New England White (43 page)

“Well, he was. And do you know what’s on the walls in the study?” He pointed at one of the doorways. “Pictures of you, that’s what. Or you and him together. I think your ex had a serious thing for you, Julia.” He straightened. “I’ll tell you something else. The pictures aren’t only of you. Your children are there.”

“My children?”

He nodded. “You can come look for yourself if you want.”

And so she did, following him dutifully into the study, walls covered with fabric of dusty rose, her favorite shade. And, sure enough, photos of Julia alone, photos of Julia with Kellen, photos of Julia with her children, either blown up from magazines or snapped—so it now seemed to her—surreptitiously. Her trembling fingers touched a shot she remembered, all four kids wiggling on her lap, clipped from an
Ebony
magazine article about the grown-up children of a certain Harlem generation. Tears tried to surprise her, but the new Julia surprised them right back.

“I think he was getting this place ready for you,” said Cameron from behind her.

“For me? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I think it was supposed to be a love nest.”

She whirled around, ready to get in his face.

“No, no, no, Julia, no. Calm down. I’m not suggesting anything untoward, except in poor Kellen’s imagination. I think he planned to get the place ready and then present it to you like a gift. He wanted you back, Julia. He was trying to fight for you.”

Not sure whether to laugh or cry, she kept a stubborn silence. Yet, at the back of her mind, something tickled.

Cameron waved a hand. “You’re wondering why I bought the place.”

“Yes.”

“Because I was hoping that the surplus is here somewhere. Hidden. The answer. A clue. Anything. The amount of time he spent here, I can’t believe he didn’t leave some sort of record behind.”

“I thought you weren’t involved with the re-election campaign any more.”

He chuckled, his whole belly shaking with mirth. “Oh, Julia. Your husband’s influence is vast, but it’s not infinite. Men like me do what we want. We just prefer to do what we do in the shadows. Besides”—up on his feet now, roaming the room—“not everything has to be for somebody else. I’m not an altruist. I’d love it if the President won, but, if he doesn’t, he doesn’t. That’s why I bought the place. Don’t you see? If there’s any way to find out what Kellen was up to, I want it. I want the evidence. I don’t care which way the evidence cuts. If it’s evidence that the President did wrong, then I’ll bury it. If it’s evidence against Senator Whisted, then I’ll hold on to it and if he wins I’ll use it, ah, to keep him from straying too far from where he needs to be.”

That was it. Almost. Almost. She could even overlook the perfidy of his motivation in the realization that she was nearly home.

“Or, if it’s evidence against the President,” she said slowly, “you could still use it to make sure he didn’t stray too far.”

He folded his arms. “I suppose.”

“But you don’t have the evidence, do you?”

“Not yet.”

She almost smiled. “Sorry.”

“Julia. Come. You didn’t drop in for no reason. Kellen left you some kind of message. A clue. You’re searching for something.” Waving his hand again. “Don’t let me stop you.”

“I’m sorry, Cameron. I really can’t help you.”

“I am entirely confident that you can help me. Take as much time as you need. Look around.”

“I’m kind of in a hurry—”

The investor gestured, and his black minion appeared. “Please go outside and tell Ms. Madison that Mrs. Carlyle will be a few minutes more. Wait. Invite them in. Find the kids some cookies or something.”

“We really have to go,” said Julia, but the minion was already out the door. And, after all, Cameron was just good old Mr. Knowland, who, as Jeannie brightly put it, owned the university.

Pretty much true.

(V)

A
ND SO SHE LOOKED
. She could have left. She did not think Cameron meant to stop her. She could have climbed into the Escalade, driven home to the Landing with Kimmer and the kids, and put Kellen and his surplus behind her once and for all. She did not. The urge that had led her this far—the urge to solve the mystery, not for its own sake but to save Vanessa—held her tightly in its grip. Kellen had led her back to her childhood, the days when Amaretta Veazie tried, as elite Harlem society faded around her, to maintain a salon, just the way she and the other Czarinas had back in the day.

There are three things you always seem to be running from,
he had said.
Your people, your past, and your God.

Kellen had led her back to her people, through Miss Terry, and into her past, right here in Harlem. She supposed God would be next, but could not see how.

“Julia?”

“Hush,” she said, secretly gleeful at shutting up a billionaire.

It worked, too.

She stood in the front hall gazing into the long mirror—another cheval—and remembering, as a girl, watching Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte standing here to straighten their ties and collars before plunging into the waiting throng of a Veazie party. Once, when she was about five, the guest of honor was Martin Luther King, Jr. Another time Hubert Humphrey held a fund-raiser. And then there was the wretched day in the spring of 1972 when Mona, aided by her twins, swept a furious and unwilling Granny Vee into their Plymouth station wagon for the long ride to Hanover. Kellen, upon hearing that story, had said—

That was it.

She stepped away from the cheval and walked into the apartment, Cameron following her with his eyes, the children at the kitchen table eating ice cream, Kimmer hovering near them like a bodyguard. The minion was nowhere to be seen.

“I came up here with Kellen a couple of times,” she said, not sure why she had decided to narrate, except that her instincts told her the story would distract. “When we were…together. I wanted to show him Harlem. But it was all different. This place was dilapidated. Boarded up. We snuck in anyway. Just pushed aside some plywood and climbed in the window.”

I’m going to buy this place one day,
Kellen had promised, standing amid the filth.
For us.
A kiss.
For you.
Another kiss.
And for our children.
A third.
It has too much history to waste.

I hate history,
she had said.

If I had your history, I’d love it,
Kellen had answered—and that night went out to a meeting he had forgotten to mention and stayed away until morning.

“What else do you remember?” prompted Cameron from behind, his urging quite unnecessary.

“We must have come here twice when we were together, and we broke in both times.” She laughed. “They hadn’t even replaced the boards. The second time, some homeless guy was living in one of the rooms. I wanted to go, but Kellen booted him out.”

“Did the two of you ever come here after that?”

“No.”

Yes. The final goodbye. Gathering the tatters of her Veazie courage, Julia had taken the train down to the city to tell the man who had wrecked her life that somebody else was on the verge of saving it. They met for lunch at Sylvia’s—a Harlem legend, and one of his favorites—and Julia looked him in the eye and told him she was pregnant, and marrying Lemaster. She watched the emotions work in his beautiful face. Anger. Astonishment. Jealousy? She had never worked it out. All through the months Julia had spent dating Lemaster—even when she had lived with him—Kellen would now and then call or send a note, either wanting to keep her on a string or trying to pry her loose. Now, hearing her news, he took his time, then smiled, said congratulations, and leaned across the table to kiss her, lightly, on the mouth. Afterward they took the subway up to Sugar Hill for a last look around.

A month later, he accepted an appointment at the University of Chicago, never quite saying goodbye.

But that day in early 1983, they had crawled in through the same window, even though it was more carefully boarded this time. Kellen had crossed to the fireplace, where ornately carved woodwork was all that remained of the huge decorative mirror above. She turned. A new mirror was in place, but the woodwork was the same. On that visit in 1983, Kellen had pulled a Swiss Army knife from his jacket and carved their initials and the date into the filigree. Followed closely by Cameron, she crossed the room. She looked in the mirror and saw reflected back not a middle-aged woman stalked by an anxious billionaire but a nervously pregnant twenty-something who felt her life slipping into other hands than her own. She smiled, but her younger self looked close to tears.

Stop it,
she mouthed.

I can’t,
she mouthed back.

Cheeks burning, Julia fingered the woodwork, careful to stay away from the spot. She remembered how Kellen had carved
KZ JV,
and the year, 1983. Then he had tried, and failed, to draw her into a kiss considerably more passionate than the chaste peck they had shared in the restaurant. At the time Julia had been both proud and regret-ful of her newfound ability to refuse him. Now, like the hallmark on the Comyns mirror, the letters had been rubbed away, obscured, the scratches in this case shellacked into permanence.

“What did you find?” said Cameron.

“Nothing yet.”

Intelligence, not luck, had pushed him to the top of his field. He pointed at the scratches. “What’s this?”

“I don’t know.”

“It says
83
and then some markings.” He leaned close. “I can’t make them out.”

“I don’t think they’re anything.”

“Why would Kellen carve this? It has to mean something.”

“What makes you think it was Kellen?”

She left the mirror and went over to the window opening on the back yard, where Amaretta used to make her sit on a wrought-iron chair for hours, practicing her table manners. Here, too, she studied the molding and reflections.

“Nothing,” she said.

“Think,” he suggested.

“I’ve tried thinking. I can’t think of anything else.”

She went into the kitchen, caressing Jeannie’s shoulder as she passed. But everything here was new. She opened a few random cabinets anyway. The dining room had preserved aged dentil molding, which she pretended to study. She examined the woodwork in both bedrooms.

She shook her head.

“What about all those mirrors he tried to send you?” Obviously the Senior Trustee had done a lot of homework. “They must mean something!”

Julia shook her head. “I thought he meant them to lead me here. But I don’t see anything I…recognize.” A sad shrug. “Maybe I misunderstood. Maybe you did.”

“You’re not trying to say—”

“There’s nothing here.” She turned to face him. “It’s over, Cameron. I can’t find it. You can’t find it. If there was anything to find, it’s hidden someplace else. I’m done.”

“Done?”

“Done looking. I’ve had enough. I have a family to worry about—”

“You can’t stop now!”

“I can, and I will. I’m tired of this. Kellen wasn’t a good man, Cameron. You’re welcome to keep looking if you want. But I’m through.”

“Right. Right.” Scarcely listening, so bright was his fury. If she could not help him and could not obstruct him, she was irrelevant to him. He was still fuming as she collected Kimmer and the children and went outside, where the black minion had spent the past half-hour guarding the car. She had what she had come for.

(VI)

“S
O THAT WAS
the great Cameron Knowland,” murmured Kimmer as Julia popped the locks. The street was dark but refreshingly quiet. “Why did he want to meet you in Harlem? I mean, it’s not like an assignation, right?”

“It’s a long story.”

“With Saturday-night traffic, we’ve got hours and hours.”

“Maybe another time.” She was scribbling frantically, drawing the curves she had memorized that Kellen had carved beside the
83
in the wainscoting. The squiggles were quite elaborate, with serifs and curlicues everywhere, to make reading them backward difficult. But Julia, who had brought her mirror, had no trouble.
BCP,
the carving, reversed, now read. Since Kellen had done nothing to the numbers, she assumed she should read them as they were.
BCP 83.

She did not know for sure where Kellen had meant her to look next, but this time, at least, she had a theory.

“Mommy,” said Jeans, tugging at her sleeve from behind.

“Don’t worry, honey. We’re going home now. And you can sleep all the way.”

“No, Mommy, that’s not what I’m talking about. Look. Look!”

She glanced where her daughter was pointing, at a small park across the street. Kimmer was already on her cell phone again.

“What am I looking at?” she asked her youngest.

“He was there, Mommy!” Jeannie was thrilled and concerned at once. “He was! He’s gone now, but he was there!”

“Who was?”

“Jeremy!” Kicking the back of the driver’s seat to illustrate the stupidity of the question. “Mr. Flew! He was over there on the bench!”

Julia laughed nervously, aware of Kimmer’s scrutiny. “Oh, honey, he works all the way home in Elm Harbor. I’m sure you imagined it.”

At least I hope you did,
she thought but did not say. Maybe Jeannie had spotted Jeremy. Maybe not. Certainly Julia had suspected for a while that she was being followed, and not only because Mary Mallard said so. She had felt the scrutiny of perfect strangers, like hot breath on the back of her neck. Perhaps some of them worked for Cameron Knowland. If she was going to complete her task, she could not afford to be tracked. Heading down from Sugar Hill toward Madison Avenue and the bridge across the East River to the Bronx and on to New England, Julia had a fresh idea. Ideas seemed to plague her constantly since what Mary called her liberation and Lemaster called something odd going on with her; and some of the ideas were pretty good. This time Kimmer’s incessant yakking had inspired her. Cell phones. Something about cell phones. According to Bruce Vallely, Kellen’s cell phone had vanished from police custody. Tony Tice, like Kimmer, seemed unable to put his down. Julia thought back to the night Janine Goldsmith had slept over, before Vanessa was, as she liked to say, Smith-grounded. Julia had caught the two teenagers playing with a device to clone cell-phone numbers, constructed from plans they found on the Internet.