by Coyle, Cleo
Matt appeared shocked. Neither of us knew what to say.
“Life may take from us, but God gives back, in His own time. A few years later, when Matt came home from Europe with a young woman named Clare, who was pregnant with a daughter . . . well, I knew it was meant to be.” She turned to me. “I knew you were a gift from God the moment I heard your name. The daughter I’d lost came back to me.”
I put my arms around her, blinked back tears. “I can’t believe you’ve been carrying that around all these years . . .”
Matt swallowed, his voice hoarse. “No wonder you never trusted the police.”
“My darling boy, it wasn’t that I didn’t trust them. I simply needed to get to know them before I could judge which cops were good and which weren’t.”
She paused, met my eyes.
“Mike’s a good cop,” I said quietly.
“I know he is, dear. Officer Quinn saved your life and Joy’s.” She squeezed my hand. “I don’t know why Cormac is back again, after all this time. But I have to trust that your blue knight will protect him from men like that deputy commissioner Hawke. If Cormac gets a fair hearing, I’m sure everything will turn out all right.”
I shifted on the sofa, suddenly queasy. “What did you say about Hawke? How do you know him?”
Madame blinked. “Didn’t I say? Larry Hawke was the name of the corrupt patrolman. The young officer who appeared on the roof, shot the dealer, Cormac’s partner, and tried to kill Cormac. Hawke was the cop who framed him.”
Shaken to the core, I sat frozen a moment. Finally, I rose and quietly excused myself.
In Madame’s bathroom, I sat on the edge of the tub, ran my fingers through my hair. In my bones I knew that Madame was telling the truth. But her facts ran completely counter to the police file.
Will Quinn believe me? Or will he claim Madame is just trying to protect her old boyfriend, like she did before?
I recalled the words we’d had at the dock about Franco. What would Quinn do? Side with me and Madame? Or with the towering command structure he’d trusted for his entire career?
I checked my watch. It was past midnight, but I had to call him, try to explain. I fumbled in my pocket, found my cell. A voice mail was waiting for me. Mike hadn’t rung through. He’d sent a silent message.
“Clare, listen to me carefully. This cold case has gotten complicated... and a little dangerous. I’m going to be out of touch. I’m not sure how long. You won’t be able to reach me through my cell or the police radio. Sully and I need to follow a few leads. For our own safety, we can’t be traceable. I can’t say more to you now, except . . . well, I think you’ll understand this. I’m about to pull a Franco . . .”
Oh my God.
“Try not to worry . . . and, please, do not tell anyone what I’ve just told you. It could put our lives in danger. Just . . . I don’t know, say a prayer for me today. I’m going to need it...”
Praying was the first thing I did, asking God to keep Mike and Sully and Franco safe. Then I squeezed my eyes shut, realizing in a whole new way what Madame must have felt all those years ago.
How do I make sense of this?
Did Mike hear the same story from Cormac and believe him? Were they trying to gather evidence and go to the Feds together? Or had Mike confronted Hawke, just like Franco? Did Hawke try to take Mike’s badge and gun? Or was it even worse? Did he try to take his life?
What in heaven’s name is happening?
I closed my eyes, bowed my head, and lost track of time. When a soft knock sounded on the door, I rubbed the back of my neck.
“Clare?”
I’d spent so long in the bathroom that Matt had grown concerned. I opened the door, moved into the hall.
“Are you okay?” Matt asked.
“I’m staying here with your mother tonight . . .”
“You look like hell,” he whispered, opening his arms.
I stepped into them.
Matteo’s body felt as strong as ever, as strong as his spirit, and I let him lend me that strength. Holding on tight, I let myself break, felt the hot tears dampen his shirt.
“Did Mother’s story upset you that much?” he whispered.
I wanted so badly to spill more than tears, tell Matt about the call, about Franco, Hawke, everything. But I felt bound by Quinn’s request. Just like Madame, I had no evidence of Hawke’s guilt, none. The only thing I could do for Mike Quinn was what he’d asked—not tell a soul what was happening. Not even my family.
“Please don’t cry,” Matt whispered, stroking my hair. “It’ll be okay . . .”
“You don’t know that.”
“No. But I find if you say it enough times—and click your heels—sometimes it is . . .”
“What are you? Glenda the Good Witch?”
“Naw. The good witch auditions aren’t till next week.”
I pulled away, swiping at my eyes. “Better tell Punch then. He’s willing to do drag to get into that show . . .”
Matt touched my wet cheek. I squeezed his hand. “Check on our daughter, okay? Let her know I won’t be back to the coffeehouse until late tomorrow.”
“Where are you going?”
“Your mother and I may not be able to help Cormac O’Neil or Mike Quinn, but we can do something to help Alicia Bower—and that’s what we’re going to do . . .”
FORTY-TWO
I rented a car and drove us east, toward the brightly rising sun. Bypassing the city’s gritty borough of Queens, we headed for the north shore of Long Island, land of quaint waterfront villages, pedigreed horses, and exclusive yacht clubs.
Over a dozen institutes of higher learning were located on the Island east of New York City. Bay Creek Women’s College was not among them—and for good reason. A decade ago, the school had gone coed, changing its name to Bay Village College.
According to its Web site, the campus’s Essen Library held the archives for student theses, and that was our destination. But we had a problem: neither Madame nor I knew Aphrodite’s real name.
I’d searched the Web, read her Wiki bio, her Facebook page (three million likes!), but Aphrodite had reinvented herself so aggressively, I had no clue where she was born or who she really was.
Fortunately, scholarly papers are generally cross-referenced by subject, so I was hopeful that any thesis referencing Laeta, Severa, or Rufina would be listed in the card catalog.
I didn’t think the paper itself would clue us to the killer’s identity. The real lead would be found on a lending card of some sort, the kind that listed all the people who’d accessed the thesis, hopefully stretching back years. If I found a familiar name—one who had motive and opportunity to frame Alicia and Sherri—that person would zoom to the top of my suspect list.
Now, as we crossed the lush green of the manicured campus, Madame openly admired the main library’s High-Victorian Gothic style. We quickly checked the brass plaque for the architect’s name and I noticed the building was a national landmark, which housed the college library, a collection of rare first editions, and the Juliana Gregg Saunders Archive and Reading Room.
Madame pointed at the plaque. “Who knew Juliana Saunders had a philanthropic bone in that venal body of hers?”
“You know the woman?”
“I’m afraid so. She’s one of Otto’s more disagreeable clients—and in oh-so-many ways. Last year she bid on a Chuck Close self-portrait because ‘it was just the right size’ to fit her two-story Park Avenue living room and the colors matched her brand-new Aubusson.”
“Ouch.”
“Thank goodness she lost the auction.”
“Yes . . .” I was smiling now but not because of the story. I realized Madame’s acquaintance with Ms. Saunders might be the miracle we needed, right when we needed it.
The Essen Library, a private institution at a private college, required a student or faculty ID to enter. Rather than try to explain ourselves at the dean’s office, I thought my work-around would save us valuable time.
“Do you think you can channel this Juliana Gregg Saunders? Imitate her mannerisms? Her attitude? Convince people you’re the real deal?”
“Why would I want to do that?” Madame suppressed a shudder.
I pointed out the security issue, and Madame agreed. As we ascended the steps to the library’s entrance, she slipped into her role and boldly took the lead.
The student working the front desk didn’t bother to look up from her iPad as we approached. “ID, please,” she said, hand extended.
Madame squared her shoulders. “My good woman, one does not need a common ID when one’s name is on the door!”
The girl looked up. “Excuse me?”
Madame tapped a manicured nail on the polished desk. “My name is Juliana Gregg Saunders, and I wish to see my room!”
“Room?”
“The Juliana Gregg Saunders Archive and Reading Room, young dolt. I pay a steep annual stipend for the privilege, and because the room bears my name, I would like to see it . . . Now.”
“Oh . . . oh! I’m so sorry Mrs. Gregg—I mean Saunders, er, Mrs. Saunders.”
Madame sniffed and the student jumped to her feet. “You can go up right now. It’s almost lunchtime, but I’m sure Ms. Themis will be happy to give you a tour.”
“Announce us,” Madame said. “Immediately.”
“Of course!” The girl lifted the receiver and with shaky hands dialed a three digit extension. She waited. “Ms. Themis isn’t picking up. She’s probably working in the stacks. If you want, I can escort you—”
“I’m capable of following directions, if they are accurate.”
The girl appeared relieved. “Okay. Take those stairs one flight up, to the second floor. Then make a left.”
“Come, Clare. Let’s see how this institution spends my largess!”
A wide staircase behind a granite arch led upstairs. Halfway to the top, Madame sighed. “That was quite distasteful. Imagine going through life behaving in such a ghastly manner. It’s so taxing . . .”
“Don’t drop your newfound nasty just yet. We’re not out of the woods.”
I opened a heavy door and we entered the archive. The walls were lined with darkly stained shelves packed with volumes thin and thick. A half-dozen reading tables, arranged to take advantage of the western sun streaming through the tall windows, were empty now. In fact, we saw only one occupant—an elderly woman with wild gray hair, sorting books beside a wheeled cart.
Madame cleared her throat. “Excuse me—”
Without facing us, the woman raised a hand for silence. With her other hand she fished a pair of false teeth out of a Mason jar and slipped them into her mouth.
“I’m sorry,” she said, facing us at last. “I can’t say a comprehensible word without my teeth. Someday I’ll be gone from this room, but these choppers will still be in that jar, chattering away like the voice of the Cumaean Sibyl!”
The woman approached us, her teeth roughly in place, which gave her a crooked, toothy smile. Not much younger than Madame, she had that same spark in her eyes and spring in her step. Dressed appropriately tweedy, her jacket actually had leather patches on the elbows. But her outspoken attitude and wild gray-white hair were far from retiring.
“I’m Miss Themis, the head archivist. But please call me Phoebe,” she said, extending a hand.
“I’m Juliana Gregg Saunders,” Madame said solemnly. “And this is Clare, my personal assistant.”
“Now that’s odd,” Phoebe said, “because the Juliana I know is just now rolling out of bed with a bad hangover and worse disposition.”
The woman leaned close and lowered her voice. “And between you and me, after a typical evening in her cups, the last thing Juliana would ever do is visit her reading room.”
My knees felt suddenly shaky. Madame paled. Phoebe simply cackled and slapped her knee. “Look at you two! Your faces are white as whippletree petals!”
“Whippletree?”
“Dogwood. Part of Chaucer’s nomenclature from “The Knight’s Tale.” Did you know Boccaccio was the source of that tale? His was an epic, of course, and old Geoffrey changed the genre to romance, although, inspired by Boethius, he added an undercurrent of philosophy.”
“I see.”
“Too much information?” She cackled again. “Oh my. Why so serious?” she leaned close. “Nothing to fear. Your secret little masquerade is safe for now. But, of course, with good scholarship, most secrets are revealed, sooner or later.”
“Sooner is better,” I replied, offering my hand. “My name is Clare Cosi and this is Mrs. Dubois. We apologize for crashing your reading room, but we need information. It’s a matter of life or death—”
“Tea!” Phoebe exclaimed. “Earl Gray. There’s nothing better than a strong tea served hot with a story well told.”
“We don’t have time for—”
“Sounds delightful,” Madame cut in, squeezing my elbow.
I forced a smile. “Thank you so much.”
MINUTES later, tea was served under a tall, open window, in the warmth of the noontime sun. A flowering laurel tree stood just outside, swaying in the spring breeze. The sea-tinged air flowed in off the manicured quad along with sounds of laughter from passing students.
The cups were cardboard, the sugar in little packets, but the hot tea, freshly brewed from imported loose leaves, could have raised the dead, and the home-baked mini chocolate-chip scones, rich with butter and cream, were perfectly balanced—the lighter flavors rescued from complete obliteration by the judicious control of the chocolate’s darkness.
When we were all settled in, Madame tactfully explained our quest. “We’re searching for a thesis written by one of your alumni. Unfortunately, we don’t know the author’s name. We only know the subject.”
Phoebe patted Madame’s hand. “Never fear, Mrs. Dubois. All of our papers are cross-referenced.”
I jumped in. “This paper mentions words or perhaps names. One of them is Laeta, another is Severa—” I was ready to spell them out, but Phoebe was way ahead of me.
“Laeta, Severa, and Rufina. You don’t have to be coy, ladies. If you wanted to see ‘The Romance of the Vestals’ by Thelma Vale Pixley you need only ask—the dean of the college, that is.”
Aphrodite’s real name is Thelma Vale Pixley?
Phoebe rose and fetched a thin, worn volume from a shelf. “Once upon a time, this notorious thesis was referenced each and every semester,” she said. “That’s not true anymore. Time has passed, and the school has done its best to make everyone forget.”
Madame arched an eyebrow. “Forget?”
The archivist stood at my shoulder, volume in hand. “I’m not supposed to show this to anyone but students or alumni. Not without the express permission of Dean Parnassus.”
I felt a pressure in my chest. So close. Are we dead?
“Oh, what the Hades!” Phoebe declared.
She placed the volume on the table in front of me, and I turned immediately to the lending sheets attached to the inside back cover. As Phoebe spoke, I rapidly scanned the names of those who’d looked at this thesis in the past eleven years. None looked familiar—and I felt crushed.
“That paper is a real potboiler,” Phoebe said. “As scholarship it’s rubbish, but as fiction it’s worthy of Anne Radcliffe.”
“I adored Anne Radcliffe when I was a girl,” Madame said. “I do believe I married an Italian man because I read The Italian at too impressionable an age.”
“Well, my guess is Miss Pixley was reading Henry Miller,” Phoebe said. “Or perhaps the Marquis de Sade, because the girl turned a tale of intrigue and injustice from the late Roman Empire into a Dionysian tragedy of sinister lust—complete with erotic passages. Of course, much of Greco-Roman mythology was driven by amorous desire.”
She tipped her head to the swaying branches beyond the open window.
“My beautiful laurel even has her roots in such a tale—a nymph transformed into a tree, the answer to a prayer
as she ran from the clutches of a lustful god. ‘A heavy numbness seized her limbs, thin bark closed over her breast, her hair turned into leaves, her arms into branches, her feet so swift a moment ago stuck fast in roots, her face lost in the canopy. Only her shining beauty was left.’ ”
Madame sighed. “So much yearning, desire, and heartbreak. The young live in Puccini.”
“Oh, Puccini! ‘Mi chiamano Mimì’ is one of my favorite arias.”
“I have it as my ringtone.”
“Did you know the libretto for Gianni Schicchi is based on an incident mentioned in the Divine Comedy?”
“Which one?”
As the newfound friends continued talking, I paged through the long paper. Finally, I interrupted: “Excuse me, but what was Miss Pixley attempting to explore here? An Apollonian versus Dionysian philosophy?”
“Oh, nothing so deep as that, I’m afraid.” Phoebe tipped her head to the campus quad. “And yet her dissertation became so popular among the other girls, she was made something of a campus celebrity.”
“But isn’t this supposed to be a scholarly study?”
“There’s some scholarship involved,” Phoebe said. “The trial and execution of the three innocent Vestals occurred in AD 213, as in the thesis. And Emperor Caracalla, the man whose lust for them led to their death sentences, was as brutally handsome as he was murderously brutal. But the rest of it is a fiction that sprung from the fevered, postpubescent mind of Thelma Pixley.”
“What happened to the author?” I asked.
Phoebe’s teeth rattled. “That story is quite a potboiler, too. And it also ends in an execution. It was back when this college was exclusively a girl’s school. With that notorious paper circulating throughout the student body, Miss Pixley became a ringleader. She spearheaded a pagan revival. Thelma and her friends formed a secret sorority, complete with Dionysian rites.”
Phoebe lowered her voice. “These were daughters of affluence, you understand, so recreational drugs were easy to purchase. But this was a school for girls, so there was a dearth of men around with whom to practice their rites.”