The Northbury Papers

by Joanne Dobson

  When the phone rang at 9:10, Jill was in the shower.

  “Hello, Jill Greenberg’s residence. Karen Pelletier speaking.” The silence on the other end of the line was so extended I almost hung up, deciding that the caller was either a slow-off-the-mark telemarketer or a heavy breather. Then Lieutenant Piotrowski spoke: “I don’t fucking believe this. Karen Pelletier! Again! I thought you told me you had nothing to do with this case.”

  “Piotrowski! For God’s sake! What are you doing calling Jill?”

  “What are you doing at her house?”

  “I asked you first.” I sounded like a six-year-old.

  “It’s not really your business why I’m calling Professor Greenberg, is it? But it is my business to know about suspects and their associates.”

  Of course—Gerry and Jill. Poor Jill; I’d been so stunned by her revelation, I hadn’t thought of any implications of her situation other than how she was going to raise a child alone. “Piotrowski, listen to me, take it easy on Jill, she’s—” I stopped. She’s trusting me to keep her secret—that’s what she is.

  “What? She’s what?”

  “She’s—in the shower. Take it easy on her, will you; she’s very young.” Jill wouldn’t be able to hide her pregnancy forever, but I wasn’t about to spill the beans.

  “Weren’t we all? Young, I mean. She’ll get over it. And what d’ya think I’m gonna do, anyhow—stick lighted matches under her fingernails? You ought to know me well enough, Dr. Pelletier, not to jump to the conclusion that I terrorize people.”

  “Sorry, Lieutenant.” And I was. When he’d dealt with my student Sophia the year before, I’d seen how gentle Piotrowski could be with vulnerable people. “I didn’t mean to imply that. It’s just that … there are special circumstances here.”

  “Yeah—I’ll say. Homicide. Wouldn’t you say homicide was a special circumstance? And you didn’t answer my question: What are you doing there?”

  “I’m a friend of Jill’s, Lieutenant. And she got hyster—very upset when she found out about Gerry Novak. I hope you didn’t arrest him solely on my word—”

  “Arrest him? We haven’t arrested anyone; we’re just interviewing him. Novak wasn’t cooperative on the scene, but, like we thought, a few hours in detention made him a little more—er—vocal. Arrest him? Jeez, Doctor! Now put Professor Greenberg on, willya? Please? And,” the lieutenant cleared his throat before he said the next words, “looks like you and me are gonna have another chat, Doctor. I believed you, ya know, when you said you weren’t involved in this, and now, look at you—smack dab in the middle. Again.”

  “I guess it’s time for me to grow up now—isn’t it, Karen?” A good night’s sleep seemed to have given Jill a new sense of resolve. She couldn’t tell me what Piotrowski wanted, other than that he was on his way to “ask her a few questions.” As she prepared for his visit—and I prepared to get the hell out of the way—Jill wanted to talk about babies.

  “It’s just that I feel so young to have the responsibility of a child. How old were you when Amanda was born?” She pulled her hair back in a ponytail and secured it with a purple scrunchy.

  I hesitated. I’d never talked to Jill about my past. I knew she couldn’t even begin to comprehend life on the wrong side of the tracks in Lowell, Massachusetts, in the 1970’s. “Nineteen,” I replied, running a borrowed hairbrush through my hair, and securing the dark mess with a borrowed clasp.

  “Nineteen! For God’s sake, Karen; whatever possessed you to have a baby that young?” Her green eyes were incredulous. As if I’d had choices.

  “I had sex. I got pregnant.”

  “But why didn’t your parents—”

  “I’ve got Amanda, Jill. She’s the best thing in my life. That’s all I care about. I don’t want to talk about anything else. Especially not about my parents.”

  “But—”

  I gave her a cold, level stare. No one was going to get me to talk about my early life. No one.

  “Okay—don’t get huffy.” She grinned at me; I was relieved to see a little spunk. “Nineteen, huh. Well, if you could do it, I can do it. My folks’ll help out financially; there’s day care here at the school …” And she was off, making plans for the future. This was going to be one hell of a privileged single-parent family; I could see that already. Jill would probably have the kid enrolled in Harvard before it was born.

  When I left Jill’s place and was crossing the wide, white porch with its hanging pots of fern and ivy, the door to Ken Halvorsen’s apartment opened, and Jill’s neighbor emerged. Ken was as blond and solid as usual, and his customary outfit of blue Enfield sweats did nothing to detract from the air of physical strength and prowess that had earned him, among student athletes, the nickname of The Incredible Blue Hulk.

  “Is Jill okay, Karen? Last night I couldn’t help but hear her crying. She sounded so—upset, I almost came over, but then I saw you arrive. I knew you’d take care of her.”

  It was all I could do to keep from sighing with exasperation. Kenny took a lively interest in the doings of his faculty fellows; the gossip mills would be churning today: Jill Greenberg hysterical, Karen Pelletier spending the night. But, at this moment, he looked genuinely concerned.

  “She was upset over something, Kenny; but she’s fine, now.” I paused, then decided to appeal to his worried frown. “I know I can count on you to keep this to yourself, Ken. Jill needs a little time to get over—well, whatever—and nobody needs to know she was so—distraught. You know?”

  “I hear what you’re saying, Karen. I hear you. And I’ll keep an eye out for her; Jill’s a bit of a nut, but she’s always been awful nice to me.”

  “Thanks, Ken.” I took another look at this blond hunk; maybe behind the muscle and the macho and the well-filled blue sweats lurked the contours of a decent guy.

  Ten

  “I was in the neighborhood, Doctor. Didn’t have a chance to let you know I was coming. Sorry.”

  Lieutenant Piotrowski wasn’t alone as he strode brusquely through my front door two days later at the rude hour of nine A.M.; he was accompanied by an extremely plain young woman wearing black jeans and a forest green twill jacket. I’d lived with a cop long enough to note instantly the slight bulge of the shoulder holster concealed under her loose-fitting jacket. I brushed Piotrowski’s introduction aside; I knew this woman right away.

  “I remember Trooper Schultz,” I said.

  “It’s Sergeant Schultz now.” Her rejoinder was curt. Felicity Schultz, working undercover on a protection detail, had saved my life the previous year, but I knew she didn’t like me. On the trail of a killer, she had shadowed me for a few days. Since Piotrowski hadn’t seen fit to inform me he had protection on me, I’d become annoyed by the persistent little busybody who seemed to show up everywhere I went. And, unfortunately, I didn’t hide my irritation; Officer Schultz had found me “arrogant and rude,” Piotrowski had later announced.

  So what was she doing here now?

  And why was Piotrowski here? When he declined my offer of coffee, the creeping fingers of trepidation began playing up and down my spine. I make good coffee, and he knows it. And I’d never seen the big cop turn down any offer of sustenance.

  When the lieutenant lowered his bulk onto the worn black recliner in my living room, Sergeant Schultz perched on the edge of a straight oak chair and pulled out a notepad. She began writing immediately, and I knew she was recording the date, location, and purpose of their visit. This looked increasingly like an official interview. The fingers of trepidation ceased their creeping and clutched—hard. What in holy hell was going on here? I was instantly sorry I had chosen a seat on the couch. The soft cushion sagged under me, and I seemed to be sitting at least six inches lower than either of the police officers. I felt like a little girl in the presence of stern adults.

  “Lieutenant?” I queried, apprehensively. “You’re scaring me. What do you want?”

  Piotrowski leaned forward in the large chair, his hands
clasped lightly between his knees. He was more formally dressed today than he’d been at Fran’s Kountry Kitchen, wearing a gray tweed jacket, black flannel slacks, and a blue Save the Children tie. Despite his size, he looked fit, as if he worked out on a regular basis. Piotrowski had been on a diet when I’d known him the year before, and although there was still a great deal of poundage there, the word fat didn’t come to mind.

  “One,” he said, holding up a forefinger, as if he were about to tick off items on a list. “Your call to Meadowbrook on the day of Dr. Edith Hart’s death.” He tilted his head and granted me a straight, unblinking stare.

  I shrugged.

  “Two.” A second finger came into play. “Your presence at Professor Jill Greenberg’s apartment the morning I called to arrange an interview with her about her—er—boyfriend’s activities.” The beige eyebrows rose, the tilt of the head became more suggestively pronounced.

  I shrugged again.

  “Three—”

  “Three?” I sat up as straight as I could on the soft couch. “How can there be a three? Nothing else has happened.”

  “Three,” he repeated, firmly. His ring finger joined the other two digits. “Dr. Edith Hart’s last will and testament.”

  I could feel my eyes widen. “Her will?”

  “Her will. Of which we found a copy in her papers.” His three raised fingers repositioned themselves contemplatively at his lips. “Yes. Quite an interesting will, as a matter of fact. Have you seen it?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “Did Dr. Hart speak to you about it?”

  “No!” I was getting annoyed now. “Why the hell would she? I hardly knew the woman.”

  “So you said.” The words came from Sergeant Schultz, sitting upright on her straight chair. I’d forgotten she was there, recording everything in her little book. “So you said.”

  I turned in her direction. “Yes? So I said. Is there a problem with that?” Even I could hear the edge in my voice.

  “No,” Piotrowski chimed in. “No problem, Doctor.” He gave Schultz a hard look. “Is there, Schultz?” She dropped her eyes to her notes, and began writing again. Her lashes were long and dark in an oval face. A slow flush brought color to her cheeks, prompting me to take a prolonged second look at Piotrowski’s new sidekick. Hmm, I thought, with a little makeup and the right clothes, this woman could be quite attractive. But given the brutal way her chestnut hair was chopped off and the stark plainness of her wardrobe, Sergeant Felicity Schultz seemed determined to fade into the woodwork. In her line of work, invisibility was probably far more useful than beauty. I wouldn’t have forgotten the presence of a beauty the way I’d allowed the unremarkable Felicity Schultz to slip from my mind. But all the time she’d been sitting there, upright on her uncomfortable chair, observing, coming to conclusions, taking notes. And—it would seem—distrusting me.

  “What about Dr. Hart’s will, Lieutenant? Why do you think I might have seen it?”

  “Tell me again about your relationship with the victim.” Piotrowski was expert at evading questions. “Begin at the beginning and tell me everything.”

  I sighed, sat back in my soft burrow of cushions, and began to talk. I told the detectives about Mrs. Northbury’s copy of Jane Eyre in great detail—even to the photograph of the baby stuck between the pages.

  “Can I see it?”

  “The book?”

  “The picture.”

  “Why?”

  “You know me: just nosy.”

  “I gave it to Edith.”

  “Really?” He swiveled toward Schultz. “Sergeant, we come across anything like that at the victim’s place?” I flinched at his casual use of the word victim.

  “No.” In the single syllable, the sergeant managed to convey absolute skepticism about my story. No, sir, we sure didn’t.

  I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye. Ms. Prim and Proper. Butter wouldn’t melt. Etc. Etc.

  “I visited Edith twice, Lieutenant.” My best option was to ignore the sergeant completely. “We talked about her great-grandmother; we talked about women’s literature; we talked about Mrs. Northbury’s manuscript. By the way, what’d you do with that manuscript, Lieutenant?”

  “What manuscript?”

  “Mrs. Northbury’s book manuscript. Child of the North Star. A bulky thing, handwritten, tied with string. We found it in one of those ancient boxes—a blue hatbox. Edith was going to pass it on to me when she finished reading it. I thought it might be publishable.”

  “Sergeant? Sound familiar?”

  “No.” But Schultz looked thoughtful. “There were a few handwritten pages in her bed—under the blankets. Four … maybe five. Six? We didn’t know what to make of them. Old paper. Brownish ink—”

  “That’s right,” Piotrowski broke in. “Six pages—but not consecutive. Bits and pieces of something.”

  “Were they part of a novel?” I was leaning forward now, anxious. Edith’s death was bad enough. The loss of her ancestor’s novel would compound the tragedy. “A story of a woman about to give birth?”

  “They didn’t make any sense to me.” Piotrowski was gazing at me contemplatively, his expression impenetrable. “And there’s so much stuff in that house—we didn’t pay much attention to a few loose pages. At least I didn’t. How about you, Sergeant? You look at those documents closely?”

  She spread her hands, shrugged. “But being as they were found with the body, they’re in Evidence.”

  Piotrowski rose abruptly. “Okay, Doctor. Come along with us.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Headquarters.”

  I froze. Headquarters? Were they arresting me? “I want to call my lawyer.” I rose from the saggy couch with a futile attempt at dignity. “I’m not going anywhere until I call my lawyer.” I was bluffing; I didn’t have a lawyer.

  “Dr. Pelletier,” the lieutenant’s smile was slow and amused, “you don’t need a lawyer. Not unless you want someone real pricey to look over some manuscript pages with you.”

  Six sheets of paper in Serena Northbury’s careful, rounded handwriting lay in front of me on the long, scarred table in the BCI Evidence Room. They were numbered in the top center of each page, and I arranged the pages in order: 23, 24, 179, 180, 432, 434. Centered under the half page of script on 434 were the words The End.

  “This is it, Lieutenant,” I said. “At least these pages look identical to those in the manuscript I saw. The handwriting is Northbury’s; the paper and ink look the same; there was a character in the novel named Emmy.”

  “’Zat so?” Piotrowski ruminated. “So—maybe we did overlook this manuscript. That possible, Schultz?”

  Her expression was implacable. “It’s a big place. Lots of stuff there. A whole room full of boxes of dusty books and papers on the first floor alone. I s’pose it’s possible we missed it.” An unspoken message passed between the two officers, then the sergeant left the room. I watched Schultz’s retreating back. I would have bet anything she was making ready to head back to Meadowbrook to do a follow-up search.

  “Or,” the lieutenant continued, more to himself than to me, “maybe somebody took it.” His gaze raked over me, then slid to the pages in front of me. Then he glanced up at me again. “Look ’em over, Doctor. Then we can have a long talk. A long, literary talk.” He leaned backward in his battered wooden chair; the front legs rose from the floor. For a second I was riveted; would two spindly legs hold the policeman’s great weight?

  “Read,” he said. “I don’t have all day.”

  —23—

  … in a leafy copse on the hillside.

  The child’s eyes widened with wonder at the sight of the vine-covered summerhouse. “Pitty,” she said. “Pitty. Lizzie want go in.”

  Emmy placed her hand lovingly on the golden haze of her young daughter’s curls. If ever a child was loved by nature, it was surely she. The amber hue of her skin in the summer sun and the halo of scarce more golden curls: Yes, surely she wa
s as much nature’s child as if all of nature’s benison had gone into her begetting.

  At the thought, it was as if a morsel of sky detached itself from the general cerulean and fluttered toward the pair waiting in the leafy arbor. “Butta-fwy,” cried the child. “Oh, catch it, Muvver, do.”

  The ethereal winged creature evaded Emmy’s grasp, but circled little Lizzie’s head, as if inscribing a halo of blue around the airy golden one, brushed briefly against the rounded cheek, then vanished at the cherub’s joyous laugh. “Muvver, Muvver. The sky give kisses, jess like you.”

  Emmy clutched her daughter to her throbbing breast while tears fell like Niagara. If only …

  I came to the end of the page and looked up, the leafy bower vanished, replaced by the institutional green walls and the metal shelving of the BCI Evidence Room. Piotrowski was staring at me. “Doctor? You all right? You look like you’re gonna bawl.”

  “I do not. And don’t use that word; I never bawl.”

  Page 24 swam just a little as I dropped my gaze back to the old manuscript pages. But I’d be damned if I’d let this, this—yahoo—see me misty-eyed. I read on: she were mine to glory in before the world, I would die a happy woman.

  “So, what’d ya think?” The detective’s question cut through my sentimental haze.

  “I’ve read one page, Lieutenant. I don’t think anything yet. Except, maybe …”

  “Maybe what?” He was still leaning back in his chair, and with Sergeant Schultz out of the room his expression seemed to have relaxed a little. But he was still sharp with his questions.