To the Power of Three

by Laura Lippman

  “Yes, it’s hard to say no to one’s mom, no matter one’s age.”

  “Does your mom still expect you to eat when you see her?”

  “My mother passed away ten years ago.”

  He lowered his head, embarrassed. “Oh, yeah, I should have noticed. I mean, yesterday, in the cemetery…I mean—sorry.”

  “It’s part of the natural order of things, losing one’s parent. Sad, but logical. Losing one’s child, however…” Such clichés were inextricable from grief, Dale was discovering.

  “I know, it must be awful. I still can’t believe it’s Kat. Everyone liked her.”

  “Well, someone clearly didn’t.” He let that sink in. “Did you know Perri very well?”

  “Not at all. I mean, I must have met her, the summer I dated Kat. I think she was in Carousel. But she wasn’t, like, someone I talked to. Her older brother was ahead of me in school, but I knew him a little better. Dwight.”

  No matter how things end, they have a child left, Dale thought. It’s so unfair. And the Patels have all three of theirs. Again he felt that impulse to pound the table, to throw his own untouched plate across the room, to succumb to a tantrum.

  But all he said was, “So you stay plugged into Glendale, after all these years?”

  “It’s home,” Peter said with a shrug. “You hear stuff, almost without trying. Truth is, I feel a lot closer to my college friends than my high-school ones. I mean, I have so much more in common with them. Whereas in high school, it was just, you know, being in the same place.”

  “Propinquity.”

  “Sir?”

  “The mere fact of being in close physical quarters. It’s that way for most people. I seldom see my high-school friends outside reunions. And I wouldn’t even go to those if I still didn’t live in the area. My brother never goes.” Because he doesn’t want everyone to see how Mr. Most Popular turned out. Those whom the gods would destroy they first elect most popular. Then again, Kat was most popular. Most popular, first in her class, prom queen. Yes—and she was dead.

  “Yeah,” said Peter, clearly just being agreeable, but Dale started, thinking the boy was affirming Dale’s unvoiced thoughts.

  “The thing that bothers me,” Dale said, growing impatient, as he always did, with the small talk endemic to business, “is the idea that I might never know why this happened. If Perri doesn’t recover, we won’t find out. Even if she does, it will probably turn into some variation on the insanity defense. Either way we lose. And not just my family. I think everyone in Glendale has a stake in what happened.”

  “I just assumed Perri was jealous or something.”

  “But do you know that? Is it based on something someone said, or is it just your conjecture?”

  “Um, well…I don’t really know anything. Giff, the drama teacher, said Perri was really burned when they subbed Oklahoma! for Anyone Can Whistle. Even though he said Perri could be Ado Annie, which is the kind of part that actors salivate for.”

  “What did any of this have to do with Kat? I mean, I know she had the lead in Oklahoma!, but why would Perri care about that, especially if the drama teacher told her the other part could be hers?”

  “Beats me. Girls get crazy over weird shi—stuff. But, Mr. Hartigan, won’t the police figure this all out? I mean, isn’t it their job?”

  Dale took a gulp of his coffee, willing himself to slow down, reel the boy in gently. This was the part Susannah played in his company, the gentle, gracious hostess. But he couldn’t use Susannah for this bit of liaison, for Susannah would not have approved of what he was doing.

  “It should be. But I’m hearing about, um, some irregularities in the investigation. They’re nice fellows, very professional. But it’s a job to them, nothing more. They’ll be satisfied with far less than I ever will—a straightforward exegesis of bullet trajectories, where everyone was standing.”

  Vocabulary was clearly not the boy’s strong point. How had he ever gotten into NYU? Oh, yes, the Cuban mom. “Well, what about Josie Patel? Can’t she tell you what you need to know?”

  “As I understand it, Josie’s story doesn’t exactly track.” Dale hated to admit it, but his father had been right, calling in all those political markers, making sure they were kept up to speed on the investigation. It was like getting private title insurance—the lender’s interests and your interests overlapped only up to a point, and then you were on your own. “And her parents have hired a lawyer now.”

  He made eye contact with the boy and held it. Why did women think he was handsome? Yes, his features were even, his skin pleasingly smooth, his eyes puppy-doggish, his hair floppy in the retro style that girls seemed to like. But those lovely eyes were a little vacant, his manner as floppy as his hair.

  “Do you know Josie, Peter?”

  “A little. She and Kat were tight. She did flip-flaps in the opening of Carousel, the one where I played Billy Bigelow.”

  “Right,” Dale said, although he certainly hadn’t seen the show. Kat wasn’t in that one. He remembered Kat’s asking him to go with her, however, to see Josie and Perri. And Peter, he realized now. She had wanted her father to see her boyfriend as something other than the predatory college creep he was. Whatever regrets he had about Kat, he would never feel bad about getting this kid out of her life. He was just sorry that Peter hadn’t finessed it better.

  “You know, Peter, the people who loved Kat—we need each other more than ever right now. And we have to pursue the truth as…a memorial to her. We owe her that much, don’t you think?”

  The boy wasn’t the sharpest crayon in the box, and the seconds passed. Finally, finally, however, Peter said, “I could talk to her. Josie, I mean. If you think it would help.”

  “Really?” Dale replied, as if the idea had never occurred to him. “Why—of course, that was never my intent, but if you did find out something, it would be …a comfort to me. Whatever you found out. From anyone, not just Josie. I mean, you have a lot of influence with that high-school crowd. People who wouldn’t dream of talking to the police might talk to you.”

  Peter brushed his hair out of his eyes, sat up a little straighter. Dale could not say for sure, but he believed that what he saw then was the dreamy aspect of an actor trying on a part.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. I could definitely do that.”

  Dale pushed his business card across the table. “Between us. I know I can trust you.”

  “Because…”

  “Because you’re an honorable sort.” No point in reminding Peter how dishonorable he had been, how abruptly he had dropped Kat three years ago, when he thought there might be some advantage in it for him.

  “You know, I kind of loved her. Kat, I mean. I really did. But we were young, like you said.”

  “I’m sure you did care for her.” I’m sure you think you did.

  “I really want to help, in any way I can. Josie, anybody. I’ll talk to anybody.”

  The boy felt guilty, Dale realized with a thrill. Guilty and obligated—as well he should. If he had really loved Kat, Dale wouldn’t have been able to scare him away. He hated him now, just a little, for doing exactly what Dale had wanted. Even if it had been in his daughter’s best interest, it had hurt her. Even Dale could see that.

  “That’s great, Peter. Once you do, check in with me on my cell. I’ll be interested in hearing what Josie has to say when she can talk to a friend, instead of strangers. Now—you sure you don’t want a Blue Moon cinnamon roll? They’re homemade.”

  The boy puffed out his cheeks and shook his head in regret. Only he wasn’t really regretful, Dale realized. Peter Lasko was glad to give up cinnamon rolls for the privilege of being handsome and buff. There would be time enough, to paraphrase Prufrock, for cinnamon rolls and whatever small treats he denied himself now. The waitress topped off Peter’s coffee, although it was barely down an inch, brushing her breasts against his arm as she leaned forward.

  Dale’s water glass was empty, but no one seemed to care. And
all the water he had downed in between gulps of his private coffee now seemed lodged somewhere in his chest. These days it was as if he could never get enough air, as if he were always in danger of suffocating.

  28

  A floater couldn’t help losing things, Alexa told herself, pawing through a sheaf of papers for the second time, still trying to find the paper she was now sure that Perri Kahn had submitted just minutes before she had gone to the girls’ restroom to confront Kat. If the paper didn’t exist, she couldn’t give Perri a final grade and challenge Barbara on her refusal to grant the girl a diploma. Maybe it never existed, but Alexa had convinced herself that it did, that she’d held it in her hand the very moment the phone rang, a stapled sheaf of off-white typing paper in one of the distinctive fonts that Perri preferred. But the papers had been dropped, and the soda had spilled, and everything had been gathered up in such a rush—

  She lifted her head at the sound of a student clop-clop-clopping down the hall, a would-be stealthy Billy Goat Gruff, trying to muffle the sound of her Dr. Scholl’s. It was Eve, trotting toward the exit, shoulders squared. Alexa called the girl’s name once, twice, three times before she finally turned around.

  “Oh?” Eve said. “Were you talking to me?”

  Several sarcastic replies occurred to her, but Alexa had learned that sarcasm didn’t work on these girls. “Got a minute? I want to talk to you.”

  “I’m on a bathroom pass from health,” Eve began, but Alexa knew she was headed for her usual cigarette break in the trees, with Val and Lila.

  “I’ll write you a note. Let’s talk.”

  Alexa had a classroom for this period, but no real class. This had been her independent study session, and the five girls had all finished their work for the year, except for Jocelyn Smith, who had been given an extension for mental-health reasons. She said, and a family doctor agreed, that Jocelyn had been traumatized by the shooting. Alexa was reasonably sure that Jocelyn had just found an unimpeachable excuse for not finishing her work.

  Alexa sat in one of the chairs in the front row, feeling that a desk was too much of a barrier to intimacy in a conversation. She was always attentive to such seemingly insignificant issues. When she was holding a class, her preferred configuration was a circle, although some teachers bitched if she forgot to have the students put the chairs back in their rigid little rows. And she insisted on a true circle, not one of those horseshoe-shaped parabolas, which maintained the teacher as focal point. Ladies of the Round Table, she had once dubbed this circle, although one of her students had quickly pointed out that the Arthurian ideal had not survived. “It was torn apart by a woman, in fact.”

  Perri had made that contribution although her knowledge of King Arthur almost certainly came by way of Camelot as opposed to The Once and Future King. Alexa had countered with the story of the Paris peace talks and the argument over the table’s shape, an anecdote that one of her history professors had loved. But she might as well have been talking about a time as remote as King Arthur’s, given the girls’ furrowed brows. At the end of her story, there was a confused silence, and then one girl asked, “Did you march against the war and stuff?”

  Alexa had to inform the girls that she had been born after the Vietnam war ended, a fact they seemed to find suspect. No matter how young you were, no matter how young you looked, students thought you were ancient, a witness to everything that had happened in the previous century.

  “How are you, Eve?” No reproach in her tone, no reminder that the girl had been ducking her for three days.

  “Good.”

  “Good?”

  Eve frowned. “I mean, good under the circumstances.”

  “I imagine it’s hard for students to concentrate these days—not that June was ever known as a month for students to focus.”

  “I’m okay.” Said firmly now, in the manner of someone trying to get rid of a telemarketer.

  “How are things at home these days?”

  Eve squirmed a little in her chair. Her embarrassment about her parents was far more acute than the average adolescent’s. When Mr. and Mrs. Muhly had been summoned to school for that infamous meeting, Eve’s main concern had been that people would see just how old her parents were, and that would be held against her in a way that made the blow job on the bus utterly secondary. They were old, at least her father was, and her mother had disastrously retro taste.

  “Fine,” Eve said at last. “Fine.”

  Frustrated, Alexa decided to go straight to the matter. Directness was a risky tactic with a girl like Eve, but she hoped her reputation for being truthful and loyal would pay off here. And Eve owed her.

  “Did you ever figure out who spoke to you that day? Who you overheard talking about the girls’ room and the gunshot?”

  “Nope.” She was swinging her head so hard that her fine dark hair lashed at her cheeks.

  “It could be important. You might know something crucial to the investigation and not even know you know it.”

  She had expected Eve to look intrigued, but the girl just glowered, as if having vital information were an unfair burden.

  “The thing is…there are so many rumors going around. The Kahns have a lawyer. Josie Patel’s family has hired a lawyer. Even Mr. Hartigan has a lawyer. I’ve heard that Perri wrote Kat some sort of letter, too.”

  Eve’s face was now a classic teenager’s mask, her eyes focused on some spot over Alexa’s right shoulder.

  “So the girl you overheard…” Alexa, no slouch at nuance in conversation, gave this word the most subtle rendering she could, something well short of the arch invisible quote marks used by doubters, but a tone shot through with light challenge. “The girl you overheard…well, maybe it’s the age-old case of someone saying she heard something happened to a friend, when it was really her. This girl, I mean.”

  It was you, Eve. Admit it was you.

  “And maybe she didn’t just hear something. Maybe she saw something.”

  “I wasn’t there,” Eve said, her words coming with painful slowness. “I wasn’t anywhere near there.”

  “But the girl who spoke to you …?”

  “The girl I overheard.” Eve’s smile was triumphant.

  Alexa found herself thinking of one of the few happy memories she had of her father, when he had told her she could win ten dollars by playing the “No” game. He explained the rules at great, ponderous length, speaking for almost ten minutes. She must answer “No” to every question, whether it was the truthful answer or not. “No” was the only answer permitted. The game would go on as long as she was successful. It might go on for hours. Did she understand? “NO,” Alexa had roared, and her father had laughed. But he had also tried to renege on the promise of the ten-dollar payment. No matter. Alexa was sure her five-year-old face had looked much as Eve’s did just now. Victorious, but a little fearful, too, as if there would be consequences for winning this point.

  She was trying to figure out what to ask the girl next when Jocelyn Smith appeared in the doorway, her features working as if she were a silent-screen actress.

  “Ms. Cunningham, Ms. Cunningham? About my paper?”

  “It’s okay, Jocelyn. I already told you it’s okay. You got the extension.”

  “But it’s not about finishing it late. It’s about finishing ever. I have horseback-riding camp this summer, and then a killer schedule in the fall, and my parents pointed out that if I have an incomplete going into the fall, it could totally screw up my transcripts on my college applications….”

  She was now in a state of near hysteria, admittedly a place never far away where Jocelyn was concerned. Alexa couldn’t help being annoyed by the girl’s selfishness. True, this was Jocelyn’s independent-study hour, when Alexa was supposed to be available to her, but hadn’t she noticed Eve sitting here? For all Jocelyn knew, Eve also was doing an independent study with Alexa and Jocelyn was stealing her time, her attention. But Jocelyn never worried about such things.

  “Hold it a
sec, Jocelyn. I’ll talk to you in the hall.”

  She closed the door behind her, signaling that she was not through with Eve.

  Eve, left alone in the classroom, found herself reaching almost automatically for Alexa’s cart. Her father spoke of people who stole as having sticky fingers, and while Eve understood the metaphor, it didn’t apply in her situation. Her fingers never felt drier or cooler than when moving through property that wasn’t hers.

  Her parents had made her a thief, she reasoned. They would not buy her the things she needed nor allow her the part-time job that might subsidize such purchases, so she had learned to get what she wanted—what she needed—by seizing opportunities. Left alone to tend the produce stand, for example, she gouged the more gullible types, claiming that ordinary beefsteak tomatoes were a rare hybrid or that the corn was true Silver Queen. (Her father’s corn was actually better, but people thought they wanted Silver Queen.) And she was always on the prowl for untended money, because only a fool would boost things at the mall, although items without price tags were ripe for the taking. Once pocketed, these things were guaranteed, for how could someone prove you took it? Or you could pull a little switcheroo. That’s how she had gotten her big gold E, by switching price tags.

  But money was the best. So her fingers moved through Alexa’s cart, looking for a billfold. Never take it all, was Eve’s motto. People noticed when everything was missing. But when it was one twenty-dollar bill out of three, the marks tended to blame themselves, assuming they had lost track of some minor purchase. This assumption worked with everyone but her father, who knew to the nickel how much money he had. That had been a hard lesson, but once learned, it was never forgotten. Eve didn’t make the same mistake twice.

  But Ms. Cunningham, while so stupid in some ways, had taken her purse with her when she stepped out of the classroom. Really, Eve should be insulted. Did Ms. Cunningham think she was a thief? (Okay, she was, but Ms. Cunningham didn’t know that.) Would she have taken her purse with her if, say, Perri had been here? Perri, who had brought a gun to school, who had proved to be much more unpredictable than anyone knew? What about Kat Hartigan? But if Kat Hartigan had been a dog, you could have left her alone with a steak and she wouldn’t budge. No—Kat would sit and wait, and someone would bring the steak to her. That was the beauty of being Kat Hartigan. Everything offered up, everything done for her. All she had to do was exist.