I sighed. For once, I’d come up against someone more obstinate than I am. “Well, Lieutenant, I had dinner with Dr. Thorpe last night, and he happened to mention …” But when I’d finished telling him about Thibault Brewster’s diabetic mother, Piotrowski showed no response. None at all. The “info” had gone into that great data bank of a brain for processing, and that was all I needed to know—at least as far as the lieutenant was concerned. He was in that kind of mood.
The porch light didn’t reach into the corner where we stood, and the few partygoers who’d deserted the house for the minimally cooler porch must have assumed our tête-à-tête was private. Piotrowski leaned back against the white pillar, chewing his lips—very nice lips, I’d always thought, full and sensuous. I decided not to interrupt his meditations. Finally he looked up at me and asked, “Doctor, do you know anything about Gerry Novak you haven’t told me?”
Gerry Novak? Helen Whitlow’s bitter tale came flooding into my mind. I could hear the funny, rusty voice: Gerry takes care of me like a son … he does anything I ask him to do. “Why do you ask, Lieutenant? Have you arrested Gerry?”
Piotrowski’s brown eyes were absolutely still. “Do you know something about Novak that would make you think I might have a reason to arrest him?” Carefully selected and carefully articulated, his words thickened the darkness in our remote corner of the porch.
“Noooo. Well, I have heard some things about him, but nothing that would count as—you know, evidence of any wrongdoing.”
Abruptly the lieutenant uncrossed his arms, clapped his hands back against the porch railing, and pushed himself into an upright position. “Come on, Doctor, we’re going for a walk.”
“A walk? Piotrowski, there’s a party going on here.”
“And don’t I know it.”
Protesting all the while, I was tugged along in the big cop’s wake as he navigated the small group by the porch steps and headed toward the sidewalk.
“Dr. Pelletier,” he said, as soon as we had gotten out of earshot of the house, “sometimes I think I have the shittiest job in the world.”
“Lieutenant?” I was flabbergasted, by his words, but even more, by the vehemence with which he’d spoken them.
Piotrowski sighed. “Ferrinstance, Doctor, you and me—we go back a ways, right? And I gotta admit I like you—as a person, I mean.” He paused for a second. “That’s okay to say, right? I mean, that’s not—like, er—sexual harassment or anything, is it?”
“No, of course not!”
“With you academic types, I’m never sure—you know, all that PC stuff. Anyways, so you’re basically a decent person, and I know that. But, you’re all the time pissed at me. Holdin’ out on me. Accusing me of harassment. And all just because I’m tryin’ to do my job. I mean, c’mon, Doctor—give me a break! We’re talking about a homicide investigation here. I gotta ask obnoxious questions, and you know it. But I don’t harass anyone—unless they deserve it, of course. Give me credit for having some brains, willya?”
I winced at his words. “Sorry.” We were walking fast in the direction of downtown Enfield. My legs are long, but I had to hustle to keep up with Piotrowski’s rapid stride. “You know I respect you, Piotrowski. And I do know how hard your job is. Living with Tony was no …” The heavy fragrance of roses in the air alerted me that we were passing the Whitlow house. “Anyhow, it’s just that I, well, I guess I have conflicted loyalties—”
“Tsk. How could you have conflicted loyalties when it comes to homicide?”
“No, it’s not that. It’s just that a lot of the stuff I hear, you know, couldn’t possibly be relevant.…”
“Tsk.” The lieutenant came to an abrupt halt at the door of Moccio’s, a dingy bar at the near end of Field Street. He peered in the door. “We won’t likely run into any of your colleagues here, will we, Doctor?”
“Hardly. I’m probably the only faculty member on campus who’d be caught dead in a place like this.”
By the yellow light above the entry, I saw Piotrowski wince. His voice was somber as he said, in all seriousness, it seemed, “Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, Doctor.” Then I remembered, for this man death was more than simply a figure of speech.
A blast of cold air hit me as I pushed open the door. My sweating face went clammy. Avoiding the bar, the lieutenant led me to a table in a back corner. “Order something stiff,” he said.
“My God, Piotrowski.” My fingertips went even colder than my face, and the sudden chill had nothing to do with air conditioning. “What’s going on?”
“You drink bourbon?”
I nodded.
“Two Jack Daniel’s,” he called over to the bartender. “Doubles.”
“Another shitty part of my job,” he continued, once the drinks had been delivered, “is that I occasionally have to deliver really bad news, sometimes to really nice people.”
“Me?” Had something happened to Amanda? Was he trying to break it gently? Something seized up in my chest. I think it was my heart. Was that why the booze?
“No,” he said, and reached out to squeeze my hand. I almost choked on my drink, I was so surprised. “Thank God, no.”
My heartbeat picked up again. “But, then, why are we here?”
He looked down at his hand, pulled it back. His expression remained grim. “I’m gonna need your help, Doctor. I gotta tell your friend Dr. Greenberg that the father of her child—I assume Novak is the father of her child—was found dead this afternoon.”
My shocked intake of breath sounded like something between a hoot and a cry of pain. A couple of chivalrous UPS drivers at the next table glanced up, concerned, saw they couldn’t take Piotrowski, even if he was brutalizing me, and, wisely, decided to ignore us.
“What? How?”
“Drowned.”
“Drowned? Where?”
“In that big pond at Meadowbrook. Down behind the house a ways.”
“Yes. I’ve seen it. He goes—went—fishing there, Jill said. All the time. Oh, my God, poor Jill! What a horrible thing! It was an accident, right? Please tell me it was an accident.”
“Maybe it was an accident—” The bulky shoulders moved fractionally up, then down.
“Maybe?” My voice came out in a horrified squeak.
“Or maybe it wasn’t.”
“Lieutenant!”
“Drink your drink.” I sipped, obediently. “The other options are homicide—or, of course, suicide—”
“Suicide!” Maybe because Jill had broken up with him? Could she live with it, if that turned out to be the case?
“So you see, Doctor, why I need you to tell me anything you might possibly know about Gerry Novak, whether you think it’s relevant or not.”
I knocked back the rest of the bourbon, then began to talk in a rapid, mechanical, manner—about Gerry’s belief that Edith Hart was his real mother, and had given him up at birth, about Helen Whitlow’s long-ago passion for Gerry’s father, her bitter hatred of Edith, her statement that Gerry would do anything she asked him, about the other woman he’d been sleeping with at the same time as Jill, even the fact that Jill had just ended her relationship with the father of her child-to-be. I wasn’t breaching any confidences with that last piece of information; Piotrowski’d find out soon enough.
As I spilled it all out, a story began to form, a nice, neat narrative package. I couldn’t resist explicating it to the lieutenant. “Don’t you see? It must have been suicide. Under the influence of Helen Whitlow, Gerry had come to hate Edith. Whether or not she really was his biological mother wouldn’t matter.” I recalled Helen’s claim that Edith had stolen Karl Novak. Given what Will had told me about Edith’s—heightened—sex life, a hot affair with the handyman was a not-inconceivable scenario. So I threw that supposition into the narrative brew. By the end of my tale, I had Gerry guilty of killing Edith, and then, in a state of repentant remorse, deciding to end his life by drowning himself in his murdered mother’s lake. It was a good story, pos
itively Faulknerian, and I told it vividly and compellingly. By the end of the tale, I had myself utterly convinced.
When I glanced over at Piotrowski for a reaction, he was sitting back in his chair with a wry half-smile on his face. “Well, Dr. Pelletier, that’s real good. That sounds just like one of those stories your Mrs. Northbury woulda written.” His response jolted me back to reality.
“Piotrowski, don’t mock me! And, anyhow, why couldn’t it have happened that way?”
“Oh, it might of, and I’ll keep the possibility in mind. And I’m not mocking you. It’s just that—well—unlike you literary types, I hafta provide evidence when I put together a story like that.”
“And a good thing, too.” I was just a little muzzy from the bourbon. “But I can’t bear to think that he was killed, Lieutenant! Two murders at Meadowbrook in the same month? It is just like a book! The place must have a curse on it. A long, dark, sinister curse.”
Piotrowski gave me a straight look. “You really shouldn’t drink, Doctor.”
“But you …”
He pushed back his chair and stood. “C’mon, I gotta get back to Dr. Greenberg’s. The sergeant’s probably there by now.”
“Sergeant Schultz? What’s she doing at Jill’s?”
“I thought a female officer might provide some comfort—”
“Comfort? That woman would provide about as much comfort as a pit viper.”
“Yeah—and she likes you, too. C’mon, upsy-daisy, Doctor. Ms. Greenberg is gonna need you. You wanna hold onta my arm?”
Twenty-one
Gerry Novak had been a pack rat. What’s more, he had come from a long line of pack rats. Not only was the dining room table he’d used as a writing desk piled high with stacks of meticulously dated and labeled drafts of poems—“Bastard I,” draft one, “Bastard I,” draft two, “Bastard I,” draft three, “Bastard II,” draft one, and so forth—but two of the three small bedrooms in the house his family had occupied for over a century were stacked five feet high with papers and magazines dating back at least to the 1930’s, long before he was born. In the kitchen, under the stony gaze of Sergeant Felicity Schultz, I leafed through the topmost issue of a pile of Reader’s Digests from the 1950’s—“My Most Unforgettable Character,” “Humor in Uniform,” “Life in These United States.” No clues there.
“What is it you want from me, Sergeant?” The night at Jill’s house had been a long, sleepless vigil. Then, as soon as I had gotten Jill to agree to rest for a few minutes, the call had come saying Piotrowski wanted me at Meadowbrook. I left Jill under the solicitous care of Kenny Halvorsen and trekked out to Eastbrook, exhausted—and sick to death of cops. I plopped down into a red vinyl-covered kitchen chair and surveyed the chaos around me. “It would take weeks to go through this junk,” I told Felicity Schultz, “and I wouldn’t have any better perspective on it than your greenest rookie would.”
The sergeant remained standing; that way she was taller than me. Intimidation. I hadn’t lived with Tony for six years without learning stuff like that. Today, as hot as it was in this musty little house, Felicity Schultz wore a beige poplin jacket over a rust-colored camp shirt and khaki pants. Her scrubbed face shone with a fine layer of sweat. I was better off in the lightweight white pants and sleeveless blouse I’d worn to the party, but just marginally. Only a few windows in the Novak house would open—the rest had been painted shut long ago—and the kitchen was stifling. In order to tolerate life in this airless atmosphere, any permanent occupant would have had to be totally impervious to discomfort.
“The lieutenant and I—” she stressed lieutenant, “—did not ask you to come out here to look at Reader’s Digests, Professor Pelletier. We are fully aware of the limited range of your professional expertise”—ouch—“and it is within that range that we require the assistance of your knowledge.” The assistance of your knowledge: That’s probably how she thought you were supposed to talk to college professors; I resisted the impulse to inform her that I spoke English, and she could simply ask me to help. Striding over to the open kitchen door, Schultz barked, “Demarest!” The tall, thin uniformed trooper had to stoop to enter, the old-fashioned door frame was so low.
“Yeah, Sarge?”
“The box the lieutenant gave you? You got it in the van, right?”
“Which one?”
“That round box? The blue one?”
Round box?
“Right. Should I bring it in?”
“On the double.”
Hmm. Round blue box. I wonder …
“Right, Sarge.” Demarest turned hastily and cracked his head on the low lintel. I winced when he did, but Schultz remained stone-faced. Tough guys don’t sympathize. Hey, maybe I’d get a T-shirt made up and give it to her.
Officer Demarest walked back in, ducking carefully. He carried a large brown paper bag. Placing it on the red enamel tabletop, he opened it and revealed—yes!—Serena Northbury’s battered blue hatbox. The one I’d seen in Edith’s pantry. The one that held the manuscript of Child of the North Star. I shrieked and lunged for it. Schultz grabbed my arm; her grip was the kind that leaves bruises.
“Don’t touch, Professor.”
“Yeah. You, too, Sergeant. That hurt.”
“Sorry.” She didn’t look in the least bit remorseful. “Guess I don’t know my own strength.” Yeah, right. “But this here is evidence; I can’t let you touch it. The lieutenant says to tell you that later on you’ll have your chance. We just want to see if you recognize this before it goes in for testing.”
“Yeah, I recognize it. That’s the box I told you and Piotrowski about, the hatbox Serena Northbury’s novel manuscript is in.”
“Not any more it’s not.” Slipping on a pair of latex gloves, the sergeant lifted the ornate lid with her fingertips. Inside, a jumble of yellowing envelopes half-filled the round pasteboard hatbox. No sign at all of anything resembling a manuscript.
I looked up at Schultz, imploringly. “Tell me you took the manuscript out separately. Tell me it’s stowed away in a nice, clean evidence bag on some nice, safe shelf in some nice, secure evidence room.”
Her eyes were hooded. “We didn’t see hide nor hair of any manuscript, Professor. Just these old letters.”
“Yeah. They were in the box when I found it. I recognize the handwriting. It’s Northbury’s. Can I at least look at those?”
She slid the box out of my reach. And enjoyed doing it. “First we got to check for forensic traces.”
Traces, I thought. That’s what I’m looking for, too. Traces of a lost life. Serena Northbury’s life.
The sergeant replaced the hatbox top and motioned with an abrupt jerk of the head for Demarest to return the precious box to the van. I watched the officer’s back until he was out of sight.… All those letters. They could tell me so much. Folding my arms on the table, I pillowed my head. I could go to sleep right there. Then a thought struck me.
“Sergeant!” I jerked my head up. When she thought I wasn’t looking, Felicity Schultz had dropped her guard; her eyes revealed exhaustion, the muscles of her face were tight with anxiety. The instant I spoke, however, she jammed the stone mask back over the human features.
“Yeah?”
“When you found the box, was there anything else with it?”
“Why?” My question had hit some kind of nerve. Stone turned to iron: the plain, round face gave nothing away. “What kind of anything are you talking about?”
“Well, more papers, of course.”
“Oh.” The flatness of her tone let me know that this was not what she had wanted to hear. I plowed on, anyhow.
“Because when Shamega and I went through those old boxes at the big house, there was another cache … er … bunch … of letters, right next to the hatbox. Did you see it? A gray pasteboard box? So big?” With my hands I indicated a rectangle a foot long. “If Gerry took the hatbox and brought it here, for whatever reason, maybe he took the other letters, too.”
Schultz wasn�
�t really interested. “There’s so much stuff here.…” She obviously didn’t want to admit the possibility of having overlooked anything. “But, we’ve got an—er—team of specialists coming in; by this evening they’ll have gone through everything.”
For what? I wondered. But that wasn’t my business. I was interested only in the Northbury papers. “Could I look around a bit? I might recognize the box; it was the kind stationery comes in.”
“Well, I suppose.” It was a grudging concession. “You can look, but you can’t touch. You understand? And I go along, too—to make sure you don’t get carried away.” And thank you so much. Professor, I thought, snidely, for your commendable willingness to assist. But I did find the second box of letters. Under a pile of twenty-year-old college textbooks in the corner of Gerry’s bedroom. Schultz wouldn’t let me touch the box, let alone read through the letters inside, but after I identified it as Northbury’s she thanked me, thus practically sending me into shock. The new sergeant was finally happy: She had something to take back to her boss; she had done good.
Jill’s parents had arrived at her place, so I headed for home. I wanted nothing more than to sleep all afternoon, but, as I unlocked the front door and pushed it open, the aroma of fresh coffee hit my nostrils. What the heck?
“Mom!” My daughter bounded out of the kitchen. “Where’ve you been? I’ve been waiting for hours.” She grabbed me in a mighty hug. “I was starting to worry.”
“Amanda!” I hugged back. “Where on earth did you come from?” I peered out the window. Her little red VW Rabbit was nowhere to be seen. “How’d you get here?”
“Oh, I went to Boston for the weekend with a guy from school, and he dropped me off. He’s going on to Montreal for a couple of weeks, and I’m gonna take the bus back tomorrow.”
“What guy?” I worry about my beautiful daughter.
“Just a guy. Don’t freak out. It’s nothing.”
“Who was freaking out?” I was. I stroked her cheek. “But you do remember to be careful, don’t you?” I was thinking of Jill.
The Northbury Papers Page 21