Everything You Want Me to Be

by Mindy Mejia

  “Who killed her? Who killed Hattie?”

  “If I knew that, I’d have better things to do this morning. As it is . . .” I unrolled the newspaper and dropped it on the coffee table with a loud thwack. “You’ve been feeling chatty, haven’t you?”

  She shrugged. “They were outside school at lunch yesterday. I wasn’t going to lie to them. The curse is real.”

  “You didn’t mind the attention, did you? And you sure didn’t seem to mind getting to play Lady Macbeth in Hattie’s place.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “All these nuts are going to come rolling into town looking for interviews now, and if you jump in front of the microphone like you did here, maybe your face’ll be splashed on newspapers and TV programs all over the country. Mighty nice for you.”

  “Stop it!” she yelled and then started crying. Mr. and Mrs. Nguyen stood behind her, motionless. “I was her best friend. I can’t believe she’s dead.”

  “If you’re her best friend, you must know things about her. Private things. Things she wouldn’t have told anybody else.” I waited until her crying quieted down. “I need to know those things, Portia.”

  “Like what?”

  “Who was she seeing before Tommy?”

  “Nobody.”

  “She didn’t have a crush on anybody?”

  “No, she used to make fun of Maggie and all the girls that dated a lot in school. She called them ‘he-tarded.’ ”

  She laughed a little and I couldn’t help joining in. It sounded like one of Hattie’s quips.

  “Okay, no boy at school. How about someone she met somewhere else, like at the play over in Rochester last fall?”

  Portia shook her head.

  “Is there anything else that you know about Hattie? Something she confided? Anything that didn’t seem quite right?”

  She shrugged and looked up, wiping her eyes with a sleeve of her robe. “I don’t know. I mean, I thought we told each other everything, but . . .”

  But obviously Hattie hadn’t trusted her best friend enough to tell her about L.G.

  “A couple weeks ago,” she huffed, hiccuping, “Hattie’s truck broke down on some nowhere road south of Zumbrota. I dropped everything to go pick her up—and I’d just flown home from the choir trip the day before—but she wouldn’t even tell me where she’d been or why she had a suitcase with her. She made me drive her to the Apache Mall in Rochester and said she had something to take care of. She wouldn’t tell me what and she wouldn’t let me come with her. I was pissed. I spent an hour at the Gap waiting for her to text me. When she finally came back, the suitcase was gone and she looked, I don’t know, like sweaty but happy.”

  “What did she do with the suitcase?”

  “I don’t know. When I asked, all she would say was It’s waiting.”

  “What did it look like?”

  “Small, carry-on size. Black with wheels.”

  “And you don’t know where she was earlier that day or where she went while you waited at the mall?”

  “No, her cheeks were all red and she was out of breath when she came back, but she totally changed the topic whenever I asked. She bought a sundress for herself and randomly bought me a shirt, like a total afterthought, then spoke like two words to me on the ride home. She didn’t even ask about my trip.”

  The anger and grief were all churned up together in her voice and she kept wiping at her eyes.

  “After that day, she seemed all right except like, not there anymore. Even though we still talked and hung out, she acted weird.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I don’t know. Like on Friday after the play I told her she’d been great, and she just laughed and said she was done acting. And I was like, Oh, you’re retiring at eighteen? Can you be more dramatic? But then she was. She was done, she was done.”

  Portia broke into full sobs. Both her parents stood at the door, her mother clutching a dish towel, her father’s head bent.

  “All right.” I pointed to the ceiling and waited until she registered the gesture. “You think of anything else and you know where to go, right?”

  She nodded and walked out of the room, melting behind the wall of her parents’ bodies. I nodded at both of them and let myself out. Maybe it was unrelated, but I wanted to know what Hattie did with that suitcase and why she was carrying it around in the first place. I called Jake on my way into Rochester and filled him in. He was busy requesting a warrant on a few websites that he thought Hattie’d visited a lot, but said he’d check with the Rochester police for reports of abandoned luggage.

  I chewed on the interview for the rest of the drive. Hattie hadn’t told her best friend about L.G. or where she’d been that day her truck broke down, and wouldn’t let Portia see what she did with that suitcase. Usually when someone stashed a suitcase they were getting ready to run away, but what did she need to run away from? The list of Hattie’s secrets was growing. What would Bud do if I had to tell him any of this? If I had to take his girl away all over again?

  Part of me couldn’t help hoping the DNA would come back as Tommy’s. It was a simple story, one I’d heard dozens of times over the years with different variations, yet always the same key parts. A couple has a fight, things get out of hand, and he kills her. It wasn’t a crime I understood, but it’d become awfully familiar. The rest of this—a curse, a secret lover, a possible runaway attempt—came from someplace else entirely. Her body flashed into my head again, stabbed and bloody on top, legs bloated and floating in the water below, with me kneeling next to her, trying to fit her disjointed pieces together.

  I turned off the highway into downtown Rochester, looking for another piece.

  “Of course, she was an amateur. That was abundantly clear from the first day of rehearsals.”

  Gerald Jones was built like a beanpole and dressed all in black. Not like Johnny Cash black, more like Fred Astaire pretending to be a cat burglar. We were in the front office of the Rochester Civic Theater, and he’d spent the last ten minutes wiping his dry eyes and showing me “stills” from the Jane Eyre play he’d directed Hattie in last fall. They looked like run-of-the-mill pictures to me.

  “She didn’t even know stage directions at first. I had to ride her a bit, but by the second week she’d gotten up to speed and apart from the technical side of the business, she was a director’s dream.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “She was the perfect actor. Unformed clay. All I had to say was ‘more vulnerable’ or ‘urgency’ and she’d make the adjustment. It flowed through everything she did—her gestures, face, posture, tone, volume. I’d cast her because she had a good read and her appearance was exactly what I was after. See?”

  He held up a picture of Hattie clutching a shawl and staring at a man in an overcoat and hat.

  “She was thin, so she could pull off that gaunt look, but there was a fire in her—something always unspoken—which gave her a beautiful stage presence. The audience fell in love with her as much as Mr. Rochester did every night.”

  “Mr. Rochester, he this guy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anything going on between them backstage?”

  He was genuinely surprised by the question. “No. God, no. Mack’s happily married with two kids.”

  “But you just said he was in love with her.”

  “His character was in love with her character.” Now he sounded as if he was talking to a small child.

  I worked out the last bit of orange pulp caught in my teeth and flicked the pictures around on his desk. “And how about your character? Did you have any feelings for Holly?”

  “Jane.” He sounded out each letter in the word, slowly, like he’d downgraded me from a child to an idiot dog. “The character’s name was Jane. And no, I didn’t have any feelings for her. What are you trying to get at?”

  “Maybe you were feeling cozy with your new star. Looking to squeeze some of that unformed clay.”

  He gave a quick bark of
laughter. “I don’t think my partner, Michael, would appreciate the insinuation.”

  The way he said “partner” cleared things up quick.

  “Hmm.” I looked away, clearing my throat. “Right.”

  Jones clearly wasn’t L.G. Even if he didn’t bat for the other team, he had zero reaction to Hattie’s screen name. I sighed.

  “Why did you think I had a relationship with Hattie?”

  “We found her purse in the bottom of the lake. The murderer had thrown it in the water after he hacked her up. You want to tell me why your business card was one of the only things she was carrying?”

  “Oh.” His smug superiority dried up and it finally seemed to register that Hattie was dead. He sat down in front of his pictures and stared blankly at them.

  “I hadn’t talked to her in months. I gave her my card after the play ended, to help her out. She was set on New York, you know, and I still have some contacts there. I told her to call me when she was moving.”

  “Did she say when that would be?”

  “After she graduated, I thought.”

  “When’s the last time you talked to her?”

  “Christmas. I sent her one of my old camcorders and she called to thank me.”

  “Video camera?” There hadn’t been anything like that in Hattie’s room. “What for?”

  “It helps some actors rehearse. To record and review their takes. Hattie had talent and I wanted to help her refine it.” Then he smiled ruefully. “Also, I’d just bought myself a new one and Michael had forbidden me to bring any more equipment into the house without getting rid of some of the old.”

  “Right. Can you think of anyone else she might have been close to during the play? Anyone she maybe met while doing it?”

  “Not that I ever saw. She was always so busy, between her classes and work schedule. She was in and out of rehearsals without talking to much of anyone, and she even did her homework during the few scenes she wasn’t in.”

  “Do you have records of who bought tickets to come see the play?”

  It turned out he did and after a little finagling he let me go through the sales slips on site without having to get a warrant. It was grunt work, something I should have sent Shel to do, but I needed to be on the front lines of this. Sitting back in the office signing payroll or doing a press conference while someone else looked for Hattie’s killer would have driven me mad. I sat on the visitor side of Jones’s desk, pulling all the receipts for male customers to scan back to Jake. There were a lot. Who knew this many people went to plays?

  Jones grabbed some coffee for both of us and watched me work. After a while, he quietly commented, “This wasn’t the play that killed Hattie.”

  “Save it.” I kept flipping through receipts.

  “You don’t believe in the curse.”

  “No. I don’t believe a spook story can murder someone.”

  “Then you’ve never heard of the Astor Place riots.”

  He went to a file cabinet and rustled around, pulling out two pieces of paper.

  “William Macready was one of the finest British actors in the early eighteen hundreds. Here he is.” I glanced up at a drawing of a little guy with a wig, tossing his head back and smiling at something outside the frame. Looked like the tax-evasion type.

  “Great.” I went back to work.

  “At the same time in the US, Edwin Forrest was making a name for himself in the New York theaters.”

  He showed me the other picture. This one was a stocky, ruddy-looking guy with black hair sticking straight up. A brawler.

  “The two were friends early in their careers, until Forrest performed Macbeth in London. The audience booed him and Forrest got it into his head that Macready had orchestrated the reaction out of jealousy. A few weeks later, while Macready was playing Hamlet, Forrest stood up in the middle of the audience and heckled him. He was immediately cast out of London society and had to return to New York.”

  “Is this going anywhere, Jones?” I checked my phone and saw two missed calls, both from Jake.

  “In May 1849, Forrest and Macready performed competing versions of Macbeth in New York on the same night. An army of Forrest’s fans stormed the Astor Opera House, determined to put a stop to Macready’s production. The rioters pummeled the theater with rocks and tried to set the building on fire, which prompted the militia to start firing into the crowd.”

  “All this over a couple of theater actors?”

  “These men were the movie stars of their time. Over twenty people died that night and a hundred more were injured. It was the worst tragedy in the history of theater. And it happened because of Macbeth.”

  “It happened because of a bunch of idiot rioters and some policemen who couldn’t do their jobs.”

  “But what set it off? Macbeth. Forrest’s terrible performance in London, which started the whole rivalry in the first place. What were they both playing that night? Macbeth. It’s the story of a man who murders his way into a crown. Not an insane man. Not a manipulated man. Just an ordinary man, drawn to extraordinary evil. That’s what Macbeth is, and for four hundred years, violence has been drawn to that play like a moth to the flame.”

  He put the pictures away and looked at the one of Hattie lying on top of the desk. His voice dropped, as if the story had exhausted him.

  “You’ll find your murderer, Sheriff. You’ll have a weapon and a motive and everything you need for your day in court. The curse is what you won’t be looking for, what you’ll never be able to prove with forensics. It’s the catalyst. It’s what makes things boil over.”

  I’d fallen still, my hands lost in the papers. Something about his words brought the memories back. They could be gone for years, healed over and laid to rest, and then out of nowhere the gun smoke stung my eyes, the wet jungle invaded my nose, and I had to bury them all over again. You could leave a war, but it never left you.

  “Ordinary men commit extraordinary evil all the time. Trust me.”

  He smiled a bit and nodded in deference. “You would know.”

  I started working again and shook my head. “You know what that play really is? An insanity defense from heaven.”

  Jones laughed just as Jake phoned again and I answered this time.

  “What have you got?”

  “Why didn’t you answer any of my calls?”

  “Good God, Jake. When you get married you better find some girl who likes wearing the pants.”

  “We could’ve found the murder weapon. Or there could’ve been an explosion at the plant.”

  “Dispatch would’ve called for something like that.”

  “You don’t know, that’s all I’m saying. It could be important.”

  “Well, is it?”

  “Damn right it is. I found out who L.G. is.”

  Finally some good news today. And I was in just a mood to haul this pervert through the ringer. “The warrant came through?”

  “Yes, so I accessed her account information and found hundreds of messages to a guy named LitGeek.”

  “L.G.,” I muttered.

  “Exactly. So I accessed his account information and there was an email address. I traced . . .”

  I didn’t hear much of the techno talk, because at that moment I flipped a piece of paper and saw a name that clicked everything into place. I dropped the other papers and stared at the black type, thinking back over the last few days.

  “. . . so when I got the gmail registration it said the guy’s name is—”

  “Peter Lund,” I interrupted.

  “How did you know that?” He was pissed as all get-out.

  Gerald Jones wasn’t so good an actor that he could pretend he wasn’t eavesdropping, and the last thing I needed was another juicy bit leaked to the press. If Hattie had had an affair with her high school teacher, they’d be on Pine Valley like white on rice.

  “Never mind. I’m headed there now. I’ll have him at the station in thirty minutes.”

  “I’m coming with
you.”

  “You’re staying right there and printing out every email you’ve got off of Hattie’s computer. And take that busted fax machine out of the interrogation room. And make sure there’s a fresh pot of coffee.”

  “You’re going to try the friendly angle?”

  “No, I’m thirsty.” I hung up and tossed the half-full coffee cup Jones had given me into the trash. He grinned.

  “Somehow it’s heartwarming to know the crusty-sheriff cliché is alive and well.”

  “Happy to oblige.” I got up and shook his hand. “Jones.”

  I took the highway back to Pine Valley at a hundred miles an hour, lights flashing. The speed felt good. It got the blood up, helped clear the morning away. I walked into Pine Valley High School less than fifteen minutes later and the principal met me before I’d even crossed the front door.

  “Sheriff. This about Hattie?”

  “I wouldn’t be pulling one of your teachers out of the classroom otherwise.”

  “Which one you need?”

  “Lund.”

  He made a sort of sucked-in face before hollering to his secretary to call for a sub.

  “This way.”

  We walked back to the classrooms and he led the way to the end of a hall.

  “Anything I should know about Peter?” he asked, just as we got to the right classroom.

  I knocked on the window. Lund looked up from his computer and froze a bit. I pointed at him and then at my feet. Get your ass out here.

  “A lot of things you should probably know about him.” We both watched him fumble around and say something to the students. “I’m only interested in one.”

  Peter came out and glanced between the two of us. “Sheriff. Do you have more information about Hattie?”

  “Matter of fact. Need you to come down to the station.”

  “Can’t it wait until the end of the day? I’ve got classes.” He waved behind him, looking at the principal, who was eyeing him like he was trying to picture the knife in Lund’s hand.

  “We’ll take care of the kids,” the principal said. “Go get your stuff.”

  Lund did as he was told and we headed out to the cruiser. I let him ride in front.