The Northbury Papers

by Joanne Dobson

  “Jill!”

  “That’s the last one, I swear it. Do you want more?”

  “No!”

  She rose, carried the slender green bottle across the kitchen to the sink, and let the remaining wine glug down the drain. “I think that’s why Gerry appealed to me so much.” Jill rinsed out the bottle and deposited it in the recycling basket. “My mother and father are good parents, but there was always like this safety net for everything I did. My folks know everything about child development, so they gave me all sorts of freedom. Every time I abused it and got myself in trouble, their money, their connections, their know-how got me out of it. Basically, they kept me on track and I whizzed through grad school. And everything was so safe.

  “Then I met Gerry. There was nothing safe about Gerry. How could I resist him? Like I said, he gave me the shivers.”

  “Hmm,” I said. God, was she young!

  Jill did shiver then, unconsciously, as if sloughing off some kind of outgrown skin. “But when I got pregnant, the odds changed. It wasn’t just me, anymore; Eloise—” She grinned like a four-year-old with a new toy. “Eloise was involved. So, when I saw that Gerry refused to be a real father, I gave up on him. I may be a thrill-seeker, but I’m not a fool. Can you imagine what kind of life the baby and I would have had with him? What kind of life he would have led us?”

  I didn’t know if this was a real question, or merely rhetorical, so I raised an ambiguous shoulder; it doesn’t pay to comment too outspokenly on other people’s love lives.

  Jill continued, “And when I renounced Gerry, it wasn’t like giving up a person—because I’d never really had him as a person. I was in love more with who he could have been, than with who he actually was. Giving him up was more like giving up a specific kind of thrill. Maybe even an addiction. It was more like growing up, than giving up.”

  “Hmm.” A nod of the head. I could be a therapist. This nonverbal affirmation stuff was easy.

  “I mean, when I found out he’d been screwing Sally Chenille, that was it.” She paused, playing with the gold locket she’d pulled from the neck of her gauze tunic.

  “Sally Chenille!” So that’s who Gerry had been cheating with! No wonder Sally had been so fixated on Jill. And no wonder she’d been speaking in the past tense when she talked about trying to “get near” Jill; their mutual boyfriend was now dead. I assumed that meant I didn’t have to worry any longer about Sally bothering Jill. Right? Or should I tell Jill about my wierd encounter with our funky friend?

  But Jill didn’t want to talk about Sally. She was fixated on herself. “Am I a coldhearted bitch?”

  My ambiguous shoulder came into play again, but she wasn’t paying attention.

  “You know,” she said hesitantly, “it was almost a relief that he died. Terrible for him, of course, but a blessing for me. It got him out of my life completely. And out of the baby’s.”

  “Jill, for God’s sake, don’t let the police hear you say that!”

  “Why not? I mean, I already said it to Felicity, you know, that nice sergeant—”

  “Jill! That nice sergeant is a hard-assed bitch! You can’t trust her. She’s probably taking down every word you say. As Gerry’s ex-girlfriend, you’re at the top of her list of suspects.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about it, Karen. I didn’t kill Gerry—and cops don’t go around arresting innocent people.” She slid the gold heart back inside her blouse.

  “Geesh, Jill. Don’t you ever read the papers?” But her mention of Sally Chenille had jarred me into, among other things, a recollection of having just seen Sally with Earl Wiggett. “Jill, do you have an Enfield College directory?”

  Sally’s answering machine picked up after the third ring. With Madonna’s “Material Girl” as background, Sally’s husky voice announced her bodily absence. I hung up without leaving a message. What was I going to say? Sally, you creep, did you know that the creep I just saw you with is wanted for questioning by the police?

  Piotrowski wasn’t in his office—well, it was seven-thirty P.M.; he didn’t live there. I hesitated, then dug out a card he’d given me the year before with his home number on the back. An elderly man’s quavery voice answered the phone. “Hello?”

  “Is Lieutenant Piotrowski there?”

  “There’s no lieutenant here, girlie. You must have the wrong number; this isn’t the army.”

  “No, I mean—”

  “Dad!” I heard Piotrowski’s pleading voice in the background. “I asked you please not to answer that phone.” And I remembered Will Thorpe telling me … what? … something about Alzheimer’s.

  “Piotrowski.” The gruff phone voice was nothing like the gentle tones just addressed to his father.

  “Hi, Lieutenant.” This unexpected peep into the investigator’s private life had flustered me. “I’m so sorry to disturb you at home—”

  “Dr. Pelletier?”

  “Yes. Look, I just wanted to tell you that I’m quite certain I saw Earl Wiggett this evening—in Enfield. He was with my colleague, Sally Chenille—”

  “The batty one?”

  I chortled. “Yeah, the batty one. But I couldn’t catch up with them, and no one answers her phone.”

  “Really? Hmm. Well, I’ll send someone out there. She in the book?”

  As I read Sally’s address and number from the directory, I thought briefly about telling the lieutenant that Gerry Novak had had an affair with my chameleon-haired colleague, but, just in time, remembered that Jill had told me that in confidence. I was just about to hang up when Piotrowski said, “By the way, Doctor, I thought you’d want to know—when we went through the Novak house, we didn’t see any sign of a novel manuscript. All sorts of other stuff there, though, going back more than a hundred years: papers, books, magazines, old furniture. The MacMahons were as bad about keeping junk as the Novaks were.”

  “MacMahons?”

  “Yeah, the original family, the one that worked for your Mrs. Northbury. Gerry Novak’s mother was a MacMahon.”

  I wanted to ask the lieutenant if I could look through the house. Even if they hadn’t found the novel there, there was no telling what else might be useful in my research. But, then, I was afraid that—so close to Gerry’s suspicious death—he’d say no. If I was going to do it—and it seemed that I was—I didn’t want it to be against Piotrowski’s express interdiction.

  “Lieutenant, do you have any idea who leaked that sensational story to the Boston Herald?”

  There was a long silence. Then he said, “I saw that.”

  “That’s not an answer, Piotrowski.”

  “I know,” he said. “I know. So—anything else you can tell me?”

  There wasn’t, and once again I was about to hang up, when the big cop spoke, his voice rough again, but this time with emotion.

  “Listen, Doctor … I want to apologize about … you know … my father. He’s—er—ill. So—”

  “I understand, Lieutenant. Really, I do. And I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, well … Well, thanks for the tip.” He hung up.

  I admired Piotrowski’s loyalty to his elderly parent. It had been years since I’d seen my mother—not since my father’s funeral. I took my hand off the phone and a shudder passed through me. My mother.

  But I had nothing to feel guilty about. My sisters were taking care of her. I sent money to help out. That would have to be enough. They’d all let me down in my hour of need. Well, they could just live with the consequences of that.

  Jill and I took a twilight walk around town, weaving in and out of Enfield’s narrow back streets until we finally paused in front of the Whitlow mansion, arrested by the perfume of roses and the eerie beauty of the big house behind its hedge of overgrown yew.

  “Gerry used to run errands for this woman,” Jill informed me, toying once again with her locket on its long chain. “But I never met her.”

  “I did,” I said, and smiled at the memory. “And it was a strange experience. Almost like meeting Miss
Havisham.”

  “You mean, from Great Expectations?”

  “Yeah, you know, where you walk into a room and nothing has changed in fifty years. I swear I looked around for the moldy wedding cake.” Before I could finish telling Jill about Helen Whitlow’s disappointment in love, a voice shrilled out from the house: “Girl! Girl! You out there! Karen Pelletier! I want to talk to you. Bring your friend and come on in here.” Jill and I stared at each other, wide-eyed. I think she was stifling an impulse to run. I know I was.

  “Karen…” Jill said, a trifle tremulously.

  I pulled myself together and laughed. “Come on, Jill; the lady wants to talk to us. What are you afraid of? You think she’s going to eat us?”

  “Exactly,” Jill replied. We were still giggling when we climbed the steps and entered the now open front door.

  Helen Whitlow sat us on the cat-hair-covered love seat, and served sherry in her fragile pink-stemmed glasses. She wore the same boy-size flannel shirt and rolled-up jeans as at my last visit. “My boy is dead,” she declared, in her creaky voice. “Did you know that?”

  “Your boy?” Jill queried, eyes wide with fascination at this diminutive woman and her dilapidated, romantic surroundings.

  “Gerry Novak,” I muttered out of the side of my mouth, “I was going to tell you.”

  “Gerry,” Jill wailed. So, she wasn’t as composed about his death as she claimed she was.

  “Yes, my boy—Gerry,” Helen repeated, in her rusty voice. She turned to Jill and her eyes narrowed. “Did you know him?” Helen’s gaze slid oddly from Jill’s face to her throat, then she looked up at her face again with renewed interest.

  “Oh, yes—” But I poked my friend in the ribs before she got any more confessional. If Jill told this eccentric woman about her affair with Gerry, there’d be no keeping the secret.

  “We were both slightly acquainted with him,” I told Helen.

  “He was my baby. My pet.” The hooded eyes were dry, dark buttons in a wrinkled-cotton face. She continued to stare at Jill. “And she took him away from me, after all. Even after she was dead, she came for him.”

  Jill and I exchanged wild glances. “Edith?” I asked, baffled.

  “Edith, of course. Who else could have gotten out to that boat in the middle of the lake without leaving any prints?”

  “I don’t know, Miss Whitlow.” My brain reeled at the concept. Footprints? Fingerprints? On water? “Maybe Gerry’s death was an accident,” I suggested. I wasn’t about to mention the possibility of suicide.

  “Accident! He’d been out in that boat a million times. Accident, indeed!” She paused, still dry-eyed. “Now, who’s going to take care of me?” So it wasn’t grief that so impassioned her, but the necessary narcissism of the elderly: Who’s going to take care of me? No devoted Piotrowski for this lady—poor old thing.

  “Well, I—I’m sure there are community services—”

  “Oh, Will Thorpe has some young whippersnapper coming in to do the shopping. And some busybody social worker—from elder services, she claims, was here. Poking around. Talking about medication, regular meals, housecleaning services. As if I haven’t gotten along all these years on my own—just me and my boy. Elder services! Imagine!” Her creaky voice dripped with contempt.

  “I’ll come visit you,” Jill piped up. She was clutching her heart locket. “You can call me if you need anything, and I’ll get it for you. And I can help with the flowers.…”

  Whaa? I stared aghast at my self-centered young colleague. What the hell? Then it hit me: This pathetic old lady was all Jill had left of the father of her child. A mother-in-law, of sorts. A grandmother for the baby—for Eloise.

  I sat back and watched them make plans—the weird old woman and the unwed mother-to-be. It should have been a heartwarming scene, but, instead, it gave me the creeps. Why would Jill want such a vivid reminder of the man who had caused her so much pain? And why should this bitter old woman take any interest at all in my impetuous young friend?

  Unless somehow she knew that Jill was carrying Gerry’s child. Hmm. Could it be?

  An hour later, when the sherry was gone and arrangements for a gardening date had been made, Jill and I walked out into the warm, dark night. As the door shut behind us, the last ray of house light glanced off Jill’s gold filigree locket.

  Jill’s locket?

  Edith Hart’s locket! Jill was once again wearing Edith’s gold filigree heart. The locket Will Thorpe had been running through his fingers the night we’d had dinner.

  Finally I had a chance to ask her about it.

  “Jill,” I queried, “that locket? Did Will Thorpe give that to you?”

  “Dr. Thorpe? No.” She paused. “He’s been very nice. After Gerry—” she gulped, “after Gerry died, Dr. Thorpe called to see if there was anything he could do for me. I told him about the baby—he’s a doctor, after all—and he’s been extremely solicitous. But, no, I didn’t get the locket from him. It was Gerry’s, and he gave it to me months ago. He said it had been in the family for over a century. It belonged to his mother, and to her mother before that.”

  Gerry Novak’s locket? And Jill had had it in her possession for months? Then what had I seen in Will’s hands just a few short days ago? And why did I remember having seen it somewhere else, not too long before that?

  Jill paused at the gate. I could feel Helen Whitlow’s shoe-button gaze probing into our backs from her perch on the second-floor window seat. “It will be the only thing Gerry’s child will ever have that belonged to her dead father,” she said. And in the hazy half-light, I could see that this time her dark brown eyes were dry.

  We walked hand in hand back to Jill’s house. Two or three cars passed by. One looked like Sally Chenille’s BMW, the street lights reflecting eerily off its chartreuse surface. The luminous car slowed down when it passed us, as if to take a curious, lingering, look. Somewhere inside my skull, previously detached neurons met in momentary, fleeting synapsis. If Sally had been screwing Gerry Novak, then she, as much as anyone, should be considered a suspect in his death. Perhaps Piotrowski, in his investigation of Novak’s death, had already ferreted out the fact of that relationship. Perhaps not. I’d tell him next time I talked to him, I decided, but I wasn’t about to call him again tonight.

  Twenty-five

  “This is Joyce Brewster—Tibby Brewster’s mother. Am I speaking to Professor Pelletier?”

  It was Monday morning. I had just emerged from the shower and was dripping all over the bedroom’s oak floor. I tucked the big white towel a little tighter around me and sat down on the unmade bed. “This is she, Mrs. Brewster. How are you?” And what the hell are you calling me for?

  “Fine.” The word had no meaning. “I need to talk to you, Professor. And I don’t have much time. Could you tell me how to get to your place?” The vowels were rounded; the consonants were clipped. It was a voice used to getting what it asked for.

  I glanced around. Did I want Joyce Brewster in this house? “I’m coming in to campus this morning, Mrs. Brewster. Would my office do?” The bedside clock read nine on the button. “Say at ten o’clock?”

  “I’ll see you there.” Without further nicety the connection was broken. I sat with the silent phone in my hand for a good ten seconds. You don’t have much time? I thought. Elitist bitch! Then I hung up.

  I have an olive-green checked DKNY skirt I got for a fraction of its original cost at a Filene’s end-of-season sale. It was too good to wear to the office. I stepped into it, anyhow, donned the coordinated cream-colored silk T, and rooted around on the floor of my closet for the block-heeled sandals.

  Joyce Brewster was making polite conversation with the English Department secretaries when I walked into Dickinson Hall. I had applied lipstick and blusher, brushed my hair a hundred strokes and allowed it to hang loose.

  “My, Karen, don’t you look nice today!” Elaine’s expression of surprise thoroughly demolished the offhand effect I was striving for. “You really s
hould dress up more often.” I scowled; the matronly secretary misinterpreted my expression. “But you do—you look really good. Doesn’t she, Shirley? She looks good.”

  “Thank you, Elaine.” I said it through gritted teeth. Then I turned to Tibby’s mother and was shocked right out of my hostility. She looked terrible. Cheeks hollower than ever. Eyes shadowed. Ironed jeans and golf shirt sagging on her emaciated frame. This woman is sick, I thought, with an almost audible intake of breath. Maybe even dying.

  “Hello, Professor Pelletier.”

  “Mrs. Brewster?” Her name stuck in my throat like a fishbone, I felt so guilty about all my nasty thoughts. “Please call me Karen.”

  “And I’m Joyce.” She glanced around—at the door that opened into the public hallway, at the far-too-interested secretaries. “May we talk in your office … Karen?”

  “You know, Karen, when I said on the phone that I didn’t have much time, I didn’t mean it the way it sounded—that I was in a hurry.” Joyce Brewster sat, denim-clad knees together, in my green vinyl chair. “I meant it literally: I don’t have much time. I’m terminally ill with metasticized breast cancer.” She waved away my horrified exclamation. “And I have a few things to attend to while I’m still able. One of them is Tibby.”

  I had settled myself across from her in the black captain’s chair with the Enfield insignia. Now I wished I could barricade myself behind my big oak desk—so death couldn’t get me.

  “You must wonder why I’m here,” she continued. “I’m certain my son’s recent behavior has not endeared him to you.”

  As I considered my response, Tibby’s mother broke impatiently into my silence. “I want you to know, he’s not a bad kid.”

  I thought about the young man I knew—his harassment of Shamega, his nasty drawings, the obscene e-mail, his father’s vile complaint to Miles. I nodded wordlessly.

  “I know about his drawings,” she continued, surprising me. “I found a number of them in his room this weekend. He broke down then—as if he’d just been waiting for me to ask—and, among other things, he told me about that poor girl he’s been bothering. Shamala? Shamona?”