New England White (44 page)

Cell phones. Of course.

She wondered if Smith had ever tried to build…Hmmm.

CHAPTER 48

SAFETY IN NUMBERS

(I)

S
UNDAY NIGHT
was yet another committee of Ladybugs, and this time nobody pretended not to be interested in how Julia’s family was doing, and Vanessa in particular, the Sister Ladies smothering her with their fluttery concern. Julia finally pointed the Escalade toward home well past ten. Exhausted by their swarming attentions, she wanted nothing so much as to tumble into bed.

She drove through town. She hardly ever took the expressway, especially at night, preferring the relative coziness of city streets. But the city streets were empty. Furtive flakes snuck through the bright cones of her headlights as if embarrassed to be falling so thinly. Later tonight they would be back, proudly, trillions of buddies in tow. Safety in numbers: the same theory that still fortified Ladybugs and Empyreals and the dozens of other groups to which middle-class African America aspired. Once upon a time, when the most professionally successful among the darker nation were yet segregated out of white social life, the fraternities and sororities and clubs had filled the need to rub shoulders with people of similar education and attainment. Today, even with most formal barriers gone, black Americans at the top of their professions seemed to feel the need from time to time to slough off the personas that brought success in the wider, whiter world—and to escape the small whispers and slights whose existence they secretly feared—and hang out instead with the successful of their own nation.

Safety, still, in numbers.

And Julia Carlyle, who had grown up surrounded by white kids in Hanover, whose closest friends most of her life had been white, and who lived now in Tyler’s Landing, the heart of whiteness, felt the same tug.

Julia stopped for gas as usual at the Exxon station on Route 48 in Langford—she loved her car, but it seemed to need a tankful every two days—and set the pump, then went inside for a cup of foul coffee. She was alongside her car, pulling out her phone in defiance of the warning sign, when the skinny man in the windbreaker climbed out of the sedan that had pulled in seconds after she did and asked if he could talk to her for a minute.

“I’m in a hurry,” said Julia, in her mother’s voice, for she assumed, although her accoster looked not at all penurious, that she was about to be hit up for money. She stopped pumping at once and hung the nozzle. She declined the receipt. “I’m sorry,” she said, reaching for the door.

“I only need a moment, Mrs. Carlyle.”

An instant’s astonished paralysis at the sound of her name, and an instant was all the stranger needed. He put a hand on her arm. She pulled free.

“Don’t touch me.” It occurred to her that the stranger had chosen a moment when no other car was in the station. His thick mop of hair was an uneasy brown. He wore a diamond stud in one ear. “Who are you?”

“I only have a few questions.”

“I don’t have any answers.”

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist.”

“Leave me alone,” she snapped, and opened the door, fast. The man grabbed her arm again, more firmly. Stunned, she struggled, but his grip was iron. He was dragging her away from her car. She threw her coffee in his face, and cocked her arm for a good hard slap, except that by now the man was on his knees, not from the pain of the scalding coffee, but because Bruce Vallely had him in an armlock.

Bruce stepped back and the man stood up, hands at his sides, not saying a word.

“Where did you come from?” said Julia, surprised and appalled. Safety in numbers indeed. She was trembling, and had already decided, incoherently, never to stop for gas again in her life.

“I thought you were staying away from reporters,” said Bruce.

“Reporters?”

Bruce nodded. The light snow settled in his bushy hair. One hand was on the stranger’s shoulder. The other was out of sight. “This gentleman is a reporter. Tell Mrs. Carlyle you’re a reporter.”

“I’m a reporter,” the stranger confirmed, tonelessly. In a perfect world, Julia would have noticed something amiss. But pounding adrenaline warps the judgment. Besides, she was growing tired of journalists as a breed and lately had not even returned Tessa’s calls.

“We’re going to have a little talk, this gentleman and I.” Bruce gestured toward the man’s car, and the brown-haired man drifted toward it. “I’ll find out who he works for, and make sure you’re not bothered again.”

“Wait,” said Julia. “What are you doing here?”

“Buying gas.”

“But—”

“If you’ll excuse us, we have to be going.”

After the two men drove away in the stranger’s car, Julia finally spotted Bruce’s Mustang, in the parking lot of the long-closed florist across the road.

(II)

S
AFELY BACK HOME
, having calmed herself with two glasses of a playful Monterey white Riesling, Julia decided to act on the impulse that had seized her when, in Harlem, she had noticed how Kimmer could not put down her cell phone. Tony Tice, Kimmer’s fellow attorney, could not live without his either. Julia had been about ready to chalk up Gina’s killing to Malcolm Whisted, but Cameron Knowland’s determination had set her back. She would have to talk to Mary, who said she had discovered startling information of her own. The two women would meet in a few days. Meanwhile, Julia found Vanessa in the kitchen, sitting at the shining black counter, a half-eaten apple and a glass of milk beside her, nose in a volume of Emily Dickinson from the school library.

“Gina was right,” said the teen, not looking up.

“Gina?”

“I always thought Dickinson was overrated, but she’s not. She’s a
genius.
” She turned a page. “Or she
was.
I was never into poetry all that much, but listen to this.”

“Honey—”

“Listen.” She had found what she wanted:

“Exultation is the going

Of an inland soul to sea,—

Past the houses, past the headlands,

Into deep eternity!”

Vanessa ran her fingers over the verses as if memorizing their feel, then slipped a cloth marker into the book and closed it. “I’m going to post it on my blog,” she said, and, swiveling on the counter stool, brandished the volume like a fire-and-brimstone preacher holding her Bible. “This woman understood death.”

Julia searched for the appropriate words. “I’m so glad you’ve found a—”

“Heroine,” her daughter finished. “Don’t worry, Moms, I don’t expect to start communing with her spirit anytime soon.”

“Oh, ah, well, good.”

For a few minutes, Julia busied herself at the sink, scrubbing what needed to be scrubbed, rinsing what needed to be rinsed. These late hours still belonged to the two of them. Lemaster and Jeans slumbered upstairs, Mr. Flew in the basement. Vanessa, perhaps sensing that her mother wanted something, stayed at the counter, reading and clucking. Julia waited until she could wait no longer.

“Honey?” Casually, casually, barely glancing up as she wiped the countertops. “You remember that electronic toy you and Janine were playing with last month? The thing that, ah, that cloned cell-phone numbers?”

Color flooded Vanessa’s smooth cheeks. She was ready to get very angry indeed. “You told us to stop, and we stopped, okay? And we weren’t playing. It wasn’t a toy.”

“No, no, I understand. I understand.” Holding her hands up for peace. “I’m not criticizing you, honey. I want to ask you about, ah, another device that I bet Janine has got lying around somewhere.”

“Smith.”

“Right. Smith. Until the violence stops.”

“No, that’s the vow of silence. Her name is a protest against consumerism and regimentation.”

“Oh, right. Right. Sorry.” She put down the rag, leaned back against the counter, and explained to her daughter what she had in mind. Vanessa shook her head several times, then, finally, said, “Those things aren’t illegal. Well, they are some places. Most places. And, well, this state is one of those places. This whole country, actually.”

“Does she have one? That’s all I want to know.”

“Why?” Defiantly. “What are you going to do if she does?”

“Borrow it. But without her knowing.”

Vanessa’s brow crinkled in thought. “What do you need it for?”

“To sell to Hollywood. To worship in my spare time. To decorate the mantelpiece. What difference does it make what I want it for?”

“I’m just asking.” Sharply, followed by a sulk. “You don’t have to jump down my throat.”

Julia softened. “I’m sorry, honey. Let’s just say it’s my ace in the hole.”

Her daughter thought this over. “How?”

“How, what?”

“How are you going to borrow it without Smith knowing?”

“Oh, that part’s easy. You’re going to borrow it from Smith, and I’m going to borrow it from you.”

Vanessa immediately shook her head. “I can’t borrow it. I’m Smith-grounded. I’m not allowed to see her. I’m not allowed to talk to her. I’m not allowed to IM her or e-mail her or text-message her or anything. I’m not even allowed to sit next to her in the cafeteria. Ergo, I can’t borrow it.”

Julia put her hands on her hips. “Vanessa Amaretta Carlyle, I have known you since the night you came out of my womb, squealing and fighting all the way. You are a Veazie from your beautiful braids down to your lovely brown toes. You always do everything your own way. I refuse to believe that you’ve followed all those rules just because we told you to, and I wouldn’t be terribly surprised to learn that you haven’t followed any of them.” Lifting a hand to forestall a squawked objection. “Now, listen to me. I don’t care if you’ve broken the rules before or not. I’m giving you a dispensation now. Be discreet. Don’t let anybody know what you’re up to. But borrow the thing from Smith and get it to me.”

The teen’s mouth was hanging open. “And I bet you don’t want me to tell Dads, right?”

“I’ll deal with your father.”

“Yeah. I bet you will.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

A sudden smile, like winter’s thaw. “It means I like this new you. I
love
her.”

Julia smiled. “You know what, honey? I love her, too.”

(III)

T
HAT
B
RUCE HAD HAPPENED UPON
Julia Carlyle being accosted by the stranger that night was attributable at least partly to luck. He did not follow her every evening. He was one man, he had a whole department to run, and every minute he stole for the Zant case was a minute he could not spend on a more productive endeavor. Surveillance was most intrusive of all, which was why he indulged in it rarely. On the other hand, Tony Tice’s warning about his clients becoming active worried him. And the lawyer was right. They would not bother to go after Bruce. If they chased anybody, it would be someone who could actually give them information.

Like Julia Carlyle, who Tice believed to be Zant’s Black Lady.

He had tracked Julia to the meeting at the home of Tonya Montez, then met some friends for dinner and still been back in time to catch her as she left. He had decided to follow, just to see if her back was clean—in particular, if Jeremy Flew was in the picture—but had spotted the stranger instead.

Bruce had watched, and waited, and finally intervened when he saw the man grab her arm.

The stranger had stopped resisting once he felt Bruce’s gun in his back, for he had no way of knowing that the university’s rules did not allow any campus officer, even the director, to carry a gun if not in uniform; or that what he felt in his back was only a wooden tube. They parked in a municipal lot, hidden by yellow school buses. The interrogation was unpleasant. Once Bruce found the gun in the stranger’s waistband, he would have turned the man over to the police, except that he also found a syringe and a set of plastic handcuffs. Bruce gave him-self a moment. This was not some ruffian, out to put a scare into Julia Carlyle. This was a man who intended to take her along.

Tony Tice’s clients were indeed becoming active. The stakes of the game had changed, and he had to change them back, fast.

Bruce dropped the man he had interrogated at the university hospital, flashing his credentials and spinning a tale, knowing the stranger would not contradict him. From the Mustang he called the lawyer to say they had a deal. If Bruce Vallely were to get his hands on Kellen Zant’s surplus, he would deliver it to Tony’s clients.

CHAPTER 49

AGAIN THE COMYNS MIRROR

(I)

M
ARY
M
ALLARD CAME AND WENT
, leaving behind information every bit as startling as she had promised. According to her sources, the President of the United States and Senator Malcolm Whisted had recently had at least two and possibly three off-the-record meetings. Leaks would soon be published, said Mary, to the effect that they were discussing foreign policy, both men wanting to look presidential and nonpartisan. But Mary’s sources said no aides were present, and the meetings were long.

In return, Julia told her about encountering Cameron Knowland in New York. She kept to herself what she had found there. She had never told Mary about the Comyns mirror either.

After Mary left, Julia checked the family calendar. One of the meetings had occurred when Lemaster was in Washington. But when she asked, he repeated Bay Dennison’s dictum that a rumor was not rendered more likely to be true because the rumormonger refused to give his name.

“That’s not a denial,” Julia had said.

“I didn’t hear an accusation,” he answered calmly.

Meanwhile, she had been searching for BCP 83. Kellen had promised to send her back to her God, and Julia guessed that BCP stood for the Book of Common Prayer. But when she checked all the copies in the house—both the 1928 version favored by Lemaster and the more modern texts used by nearly all Episcopal churches—no notes or cards or photos fell out of page 83, or any other page. She spent an afternoon back at the Kepler Library, sorting through every edition of the book she could find, in every available language, but came away disappointed. She even found herself making excuses to visit the offices of div school colleagues who might have a copy on their shelves. She would stand there chatting with Suzanne de Broglie or Clay Maxwell about faculty appointments or the state of the physical plant, and pick up, as if idly, any Book of Common Prayer in sight.

No luck.

One afternoon, Julia arrived early for a meeting with Claire Alvarez, who was held up at a campus event. An assistant invited Julia to wait in the dean’s office. Claire stepped inside a few minutes later to find her deputy on the rolling stepladder, pulling down from a high shelf in a glass-fronted cabinet the aged copy of the prayer book to which every dean, by long tradition, added a new
dédicace
before passing it on to the next. Claire Alvarez expressed no surprise. She smiled beatifically, the only way she ever displayed anger, and, remarking that she, too, drew inspiration by reading from time to time what others had written there, plucked the book gently from Julia’s fingers.

But Julia held on long enough to establish that there was nothing stuffed inside.

As their meeting ended, the dean put a hand on Julia’s shoulder and said, her voice dripping sweetness and affection, that people had told her that the dean of students seemed to have missed quite a few days of work lately. Not that anyone took attendance, naturally, but was everything all right at home? It was? And with Vanessa, too? Yes? Marvelous, Claire Alvarez assured her, just marvelous. Oh, and, by the way, should she happen to have the chance, she wouldn’t mind, would she—only if it comes up in conversation, naturally!—but perhaps she wouldn’t mind mentioning to her husband that the div school was still hoping that Lombard Hall would look favorably on the request for a supplemental capital appropriation to help with the chapel roof?

That same night Julia drove up to Saint Matthias, because the church was open late for the weekly prayer meeting, and, feeling foolish, spent over an hour afterward straightening up the books in the pews—
no, please, I don’t need help, I can handle it, thanks!
—still without result.

Another day, at Kepler, she pulled Suzanne de Broglie aside after a faculty lunch, because Suzanne spent more time in the archives than any other professor. Suzanne, always impatient around actual people, cut her off before the question was finished. The sub-basement, she said. That was the level of the stacks used least. The sub-basement.

Now it was Friday night, and Julia, still agitated, settled at the piano, because the other way she relaxed was to play. Jeannie was sleeping over with friends, and Lemaster was out of town again, so it was just Julia and Vanessa in the house. Vanessa had her door closed and, very likely, her earphones on. She would not be disturbed. So Julia did a couple of finger exercises and then began to play. Not classical this time but her beloved Broadway. She did a medley from
The King and I,
and another from
The Sound of Music,
stopping here and there because the instrument seemed to be in need of a tuning. She remembered Tonya Montez sitting at the keyboard and wondered whether the chief Sister Lady might have damaged something when she slammed the lid. She grew irritated. This piano was worth a fortune. Duke Ellington had played it, often. And Tonya had treated it like a—

Wait.

Was it possible?

Julia went upstairs to the master suite, opened the drawer of her vanity, pulled out Granny Vee’s mirror, the one Seth Zant had returned to her after Kellen held it hostage for twenty years. She turned on the lights around the dressing mirror, held up the William Comyns to examine its back. Yes, as she had thought before. The
W
•
C
hallmark had been scratched out, replaced with backward letters that, translated, were
E
•
K.

Granny Vee’s mirror.
E
•
K.

Duke Ellington’s given names, as jazz fans and everyone of a certain age in the darker nation knew, were Edward Kennedy.

Edward Kennedy Ellington.

Back down in the living room, she examined the piano. She did not pause to ask herself how Kellen could have gotten into the house to hide whatever he hid. Knowing he had done so was enough. This was why he had come to the house the night he died. He wanted to retrieve whatever he had left here, but saw the sitter’s car, panicked, turned, sideswiped the lampposts on his way to the road.

Julia began to search. She looked inside the piano bench, but there was only the sheet music. She looked under it. She looked inside the piano. Under it. In every cranny. And saw nothing. Not a scratched message, not a piece of paper, not a photograph.

Nothing.

Julia stood up, frustrated and sweating. All right, she had erred. Suppose she had the
E
•
K
right, but not the piano. Could Kellen have meant Amaretta’s Harlem townhouse, where the piano used to sit? But she had just been there—

A footfall behind her.

“Dance with me,” said Vanessa, her voice soft and caressing. “Like you did last month. I liked that.”

“It’s late, honey. I think—”

“Just for a little while? Please?”

How could she refuse? So dance they did, in the family room, gently, as smooth jazz played. Probably they wept a bit, but neither discussed it. When Julia at last tiptoed into her bedroom, it was well past one. She used the bathroom and hung up her robe, and found on her pillow a long white envelope. She remembered her daughter’s long-ago habit of leaving little scraps of paper around to tell Mommy she loved her.

That girl, said Julia to herself, smiling.

Then she noticed the bits of tape hanging off it and bits of shellac hanging off the tape.

“Is that what you were looking for?” asked Vanessa, who had crept up behind her again.

(II)

“Y
OU FIND EVERYTHING
,” said Julia, frustration and admiration mixed in her tone. As a small child, Vanessa had spoiled more than one Christmas Eve by gleefully announcing that she had discovered where Mommy and Daddy had hidden the presents. Finally, they had stopped hiding them at home.

“Most things,” said Vanessa complacently.

“Have you—”

“Read them? Uh-huh. It’s pages from some guy’s diary.” She took the envelope from her mother, but only to pull out the sheaf and hand it over. “All the reasons DeShaun couldn’t have done it. Like how Gina’s prints weren’t in the car, or Gina’s blood, and how the fact that somebody saw them talking doesn’t mean she ever got into the car. Look at the last page.” Julia, reading fast, had found the place already. “See what he says there? He wanted to investigate some more, but they wouldn’t let him. He said he and his deputy went to this meeting, and at the meeting they ordered him to stop.” She had to stop for a moment to allow her mouth to catch up with her mind. “Only the thing is, he doesn’t say who was at the meeting. I don’t know why you care,” Vanessa continued, one hand trembling. “It was DeShaun. Anybody who says it wasn’t, is lying. I’m like the world’s leading expert—”

“Why are you so adamant, honey?”

“I’m not adamant. I’m right.”

“You know I have to check. I have to be sure.”

Voice suddenly small: “I know.”

Julia read the pages for a third time. Nothing new here, except for one tiny phrase.

Julia looked at her daughter. The braids had fallen in front of Vanessa’s face so that her voice seemed disembodied. “Moms? Are you okay?”

Julia said, “This changes everything.”