Till the End of Tom (7 page)

“Interestin’, of course,” Mackenzie said. “An’ undoubtedly troublin’, but I’m still unable to see what you want of us.”

“Proof,” she said firmly. “Proof that he murdered Tomas.”

“He? Who?”

“Cornelius, of course.”

“But he wasn’t in the building,” I said. “How—”

“How do you know who was there?” she snapped back, and I could sense how it must have been to deal with her when she was guardian of Ingrid Severin’s calendar. “You weren’t on the spot when this happened, and surely there’s more than one exit.”

“But why kill him there? Assuming anybody wanted to do such a thing, and assuming there was ongoing strife—why there?”

“I don’t pretend to understand Mr. Westerly,” she said. “Nor do I wish to. What I do understand is that he’s an opportunist, and he has no scruples. If there was a sudden opportunity, he would seize it. Trust me on that.”

“How would he even know where Tomas—Mr. Severin—was going to be?” I asked.

She looked at me, too quickly, and then at Mackenzie, and then down at her pale pink nail polish. “They had an appointment midmorning at the lawyer’s office. I have no idea what was decided, but I do know there had been all-out war about the inheritance and time was running out. Ingrid’s memory is fading rapidly, and it was apparent to all of us that if she didn’t make the changes in her will soon, then it was probable no responsible lawyer would ever allow her to do so in the future. Tomas—of course he was concerned and trying to slow the process. Hence, the rush and the conflict. You see how reprehensible Cornelius is? And then—just when it appeared that sanity was going to reign and Cornelius would get nothing, which is precisely what he deserves—his opponent in the struggle dies in a most peculiar place and manner a mere hour or two after they’d had a meeting that was surely rife with discord.”

Her theory was porous, to put it mildly. Without thinking about it, I came up with objections and questions about the motive and the drug, including how Cornelius would have administered it, where he’d have gotten it, whether she was suggesting that he always toted it in case he was going to a rave, or was in the mood for rape—or found himself with the opportunity to kill his fiancée’s son. But I also remembered Sasha saying that Tom Severin had a vodka martini before lunch because he’d had an upsetting morning.

“The man is a disgrace,” Ms. Koepple said. “A gigolo preying on a woman who could be his grandmother, and who is barely holding on to her sanity. Who will speak for her if not me? She’s lost the son she loved above all things until her mind started going soft. And soon, the son’s children will lose their rightful inheritance, thanks to this dreadful man.”

I tried to generate compassion for the children who, after splitting up millions of dollars, were going to be denied the consolation of bonus apartment buildings when grandma died. “Has anyone in the family gone to the police?”

She shrugged. “This is not the sort of family you see on TV sitcoms. As I mentioned, Mr. Severin was in the process of divorcing his wife.”

“How about his other wives?” Mackenzie asked.

She rolled her eyes. “Ex-wives,” she corrected him. “As far as I can tell, they’d have killed him themselves if they could.”

“Not friendly divorces?” Mackenzie said.

Once again she raised her eyebrows. “Tomas doesn’t—did not—wear well with women, although there were always lots of them. Until a week ago or so, he had number four waiting in the wings. She considered herself engaged to him, although . . .” She shook her head slowly back and forth, not willing to actually mention, out loud, the simple fact that a man is not supposed to have become betrothed while he’s still very much married to another woman.

“What happened to her?” If she was referring to Sasha, I’d know Penelope Koepple was prone to overstatement. Not even Sasha believed the relationship had gone that far.

But she was talking about somebody else. “He grew tired of her, of Georgeanne—or, more specifically, tired of the prenuptial agreement, of the squabbling over it, of the greed. That’s what I understand. No great loss. From what I’ve observed, she’s a better match for Cornelius than she would have been for Tomas, not to speak ill of the dead’s choice in spouses, though he surely wasn’t good at picking them. But the fact is, birds of a feather, and Georgeanne is Cornelius’s friend. Childhood friend, she says, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re the actual couple and this combined attack is all part of their plan.”

My head swam with wives present, intended, discarded, and prevented. Ms. Koepple’s theory of Cornelius and Georgeanne working in cahoots—he’d take the mother and she’d take the son, and they’d have the billions together—was too convoluted for what I knew of reality.

And where did Sasha fit in here? Or had she had a niche of her own at all?

“I have to once again advise you to go to the police.” Mackenzie’s voice dragged at the edges.

“And I would once again remind you that if I were to do so, Ingrid would fire me the first lucid moment she had. And even if she didn’t, I fear retribution from Cornelius. I consider him a dangerous man. Yet even so, if I had anything besides my convictions and the obvious two plus two of the situation, I would go to them, but what do I have? The fruits of long observation—a distrust of and disgust with this man and nothing else. They would laugh at me.”

Mackenzie leaned closer to her, and in his most winningly soft-voweled Louisiana bayou voice, he said, “What is it you want of us in that case?” It was a sweet, almost lulling sound, and I could tell by it just how exceedingly, nearly critically impatient he’d become at this point.

“I want you to find whatever would give me a case to take to the police. Isn’t that what you do? I have no idea how to find out who he really is, or what was or wasn’t said in the meeting, but you do.”

The money would be welcome, but not right now. Not with an already overflowing plate, with the wedding witches and their ridiculous all-consuming plans. I had already talked with Mackenzie about cutting back here until after the wedding, and he agreed. In fact, he thought we both should because he, too, was feeling overburdened and pressured.

So no. Not possibly.

“I’m hiring you,” she informed—not asked—Mackenzie. “That’s what I’m doing.”

He nodded.

What was this? I wasn’t asking for us to have extrasensory perception or acute sensitivity, simply to remember what we’d talked about. Maybe Mackenzie no longer felt overworked. Maybe he’d reached a state of inner peace he hadn’t told me about, and he felt ready to accept additional work on his own. I didn’t see how, but what else could account for this?

“But you must understand, Ms. Koepple, that Ms. Pepper and I are a team, so when you hire one of us, you hire the other as well. We work together.”

“I understood she was a schoolteacher.”

I had obviously disappeared while I wasn’t looking—to both of them. He didn’t remember what I’d said about cutting back, and she didn’t even remember that I was sitting beside her. I cleared my throat.

“She is also an investigator,” Mackenzie said.

That wasn’t 100 percent accurate, but a schoolteacher-clerk doesn’t have the same punch.

“I understand.” She looked at me this time, and nodded. “Actually, I surmised as much from the minute I read the newspaper story. I only meant your other duties might . . .” She let go of that. “Now I am sure there are practical details to be arranged, such as your fees and retainer, and how to bill me, as I would not like any bills arriving at the household.”

Her efficiency and thoroughness were commendable. She must have been a hell of a social secretary. I wondered if Mackenzie would approve of a barter system. We’d handle Penelope’s fears, and she’d handle mine. Let her deal with my mother. It would be just her cup of tea. With the smallest dash of cream.

Seven

T
HAT
night, Mackenzie was occupied writing a case study. He had a head start on his classmates because in this instance, he could base his paper on an investigation he himself had done ten years ago. While he was busy with reminiscence and scholarship, I Googled the Severins.

The family had definitely made their mark on history, and they were all over the Web, with Tomases dotting time lines from the revolution to the present. Our Tomas was there in an article about his successful transformation of the family’s venerable eighteenth-century company into what the writer called a “global model for the new millennium.” And global it had become, possibly more than one would want. The new owner, the multinational firm, had relocated the main plants to five Asian countries and the corporate offices to a suburb of Berlin.

I wonder how many people that had displaced, and if any of them were apt to drug Tom Severin, bash his face, and shove him down the stairs.

I also found mention of the family matriarch, Ingrid Severin, though the articles were mostly from magazines a few decades old. Apparently, Mrs. Severin the elder had been the apotheosis of fashion in her day and circles, the “benign dictator” as one of her friends had put it, of what was and wasn’t chic. “Always great fun and gracious,” other friends were quoted as saying. “And always, always outrageously stunning.” These observations were scattered through articles about banquets honoring her for her charitable work on boards, which I translated as gratitude for large donations. One brief piece mentioned a lavish birthday party Tomas had given his mother, though which birthday it celebrated remained a secret. “Who cares about numbers?” the businessman for the new millennium had asked the reporter. “She’s ageless.”

That explained a lot. You keep saying things about agelessness to your mama until she believes it and next thing you know you’ve got a thirty-two-year-old prospective step-daddy.

“Severin was worth billions,” I said, just to hear how it sounded out loud. “
Billions.
”

Mackenzie looked up from his yellow legal pad. “Sure that isn’t what his companies sold for? I mean there were shareholders and partners . . .”

“Okay. Make it a fraction of that. His portion—maybe only a single, lonely billion. I could run the household on that.”

He stood up and poured himself a glass of water. “Is it time for me to spout all those clichés about how little he can enjoy the money now, and about how money can’t buy happiness and look how happy we are without it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Good, because I’m pretty sure it bought him a heap of happiness.”

“A heap of wives, at least. Don’t you wonder about that wife? The bad-tempered one who phoned Sasha?”

He ignored me. “Frankly, if I could think of a way to be a claimant to billions, I’d be sorely tempted.”

“You could always shove Cornelius aside. Mrs. Severin the elder is still single. As are you.”

He glanced my way, then went back to work, and I returned to speculation about what the feel of billions resting under you would be like. It definitely would provide the right degree of support. I imagined it would feel spongy—a perfect shock absorber, and definitely enough to cushion every fall. Except, of course, in the case of Tomas Severin, that final one.

I
WOKE UP
with three things on my mind.

First was relief that I’d actually marked both sets of essays the night before. That sense of accomplishment was short-lived, because right on its heels came the “but what didn’t you do, Amanda?” daily reminder.

So, second was the depressing fact that I had not phoned my mother about the invitations. I had done absolutely nothing, in fact, about my pending nuptials.

And saving the worst for last—today was V-day. The day I dealt with the girls’ room problem and those who’d created it. That realization hit me with sufficient force to push me back into my pillow.

I was an English teacher. I was supposed to work on language skills, to introduce young minds to the canon of literature. I was not trained or equipped to deal with psychological or emotional hangups. I was, in fact, not expected to, either.

That’s how it went in theory, but I’m not sure who the theorists were or whether they’d ever seen a young person. A child, a teen, is a package, and one so intricately designed that all the pieces connect. The toe bone’s connected to the foot bone, and the emotional system leaks right into the psychological and intellectual one.

None of that was news, and I couldn’t lie abed regretting it. But I could resent the current conviction that the schools can cure every imaginable woe, make up for any cultural failings, any family pathology, plus unfortunate acts of God.

Nonetheless, there was nothing to do but get out of bed, reluctantly or not, and go to work.

There might be light at the end of the tunnel. Nobody could get me off the paper-marking treadmill, and nobody could take my place with the wedding belles. But there was a chance I could palm off the V-problem.

D
ESPITE MY DITHERINGS
, I arrived with time to spare, so first thing after checking in at the office, I trudged upstairs and turned left, away from my room and toward Rachel Leary’s office.

I hated doing this to her. She’d looked exhausted lately, and with good cause. She had three children under three and a husband who was becoming a long-term casualty of the burst dot-com bubble. But she was the school counselor.

“Sorry,” I said by way of greeting.

She flinched. “Skip the apology, and hit me with it.”

“Vomit.”

“Boy, am I glad you didn’t take my ‘hit me with it’ literally. But was that a command, a new way of saying you need help, or do you want to reminisce about my pregnancies?”

“None of the above. Regurgitation is the problem. Unless you count Liddy Moffat’s threat to quit as the real problem.”

“Ah . . . Liddy. Cleanup crew, so—are we talking bulimics?”

I nodded, and she waved me into the worn chair next to her desk. I started talking before my rear hit the dusty-looking upholstery.

“Everybody’s worried about obesity,” she murmured. “Me, too.” She patted her abdomen. “I count calories, drink protein shakes . . . The mother’s not the one supposed to be carrying the baby fat.”

Nor the bride. I thought about the obnoxious ads I was suddenly receiving about getting in shape for The Big Day. Somebody—and I had my suspicions who—had put my name on a list so that I was blitzed with bridal lit. This included so many remodeling suggestions that I felt as if a groom-to-be became betrothed not to the woman as she was, but to his or her fantasized version of what else she could be. According to the ads, the engagement period was the time assigned to change the contours of hip, nose, chin, breasts, even feet if the desired slippers didn’t fit properly. If exercise and portion control didn’t do it, then implants, liposuction, and surgery could. There were special discounts for the soon-to-be wed, timetables of how far in advance of The Big Day each surgery would need to be performed.

It wasn’t hard to understand how young girls acquired distorted visions of themselves, how they were trained to never be satisfied with who they were and how they appeared. After half a dozen of the ads arrived, I looked at myself differently and asked Mackenzie—only half in jest—whether I’d be a better me if I trimmed or augmented various parts.

He suggested that I should. In fact, he advocated that I add a Pinocchio-sized nose and remove my current boobs so that I’d stand out in the plasticized crowd.

He is definitely the guy for me.

I remembered why I was in this office. “So my question is, what are we supposed to do about the problem? Or maybe—are we supposed to do anything about something like that? Tell me we can’t. Can we? And if so, what would it be?”

She exhaled loudly. “How about we DNA test the girls’ room mess, and, of course, the entire student body so that we can track down the offender, tie her up, and force her to actually digest what she eats.”

“Great plan. Do you have any suggestions that approach reality?”

“Nothing short of changing the entire culture. Eliminate all ads for fried and fattening and delicious and chocolate and beer and burgers—no wonder obesity’s such a problem—but then, in order not to make them truly crazy, also eliminate all the TV shows with the incredibly thin stars, and all the airbrushed, Photoshopped, further thinned-out models in their magazines. How about if we stop saying you’ll be happy and feel good if you eat this great-tasting fatty, salty, sweet stuff—and then, if you want to be adored, look like you’re starving to death. What if women could simply look like themselves?”

She reached over to a teen magazine on her makeshift coffee table and flipped through it until she stopped and pointed at a page. “This!” she said. “Look at this model.”

She was, of course, beautiful. Also, judging by her proportions, slightly over seven feet tall, and perhaps sixty pounds, and all of that in the chest. Her legs began at her neck. “This is who they want to be,” Rachel said. “And she doesn’t exist. I actually got a letter from the photographer who did a similar ad, lots of similar ads. He had repented and was trying to spread the word about how fake these images are. His mission has obviously failed and the images go on. I personally find it immoral, but there aren’t any laws about it. He said that the photo of the already emaciated model had been further altered, at the orders of the art director, so that her legs were made longer and thinner, and her crotch lifted.”

I raised my eyebrows at that last item. “A new kind of plastic surgery?”

“It’s necessary to lift the region in the photo so as to convince you that her legs really are that long and thin,” Rachel said. “Millions of dollars spent on ads for food nobody needs, and then billions spent forcing these images in front of every pair of dying-to-be ‘normal’ eyes, compelling them to believe this is normal, ‘This is how you have to be!’ when it’s not only unhealthy, it’s not only damaging what remains of their bodies, but it’s also physically impossible. No wonder you wind up with Liddy Moffat ready to quit.”

I let her rant. This was obviously not a new issue to her, or to this office. Whether or not it was one she, or we, or anyone could tackle with even a slim hope of success remained to be seen. Meanwhile, I would stop wondering whether I really had to lose weight in order to become the right sort of bride.

A
T NOON
, when I checked, there was a message from Penelope on the cell phone. “Please call, Miss Pepper. Ingrid is in a good phase, which is astounding given the shock of her son’s death. I thought it might help you with your investigation if you actually met her and . . . Cornelius.” She made his name have four distinct syllables and made it clear that each one of them left a bitter taste on her tongue. “I wondered whether you’d be at the funeral tomorrow. Please let me know.” She gave me her private line’s number and an e-mail address, and I phoned in my regrets, telling her that my partner would be there.

“Pity,” she said. “But wait, is there a chance for this evening?”

Once again, I had to demur. “I’ve got an appointment,” I said. “Concerning this issue.”

She didn’t ask me with whom, which I found strange.

“Pity.” Her voice had lost its verve. And then her spirits rebounded. “Last try—have you a minute later today? She generally rests midday so that she’d be refreshed by teatime.”

Teatime indeed. Why not? While I didn’t think much of a practical nature would be gained by the visit, I was curious about the old woman. Definitely curious to meet the fabled Cornelius.

And a cup of tea never hurt.

If I say the day passed without much incident, you must take that to mean on this day, nobody died. There was, of course, incident aplenty. You can’t be in a community of adolescents without hourly doses of high drama. Tragedy, comedy, and lots of farce are our daily fare, although most often, they hinge on less than Shakespearean themes, such as whether a given boy likes a given girl, or whether a given girl has erupted with an unfortunately located pimple, or whether someone’s parents were allowing him to see the new movie the night it opened. The laws of physics are suspended in high school, because any action, no matter how insignificant, can produce a reaction that is operatic in intensity. With the exception of schoolwork and adults, everything mattered to everyone, all the time, enormously.

The
Inkwire
staff met at the end of the day. Last year, we’d placed third in an all-city contest for design and layout. Not exactly the Pulitzer, but a start. This year, we were going for the gold, entering the actual journalism contest with the drug feature. When I told them the plan they looked as delighted as if they’d already won, and in a way they had, by being eligible for it. “We should specially send the part Zach wrote,” a dark-haired girl said. For once, I was fairly sure this wasn’t teen code for “I have a crush on Zachary Wallenberg.” She was paying simple and honest tribute to his work, which was, in fact, the strongest part of the issue. “That’s the one that could win,” she added. “It’s not like the usual ‘just say no’ junk. It’s real.”

We were not a school used to garnering awards, particularly in anything resembling intellectual endeavor. The possibility of a prize for a piece of research and reportage loomed large in all our minds.

Zachary, who’d found the dealers and established how frighteningly easy it was to acquire whatever illegal substance one had in mind, or to make some of them, looked both pleased and embarrassed. Then he succumbed to the excitement swirling around him and raised his arms in a mock victory salute. It was an intentionally funny gesture, since the show of strength was tempered by the cast on his arm. He’d broken it in a soccer accident the first week of school. Still, even an autographed and grimy cast can express triumph, and he’d earned it.

“The dude who died here,” one of the other boys said. “The paper said he had stuff in him. You think he came here to make the buy? You think he found out where to go from your article, man?”