8

We took Moon’s battered Pontiac instead of an unmarked unit, which meant I had to enter via the driver’s side and slide across the cracked leather bench. His passenger door is nonoperational, creased and rusted from an ancient accident. He holds to the Boston school of thought on auto repair: A perfect car equals a perfect target, so why bother?

In all other ways, he is atypical.

Mooney will never get a speeding ticket, never earn a hundred-buck fine for a moving violation. Not because traffic cops show professional courtesy to homicide cops. Not because it’s tough to get cited in this town of perpetual scofflaws. The man drives so conservatively I find it hard to credit his claim of native birth. Boston drivers are tough and scrappy. They change lanes without signaling; they turn left from the right-hand lane in front of oncoming traffic. Mooney drives like a respectable Midwesterner. Whereas I, born in Detroit, have picked up all the Bostonian tricks of the trade. Take me out of Boston, I can hardly drive. Cops nail me. Citizens honk.

I fidgeted, adjusting the window up a smidgen, down an inch, searching for the perfect blend of pollution and breeze. My hands itched for the steering wheel, my foot for the brake. I actually fastened my seat belt. I was terrified we’d get rear-ended; Moon stops for amber lights.

He remembered that Thea Janis was a writer, but I doubted he’d read Nightmare’s Dawn—touted as a girls’ “coming of age” story—word for word. More likely, he’d been present when a used paperback was passed around, dog-eared to the sexy pages.

Hell, my copy fell open to them automatically.

Moon refused a single taste of Suan La Chow Show, but admitted that Crab Rangoon had its charms. I’d have opted for the train, but he insisted on chauffeuring me to Harvard Square, which was far enough out of his way and so unlike his usual manner that I wondered if he’d joined me for lunch just to see for himself whether or not I was being tailed by a mob hitman.

He dropped me where Mass. Ave. meets Brattle, earning an upraised finger from three drivers.

I jaywalked across the street, spinning a quick three-sixty in front of the international newsstand, gawking like a tourist easily awed by red brick and pricey retail. I didn’t spot Mr. Windbreaker. The line at CopyCop was half a mile long, as Roz had predicted. Thirty-seven minutes later, I sighed with relief as I tucked two copies of “Thea’s” brand-new manuscript into a CopyCop envelope, the original notebook into the original manila envelope, the whole package back into the plastic sack.

A phone booth beckoned. Not exactly a booth, but a machine wall-mounted to a sheltered corner of a bank. I didn’t have a pocketful of coins so I tried collect.

It’s automated. I did the Miami area code preceded by the operator’s 0. Canned accentless voices took charge. I figured Vandenburg wasn’t going to accept anything collect from Carlotta, so I murmured “CRG” into the appropriate time lapse on the tape. The sleaze would eat any charges from Carlos Roldan Gonzales.

That call got through immediately.

“No names,” I said as a greeting.

“Jeez—”

“Don’t hang up. Have you heard from him?”

“No. Stay the hell out of it.”

The line went dead. So much for news on the Colombian cartel front.

I watched a guitar picker with a glass eye and shaky fingers try to wheedle quarters for a song. He was too old and too bad to be playing on the street. I put fifty cents in his battered guitar case. He had two missing teeth up top.

I walked along Brattle, aiming for the Avon Hill School. I didn’t expect a full complement of teachers and students hanging around in summertime, but I might find someone minding the store. I’d get to view the institution where Thea had spent over a year of her life. If I could see what Thea had seen, maybe it would help me decode a line or two of her prose, her poetry.

I know. If she was dead and buried, what the hell difference did it make? I like to walk; the school wasn’t far out of my way. And my “Adam Mayhew” had spoken about Thea’s time there as if he’d witnessed it, realized exactly how she’d felt.

Maybe I thought I’d just ring the doorbell and old “Adam Mayhew” would answer the call. He could damn well pay for a day of my time, a day of Roz’s time.

The Avon Hill School stared down on the world from a swath of real estate that made local developers drool. Harvard had tried to buy it once. The city had wisely pulled out all the stops, determined to make the college stick its fat checkbook back in its overstuffed pockets. If Avon Hill ever folded, Cambridge was going to make damn sure its land joined the tax rolls. Non-profits, universities, schools, and churches drive Cambridge taxes so high that regular folks have to move to the suburbs.

The main building was a Georgian mansion, gray with white trim, slate-roofed, and beautifully proportioned, with a pillared center portico. From street level, you could hardly see the dormitories and outbuildings. Even the gymnasium was discreet. Because I’d read Thea’s book, the place gave me the shivers. It didn’t seem like anywhere children would laugh or play. It looked like the setting of some Gothic horror tale, complete with a wicked governess and a madwoman in the attic.

I climbed the well-kept slate walkway that curved along the hillside, thumped the heavy brass knocker against the oak door. It made a hollow booming sound, but nobody came. I walked around back. There had to be a playground, a soccer field, a summer school class.

Gardeners. Three long-haired males on riding mowers were cutting the grass. The drone grew louder, deafening. I waved and hoped they’d stop. The one riding right-wing waved in acknowledgment. He wore no shirt. Either he hadn’t heard that overexposure to the sun could cause skin cancer or he didn’t care. Handsome and young could beat the big C any day.

Life had news for him.

He swooped out of line, sped downhill, and halted a few feet from me, standing astride his mower like it was a stallion and he was an old-time outlaw. If there’d been fewer clouds, his gold hair might have shone. He wore dark heavy boots that didn’t go with his skimpy cutoffs. Sensible enough to value his toes if not his health.

“Everybody gone for the summer?” I asked.

His face split in a grin.

“Headmaster,” he said, wiping sweat from his brow with a muscle-roped forearm.

“Huh?”

“House next door to the biggie. He’s the guy pays us.”

“You work here all year?”

“Mostly. We cut grass, plow snow. They’ve got a couple old guys do the roses and shit.”

“You work here during the school year?”

“Yep.”

I’d located an outspoken informant.

“How old are the kids?”

He shrugged.

“Kindergarten? High school?”

“More like junior high. Older, maybe, I guess.”

“They give you a hard time?”

“Not allowed to speak to the snots.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah, and you should see some of ’em, too. Delicious. Wiggle and giggle whenever we buzz by.”

One of his mates on the hilltop hollered down at him, made a gesture.

“I gotta be gettin’ back to it,” he said, staring at his boots. His feet must have been hot.

“Headmaster around?” I asked.

He shook his head no. “Went out. No telling when he’ll come back. Walks into the square.”

“Old man? Silvery hair? Glasses?”

“Kinda young. New last year.”

So much for a heart-to-heart with my lying client.

“Thanks,” I said.

“You might try the missis,” he said before he gunned the motor and returned to the hilltop.

The house next door was a well-maintained Victorian with a wraparound porch. A box of brochures rested on a rattan table. I grabbed a couple. Educational philosophy, along with a wide variety of classroom offerings, and the option of extensive study abroad. No prices. If you had to ask, you couldn’t afford it. I wondered if the brochures on the porch were the gist of the school’s advertising. Word of mouth and the old boy network would provide.

I knocked at the headmaster’s door. I’d almost given up when it finally opened.

The woman was both young and shy. Her shiny brown hair was twisted severely and coiled on top of her head. If not for her obvious pregnancy, she would have fit the surroundings perfectly. A servant’s apron and cap would have looked positively fetching.

Fetching! The otherworldly old-fashioned air of the place was starting to get me. Fetching, my ass.

“Are you selling anything?” she said. No throwback to a gentler age here. Straight to the point.

“No.”

“Okay. Um, is it about one of the students, because they’re on vacation.”

I could simply wait until she hit on the reason for my visit. Or I could supply one.

“Hello,” I said, taking the steps quickly, opening the screen door, pressing her hand warmly. “I’m so glad you answered the door. You’re Mrs.…?”

“Mrs. Emerson. I’m, uh, the headmaster’s wife.”

She blushed when she said that, and twisted her wedding ring. She hadn’t been the headmaster’s wife for long. I wondered if the pregnancy had predated the wedding.

“Is your husband in?”

“No. I’m sorry.” She started to close the door.

I wished I’d dressed better. Still, it was hot and old money doesn’t flaunt its presence.

I touched my fingertips to my forehead and breathed a deep sigh. “It’s only that my sister, Helen, called last night and begged me to take a look around. She’s raising two children in Colombia, South America, you know. Political unrest. She hates letting them go, but lately she’s been thinking of sending them to school in the States.”

“We have quite a few foreign students,” the woman said, her eyes brightening as I dangled two hefty tuition fees.

“Helen, my sister, was planning to do the rounds herself. B, B, and N, Southfield, Phillips-Andover, but she had to go in for minor surgery, and the recovery period just stretched and stretched.”

“You’re not talking about a fall placement?”

“I know it’s late. You’re probably full.” I tried to look apologetic and contrite.

“We do have a waiting list.”

“I told my sister it was too late,” I said, turning away, accepting defeat graciously.

“We might have an opening or two for next September,” the woman said.

I paused, feigning reluctance, checking my wristwatch as though I had a tight schedule.

“Next September,” I said, summoning up a sigh of regret. “Those kids need someplace now.”

“Since you’re already here, it wouldn’t do any harm to look around,” the headmaster’s wife said, as though suddenly remembering her sales pitch. “What age are the children?”

Good thing I’d scanned the brochure.

“Paolina’s thirteen,” I said without having to lie. I quickly gave my little sister an imaginary sibling and christened her Cecilia. “And Cecilia’s fourteen, fourteen and a half.”

The woman turned and snagged a set of keys from a nearby hook. Her voice became animated, brisk.

“Let’s start with the main building. The school was founded in 1898. We maintain a tradition of excellence.”

She’d done this routine before. The mansion door creaked when she put her shoulder to it.

The entry hall was filled with glass cases. Elaborately framed photos hung everywhere, as though someone had banged nails into the molding at random. Classes, sports teams, rowers on the Charles. Shelves and glass cases were devoted to trophies. Silver Paul Revere bowls, some tarnished, some shiny. Aged sepia photographs, lying on their backs. Blue, red, and gold ribbons, some mounted, some piled.

Oil paintings of founders, headmasters, and headmistresses lined the other wall. Talk about gloomy. The entire corridor must have been lit by a sixty-watt bulb.

“Who are some of your famous alumni?” I inquired when she came to a halt. “That’s the kind of thing my sister would want to know.”

She quickly rattled off a U.S. senator, a popular national news anchor, a rock singer, a woman who’d won the Alaskan Iditarod three years running, an attorney who regularly appeared before the Supreme Court, and several hotshot businessmen, including a software billionaire who could have made all future fund-raising moot with a grant.

“Anyone in the arts? Actors? Writers? My sister’s very big on arts education.”

She stuck her tongue firmly between her teeth and furrowed her brow. Extreme thought.

“We had a poet, I think,” she said.

“Would you mind if I looked at a few of the photos?”

“Not at all. You really ought to come back when my husband’s here. He knows so much more about the arts offerings. We do have a cooperative program with the Boston Ballet School.”

“Does that mean there’s no ballet teacher on campus? What about music? Cecilia plays the cello beautifully.”

Damn, I find it so easy to lie to people it scares me sometimes.

She tucked her tongue into the corner of her mouth and furrowed her brow again. “What you need is a faculty list.”

“A list would be marvelous,” I agreed.

“My husband has them.” Her brow stayed wrinkled, her mouth pursed.

“Probably keeps things like that in his office, don’t you think?” I suggested offhandedly.

His office. She charged down the hall like a knight in pursuit of the Holy Grail, and I started some serious staring. Class of ’73? ’74? Which would be Thea’s class? No leatherbound edition of Nightmare’s Dawn graced any trophy case. In light of its content I wasn’t surprised.

She came back too quickly, with a flimsy sheet of paper, two large folders, and the flushed face of success. “I’ve got the faculty list. We have some very prominent professors who give generously of their time.”

“Wonderful,” I enthused.

“And I brought two applications. Just in case,” she said.

I wondered whether they offered a two-for-one deal on application fees. Probably not.

I studied my watch, made a clicking sound with my teeth.

“I really have to be going,” I said.

“But you haven’t seen the gymnasium—”

“I know, but since there’s so little chance of admission—”

“You, really ought to hear my husband talk about this place. He’s an alumnus.”

I did a little rapid arithmetic. He could be ten years older than his wife and still be called “young” by the teenage gardener. He could have been Thea’s classmate.

“I’d certainly like to speak to him,” I said. “Let me give you my card.” I chose a plain one. Address and phone number. Nothing concerning profession.

“A pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Emerson,” I said.

She stole a look at my card. “Miss Carlyle.”

“Oh, and your husband’s first name?”

“Anthony.”

“Tony?”

“He prefers Anthony.”

“Thank you so much.”

We said our farewells at the door of the Victorian. Once she disappeared inside, I quickly ran my finger down the faculty list. No Adam Mayhew, no teacher with the initials A.M.

I walked back to the mansion and sat on the front porch, not really waiting for the headmaster to return, but trying to put myself in a place Thea might have been. I looked across the grand lawn with the eyes of the young woman who’d written Nightmare’s Dawn, saw her imaginary snakes and rodents. Moles digging by night, secrets eating at the students by day. Cliques, anorexia nervosa, hazing, bullying, underground societies, exclusion.

I blinked. The sky was azure, furred by high cirrus clouds. The air smelled of fresh-mown grass. To me, it looked like Eden the day before God created apples.