The Ghosts of Lovely Women (27 page)

“Good. Do that. But not with anyone but Mrs. Martinez, okay?”

“Okay.” She called back and left another message. Her voice sounded curiously young and sweet as she talked to the tape that her mother would hear. I remembered how Jessica’s voice sounded on my answering machine. “Ms. Thurber, what’s going on?”

“I’ll tell you later. This might lead to nothing. But knowing Jessica, it might also lead to something, right?”

“Yeah.” Rosalyn nodded her pretty head. “Yeah, I think it could. I don’t know why it never occurred to me to look in there.”

“Go on back to class, before Mr. Henders gets really mad at me.”

“Okay.” She went, but not without looking back at me with a worried frown.

Then I went to Derek’s room. He saw me and was at the door instantly. “What’s wrong?”

I drew him further into the hall. “It’s Fred,” I whispered.

“What about him?”

“It’s Fred. Fred did it. Fred killed Jessica.”

He stared into my eyes. “How is that possible?”

“Your lecture was still in my mind, and our book, and then he appeared, just acting so strangely. Like a page out of our novel. He was carrying a clipboard with nothing on it and staring into my eyes as though he was searching in there—”

“He had access to your key.”

“Yes. And Derek, his mailbox number — it’s 101. I think Jessica was giving him something, or getting something, via the mailboxes. I think she — or he — might have even communicated that way. Maybe that’s why the number was so important in her mind. She saw it almost every day. She connected it with Fred.”

“That poem she wrote—”

“It was labeled 101. And Kathy — she somehow knew the number of the customer, and how much money he’d given to Jessica. Maybe she thought it was blackmail, or maybe it was hush money. She thought I knew, too. Maybe she got that information about Jessica while she was in town. But the day I saw her she told Rosa that she’d be back. She asked about the mailboxes, and about who was with Fred in the office, and said, ‘I’ll be back.’ And that night she was dead.”

“We need to call the police.”

“Derek. He’s our boss. If we’re wrong — If I’m wrong, I mean — this would be beyond awkward, for all of us. I need to be sure. But I’m not facing him alone.”

“Help me find a sub,” he said. “We’ll go down right now.”

Maura Jamison, our head librarian, was the nicest person in the world. I found her ordering books online, drinking Diet Coke and swearing softly under her breath. Swearing was her secret pleasure, although not one of our students would have known it. “Hey, Teddy. Do you believe how expensive this reprint is? How the hell are we supposed to get these for the kids—”

“Maura, I need a huge favor. Huge.”

She looked up and saw me for the first time. “Oh, my God. What’s wrong? Did you have lunch? Honey, you’re going to faint.”

“No, I’m not. Really. But I need you to sit in on Derek Jonas’ class for a few minutes. Maybe the rest of the period.”

“Teddy?” Her voice lowered. “Is it a student? Has another student been hurt?”

“No. No. Let me tell you later, okay?”

She grabbed her purse and a copy of
Remembrance of Things Past
. Her bookmark was halfway through it. “I’ve got my Proust and my wallet. Let’s go.”

“What do you mean — who is the murderer? …
Why,
you
are the murderer, my dear fellow! You are the murderer.”

—Porfiry Petrovich,
Crime and Punishment

It’s an odd thing to go into a familiar room and to see it entirely differently. There was Rosa, and there were the other office workers, and there were the mailboxes. Above Fred’s name was the number 101. This room was no longer about work.

In
Crime and Punishment
, Porfiry suggested that to enter one’s room was to enter their mind, their territory. He mocked Raskolnikov, saying “The door of your room was wide open. I looked round, didn’t even tell your maid, and went away. You don’t even lock your door, do you?” He was accusing Raskolnikov of being transparent. Porfiry could SEE his guilt as plain as day.

Derek stopped me before we went in. Rosa and the other women were looking at us. “Just go along with me in there, okay? Even if I say something weird,” he said.

Rosa said, “Do you guys have an appointment?”

“We need to see Fred, Rosa — right now.” I know my face must have looked ghastly.

We walked into Fred’s office then, into the point of no return. Fred was on the phone, and he held up a pointer finger; he was pretending to be annoyed, but he had grown four shades paler. I didn’t even look at Derek. I knew he had seen it, too.

Fred ended his call and swiveled his chair to face us. “Yes? I’m very busy.” He seemed to have forgotten all about the proposal he wanted from me.

“I need to talk to you, Fred. It’s about Jessica.”

“Ah. And Derek, what can I help you with? Shouldn’t you be in class?”

“I’m staying, Fred.”

“Teddy and I can sort this out, whatever it is. Please go to class.”

“No.”

They stared at each other, then Fred nodded. “What’s this about?”

“Jessica — I recently found a poem she wrote. A poem she titled ‘101’,” I said, not sure how to begin.

Fred looked ostentatiously at his watch; it was inappropriate to the situation. This fueled my resolve. I sat down in one of the chairs across from Fred, at his eye level. Derek sat in the other. “In the poem she suggests that she is going to confront a man. She says she wants this man to step down. And she indicates that it will be sort of a final confrontation. That if he doesn’t do what she asks, she will become angry.”

Again I saw the tightening in Fred’s jaw. “Angry,” he said.

“Rosa tells me that last year Jessica was always delivering and receiving mail. Your mailbox is number 101.”

Fred looked at me blankly. Then, as though it were my gender that made me inscrutable, he turned to Derek. “Maybe you can clear this up for me, Jonas. I don’t know what Teddy’s talking about.”

Derek nodded. “She can go off half-cocked sometimes, I admit.” I checked the anger that flowed instantly into me. Derek was trying to gain Fred’s trust. He was going to make it guys-against-girl.

I turned on Derek. “No, I do not, Derek. I have a valid point and I would like it addressed.”

Fred smiled at Derek, then looked at me. “My mailbox number. What does that have to do with anything?”

“It relates to the poem. This person that she thinks of as 101—she was going to confront him. She wanted him to step down. Did Jessica come to see you here? She visited the school on the day she died.”

Fred opened his drawer and searched out a box of mints, which he made a show of opening while he wore a quizzical expression. “Here? Where did you hear that? I never heard that.”

“Some students saw her car.” Only one; I was hedging my bet.

“Really? Huh. Well, I was not here that day. I mean, I was here, but I left before—” He stopped and laughed, then said, “before I would have seen any visitors. Now if that’s all?”

“That’s not all.”

Derek touched my arm. “Teddy, maybe we should just go. Fred’s a busy man.”

“I would like some answers, actually.”

Fred seemed to billow to a slightly larger size, like a toad. “Teddy, I don’t have to answer your questions. I’m your superior, and you are being insubordinate.”

“Was Jessica blackmailing you? Did you give her money?”

Fred laughed, appealing to Derek with his hands out, palms up. “What is going on with you today, Teddy? You’re unprepared with your writing proposal, you’re hallucinating about Jessica Halliday. Do you need to take a leave of absence? You told me you’re upset about her death. Maybe more so than I realized.” He closed the mints and dug in his middle drawer for a pencil, which he then tapped on his blotter. “I mean, get real, Teddy. Next you’ll be saying I killed the girl.”

He almost pulled that off. He was in his own territory and starting to feel more comfortable, but his mouth did a curious thing when he said the word “killed.” Normally when people make the “k” sound their lips purse outward and their tongue touches the back of the roof of their mouth. Linguistics 101. But Fred’s lips curled inward in an almost impossible way. He was trying to make light of the word, to breeze it out, but instead it came out with an almost strangled sound.

I pictured Fred strangling Jessica Halliday. I stared at the hand that was tap, tap, tapping away with the pencil. It was large and somehow formless. Fred was large, too — probably six feet tall. “I’d like to get Anthony in here,” I said.

“No. This meeting is over!” The anger in his eyes was no act. “I’ve put up with enough of your insinuations. This is a serious thing you’re doing, Teddy — a serious thing. I hope you know what this can mean for your career.”

“Fred, calm down,” Derek said. “Teddy hasn’t been well. The fact is that she hasn’t been sleeping much since Jessica died. Insomnia. She—” He looked apologetically at me. “She’s gotten some very weird notions into her head.”

“Such as?” Fred wanted to throw me out, but he also wanted to know just how much I knew. I had told Derek all of my suspicions on the stairway as we walked toward the office. Now he pulled some of them out.

“She thinks you stole her house key,” he said. “She thinks you broke into her house and ransacked it. Kathy Olchen’s house, too.”

Fred went for supercilious. It was all he had. “Teddy, this is beyond ridiculous. Breaking into teacher apartments, stealing their things. When will the accusations end?”

“Did you find what you were looking for, Fred? Did Jessica tell you she’d left clues with us? Or evidence, maybe? There’s a certain piece of paper that is missing. Many people want to find it. I’m guessing you want to find it most of all. And in my apartment? Maybe you were looking for the journal, too. Rosalyn told me you hadn’t known of its existence until she mentioned it, when she got called down. That must have surprised you to know the journal was there, to know that I had read it.”

He sighed, shaking his head and grinning at Derek. “Unbelievable. You read too much fiction. Now I think I will send you home. A leave of absence to help you cure your insomnia.”

“How did you know I lived in an apartment?” I said.

“What?”

“Derek said house. House key. You said “apartments.”

“I assume all teachers live in apartments. We don’t make much money, now do we?”

Derek laughed. “Come on, Teddy. The man has a school to run.”

I shook my head. “Fred has something to answer for. I won’t stand for this. I want you to step down, Fred. It’s the right thing to do.”

I was trying to echo Jessica’s words as closely as I could. Fred shifted in his chair and said, “I do not need some
girl
telling me what to do. I have a position of great responsibility here.”

“By girl do you mean me? Or Jessica?”

He wasn’t trying to laugh anymore. “What is it that you want, Teddy?”

“A whole lot more than two thousand dollars,” I said softly, leaning toward him.

“What? What? This is unbelievable!” he yelled, going red.

Derek turned to me in mock disbelief. “Teddy, are you asking for money? What is this? Are you trying to blackmail Fred?”

“Fred has paid blackmail before.” I stared at Fred and he stared back at me, with hate. “Or money, at least. Did Jessica even ask for it? I don’t think she did. I think she started receiving it in her mailbox with the drama mail. I think she kept it because she wanted you to suffer, to lose something. It was just an extension of the money men spent on that website. But in the end she had to give it back. It didn’t sit right with her own convictions.” I stared at him.

He looked away first.

“Derek, I suggest you take Teddy out of here, along with all of her allegations. Teddy, you are dismissed. I will have someone escort you from the building.”

Derek swung back to Fred. “Why would you fire her? She obviously needs help. I thought this was a Christian institution. It’s not like you actually feel threatened, right?” He was half laughing, both at my audacity and Fred’s overreaction — that was what his face said.

Fred’s voice was wooden. “Next time I will be sure to hire a man for this position.”

“Oh,” I said. “I see now why Jessica would have resented you so much. You dislike women, and yet you visited her website. Is that what women are for, Fred? And not even women, girls. You typed in those search terms. You had to look for a site that showed teens undressing, naked girls.”

Fred stood up. “I never visited that girl’s website! What a disgusting allegation!”

There was a knock at the door. Rosa opened it, her expression bland. I could only imagine what she’d been hearing. “Teddy, you had an urgent call. Mrs. Baxter said that she found the sheet you were looking for.”

“Ah,” I said, looking at Fred.

He was blank, waiting for my move. “Well?” he asked.

“That sheet would be what, Rosa?”

Rosa looked at her memo pad. “She said it had names of men who had visited Jessica’s website. She wants you to call her.”

“The missing page,” I said, staring at Fred. “Number NR1415. Thanks, Rosa.”

Rosa left with great reluctance. The three of us sat together in Fred’s office like islands.

“Your name is on it, Fred, I’ll bet my job on it. I’ll bet Jessica told you she hid it, just like she told you, what — that she had given clues to two of her teachers? And that was why you targeted Kathy and me, why you monitored me so closely. Did Kathy find out? Did she confront you?”

Fred cleared his throat. “Derek, can you help me out here?”

“I don’t think I can, Fred. I saw your face when you heard about that sheet.”

Fred laughed. “You two understand nothing. The fact is, yes, Jessica received money from me. Just small amounts. I paid her because I felt sorry for her. I thought if I gave her some money, bits at a time in her mailbox, she might be persuaded to stop her little witch hunt. I certainly didn’t kill her.”

“I don’t believe you,” I said.

“More importantly, the police won’t believe you,” Derek added. “But I’m going to call them now.”