When she came out, she found her wallet, keys, and phone in a plastic bag by her bed. The phone had suffered no damage. She turned it on, and sat on the edge of the bed. She should call Terri, but couldn’t bear his sympathy at the moment. He would offer to fly to Massachusetts. She didn’t deserve it. What she needed was a ride home and someone to explain the previous night in a way that told her what to do. Did she have to leave Pittock? Did the police know Drummond had taken Wilson’s gun from her hand? There would be questions, an investigation. The board would ask her to resign. She didn’t care. She just wanted someone to move her through the day, and the day after it, and the day after that, until… what? She had wanted Adair. She loved Adair. And then killed her. At the end, whom could she call when she was beyond pity?
****
Patrick arrived at a run, his round face flushed, his words coming out in a jumble. Dropping into the chair beside her bed, he clasped her hands. “Oh, my God, Helen! I was so worried. Are you okay? Of course you’re not okay. What am I asking? You’re alive, at least.”
Helen closed her eyes. She didn’t want sympathy.
“Can you get me out of here, Patrick? I want to go home.” At the word “home,” her throat constricted. Let me take you home, Adair had said, and in the twelve hours she spent in Adair’s condo, Helen had felt more at home than in any house she had owned or rented. Behind her closed eyes, she saw Adair in her gray kimono, her eyes full of grief.
****
Helen leaned her head against the car window as they flew down the Mass Pike.
“How did she know I was in there?” she asked, staring at the fall colors flashing past in a blur of yellow, blood, and ocher.
“I’m sorry,” Patrick said.
“Sorry.” The words floated in the air, like a language half–understood. “For what?”
“I told Drummond where you were going. I was worried. You didn’t seem right.”
“What about Adair?”
“We went out to lunch. I was telling her what you were doing, telling her about Drummond going after you. We were sitting outside the Craven, and that crazy woman, Sully, came up to Adair and started raving about killers and madmen. She kept saying, ‘He has your lover under the grate’ and then something about an isolation ward. I was about to call the cops to get her out of there, but Adair jumped up and headed off like there was a fire. I’m sorry. I never liked Drummond, but I didn’t think he was a killer.”
“They’ve got him in the medical ward at the state psychiatric hospital. Six bullets but he survived. And Hornsby confessed. Drummond was paying him off from the beginning.”
Helen barely listened. She wondered how many of the cars on the road belonged to tourists, come for the fall colors. Had they heard the news about Pittock? Did they turn back and head home, or had it simply added a thrill to their pleasant vacations. Would they say, “Remember that time we drove out to the Berkshires, and we had the good sirloin, and that woman was killed by her provost?”
“I know it’s hard to believe,” Patrick said, as though Helen had spoken. “But you knew it. The Meyerbridge donation. We both thought it was too small. Even for broke-ass Pittock, even if Meyerbridge was Drummond’s friend, no one sells a building name for five hundred thousand dollars. Turns out Meyerbridge gave the school about 2.2 million, but Drummond gave half of it to Hornsby. I don’t know how he managed it. That’ll be someone’s job to find out. I’m guessing he’s been skimming for years.
“Anyway, after Thompson and Giles took you to the hospital, Hornsby called Thompson and told him everything. Drummond had offered him money to keep things quiet. He said no. Then Drummond came back with this story about a cancer treatment in Switzerland. It could save Alisha, his wife, and Hornsby went for it. Only, when he finally got in touch with the hospital, they said there was a serious protocol for getting into the test study. It wasn’t proven, and Alisha wasn’t a candidate.”
“He tried to arrange something for Carrie,” Helen said, still staring out the window. “He was going to send her to South Africa to have her legs amputated.”
“Well maybe in South African you can buy a doctor for a price. The Swiss aren’t so flexible. Alisha Hornsby died. She got an infection while she was there. The Swiss doctors took good care of her, Hornsby said, but she didn’t make it. She was glad to see the Alps before she died. Hornsby turned himself in. The money doesn’t mean anything without her. He only did it for her.”
Patrick’s small sedan rattled noisily. A rip in the cloth of the ceiling revealed yellow foam.
“I guess Adair was right about the theater budget,” Patrick nattered on. “She’ll probably make you give her back-pay for all the years she was supposed to get funding. Not that she needs it. She’s so fucking rich, but she loves to make a point.”
Helen waited for Patrick to catch himself. She’ll make you give her back-pay. She loves to make a point. Adair was dead.
“They airlifted her to New Hampshire in a private helicopter,” Patrick added. “Her brothers are scary. Two of them came down to get her. It was like the NRA meets the GOP meets the mafia. I thought they were going to open fire on Thompson when he said he wanted to keep her in Pittock.”
Patrick had pulled off the Mass Pike, and they were winding through the Berkshire hills. Helen closed her eyes. She held her body very still. She wished she could stop breathing.
“You okay, Dr. Ivers?” Patrick asked.
Helen nodded. She didn’t want to cry in front of him. Her grief was too big and too full of her own guilt.
“Why did Thompson want Adair’s body?”
****
Helen’s eyes flew open as Patrick veered onto the gravel shoulder. The car stopped with a screech. He turned to Helen, grasping her arm.
“Helen.” He didn’t sound like a chatty secretary anymore. “Adair’s not dead.”
Helen opened her mouth, but no sound came out.
“Did someone tell you she was dead?”
“I saw her,” Helen whispered.
“Oh, God, Helen!” Patrick leaned over the gearshift and hugged her. “You thought she was dead?”
Helen sobbed.
“She was wearing a vest,” he said, still squeezing her. “That gun–nut brother of hers bought her a whole paramilitary outfit. She got four cracked ribs, and they were worried she might have punctured a lung, but she didn’t. As soon as her family heard what happened, they sent the helicopter down to get her. She’s taking a leave of absence, and her father is threatening to sue the college, which will probably bankrupt us, but she’s alive. She’s fine.”
“I saw her.” Helen clung to Patrick. “I saw him shoot her.”
“She said it was the performance of her life,” Patrick said, his voice full of pride. “She knew if Drummond checked on her, he’d shoot her in the head. She said she even pissed herself to make it look more realistic. She hoped he’d think it was blood.”
Helen couldn’t tell if she was crying or laughing. She pulled away from Patrick and wiped her eyes.
“I thought she was dead. I thought I killed her. She gave me her gun. I talked her into giving me her gun, and then Marshal grabbed it. I wasn’t even paying attention. She warned me.” She stopped. “Patrick, I love her.”
The engine was still running. Except for its intermittent rattle, the car was quiet.
“I guessed,” Patrick said. “She told me there was a woman. Addie and I have been friends for ages, and this was the first time she wouldn’t tell me who. She said she couldn’t. She was protecting someone. She said it was someone powerful. And I saw the way you looked at her.”
“She didn’t tell you?” Helen was touched.
“She said you didn’t want people to know, so she wasn’t going to tell anyone until you were ready.”
“I have to see her.”
Patrick looked away, biting his lower lip. “You’d better. She’s pissed.”
Chapter Fifty-one
Three days later, her head st
ill aching from the blow of the gun, Helen found Adair’s ancestral house in the hills of New Hampshire. A footman in full uniform opened the wrought–iron gate that led to the driveway. Another attendant took her keys, as though the idea of leaving a car parked in the circular driveway was abhorrent. Slowly, Helen climbed the marble stairs that led to the front door. Yet another servant, this time a woman in a black suit as elegantly tailored as Helen’s own, greeted her.
“I’ll ask Miss Wilson if she is expecting you,” the woman said.
“She’s not,” Helen tried to explain, but the woman was already speaking into a small phone she had withdrawn from her pocket.
“She’ll just be a moment. Wait here.”
Helen surveyed the foyer as she waited. While Patrick had described Adair’s family as a paramilitary organization, the house offered nothing but subtle good taste. Everything from the terracotta tile, to the large abstract paintings, to the restored antiques, exuded masculine elegance. Helen tried to imagine Adair growing up in this palatial hall. No wonder she had such confidence.
A few minutes later, the woman ushered Helen into a parlor decorated in rich, red leather furniture. A fire burned in the fireplace, half hidden by an intricate metal screen. The windows looked out on an expansive deck and, beyond that, rolling fields and forest. Helen did not have time to appreciate her surroundings. Seated, half-reclining on a sofa in the center of the room, Adair sat wrapped in a fur throw. She wore a skirt and a cashmere sweater of a rich raspberry color. She’d smoothed her hair into a gold streak across her forehead, more Princess Diana than lesbian radical.
Adair was flanked by three men. On one side, stood a slender, gray–haired man, about Helen’s age. In another life, she would have found him attractive. He had Adair’s vitality, her pale blue eyes. He introduced himself as Monty. On the other side of the sofa, stood a stocky man with a chest like a granite slab. Helen guessed this was Cy, the gun aficionado. He said nothing, his mouth set in a scowl that was all the more sinister for his round baby face. Next to Cy, the patriarch of the family sat in a heavy, carved–oak throne. Arthritis gnarled his hands, but his back was straight and his face steely. In their center, Adair leaned her cheek against the leather sofa and stared out of the window.
“I… I’ve come to speak to Adair,” Helen said.
“Go ahead,” Monty said. Then to Cy he whispered. “Prichard let her in. I told her not to.” He meant for Helen to hear. She was not welcome and they weren’t leaving.
Helen took a step closer.
“May I sit here?” She gestured to the sofa next to Adair. Adair shrugged and winced. Helen reached out to touch her shoulder, then stopped at the edge of the fur throw.
“Adair, I’m so sorry.” The words were inadequate and she knew it.
Cy’s eyes bored into her.
“I know that’s not enough.” Helen tried to think of what to say. It was all so clear now. She had thought Adair was a wild–child, while she herself was established and powerful. Too conservative for Adair. Or so she had thought. Now she saw Adair in her natural surroundings.
Once again, Helen was a shabby girl from Pittsburgh’s working class, her suit the same grade as the door attendant’s. She should have been proud to be Adair’s lover. She was now. She didn’t care who knew, and if acknowledging it meant starting life over, she could do that. The position at Pittock had meant nothing in the bleak hours when she thought Adair was dead. “I love you,” she wanted to say. The stern eyes of the men stopped her.
“Why didn’t you believe me?” Adair said quietly.
Helen could feel the men glaring at her. “Adair, I’m so sorry.”
“I told you everything,” Adair said. “From the first moment I knew anything, I told you. I told you about the legs, about Anat. I told you about Carrie.” She stopped, as though just speaking these words had exhausted her.
The men’s eyes cut into Helen’s scalp.
“I know,” Helen said. “You tried to warn me.”
Adair said, “I was wrong about, Ricky. I thought he was the murderer. It all fit together, but I didn’t feel it inside. Is that why you left me? Because I got it wrong about Ricky? Why, Helen? Why would you take my gun? How could you choose Marshal Drummond over me?”
Helen wanted to say that she had not chosen Drummond, that she had just handled a difficult situation the best way she could. But it felt like a lie. In that last instant before she took the Glock, she had disbelieved Adair and chosen Drummond.
“I was just so wrong.”
“I trusted you to protect me, Helen.”
“Please come back to Pittock.”
“Why?”
Helen hesitated. “We need you. The students need you.”
Adair closed her eyes, and Monty took a step toward Helen. “My sister is tired.”
She was being dismissed.
“Adair please.”
It was too late. Monty was moving her toward the door, politely but irrefutably. He ushered her into the hallway, putting his hand on her shoulder in a gesture simultaneously patronizing and dismissive.
“I can understand why a woman in your position would not want to align with Adair’s lifestyle. Naturally, it’s not what we would have chosen for her either. But here in New Hampshire, family is very important.”
Here in New Hampshire. Helen almost laughed. The Wilsons’ mansion had as much in common with New Hampshire as the Taj Mahal.
“Here in New Hampshire, we stand by our own,” Monty continued. “We believe family comes first. Always. We expect that of our friends too.”
Helen stepped away from his touch.
“What I am saying is that we could buy your little college or bankrupt it. Whichever.” He tucked his hands in his pockets and stared over Helen’s shoulder, out the window at his estate. “Adair does not need you. We will support her in the manner to which she has a right to be accustomed.” He turned his gaze back to Helen. “I’m saying, don’t contact my sister again. She has been through enough. She deserves someone she can count on, someone she can ‘go to the well with,’ as my brother Cyrus would say. Naturally, we’d all like this to be a man, but lacking that, we’d like it to be a woman with balls.”
****
Helen was still speechless as the front door closed behind her. The instant she turned, her car appeared, driven by a liveried valet. Dazed, she got in and drove a few miles down the road before pulling into the parking lot of a small country store. The letter board out front advertised “organic meat” and “fine wines.” Clearly, the grocer knew his clientele. Helen turned off the engine and called Patrick
“What do I do?”
“You’ve met the dragon brothers, haven’t you? Those men give me nightmares.”
“What should I do?” she asked again.
“Do you love her?”
“I do.”
“Tell her and don’t worry about the rest. Adair is the best friend I’ve ever had, but she’s a princess. I won’t lie. She flies up to New Hampshire every time something goes wrong. A performance flops; she gets a bad review. She sulks for a day or two. Her brothers threaten to buy whoever upset her, buy them and ruin them. Then she comes home.”
“This is more than a bad review.”
“So maybe she’ll stay for a month. I know Adair. Optimism and women: those are her weaknesses. If she thinks there’s a chance with you, she’ll come back.”
Helen paused. “If her brothers are so rich, why didn’t she just ask them to rebuild the theater? Why is she even at Pittock?”
“Ultimately?”
“Yeah.”
“She doesn’t want them to fix her life. That’s why she’s not in the family business. That’s why she didn’t marry some lesbian heiress—there are plenty in her circle. Or a gay politician, who needs a cover and is willing to pay for it. Adair could have had it a lot easier, but she wants to be her own woman, make her own decisions. It’s hard to be strong when you’ve always had that kind of money, but she is
. She really is. Don’t worry too much about her brothers. Just make sure she knows how you feel.”
Helen said goodbye to Patrick and dialed Adair’s cell. The voicemail answered immediately, and Helen did not hesitate.
“Adair, I love you. I should have said that to your face. I should have said that in front of your brothers, but I won’t lie. They’re terrifying. I don’t know how to say I’m sorry for what I did because you could have died. I thought you died, and when I did, I didn’t care about anything else.” She went on until the voicemail cut her off.
She didn’t know how many messages to leave. She spoke until she couldn’t think of anything more and she began to repeat herself. After a few seconds of silence, she pressed END.
Dimly aware of the parking lot, she saw luxury cars pulling in and out of the gravel. Funny how the rich liked to play at having a humble life. She saw that now; Adair had been playing. Playing the hard-working professor. Pretending outrage over the theater budget. Feigning a life of work and salary and paycheck. Playing and not playing. Playing but also making a life of her own. It was something Helen had not even considered when Eliza was alive. A life of her own. It was time. The autumn was just beginning. The leaves were a tableau of scarlet and gold. The sun was so high, it cast no shadows. And it was a new year. For the students. For Pittock. For Helen.
****
Helen jumped when a black limousine pulled up next to her car, spitting gravel as it came to a stop. After the events of the past days, even the click of a stop light, turning from red to green, invoked a jolt of fear. The driver’s window glided down. An Asian man sat at the wheel in a starched uniform with a stony frown. He pointed toward the tinted window behind him.
Helen looked. The back window retracted.
Adair still held her phone to her ear.
“You may get in on the other side,” the stern driver said. “The Wilsons will arrange for your car.”
The Admirer Page 27