The Ghosts of Lovely Women (17 page)

I didn’t know there was a lower level of depression until I sank into it. My sense was that Derek hated me now, and I didn’t think it was fair. Maybe it would all seem more sane, more rational, tomorrow. Until then I simply had to endure. My stern conscience told me to be glad that I was alive; that Kathy was dead and I had to remember that I was still potentially in danger.

* * *

Mitch Menteith was thin, rather short, but not unattractive. He had spiky hair, gloriously red, and a small red goatee. He wore thin wire glasses and, I noted, had a strong grip. “What can I get you, Miss Thurber?”

“Call me Teddy.”

“Okay. I’m Mitch. So you were Jessica’s teacher? Is that what you said?”

“Yes.” I paused to give my coffee order to the waitress, then said, “I taught Jessica. Both her junior and senior years.”

“Wow. This just throws you, doesn’t it? I mean, of all people. She was so awesome, too.”

“Were you interested in her romantically?”

“She had a boyfriend,” he said, avoiding my question and my eyes.

“I’m curious about Jessica’s website. She called and told me about it, but I didn’t get the message until after… she had died.”

“Yeah. Well, that site was a big success before they pulled the plug.”

“They?”

“The cops — and me, I guess.”

“How exactly — how did it work? I mean, how was the money processed?”

Mitch looked smug. “I set it up so that it was pretty hard to trace the host. But we had a merchant account, and then Jessica had me write checks to the shelters of her choice. There were two, mainly, that she had picked.”

I pulled a pad out of my purse. “What were they called?”

“One was called Hope House. The other one was called The New York Center for Women.”

I jotted this down. “And did they know where Jessica’s money came from?”

“She told them it was a percentage of her internet business. I don’t think they cared all that much. That was good money, and they needed it.”

“How much money?”

He shrugged and looked out the window, then at me. “The last check I wrote to Hope House was for forty-two thousand dollars.”

I stared at him. “Forty-two thousand.”

“Sick, huh? How many pervs paid to see her undress?”

“How — I mean, how did people even find that website?”

“I set it up so that it popped up with certain search terms. “Teens undressing,” “Girls on webcams,” stuff like that.”

I sat in silence, processing this. The coffee came and I sipped at it gratefully. The aroma made me feel slightly better, and soon so would the caffeine.

“I don’t know a lot about this, but why wasn’t the website shut down long ago? I mean, isn’t it illegal?”

“Not technically — unless it’s kids. Jessica wasn’t officially an adult when we started, so I guess that was iffy. We looked into it. We were careful with the way we phrased things. It really just reads like an erotic site, not a pornographic one. But we made sure that no one could complain. What are they going to tell the cops — I expected this girl to undress for me, and I want my money back?”

“And the money — how was that paid to you?”

“We had a merchant account, like I said, and people used their credit card numbers.”

“So was there any way to know who people were?”

“Yeah, their names popped up on the printouts. I sent them to Jessica every couple of weeks, and she read them. She was sort of… like, vigilant about that.”

“Huh. And I assume the police now have all those printouts?”

“Yeah. Except they told me that one is missing.”

“Missing? Can’t they just go back online and get the information?”

Mitch looked guilty. “Not exactly. When I heard they were shutting down the site—”

“How did you hear that?”

“Rosalyn Baxter called me. She’s a girl that—”

“I know who Rosalyn is.”

“She told me about Jessica. She was crying and shit. I couldn’t believe it, to be honest. And she said she had heard something from Jessica’s mom — that the cops were going to seize the computer and look into the whole New York operation, and were we going to be in trouble?”

“Were you?”

“I don’t think so. But just in case I got in there and scrambled everything. Like fried it. With my own homemade virus.”

“You’re pretty capable, huh?”

He shrugged again, then cracked his knuckles. “Back when I was in school, I knew more than even the fancy troubleshooters they used to call in. They finally figured this out; when the mainframe went down, they just called me out of class.” He looked smug again. “I finally said they had to pay me, and they did. It was fuckin’ great.”

“Your university paid you to solve their computer problems?”

“My high school,” he said. “Starting my freshman year.”

Stunned, I took another sip of my coffee and studied Mitch Menteith. He was a self-assured young man, but also one with lots of knowledge. If he had helped Jessica to do something not-quite-legal online, what else did he have his hand in? Might Jessica have found out?

“Anyway, I should probably get going,” he said. “Unless you wanted to ask me more questions?”

“Yes. Yes, I do,” I said with a sudden inspiration. I took out my wallet, where I had placed a copy of the folded paper taken from Kathy Olchen’s wallet. The police had the original. “Does this mean anything to you?” I held out the number: “NR1415. Two thousand dollars so far.”

Mitch read it, clearing his throat. His coffee still sat untouched in front of him. “Well, I would say that whoever the dude was had already given us 2000 bucks worth of business, except as you know, nobody would come back after they’d been caught once. I did get some repeat customers, though, because I kept changing our address and the basic look of the site. But anyway, the money is probably something else.”

“What makes you assume it’s related to the website?”

“Because this was how the merchant account was set up — every number started with NR — Nora’s Revenge — and then the number we issued to each new client. Their customer number. I just explained this to some other chick who called me.”

“What chick?”

“Some lady who knew Jessica — from her new school, or your school, maybe. I was only half listening. I was online when she called.”

“Was it Kathy Olchen?”

“That sounds right. She was asking about the number — it was written on something that Jessica had given her. Jessica said it was “insurance,” except that she didn’t say what it was insurance for. This lady knew about the site, and somehow she got my name. She was asking questions, too.”

“Did she get the answer she wanted?”

“I don’t know. She asked me if anyone had been sending Jessica cash. Like unsolicited cash.”

“Had they been?”

“Not that I know of. I mean, her parents sent her money now and then. They’re pretty loaded.”

“Why did Kathy think Jessica was getting cash?”

“I guess it was something weird Jessica said to her before she died. I guess she and this woman had talked, either on the phone or in person. And Jessica said something about money, or money being a burden or something. Later this woman thought it was significant.”

I sighed. This wasn’t adding up. “So this NR number — this is something the police will be able to look up? And find out who this man was?”

“Uh— no.” Mitch looked guilty. “Because that particular series of numbers was on the missing sheet. His name, his credit card info, that was all on there. It’s most likely Jessica pulled it for some reason. I mean, the cops can try to trace it through the credit card companies, but that will take a million years, because we don’t know which credit card companies we’re talking about.”

“You didn’t save a copy of the sheets?”

“I didn’t need to. I had the computer. Until I didn’t, that is.” He looked regretful. “It’s hard to destroy your own creation.”

“Sometimes it’s better. Didn’t you read
Frankenstein?
”

“You must teach English, huh?”

I sighed. “Thank you so much for your time, Mitch.”

“No problem. Sorry I couldn’t help more. But I’ll tell you this. If Jessica pulled that sheet, it was because she wanted to stick it to some guy, right? I mean, why else did she read them all except to look for names she knew?”

“I don’t know. Why would she want to know that?”

He picked up his coffee and took his first sip. “She felt like a cop. Like a vice cop. She was glad to hit these guys up for twenty-five bucks, but she wanted to do more. She wanted to find some big-name guy — a politician maybe, and really nail him. She said that men were dishonest about their uh—
sexuality
.”

He said the final word as though it were an eccentricity, an odd usage on Jessica’s part.

When we shook hands again and Mitch sauntered out with his coffee, I realized I hadn’t asked him how he knew her.

“I came to see you for one thing only: I did not want you to leave me.”

—Raskolnikov,
Crime and Punishment
, Part Five

The only thing I wanted more than sleep was to resolve things with Derek; in order to do that I had to speak with his sister and find out just how that necklace had gotten into the kitchen junk drawer of the man I just so happened to be falling in love with. I called his home number and a girlish voice answered. “Hello?”

“Oh — uh— hello. This is Teddy Thurber.”

“Oh, hi, Teddy! Derek told me you would call. I guess he got in some hot water because of Jessie’s necklace, huh? I’m sorry. I really need to give this back to her!” Her voice was light; it sounded as though she was smiling while she talked.

“Didn’t Derek tell you — what was going on?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Jessica Halliday was your friend?”

“Yeah. Still is, although I haven’t talked to her in ages.”

“Cindy, Jessica was murdered more than a week ago. Didn’t you see it in the papers?”

“Murdered? Oh my God!” she cried in my ear. “Oh, no, oh no!”

“I’m sorry. I thought Derek would—”

“Oh, man. Listen, I need some time to process this. Maybe we can talk later? Do you want to come by? I’m at Derek’s — I’m here with my son, who I think you met. His name is Charlie?”

“Yes, I met—”

“Okay. Give me like an hour, and then I’ll expect you, okay?” She sounded as though she was about to cry.

“Okay, Cindy.”

An hour later I trudged toward his house with P.G. in tow, allowing P.G. extra sniffing time as repentance for the short shrift I’d given him earlier in my haste to meet Mitch Menteith. I suppose I should have been wary — even suspicious. What if this were just a ruse? What if Derek were waiting there to kill me, and had simply paid someone to act the part of his sister?

But two things prevented my suspicion — the first was that I was now so tired I could barely keep my eyes open. The second was that, no matter what the evidence, I trusted Derek. I think I had trusted him all along, but I had been distracted, horrified, by the evidence.

We reached Derek’s place and I pressed the buzzer. A young sounding voice said, “Yes?”

“Uh— my name is Teddy Thurber. Derek—”

“Oh, yes Teddy! Come on up!”

Cindy Jonas looked about as sweet as she sounded. She had strawberry blonde hair, a freckled face dominated by giant green eyes, and the same perceptive look as her brother’s. She was lovely. She wore a pair of jeans and a T-shirt that said “Crank” on it. Her feet were bare. “You’re so young,” I said.

She laughed. “I’m twenty-six. I’m sure I’ll be glad that I look ten years younger when I’m fifty, right?”

She led me into the apartment, where I saw Charlie sitting on the floor and playing with blocks. His legs looked tiny and foreshortened when he sat, like the kids in the Charlie Brown cartoons. He’d built an impressive structure, and I was just about to compliment him when he knocked it down with a violent swing of his arm. He smiled at me and said “BANG!”

“Wow,” I commented.

Charlie spied P.G. then and said, “Dahgie!”

“Is it okay for Charlie to pet him?” Cindy asked.

“Sure.” I led P.G. over to him and Cindy instructed Charlie to pet P.G. very gently, not to hit or squeeze. We watched him for a while and he did quite nicely. P.G. started to close his eyes under Charlie’s ministrations.

I got up and sat in one of Derek’s dining room chairs. I took Jessica’s necklace out of my purse and gave it wordlessly to Cindy. She sat across from me and held it, nodding.

“This is Jessie’s,” she said.

“How did it happen to get here?”

“Oh, Derek didn’t know it was here, I’m sure,” she said. “I wore it here one day, and then I took it off in the kitchen while I was doing dishes; it was swinging around and getting in the way, and I think I just ended up putting it in there so it didn’t get misplaced or thrown away, and then — I just forgot about it.” She gave me a sincerely regretful look. It was almost impossible not to like Cindy Jonas; she had the proverbial girl-next-door face and a kind demeanor.

“But how did you GET it?” I asked. “I thought it was very important to Jessica.”

“Jessie was your student, huh? What a coincidence! I mean, with Derek liking you so much, and me liking Jessie so much. I can’t believe this. I looked up the story online. It sounds so horrifying. So unbelievable when it’s someone you know.”

“Didn’t Derek say—”

“Oh, he just called from work and asked if I knew about the necklace and I said sure, and he said would I please explain its existence to Teddy Thurber — you know that sort of stern pedantic tone he gets?” She grinned at me as though we had both appreciated this thing for many years. Our shared joke.

“That’s all he told you?”

“He had to run. Some guy from his department went to some conference and they were supposed to meet about the results or whatever.” She grinned again, this time abashedly. “I wasn’t totally listening.”

“Cindy, how do you know her?”

She sighed and looked over her shoulder to check on Charlie. Then she turned back to me. “I went to a booksigning last year for this woman — this psychologist named Dr. Janice Foster.”