9

It was too hot to rush home. I walked slowly, savoring the colors of late summer blossoms I couldn’t name, impressed by the industriousness of bees. No one tailed me. I heard the ragged engine of a motorbike and wondered idly whether any self-respecting mobster would use such primitive transport, but it traveled another street.

Stifling an urge to kick the mail under the rug, I grabbed the envelopes cascading from my door slot. The kind of correspondence I get usually isn’t worth bending down for. Circulars from my local hardware and grocery stores, like I have the time or inclination to clip coupons for things I never wanted in the first place. Reminders to visit the dentist who once charged me a bundle to replace a tooth knocked out in the line of duty.

A postcard from Paolina made me smile, her irregular scrawl on one side, a quaint New Hampshire vista—small-town idyll spiked with white church towers—on the other. I inhaled, holding the card close to my face, wishing I could smell the cherry Life Savers aroma of my little sister. She’s thirteen now, the single truth in the pack of lies I’d dealt Mrs. Emerson, but I remember her best at seven, bruised, scared, and defiant. Despite her liberal use of trendy free-sample scents, Anais Anais one week, DKNY the next, she’ll always be cherry Life Savers to me.

“Ola, Carlotta! I’m really having an okay time. Better than okay. Terrific! My cellies are cool even. How’s Sam? Kisses and hugs to Gloria and you too. Remember to feed my bird!”

At fourteen, a scant year older, Thea Janis had written:

perhaps as penance,

i must walk,

barefoot and holy,

through snow-wax camellias

as bitter as the ichor of

the living

or fruits of the dead.

If Thea wrote like that at fourteen, why the hell not kill herself at fifteen? What act had she committed that required such penance? What crime, outside her fanciful imagination?

I reread Paolina’s card, slightly troubled by her use of “cellies.” It’s current jail jargon for “roommates.” Did a fellow camper have family in prison? Was I shelling out good money so my little sister could learn to boost cars instead of sailboats? Boosting cars she could learn in her own neighborhood, just by sticking her head out the window.

I hollered upstairs, but it seemed Roz had not returned with information on the Camerons or Adam Mayhew. Damn. I should have trusted her with the notebook and done the research myself.

Most likely, Roz had not trotted directly home from library hour. She’d met a new pal, gone boozing and dancing. She might even be upstairs, awake, alert, and nonresponsive because she and her pal were now between the sheets, except you can’t really say “between the sheets” with Roz because she doesn’t have sheets. Washing clothes is anathema to her. No sheets; less laundry. Her karate tumbling mats, which double as futons, have started to stink like a used cat box, but I haven’t figured out a tactful way to approach the subject, and I probably never will. I keep hoping she’ll grow out of it, this constant need to bring home a new boy-toy every afternoon, every night. Maybe she’s going for the Guinness Book of World Records.

If Roz was home, I’d hear her soon enough. Yowling alley cats have nothing on Roz in heat. I have spoken to her about condoms.

Aha! She had left a message. A single page of elegant penmanship, prose marked “B.U. Archives—Acid-free paper. Do not remove from stacks!” lay centered on my desk.

A sample of Thea’s handwriting. I read it eagerly.

Her matter-of-fact description of sea, shore, and fog made me feel the tickle of tiny fiddler crabs racing over my bare feet, smell the low tide. I removed a magnifying glass from a chamois bag, compared the B.U. Archive’s page to one from the notebook given me by Mayhew. My glass does not have the reliability of, say, the renovated and repaired Hubble telescope, but the flowing script seemed remarkably similar in tilt, structure, and style.

I’d be willing to hazard a guess that the notebook was authentic. If that were possible …

Damn. I wished Roz had given me more, left detailed information about Adam Mayhew, alive or dead, so I’d know with whom I was dealing. I couldn’t pursue the Thea Janis manuscript business, sort out truth from hype, real from counterfeit, unless I could trust my client. Once, I came close to helping an abusive husband locate his fleeing spouse. Nothing like that’s going to happen again. Not to me.

Paolina’s admonition to feed “her” bird carried me into the kitchen in search of seed. The bird’s a touchy issue. I wouldn’t own a parakeet by choice; I inherited Fluffy from my aunt Bea, not expecting the pet to long outlive her mistress.

Fluffy’s evidently going for the Guinness Book, too. Not under that name. I will not share quarters with anything named Fluffy. She is now Red Emma after Emma Goldman, a hero of mine. Paolina does not approve. She calls the bird Esmeralda, because she is indisputably green, although not in the way any emerald of value is green.

The bird is a nasty lump of feathers no matter what you call her. I filled her seed and water dishes while she tried to peck off my fingers. Feeding her made me recall other responsibilities, Such as the cat, T.C., who actually earns his keep by virtue of being listed in the phone book at this address. Thomas C. Carlyle gets fewer harassing phone calls than Carlotta Carlyle would. He gets tons of junk mail, too, but I don’t have to read it. If it’s addressed to Thomas C., I toss it in the trash.

T.C. deserves better care than I give him. I scratched his ears thoroughly before serving him a can of Fancy Feast Beef & Liver.

Activity agrees with me. Sitting, unless I’m earning money doing surveillance, does not.

I went back to the Avon Hill faculty list. “Adam Mayhew” could have taught there, retired. I opened the desk drawer where I’d stowed Thea’s photo. Her knowing eyes stared me down. If I ever got moving on this case, would I start with the presumption that she was dead or alive?

Mayhew had given me the Berlin poem. He’d seemed to believe in Thea’s current health. The document Roz had snatched from B.U. looked as though it had been executed by the same person who’d written in the chocolate notebook.

When I was in high school, my favorite teacher stunned us all by running away, deserting a wife and two kids for a student. Sixteen-year-old AnnaBeth O’Reilly with yellow braids and ice-blue eyes. Wonder what happened to her …

Her family hadn’t held a funeral, that’s for sure.

Seventeen names on the faculty list, followed by lots of prestigious initials. How many of them had been teaching at Avon Hill when Thea pulled her vanishing act? Any teacher who’d left Avon Hill the year of Thea’s disappearance would be suspect. Thea could have changed her last name to his.

But what about her writing?

Freedom to write, that’s what my client had said Thea valued most of all. Would she run off with a forbidden man if it meant the loss of her freedom to write?

I wanted cold facts. I wanted Roz’s report on Mayhew and the Camerons. I wanted a fat file of newspaper clippings detailing the disappearance or death of a prodigy.

I checked my watch. Five thirty-two. Five whole minutes since the last time I’d checked. I wished Gloria was back in business. I have a dozen cards from cab companies on my desk. I could drive a shift for any one of them, but it’s not the same. Driving for Green & White was more than a job, it was a second home until the place got torched, with Sam, former lover, and Gloria, dispatcher and friend, inside. Gloria’s doing okay, fussing over construction at the new garage, but the company won’t be handling business for months.

The phone rang. Roz, I thought. Hallelujah!

Mooney didn’t bother to identify himself. He said, “Is it true that the Cameron guy’s thinking of quitting the race? Is it some kind of public relations stunt? Does he expect some kind of reaction, a public show of confidence?”

I said, “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t you ever listen to the news?”

“No. Run it by me again.”

“And here I thought you could give me the lowdown. Garnet La-di-dah Cameron, of the very same family you’re so interested in, says he’s considering withdrawing his name from the November election. And I was actually gonna vote for the bastard.”

“You like him?”

“As much as I like any pol. Every jerk running for office yells about more money for law enforcement. I figured with Hailey, he meant megabucks for jails and prisons, maybe a new electric chair, if he could slip it by the Great and General Court. With Cameron, we’d have a chance for more street cops, more computers. I even sent the bastard money, like he needs it.”

When Mooney uses the word “bastard,” he’s about as upset as he gets.

“Why would he want to quit, Moon? I thought it was in the bag.” Democrats outnumber Republicans in this state. Of course our Democrats act like Republicans and vice versa, so it gets tricky.

“I’m not privy to that information,” Mooney said, making like a court reporter.

“There’s got to be station house gossip.”

“You want gossip? What I heard, the sweet young wife plans to divorce him. Extremely bad timing.”

I didn’t see how the timing would affect me. I hadn’t been hired to force Marissa and Garnet Cameron to kiss and make up for an adoring public. That kind of thing turns my stomach.

I hadn’t been hired for anything yet. I’d refused Adam Mayhew’s money. Face it: My client was a possible forger, maybe entirely off his rocker.

I could hear Mooney breathing on the phone. He’s not one for long phone calls. It made me suspicious.

“So you called to thank me for lunch,” I said. “Or just to share the speculation?”

“No.”

“You found me Woodrow MacAvoy’s address?”

“No.”

“I give up.”

Mooney’s voice sounded odd.

“Look, Carlotta, I found the files. Old MacAvoy kept every piece of paper he breathed on, I swear.”

“That’s great, Moon. I’ll be right over.”

“No! Carlotta, listen. Seriously. I’ve got the whole damned case in front of me.”

“I heard you the first time.”

“Thea Janis … your ‘missing person’—”

“Yeah?”

“Forget her. She’s dead.”

The girl in the photo stared up at me from the desk drawer. I smiled at her reassuringly.

I said, “Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe MacAvoy got it wrong. He probably bought suicide. My client said there were clothes found near a beach—”

“No,” Mooney. said. “No. Forget it. No way.” His tone turned rough and gentle, the way it used to when he’d tell parents that their beloved children were gone, dead, shot. “Get this straight. She didn’t kill herself. She was murdered. A guy is serving life at Walpole for doing her and two other girls.”

I stared at the sheet of archival calligraphy on my desk, at the Avon Hill faculty list.

“But, Mooney—” I began.

“Carlotta, listen! It’s not an open case, it’s not a cold case. It’s a one hundred percent closed case.”

I swiveled my chair. My elbow whacked a cup filled with pens, pencils, odds and ends, sent it crashing to the ground. T.C. raced out of the room, startled by noise and debris.

“Carlotta, you okay?”

“Fine. Thanks.”

Whose verses, whose prose did I have in my possession?

At first I thought I’d slammed the receiver into the cradle so hard that the phone had clanged in self-defense. Then I realized it was the doorbell. Not Roz. She has her own key. Not someone for Roz. Roz responds to three-buzz salutes.

I was hoping for Adam Mayhew.

Be careful what you wish for, my grandmother used to say.