Mitchell Smith (36 page)

“I know just the male counterpart,” Ellie said. “-I’d have to persuade him - . - - “

Behind the building, the path curved up across a lawn, and on into a cluster of small, light green trees. There were flowers planted along this path, too. -Marigolds, Ellie thought, like the others … hanging on through early fall. Now, there was no breeze, no movement of the air at all. Perfect sunny late-morning stillness. The priest stopped walking as Ellie stopped.

“You’re thinking we have a little paradise here, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Ellie said.

“The garden-the students call it Sanctuary because it’s their private place, and faculty isn’t supposed to go there-the garden is right up through those maples.”

“I was wondering,” Ellie said, “what’ll happen to Sonia, now.”

“Nothing further grim,” Peschek said, “-if we can help it. We aren’t entirely at the service of the thoughtless rich, you know. We–or I, anyway-take St. Christopher’s very seriously, even if some no longer regard our patron as a serious saint.” The priest’s scalp was bright pink in the sunshine, his fine hair no protection at all.

“I’ve spoken to some of the parents about it, and we hope that Sonia will stay right here with us, will go to school here until she graduates, and then-hopefully with some scholarship assistance-will go on to college. She’ll be spending her summers with her friends.”

“Lucky.

“Maybe,” the priest said. “-We won’t know that for a long time.”

“We found fourteen thousand dollars in Sally’s apartment,” Ellie said.

“It’ll be tied up for a while-but you could check with the Manhattan D.A., the District Attorney’s office. If you have a lawyer, he could check with them - The probate court might release some of that. . . .”

“Well, thank you very much. that could be helpful. -What’s your first name?”

“Eleanor. -Ellie.”

“Thank you very much, Ellie. We’ll check.” He held out his soft hand to shake. “Will you come up and visit us again? -Bring your reluctant male counterpart?”

“I’ll try, Father.”

“Bye-bye,” Peschek said, turned, and walked back down the flagstone path. He waddled slightly.

Ellie walked up into the maples, saw a low darker green line of hedge ahead, then came into a small brickpaved garden circle, walled with the hedge, waist-high.

The girl was waiting on a redwood bench to the left, sitting in her school uniform, her legs crossed, a green book bag in her lap, reading a textbook-pretending to read it, Ellie thought.

“Hi . . .” Ellie walked over to her. “You’re Sonia, aren’t you?”

The girl looked up from her book. “Yes . She was not as pretty as her mother had been. Slightly stocky, with straight light-brown hair, almost blond, worn long.

Blue-gray eyes, though, that looked a little like her mother’s in her pictures. A long elegant nose-very like her mother’s.

“My name’s Ellie Klein. I’m a police officer, which I guess you know.

-May I sit down?”

“O.K.” Sonia closed her book-a small book with a red cover-and held it in her lap, on her book bag.

“-Did you find out who did it?”

“No, not yet,” Ellie 9said, and sat down beside her.

“Well … the first thin I want to say is I’m sorry I had to come up and bother you-“

“You’re not bothering me.”

“Well … I took you out of class.”

“I don’t care about that,” Sonia said. “It was just algebra. That stuff’s a waste of time, anyway.”

“Well, I had to come up. There’re a few questions I need to ask you……

“So … ? Go ahead. Ask me.”

The girl had beautiful skin, so smooth and fight-attracting that Ellie could see the separate fine hairs of down along her forearm, could see shifting delicate pinks and pearls n-ex and silvers in it. -I’m sitting t to Sally Gaither’s child, e now as anybody ca she thought. This is as clos n ever be to Sally. . . .

“Did you ever meet any of your mom’s friends?”

“Mother. My mother.”

“Did you ever meet any of your mother’s friends)”

“I met Susan Margolies, once. She wasn’t very smart.”

“Why not?”

“She let all mother’s plants die when we were in New mexico-said she forgot.”

“You meet any other of your mother’s friends’)”

“No-I didn’t. It wasn’t Appropriate.”:

“Did your mother ever mention anybody to you …

anybody she was close to, or afraid of? Any man she knew … who was kind of tough-or a little weird?”

Sonia Gaither smiled, ,My mother knew lots of men who were tough-and a little weird. It was her profession, you know. Don’t you know lots of guys who’re tough and a little weird? -That wasn’t a very good question.”

“I mean somebody special, Sonia. ‘You know … somebody who was bothering her. Somebody she mentioned recently.”

The girl turned to face Ellie, and showed shadows on the skin under her eyes. It made her face look odd-a young girl’s face, with a woman’s shadows under her eyes, ,-She didn’t tell me about anybody like that.

-Nobody bothered my mother. She told me, if anybody bothered you—either pick them up and set them aside, or if they’re too heavy to lift, then walk around them and keep going. She wasn’t afraid, -You can’t be a professional prostitute, and be afraid of people. You need to like people, to be good at that.”

DAYDRE”S

“But there must have been somebody, Sonia-because somebody killed her.”

Sonia stared at Ellie, reminded. Ellie, watching the change of light in the girl’s eyes, the shifting shades of blue and gray, saw at their centers the round black pupils barely expand. “I don’t understand it,”

the girl said. “-I don’t understand it at all. ” Sonia smelled of vanilla and clean Cloth.

“I want you to think about it. Please, Sonia. See if you can think of anyone Your Moin-your mother talked about.”

“Mother didn’t talk about her clients. -Well, she did, sometimes. But she didn’t tell me their names or anything.”

“Did she describe a man to you? -Maybe someone who was really close to her-maybe someone she really liked?”

“She liked George Soseby.”

“And she told you his name,”

“I know George. George wasn’t a client. -He’s my mother’s lover.

That’s a whole different kind of relationship. -You know how they met?

He was a date-and then afterward, he asked for his money back. And my mother asked why, and he said he didn’t want money standing between them, and asked for his money back.

She gave it to him, too. -He’s really nice.”

Ellie felt a little short of breath. “Where does George live, honey?

-Has he talked to you since your mother died?”

“George lives in New York; he’s a factor. You know what that is?”

“No-I don’t think so. .

“I think it’s a trader who is kind of a middleman between other traders-importing things.”

“Oh. -Where does George live? What’s his address?”

“I don’t know-but he’s in Europe, now. He’s in Brussels, Belgium. I don’t think he knows what happened. . . .”

“In Belgium … He hasn’t called you … written to you?”

“He sent me some postcards.”

“Did you keep them?”

“No-the pictures weren’t that great. I guess he knew something was wrong. He said something in the last one about mother not answering her phone … just kind of joking. I threw all those cards away. I didn’t want to keep them.”

“How does Mr. Soseby spell his name, Sonia?”

“S-0-S-E-B-Y.”

Ellie took her notebook from her purse, and wrote that down. Then, they sat together without saying anything for a while.

“Is it true,” Ellie said, “-that the teachers can’t come here?”

“Masters.”

“But they can’t come here?”

“They’re not supposed to,” Sonia said. “-But if kids started smoking pot and stuff here, they would.”

“I guess this is the prettiest school I ever saw,” Ellie said. “Is it nice as it looks?”

“It’s O.K. They don’t bug you too much.”

“Hard classes?”

“The classes are very hard.”

“What do you do in the summer? -Stay with friends, or what?”

“I stay with my mother. -We went to New Mexico this summer to see the pueblos and watch the Pueblo indians make sand paintings and katchinas.

-It’s part of their religion.”

“Did you stay with her in town, too? In her apartment?”

“That place was for business. When I came to New York, we stayed at a hotel. Any hotel I wanted to . . .”

Sonia bowed her head, looking down at her textbook, her book bag.

“Well, I need to ask you one more thing. Then, I’ll leave you alone.”

“That’s all right……

A sparrow flew down onto the brick pavement in front of the bench, and began to hop and peck at things in the cracks of the bricks.

“Did your mom-Aid your mother leave any notebook or diary with you? An appointment book, anything like that?”

“No.”

“You don’t have anything like that?”

“No. She wrote me some letters when we came back from vacation. . .

.”)

“A lot of letters?”

“My mother came up here all the time-she didn’t have to write me a lot of letters.”

Another sparrow came and joined the first, and they fluttered into the air, then landed again in the same place, and pecked between the bricks.

“O.K.,” Ellie said. “Listen, I know it’s a private thing.

But it could be important. Could I just look at the letters-to see if there might be something important in them?”

“No.

“Even if there might be something important in them? -Something you wouldn’t know about?”

“I know about what’s in my letters,” Sonia Gaither said, put her textbook in her book bag, zipped it shut, and stood up. She had narrow ankles, round, strong calves. “-I have to go and get some stuff for gym in my room. I have gym right after lunch.”

Ellie stood up, too. “Can I walk with you?”

“Sure. That’s all right.”

They walked out of the garden, and down the path between the pines.

Sonia was shorter than Ellie, 6y a good bit.

“Are these marigolds?”

“Mums.”

They walked down to the building where Peschek had his office, then on across the turnaround and back down the drive Ellie had come up. Near the first faculty house, Sonia went to the left, and they walked down another flagstone path toward a long, two-story building-white clapboard, like the others.

A Hispanic-looking girl came walking up the path toward them-the school uniform looking better on her than on the others—glanced at Ellie, and said, “Hi, Sonia.“Juana,” Sonia said.

“You know,” Ellie said, after the girl had passed, -when I was nine, I came home from school one day, and my mom had left a note for me on the kitchen table.

It said, ‘There’s a tuna-fish sandwich in the refrigerator, and pour yourself a glass of milk. —Good luck, honey.”

She had left me and my dad-and I didn’t see her again for four years.”

Sonia didn’t say anything.

“When I did see her again, it was like she wasn’t my mother at all. I think, in a kind of way, my mother died that afternoon when I was nine.

-You were lucky, Sonia.

Your mom loved you. -That’s one thing I already found out. Your mom loved you more than anything.”

Sonia said nothing until they got to the building steps, then she stopped, and held out her hand. “It was nice meeting you,” she said.

“-I’m sorry I didn’t know any of that stuff you wanted to know.”

“That’s O.K.,” Ellie said, shaking her hand. `-It was nice meeting you, Sonia.” She wanted to hug the girl, but Sonia didn’t seem to want anything like that. Ellie searched in her purse, found her wallet, and took out her card; then she found her pen and wrote her home phone number on the back. ‘-Here, it’s my home phone.” She handed the card to Sonia. “If you remember anything, or … or if you just want to talk to somebody, call me. I have an answering machine.”

“O.K.,” Sonia said, “-bye-bye,” and turned and went up the building steps.

Ellie closed her purse, stood and watched until Sonia went in through the entrance and was gone, then started back up the long walk to the turnaround. It was a big school. -Spread out, anyway. She thought the kids must get a lot of exercise, just getting around.

She walked up to the turnaround, went to the Honda, and leaned on its roof to write “Factor” and “Belgium” in her notebook. If Soseby had really been in Belgiumthen that was likely that. Ellie supposed he didn’t even know Sally was dead. -Unless he’d had someone kill her.

She unlocked the car, got in-it was warm inside, even though the day was cool-started it, backed out of her parking space (the brown-and-white van was gone), and drove around and down to the driveway, then past the faculty houses and out across the big lawn. The boys weren’t playing on it, now. Probably gone to lunch.

As she pulled around the grove of trees at the end of the drive, Ellie saw a girl. -Sonia. She was standing beside the school sign at the side of the road, waiting.

Ellie pulled up beside her.

Sonia’s hair was tangled from running. Ellie thought her face was sweaty-then saw she was crying. Ellie turned the engine off, got out of the car, and went to the girl and hugged her.

“I’m sorry,” Ellie said. “Oh, Sonia-it’s so terrible for you. I’m so sorry.”

“Oh … oh, Mrs. Klein,” the girl said, and held on to Ellie hard.

Ellie kissed her cheek, and tasted tears. “Poor, poor baby,” she said.

“-There . . - there.”

“Why did he hurt her so much?” The girl’s arms were locked around Ellie like chains. “-He could have just killed her. -He didn’t have to hurt her so much!”

“Here,” Ellie said, reached down for her purse for Kleenex, then realized it was in the car. “Oh, my God … come on, now. There, there, sweetheart . . .”

Sonia Gaither sagged against her, and wept the front of Ellie’s white blouse wet, her body convulsing as she cried.

“Ah, darling,” Ellie said, and held the girl to her.

“There, there . . .” Ellie thought that Sonia, a little younger, could have been her daughter. She held the girl, and rocked her in her arms.