Fatality (6 page)

The police made no comment as they forded the stream of Alan’s possessions and made it into the living room. The living room was even worse, because his sister was getting married, and wedding plans and possibilities were strewn on every surface. They talked standing up.

The policewoman was his own height, six one. He studied her name tag. “Did you play for St. Mary’s?”

She was extremely pleased to be recognized.

“My sister went to St. Mary’s,” Alan explained.

“Hey? Would that be Cecily Finney?” said the policewoman, beaming. “Say hi to her for me. Is this her wedding you’re planning?”

“I’m
not planning it,” said Alan with a shudder.

When they started talking about Rose Lymond, Alan was simply astonished. If there was a person more law-abiding, more cautious, more academic, Alan hadn’t met her. She was such a contrast to Tabor, who was not all that law-abiding, never cautious, and despised academics. It was actually kind of a miracle that any college had taken Tabor. Of course, he had had to go two thousand miles to find one.

“Stole a police car?”
said Alan. “Rose? Impossible. A definite case of mistaken identity.”

The police explained why there was no mistake about it.

Alan couldn’t imagine Rose stealing a paper clip. “But why?” he said. He didn’t tell the two police that he thought Rose had done something outrageously wonderful. Or insane.

Craig Gretzak told him about the diary and its place in the murder investigation.

A few months ago, when Alan turned eighteen, the baseball coach had coaxed most of the team to donate blood. Alan had not done well at the sight of needles. His head and heart and knees blended, and he found himself on the floor, with a doctor saying, “Alan, you better not try this again. You are literally green.”

I’m probably green now, he thought.

He managed to stay upright, though, which he had not accomplished at the Red Cross. He busied himself shifting wedding stuff onto the floor so they could sit on the couch. Cecily’s magazines seemed harder to lift than a pallet of patio slate.

“We retrieved the remains of the diary,” said Craig Gretzak, “and we’re talking to any kid Rose mentions. Mrs. Lymond helped us interpret some of the entries. It looks as if you know the Lymonds well.”

“Just Tabor.” Tabor had the largest family Alan had ever come across: uncles, aunts, cousins, grandparents, great-grandparents. He was always visiting or being visited by some relative or other. By high school, Tabor was embarrassed by so much family and spent much time in seclusion, hoping to avoid them. “Why can’t I be an orphan?” Tabor moaned. “Why can’t I be normal and have all my relatives living in other states, with mountain ranges between us?”

A rock band had created something of a mountain range. No relatives visited when the band was practicing. Now that Alan was eighteen he could admit none of them had had talent. But they had sure had fun.

Nobody in the band paid any attention to Tabor’s kid sister. It was pesky the way she’d sit on the top step of the basement stairs writing away in her diary when the band rehearsed below. “Beat it, Rose,” Tabor would yell.

“No. These are my stairs, too.”

“Well, cut it out with the journal. Stop writing about us.”

“Why would I write about you?”

“Because we’re interesting and you’re not.”

Regular brother and sister stuff. Exactly the way Alan talked to his sister. Eventually Tabor would reduce Rose to tears and she’d leave.

“Where does she keep the diary?” Verne asked once. Verne had started the group but proved to be incapable of memorizing two chords in a row. Verne’s idea of practice was to be on the phone ordering pizzas. But he’d had his driver’s license and an old Volvo wagon into which they managed to fit drums, speakers, wires, cord, keyboard, and band members. Alan, the youngest, had been forced to sit with the drinks cooler under his feet and two guitar cases wedged under his chin.

Tabor shrugged, not because he didn’t know where Rose kept her diary but because he didn’t care. “In the headboard of her bed,” he said. “She keeps the key on the hook behind her bathrobe and thinks nobody knows.”

“Let’s steal the diary,” Verne suggested.

It was at that moment that Tabor became the leader of the group and not Verne. “That would make us twelve years old, too,” Tabor said. “That’s what little boys do—torment little girls. We’re trying to be musicians here, Verne. Although it’s a struggle for you. Okay, everybody, take it from the top.”

One day, Tabor actually mentioned his sister. She was going to visit the Loffts for a weekend. They had all been impressed. The Loffts were exciting people and Anjelica seemed much older than twelve. The boys discussed what Anjelica’s figure would be in a few more years. Nobody cared what Rose’s figure would be.

The weekend was chaotic. Musically, the band changed forever when Verne called up to say he was quitting because he had better things to do. They not only had to find another musician, they had to find other transportation. Furthermore, Alan had had a major paper due and had to stay up all Sunday night to pull it off. He slept through class Monday, ended up in the principal’s office to discuss whether he had a drug problem, and Monday night heard about the murder of Milton Lofft’s partner. By Tuesday it was known that Milton Lofft had been the last person to see the victim alive.

Tabor called practice on Wednesday and the entire band happened to be in the cellar while the police interrogated Rose. Well, except for Verne, who never did come back. Alan still thought it was unprofessional of him.

Rose, who could write five pages sitting on the top step watching the band, could not come up with one sentence about an entire weekend with the Loffts. The band knew because they were standing on the pool table with their ears literally pressed to the ceiling, trying to hear every word spoken in the room above.

“But what about—?” said the police, “and how about—?”

“Nothing,” said Rose.

“I can’t remember,” said Rose.

“I didn’t see,” said Rose.

Tabor was embarrassed. Everybody had been hoping to get in on hot police activity and glamorous crime, and his sister was a complete dud. They played softly, so Mr. Lymond wouldn’t come to the top of the stairs and yell at them and so they could get over their embarrassment at having listened in to start with.

Alan’s fingers moved automatically on his keyboard while his mind fixed on Rose. She’s so smart, he thought. Much smarter than Tabor. Twice as smart as me. Smart enough to have seen and understood everything. Her brother believes her lame little statements. I don’t.

A few nights later, during band practice, Alan ran upstairs to the kitchen for a cold soda. Rose was standing in the middle of the room doing nothing, holding nothing, and as far he could tell, seeing nothing. “Hey, Rose,” he said cheerfully. “No diary tonight?”

Her head snapped back as if he had struck her. He actually looked down at his hand to see if he’d done that, and then looked at her cheek to see if it was bruised.

She was not breathing. Her entire body, including her eyes, was rigid. It was like a motionless seizure. “You okay, Rose?” he said uncertainly.

Her body turned in his direction. A few beats later she looked in his direction. She still had not blinked. “I outgrew keeping a diary,” she said. She backed away from him.

Outgrew it when? thought Alan. Last Thursday you were sitting on the cellar steps, scribbling away.

Rose fled from the kitchen. She literally ran away from him. The sensation of having slapped her lived on in the flat of Alan’s hand and the muscles of his arm. You may have stopped
writing
in a diary, thought Alan, but I bet you didn’t stop
keeping
it. I bet you still have it. And you wouldn’t have a silent seizure unless you had a serious secret written down in that diary.

It was only an hour before Mr. and Mrs. Lymond and Rose drove off to visit relatives and the rest of the band drove off to pick up pizzas. Alan claimed he wasn’t in the mood to get off the couch. He stayed by himself in the basement.

How silent was this house that usually rocked with percussion. He could hear newly made ice cubes clunking inside the refrigerator. A clock ticking.

Alan walked upstairs. He entered Rose’s room. The key was where Tabor said it would be. Against the slanted wooden headboard of Rose’s large bed were a dozen frothy pillows. He imagined slumber parties, with girls leaning on pillows to eat and giggle and watch TV. He shifted the pillows carefully so he could put them back in order. His fingers scrounged around the cubby, closing on a leather book as pretty as any volume he had ever touched.

How well he remembered Rose’s handwriting, the graceful slope of each letter. He remembered the final pages where her handwriting disintegrated into a frantic blotchy scrawl. Over and around the words he read in such shock were odd puckered circles.

Dried tears.

In his remembering, Alan forgot the present. Now it returned in the voice of a cop. “We’re wondering, Alan,” said Craig Gretzak softly, “if Rose saw something else that weekend. Nothing to do with Milton Lofft. Something to do with Tabor. Or you.”

I
T WAS NOW THURSDAY
. Rose’s father drove her to school. Her parents were rarely willing to drive her, since there was a perfectly good bus, and anyhow, it cramped their work schedules. But Rose’s father was afraid of her choices now. For all he knew, a daughter who stole a car at the beginning of the week might be headed toward drugs and prostitution by the end of the week. Rose had thought of her silence as a way to keep the family together, not tear it apart. “Bye, Dad,” she said softly.

He tried to smile, but nothing came of it. He actually seemed more gray and more lined in only a few days. He was certainly more upset than she had ever seen him. Mom, too, was raw and frayed at the edges. Even Tabor’s shenanigans had not disturbed her parents like this, perhaps because they saw Tabor’s actions as nonsense, whereas they had expected Rose to grow up neatly and without bringing pain to their hearts.

She had not yet shut the car door when Augusta spotted her, flung her own book bag down, and leaped like a crazy woman to greet Rose.

Rose liked Augusta enormously and would have liked to be closer friends, but Augusta always seemed to be with somebody else or interested in something different. Rose had not actually been around Augusta since fourth grade, when the teacher fixed their little desks in sets of four, facing in, and Augusta had sat directly opposite Rose.

“It cannot be true,” said Augusta, plowing to a halt. “Science project star, history-loving, never-swearing Rose Margaret Lymond? Stealing police cars?”

If Augusta knew, everybody knew. Rose smiled at Augusta out of leftover fourth-grade memory. “Actually, just one police car,” she said. She shut the car door and walked off without looking back to see how Augusta’s greeting had played with her father. Oh, Daddy, she thought. I’m doing this for you, and you’ll never know, and I can never let you know.

Augusta fell into step with her. They ignored the long, slanted ramp and took the steep stairs. Quietly and seriously Augusta said, “Do you need help, Rose? I don’t know what’s happening, and I’m not asking, but there must be something radically wrong. Your father looks terrible. Rose, if you need me, I’m your friend.”

People who hardly knew him could tell that this was destroying her father. “Thank you, Gussie.” She ignored the tremor in her voice, hoping Augusta would be kind enough to ignore it, too. “I think everything will work out.”

Augusta nodded without saying more and Rose wondered whether she had crushed or opened a future friendship with Augusta. But there was no time to continue the conversation. Ming arrived. “Is it true?” she demanded.

“Is what true?”

“Rose! Don’t be difficult. That you stole a police car, of course.”

“Oh. That. Yes. It’s true.”

Ming howled with delight. “Tell me exactly what happened.”

“And me,” said Emma.

“And us,” said Caitlin and Halsey and Richard and Keith and Alex, grinning and waiting.

They seemed to find Rose and her car theft rather cute. They seemed, in fact, to regard her as an episode in a good TV show. Only Augusta realized that there must be something very wrong.

“Come on, tell us!” cried Ming.

I can hardly say I don’t remember, thought Rose. It was this week. If I say, “It’s a long story,” they’ll be twice as happy and settle in for all the details. “It’s under litigation,” she said finally. “I can’t talk about it.”

“Bosh. Rot. Balderdash,” said Ming.

Everybody laughed.

Rose tried to walk toward class but they were clinging to her. It was like walking through a department store, brushed by clothing displays and countertops.

“Come on, really,” coaxed Ming.

Rose was saved by, of all people, the principal’s secretary. Dr. Siegal and Mr. Burgess wished to see Miss Lymond, said the secretary.

Last week, her friends would have assumed Rose was being summoned because she had won a prize, placed in some essay contest, was sought after by the university for her phragmites data. They’d have been bored. But now that Rose was in trouble—lots of trouble, oceans of trouble—they were delighted.

Why had Rose not realized how much attention stealing a cop car would bring?

It was funny, in a dreadful way. You spent your whole life trying to attract attention, trying to be interesting and pretty and smart and graceful and wanted. Then you got the attention and it was like being hit over the head with a baseball bat.

First period bells rang.

Reluctantly the crowd around her dispersed and went on to class. Ming was slow to depart. She gave Rose plenty of time to say, Of course I’ll tell
you; you’re
my best friend; I wouldn’t leave
you
out.

Rose did not say it.

She could see no point in hurrying to meet with the principal and vice principal. She walked so slowly that both men had appeared in the office doorway by the time she finally arrived. Star students always got to know the administration. She liked the two men well enough, although they were pompous and played favorites.