The Pact (10 page)

Glad to have that out of the way, I picked up my empty soda can and the folder. I could still hear the sound of the water running through the closed door to Peter’s room. Clearly, he, too, had felt the need for a long, hot shower after absorbing the news. If I were Hilary, I probably would have offered to help him scrub his back.

Instead, I went back downstairs. I ran into Matthew talking to Mrs. Furlong on the second-floor landing.

“How’s Emma?” he was asking her.

“She’s asleep, poor dear. We gave her a pretty hefty sedative. It’s probably the best thing for her, right now.”

“What exactly did you give her?” he asked in his professional voice. “Not to lecture or anything, but you really shouldn’t be administering medication that wasn’t prescribed. I’ve got my medical bag with me. If she’d needed anything, I could have given it to her.”

“Oh, Mattie,” Mrs. Furlong said, brushing away his concern with a smile. “It’s always hard to believe that you’re all grown-up, let alone that you’ve graduated medical school. But you have nothing to worry about. We were very careful. There were some painkillers left over from what Jacob was prescribed after the knee surgery he had last year. I only gave her half of one, and it knocked her right out.”

“I should probably go look in on her,” said Matthew.

“Oh, let her sleep for a little while, darling,” she urged him, placing a restraining hand on his arm. “Don’t disturb her yet. It’s going to be such a terrible day for her once she does wake up. There’s no need to rush it.” They both turned when they heard me approach.

“How are you doing, Rachel?” Mrs. Furlong asked. “Have you managed to make all of your calls?”

I nodded. “I was just going to check in with everyone else to see if I could help them finish. I’m sorry to ask you this, but would it be all right if my office faxed some papers to Mr. Furlong’s fax machine?”

She made a sympathetic noise. “Do those people never let you rest? Please feel free to have them send whatever they need. The fax machine is in Jacob’s study.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Now, Matthew, the police will probably want to talk to Jacob and me first. He’s in his studio?” Her voice didn’t betray that she’d referred to her husband as a bastard barely an hour before.

Matthew shifted uncomfortably. “Um, I think so.”

“Well, he’ll have to come up to the house. Will you call him?”

“Sure,” he agreed. He gave me a reassuring look as I passed and then followed Mrs. Furlong down the stairs to the first floor.

I found Mr. Furlong’s study empty except for Luisa, who was on the phone having a conversation with a wedding guest that sounded as awkward as the conversations I’d just concluded with the few people I’d reached in person.

She glanced up when I came in, and her harried look told me that she was enjoying the task even less than I had, although she seemed to be handling it with infinitely more grace. She wasn’t rushing people hurriedly off the phone. “—an accident,” she was saying. “Yes, I’m afraid that’s all I can say at this point. Yes, Emma’s fine, everyone’s fine. I’m sure they’ll be in touch with you soon. I’ll give them your regards, of course.”

Whoever was on the other end continued to talk, and Luisa was too polite to do anything but make courteous replies. Remembering my conversation with Stan, I turned my attention to the fax machine that sat on a small table in the corner. Its digital screen displayed its direct number, which I hastily scribbled on a piece of paper. Then I picked up the receiver attached to the machine and called Office Services at Winslow, Brown.

Office Services—or OS, as it was commonly referred to—occupied a full floor of Winslow, Brown’s Wall Street building and housed all the equipment and personnel that enable an investment bank to crank out documents twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. I often thought that if God were an environmentalist, all investment bankers were doomed to hell. I’d already gone through forests worth of paper in my relatively short career.

A corps of aspiring artists, musicians, actors and writers manned the fleet of copiers and word processors that comprised the OS infrastructure. These creative souls were by far the most interesting group you’d find anywhere within the walls of the firm. Winslow, Brown offered them decent pay, flexible hours, and superb benefits, allowing them to pay their rent and put food on the table while they struggled to make it big.

Cora, the weekend supervisor, answered the phone, and I greeted her warmly. She had played the role of savior several times during my banking career, managing to turn battered piles of handwritten papers into sleek, colorful, neatly bound presentations in record time. She was a middle-aged, nondescript woman who had published several mysteries set in medieval Germany. I’d read a couple of them and been impressed. Alas, the market for her work was small, and Cora needed Winslow, Brown to make ends meet.

Cora and I spoke for several minutes—the way I saw it, nothing but good could come out of being friendly with the OS staff. And Cora knew all about my relationships in the publishing world and was always eager to learn useful news or gossip. Eventually I brought the conversation around to Stan. She had the papers he had sent for me and promised to fax them through shortly. We commiserated a bit about our fearless leader (apparently, the original documents she’d received bore evidence of being used as a coaster), and she urged me to call if I needed anything else.

I thanked her and hung up the phone just as Luisa finished her conversation. The expression on her face was pure exasperation.

“That was a talkative one,” I commented.

“If you only knew. I thought she’d never shut up. Fortunately, she was the last on my list. This is beginning to qualify as one of the worst mornings I’ve ever had.” She reached for the carafe of coffee and topped off her mug.

“If it makes you feel any better, I just got to tell Peter what happened. He’s one of the few people here who seemed genuinely upset by the news. But he still volunteered to call Richard’s mother, thankfully. I think that would have put me right over the edge.”

“Gracious. How did he manage to sleep through all the noise before?”

“Earplugs and a sleeping pill,” I explained.

She raised an eyebrow. “Impressive. It was quite a commotion.”

“I guess he travels frequently. I know lots of people who use earplugs when they travel.”

“And is Peter as handsome when he’s upset as he was last night?” She had a mischievous glint in her eye.

“Of course. Not that I noticed.” We both laughed. I settled into one of the big leather club chairs opposite the desk, and Luisa lit a cigarette.

“Well, perhaps this isn’t the most auspicious weekend for romance, but surely it will be a good test of his mettle,” she observed.

“And mettle is so attractive,” I agreed.

She smiled, and we fell into a companionable silence. I watched as the smoke from her cigarette spiraled lazily upwards, pierced by shafts of light streaming in through the windows. She was her usual elegant self, dressed in a black linen sheath and black sandals. I only had to look at linen before it started to crumple, but the material looked crisp and cool on her. A bright streak of prematurely white hair ran from one temple back to the knot at her nape. It would have aged anyone else, but on Luisa it just added to her allure.

Without thinking, I asked the question I’d wanted to ask for years.

“What really happened that night?”

She sighed. Somebody else would probably have pretended not to know what I was talking about, would have feigned incomprehension. But Luisa understood immediately.

“He raped me,” she said. “But you must have figured that out.” She inhaled deeply on her cigarette.

I
mages from the night in question flashed before my eyes. It was freshman year, and we were at a Valentine’s Day party, an annual event hosted by the Hasty Pudding Club. Its theme was Leather and Lace—partygoers were supposed to dress in one or the other—and it had a reputation as an unusually wild event, with hundreds of the Type A overachievers who made up much of the Harvard student body drinking to excess and shedding their inhibitions both on one night.

I’d had my eye on a sophomore from my English survey course, attracted by his brooding good looks and the exquisite doodles he drew in the margins of his
Norton Anthology of English Literature
(I sat behind him in class whenever I could). I ran into him early in the evening, he asked me to dance above the thrashing chords of the latest New Order single, and one dance melted seamlessly into another. From the limited conversation we could have over the heart-throbbing pulse of the music, I was thrilled to learn that he seemed to have all of the various neuroses that I found appealing.

We stopped for a drink between dances, and I was waiting patiently for him to return from the bar when I caught sight of Luisa across the room, standing by the window and smoking a cigarette. Richard sidled up to her and handed her a drink, which she accepted. I saw them again a few minutes later, still by the window, deep in conversation. I didn’t think much of it at the time.

Luisa didn’t tell anyone but her closest friends that she was gay until well after college, and during her years at Harvard she was pursued by scores of men. While Harvard had its fair share of beauties and heiresses and even some beautiful heiresses, Luisa had an air of mystery and sensuality that distinguished her from the hordes of field hockey players and lockjawed debutantes. Luisa’s family, the Caselanzas, practically owned a small Latin American country, and Luisa had the sort of self-assurance that only comes with great wealth and beauty. While most freshman girls rushed about Harvard Yard in jeans and turtleneck sweaters, Luisa’s wardrobe was a study in understated sophistication. Her sweaters were of the finest cashmere or silk and her trousers and slim skirts fit her subtle curves in a way that only expert tailors could achieve. Her long black hair was invariably pulled back into a plain knot or ponytail, except for the occasional formal event when she allowed it to cascade magnificently down her back. Her eyes were large and dark in a fine-boned face, and her lips were full.

Luisa had been the first of my friends to meet Richard, which wasn’t surprising. She lived with Jane freshman year, across the hall from Emma and me and upstairs from Hilary in Strauss Hall. We were all a bit scared of her at first, although she quickly won us over with her sly sense of humor. Still, we couldn’t help but be in awe of the men who lined up at her door. Her suitors included the president of the Porcellian (the oldest, most exclusive, and most secretive of the finals clubs), the president of the Lampoon (widely rumored to be homosexual but apparently willing to make an exception in Luisa’s case), the most eligible Kennedy cousin in Boston, and the son of an exiled Middle Eastern potentate. Luisa allowed each of them to take her to dinner precisely once before politely rejecting further invitations. In all but the most unusual cases, the rejections seemed to make her suitors more determined, judging by the flowers that arrived daily.

One of Luisa’s most aggressive pursuers was Richard. On a crisp fall day, I came upon the two of them standing in front of our entryway when I returned from class. Next to Luisa, I always felt scrawny and gauche and as worldly as a four-year-old. Luisa greeted me and introduced me to Richard, and I stopped to talk to them both. She seemed relieved that I’d shown up, whereas Richard was visibly annoyed at the interruption. After a few minutes of awkward three-way conversation I excused myself. Luisa made her excuses as well.

“So, I’ll see you on Wednesday? In class?” Richard asked Luisa.

“Hmm,” replied Luisa noncommittally, allowing the door to swing shut behind us. “Creepy,” she muttered as we climbed up the three flights to our rooms on the fourth floor.

“Him?”

“Yes. Very creepy.”

“I thought he seemed nice. Cute.” At seventeen, my skills of perception were all but nonexistent. Not that they were so finely tuned at thirty.

Luisa paused on the landing between the second and third floors and turned to face me. Her brow furrowed as she chose her words. “There’s something sort of off about him. He seems great, you know, good-looking and friendly and all that, but there’s something there that bothers me. I don’t know what it is—I can’t put my finger on it. He followed me out of class and started talking to me and then he ended up walking me back here. I got this sense that he’s been watching me for a while.”

“Of course he has, Luisa. Every man on campus has been watching you,” I said as we continued our trudge up the stairs.

“That’s not what I mean, Rachel. I can’t explain it. It’s what—about a five-minute walk, not even, from Sever Hall to here—and he must have mentioned three or four things that nobody could know about me unless he’d been…observing me. Stupid things—he knows I’m left-handed—but it’s like he’s keeping a file on me somewhere. And he seemed to know automatically that I lived in Strauss.” She gave an involuntary shudder.

I don’t remember how I responded. I probably said something reassuring—but I also thought to myself that I wished I had Luisa’s problems—exciting upperclassmen didn’t seem to be noticing me at all.

Luisa never did accept any of Richard’s invitations for a date, and she maintained a polite but chilly distance from him when she saw him. But we began running into him a lot, mostly because Sean began inviting us to parties at his and Richard’s club. We had many a debate as to whether or not we should grace this club or any other with our presence in light of their unabashed refusal to consider women as members and their general odor of snobbery. But, as Hilary frequently pointed out, a free drink was a free drink, and besides, how better to dismantle the establishment than from within? We felt conflicted but we went when Sean invited us, and we usually enjoyed ourselves.

The odds of running into Richard during one of these evenings out were high. Especially since Richard was all but stalking Luisa, to her disgust. He appeared around every corner—whether at the library or in class or running errands in Harvard Square—at least that’s how it seemed to Luisa, who confessed her annoyance and vague fear to me in a rare moment of intimacy. To say rare was not an exaggeration—Luisa was the most self-contained person I’d ever known. Maybe part of the reason the men flocked to her door was the lure of unplumbed depths in her eyes.

It was thus curious to see Richard and Luisa talking together that night at the Pudding, but I was too busy pursuing my own romantic objectives to pay much attention. At some point, they must have left, because I didn’t see them again that evening.

My new friend and I were at the party until 2:00 a.m., and then we went on to a late-night gathering in Adams House. We ended up at the Tasty in the wee hours of the morning. The Tasty was a small and downtrodden diner, a Harvard Square landmark that has recently been converted to a Gap or Starbucks or a similar outlet of a generic chain. He ate a hot dog and I sipped hot chocolate as the sky began to lighten. Exhausted, and with the unfortunate knowledge that I had a paper to complete the next day, I eventually let him escort me across Mass. Ave. back to Strauss before giving him a chaste kiss at the door and sending him on his way. I was searching my coat pockets for my keys when Luisa came barreling out of the entryway.

“Oh!” she cried. We were both startled.

“Luisa? Where are you going?” She was wearing a long dark coat and had a leather satchel slung over her shoulder

“To see my sister,” she said, visibly flustered. Luisa’s sister was several years older than us and lived in New York with her husband, a banker who headed up the Caselanzas’ New York operations.

“At five in the morning?”

“There’s a train that leaves South Station at five forty-five.”

“But—when did you decide to go?” I studied her in the murky light. Her face looked gray, and there were dark circles under her eyes, which were bloodshot. She looked as if she’d been crying, I realized, shocked. I’d never seen Luisa cry. “Luisa—what’s wrong? Are you all right?” I reached out to touch her elbow.

“I’m fine,” she told me, but her voice caught on her words.

“No, you’re not. What happened?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all. I’ve got to go, or I’ll miss my train. I’ll call from New York.” With that she hurried out of the small quadrangle bordered by Strauss, Matthews, and Mass. Hall, her long dark hair streaming out behind her.

She did call later that day, with a story about her sister being upset and wanting Luisa to come down and help to take care of her niece and nephew for a few days. I didn’t believe her—if her sister had asked her to come she would have told me when I ran into her. Not to mention the fact that her sister had a veritable army of nannies and governesses to tend to her children. My suspicions were heightened when Jane mentioned that she and Sean had walked back to Eliot House with Richard and Luisa after leaving the Pudding and that the two of them seemed to be getting along surprisingly well. The couples parted at the entryway, with Richard saying that he and Luisa were going to stop by another party. Jane admitted somewhat sheepishly that her memories were a bit hazy, having had more than enough to drink.

I sat in the library that afternoon trying to work on my paper, but conflicting images of Luisa and Richard standing by the window at the Pudding and of Luisa flying out the door of Strauss in the predawn light kept running through my head. I tried to replace these images with thoughts of my own encounter with the brooding sophomore, or, at the very least, with some insights into the role played by colonial economics in the Salem Witch Trials, but I kept coming back to Luisa.

She returned midweek, cheerful and composed. I tried again to ask what had happened, but she made it clear that she had no desire to discuss the events of that evening. The only change I noticed was that she carefully avoided situations where Richard might be present—begging off Sean’s parties and studying in her room rather than the library.

Whatever happened, Richard, for his part, seemed magically to disappear afterward. I would see him every so often, across a crowded lecture hall or a smoke-filled party. I heard that he’d gone to work at a talent agency in Los Angeles after he graduated. I’d almost forgotten about him when he suddenly rematerialized at my twenty-ninth birthday party, his arm confidently slipped through Emma’s.

“I think he put something in my drink,” Luisa continued.

“Why did you never say anything?”

She shrugged in a way that only Europeans and Latinos can pull off. “What difference would it have made? It happened, it was done with. There was no erasing it. And I didn’t want everyone probing into my business. That would have been truly unbearable.”

I felt chilled to the bone, despite the summer sun that lit the room.

“Come on, Rachel, don’t look so stunned.”

“I’m not,” I blurted. “Well, I guess I am. It’s just that—given what’s happened…it wouldn’t look good. Does anybody else know? Does anybody else know what he did?”

“No. How could they? I never told anyone, and I can’t imagine that he did. Of course, when Emma and he became engaged, I thought about trying to tell her, but she seemed so set on her course. I ultimately decided that it would be a waste of time, at best.” She stubbed out one cigarette and lit another.

“Luisa,” I pressed on. She didn’t seem to understand the gravity of the situation. “You can’t tell anyone else. Please don’t tell anyone else. It really wouldn’t look good,” I repeated.

“Why, because it gives me a reason to hate Richard’s guts and explains why I would rather have seen him dead than married to Emma?”

“There’s that,” I said, laughing despite myself, although even I could hear the slightly hysterical edge to my laughter. I told her what I’d overheard on the phone—the detective’s belief that Richard had been poisoned in some way and then shoved in the pool in an attempt to cover up the murder.

She sipped her coffee, absorbing the information. “Well, nobody will be shocked by that. Of course he was murdered.”

“But if the police think so, too—they have no choice but to figure out who did it.” What I didn’t say but left unspoken was that I couldn’t see any benefit in handing them Luisa’s motive.

“Well, I have no desire to tell them. Whoever did kill him certainly has my blessings. That said, I don’t see any reason to point the finger at myself.” She paused and then added in a thoughtful tone, “Wouldn’t it be a sort of poetic justice, though, if they found out that somebody had put something in his drink?” She smiled and lit yet another cigarette, forgetting about the one she already had burning in the ashtray. This uncharacteristic absentmindedness was the only indication she gave that she was even the least bit disconcerted.

I didn’t reply. I was contemplating poetic justice and the many different forms it could take.

“Buck up, darling,” she said to me, narrowing her eyes through the smoke. “It looks like we’re in for quite an interesting weekend.”