I worked at home over dinner, averaging out student quarter-grades. I hate the entire idea of performance marks, but parents consider them the merchandise they pay for. The problem is that they expect the grades to be as inflated as their tuition bills. I entered a “D” next to Lance Zittsner’s name, sighed for my lost morality, and closed the roll book.
I readied myself for Liza’s viewing. I showered and changed into a severe skirt and blouse I’d bought when I started teaching and thought I had to look like Miss Grundy. They were as good as new.
The evening was clear and balmy, and I walked the few blocks to the funeral home, liking the crisp feel of early spring. It surrounded me in sweet contrast to all the spongy, suspect things in my life of late.
The home’s entry hall was cavernous, and I was greeted by an emaciated young man with 1920s center-parted hair. He led me to a room off the hallway that was filled with the hum of voices and a badly matched assortment of people.
I recognized several actors and actresses from the night before. They huddled together, dressed in dark suits and dresses, all of us looking as if we wore borrowed clothes. The Eddie person stood somewhat apart, staring at the ceiling. I wondered if he was on drugs, if that was why he looked both nervous and drowsy.
Near me stood another cluster of young, very upset men and women. One of them talked about tenth grade, about how she and Liza had cut school and hitchhiked to Atlantic City. Another, very pregnant and bloated, blew her nose and wiped her eyes.
Nearer to the coffin, I saw Gus and Dr. Havermeyer. My headmaster pulled at his collar and stroked his belly, waiting to be excused. Helga Putnam stood by her leader, scowling. She had changed into a dark gray cardigan.
In the center of the room, sitting near the coffin on a straight-backed chair, Mrs. Nichols listened to a woman in rusty black. A few men stood nearby, saying little, obviously dragged along by their wives.
There were only a few feet between the cluster near Mrs. Nichols and a threesome in the corner, but the feet could have been light-years. It was the difference between what is, what was, and what might have been.
Sissie Bellinger, chic and rail-thin in navy blue and heavy pearls, formed one pointy edge of the triangle. She stood next to an impassive, elegantly groomed Hayden Cole. His mama faced them. She shared her son’s jutting chin, colorless light hair, and solid, tall frame.
I went to Mrs. Nichols. The flock of women around her parted expectantly. She clutched my outstretched hand in both of hers. “Oooh,” she moaned loudly, fresh tears welling over her puffed lower lids. “I still can’t believe it—my baby!” She seemed close to hysteria, keening and wailing and beating her hands with mine inside them onto her knees. “Have you seen her? Have you seen how beautiful…?” She released me, pushing me toward the open coffin.
Liza did look beautiful. And unfamiliar. With no animation, no drama, with her jet hair haloing her still face, with the bruise I could never forget cosmetically hidden, she looked like a sleeping child and no one I had ever known. Even so, the sight was terrible, and I moved my eyes away over it quickly, trying to leave no imprints.
Mrs. Nichols screamed, “Liza! My Liza!”
I turned away, feeling like a voyeur to so much naked pain. Gus’s sympathetic face greeted me. Then I saw Sissie staring incredulously at Mrs. Nichols, and beside her, Mrs. Cole and her ramrod back. They had no qualms about watching and silently condemning Mrs. Nichols’s misery.
Main Line ladies’ upper lips were genetically stiff, and only genteel sounds could squeeze through them. Mrs. Nichols, made only of flesh, sounded primitive and frightening.
“Pray for Liza,” the women around Mrs. Nichols crooned, patting her shoulders and clucking until the heavy, choking sobs gradually stopped. The bereaved turned into a bulky woman of stone, staring blindly ahead. “Thank you for coming,” she said flatly.
The circle of women closed in on her and filled the room’s sudden silence with more comforting noises.
“Mrs. Cole would like to meet you,” Gus said. I followed him into the corner.
“Ah,” Mrs. Cole said, shaking my hand vigorously. “Amanda Pepper, the one who… It must be so difficult for you, dear. So trying. We have thought of you constantly during this dreadful time.”
Hayden, who had definitely thought about me, stood a bit behind his mother, avoiding me as much as he could.
Sissie, who had also thought about me—if actual thoughts passed between her jet streams of observations— fidgeted, but didn’t interrupt the older woman.
“Knowing Liza so intimately,” Mrs. Cole added.
“Well, actually, I didn’t,” I began.
“Miss Pepper prefers to consider herself as merely an acquaintance of Liza’s,” Hayden said dryly.
“To lose your dear friend,” Mrs. Cole continued, undeterred, “to lose a confidante, a girlhood companion. Oh, when I was your age, how terrible it would have been.”
I had a vision of girls in organdy ruffles, whispering innocent secrets in a garden of phlox, and wondered what her images could possibly have to do with me. I didn’t consider my stage in life “girlhood,” either, but the woman was nodding agreement with her own statements, and I didn’t think a discussion of semantics was appropriate.
“Isn’t it terrible?” she said directly to me.
“Yes,” I said, not certain what, precisely, I was agreeing to.
“And to have to speak with the police, to be questioned. I find it trying. They have no sense of propriety. No manners. The most brash young man came to our house. I refused to speak to him after a time. Don’t you agree? Didn’t you?”
Hayden eyed me suspiciously. Sissie paced back and forth, hovering like a vulture. And Mrs. Cole examined me intently. I knew I was being tested, and for some reason, I wanted to pass, or at least stay in the running. “I talked to them, but I didn’t have anything much to say. I don’t know anything.”
Hayden’s mouth turned down with distaste.
“I never had a daughter,” Mrs. Cole said, off on a side trail of her own. “I had such hopes, such hopes.”
Sissie, who had all the necessary qualifications for the newly vacated position of Cole daughter, took this opportunity to reach over and pat the older woman’s arm. Mrs. Cole didn’t seem to notice.
I searched for a graceful out. Gus was no help, lounging against the nearby wall. I looked around. Near the door I saw a familiar tall figure, a brash young policeman with blue eyes that circled the room, noting whatever it was he was paid to note. He noted me, we shifted our heads slightly to acknowledge each other, and then Mrs. Cole began again.
“I would like to talk with you,” she said. “I want to know more about poor, dear Liza, and you knew her best.”
“But really, I didn’t.” It is not seemly to speak, or probably to think, ill of the dead, and it’s certainly futile to resent them, but Liza’s lies had outlived her and were twisting my life around. I wasted a few moments dealing with lots of directionless anger. “Certainly,” I insisted, “your son knew her a great deal better than I did.”
“I think we should leave, Mother,” her son said. He glanced at his watch and looked displeased. “I’ve already postponed the meeting.”
“Oh, Hayden!” Mrs. Cole smiled at him. “You’re so busy all the time!” She looked at me. “He’s so concerned about helping others. The geriatric groups. The handicapped, and on and on.” She leaned close. “My son is a good man, Miss Pepper. Thinks and does only what is good. That’s why it’s important he become senator.”
“We must say good-night to Mrs. Nichols,” Hayden said impatiently, taking his mother’s elbow. “And to you, Miss Pepper.”
Gus left his post by the wall when the Coles and Sissie were out of earshot. “Ugly people, aren’t they?” he said. “And Liza was waltzing right into their arms.”
Not ugly. But odd, most definitely. Especially odd about me. Why me? What was it everybody, including Gus, thought I knew? And what would convince them all that I didn’t?
“Gus, we should go now.” Sarah Halvorsen’s voice was low but emphatic. She stood in front of us, along with several others of the company.
“All right,” Gus said, “let’s make our farewells.” He merged into the little knot of actors moving toward Mrs. Nichols.
I walked over to the crowd and waited my turn. Mrs. Cole’s broad back was in front of me. She, her son, and Sissie waited stolidly in silence. They seemed withdrawn from the scene and the people around them.
“Amanda Pepper. I knew we’d meet again soon.” Eddie stood close to me, smiling, looking almost innocent and boyish.
Mrs. Nichols sobbed in the background, her cries muffled by the people around her.
“Look,” Eddie said, “it’s because you’re the one who found—”
I could not bear hearing that again. Of all the careers and claims to fame I’d ever imagined, none had been based on being “the one who found the body.” The disgust on my face must have been obvious.
“Don’t get mad again,” he said. “There’s something we have to talk about.”
“I don’t know anything.”
“I think I do,” he said. He rolled an unlit cigarette in his hand, waiting to get outside and light it. His long fingers trembled. The circles under his eyes were now a frightening purple.
“Why tell me?” I asked. “Why not tell the police?” I kept my voice low and calm.
“I can’t. I’ve got enough hassles with the law already, and I can’t. Besides, until I talk to you, I’m not one hundred percent sure if what I know is important.” He reached out and clasped my wrist. “Trust me,” he said.
“Why?”
We were moving closer to Mrs. Nichols, pushed forward by the crowd. “You were the last to see her,” he said. “Well, almost. You were the one in the middle. And see, I think—”
“Shh,” I said because his voice was becoming reedy with urgency, and I didn’t think this was an appropriate conversation for the mournful, subdued setting.
“Did she tell you about it?” he said, whispering now.
“About what?”
“About…about her news?”
“She didn’t tell me anything.”
He looked surprised. “She didn’t?” He released my wrist and rubbed his hand over his bruised-looking eyes. They seemed much older than the rest of him. “I was sure she did. This is driving me up the wall. I tried to see you the other night. Waited near your house, but when I finally got the nerve to approach you, you screamed. Then a car came, and I—”
“It was you!” I momentarily forgot to monitor my voice, and Eddie shushed me now.
“I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he said. “I’m telling you, I was scared myself. I didn’t know you. But I had to talk to you, alone.”
“Go to the police, Eddie,” I repeated. “I don’t know anything. She didn’t tell me anything. I swear it.”
“Listen,” he whispered urgently as I moved forward. “Listen to me. Talk to me.”
“I am.”
“No. Not here.”
I shook my head.
“Listen, you don’t think I did it, do you? Why would I hurt her?”
“Why would anybody? But somebody did.”
“Okay. Talk to me someplace you won’t be scared. I have to go to rehearsal after this. How about tomorrow? After the funeral, in public. Outside. That could be private and still safe enough for you.”
I shrugged.
“It’s a deal. And then, if you think I should, I swear I’ll go to the police.”
“Listen, Eddie, you’re not making a whole lot of sense.”
“I will, after we talk.”
The Coles and Sissie turned to leave, having completed stiff farewells to Mrs. Nichols.
Eddie gave them a cursory nod, said a quick “tomorrow” to me, and left the room.
“Miss Pepper,” Mrs. Cole said, “I meant it about wanting to spend time with you. That was not mere social pleasantry.”
“Mother Cole,” Sissie said, obviously pushing for daughterly status, “we must rush.” Her voice was at its most cultivated, and it floated and lounged above the earthy sounds of the masses below it.
When it was my turn, Mrs. Nichols accepted my words passively.
At the doorway, C.K. Mackenzie monitored the room with singular apathy. He yawned as I approached him, then belatedly covered his mouth with his hand. “Feelin’ all right tonight?” he said softly when I was near. “No more hysteria? Haven’t heard from you, so I figured you were still intact.”
“I’m fine. And what brings you here?”
“I’m supposed to do this sort of thing. In movies, detectives always appear at funerals, viewings, you know. They experience epiphanies.”
“And have you?”
“Not even a minor truth became obvious. I’m ready to drop, anyway.”
I believed him. His eyes, half shut, had lost their wattage. His normal slouch was exaggerated, drooping dangerously near to a crawl.
“You leavin’ too?” he asked.
We nodded farewell to the slick funeral director. “I’m doing the right things,” C.K. muttered as we walked. “I run around and collect things that don’t add up. I sit with Ray and try to make it add up anyway. I go back and forth to the Playhouse, her modeling agency, the bastions of the rich—”
“I gathered as much,” I said. “Everybody I meet seems to be spending time with you on a daily basis.”
“We read reports and talk,” he droned on, barely acknowledging me. “And nothing. I came here tonight, studied the list of visitors, carefully scrutinized everythin’, and instead of revelation, I get fatigue.” We were down on the sidewalk. “Want a lift?”
His car, for no apparent reason, smelled of popcorn.
“Maybe it’s no good being officially labeled ‘detective,’” I said. “You go around trying to force people to tell you things. They clam up. But I stand still, knowing zilch, and people come on to me, force-feeding me tidbits. Maybe I find out more than you do.”
I thought that’d tantalize him, but he was less than intrigued. He scratched his head and stared at his ignition key. “Like that dark-haired fellow?” he finally said. “Saw some heavy action between you two. He doesn’t seem your type, though.” Mackenzie yawned and began driving, very slowly.
I almost asked Mackenzie which parts of my household inventory made him deduce what my type might be. But he was right; Eddie wasn’t my type, and as fascinating as it is hearing myself described, I was not the topic at hand.
“Eddie, that dark-haired fellow, is an actor. At the Playhouse. He wants to talk to me about Liza.”
“I know who he is. I talked to him. He isn’t a suspect. He was working all day Monday. He’s clean. And I think he was coming on to you in a kind of creepy way, considerin’ the circumstances.”
“He has something he wants to say. To me. Not to the police.”
“I’ll just bet. And who could blame him for his preference?” We waited for a light to change. Mackenzie rested his head on the steering wheel.
“About Liza. He wants to talk about Liza.”
This time my somnolent driver attempted to smother his yawn by holding his lips together. He looked like a blowfish.
“I’m serious, Mackenzie,” I said. “And you’re barely listening. This could be important stuff. Also,” I said, forcefully, so that it would penetrate his stupor, “Sissie Bellinger has twice been at me, asking what Liza said, what I know.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, barely moving his mouth. “People love firsthand tellings. That’s what sells all those magazines in the supermarket, you know?”
“It’s more than that. Hayden Cole is behaving suspiciously. He practically kidnapped me yesterday. I forgot to tell you.”
“Forgot?” Mackenzie shook his head. “Forgot a kidnapping?”
“Well, it was almost one. He made me ride around with him, and he questioned me.”
“Made you? Forced you? Dragged you? Hit you?”
“Well, his man, this Haskell creep, yanked me.”
“And Hayden? What did he do?”
“He, ah, he told him to stop.”
“Wow,” Mackenzie said; then he yawned again.
I sat up straight for my final offering, hoping it would trigger some sympathetic response.
“Then listen to this one, C.K. Hayden’s mother followed it up by telling me that her little boy wouldn’t hurt a fly and that he’d better become senator because he’s all goodness and light. She’s weird.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “And she told me all that, too, even though I am an official detective. He was a good little boy. Citizenship award every year. Perfect attendance record. Dean’s list at Franklin and Marshall. Right fraternity, right—”
“Doesn’t it make you suspicious? Why is she pouring his innocence all over you? I mean, my brother-in-law was in the same right fraternity at F&M as Cole was, but I don’t rush around making sure you know that. What’s its relevance? Any of it?”
But he was on a roll, and as soon as my interruption ended, he resumed his sentence. “…law firm. Right father. Right mother. Nice baby, nice boy, nice man…”
Mackenzie was driving five miles an hour. He even lacked the energy to press on the gas pedal.
“It’s the way she said it that’s important, Mackenzie! Wake up! Why should she talk to me that way?”
Have you ever noticed how we rush to fill vacuums? Energy vacuums included? As if there’s a base level that must be maintained at all costs. So the lower-keyed Mackenzie got, the more manic and expressive I became, just so there’d be evidence of life in the car. I gesticulated, I emphasized, I trilled, I pleaded. “Hayden quizzes me, Mama prompts me,” I said. “Isn’t it all obvious? What’s his alibi for Monday? Did you check it out?”
He stopped in midyawn. His ego was obviously still hearty. “What kind of question is that? Of course I did. He was with some dumb—the Thursday Club. Except they meet Mondays. Late breakfast, then a conference with his campaign manager.”
We were finally in front of my house. C.K. put the car into neutral and rubbed his eyes.
“Yes, but I mean really check. Was he with other people every single minute? And wouldn’t they cover for him, anyway? As his campaign manager would, wouldn’t he? Were there any breaks in time, long enough to get to my house?” I felt inspired, considered myself one of the great orators. My honeyed words, my persuasive powers, would convince the slow-witted detective.
He stared at me, his mouth half-open.
“Look!” I said, eyebrows rising to convey the message. “The suburban clique is too worried—look how hard they’re pushing me! If you really go over his schedule Monday, minute by minute—and Sissie’s, too—you might find something.”
“My, oh, my,” he said. “Havin’ fun, aren’t you? Look at you now! Perky little lady sleuth. Nancy Drew’s all grown up.”
I shriveled and tumbled from my podium. “I resent that.”
“Hold on, now. I have been on this for four straight days with almost no sleep. There’s a lot of pressure you don’t know about, family bein’ so prominent and all. But I know my business. I’m good at it. Your business is teachin’ English. You’re good at that. But your part of my business is over. Stay out. I appreciate your good intentions, but this is my job.” He ran out of steam.
“Good night,” I said stiffly, getting out of the car. “Do get some sleep. It’s supposed to rejuvenate brain cells.”
“I’ll wait till you’re inside,” he said, sagging over the steering wheel. “I’ll see you tomorrow at the funeral. All us detectives go to those things, too.”
I went into my house, fuming over the way my tax dollars were being wasted on that dimwit. I wondered how and why I had ever, even for a moment, found him the least bit appealing.