The Sixes

by Kate White

“My, don’t you look lovely today?” he said. He stepped closer and kissed her softly on the mouth.

  “Thank you,” she said. She leaned back, looking into his eyes. “Though I’m a bit wigged out at the moment.” She briefly described what happened with the dishwasher and then bumping into the girls on the path.

  “Gosh, Phoebe, why didn’t you call me?” he said. “I would have come right over.”

  “You were already forced to come to my rescue once this week. How many times can I drag you out of bed?”

  “Well, is Ball taking this seriously enough?”

  “Yes, I think so. And he’s involving the police now.”

  “Would you prefer to bag the tour and just head to dinner then?”

  “Oh, no, a tour would be fine.”

  “Great. Wait here for just a sec, though, would you? Bruce wanted to ask me something up on four.”

  As soon as Duncan departed, Phoebe let her eyes roam the room, trying to see what the space would divulge about him. There were stacks of term papers on the desk and on the counter behind it, shelves full of books, and Post-it notes stuck to the computer screen, typical items in any professor’s office. The only personal objects were a mug that read “Musikfest, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania,” a wall diploma for a doctorate from the University of Michigan, and two small photos on the desk. In one Duncan stood with several students, holding an award; the other featured him and Miles, in hip waders, standing in a stream. Not much to go on. She took a seat and tried to relax.

  For a while her thoughts wandered, and then finally she brought them back—to the room, to the night ahead. She glanced down at her watch. To her surprise Phoebe realized that Duncan had been gone fifteen minutes already. She rose from the chair and sauntered down the short hall to the reception area and then out into the main corridor. It was empty and silent, not surprising for this hour on a Friday night. Suddenly there was the sound of footsteps echoing in a nearby stairwell. She waited, thinking it was Duncan, but he failed to appear. She felt a sliver of annoyance at his having left her for so long.

  She started to turn, to go back to Duncan’s office. Then suddenly the hall lights went off in unison. Phoebe was standing in total darkness.

  18

  P HOEBE FROZE, HER mind momentarily blank in surprise. Had the janitor turned the lights off? she wondered, soon grasping that every light along the corridor was out. She spun around in the dark toward the doorway of the pysch department. Duncan’s desk lamp had been on, but now there was absolutely no light seeping into the reception area. There’d been a power failure, she realized. She felt a sudden surge of panic. Take a deep breath, she commanded herself. Just get control.

  She swung back around toward the hall again. As her eyes adjusted, she saw that the emergency exit signs above the doors to the stairwells were still lit. They cast an eerie, ghostlike ball of light at each end of the corridor. Where in hell was it that Duncan had said he was going? she wondered. The fourth floor. But why in the world wasn’t he hurrying back now? She quickly began to make her way to the stairwell at the end of the corridor, where she figured she was bound to meet him coming down. She wondered if the power was out over the entire campus.

  It turned out the stairwell had emergency bulbs, but they cast only the dimmest light. There was no one on the stairs, and no sound of anyone descending.

  “Duncan?” Phoebe called up the stairs anxiously. “Are you there?”

  From far off she thought she heard the sound of a door slam, but then nothing else.

  She felt annoyed, pissed really, that Duncan had not only left her for so long but wasn’t bothering to rush back. She had no intention of standing around in the dark. I’ll just go outside, she decided, and wait for him in front of the building. But first she needed to grab her purse from his office. She’d left it on the floor by the chair. In fact, maybe the smartest thing to do, she realized, was to call him on her cell. Hopefully, he had his own phone in his jeans pocket.

  She reentered the corridor. It was utterly silent there, and her heart rate quickly accelerated even more. Relax, she willed herself again. It’s only a stupid power failure. She made her way back toward the psych department. Peering into the reception area, she saw that it was even darker there than in the corridor because the windows faced the Grove. Phoebe took several tentative steps into the room and turned right, in the direction of Duncan’s office. She edged along with a hand out in front of her, feeling for the open door to the hallway. She found it the hard way, as the left side of her head smacked into the doorframe. Phoebe groaned in pain.

  Taking a breath, she corrected her position and entered the hall. Her eyes started to adjust, and she could see a little in the darkness. With both hands now in front of her, she groped her way down the hall to the entrance to Duncan’s office. She stood for a second in the doorway, gaining her bearings. Finally her eyes found the dark shape of the chair, and she moved clumsily in that direction. It was only when she touched the chair and felt the fabric that she realized she wasn’t in Duncan’s office after all. His chair had been made of leather.

  Cursing in frustration, Phoebe retreated to the hall and made her way jerkily to the next office down. This one was definitely Duncan’s. Even in the dark, she could see the dull gleam of the yellow Post-its on the computer screen. She moved toward the chair, and felt around by the base until she made contact with her purse.

  As she stooped to pick it up, Phoebe heard a sound out in the hall. She rose and spun around in that direction.

  “Duncan?” she called out. Thank God, she thought.

  But no one spoke back. Phoebe crept out into the hall and listened. From outside the building, probably from the path that ran in front of it, she heard the muffled sound of a guy yelling boisterously to a friend—“Max, hey,” and then, “Wait up, okay?” Inside, though, there was only silence. But then, from somewhere very close to her, Phoebe thought she heard a person sigh—a low, rough sigh like the kind a dog makes in its sleep. Her legs went limp with fear.

  “Who’s there?” she said. The words caught in her throat. She turned and looked behind her, where there were several offices beyond Duncan’s, and then back into Duncan’s office. She had no idea where the sigh had come from. Darkness seemed to be throwing sounds, like a ventriloquist. Then she heard the same thing again. It was close, but she couldn’t tell if it was behind or in front of her.

  Frantically, Phoebe lurched toward the reception area. Once she stepped into the main corridor and had the emergency exit signs for guidance, she flew toward the stairwell doors and then down the steps to the ground floor. After flinging open the door and bursting outside, she nearly collided with a man in the dark. It was Bruce Trudeau. The moment she recognized him, all the lights inside the building popped on.

  “What’s going on?” Bruce demanded as they both looked up at the building. He was out of breath, as if he’d been running.

  “I don’t know,” Phoebe said, breathless herself. “Someone . . . where’s Duncan?”

  “Duncan?” Bruce asked. “I have no idea. I was on the lower campus and saw the lights go out up here. Figured I’d better investigate.”

  “You weren’t with Duncan?” she asked. It was starting to feel as if she were in the tail end of a dream, when everything becomes even more absurd and horses sit down at the dinner table.

  “No, why?”

  She could see the curiosity in his eyes. The last thing she wanted right now was for the whole world to know she and Duncan were together.

  “Um, he was going to show me the rats,” Phoebe said. “He thought I’d be interested. He had to go to another floor first—I thought to meet with you—and while I was waiting in his office, all the lights in the building went out.”

  “How odd,” Bruce said. “Let me see what’s going on. Do you want to wait here or come back inside?”

  “I’ll wait here,” she said, forcing a smile.

  As the front door of the building closed behind Bruce, Phoebe g
rabbed a deep breath. If Duncan hadn’t gone to meet Bruce, where in God’s name was he? She started to dig around her purse for her phone.

  But as if in answer to her question, the front door of the building swung open, and Duncan came bounding out.

  “There you are,” he declared and gave her arm a squeeze when he reached her. “Bruce said you were out here.”

  “Me?” she said. “What happened to you?” There was an edge to her voice, but she couldn’t help it.

  “I’m sorry about that,” Duncan said. “The conversation took longer than I planned, and then just when I started to leave, the lights went out and Miles had an angina attack.”

  “But you said you were meeting Bruce.”

  “Did I say Bruce?” he asked, furrowing his brow. “Sorry, just a slip of the tongue.”

  “Is he all right now?” Phoebe asked.

  “Yes, he took a nitroglycerin tablet, but I wanted to wait and make sure it worked. Plus I think the lights going off is what triggered the attack to begin with. I would have called you, but I hadn’t brought my cell phone with me.”

  “Um, don’t worry about it,” she said.

  “You okay?” he asked, guessing there was something going on.

  She started to tell him about the sounds by his office, but changed her mind. Maybe it was the radiator she’d heard, or else her imagination had gotten the better of her, heightened because of the darkness, and she didn’t want Duncan to think she was becoming a paranoid basket case.

  “Yeah—the power failure just threw me.”

  “Let’s skip the tour after all and head over to my place.”

  Phoebe smiled, relieved. “Good. Right now I feel in need of a couch and a glass of wine. My shoulders are up around my ears.”

  “How about a couch, a glass of wine, and a neck massage?”

  “Even better.”

  “Just let me grab my bag from my office. I promise not to go MIA again.”

  As Duncan darted inside, Phoebe perched on the balustrade outside the building. Down the hill the rest of the campus twinkled enchantingly in the night, belying all the turmoil going on at the college—and the fact that Phoebe felt so discombobulated. I heard something, I know I did, she thought.

  “I’m surprised you’re letting me drive,” Duncan said a few minutes later as he backed his car out of the science-building parking lot. “I was almost positive you’d insist on following me in your car.”

  “What do you mean?” Phoebe asked, puzzled.

  “I know you like to be in control,” he said. He glanced quickly over to her, smiling. “That’s not a bad thing. Just making an observation.”

  “You’re saying I would have felt more in control if I’d driven my own car to your house?” Phoebe asked.

  “It’s more about later. Now you’ve got to rely on me to take you home.”

  Phoebe laughed. “Oh, I see,” she said. “Well, as long as you’re not planning to drive me home at eleven o’clock tonight, I’m okay.”

  She surprised herself at how forthcoming she’d just been with him.

  “You better be careful,” Duncan said. “I might hold you captive for the entire weekend.”

  The last line caught Phoebe off guard. She’d thrown the toiletries and underwear into her purse certain that she’d be spending the night, but she hadn’t thought beyond that. The idea of staying the weekend was tantalizing and yet also mildly discomfiting. She didn’t want things getting ahead of her.

  “Well, let’s see how good a cook you are,” she said, smiling, keeping it light.

  They had circled around to the front of the science building on their way out of campus. To Phoebe’s surprise, she saw Glenda’s husband hurrying down the front steps.

  “What’s Mark Johns doing up here?” she asked.

  “Hmm, not sure,” Duncan said, glancing over. “I’d heard at one point he was thinking of teaching a class in organizational psychology as an adjunct.”

  Don’t let him see me, Phoebe prayed, discreetly sinking down in her seat. She had to be the one to tell Glenda about her little fling.

  A minute later they passed through the northern gate of the college. “Where do you live, by the way?” Phoebe asked.

  “In Winamac Acres,” Duncan said. “It’s ten minutes from here.”

  She was vaguely familiar with the area—a fairly upscale subdivision that unfolded from the town.

  “It’s not ideal, but I was in a hurry to find something new after Allison died,” he added. That’s good, Phoebe thought. I won’t be forced to use the bathroom where his wife died.

  The outside of the house was attractive but standard—a shingle-covered ranch with a poplar tree on each side of the entrance. The inside, though, was totally unexpected. The walls between the kitchen, dining room, and living room had been knocked down to create a loftlike great room with a big gray stone fireplace. It had been decorated in a contemporary style but with comfy pieces—including a long L-shaped couch slipcovered in white canvas. The place was totally inviting.

  “Did you knock the walls down?” she said as Duncan took her coat and hung it in the closet. “It’s a terrific space.”

  “Yes, it was a bit of an extravagance, seeing that I don’t plan to be in Lyle indefinitely, but after everything that had happened, I needed a place that I felt really at home in.”

  She followed Duncan into the kitchen area and slid onto one of the stools along the island while he uncorked a bottle of Bordeaux. He poured them each a glass. Then, after lighting the gas fire in the fireplace, he pulled out a large red pot from the fridge.

  “Hmm, what do you have there?” Phoebe asked.

  “Hunter’s chicken,” he said smiling. “With a name like that, I figured I could prepare dinner for you with my masculinity totally intact.” He set the pot on the burner of the stovetop and lit the flame. “Let’s give it about ten minutes to reheat, and then we’ll eat.”

  He washed off his hands, wiped them on his jeans, and plopped on a stool perpendicular to hers on the island. After taking a drink of wine, he set the glass down and looked into her eyes. “Okay, Ms. Hall, tell me the whole story about last night—from start to finish.”

  She went over what had happened with the dishwasher, filling in the gaps she’d left before. She also told him about her talks with Hutch, Alexis, and Wesley. Despite the relaxing effects of the wine, she found herself getting churned up as she rehashed certain details.

  When she’d finished, Duncan didn’t say anything for a bit, just twirled the wineglass between his fingers.

  “So tell me your opinion,” Phoebe urged. “Do you think there could be some kind of serial killer on the loose here?”

  He shrugged. “It’s just so hard to know without being privy to any real evidence—what the cops have found. But there’s one thing I do know.”

  Phoebe looked at him expectantly and was surprised when his expression became stern.

  “Yes?” she asked.

  “Maybe it’s none of my business here, but it seems you’ve gone beyond the call of duty for Glenda—and it’s time to let the authorities take over.”

  “You’re right, of course,” Phoebe said. “Everything’s escalating. Besides, I feel I’ve done all I can do.” Which wasn’t true, she knew. She hadn’t found out yet what the other circles were. And she hadn’t learned who had killed Lily. But she could see it would be pointless to try to make any kind of case with Duncan.

  “Is that a promise to cease and desist?” Duncan asked, smiling.

  “Promise,” Phoebe said, without meaning it.

  “Great. And you know what your reward shall be? Hunter’s chicken.”

  For the next few minutes, she let Duncan do his thing while she sat curled up on the couch. She tried to keep the drownings and the Sixes at bay, forcing herself to concentrate solely on the flames dancing in the fireplace, the taste of the wine, and the reassuring sound of Duncan moving around in the kitchen. Once she jumped up and, smiling, used her
phone to snap a picture of him cooking.

  The stew was just the kind of comfort food she needed, and she devoured it. Over dinner she asked about Duncan’s background, something she hadn’t had time to probe much about yet. He was from the suburbs of Chicago, he said. He’d done his undergraduate work at UCLA but had missed the Midwest and gone to Michigan for his PhD—as she’d seen from the diploma—before finally teaching at Northwestern.

  “Is that where you met your wife?” Phoebe asked. “At Northwestern?” She found the subject of his marriage slightly unsettling but also utterly compelling, and she’d been fighting off her curiosity since their first dinner.

  “I met her when I first started teaching, but not at the school.” He cleared the plates then, and she wondered if this was terrain he wanted to avoid.

  “What about you?” he said, returning with salad and a plate of cheeses. “I realize I’ve assumed you’re from the East Coast, but I never asked.”

  “A small, uncharming town in Massachusetts. Since my mother died a few years ago, I’ve been back just once—for a cousin’s wedding.”

  “Not your favorite place in the world?”

  “No. I have some happy memories—my mom tried hard to make things special for me, even though my father took off when I was two, never to surface again. But I hated the town. I wanted to be out in the world, forging a new life.”

  “Then why leave boarding school and go back there?” he asked quietly.

  Phoebe smiled ruefully to herself. She felt like a witness on the stand in a courtroom drama who has just answered the wrong way, accidentally opening the door to a line of questioning that her lawyer has warned her to avoid at all costs. She met Duncan’s eyes briefly and looked away, picking a piece of bread from the basket.

  “So you didn’t buy my answer the other night about being homesick?” she said.

  “I sensed there was something you weren’t telling me,” he said. “If you feel comfortable talking about it, I’d love to hear.”

  “You’ll actually find it fairly ironic,” she said, meeting his eyes again. She hesitated. “I was bullied by a bunch of girls. They were part of a secret society, not unlike the Sixes.”