Helen Hath No Fury (15 page)

I
WAS TURNING MY KEY IN THE DOWNSTAIRS DOOR WHEN
an unfamiliar voice said, “Excuse me?”

I turned and found an equally unfamiliar young man in front of me.

“Are you Miss Pepper? Are you a teacher at Philly Prep?” He was well dressed, in the sloppy way that well-dressed college-age kids can be these days. He didn’t look crazed or frightening. Off-putting, perhaps, because of the tilt of his stance, separating himself from me even as he introduced himself, and his barely contained expression of distaste.

“Why do you ask?” I put my door key between my middle and index fingers. It’s a handy weapon in that position. Just in case.

“My name is Ethan. I, um, know Petra. Does that answer?”

It certainly did. But my house? “What—how did you know where I—”

“Some girl named Bonnie who goes to Petra’s school. Where you teach, she said. She wouldn’t tell me her last name, or her phone number. But she gave me yours. I called and got your machine. Didn’t want to leave a message. She’s been driving me crazy the whole past week. She said she saw a list of the faculty addresses. Something in the office, something about summer. I don’t
know, but that’s how she explained it. I’m not here to do anything except get her off my back, and since she said you’re part of it, to call off your troops. You’re making things worse.”

“What troops? What are you talking about?”

He looked around. “Can we talk a little less … publicly?”

We certainly weren’t going into my house. The idea of walking wasn’t overly appealing, either. The rain had subsided, but it was obvious it would start up again, soon. Meanwhile, a wet wind rustled my clothing.

“It’s not like I’m any kind of threat,” he said. “You’re the threat. To me. And to Petra, if you have to know.”

I had to know. “Let’s walk.” We headed toward Independence Mall, toward tourists. I didn’t mind being near people. Just in case. “Why would you say I’m a threat?” I asked. I had taken on evil powers this week.

“Involving cops.”

I thought he meant Mackenzie. I couldn’t understand why, however, and I shook my head to show my incomprehension.

“Look. I admit I made a major mistake in judgment. I thought she was older. I thought she—I thought a lot of wrong things, okay? But to act as if I’m a criminal—”

“I never—”

“Bonnie said you called the police. About me.”

I took several deep breaths.

“I could have ignored her, if you want to know. Petra. When she called—I could have so easily fanned her off. Most men would.”

Men, indeed. There’s a major difference between being male and a man, or at least, I want there to be.

“I barely remembered her. I was pretty far gone that night. And so was she. I am amazed she remembered my name or where I lived. I didn’t remember her name.” His
voice almost pulsed with emotion, and he gesticulated, his hands arcing as we walked. “Then I was only home that one night Petra called because of my grandparents’ golden wedding anniversary party. That was the only reason I ever talked to Petra again. It was all pure chance.”

Just like the pregnancy. “Chance affects a lot of things,” I murmured.

He glared. “I don’t know why you and that Bonnie treat me like scum. I mean it took two people, didn’t it? And I behaved
honorably.
I didn’t
have
to, is what I mean. Don’t you understand?”

Honorably. Honorable. The note. But that was Helen’s, not Petra’s. The two of them were merging, blurring boundaries. “I’m not sure I do, Ethan. I’m worried sick about Petra, as are her parents, as is her friend. So far, I wouldn’t paste the word
honorable
on much of this.”

“Bonnie! Call her off, would you? I don’t want my parents hearing about this—Jesus, that’s the last thing I need right now. I wasn’t supposed to use the house that way, for a party, in the first place.”

“You’re in college, right?”

He nodded. “Freshman. I was home that weekend, for a friend’s birthday. My parents were on vacation. They didn’t even know I was in town. I’d rather they never did, thanks.” He walked silently, gesturing as if he were having an argument with himself; then the words burst out of him again. “What is that Bonnie, insane? What the hell
was
all this about?”

“Petra’s missing. The police are of course involved. Is that what you mean? Her parents—”

“I don’t mean that. I mean telling the cops I murdered her!”

“Who ever—”

“Bonnie!
Why do you think I—why would she even think that, let alone call me about it three times? The first time, I called her from school, the night before my last final. I hung up on her. After that, when I was home, I had my mother take messages until I got scared that Bonnie would tell my mom what she told me. For God’s sake—I could imagine it, ‘I’m calling because Ethan murdered my friend. Would you give him that message?’ She called me three times in the last two days. What’s wrong with her?”

“She’s scared. Her friend is missing.” And maybe she’s nuts, too. What if there truly had been foul play? What kind of high school student would mess with a killer—if she really believed that—and more to the point, what kind of student would then give the killer my home address? “It has happened, you know, that a father, an unwilling father, harmed a woman.”

“Jesus! Not now! Not ever, for me—I’m not like that! I didn’t hurt her. She called me last week and at first … okay, I admit at first, my impulse was to tell her to get lost. I thought she was making it up. I thought … look, the party was at my house. My parents were away. I—they have a pretty large house. Impressive, I guess, to some people. Petra seemed impressed, all right. I guess I mean I thought she was trying to … I thought she thought I was rich, and maybe she wanted money.”

That’s what he thought at first. And then? “Where is she?” I asked. “You know, don’t you?”

We’d rounded the corner and were at Elfreth’s Alley, the cunning street where you could believe you’d been transported back in time. Its claim to fame was as the oldest continually inhabited street in the U.S., and the narrow houses were precisely as they’d been when the city began. And up on their second stories, small mirrors, “busybodies,” tilted out from the brick, spying on
two centuries of passersby. I was sure that countless times, they’d reflected people like us having this same conversation about this same dilemma on this same street. Some things don’t change.

“She wouldn’t come home, and I couldn’t stay,” he said.

“Where is she?”

“I could go to jail. Don’t you understand anything? She’s underage and we didn’t get parental permission.”

Which meant he’d taken her out of state where she had options on her own, where she still had choice. However, making that decision on her own was a crime in our state. Transporting her elsewhere to make that decision was a crime. I understood Ethan’s reticence, the need to talk in something akin to code. “Okay, I won’t push, but I need to know that she’s safe.”

“I was with her, then after, I left her with my cousin. I have a summer internship starting tomorrow. I couldn’t stay even if I wanted to. Even if I knew her. I’m not going to tell you names or addresses. When she feels ready, she’ll come back. I gave her the fare. I paid for everything. My cousin will make sure she’s okay. Her parents can just think she ran away for a while.”

“Just!”

“Yeah, she told me how it is with them. She’ll be in big trouble, but not as bad as if …”

I hoped not. Now I could talk to Rachel, present my plan. We would talk to Petra’s father about almost all of her dilemma. About her running away. About the psychological danger she was in. Of how his daughter felt about her home life. Of her suicidal talk. Maybe that would galvanize him into action on her behalf. I felt a flutter of hope for Petra.

“She’s safe,” Ethan said. “Isn’t that the thing? The whole point? She’s safe and she’s … she’s okay.”

“Thanks. It’s good knowing that. I had some pretty horrifying images of where she could have wound up. One thing—I want her to call me. Reverse the charges. Tell her I think I can help.”

“Why? You don’t believe me? You think she really is dead?”

“No. I have a plan for her. I think there’s a way to make things better at home. I want her to know about it, to feel safe.”

He nodded. “So would you call off the dogs?” he asked glumly. “Tell Bonnie to stop? I don’t want her calling my house. I don’t want her talking to my parents. And I do not want the cops involved. I could go to jail because I helped her.”

“I don’t think the police were contacted about anything except that she was missing.”

He glared at me. “This was a hoax? What was that, blackmail?”

“Ethan, you’re a little bit paranoid, and you’re still taking all of this too lightly, as an irritant to you. It’s lucky that you had the financial resources to see this through, but just because that part was relatively easy doesn’t mean this wasn’t a serious situation. You still don’t seem to understand how worried people were—still are—about Petra. And that includes her friend Bonnie, who overreacted and maybe said something that wasn’t overly bright, but only because she thought she was protecting Petra by frightening you. We’re talking about a missing fifteen-year-old who’s desperate and terrified and feels she has no safe place on earth. Maybe, while you’re doing your internship, you should think about the big picture more seriously than you seem to. This was not about your being pestered or annoyed. Do you even begin to get it?”

He raised both hands in a classic image of supplication
to heavenly powers. As if I were incomprehensible, a burden he had to bear. He didn’t begin to get it. “I have to go,” he said. “Have to catch the train.”

I nodded. So be it.

He left. I walked to midblock, where I turned and entered Bladen’s Court, an alley off the alley. Not many people knew about its small courtyard, and it was a place I liked when I needed solitude. Of course, it was more enjoyable when breathing didn’t feel like inhaling through a wet sponge. On good days, I’d sometimes take papers to mark, and sit on the bench in the circular courtyard and see the “spinning porch” of the house facing the community well. That’s where the women sat and worked through the hot summer, although the enclosed courtyard must have been unbearably oppressive as the temperature rose.

And on that porch, I now thought, they must have talked discreetly, perhaps more obliquely than even we had, of the same troubles.

I sat down. Sooner or later, I would be rained upon, but the warm blustery air was not unpleasant, and this had proven a good place so many times. A good place to think, which is what I did, in no particular order, my mind overfull of the drama and events of the past few days, and of today alone—the visit to Susan, the talk with Tess, the encounter with Ethan.

And of Petra, somewhere, as safe, I hoped, as he’d implied. But alone. What a mess it all was, and she still had an angry family to face. I wondered how she’d be, long term, because of all that had happened to her.

Anger, guilt, pain. What a roil of emotions this Sunday had held. Petra’s. Helen’s.

And then I sat very quietly as the two women blurred, blended, superimposed themselves, one on top of the other, in my mind. I thought about Helen’s secret, her unhappy
love affair, the depression when she couldn’t conceive, her sense that the infertility was punishment for her love affair with a married professor.

Tess saying I should back off, be more discreet, that there were things Helen would not have wanted Gretchen to know.

The notes in the daybook about hoping to be forgiven.

Polly Baker and her illegitimate brood.

Petra’s pregnancy.

RvW.

The quote about laws creating criminals.

I stood up quickly and walked double time back to the loft, and my pace had nothing to do with the impending rain, which I could smell in the air. It was a return to what I’d felt at the end of the visit with Susan, the talk with Tess.

I hurried to look again at precisely what Helen had written.

Yes, I had told Susan to burn the copy I’d given her, just as I’d promised to do. But first, I’d copied the pages that seemed important.

So I’d lied a little. Better sometimes to be a liar than a fool.

I
WAS BEYOND EDGY
. M
Y MIND FELT LIKE A CITY UNDER
siege. Thoughts about Petra and Helen torpedoed my brain. I reread Helen’s notes in the light of what Tess had said about her puritanical ways. And then I couldn’t concentrate on that anymore, so I reviewed the talk with Ethan and didn’t get anywhere in particular with that, either. I needed to fill the yawning, agitated space ahead until something happened—Mackenzie came home, or I felt like preparing dinner, or it was time to go meet Denise.

I saw the tape I’d promised to edit. It wasn’t much of a job. Most people, as I recalled, had said pleasant enough things. Only one that I remembered had been upset—a poor choice of words that she’d then changed. Cutting and splicing would be simple. Eminently doable.

I listened as Denise complimented Helen’s values, more or less, and felt just as irrationally annoyed as I had when I’d first heard her cast Helen’s goodness as a political plug. I was even annoyed that a fine word such as
values
had become code for something narrow and less fine. And I heard Roxanne be generous about Helen’s beauty and radiance, and Clary pick up on how the boys had loved Helen, and the anecdote about dating every Tom, Dick, and Harry. Someone else had used the same expression
with me, I remembered. Helen must have been incredibly popular. And Tess, so kind and sane, talking about Helen’s joy at her daughter’s birth and about Helen’s principles, and then Wendy, talking about their early business relationship.

This was good stuff, a fine gift to Helen’s daughter. A warm and completely positive portrait. We should do this for everyone while they’re alive. Have their memorials while they can appreciate them and force us all to see more of each other than the slivers we observe in passing.

I heard Wendy say, “Turn it off!” Time for me to work.

I sat with the tape, the women’s voices echoing as I cut and spliced out her unfortunate reference to a “happy ending for everybody.” I wondered if anything on the tape was worth adding to my diagram that looked like balloons and free-flying trash and added up to nothing. So when the minor editing task was completed, I pulled my notes close and studied them.

You know how it is when a song gets trapped in your brain until you’re humming it so incessantly you’re annoying even your own self? That’s how it was with the Helen/Petra/Susan clusters of words, issues, problems in my head. They refused to stop spinning, repeating themselves, until I could almost picture the interior of my skull with words zooming in spirals that matched Helen’s doodles. Helen. Death. Beautiful. Helen the firebrand. Helen solo on a protest march. Morality. Ivan and Roxanne. Ivan and Helen. Where was Ivan. Clary works. Stresses. Hypocrisy. Family forgive and understand. Polly Baker. Petra hiding. Petra in trouble. Ethan. Pregnancy. Trouble. Big trouble. Parents. Shame. Guilt. Fear. Secrets. Family.

Helen falling. Denise making Helen a Roy Stanton
Harris kind of person. Denise. Roy Stanton Harris. Helen radiant. Every Tom, Dick, and Harris.

Harry!

A slip of the tongue because Roy Stanton’s damn family values had insisted on being part of the babble in my brain. No need for Doctor Freud to stick in his two bits.

I nonetheless considered the slip.

Hypocrisy. That was the one word in Helen’s notes to herself that most puzzled me. Was it about her business dealings? She had borrowed funds, but still …

When Helen thought something was wrong or immoral, she spoke up.
Wasn’t that what Tess had said? That or something that meant that.

The “announcement” via Roxanne.

Hypocrisy.

A scoop. Big news.

There’s a feeling like a faint electrical shock when things begin to come to you. They aren’t there yet, but there’s a force field around them that you can feel, and I felt it then.

I went through the recycling pile and fished out this morning’s paper.

And there it was, as I’d remembered. Before entering real-life politics, he’d studied and taught it. Poli sci professor at Penn State. Helen’s alma mater. A professor. The years dovetailed. They were there at the same time.

Still, it was an enormous leap from there to …

Not all that enormous. Not when everything was considered. Hypocrisy. Honor. Rage about a contribution to his cause.

I considered the long piece, more than I’d ever before wanted to know about Roy Stanton Harris. This time, I read every word, and midway down the second column, under a subheading called
EARLY VISION
, I saw:

Every Tom, Dick, and Harry. Was that possible? At least two people had said that phrase, had mentioned Toms and Dicks. Was Roy Stanton Harris really Harry the married teacher?

His wife had been sick for a long time, ultimately dying right before Zachary entered Philly Prep, a fact the boy used as an excuse for his bad behavior. Was that part of Helen’s sense of shame? Not only a married man, but one with a dying wife and a child?

Words and ideas pressed and pushed at me. I spoke out loud, startling the cat and even myself a bit, but I felt as if I were preparing a case, a prosecution.

The loose puzzle pieces began locking together, making one coherent picture. Roe
v.
Wade. Polly Baker’s babies. Fertility problems, depression. The law that created criminals. Hypocrisy. Honorable. And so I paced and told my case to the judge, in this case, a mildly bemused Macavity.

Mr. Family Values, the front-runner, had had an affair with a college student while he was married and his wife was ill. And then—it had to be—he arranged his lover’s abortion. That’s why she thought her fertility problems were a judgment.

But now Harris preached against everything he’d done, blamed the world’s problems on such actions. Wanted
the law reversed so that others in his situation would not have access to what he’d had.

That had to be the “hypocrisy” in Helen’s note. His. His false morality. That was the only thing that made sense of it all.

Helen, who was hard on herself, felt guilt. About her own silence in the light of his platform rhetoric. And anger, about Harris’s hypocrisy. No wonder she’d been furious about Clary’s donation to his campaign. That may have sparked her determination to go public.

I was willing to bet her discomfort at the book group, the thing she’d said to her daughter, had to do with the presence of Denise, the candidate’s wife.

Denise, who needed to see me. What had she said? “There’s a situation. She”—meaning Helen—“was in touch recently.” Helen had made contact about this, about what she planned, maybe in the hopes of getting Roy Stanton to own up, or ease up on his rhetoric. In either case, with that contact, Denise would have known that Helen was trouble.

Helen spelled potential disaster to that campaign. An upstanding, model citizen was going to come forward and say to the candidate, “You are a hypocrite and I am willing to tarnish my own reputation for the sake of exposing you.” I looked at her staccato notes again and nodded. It all fit. Every bit of it.

Maybe Helen had warned them, or asked that they be publicly honest. It would have been like her to do so.

So you make a specious appointment, pretend to be a workman, dress like one, get entry into the house where a distracted and confused housekeeper dizzy with a year’s worth of workmen barely notices you, and you wait for Helen.

The remodel was no secret, certainly not to anybody in the book group.

You didn’t have to be strong to push someone who didn’t expect such an act. The surprise of seeing a familiar face might have given the killer enough time to push and have it over. That quickly.

And then there was Susan and her notes. The book group knew about that, too. You didn’t have to be strong to clobber somebody from behind, either.

I was out of breath, pulse racing. Somebody I knew could do something like this, to someone as good as Helen. And attempt to do it again with Susan.

I phoned Susan. I had to hear all of it said out loud. “No need to speak,” I assured her. “Just listen. Grunt when you object, or hear bad logic—or anything.”

I got all the way through without hearing a grunt. “Can’t believe it,” she said. She said it as if through a terry towel, missing letters and softening syllables, but I heard it as sharply as if each word had been polished to a point.

“Why not? Where am I going wrong?”

“Denise,” she said. “So … proper. Not like us. Always earrings.”

I knew what she meant. Garb for the book group was whatever anybody felt like wearing. Roxanne obviously got a kick out of costuming herself. Most of the rest of us wore whatever was most unlike work and most comfortable—jeans or sweats. Not Denise. She was ever and always a lady. A first lady in the Nancy Reagan mode. Little tailored suits. Stockings. Discreet earrings. “But you’re always talking about the least likely suspect, right? I was the one who said the least likely is the least likely, and now I think I was wrong.”

Silence for a second, then a long sigh. “Denise is
really
least likely. Prim!”

Pwim
, it sounded like, but I got the picture. A pwim killer.

“Look, I’m asking you whether you see a hole in the argument. Nobody else makes sense, really. Even if Helen borrowed money without mentioning it, what would anybody at the firm gain by killing her? Even if Ivan was off somewhere where he shouldn’t have been, what would he gain by killing his wife? Roxanne? I don’t think so. I don’t even know if the rumors are true at all. Men and women can be friends.” I thought I heard a small “hmmph!” of disbelief, but I ignored it. “So where is the hole in the logic?”

“Figged out because slipped the tongue?”

“I figured it out through a slip of the mental tongue—but not completely. I was sure it had to be about sex, and about illegitimacy, abortion—something like that.”

“Why?”

“Your painkillers have eaten your brain,” I said. “The fact that she’d copied so much about Polly Baker. When we saw they were notes—probably for her announcement—what else could the forgiveness be about? The only sin, isn’t that what she called it the night of the book club? A woman having sex without intending to procreate?

“Suppose it was only about this secret affair with a married man. That was long ago. If that was going to be her big announcement—so what? Excuses and apologies would be made. That’s not worth going public with something she kept secret from her daughter and husband. There had to be more. Something that mattered on some public, civic scale. I’m sure she was going to make Polly part of her announcement—giving some historical perspective on women and their bodies and legislation. Look at those pages I brought you—at the arrow from Polly to Roe
v.
Wade. To whom do those ideas relate? And who’s prominent enough to warrant a feature piece about this sort of thing?”

“Aaah,” Susan said. “Mirmorty.”

“Mr. Morality. Right. Only him. She could have blasted the man’s entire platform, his holier-than-thou stance, couldn’t she? Virtually destroy him, or at least injure him severely. But I don’t think he’d do anything himself. I don’t think he’d dirty his hands or be that obvious. Besides, would he know about workmen? Or your schedule?”

“You wery good,” Susan said.

“Once you’re off narcotics, some of the glow may recede.” It no longer felt revelatory. It felt horribly, ploddingly obvious and logical.

Susan squawked. “Don’ go! No meeting now!”

I laughed. “You mean like those idiots in books? The ones who run into the maniac’s house to see what the screaming’s about?”

She made clenched-jaw noises of agreement.

“Just because the old baseball bat would work as efficiently on me as it did on you?” I asked. “And because maybe there won’t be a passerby this time?”

The door opened, and Mackenzie entered. Shuffling, just about. He looked as if he’d topple with one push. “God but it is good to be home!” he said before he was even in the room. That sentence apparently had used up his last reserve of strength. He walked over, kissed my forehead, and sat down on the sofa and started an exhausted-sounding monologue. He hadn’t even noticed that I was on the phone. I covered the speaker side of the receiver with my palm and listened.

“This is all I wanted all day,” he said. “All I thought about every minute. I am tired of crime and killings and sorrow. I am tired, tired, tired, and I jus’ want to be with you and consider other life alternatives. Like becoming a street cleaner.”

Poor man. Poor desperate-for-the-sanctuary-of-home man.

“Manda?” Susan said.

I took my hand off the speaker. “I’m not an idiot,” I answered her. “I’m not going there alone. I’m going with police protection.”

Mackenzie already had one shoe off, but he stopped in mid-removal of the second one.

“Who wif?” She waited a minute and, still blurry-lipped, said, “Wif whom?” We’d majored in English at Penn. A few bashes on the head aren’t supposed to eradicate that.

“Guess.”

“Oh. Fawt he was wurrgink.”

I considered the poor man holding the shoe. I felt compassion, understanding of where he was emotionally and physically. I felt concern.

I realized, once and for all, that I truly, permanently loved him.

Which nonetheless coexisted with my need to see the mystery of Helen’s death through as far as I could go.

Mackenzie still waited, his hand on his second shoe, his excellent features slowly contracting into an affectionate, but suspicious expression.

I put my hand over the receiver. “Might as well let that second shoe drop,” I said. “Or I will. Because yes, the answer is: with you.” I waited. This was a test, I realized. A grossly unfair one, just like in fairy tales. I waited with held breath.