Dark Rooms (20 page)

“Then that's the first thing we should try to find out.”

I stare at him. That the
we
was on purpose, not a slip of the tongue seems too much even to hope for.

“You think I'm going to let you run around by yourself, chasing after a psycho who's killed two people and—”

I interrupt. “Two? How did you come up with that number?”

“Nica plus Manny. Am I forgetting someone?”

“No,” I say. “Jesus, I was. I was so focused on Manny not having killed Nica that I didn't, like, take the logical next step. Of course. Someone must have killed Manny, too.”

“And made it look like a suicide.”

“Wow, yeah.”

We're both quiet, lost in thought.

It's Damon who finally speaks. “Get up.”

“What? Why?”

“So you can help me get up. My leg's stiff. All right,” he says, once I've pulled him to his feet, “I'll see you tomorrow at the office. Sleep tight.” He starts off down the street toward his grandmother's.

The abrupt end to the conversation has taken me by surprise, and for a while I just stand there, watching him. When at last he's absorbed by the darkness, I snap out of it. Begin walking myself.

I've just about reached my car, when, suddenly chilly, I slip my hands into the pockets of Nica's jacket. My fingers collide with something. I pull it out. A torn-off piece of blank paper, folded in half. I unfold it.

As I drive home, I keep looking at the scrap of paper on the seat beside me, rubbing my eyes over the words on it, trying to interpret them, understand how they might connect to Nica's death. Jeanne is Mrs. Bowles-Mills's first name; Bill, Mr. Mills's; making
T
, obviously, Mr. Tierney. So Mr. Tierney
was
romantically involved with Nica, just as Jamie had thought before he spotted Mr. Tierney skulking outside the Millses' house all those months ago.

The anger I feel toward myself is so overwhelming it makes it hard to breathe. Had I been a little sharper, a little slicker, not quite as wide-eyed, I would have put this together much sooner. Wouldn't have made the naive assumption that because Mr. Tierney was sleeping with Mrs. Bowles-Mills he wasn't sleeping with Nica too. Would have understood that an affair with a middle-aged woman in an unhappy marriage made an affair with a teenage girl with a reckless spirit more likely, not less.

But if
T
's identity is clear, not much else in the note is. It sounds as if Mr. Tierney had ended things with Mrs. Bowles-Mills and she wasn't happy about it, that Mr. Mills might have seen or heard something that led him to believe Mr. Tierney and Nica were a couple, and that Mr. Tierney was afraid he'd voiced these suspicions to his wife. Why was Mr. Tierney afraid, though? Or, rather, of what was Mr. Tierney afraid? That Mrs. Bowles-Mills would rat him out to the school? To the police? That she'd turn violent? That she'd make Mr. Bowles-Mills turn violent? Toward him? Toward Nica? Or was he
the one who turned violent? He sure sounded desperate in his writing, practically beside himself. Could the vector of his desperation have changed? Become directed at Nica?

The only way I'm going to get answers to any of these questions is by asking. Confronting Mr. Tierney's a definite. What isn't, though, is whether to take Damon with me when I do. I'm torn. He's just agreed to help me find Nica's killer, which means he's entitled to be informed of any new developments. But he's also just finished telling me that Nica was the love of his life. Does he really need to hear about the other guy she'd been fucking while she was with him?

I decide to pursue the lead on my own. If it goes somewhere, then I'll tell him. But only then.

I crawl into bed at a quarter past five, crawl out again at a quarter to eight. Queasy with morning sickness and lack of sleep, I shower and dress for work. Head downstairs to slosh milk and cereal around in a bowl, leave the bowl in the sink or on the countertop—some conspicuous location where it will have to then be moved by Dad to the dishwasher. Once I enter the kitchen, though, I take two steps toward the refrigerator and stop short. The room is filled with stink: cheap alcohol combined with openmouthed breathing. I turn. There's Dad at the table, under
Nica's Dream,
body slumped sideways in the chair, lips mashed against a plastic mat with different types of citrus fruit on it, hand curled around an empty bottle with the familiar yellow label.

This isn't the first time I've found him like this. It isn't the second time either. He hardly ever used to touch liquor. A beer occasionally or a glass of wine with dinner, but that was it. Since Nica died, though, drinking Jim Beam until he passes out is a regular thing with him. I know I should probably say something, ask him if he needs to see a
counselor or join one of those programs with the steps, especially now that his doctor's prescribing him trazodone. (Not that he's exhibited much interest in the drug. He picked up his refill at the pharmacy weeks ago. The bottle's still sitting in its crinkly white bag on the end table by the front door.) And it's not as if I don't understand the impulse, using a chemical substance to allay a pain that isn't physical.

Which is why I turn around, tiptoe out of the room. After all, Dad isn't raising his blood alcohol level during the day, on the job, or posing a threat to anybody's safety. It's only at night, after he's met his obligations—obligations primarily to me, providing food and shelter, the steady presence of a parent who won't leave no matter how bad it gets—and only when he thinks he's alone, no one around to witness the gruesome and heartrending sight of a man falling to pieces. If I wake him to help him upstairs to bed, he'll realize I know about his drinking, and once he knows I know, he'll feel compelled to stop. And, the truth of the matter is, I don't want him to stop. I believe that he's been pushed past the point of endurance, that Nica's death has broken him, and that alcohol is what's keeping him going, allowing him to function; it's what's allowing him not to function, too, to shut off, lose consciousness for a couple hours. And God knows he deserves whatever peace he can get.

I decide to close the A/V Department a period early, just cross my fingers and hope no late-day requests come in. As soon as seventh is over, I lock up and head to Knox Theater. Slipping in through a side entrance, I take the staircase down a level and walk along the corridor, passing the office of Mr. Savvides, the drama teacher, the storage room that contains old stage sets, some from as far back as the forties and fifties, then pause in the doorway of the ceramics and woodworking studio.

Mr. Tierney's at the wheel. He's wearing a linen shirt, shorts, tennis shoes with no socks, his thick, wavy hair mussed just so. As he works, his hand moving up and down inside an expanding clay wall, he talks to a pretty junior, Leigh Cullen. I can't hear what they're saying over the hum of the wheel, but the soft cadences of their voices let me know it's flirtatious. Leigh drops her head as she responds to something he's said. When she does, I see him look past her to catch his reflection in one of the dark wall tiles opposite.

At last he notices me standing there. He stops the wheel and jogs over to me, hand outstretched. When I don't take it, he looks down, sees it's covered in clay up to the elbow. He shakes his head and laughs as if he's done something foolish but charming. “Gracie, I heard you'd become one of us. I've been meaning to stop by the library, say welcome to the dark side. So”—laughing again—“welcome to the dark side.”

Not laughing, I say, “I need to talk to you.”

“Sure. What's up?”

“Privately.”

“Okay,” he says. “But can you give me a minute? I'm just wrapping up with Leigh here. She wants to switch into my adviser group.” He raises a hand vertically beside his mouth. “I'm trying to talk her out of it without letting her know I'm trying to talk her out of it. She's a nice kid. Kind of a pain in the ass, though.” Then he grins, the grin meant to show that he knows he shouldn't be calling a student a pain in the ass, is doing it anyway—a real little rascal. It unleashes a burst of rage in me.

“Take your time,” I say casually. And then, when he's turned away from me, “Is this slutty schoolgirl or hot for teacher?”

I watch the color rise up the back of his neck. “What?” he says in a near whisper.

“I just wondered whose fantasy I've wandered into—yours or
hers. I'd have thought your experience with Nica would have cured you of the schoolgirl fantasy. But, hey, maybe not.”

“Leigh,” he says in a normal voice, “we're going to have to finish this discussion another time.”

Leigh makes a pouty face. “But, Mr. T, you said before that—”

“It doesn't matter what I said before. I'm saying now that this isn't a good time.” Then, easing up on his tone, “We'll talk tomorrow, okay? In fact, just bring the paperwork by. I'd be happy to be your adviser.”

When the door closes, Mr. Tierney turns back to me, his smile for Leigh quickly fading. “Grace, are you insinuating that—”

“That you were having sex with my sister? No, I'm not insinuating that at all.” I wait until I see relief loosening his features before continuing, “I'm saying it straight out.”

His only response is to stare at me. And then he says, “That's ridiculous.”

“You two were hitting on each other every chance you got.”

“Flirting is different than—” He breaks off.

“Than?”

After a long pause, he says, “Haven't you ever heard the old Victor Hugo line? God created the flirt as soon as he made the fool.” The playful-teasing note has returned to his voice, and from it I understand that he's decided to treat my accusation as a joke. Has decided to try to anyway.

“Haven't you ever heard the old Jimmy Buffett line?” I say back. “Fifteen will get you twenty.” Nica was sixteen. Still underage, though.

Another long pause. “Listen, Grace, I don't know where you got the idea that Nica and I were involved, but it's not true.” All traces of jocularity are gone from his tone, and his eyes are holding mine. He wants to show me that he isn't laying a line, that he couldn't be more sincere. I'm not fooled. It's just another pose.

“I got it from you,” I say, and drop the note on the table in front of him. He looks at it, then at me, then at it again. Wiping his hands on the tail of his shirt, he picks it up. As he reads, I keep my eyes on his face, watch it fly apart, go wide and flat and stretched, before snapping back together. The reaction only lasts for a second—a spasm—but I catch it. If I'd had any doubts about the affair going in, I don't now. “So the question, Mr.
T,
isn't whether or not you were fucking Nica, it's whether or not Mrs. Bowles-Mills or Mr. Mills knew you were fucking Nica.”

He starts to speak, but the words stick in his throat. Trying again, he says, “Where did you get this?”

“No, that's not how this works. You don't ask the questions. You answer them.”

He gazes blankly at me, the note dangling limply from his fingers. Then all of a sudden, he steps forward. The room shrinks as he leans his body into mine, seizes my shoulders, shakes me. “I said, where did you get this?”

Now I'm the one who can't speak. All I can do is stare at the two white balls of spit that have formed at the corners of his mouth.

“The answer to your question, Grace, is that I have no idea what the Millses knew or didn't know—about anything. Now, for the last time, where did you get this?” He shakes me again, this time so hard my teeth rattle.

“The pocket of Nica's jacket,” I say, almost shouting. Immediately his grip slackens. Angry with myself for getting scared, for giving in to him, I jerk my shoulders back. “Why were you so jacked up about Mrs. Bowles-Mills finding out you and Nica were together? Was she jealous? Angry that you'd dumped her? Was her temper bad? Was Mr. Mills's?”

Mr. Tierney is silent, his head bent so that I can't see his face. Sensing that the time to press my advantage is now, I say, “If you don't
start talking, I'll go to the Millses. Get my information from them. Is that what you want?”

Seconds pass. He brings his hands to his face, presses his fingers to his eyes. His shoulders begin to heave. My heart starts to beat fast with excitement. I've got him. He's going to tell me what I want to know.

And then he lifts his head, his smile so big it looks like his face is breaking in two. And that's when it hits me: he was shaking with laughter, not sobs. I've overplayed my hand, I realize, have pushed him too far, made it so he's past caring.