The Spire (25 page)

An older woman tended bar. Though Darrow had never seen Angela's mother, he could not have mistaken her'slender, she had a faded version of Angela's prettiness and grace. As with many black women in middle age, her eyes were older than her face, staring at Darrow with hostile weariness from a lineless mask. She held his gaze until he felt impelled to take a seat at the bar.

As he did, two men at the other end shot him a glance. The woman approached him, looking hard into Darrow's face. 'So,' she said curtly. 'Do ghosts drink liquor''

Darrow did not respond to this. 'Hello, Mrs. Hall.'

She laid her hands flat on the bar. 'You're the last person I'd expect to see here.'

Darrow nodded slightly. 'If that dredges up hard feelings, I apologize.'

'Hard memories,' she said coldly. 'You were one of the last to see my daughter alive, the first to see her dead. Except for your friend. I don't need you to remind me of how she looked when he got through.'

Darrow weighed his response. 'I can't claim to know how you feel, Mrs. Hall. But Angela and I were becoming friends. How she died still makes no sense to me.'

She stared at him, repelling sympathy. 'Do you want a drink, or not''

'Cutty Sark, neat.' Darrow was glad he had not eaten the doughnut.

After a time, she brought him his scotch, then watched him take a sip. '_What_ made no sense'' she demanded.

'Something feels like it's missing.' Darrow hesitated. 'The night I saw her, she was drinking to get drunk. I didn't know her that well, but it bothered me enough to offer to drive her home.'

Her voice softened slightly. 'Lord knows I wish you had.'

'She didn't want to go. It was like she was on a mission that night, but wouldn't talk about it.'

'Maybe you're seeing a mystery where there was no mystery.' Maggie Hall looked around herself, then back at Darrow, a sudden film appearing in her eyes. 'Maybe, for once, my daughter wanted to escape. That's nothing to die over.'

Darrow cocked his head. 'Escape from what, Mrs. Hall''

'From being so
good
all the time. If you knew her at all, you must know that much'working to meet expenses, studying late at night to keep from losing her scholarship, always scared to death of failure.'

'Or just driven to succeed. I know she was set on going to a good law school.'

Maggie Hall's eyes grew distant. 'That was always her dream. Angela was the child with dreams.'

The last was spoken with deep sadness, perhaps a hint of disdain for the child who had survived. Softly, Darrow said, 'Still, working like that had been her life for all four years. Did something happen to make that harder''

She gave him a probing look. 'Maybe my girl just wore out. Why does any of this matter to you now''

'Because I became part of it, and it's still with me.' He took another swallow of scotch. 'I guess you know they made me president of Caldwell.'

'Who doesn't' It's like the pope showed up, except you're not wearing a dress.'

Darrow knew better than to smile. 'Fred Bender's our chief of security. The other day, I asked him about Angela. Fred gave me the sense that her life had changed in her last few months.'

The woman's face closed. Relinquishing secrets about a child was hard, Darrow surmised'even a dead child. Maggie Hall had spoken to Bender in anguish and then, perhaps, with Angela buried and Steve convicted, reinterred her daughter in memory as the near-perfect striver. Now Darrow was digging her up.

'What good is this'' Maggie Hall said flatly. 'She's dead.'

'The reason still matters,' Darrow answered. 'After law school, I spent time prosecuting homicide cases. I can't help thinking about Angela. How she died and where I found her aren't quite adding up for me.'

In a guarded tone, Hall said, 'I don't follow.'

'Steve Tillman still says Angela told him she needed to go somewhere''

'What
would
he say'' Hall snapped. 'It was two o'clock in the morning. Think my girl was going to the movies''

'I understand your feelings about Steve. But suppose, just for a moment, that he was telling the truth. You told Fred Bender that Angela had started disappearing at night'that you didn't know where, and it wasn't like her.'

Staring at the lacquered bar, Hall briefly closed her eyes. 'I thought maybe it was to sleep with someone. A new guy called for her a couple of times'sounded like a white college boy, but he wouldn't leave his name or number.'

Surprised, Darrow asked, 'Do you think it was Steve''

'I didn't know. But I asked her about it, the whole business of sneaking out,' she said in a muted tone. 'Angela got real angry. Her late father hadn't left us anything, she said, and I wasn't
paying
for anything. So I had no right to ask about her life, or how she made her way in the world.'

'Did she often get that angry''

'This was more like being defensive,' Hall answered in a parched voice, 'like I'd said out loud she was selling herself. So I asked her if she was.

'The girl just stared at me. 'You don't understand me at all,' she said. 'You don't understand my life at all.' ' Hall's tone became harsher. 'I wanted to bury the hurt of what she said, and the trial helped me do that. Or I think I'd have died from the hole in my heart.'

Darrow wondered what right he had to strip-mine this woman's pain. But in the brutal logic of the law, someone should have done it long ago'certainly Steve Tillman's lawyer. 'Fred Bender said you thought she was keeping a diary. I guess you don't know what happened to it, or what was in it.'

Hall shook her head, either in affirmation or refusal to speak. After a moment, she said, 'Finish your drink, Mr. Darrow. And please don't come back here again.'

Darrow nodded. Maggie Hall's decision not to spy on her daughter, he supposed, had become her deepest wound: she was afraid that by shrinking from the truth she had caused Angela's death. Only Steve Tillman's guilt could salve her own.

Darrow paid for the drink and left.

L

OOKING AHEAD TO F RIDAY NIGHT, T AYLOR PROPOSED TO provide their dinner. She enjoyed cooking, she explained, and they had largely exhausted Wayne's cuisine. All she needed was to borrow Darrow's kitchen. 'With all respect,' she told him, 'I don't want your provost hovering around.'

Laughing, Darrow said that was fine. He found himself looking forward to the evening.

The day was crystalline'electric-blue sky, a light pleasant breeze, little dampness in the air. Taylor called him in midafternoon, suggesting a change of plans. 'Would you mind going to the riverbank'' she asked. 'I haven't been there for a very long time.'

Something in her tone suggested that this was more than a whim spurred by lovely weather. 'Sure,' Darrow said. 'Do you want me to pick up something''

'Maybe some wine,' she answered. 'I'll pull together a gourmet picnic from the heartland.'

For whatever reason, she sounded preoccupied. 'I'll bring a nice bottle,' he said.

DARROW PICKED HER up in his convertible. As they drove up Scioto Street with the top down, he was suddenly aware of the impression'or misimpression'they might make: the president of Caldwell and his provost's daughter cruising through town, wind blowing her raven hair. 'I think maybe I should garage the car,' Darrow remarked. 'It's beginning to feel a little ostentatious.'

Smiling, Taylor did not answer. After a time she said, 'I should give you directions.'

'I know the way. I used to go out there all the time.'

'Up to no good, I suppose.'

Darrow grinned. 'Depends on your point of view.'

'I can imagine. But if you don't mind not reliving your off-the-field highlights, there's a place I'd like us to go.'

As they sped through the sloping countryside, nearing the river, Taylor became quieter. 'You okay'' he asked.

She turned to him. 'This is going to sound kind of weird. We're going where my parents used to take me when I was young, to swim and picnic. But the last time I went there was with my father, to scatter my mother's ashes. I've never been able to go back.'

Darrow thought of visiting his mother's grave. 'Memories have their undertow,' he said. 'Sometimes it's best to face them.'

Taylor gave him a pensive look. Perhaps, Darrow realized, she thought he was remembering his wife. But, this time, he had not been.

FLANKED BY TREES and grassy banks, the Miami River resembled a wide creek, perhaps a hundred feet across, its waters so serene and still that they barely created a ripple. At once Darrow thought of riverbank parties, fraternity raft races, dope and beer and sex at night in the grass. But Taylor's images, it seemed, began with the dawn of her memory.

They sat on a blanket in the light of summer's longest evening, drinking red Tuscan wine from plastic glasses. 'At first,' Taylor told him, 'my dad would carry me in on his shoulders. When I was five, he gave me swimming lessons'sometimes a bit impatiently, like I was in boot camp for kindergartners. But I learned to swim, and not to be afraid. Fear, he always insisted, should be mastered.'

Darrow tried to imagine Lionel Farr as the father of a little girl. 'Did your mother swim as well''

'She watched us, mainly. Often she'd write poetry or something in a journal she kept; other times she painted. Sometimes I'd see her smiling at me.' Taylor's face clouded. 'Most of these memories are from when I was six or seven. I don't remember her coming here much after that. Maybe it was her heart.'

'Was that always a problem''

Taylor spread pesto on two crackers and put them on Darrow's paper plate. 'I don't really know. What I recall so vividly is finding her on the kitchen floor, unconscious, blood coming from her nose. My dad stayed calm'by the time the doctor arrived, she'd recovered.' Taylor gazed out at the water. 'Both my parents tried to reassure me. But every day until she died I worried that I'd lose her.'

Darrow watched her face, filling with remembrance of a child's fears. 'I came over that night, remember''

'Did you'' Turning, Taylor smiled a little. 'I don't recall that, so I
must
have been devastated. When I was young, you showing up was a real highlight.'

Though she said this lightly, Darrow sensed she was not joking. 'I didn't know I'd made such an impression.'

'Part of it was your smile.' Saying this, Taylor's own faint smile lingered. 'That, and the way you talked with me, and listened.'

Recalling her own vulnerability, Darrow reflected, seemed to soften her a little. 'I remember everything about that day,' he told her. 'I came to tell your dad that Steve Tillman had been arrested.'

Taylor shook her head. 'Something so important to you, and for me it's like you were never there. The only other part I remember is sitting in the living room, the two of them trying to reassure me. My mother had a heart condition, she explained'sometimes her blood pressure would drop suddenly and she'd just pass out. There was medication for it; I needn't worry. I fought back tears: somehow it was important to show them'him, really'that I wasn't afraid. Then my mother promised that she'd always be there for me.'

Her deep blue eyes, though directed at Darrow, seemed focused on the past. 'But you didn't believe her.'

'No. Her promise scared me more than anything else they'd said. That was when I knew she wasn't like other moms, that she might leave me in an instant. After that, whenever I'd come back from school, I'd go through the house, heart in my throat, until I found her. When I did, she'd smile'in a sad and knowing kind of way, I think now'and give me a hug.'

To fear losing a mother, Darrow reflected, must have been haunting for a girl that young. He wondered whether Taylor's fear had been more long-standing and intuitive, preceding her discovery of Anne lying unconscious on the kitchen floor. That might explain the solemnity of the lovely child he remembered and, perhaps, her retreat into painting and drawing. 'She hugged me every day,' Taylor concluded simply. 'Five months' worth of hugs, and she was gone.'

Darrow nodded. 'I went to class that morning, and Lionel wasn't there. You found her, didn't you''

'Yes.' Taylor paused, as though summoning the will to say more. When she did, her words were so vivid that Darrow, listening, could imagine how she felt.

IT WAS A bright spring morning, a little before eight o'clock. That semester her father taught an early class, so Anne drove Taylor to school. But on this day her mother did not seem to have awakened.

Tentative, Taylor walked down the hallway to Anne's bedroom. Her parents had begun sleeping apart'her father was a restless sleeper, Anne had told her recently, with dreams that seemed to surface from the murky void of Vietnam. Leaning her face against the bedroom door, Taylor heard no stirring. She knocked on the door, and still there was no sound.

Taylor steeled herself, then cracked open the bedroom door.

She half-expected'deeply hoped'to find her mother stirring. Instead, Anne lay on top of the covers, still and very pale. Something about the cast of her face did not resemble sleep; it was as though, Taylor thought, her soul had left behind a shell.

Taylor could not touch her. Turning, she rushed out the door and ran toward the campus, heart pounding wildly, tears streaming down her face. She arrived at her father's classroom out of breath.

He saw her standing in the doorway and knew at once what must have happened.

Calmly, Farr faced his students and explained that he had to leave. Then he took her by the hand, his grip firm, and hurried across the campus, urging Taylor to run with him as fast as she could.

Reaching the house, he paused briefly at the door, then pushed it open. 'Where is she'' he asked.

Mute, Taylor pointed toward Anne's bedroom. Her father swiftly climbed the stairs, Taylor following.

The bedroom door was open. Her father knelt by the bed, feeling for Anne Farr's pulse. Briefly, Taylor saw his eyes shut, and then he turned to her.

'She's gone,' he told her gently.

LISTENING, D ARROW REMEMBERED Farr kneeling by a murdered girl, the beginning of a terrible, tragic year. Now he wondered if Farr had thought of Angela Hall as he pronounced his own wife dead.