A Fierce Radiance (28 page)

“I had lunch with Tia Stanton once, but I can’t say I knew her
well,” he mused. “She was quite an unusual personality, that much I recognized. A counterintuitive type: vivacious, elegant, and spending her nights with mold. I’m here to look into her death from a more…
private
perspective than the police can manage.”

He seemed to expect a reply from Claire. “Indeed.”

“You see, Mrs. Shipley, her work took her into confidential areas. As you probably know from Lieutenant Stanton.” This was said with a bit of a leer, an attempt to suggest that he did, in fact, know everything about her. “The death of a person working in confidential areas is a very serious matter.”

This time Claire said nothing.

“It’s a curious situation. No doubt the police are correct and she had an accident. But she was a rather careful person in most ways. At least according to her friends and family—although we must keep in mind that friends and family don’t always know everything there is to know about a person. Sometimes friends and family are the
least
likely to know what’s most important about a person. Especially when suicide, for example, is the cause of death. The suicide of someone involved in government work is taken extremely seriously.”

“Tia Stanton didn’t commit suicide,” Claire said.

“What makes you say that?” he asked lightly.

Only her own wish, she realized. Her desire to spare Jamie and assuage her guilt.

They continued walking. Barnett didn’t press her for a response, but he didn’t speak for a full minute. Then: “Did you know, my dear, that Norway was overrun with Nazi spies before the invasion? They entered the country quite legally, on tourist visas. Bird-watchers, fjord-admirers, even absentminded professors, I daresay. All keeping their heads down and waiting for the proper moment to strike. Of course with the Bund so popular right here in New York City, foreign operatives are probably completely unnecessary.”

Was he implying that Tia was murdered?

“Tia Stanton was almost a sister-in-law to you, wasn’t she? Did she seem despondent? Did she have boyfriend troubles? Were there new people in her life, people who might have been trying to blackmail her? You must have come to know her well. And from a perspective outside her usual circle of acquaintances.”

“I didn’t know her well at all,” Claire said, her guilt, and her anger at herself, returning in full force. Could she have stopped Tia’s death, if she’d just made some effort? She’d been so wrapped up in Jamie, in Charlie, in work, she hadn’t taken the time to look beyond her own interests and needs.

“Surely you have some insight.”

“None.”

She wanted to get away from this man. Immediately. What did she know of Andrew Barnett? Nothing. How could she know he was who he purported to be? She couldn’t. He might be working for any number of people. He said he’d spoken to Tia’s friends and family, but she had only his word for that.

“Mr. Barnett, I don’t know who you are, you’ve shown me no identification, and I feel no requirement to answer your questions.”

He thought about this. “Well,” he said with patient resignation, “you may feel differently as time passes. In fact I’m sure you will. Do please remember that anyone, anyone at all, could be a Fifth Columnist. The person we least suspect. Henry Luce himself. That’s a joke, of course.” He smirked at his fine sense of humor. “At any rate, I need to be moving along. I have a train to catch. But if you change your mind and want to talk, give me a call, would you?”

“I have nothing to talk about.”

“Well, well, you never know.” Taking from his inside jacket pocket a silver, engraved cardholder, he gave her his card, a fine piece of vellum. It listed only his name and a phone number in Washington.

“So glad to have met you, Mrs. Shipley. Seeing as I know so much about you already. Perhaps one day soon I’ll have an opportunity to
meet your fascinating father. Or take your adorable dog for a walk.” He put his hand out for her to shake, and she followed through. She was dressed formally and wore gloves, so she didn’t have to feel his skin against hers. “I do hope we’ll meet again under happier circumstances. Good-bye.” He headed off, presumably to hail a taxi to Penn Station.

Claire stood at the corner, feeling a growing sense of rage, at Barnett and at herself. Rage mixed with sorrow, for the loss of Tia, for Emily, for Jamie’s pain. Claire recalled the look on Tia’s face as she sampled the miniature chocolate éclairs, that momentary expression of bliss.

She turned back. Hoping to catch a glimpse of Jamie, she studied the crowd emerging from the Meetinghouse. She wanted to reassure herself of his love, reassure herself that she had a place in his life. She didn’t see him. Her strength seemed to drain away. She needed to sit down. She didn’t want to return to the crowded, overheated reception room until she’d steadied herself.

Out of her gaze, Nick Catalano stood just inside the Meetinghouse doorway. He’d been there for several minutes, watching her. He hoped Barnett hadn’t upset her. Nick wished he’d been more…what? Forthcoming, in their earlier conversation. But Rivers had called for his attention, and then Claire had disappeared.

Nick would never know what, if anything, might have happened between him and Tia. In their first approaches, he’d found her a little intimidating. He was more accustomed to girls who were just looking for fun, or who at least hid their true desires beneath a veneer of lightheartedness. Tia was, in fact, the sort of woman he’d always imagined spending his life with. A true equal. But when faced with her actual self, he’d had trouble talking to her about anything besides work. He was acutely aware that she was from a different world, her father a banker, her grandfather a professor. The difference in their backgrounds had made him hesitant, a feeling that was unfamiliar to
him, especially in regard to women. And yet…in an ideal world, he imagined a kind of perfect harmony between them. A perfect love. This fantasy was what made him break down and weep in front of Jamie at the morgue.

“Very nice cookies, Catalano.” Sergei Oretsky was beside him. “Have you tried? Here, have one.” Oretsky offered him a small plate of oatmeal cookies.

Nick wondered, Am I looking so forlorn, standing here alone at the doorway, that Oretsky felt compelled to provide companionship? Probably so.

“Mademoiselle Stanton adored cookies. Did you know?”

“Yes, I did know,” Nick said, although he’d never had the opportunity to learn this about Tia.

Outside, another man watched Claire Shipley. This man leaned against the gates of the park, smoking a cigarette. His funeral suit was rumpled and shiny at the elbows but presentable enough. He and his suit had never yet been thrown out of a funeral. Marcus Kreindler, New York City detective. He’d spotted Claire Shipley earlier, during the memorial service. He recognized her from a photo on James Stanton’s desk in his residence rooms. When he spotted the photo, he’d asked Stanton who she was. Stanton had explained with an enthusiasm that made him seem young and in love—even though he was, what, thirty-eight years old. Kreindler remembered his own young-and-in-love days, almost forty years ago. Agnes. He felt a surge just thinking about that time. They were in love still.

Anyway, he saw the photograph, and lo and behold, here was Claire Shipley in front of him, tall, slim, brown hair in a smart wave, pale and chic in a stark, working-girl sort of way.

He bore a grudge, he was the first to admit. Not against poor Claire Shipley, who seemed disoriented and had wisely chosen to return to the park and find a bench in the sun to rest on. No, his grudge was against the imbecile who’d tormented her. Andrew Barnett. He made
sure Barnett noticed him in the church. Let him know that somebody was looking over his shoulder; no harm was done and possibly a lot of good. As of yesterday, Kreindler was officially off this case. The government had taken over. The government would insist on a public ruling of accidental death, to stop a police investigation that might delve into confidential areas. Then Barnett would do his own investigation to try to figure out what had really happened.

Of course a ruling of accidental death might even be correct. Except that Kreindler was haunted by those footprints on the path. He had to bide his time, he knew. Keep his eyes open, stay out of trouble. He found a bench from which he could watch the woman, far enough away so that she wouldn’t particularly notice him. He took a bag of peanuts out of his jacket pocket, ate some, threw a few to the squirrels.

After about ten minutes, the woman seemed to get a grip on herself. She took out her compact, checked her makeup. Reapplied her lipstick, always a good sign in a woman who’d experienced a shock, in Kreindler’s view. She stood. A striking physique, if a bit boyish for his taste, but still. She smoothed her hair. Seemed to take a deep breath. Very pretty. She walked back into the Meetinghouse.

Kreindler was curious as to why, of all the people Barnett might have approached after the funeral, she was the one he sought out.

I
’ll just bugger off for a while then, James,” said David Hoskins in the lab. “Give you some time to yourself.” He put his hand on Jamie’s shoulder. “You need to talk, just come and find me.”

David was close to tears, Jamie could see that, but David offered his support without asking for any in return. That alone felt like a gift. Jamie didn’t have to confide his feelings to David to know that David understood and offered him comfort.

“Thank you, David.” Jamie hoped the simple phrase expressed the extent of what he felt. Before today, they’d always been
Stanton
and
Hoskins
to each other. The switch to first names created an intimacy that Jamie appreciated. It was, he reflected, like the move from
vous
to
tu
in French, or
Sie
to
du
in German. What made him suddenly think of that? he wondered. In the past few days, strange facts had been coming into his mind, things he hadn’t thought about in years.

“Lovely day, at least.” David traded his lab coat for a suit jacket and hat. “She would have enjoyed that.”

The Institute’s memorial luncheon had ended an hour before. Jamie had wandered the grounds by himself afterward. Such a rush of events and people passing before him these past days: he needed time to catch up with himself. The gardens were in full bloom. The plane trees were coming into their glory overhead. Remembering the years they’d walked these grounds together, he’d sensed Tia all around him. He’d finally come here, to Tia’s lab, the place where she’d felt most at home.

Leaving, David shut the door behind him. Jamie was alone. But Tia was still with him. Not a ghost—he didn’t hold with any of that. But he continued to have a kind of spiritual sense of her, that she was in the next room, testing soil samples. He strode through the penicillin room into what he’d come to think of as the cousins’ room, but of course she wasn’t there. And yet, everything was in place, as if she would return in just a moment. A cut-crystal vase, their mother’s, sat on the table, filled with white, fallen tulips. He remembered his mother filling that vase with daffodils for the dining table of their home on Delancey Place.

The time was going on five o’clock. The room, although facing north, was bright with natural light. Jamie stood before the long windows, to see where the light was coming from. Sunlight was reflecting off the windows of the New York Hospital, several blocks north, and flooding the lab. This light had a peculiar quality, brilliant but diffuse, without a glare. Again Jamie had the eerie sensation that Tia had simply stepped out to get a cup of coffee. She’d soon be back. He only had to wait for her.

Stop, he told himself. She wouldn’t be coming back. When he forced himself to face up to this stark truth, however, he felt that he’d betrayed her: by trying to accept that she was gone, he’d be guaranteeing it.

Of course she hadn’t killed herself. Suicide was out of the question. She’d had an accident. Accidents came out of nowhere. Her death was a chance event. That was the definition of an accident, wasn’t it? What was the Latin derivation? He’d taken Latin in school.
Accidens.
From
accidere
, to fall. He reeled at the connection. Why was he even remembering such things?

One of his colleagues at the luncheon, he didn’t know who, had indulged a doctor’s trick and injected hothouse cherry tomatoes with vodka, creating portable Bloody Marys. He hadn’t been eating properly, and at the luncheon, he’d had more of those cherry tomatoes than
he should have. He was beginning to feel light-headed and sick. He needed some solid food.

He sat down to pull himself together. He studied the room. What would happen to these soil samples, lining the walls in floor-to-ceiling shelves that Tia had custom-designed with the Institute carpenter? At the luncheon there was talk of Jake Lind taking over here, at least for the duration of the war. David Hoskins was too knowledgeable about penicillin to be working on the so-called cousins. Hoskins was needed elsewhere. Lind had a heart murmur and had been rejected by the military, so he’d be sticking around, making him the logical choice to continue Tia’s work. Jamie couldn’t bear the idea of these soil samples going untested, Tia’s life work consigned to a trash heap.

He’d already asked Beth, her college roommate, to take care of Tia’s small apartment, have the contents appraised for taxes, keep what she and Tia’s friends wanted, and give the rest to charity. This was an imposition, he knew, but Beth’s husband had recently signed up for the military, and Beth was on her own. Nowadays people left behind on the home front regarded such impositions as gifts: the gift of being useful. Jamie knew he could trust Beth.

The lab, however, was his responsibility, and his duty, to keep and preserve as best he could. He got up and went to Tia’s bench, as it was called by scientists, the table where she’d been doing her most recent work. The current notebook was closed, the sample jars neatly waiting. Tia was organized and methodical. He opened the notebook to see her handwriting. To read at random. To hear her voice through her words.

As he paged through, seeing the failure of this or that substance, he remembered her talking about a sample she’d been having some success with. He should have been thinking of that first, he chastised himself, not recalling it just now. He’d had so much on his mind, he hadn’t focused.

In his imagination, he placed himself at what turned out to be their
last lunch together. The last time he saw her. A picnic on the lawn, during one of those warm spring days before the leaves are out but when the daffodils are already blooming and you want to be basking in the warmth. So there they were, outside on the lawn with the sun glaring in his eyes and no shade anywhere because the trees were still bare of leaves. Tia was laughing at him as he explained his discomfort to her. They had to get up; he couldn’t stand the glare anymore. Finally they found a bench where they could sit with their backs to the sun.

And then Tia began to talk about her hints of success with a new substance. It was produced by a mold that she’d collected in the woods near their grandparents’ house. This link to their childhood was too good to be true, she admitted, but there it was, and it made her happy. They both knew that keeping track of where a sample was collected was basically a way to keep the samples organized. Granted, the location could help tell you what type of food the mold might like to eat, and what range of temperatures and sunlight it had adapted to, but once you found a substance that actually worked, you didn’t need to go back to the same location and dig up an entire truckload of soil to cart to your lab. No, you simply needed to grow the mold in the lab, and then analyze and develop the antibacterial mechanisms involved.

This substance from the Crum woods, Tia said, was easy to produce. In test tubes, the substance worked against gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria. It controlled infectious agents that penicillin missed and worked better on the ones penicillin did fight. She was in the process of testing the substance on mice. Thus far, these tests had been successful. Very much so. But of course the substance could lead to a dead end, just like all the rest. It could turn out to be highly toxic, with serious side effects in humans. It could cause allergic reactions, anaphylactic shock. She’d repeated this, about the dead end, as if she were trying to convince herself. As if she were forcing herself to hold back her enthusiasm.

The substance had a number. That’s how she talked about it at their lunch. By the number. Tia was meticulous in her record keeping. If he could remember the number, he’d find everything, and her work could continue.

The number. Again he placed himself at that picnic. She’d been eating a chicken salad sandwich. He couldn’t tolerate chicken salad, after the daily lunches in Washington. He had ham and cheese. The number. It was in the mid-six hundreds—he remembered being struck by the fact that she’d tested well over six hundred substances. Her voice. He had to hear her voice. He was sitting there beside her, listening to her voice.

“Wait till you see it, Jamie. It’s such a beautiful blue.”

“Tia, you know the color doesn’t matter.”

She was laughing. “You’re going to be very surprised.”

“I guess I will be.”

“I know I shouldn’t say this, Jamie, but 642 could be what we’ve been looking for.”

There it was: 642.
What we’ve been looking for.

He searched through her notebook. Nothing about 642. He started again, at the first page. Leafing through more quickly now. Nothing.

Then he saw: pages had been cut out. Probably with a razor. He ran his index finger down the sharp edges.

He strode over to the shelves to find the original soil sample. Meticulous, she always was. 640, 641, 643, 644. Sample 642 was gone. He opened the incubator. The refrigerator. He went through the stack of old notebooks on the counter. His search had to be as meticulous as her work. He couldn’t give up. There had to be something. Something left behind. Everything else was in perfect order. This made the absence clearer.

What he found in the end was what he started with: nothing. Someone had gotten here before him.

“Jamie, there you are.”

His best friend, Nick. Come to find him. Jamie’s friends and colleagues were taking too much care of him.

“We got worried that you had a few too many of those bite-size Bloody Marys. Organized a search party to find you. Wouldn’t want you to stumble—” Nick stopped, realizing what he was about to say.

“I’m all right,” Jamie said. Should he tell Nick what he’d discovered? Sound the alarm, accusations flying? He felt too tired, and too drunk, he now realized, to know what to do. He looked around. He’d wreaked minor havoc during his search.

“So, uh, you going to stay here for a while?” Nick asked.

Jamie caught Nick surveying the room, no doubt wondering about the open incubator, the notebooks tossed about.

“Just a few minutes. I’ve got to get downtown. Dinner with Claire. I’ll be all right, Nick. Really.”

“Okay.” Nick held up his hands, palms outward, as if to say, I’ll accept that, I’ll make myself scarce. “I’m here if you need me.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it.”

Still Nick didn’t leave, obviously debating the right course.

“I’ve got someplace to go, I’ll be fine, Nick.” Then Jamie realized: maybe Nick was the one who needed reassurance. Maybe Jamie had been remiss in not thinking more about his friend and probing whatever understanding Nick might have had with Tia. “Nick, you sure you’re okay?”

Nick smiled thinly. “Now is not the time for you to start worrying about me.”

“I’m happy to worry about you. Any time.”

“I’ve got work to do,” Nick said. “Fills all the empty places, doesn’t it.” Nick wasn’t asking a question, and Jamie understood what he meant. Nick turned and left.

Jamie listened to Nick’s footsteps retreating. Heard the outer door open and close.

He was alone once more.

A
t midnight, Claire rested her head upon the curve of Jamie’s shoulder after they’d made love. She stretched her legs against his and kissed the underside of his jaw. She knew he couldn’t escape the pain of Tia’s death, but she wanted to show him the reasons for pushing on. When he’d arrived in the early evening, she’d made dinner and served it outside, in the garden. Charlie was at Ben’s for the night, a treat all-around. Finally they’d talked about the events of earlier that day, and about memories of Tia. Claire didn’t tell him about Barnett’s approach to her; she didn’t want to burden him, and besides, she could tell him later, if Barnett bothered her again. Their lovemaking was long and quiet.

Jamie massaged the back of her neck. Smoothed his hand down her spine. Jamie loved this room. He loved the way the moonlight came through the long windows, illuminating her hair, her back, as she lay stretched out upon him. This room, this woman…he felt safe here, at peace, defenses unnecessary. He wanted to let himself drift into sleep.

But he couldn’t. He had a mental list of pressing matters he needed to discuss with Claire. What he’d discovered at the lab. The extended trip he would embark on tomorrow, which he hadn’t focused on until this evening. His thoughts about their future, his and Claire’s. He didn’t want their future to be an item on a list, but it was. He was having trouble summoning the energy to begin. To begin meant bringing tomorrow into this room, instead of simply being here, in the moment, the two of them alone in all the world.

“I’m going away,” he said finally.

“You’ve been away before,” she said, lifting her head from his shoulder only a little, so that he could hear her.

She sounded dreamy. He didn’t want to wake her from her dream.

“We’ll celebrate your return,” she said, “in the usual way.” She pushed more closely against him, although he’d thought she was as
close as anyone could be to another. He tightened his arms around her, even though he was already holding her tight.

“This is different,” he said. “I could be away for a long time.” For now, he’d be traveling from lab to lab across the country. He didn’t want to tell Claire that when enough penicillin was available, he’d go overseas for clinical field trials, following the front lines, wherever they were. He wanted to spare her that worry. “I’ll write to you. I’ll try to get an address for you to write to me. With luck, I’ll be passing through New York now and then, but I just don’t know. And you’ll be traveling, too, I suppose.”

“Yes.”

Claire pushed herself up on her elbows, upon his chest. She gazed into his face.

No one had ever looked at him that way, with such frankness, with such love. Her expression was clear to him in the moonlight.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“I can’t say. I mean, I’m not allowed to say. It’s classified.” This was too much now, the look on her face. He couldn’t tolerate it, when he might not see her again for weeks or months. He separated from her and sat at the edge of the bed. She leaned against his back, put her arms around his neck.