Mummers' Curse (26 page)

I sat down again and pulled a minuscule piece off the crusty bread to keep busy. But my mouth was too dry to chew, my throat unable to swallow. I switched to wine, instead.

“Couldn’t help but have my eye caught by a feature article, signed by one Marv Henneman. The headline reads schoolmarm sleuth monitors murders. Marv has a fondness for alliteration.”

I hoped I was having a bad dream, but Mackenzie read on and I had a deep suspicion this was for real.

Imagine, if you will, a situation that sounds like the “high concept” idea for a film, or at least for a knockoff of a TV drama about a writer who becomes an unlikely and accidental sleuth.

“Dear God.” A crusty crumb stuck in my throat. I coughed. Angelo rushed to my side, arms outstretched, ready to perform CPR, the Heimlich maneuver, or if all that failed, suicide. I shook my head and downed still more wine while Mackenzie looked at me thoughtfully.

“He’s twisting everything around,” I said when I could speak. “Made it, made me, sound frivolous, phony. A laughingstock.”

Mackenzie sorrowfully shook his head and continued:

Amanda Pepper, a thirtyish English teacher at Philly Prep, claims she only wanted to experiment with a second career, that of journalist. For her first topic, she chose the city’s venerable Mummers, an eccentric group with a long and interesting history.

She threw herself into her research, interviewing people, visiting clubs as they prepared, gathering personal and group histories. But instead of finding herself in print, Ms. Pepper found herself in hot water. In fact, involved in a murder—or maybe two—and several go-rounds with and questionings by the police.

And what of the story her journalistic sleuthing turned up? What does it say? What does she know? That remains to be seen. At this time, it is still not sold and its contents are known only to its author.

“Talk about purple prose, hack writing! Making things up!”

“Worry less about style and more about content,” Mackenzie said.

“Puffery and lies. Anybody can see that! I didn’t say I’d uncovered secrets. I said I didn’t want to give him the article, and look what he made of that.”

“The article,” Mackenzie muttered, followed by another of his overly expressive sighs. “Ah, yes. Well, he didn’t print our address, guess that’s somethin’ to be grateful for.” Mackenzie’s pronunciation was disintegrating again. I seemed to have that effect on him often.

Having said and read his piece, he finally noticed his dinner and with great deliberation, ate the shrimp on his fork. Once it was chewed, he spoke again. “The omission, however, is probably ’cause he didn’t know it, How’d it slip by when you told him everythin’ else in your life?”

That emerged as
Thomshin whirrs prahly causee dinknowt. Howdislipbah
… And so forth. I spoke fluent Mackenziese. If the South ever gets a seat at the U.N., forget journalism. I’ll have an exciting career as a simultaneous translator of the crisp-syllable-challenged.

I pleaded my case. “I barely said a word. He bumped into me when I was leaving the police station—which your stupid regulations made me go to again today. He recognized me, realized who I was, knew—unlike the police, obviously—that I should have been teaching at that hour, and made the connection. And then he started in. He made up the girl-sleuth business. All I said was—”

“—that you were writing an article, but why’d you keep sayin’ that, given that no matter how you’re urged, you never do it?”

He was undergoing a chemical change, his cuteness factor ebbing, obnoxiousness on the rise. This was how endings began.

“The misunderstanding is partly my fault,” I admitted.

Instead of wondering what I meant, he nodded instant and hearty agreement, which made me want to throw my mushrooms at him, but it’s a pity to waste portobellos. “I thought I could use him to publicize the lawsuit, make the Fields so ashamed of themselves they’d go away. So much for my ability to manipulate the media.”

I needed to talk about the suit, about Havermeyer’s probable response, about the possible loss of my job, about what I should do. “Why don’t we forget about that hack’s fantasy? I’m concerned about tomorrow. Havermeyer wants to see me, and I’m afraid—”

Maybe it was the acoustics, but apparently, Mackenzie didn’t hear. “I’m afraid for you,” he said. “Real worried. The hack made you sound like you know too much. Once and for all, tell me true—do you know who killed Jimmy Pat?”

I shook my head. “No idea. Honestly. Cross my heart and hope to die.”

“Not a good expression, given the situation.”

“No idea. Honestly.”

“Not even a theory? An overheard whispered rumor?”

“Not even that.”

He leaned back. “I wish this article made it clear that you don’t know squat. It’s obvious Henneman wasn’t crazy about you. What’d you do to annoy him so much?”

“I didn’t tell him why I was at the station. I didn’t give him my, ah, article. Then he left a message at school, so there’s probably something else I didn’t do, but this time it was unintentional.”

“What did he want?”

I shrugged. “For me to call him at my earliest convenience. Helga didn’t give me the message till three hours later. He’d already have been past his deadline. Maybe if I’d returned his call he wouldn’t have been so creative with the facts.”

Mackenzie’s turn to shrug with cynical disbelief. “If he was going to do a hatchet job, I wish he made you sound like an idiot instead of Amanda Pepper, Ace Detective. This way, whoever killed Jimmy Pat is likely to misconstrue. Believe this. You emerge soundin’ like you hold the keys to this thing. I was convinced after I read it, which is why I was so annoyed with the games I thought you were playin’.”

It was a relief to belatedly understand his early testiness.

“But I’m not anybody for you to worry about,” he went on. “On the other hand, somebody out there does not want those keys he thinks you hold to unlock anythin’. I don’ want you to have anything to do with that somebody. Understand why I’m worried?”

I understood. He was on my side. Sometimes I forget to trust that. Force of habit.

“Care about you, tha’s all.” It took even me awhile to decipher those words which slipped by in a single soft syllable. He cared. Really cared.

The charge in the air dissipated, the miracle of ancient chemistry cleared his features, and the attract-repel factors returned to their original tilt in his favor.

*

Friday arrived ahead of time. We’d stayed up late trying to pull apart the confusing web of facts and suspicions about the two murders. Pretty much the only result of the effort was excessive fatigue the next morning.

My classic Mustang was not, for all its charm, the most perfect vehicle for a frigid January morn, and my heater never felt that my commute time was worth the effort and energy to rev up and make a difference. With all the whistling air leaks, I might as well have driven the kind of mustang that had a mane and a whinny.

I pulled into my parking spot and sat for a moment, temporarily—I hoped—overwhelmed by the challenges of the day ahead. Looming above all was, of course, the lawsuit. I was about to walk a job-related tightrope, and I wished I had more confidence in my balance and ability to make it to the other side. I wished, in fact, that I knew which other side I wanted to be on.

And of course, there would be the Henneman article repercussions. Last night, there’d been a blather of reactions on the answering machine. My friend Sasha wanted to know why I hadn’t asked her to take photographs so the article could be a joint venture. Emily left a cryptic, worried message—I recognized her voice, because she didn’t leave her name as she questioned what precisely was in that article. Vincent Devaney left an inarticulate, half-completed message ending in “never mind.” The only thing clear was his anxiety about the contents of the mythical article. Billy Obenhauser was much clearer, if not on what I might know, then definitely on my obligation not to withhold whatever it was unless, of course, it might incriminate me.

And that wasn’t even the lot of them. Luckily, my mother’s subscription copy of the paper hadn’t reached her yet, so I was spared that call. But a concerned aunt filled in for her. Shrink Quentin offered reduced-fee post-trauma therapy—free if I’d go on-air with her and discuss it. One former colleague wanted to know if I was leaving teaching because of this new career and if so, was my position open, and an actor I’d dated in college wanted first dibs on the movie version of my story.

People say newspaper readership is down. I say nonsense.

The only heartening message was from my sister. After expressing obligatory horror, outrage, concern about my growing notoriety, and admonitions to leave the city immediately, abandoning my possessions if necessary, her voice softened. “By the way,” she said. “I, ah… Dr. Reed, On the Air? Quentin? Well, she’s no longer…well, we won’t be seeing her anymore. I was angry about how she used you as a ‘true story,’ and I could see how she twisted things. And to be honest, Karen said she was annoying her. So, I, ah…told her. And when she put up this big fight, saying Karen was seriously damaged, I threatened to tell people she was really a foot doctor.”

I laughed out loud hearing that. “Your sister’s all right,” Mackenzie said. “A little stiff, but all right in the clinch.”

I could hear Beth take a deep breath before continuing. “She used me as her true story last night. Called me ‘Louisa May’—you like that?—an abusive mother who wants to appear to help her child, but who really subverts…oh, you know.” And then she giggled. “What a creep!”

And Bea’s daughters would be friends still longer. And Karen would be safe from On the Air’s meddling. All was semi-well.

Remembering that, I screwed up my courage and willed myself out of the car and into the school. Once upon a time, the only thing I faced, feared, and anticipated at the start of a teaching day was teaching itself, which seemed quite enough, thank you.

I opened the car door, then bent toward the passenger seat to retrieve my pocketbook from the floor where I leave it to make it harder on stoplight muggers. When I straightened up I yelped. The door was still open, but my exit was blocked and I faced a pair of slacks, a winter coat, a man inside them. He had his arms out, up on the convertible top, to block any possible egress.

“Hey!” I shouted. “What’s this? Who’re—” I was getting tired of the shouting business. Besides, it didn’t seem to work.

I craned and looked up at his face. Mostly, I saw flaring nostrils and a chin that needed shaving. “Let me out right now!” I snapped in my most authoritarian voice.

It is an archetypal voice, generally reducing grown men to weepy memories of being tiny and helpless, of having Mommy give them over to a stern teacher replacement.

This time it had no effect. This guy had definitely gotten over the kindergarten blues. “Listen,” he said, “whatever you found out—”

I didn’t have to ask what he meant. “I didn’t! That article—”

“You’ll destroy me. What I did was wrong, but a mistake, I swear, a big one, and I’ll make it good. You think you know things, you have your high and mighty code of behavior, but you don’t, you don’t know.”

It seemed too late to ask who he was when we were already deep into heated disagreement. Besides, he was impossible to interrupt, although I tried so often that my
but—buts
sounded like an outboard motor.

“You—you live in this comfortable, steady world. A teacher kind of world, but other people—”

I slowly edged my feet more securely in the open door, estimating my skill and limberness, his position, and the odds of success. “Get away from me,” I said. “You’re making me late.”

“You could ruin me, understand? You could destroy me, and for what? Vincent’s so scared he got me into—”

Vincent. The connection. The schoolroom fight, the missing funds, the question of whether or not he’d taken them. I had only heard him shouting last time, hadn’t recognized the speaking voice or the nostrils.

“Fabian.” I tried the remembered name on for size.

“I told him it wasn’t like it looked. I wouldn’t kill—”

That’s who it was and I didn’t like him, never had. That first night, over coffee, all I had felt was anger corning off him, anger and dislike of me. “What do you want with me?” My feet were on the door opening. I could have used an old-fashioned running board, but I slowly edged my rear around until I was pretty much facing him.

“Don’t act stupid! You know what I want—the article before anybody sees it, before you push me into doing something I don’t want to do. I’m at the end of my—”

“No.” I was fighting over an article that did not exist. Freedom of the hypothetical press. And the man frightened me. There was something steely and cold at his center. “Don’t worry about it. There isn’t any—”

“Hand it over or I’ll—”

That was it, then. “Don’t threaten me—now—last chance, get out of my way!” I looped my bag over my shoulder.

“I swear I’ll—”

“I said don’t threaten me!”
I screamed it, I’d been trained to—but you know, men have a lot of trouble around the issue of listening to women. Including him. So while he sputtered about what he might do to me, I gave up on verbal communication. Instead, I visualized myself as an Olympic gymnast, small, strong, and compact. I pulled my knees toward my chest, then as fast and hard as I could, I swung my feet up and out. Aimed for his manhood, as they say.

And thus did I render my first lesson of the day.

“Oof!” He doubled over. “Jeez, you—why’d you—didn’t have to—what is
wrong
with you?” Then he merely groaned.

He was the one with time to contemplate answers. I was late for work and in enough trouble. As he staggered, doubled over, grunting and gasping, I jumped out of the car and ran toward the back door of the school.

“Fabian! Mandy! What the hell is going on? Did you just—I thought I saw you—”

I’d been so intent on going for the gold, doing my personal best, I hadn’t even heard him pull up, but now, Vincent stood beside his still-running car in a position that suggested he’d leaped out of it. Its door hung open as he looked from one of us to the other. I don’t know why he was astounded. Hadn’t he been in a shouting match with the selfsame Fabian earlier this week?