Adam and Evil (An Amanda Pepper Mystery)

by Gillian Roberts

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Praise for Gillian Roberts and her Amanda Pepper mysteries:

  Adam and Evil

  Dedication

  Introduction

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  In Conversation

  Adam and Evil

  By Gillian Roberts

  Copyright 2013 by Judith Greber

  Cover Copyright 2013 by Ginny Glass and Untreed Reads Publishing

  The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.

  Previously published in print, 1999.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold, reproduced or transmitted by any means in any form or given away to other people without specific permission from the author and/or publisher. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to the living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Also by Gillian Roberts and Untreed Reads Publishing

  Caught Dead in Philadelphia

  Philly Stakes

  I’d Rather Be in Philadelphia

  With Friends Like These

  How I Spent My Summer Vacation

  In the Dead of Summer

  Mummers’ Curse

  The Bluest Blood

  http://www.untreedreads.com

  Praise for Gillian Roberts and her Amanda Pepper mysteries:

  CAUGHT DEAD IN PHILADELPHIA

  “A stylish, wittily observant, and highly enjoyable novel.”

  —Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

  PH1LLY STAKES

  “Lively... Breezy... Entertaining.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  I’D RATHER BE IN PHILADELPHIA

  “Literate, amusing, and surprising, while at the same time spinning a crack whodunit puzzle.”

  —Chicago Sun-Times

  WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE

  “A pleasurable whodunit with real motives, enough clues to allow a skillful reader of mysteries to make some intelligent guesses, and a plethora of suspects.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  HOW I SPENT MY SUMMER VACATION

  “Roberts concocts colorful and on-the-mark scenes.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  IN THE DEAD OF SUMMER

  “Tart-tongued, warmhearted Amanda’s sixth case is as engaging as her others, and here she gets to do more detection than usual.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  THE MUMMERS’ CURSE

  “Another funny Philly puzzler for schoolteacher Amanda Pepper.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  THE BLUEST BLOOD

  “I’m not convinced that anyone offers better one-liners than those delivered by Amanda Pepper.”

  —Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine

  Adam and Evil

  AN AMANDA PEPPER MYSTERY

  Gillian Roberts

  Please turn to the back of the book for a conversation between Gillian Roberts and Amanda Pepper.

  *

  This book is dedicated to all the librarians who have so enriched my life, especially these wonderful people at The Free Library of Philadelphia: William Lang, Karen Lightner, Jim O’Donnell, J. Randall Rosensteel, and Connie King of the Rare Book Department. I send my lasting gratitude for your amazing knowledge and expertise—and for your patience and graciousness in the face of my complete lack of same; and most of all, Bernard Pasqualini, inspiration and lifeline, who not only suggested that I commit (fictional) mayhem at the library, but then made it possible that I do so with his patient, perfect, personalized research assistance.

  Introduction

  “Where do you get your ideas?”

  Most of the time I have trouble answering that simple-sounding question. Happily, I have never been personally involved with murder, so ideas have to come from the great beyond and it’s often impossible to trace the final result back to its origins.

  In truth, novels are more than “an” idea. Cooking one up is a lot like cooking a cake. Storylines blend and mix two or more unrelated ingredients that emerge as something completely new and often unexpected. And once the book is finished, it is as far from the ideas that went into it as a cake is from a sack of flour and a stick of butter. People, places, action have all affected each other and emerged as something new. It’s difficult identifying where the writer found this “idea,” because it wasn’t “this idea” when the writing began.

  Adam and Evil is the exception. I clearly remember its two main ingredients. I was haunted by an article I’d read about a young man whose parents had refused to acknowledge his signs of mental illness, and who went on to commit multiple murders during a rampage. I didn’t think of it as a plot-starter, for that sort of open-and-shut horrible crime wouldn’t involve Amanda.

  And then, at a book convention, I met a librarian, a fan who had an idea for me. Generally speaking, another person’s idea—if it is in fact a real potential idea—won’t work. I’ve got to be emotionally attached to an idea, it has to matter to me, so while I thought the idea was interesting and one I wouldn’t have thought of myself, that wasn’t enough to spark a book, either..

  And then, in some magical “writerly” way, the completely unrelated news story about the mentally ill teen attached itself to the librarian’s idea, and I saw how Amanda Pepper fit into the new combination, and the result was Adam and Evil.

  Time and technology have moved on. Amanda looks things up on the Internet, and a woman excitedly uses her “cellular phone” to summon help along the way. But her students are tuned into a Walkman, and computers use floppy disks as backup. A lot has changed since 1999 when Adam and Evil was first published. Unfortunately, not everything has. I’m writing this introduction in 2013 after a particularly horrific school shooting, so it is sad to read, in the very first chapter:

  “Kids today aren’t what they used to be, which was predictably, but nonlethally, weird… [Now] Headlines erupted with stories about teens who expressed their moodiness by blowing away their classmates, teachers, and whoever else peeved them.”

  I hope future readers will find that paragraph and that kind of event as dated and relegated to the past as Amanda’s floppy disks are to us today, and that future mystery writers will need to get their ideas elsewhere, because there will be no more such news items.

  Gillian Roberts

  January 2013

  One

  Odd is not a useful definition when referring to adolescents. It’s hard differentiating between a teenager with problems and one whose only problem is being a teenager. It’s nearly impossible for an English teacher to know if a sulky withdrawal is a sign of depression that requires attention, or a fit of I-want-to-die grief because the team lost a game.

  I’m supposed to develop language skills, not psychoanalyz
e students. Besides, I play a tiny role in their life and consciousness. A pie chart of the teenage brain reveals that 54 percent of that organ is devoted to tracking the state of their hormones, 21 percent does play-by-play analyses of their mercurial moods, and 10 percent is given over to calculations: what music they desperately need, what movies they’d die if they didn’t see, and what items of clothing everybody else has but they don’t. Another 8 percent debates how to fill time when school is out; 4 percent charts who did or didn’t look at or speak to them in the manner they desired; 2 percent critiques the personal lives and wardrobes of their peers and anyone in People or Entertainment Weekly magazine. The remaining 1 percent of attention is divided among whatever academic subjects they like.

  These proportions fluctuate under the pressures of momentous life events, such as attending a prom, being admitted to college, or getting a zit. But by and large, this is the adolescent brain, and there is precious little place in it for either me or my course of study. I stand outside, arms waving like semaphores, trying to wedge my message into whatever space is left in there for rent. They hear nothing, and see only a rapidly aging pest with style-challenged hair (too long, too brown), boring clothing, a pathetic (I gather) sense of humor, and a love life that annoys them because they don’t understand the status quo. Neither do I, but I can live with that.

  Working under those conditions gets old, and it doesn’t allow much time or scope for meditations on the class population’s mental health. That’s how it always has been.

  Until now, when it’s gotten worse. Kids today aren’t what they used to be, which was predictably, but nonlethally, weird. Just as we’d relaxed, adjusted, listened to experts’ explanations, and accepted teenagers’ peculiarities, they upped the ante. Headlines erupted with stories about teens who expressed their moodiness by blowing away their classmates, teachers, and whoever else peeved them.

  Lately I’ve found myself thinking about their teachers. Sympathizing with them. Wishing I could have talked to them—before their students killed them. Wondering if I’m destined to be one of them.

  Reflecting on those news stories in a school full of adjustment problems must be like living on an earthquake fault. You know the danger’s there, but if you think about it too much, you’ll go crazy, which is just as fearful a prospect. All the same, if you’re sane, you note seismic activity and stay aware of how extreme classroom tremors become.

  Adam Evans registered a 10 on my Richter scale. I hoped my machinery—not his—was malfunctioning, but I didn’t think so.

  Because of him, I feared that I’d overdosed on teenagers in general. But whether or not I had, Adam Evans was a puzzle I couldn’t solve, and he’d been a worry the entire academic year. I never felt sure of myself when it came to him. Never could even determine to my satisfaction whether our problems were his or mine.

  Now, eight months after Adam entered my class for his senior year, I was still in the dark. All I knew for certain was that he was a royal pain. Philly Prep runs a high percentage of royal—and commoner—pains. They are, in fact, our specialty, inasmuch as we appeal to those (sufficiently affluent) youngsters who have a difficult time in larger, more standardized schools. Our mandate is to ignite a spark in the insufficiently fueled.

  This was what I was trying to explain to my near and dear ones on a Sunday afternoon in late April. My sister, Beth, her husband, Sam, and their two children were visiting en route to a party nearby. This was in no way a typical experience. Beth and Sam were the ultimate suburbanites. Sam rode the Paoli Local into the city each day to his law firm, but then he hurried back out to Gladwynne. And Beth behaved as if coming to the city were the equivalent of going on safari without a guide. So this visit was an event. We drank coffee and caught up on our lives.

  I talked about teaching, my growing ambivalence. I talked about Adam. I wanted sympathy, I wanted compassion. Often, lately, I wanted out. “I’m afraid for him,” I said. “He doesn’t seem in complete control. The other day, I was sure he was going to hit someone. I had to physically restrain him. And then he freaked. Acted as if touching him was a crime.” Beth looked aghast—her suspicions about people who lived inside the city limits were proving true. I shook my head. “I’m making it sound worse than it was. He stopped as soon as I touched his arm. He hates being touched. It’s part of what’s abnormal about him. Anyway, I didn’t have to wrestle him down, he didn’t hurt the other kid, but he did overreact to both that other boy and then to me. He’s off center. I can’t explain it, but I worry about what he might do to somebody else—and I worry about what he might do to himself.”

  From atop a ladder, C.K. Mackenzie grunted, acknowledging that he was listening. Of course, he’d heard this before, so his real attention was on a painting he was hanging. My brother-in-law partnered in this endeavor, standing nearby, reading a J. Crew catalogue, ready to hand up a tool if needed. Male bonding. They didn’t look at each other or communicate. They were both very happy.

  I pulled Adam’s paper out of the pile on the oak table. There were always papers needing marking. That, too, grew old. “Tell me this isn’t peculiar. Quote: ‘I will learn to harmonize with the song of my follicles.’ End quote.”

  “You’ll do what?” Mackenzie swiveled and endangered his perch. Sam dropped the J. Crew catalogue and rushed to the rescue, grabbing the sides of the ladder, steadying it. The women made sounds of alarm, the men made sounds indicating they could take care of anything.

  “Not me. Adam.” I repeated the sentence. Mackenzie shook his head, as well he might. “I’ve asked for a conference with his parents,” I said. “There are too many strange things like this about him lately. He should be evaluated, get some help before… I don’t know what. He’s off somewhere, can’t concentrate, reacts bizarrely with inappropriate laughs or no emotion at all…” My words dribbled off because I had so little confidence in my own opinion. I had a strong sense that Adam was having mental and emotional problems, but he’d done reasonably well on his SAT exams, and that piece was such a bad fit with the rest of the puzzle, it worried me, made me think perhaps I was being too harsh on the boy.

  “It must be difficult trying to teach writing,” Sam said in his calm, ultrasane manner.

  “It’s impossible.” Writing logically requires thinking logically—and how can you teach that? But—speaking of logical thinking—how can you not try to? “So what’s your take? Is that follicle thing as weird a concluding thought as I think it is?”

  “It’s, um, interesting. Really. I don’t know about poetry, but I kind of liked it,” Beth said.

  “Imaginative,” Sam said.

  “Vivid,” Mackenzie said. “Singing follicles would sound way better than a Walkman.”

  The children, in bright plastic smocks I’d surprised them with, continued playing with modeling clay, also an Aunt Mandy treat. They did not participate in the Adam Evans follicle debate.

  Another reason to love being an aunt. I can be generous for very little outlay, endearing in short spurts, and incommunicado the rest of the time. And they don’t leave me with papers to grade.

  “Really?” I asked. “Interesting? Imaginative? Vivid? That’s what comes to mind?” Maybe Adam was taking a creative leap, in which case, even if I personally felt he fell flat, I should encourage him.

  My sister glanced at her watch. “Let’s clean up,” she said. “The party’s already begun.”

  “Why don’t you go ahead?” Sam suggested. “The kids and I will pick you up in an hour or so. I’ll stay and help…”

  Neither he nor Beth knows what to call my significant other. I call him C.K., but they’re taken aback by his remaining a set of initials. “Call him Chico,” I said.

  “Wrong,” Mackenzie said.

  “I meant Czeslaw. I always mix those two up.”

  Beth meanwhile aimed peevish looks at her husband, who ignored them. She switched her attention to me. Earlier she’d tried to sell me on this party giver, one Emily Buttonwood, a s
oon-to-be-divorced, newly relocated-to-center-city friend of hers. She’d been adamant about how we just had to meet and become new best friends. I’d redirected the conversation to Adam, hoping it would convey an inkling of why my life was sufficiently congested and chaotic without becoming a city guide to one more bewildered former suburbanite. I’d done it twice so far for Beth, with time-consuming, dismal results.

  “Reconsider, Mandy, and come with me,” Beth said. “You’d just love each other. You have so much in common—she’s a book lover, like you. In fact, she’s so down on people, books are about all she loves these days—with a few exceptions. She needs people like you. Single, interesting people.”

  Flattering, but no cigar. A depressed, bitter, people-hating new friend. Precisely what I needed to round out my life. “I’d love to, of course,” I lied. “But I have these papers to finish, a lesson to prepare, and…”

  Beth looked downcast. Then she brightened. “I nearly forgot. Emmy would be perfect for your women’s book group. I told her about it, and she’s really looking forward to it. Will you give her a call? Or should I give her your number?”

  “They just voted to close membership. It was getting too large and unwieldy. No time for everybody to speak up.” All true, but it nonetheless left me with the sense I’d failed Emmy Buttonwood in her hour of need, without ever having met her. Somehow I now owed her. I wasn’t sure how my sister had so effortlessly instilled guilt about negligence to a stranger, but she had the gift. She has inherited my mother’s tenacious nagging skills. Both of them should have been CEOs of major corporations. Instead they apply their formidable powers to those who need to be brought into line: preschoolers and me.