by Jane Haddam
She had a pile of Elizabeth Toliver’s books sitting on the small deal table that sat against the living room window that looked out on the quad. Peter had put it there for her to look through, along with a videotape of Ms. Toliver on some CNN talking-heads program where she appeared a couple of times a week. Alice had seen the program on and off and made note of Ms. Toliver, since she was the mother of a student. Peter had not left her any CDs by Jimmy Card, probably because he didn’t think she needed them to be familiar with Card’s work, which was true. Alice didn’t like the music Jimmy Card had produced in the days when he’d been a real, genuine, not simply has-been rock star, and she didn’t like the music he produced now, when he seemed to think he could turn himself into a classical composer a hundred years after the form had died in a mess of atonal aesthetic theory. She wondered if he even knew the theory. These people tended not to. She didn’t need to look through any of the things on this table. She’d met them both at orientation in September, and then again at Parents Day in October, and she had been about as impressed with them as she’d been with the one and only chicken fajita salad she’d eaten at a Chili’s restaurant—meaning, not at all. She’d known people like both of them in college, the people who’d worked too hard and dressed too well to ever really belong in the places they’d managed to scramble their way into.
If anybody were able to hear me think, they’d call me an elitist, Alice thought, but she knew it wasn’t that. It was exactly the opposite. They were the elitists. They believed it all mattered, the “polish” they got from a good education, the “achievement” of spending their lives doing things that were worth nothing to anybody, while the people who did the necessary work—who planted the crops and cleaned the sewersand filled the potholes in the roads—existed only to give them somebody to look down on. There was a nobility in poverty. There was no nobility in what these people were. Alice thought that she herself, if she had found herself born into the wrong circumstances, would have opted for living on the street or on welfare rather than grubbing away at schoolwork and a “good” job. She would not have played the lottery; and if she had, and if she’d won it as Michael’s mother had, she would have taken the jackpot only to give it all away again to the people who were working so hard to abolish all lotteries. She would not have been brainwashed into believing that qualifying for a mortgage on a three-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bath house in a subdivision in New Jersey was “success.” She would not have been so drunk on the power of money that she thought thirty-five thousand square feet in Scarsdale was “success” either. She would have seen what Michael had seen, and what his mother had not. She would have understood that wanting that subdivision house was no different than wanting that Scarsdale one or a mansion in Malibu. It was all corruption, and the only way to remain authentic and fully human was to walk away from all of it.
The books were still sitting on the table. The window was still looking out on the quad. The weather looked as awful as it had for weeks. The sky was slate gray and showed no signs of getting better anytime soon. The air was that odd color it got before they had a truly impressive snow, and they’d already had three or four this winter. She didn’t like thinking about Michael. She was sure she had done what she had to do in that case, right up until the end; but it was hard to think about, even so, and harder to think about when she put Mark DeAvecca into the same picture. It was too bad that Michael had had to room with that particular boy. Almost anybody else would have been better and less of a problem in the long run.
What she remembered, what stuck in her mind, was her last vision of Michael, only hours before he died, on that last night. He was standing out by Maverick Pond behind thehedge of trees that curved along its bank closest to the library, his hands stuck in his pockets, his arms held tightly against his chest, and she had suddenly thought how wrong it all was. He hadn’t escaped the brainwashing, not all of it. Everything he was wearing had logos on it. Even his jeans had a big leather patch on the back meant to let strangers know he’d bought a brand and a famous corporate one at that. She’d been thinking about ripping the patch off with her bare hands, and then it had been his bare hand she’d noticed, stripped of its glove, plunging up the front of her sweater, through the layers made by her cape and her camisole, his fingers pricking at the tips of her nipples as they got hard under the touch. The shock had been so immediate and so total, she’d almost given into it. She’d wanted to drop to the ice just as she was and open her legs to him without reservation, the way she’d done the first few times they had been together in her own bedroom in President’s House, while Peter was away at his conference and the campus had not suspected anything yet. She remembered those first few times quite clearly, even now, when thinking about Michael too often made her imagine, against her will, the process of fucking a dead body. That last night she could have made love to him in the frigid open air, risked frostbite for herself and for him, and exposure of a more lasting kind as well. For a few seconds before her sanity returned, she had reached for him as he had reached for her. She had put her hand down the front of his jeans and found his penis stiff and resistant against her hand. She’d had no idea if she was cold. She didn’t think he did either. His hand had moved away from her nipples and gone downward, down and down. His finger was right at the very tip of her clitoris when there were suddenly sounds in the quad. They were far away—the quad was light years away from the pond, she’d thought at the time, although of course that wasn’t true—but for some reason they were distinct and immediate, as if they were being projected over a very good speaker system. They both felt as if those voices were right beside them. His hand froze against the mound of her pubic hair and then retreated. Herown hand came up into the cold without her willing it. It happened because it had to happen, because the one thing they could not do, not either of them, was let the rest of this campus know that what everybody suspected was true.
Now she wondered. Everybody did suspect. They suspected even now, when they wouldn’t talk about it, because Michael was dead. Mark DeAvecca might even know, if Michael had talked to him. Alice had no idea if he had or not. She knew Mark was dangerous to her, but that was not the way in which he was dangerous.
Everything was dangerous to her really. She knew that. She knew that they would not be able to stay at this school after what would happen in the next week or so. Everything was already out of hand. She didn’t care if they stayed here or not. It wasn’t the school she needed, and it wasn’t her position as the headmaster’s wife she needed to preserve.
She did think, however, that since there was no hope for it on any level, there was no need for her to go to see Mark DeAvecca in the hospital. They’d be gone whether she did or not, and she had never been able to stand that kid for longer than it took to shake his hand at official functions.
2
Edith Braxner had decided, in a rush of irritation at herself and exasperation at the campus, that there was one thing and only one thing that mattered, and that was doing what she had an obligation to do. The rumors around school this morning were as thick as poison gas. Mark DeAvecca had taken a drug overdose. Mark DeAvecca had been the victim of an attempted murder. The papers had been silent this morning, but then they would be. Whatever had happened had happened yesterday evening and not really been resolved until late at night. That much Edith had managed to pick up in the cafeteria at breakfast. The local news had been silent this morning, too, but she knew that would not last long. There was another piece of information she’d managedto pick up in the cafeteria, and that was the fact that Mark’s mother was already here and Mark’s father was on the way. They weren’t Madonna or the Backstreet Boys, but they brought publicity with them wherever they went. It would take a little time to jump-start it, that was all. This was Tuesday. By Thursday it would all be everywhere. The only question was the nature of what would be out. Michael Feyre’s suicide would be out, of course, but it was impossible to tell what the media would say about Mark. That wa
s because the one person who would know what had really happened, besides Peter Makepeace, was not at breakfast at all, in spite of the fact that all faculty were required to take their meals in the cafeteria with the students. Edith had gotten to breakfast with the first opening of the doors because she did so every day, and then she had waited until the breakfast hour was over, in order to catch Cherie and feel her out. There had been no Cherie. There had been no Sheldon either. Edith had been reduced to listening politely while James Hallwood unleashed a tedious meta-analysis of everything from Windsor’s policy of having students call their teachers by their first names to Mark DeAvecca’s failings as a Member of the Windsor Community.
Edith understood, exactly, the importance of making sure that every student and faculty member was a Member of the Windsor Community, and she understood as well why so many people here thought Mark DeAvecca wasn’t one and could never be one. At the moment, however, this was not a topic she was interested in. She was back in her apartment in Lytton House, and she knew that if she stayed here she would learn nothing she could count on about what was going on. She would learn nothing in her office, either, because she was sure that Cherie had no intention of occupying hers. Edith had brought her tote bag full of work to breakfast. She left it on her desk without bothering to repack it and started back out again. She hadn’t even bothered to unbutton her coat.
Out on the quad, it was mostly quiet. Students had not taken this opportunity to catch up on their classwork. Theywere all staying up late and sleeping in. There had been very few of them this morning at breakfast. Edith went down the diagonal path that would have taken her to Barrett if she’d followed it long enough. Then she turned at the center crossing and went down to Hayes. It looked no livelier than any other House, although surely the students there must have witnessed whatever had happened to Mark in the night. Edith didn’t believe they’d all slept through it.
She got to the backdoor of Hayes and let herself in. Every faculty member knew the codes to get into every House. Edith was sure that every student knew them, too. She looked around the back hall and caught a fleeting glimpse of Sheldon at the door to his own apartment. He shut it quickly as soon as he saw her, which didn’t surprise her at all. From what she’d heard in the cafeteria—assuming she could trust any of it, which she thought she could, especially where it concerned Sheldon—he was about to be in a great deal of trouble. Sheldon hadn’t ever quite been a Member of the Windsor Community either. He’d just been better at hiding it and more difficult to get rid of than a student.
Edith went through to the other hall and then around the side to Cherie’s apartment. She knocked softly and waited. She could hear sounds in there, Cherie and Melissa, music playing on a radio or a CD player. It was Pachelbel, she thought. Pachelbel was the school obsession this year. Every year there was a classical composer, or baroque, or medieval, whom very few people had heard of, who became the school’s icon of genius. Nobody ever bothered to play Beethoven in this place. Beethoven was far too obvious.
Nobody was coming to the door. Edith knocked again, a little more loudly this time. Still nobody came. The voices had ceased, but there was no sound of footsteps.
“Cherie,” Edith said, “it’s Edith Braxner. I need to talk to you.”
This time there were footsteps, maybe because Edith’s voice sounded as loud to Cherie and Melissa as it had sounded to Edith in the hall. It was odd what high ceilings and empty halls could do to acoustics. The footsteps on theother side of the door were quick and heavy. The door opened, and it was Melissa, not Cherie, standing there.
“Edith, listen,” Melissa said, “we know you’re curious. We know everybody is curious, but we’re very upset. And Peter’s asked us to say nothing to anybody.”
“I rather doubt if it matters what Peter says now,” Edith said. “Can’t you tell that it’s all fallen apart already? You don’t really expect him to be headmaster a month from now.”
“I think Cherie would like to have a job a month from now.”
Cherie came up behind Melissa. It was obvious to Edith that she’d been crying. Her eyes were as puffy as doughnuts. Her nose was red. She gentled Melissa out of the way and came to the door.
“Come on in,” Cherie said, stepping back to let Edith through. “I’m going crazy in here. We’re not supposed to leave. Peter told us not to. He wants us ’instantly available at all times.’ And I couldn’t face the cafeteria. I really couldn’t. I don’t know what to do. Do you think the police will be called in? He looked like he had been poisoned.”
Edith went down the narrow front hall into the apartment proper. It had a big living room that had been left to go to mess much longer than Mark DeAvecca had been in the hospital. Edith leaned over and took a pile of magazines off a chair and sat down.
“First things first,” she said. “I take it that Mark is not dead.”
“Oh, no,” Cherie said, the blood draining out of her face. She sat down herself, abruptly, on the couch. The couch was as littered with magazines as the chair had been. “No, no, not at all. Peter said that he was quite fine really.”
“‘Out of danger,’ is what Peter said,” Melissa said, “whatever that means. He isn’t exactly being forthcoming.”
“He was forthcoming about one thing,” Cherie said. “Well no, not exactly forthcoming, but he said it. They did drug tests. Mark wasn’t on drugs.”
“Ah,” Edith said.
“Well, it settles that,” Cherie said, sounding despairing. “I never believed that gossip. It was all wrong. It was—tooeasy. He was behaving oddly and it was the easiest way of explaining it. Sometimes I think we’ve got only two explanations we’re willing to accept at this school, drugs or attention deficit disorder.”
“But he was behaving oddly,” Edith pointed out. “Did Peter have an explanation as to why?”
“No,” Cherie said.
“He really didn’t say much of anything,” Melissa said, “except to tell us to keep our mouths shut. I don’t know what he thinks we’re going to say. We were out in Boston yesterday and when we got back, well, we’d been back a little while—”
“An hour or so,” Cherie said.
“An hour or so,” Melissa agreed, “well, there he was, having another fight with Sheldon. I’m telling you, Edith. You have no idea what it’s been like since they moved that kid in with Sheldon. Sheldon resented the hell out of it. And he didn’t like Mark.”
“Not many people like Mark,” Edith said.
“True,” Melissa said, “but this was really awful. And of course Mark is something of a slob. And Sheldon’s anal retentive beyond belief. And it went on and on, day after day, so that Mark spent as little time in the House as possible because he didn’t feel comfortable with Sheldon there looming over him. I wouldn’t have either. God only knows where Mark was spending his time during the day”
“Does it matter where he was spending his time during the day?” Edith asked.
“It depends on what happened,” Cherie said. “That’s why I asked about the police. He really did look as if somebody or something had poisoned him, Edith. You should have seen him. And if it wasn’t drugs, then what was it?”
Edith thought about this. “It could have been something he ate. It could have been food poisoning.”
“The vomiting could have been food poisoning,” Cherie said. “But the convulsions couldn’t have been. Is that all over campus already, that he had convulsions last night? Like a grand mal seizure, but worse, much worse, than anyof those I’ve ever heard about. It was like he was being electrocuted. I thought he was going to die.”
“But he didn’t die,” Edith said.
“No, he didn’t,” Cherie said, “and if you can believe Peter Makepeace, he isn’t even much the worse for wear. No, that isn’t right. That isn’t what Peter said exactly. He was just so relieved.”
“Peter was?” Edith asked.
“Peter was,” Cherie said. She looked cold. Edith did not think it was
cold in this room, but she hadn’t taken off her coat. Cherie rubbed her hands together. “Peter asked if I’d seen Mark drinking coffee.”
Edith stood up, unbuttoned her coat, and took it off. Hayes House was not her favorite dorm. The main living room was too small, and the windows were too small throughout. “Mark is always drinking coffee,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him without his coffee. He even brings coffee to class, and he isn’t supposed to.”
“I know,” Cherie said. “And of course I did see him drinking coffee last night. I brought him a cup myself right before all that craziness started, and Sheldon was behaving like an idiot. The whole thing is so unbelievable. Maybe somebody did poison him. Maybe somebody put the poison in coffee, and they know that. That would make me a suspect.”
Edith shook her head. “That doesn’t make sense,” she said. “Why would Peter sound relieved if Mark DeAvecca had been poisoned?”
“Oh,” Cherie said, looking a little less likely to start crying again.
“Attempted murder would be worse than successful suicide,” Edith said, pursuing the thought. “A successful suicide is the result of a psychological problem on the part of the person who commits suicide. It isn’t usually an indication that there’s a danger to anybody else. Except in the case of suicide pacts, of course, but I don’t think there’s any danger of Mark having made a suicide pact with Michael Feyre. They didn’t like each other all that well. It must be something else. It must be something that gets Peter out of at least some of the trouble he’s going to be in.”
“I don’t see what could get him out of trouble after this,” Melissa said. “It may not have been attempted murder, and Mark may be alive, but his parents are in town. His mother got here last night. Peter said so over the phone—”