Richard Montanari: Four Novels of Suspense (11 page)

“What does she look like?”

“Actually, she’s hot as hell.”

Hot as hell,
Simon thought, the excitement of the story heading south from his brain. No offense to female law enforcement officers, but some women on the force tended to look like Mickey Rourke in a pantsuit. “Blonde? Brunette?”

“Brunette. Athletic. Big brown eyes and great legs. Major babe.”

This was shaping up. Two cops, beauty and the beast, dead white girls on crack alley. And he hadn’t lifted cheek one out of bed yet.

“Give me an hour,” Simon said. “Meet me at The Plough.”

Simon hung up, threw his legs over the side of the bed.

He surveyed the landscape of his three-room apartment. What an eyesore, he thought. But, he mused further, it was—like Nick Carraway’s West Egg rental—a
small
eyesore. One of these days he would hit. He was sure of it. One of these days he would wake up and not be able to see every room of his house from the bed. He would have a downstairs and a yard and a car that didn’t sound like a Ginger Baker drum solo every time he turned it off.

Maybe this was the story that would do it.

Before he could stumble to the kitchen, he was greeted by his cat, a scrappy, one-eared cinnamon tabby named Enid.

“How’s my girl?” Simon tickled her behind her one good ear. Enid curled twice, rolled over on his lap.

“Daddy’s got a hot lead, dolly-doll. No time for loving this morning.”

Enid purred her understanding, jumped to the floor and followed him to the kitchen.

The one spotless appliance in Simon’s entire flat—besides his Apple PowerBook—was his prized Rancilio Silvia espresso machine. It was on a timer to turn on at 9:00
AM
, even though its owner and chief operator never seemed to make it out of bed before noon. Still, as any coffee fanatic would aver, the key to a perfect espresso is a hot basket.

Simon filled the filter with freshly ground espresso roast, made his first
ristretto
of the day.

He glanced out his kitchen window into the square airshaft between the buildings. If he bent over, craned his neck to a forty-five-degree angle, pressed his face against the glass, he could see a sliver of sky.

Gray and overcast. Slight drizzle.

British sunshine.

He could just as well be back in the Lake District, he thought. But if he were back in Berwick, he wouldn’t have this juicy story, now, would he?

The espresso machine hissed and rumbled, pouring a perfect shot into his heated demitasse cup, a precise seventeen-second pour, with luscious golden
crema
.

Simon pulled the cup, savoring the aroma, the start of a glorious new day.

Dead white girls, he mused, sipping the rich brown coffee.

Dead
Catholic
white girls.

In
crack
town.

Lovely.

8

MONDAY, 12:50 PM

T
HEY SPLIT UP for lunch. Jessica returned to the Nazarene Academy in a department Taurus. The traffic was light on I-95, but the rain persisted.

At the school, she spoke briefly to Dottie Takacs, the school bus driver who picked up the girls in Tessa’s neighborhood. The woman was still terribly upset by the news of Tessa’s death, nearly inconsolable, but she managed to tell Jessica that Tessa was not at the bus stop on Friday morning, and that no, she didn’t recall anyone strange who frequently hung around the bus stop or anywhere along the route. She added that it was her job to keep her eyes on the
road
.

Sister Veronique informed Jessica that Dr. Parkhurst had taken the afternoon off, but provided her with his home address and phone numbers. She also told her that Tessa’s final class on Thursday had been French II. If Jessica recalled correctly, all Nazarene students were required to take two consecutive years of a foreign language to qualify for graduation. Jessica was not at all surprised that her old French teacher, Claire Stendhal, was still teaching.

She found her in the teachers’ lounge.

“T
ESSA WAS A WONDERFUL STUDENT,” Claire said. “A dream. Excellent grammar, flawless syntax. Her assignments were always handed in on time.”

Talking to
Madame
Stendhal hurtled Jessica back a dozen years, although she had never been inside the mysterious teachers’ lounge before. Her concept of the room, like that of many of the other students, had been a combination nightclub, motel room, and fully stocked opium den. She was disappointed to discover that, all this time, it was merely a tired, ordinary room with a trio of tables surrounded by chipped cafeteria chairs, a small grouping of love seats, and a pair of dented coffee urns.

Claire Stendhal was another story. There was nothing tired or ordinary about her, never had been: tall and elegant, with to-die-for bone structure and smooth vellum skin. Jessica and her classmates had always been terribly envious of the woman’s wardrobe: Pringle sweaters, Nipon suits, Ferragamo shoes, Burberry coats. Her hair was shocked with silver, a little shorter than she remembered, but Claire Stendhal, now in her midforties, was still a striking woman. Jessica wondered if
Madame
Stendhal remembered her.

“Did she seem troubled at all lately?” Jessica asked.

“Well, her father’s illness was taking quite a toll on her, as you might expect. I understand she was responsible for taking care of the household. Last year she took nearly three weeks off to care for him. She never missed a single assignment.”

“Do you remember when that was?”

Claire thought for a moment. “If I’m not mistaken, it was right around Thanksgiving.”

“Did you notice any changes about her when she came back?”

Claire glanced out the window, at the rain falling on the commons. “Now that you mention it, I suppose she was a bit more introspective,” she said. “Perhaps a little less willing to engage in group discussion.”

“Did the quality of her work decline?”

“Not at all. If anything, she was even more conscientious.”

“Was she close friends with anyone in her class?”

“Tessa was a polite and courteous young woman, but I don’t think she had many close friends. I could ask around, if you like.”

“I would appreciate it,” Jessica said. She handed Claire a business card. Claire looked at it briefly, then slipped it into her purse, a slim Vuitton Honfleur clutch.
Naturellement
.

“She talked about going to France one day,” Claire said.

Jessica remembered talking about the same thing. They all did. She didn’t know a single girl in her class who had actually gone.

“But Tessa wasn’t one of those who mooned about romantic walks along the Seine, or shopping on the Champs-Elysées,” Claire continued. “She talked about working with underprivileged kids.”

Jessica made a few notes about this, although she was not at all sure why. “Did she ever confide in you about her personal life? About someone who might have been bothering her?”

“No,” Claire said. “But not all that much has changed since your high school days in that regard. Nor mine, for that matter. We are adults, and the students see us that way. They really are no more likely to confide in us than they are in their parents.”

Jessica wanted to ask Claire about Brian Parkhurst, but it was only a hunch she had. She decided not to. “Can you think of anything else that might help?”

Claire gave it a few moments. “Nothing comes to mind,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s quite all right,” Jessica said. “You’ve been very helpful.”

“It’s just hard to believe that . . . that’s she’s gone,” Claire said. “She was so young.”

Jessica had been thinking the same thing all day. She had no response now. None that would comfort or suffice. She gathered her belongings, glanced at her watch. She had to get back to North Philly.

“Late for something?” Claire asked. Wry and dry. Jessica recalled the tone quite well.

Jessica smiled. Claire Stendhal
did
remember her. Young Jessica had always been tardy. “Looks like I’m going to miss lunch.”

“Why not grab a sandwich in the cafeteria?”

Jessica thought about it. Perhaps it was a good idea. When she was in high school she was one of those weird kids who actually
liked
cafeteria food. She hiked her courage and asked:
“Qu’ est-ce que vous . . . proposez?”

If she wasn’t mistaken—and she desperately hoped she wasn’t—she had asked:
What do you suggest?

The look on her former French teacher’s face told her she got it right. Or close enough for high school French.

“Not bad,
Mademoiselle
Giovanni,” Claire said with a generous smile.

“Merci.”

“Avec plaisir,”
Claire replied. “And the sloppy joes are still pretty good.”

T
ESSA’S LOCKER WAS ONLY SIX UNITS AWAY from Jessica’s old one. For a brief moment, Jessica was tempted to see if her old combination still worked.

When she had attended Nazarene, Tessa’s locker belonged to Janet Stefani, the editor of the school’s alternative newspaper and resident pothead. Jessica half expected to see a red plastic bong and a stash of Ho Hos when she opened the locker door. Instead she saw a reflection of Tessa Wells’s last day of school, her life as she left it.

There was a Nazarene hooded sweatshirt on a hanger, along with what looked like a home-knit scarf. A plastic rain bonnet hung from the hook. On the top shelf, Tessa’s gym clothes were clean and neatly folded. Beneath them was a short stack of sheet music. Inside the door, where most girls kept a collage of pictures, Tessa had a cat calendar. The previous months had been torn out. The days had been crossed off, right through the previous Thursday.

Jessica checked the books in the locker against Tessa’s class list, which she had gotten from the front office. Two books were missing. Biology and algebra II.

Where were they?
Jessica wondered.

Jessica riffled the pages of Tessa’s remaining textbooks. Her communications media textbook offered a class syllabus on hot pink paper. Inside her theology text—
Understanding Catholic Christianity
—there was a pair of dry-cleaning coupons. The rest of the books were empty. No personal notes, no letters, no photographs.

At the bottom of the locker were a pair of calf-high rubber boots. Jessica was just about to close the locker when she decided to pick up the boots and turn them over. The left boot was empty. When she turned over the right boot, an item tumbled out and onto the highly polished hardwood floor.

A small, calfskin diary with gold leaf trim.

I
N THE PARKING LOT Jessica ate her sloppy joe and read from Tessa’s diary.

The entries were sparse, with days between notations, sometimes weeks. Apparently, Tessa wasn’t someone who felt compelled to commit every thought, every feeling, every emotion and interaction to her journal.

On the whole, she seemed a sad girl, seeing the poignant side of life as a rule. There were entries about a documentary she had seen on three young men whom, she believed, as did the filmmakers, were falsely convicted of murder in West Memphis, Tennessee. There was a long entry about the plight of hungry children in Appalachia. Tessa had donated twenty dollars to the Second Harvest program. There were a handful of entries about Sean Brennan.

What did I do wrong? Why won’t you call?

There was one long, rather touching story about a homeless woman Tessa had met. A woman named Carla who lived in a car on Thirteenth Street. Tessa did not say how she’d met the woman, only how beautiful Carla was, how she might have been a model if life had not taken so many bad turns for her. The woman told Tessa that one of the worst parts of living out of a car was that there was no privacy, that she lived in constant fear that someone was watching her, someone intent on doing her harm. Over the following few weeks, Tessa thought long and hard about the problem, then realized there was something she could do to help.

Tessa paid a visit to her aunt Georgia. She borrowed her aunt’s Singer sewing machine and, at her own expense, made curtains for the homeless woman, drapes that could be cleverly hooked into the fabric of the car’s interior ceiling.

This was a special young lady, Jessica thought.

The last entry of note read:

Dad is very sick. He is getting worse, I think. He tries to be strong, but I know it is just an act for me. I look at his frail hands and I think about the times, when I was small, when he would push me on the swings. I felt as if my feet could touch the clouds! His hands are cut and scarred from all the sharp slate and coal. His fingernails are blunt from the iron chutes. He always said that he left his soul in Carbon County, but his heart is with me. And with Mom. I hear his terrible breathing every night. Even though I know how much it hurts, each breath comforts me, tells me he is still here. Still Dad.

Near the center of the diary, there were two pages torn out, then the very last entry, dated nearly five months earlier, read, simply: