New England White (38 page)

“Well, all I know is what Kellen told me. Tony had a client who was interested in bidding for the surplus. I got the idea that the client was on the shady side, and if Kellen could prove what he thought he could prove, well, you can see why it would make sense.”

“People say Tony’s clients are Mafiosi or terrorists or—”

“Or a coalition of Texas oilmen or Silicon Valley tycoons. They’re every bit as dangerous, Julia. Every bit as corrupt.” Mary was entirely serious. “Don’t be fooled by arbitrary labels telling us what’s legal or illegal. No matter who his clients are, anybody who’d pay for the surplus is dangerous.” She stirred her salad, managed to find a mushroom of which she approved. “I mean, somebody killed Kellen. And maybe your friend Boris, too. God knows who else.”

Julia nodded, although not in agreement. She stuffed a French fry into her mouth. She heard wild conspiracy theories in her inner-city beauty parlor and on Kwame Kennerly’s radio show, and it was easy to forget that white people, too, were capable of believing anything.

“Did Tony go to Kellen initially, or did Kellen go to Tony?”

“Good question. I asked Kellen the same thing. Unfortunately, he never answered,” Mary said, shoving her salad aside. “The thing is, Kellen told me he was planning an auction for his inventory. What he called an ‘all-pay auction.’ Do you know what that means? I had to look it up. It’s an auction where you pay your bid whether you get the item or not.”

“Why would anybody do that? It’s nuts.”

“No, it isn’t, if you think about it. People will bid less, because they know they lose the money if their bid isn’t the highest. So, if you can guess other people’s bids, you’ll get the thing for less in an all-pay auction than in the other kinds. The crazy part was Kellen thinking once he started putting out feelers the whole thing would stay secret. Are you done?”

Julia grinned. She understood. Five minutes later, they were strolling through the chilly night across Harvard Yard, most of the gates now locked at night, windows brightly lighted in the massive Georgian dorms. Mary was working on her second cigarette already.

“I’ve met a couple of times with Bruce Vallely,” Julia said. “Trevor Land suggested it. And you know what? He’s not so bad. He’s clumsy, but kind of nice.”

“Hubba-hubba.”

Julia elbowed her. “Cut it out. He’s actually shared some useful information. I’ve even put together a sort of chronology.”

“Tell.”

“On the night she died, Gina was seen talking to DeShaun. Okay. But here’s the thing. One witness—a teacher—said she saw Gina alive after she was supposed to have gotten into the car with DeShaun. Then she changed her story. Said she was mistaken.” Julia shivered. “According to Mitch Huebner, though, she didn’t just see Gina. She let Gina in her house to make a phone call. Half an hour later, a sporty-looking car showed up in the driveway with two young men inside. One of the guys got out. Gina argued with him, but finally the three of them drove off. And that was that.”

They walked in silence for a moment. Then Julia resumed.

“So—who were the two boys? Well, Mitch Huebner says Gina had a boyfriend she used to sneak out to meet. And Bruce says Jock Hilliman’s Jag was wrecked that night. By Jock’s own admission, he made a specialty of seducing the daughters of faculty. In those days, even more than these days, that was a high-risk business. Not everybody would take to it. I would guess that Jock was the boyfriend.”

“And Mal Whisted was a friend of the family.”

“That doesn’t mean Scrunchy couldn’t have been in the car. We don’t know which two they were.” She nibbled her lip. “In fairness, it could have been Jock and somebody we haven’t thought about.”

“But you don’t believe that, and neither do I.” Mary’s turn now. “I told you I found this witness. It’s a guy from the President’s class who says he’s ready to go on the record. Lives out in the Midwest. He swears Scrunchy was at a frat party that night, had too much to drink, and fell asleep on the sofa. He slept there all night. The guy says he remembers because it was the Valentine’s Day party, and Scrunchy showed up with a woman who left with somebody else and got all maudlin. So, if this guy’s telling the truth, it couldn’t have been Scrunchy in the car that night.”

“Too convenient,” said Julia.

“I’ll say. Witnesses turning up just as people need them.” She blew out more smoke. “Still, the guy didn’t come to me. I tracked him down. I don’t know, Julia. He doesn’t sound like he’s making it up.”

“Did he use the word
maudlin
?”

“What difference does it make?”

“Call me prejudiced, but it just doesn’t strike me as a frat kind of word.” Julia’s boots crunched agreeably through the snow. “And, by the way, how many of Scrunchy’s frat brothers did you call before you found one willing to talk?”

Mary smiled. “And here I thought I was the conspiracy theorist.” She moved to the next subject. “I’ve tried to find a source in the Hilliman family. But they’re so secretive, they live behind so many walls of lawyers and retainers, I can’t find a way in. I’ve talked to a friend of mine who wrote a book about them, and he told me he didn’t have any good inside sources either. I don’t think the Hillimans will do us much good.” She hesitated. “I did find out something about your boyfriend, though. Hey, no need to get rough. About Bruce Vallely. When he was doing Special Forces in Central America, he beat some poor CIA guy within an inch of his life because the Agency didn’t want to bring out an informer who’d been targeted by the death squads. He’s a very protective guy, Bruce Vallely.”

“Huh.” Julia was not sure how she felt about that one. A glance over her shoulder. She felt observed. “Were you serious a couple of weeks ago? About how I might be under surveillance?”

“Sure.”

“What makes you say that?”

The tip gleamed redly as Mary inhaled. “It’s a feeling. When you’re around people who follow people for a living—and I’ve spent a lot of time with them—you just get that sense. A couple of times, even in Harbor County, I’ve been around you, and you haven’t noticed. I don’t think I’m the only one. There are big people worried about what Kellen was doing, Julia. Powerful people. They want to know what you’re up to.”

“Last week, in the Landing, there was a car I thought was following me.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“And there was all this top-of-the-line spyware on my computer—”

“Kind of makes my point, doesn’t it? Powerful people, Julia.”

“Any idea who?”

“I’m working on it.”

“Are we being followed right now?”

“I don’t think so. You can’t ever be sure, but I don’t think so.” Blowing smoke through her nose. “College campuses are actually very difficult targets, my friends in the business tell me. Students sitting around doing nothing don’t stand out. Adults do. If adults are on campus, they’re headed someplace. Colleges belong to the kids now.”

“I sure hope so.”

“Because of your antics last month,” said the writer, smiling. “That was pretty brave of you. Breaking into the basement of your own building. But, you know, Julia, you probably left your fingerprints everywhere.”

“I thought it through. I think it’s okay. My fingerprints have legitimate reasons to be in the library.”

“On the barred window eight feet off the floor?”

“Okay, so I didn’t think it through.” The tickle of smoke in her nose set off the old craving. She was determined to resist. Students traveled in small knots, hoods up as they leaned into the wind. But Julia was from New Hampshire and Mary was from Maine, and neither was prepared to admit that the temperature was uncomfortable. “The thing is, I was wrong.”

“Wrong about what?”

“Well, I have this student—Joe—who owes me a favor. I wanted to figure out exactly what part of the Joule papers Kellen had looked at, but I didn’t want to arouse the suspicion of the archivist, who already doesn’t like me. So I gave Joe the cites and asked him to go to the library and pretend he needed them for his own research. Which he did.”

They turned into a cul-de-sac, retraced their steps to get out. Julia had the sense that Mary had led her this way intentionally, to check their back. Angry voices exploded across the Yard, a couple fiercely breaking up, at least for the moment. Back at Dartmouth, Julia and Kellen had endured several such shouting matches in the middle of the Green, hating each other so much they had to go back to bed to prove it.

“That was clever,” said Mary. “Using a student, I mean. So—what were the cites?”

“They weren’t anything. That was the funny part. Kellen had written ‘Merrill Joule Collection’ at the top of each request slip, but none of the numbers on the slips matched anything in the Joule papers. Joe thought this was odd, and he asked Mrs. Bethe—she’s the archival assistant—he asked Mrs. Bethe if she could tell him what documents the numbers would fit. Only she refused. Said it was against the rules. He had to show a bona fide academic need for any collection he wanted to get into, and a sheet full of numbers wasn’t a need.”

“She sounds like a real treat. Want one?” Offering the cigarettes. Addicts hate to suffer alone.

With an effort, Julia made herself wave the pack away. “The two of them run those archives like the most important thing is making sure nobody knows what’s inside. Rod Rutherford probably spends almost as much on security for that place as he does on books.” Both women stopped. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

Mary said, “Extra locks, alarms, bars on the windows, and a staff that doesn’t trust anybody, can’t be talked out of following the rules, and makes you leave a dozen written records if you ever do get inside.”

Julia said, “The perfect hiding place for whatever you don’t want found.”

“Like, say, pages from Arnold Huebner’s diary. And whatever other forms the surplus took.”

“Perfect,” Julia said again. A pause. “Except we can’t get in.”

“We can’t. You can.”

“How do I do that exactly?”

“I have no idea. But don’t worry. You’ve pulled one brilliancy after another out of your hat the past few weeks. I’m sure you’ll figure this one out.”

Julia doubted it but played along. “And when I get there, what do I look for?”

“I leave that to you, too.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“Seriously. You’re the one he left the clues for. Not me or Tony or anybody else. You’re who Kellen left them for, and you’re who can interpret them.”

Julia put her hands on her hips. “And while I’m risking my neck sneaking into the Kepler archives and going through all ten thousand folios, or whatever they have, looking for a few loose diary pages, what exactly will you be doing?”

“Research. Interviews. Memos.”

“In other words, nothing.”

“Working hard on my book proposal.”

“I meant, what are you going to do to help
me
?”

Mary made a dainty face, dimpling her chin with a finger. “Well, in high school I was a cheerleader.” She laughed in the winter night. “Rah, rah.”

CHAPTER 41

DARK MATTER

(I)

J
ULIA HAD NOT TOLD
M
ARY EVERYTHING
. Alone again, she steered the Escalade through the narrow side streets of Cambridge and parked at an awkward angle three blocks from the address she wanted, because no space was wide enough for her car. She knew that if she pushed the buzzer her son would find some excuse, so she dawdled near the entrance to the low building until a knot of students exited, slipping in as one politely held the door. On the fourth floor, she heard the raised voices before she reached the apartment. She knocked anyway, loud enough to be heard over the din. The door snapped open, and a twentyish redhead with teary bags under her eyes snarled, “What?”

Then Preston was there, small and compact and brilliantly complete, needing nobody, least of all a parent or a weepy girlfriend. “Well,” he said. To the girlfriend: “Believe it or not, this serious hottie is my mother.” A silence everybody waited for somebody else to break. “I guess you can come in.”

The living room and kitchen were filthy, and Julia was not invited to inspect the rest. “Megan isn’t much of a housekeeper. Well, what do you expect? She’s a historian, not a scientist.” He had his father’s devastating smile, but his eyes were New England winter. “Oh, right, I forgot. You’re not a scientist, either, are you, Ma? You’re a
biologist.
A biologist-
theologian.
”

They sat on opposite sides of a rickety table. Megan served coffee and stale croissants, then made herself scarce. Julia attempted small talk, even told Preston how she missed him, but he treated conversation like an indulgence to be shared only with your peers. In her son’s presence she felt uncertain, even inferior. Mary Mallard would not have recognized her.

“What do you want, Ma? You didn’t come to shoot the breeze. If you’d called I could have saved you the trouble.”

“Do you hate me that much?”

“I don’t hate
you
at all,” he said, savagely, and Julia could hardly miss the point.

“What is it about, Preston? This thing with your father?”

“What are you doing here, Ma?”

Julia realized that she made her son as uncomfortable as he made her. They possessed no natural way of relating to each other. She remembered him as a small boy, the way he reveled in her hugs upon every fresh accomplishment. Everybody used to say that Preston would always be his mother’s son, and Vanessa her father’s daughter. Like most generalizations made by adults about the young, this one had proved false.

She said, “Did your father ever talk to you about his fraternity? The Empyreals? Maybe about…being his, ah, successor?”

“Of course.” His interest gleamed, but he was waiting for her to play a better card. “Like a feudal lord with his firstborn son. Right of primogeniture.”

“And you said no?”

“I’m not interested in that crap. The old families. The traditions. All that bullshit.” Megan was weeping in the next room, but Preston was too puffed up with pride to notice. “I’m trying to discover the dark matter, and he’s worrying about the darker nation.”

“Dark matter?”

“The fundamental stuff of the universe. The equations predict—Never mind, you wouldn’t understand. What do you
want,
Ma?”

Excitement.
The dark matters,
Kellen had said. “Right now, I want you to tell me what dark matter is.”

“Seriously?”

She nodded.

“There isn’t enough matter in the universe. That’s what. We can only detect like one percent of the matter and energy there should be. That’s what the equations tell us. Gravity, background radiation—everything’s off. So, this other matter, the matter we can’t find, is called dark matter. They used to think it was dead stars, or maybe neutrinos, but those have been disproved. Some physicists will tell you it’s just a myth, but most of us think it’s real stuff. It’s out there somewhere, or maybe in here, passing through us all day long”—animated now that he was talking about his work, waving his hands back and forth like a man treading water—“and we just can’t detect it. Get the idea? Just beneath the surface. We can’t find it, but we know it has to be there. And, Ma, the thing is, the universe we see? It’s such a tiny part of what’s real. It’s so thin it’s almost an illusion. If we could find the dark matter, then we’d really know what’s going on.”

That had to be it. What Kellen wanted her to understand. The dark matter was down beneath the surface:
what’s really going on.
And Preston had made the allusion for her, unasked. Dark matter. Darker nation. The Empyreals had popularized the phrase
darker nation.
What swirled around in plain sight was the illusion. The dark matter, the hidden hand of the Empyreals—that was the secret reality.

But what was that hidden reality? What were the Empyreals
doing
?

(II)

P
RESTON COULD HARDLY WAIT
to get her out of the apartment. He said he had to go to the lab, and perhaps he did. In the kitchen, Megan was raising a furious clatter. At the door, Julia turned to her son.

“Your friend seems very nice.”

“She’s just a diversion.”

Ouch. “I miss you,” she said. “We all miss you.”

“How sweet, Ma.”

Another misfire. She tried again. “You said you don’t hate me. Does that mean you hate your father?”

Malice rose in his face, hot and sure. He seemed about to answer, but, with his father’s discipline, decided to wait and discover her plan before refuting it, just as he used to wait out his opponents when he finished third in the United States Junior Chess Championship. “I gotta go,” he said.

“Is that why you never come home, Preston? Because of whatever your father told you about the Empyreals?” She swallowed, closed her eyes and leaped. “What did he tell you?”

“No, Ma. That’s not the reason.”

“Then what is? Why are you having this feud?”

“It’s not a feud. We just don’t like each other.” His face told her the subject was closed. Julia knew not to press: people said Preston resembled his mother, but the firmly locked set of mouth and eyes, the
I-have-decided,
was entirely Lemaster’s.

“All right, Preston. All right.” Wondering whether any of her children would ever confide in her again.

Her son’s tone grew gentler. “Hey, how’s Nessa? How’s she holding up with all this Gina business going on?”

“She’s remarkably strong, given—” Julia covered her mouth. She had almost missed his error. “What Gina business? What do you know about what’s going on, Preston?”

“I’m just making sure she’s all right. Running away and all.”

“And who told you about that? Or that it had anything to do with Gina?” Julia answered her own question. “Vanessa did, didn’t she, Preston? You’re never in touch with anybody from the family, except you seem to know what’s going on with Vanessa. Not phone calls, they’d show up on the bill.” She saw the computer screen the night Smith had slept over, Vanessa hastily clicking away the instant messages when her mother walked into the room. “All right. You’re in touch with her. She tells you things. And—and you tell her things, too, don’t you?”

“I love my sister,” he said defensively.

“I bet you do. I just bet you do.” Julia was angry. At herself. She felt like a fool not to have seen it.
He told me to try,
Vanessa had said. “This Gina business—that’s what you just called it. Except you forgot to tell me that this Gina business was your idea from the start. A year ago Vanessa had a different topic. A month later she announces she’s looking into what happened to Gina. And who would have put the idea into her head if not you?” Her son said nothing. “What happened, Preston? Something made you stay away from the topic and then tell your sister to go for it. What was it?”

“It was an interesting topic, Ma. That’s all.”

“No, Preston. That’s not all. You’re like your father. You never do anything just for the hell of it. You always have a reason.” She read the impatience in his handsome face. “What made you tell your sister to change her topic?” Although by now what she meant was,
What makes you tick?

“I wouldn’t hurt Nessa for the world.”

“Hurt her? Her obsession with Gina didn’t start until the paper you told her to do! That’s what’s hurting her!”

“I’m done talking about Gina, Ma.” A swift, boyish grin. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go lie to my girlfriend for a while. You must know what that’s like.”

“What’s that supposed to—” She saw it then, and, for a rich moment, her anger matched his own. “Kellen Zant was here, wasn’t he? Maybe he shared some old stories about your mother. Then he asked you what I’m asking you. And you told him—what?”

“That I don’t believe in ghosts or Santa Claus or convenient little black boys who show up just in time to get blamed for killing cute little white girls.”

“Your sister seems sure—”

“I told you, Ma, I’m done talking about this. Done.” He blew out a lot of air. Julia knew that the next concession would be his last. “But I’ll tell you about Dad.”

“What does your father have to do with—”

“Not Gina. The Empyreals. You asked what he told me.” He shifted his weight, looked at his watch, glanced over his shoulder, then seized her arm and drew her physically into the dimly lighted hall. “You know in the Bible? How Satan takes Jesus up on the mountain and shows Him the kingdoms of the earth and says He can have it all if He’ll just fall down and worship the devil?” Preston stepped back into the apartment. “That’s Lemaster Carlyle, Ma. That’s your husband. The devil.”

“But what does that mean?”

“Just what it sounds like. Tempting me with earthly authority. What the fuck am I supposed to do with earthly authority? I’m doing important work, Ma. Using the blue horizontal branch stars to study Lyman alpha absorption in quasar spectra.” But he was mocking her, and they both knew it. “Please don’t come by without calling again. It’s not polite.”

He shut the door.

(III)

V
EAZIE WOMEN NEVER CRIED
, so Julia blundered along the snowy streets, forcing her mind to work the data, because she had gotten everything from Preston that he would ever give. It was Kellen who wanted her to hear it. That was what she reminded herself. Kellen wanted her to hear Preston’s tale, and if she lacked the details, at least she had the outline. Every Empyreal was supposed to groom a young successor, and Lemaster had tried to recruit his elder son. But Preston had rejected his blandishments. The disagreement was not the source of the hatred her son so carefully nurtured toward his father; it was the result. Had Lemmie then moved on to Aaron? But Julia had pressed him on the way up to Exeter, and was sure he knew nothing.

Rejected by Preston, Lemaster would have tried somebody outside the family.

A young black man. A student? A former law clerk? She shook her head. The possibilities were too scattered, and her information was too limited.

Dark matter. The hidden power in the universe. Lemmie insisted that Empyreals were no more than an insignificant Harlem men’s club. Aurie implied that they were more, and now so did Preston—with Kellen’s implicit endorsement.

Tempting me with earthly authority.

Authority over what? What on earth could the Empyreals have to do with Kellen’s surplus? The research about Gina Joule?

We can’t find it, but we know it has to be there.

You know what, Preston? I feel exactly the same way.

She had overshot the car by two blocks, probably on purpose, and now, doubling back, she saw a woman who had been behind her turn just as suddenly, fumbling in her pocket for a cell phone. Maybe she was answering an unexpected call. Maybe she was following Julia’s utterly undisguised trail. Maybe Mary Mallard’s paranoia was playing with Julia’s mind. She hesitated. But the Escalade was in that direction, straight past her. She walked faster, toward the woman, who stood near a shop window, head down, chattering into the phone. Julia drew abreast. Panicky eyes met panicky eyes.

Julia managed a plucky smile as she passed. “You’ll have to do better than that,” she said.

Startled, the woman took a step away. Then her fear softened. She reached into her pocket once more and pulled out not a gun or a knife or the bill for the coach lamps on the driveway but a couple of crushed dollar bills.

She handed them to Julia.

“I hope this helps a little,” she said, and went back to her call.