The Ghosts of Lovely Women (26 page)

“Great point. Who’s seen television shows about police interrogations?” Tons of hands. “And what’s one way they try to get people to confess?”

Chris didn’t even raise his hand. “By getting in their heads. By trying to expose whatever is repressed.”

Derek turned to me where I sat quietly in the corner of the room. “Miss Thurber, I am thoroughly impressed with your class, and I pledge to read
Crime and Punishment
this summer.”

The class cheered. Derek smiled and pulled out some handouts. “For those of you who have further interest in this topic, I have compiled a list of articles — not long ones — I hear you’re quite tired of long readings.”

The class groaned as Derek grinned and passed out his papers. “But some of this research might lead you to future projects, even in college. I point you initially to some readings by Rousseau, Marx, and Freud…”

The students took them willingly enough, but they continued to pepper Derek with questions. “Let’s all thank Mr. Jonas for giving up his free period,” I said, and the class applauded.

Then, inevitably, one of the girls asked, “Are you guys going out?”

Derek’s face didn’t change at all; he straightened his pile of papers on my desk. “I wish,” he said.

Chris yelled, “I think Mr. Jonas is being inauthentic!”

The class laughed, and I held up a hand. “Class, no one asks you about your personal lives.”

“Ms. Thurber is blushing!”

The bell, mercifully, rang at that moment, and I shooed the students away. Danny remained, though. “Ms. Thurber, can I talk to you?”

“About my love life?”

“No. About Jessica.”

“Uh— okay. Can Mr. Jonas hear this, too?”

“Sure, I guess.”

He waited until the last student left and then he faced us, his chin a jut of determination. “This theory makes sense to me. And I decided to apply it to real life. And I think I know who killed Jessica.”

I was standing in front of my desk; I sat on it, suddenly. “What?”

“The thing is, we know she was after some guy, right? Some guy in power.”

“We don’t know—”

“So the logical conclusion is that it’s a guy here. She was here, in Pine Grove, when she got killed. Who does she know here? Her friends, her family, and her teachers.”

“But Danny, you’re leaving out a lot of variables.”

“Do you know what David Paris told me?”

“Who’s David Paris?”

“He’s — sort of a stoner, but he’s a good kid.” Danny waved that away. “He said he saw Jessica’s car in the school parking lot on the day she died.”

“What?”

“Yeah. Not during school hours, but afterward. But he saw it like in the faculty parking, right by the door.”

“Has he told the police this?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think he thinks it means much. He figures she came here to visit people, then got killed later by some random mugger. He doesn’t think much, period.”

“And couldn’t that be true?”

“It could if she were visiting people. But this was after school. We were all gone.”

Derek said, “Does she have a recognizable car?”

I looked nervously at the door. My period two students were gathering in the hall and peering in; they seemed to think that Danny was in trouble. I waved at them to indicate that it was nothing, and they began to file into the room.

Danny saw this. “Yeah, it’s recognizable. And you think about this: who was her hero around this place? Who came to every show and acted like Jessica could do no wrong? Our principal,” he said in a low voice. “Mr. Anthony Fairchild.”

He left, with a dark look over his shoulder. “Danny—” I said, but he was gone. And what was I going to say?
Don’t pursue this?
Why shouldn’t he? Let him tell the police. If Anthony had to endure some temporary suspicion in order for Jessica’s murderer to be found, then that would be necessary. He had certainly allowed Josh to endure plenty of it before he was exonerated, in the aftermath of a girl’s vicious rumor.

I sighed. Derek said, “I’ve got to get to class. We’ll talk later,” and was gone. I faced my own class and pasted on a bright smile. Could they see my inauthenticity? Could they sense what was simmering beneath my surface? Tension, growing inexplicably, and the gnawing feeling that Danny might somehow be on the right track.

* * *

By period three I was feeling drained. Between Derek’s visit and Danny’s information, I had expended a great deal of psychic energy. I decided to put some of Derek’s notes up on the board for the world lit class who would not hear his presentation. I opened my drawer to look for a piece of chalk that wasn’t already a hopeless nub, and saw a shadow in my doorway.

I looked up to see Fred Bastian, all business with his clipboard and his brown suit. He consulted the clipboard for a moment. “Teddy,” he said. “How about that writing proposal?”

I sat back in my seat, surprised. Fred never came to people’s classrooms — he always gave us those little notes, what Josh lovingly called the “Fred-Ex,” and he waited for us to come to him. Here he was in my kingdom, and I couldn’t even revel in the victory because I had so much on my mind. Out of nowhere a line from
Crime and Punishment
came to me. Porfiry, the brilliant detective, is amused when Raskolnikov comes to the police station. “
Here you are
,” he says. “
In our territory
.”

“Oh, Fred — you’re going to hate me, but I didn’t do it yet.”

“Ah. Well, the thing is I need to put this curriculum guide together, and I was hoping I could get it from you. Do you think you could type something up this period?”

“Of course. Absolutely. In fact—” I jumped up and rushed to the bookcase by the door, where I’d left a notebook with some preliminary jottings. I retrieved it and turned swiftly; Fred turned, too, but not before I saw that his clipboard was entirely empty. I paused, my mouth open, and Fred smiled at me.

“You’re normally so organized, Teddy. I’m surprised you don’t have this in triplicate by now.” He reached out and tapped my arm. Joking around. Something Josh would do, but never Fred.
Never Fred
. I stared at him for a moment, not laughing, and something twitched in his jaw.

Your lip is trembling, as it always does
. Porfiry Petrovich, confronting a murderer.

I needed to get myself together. I wasn’t inside a book. This was life. This was Fred Bastian the boring, for goodness’ sake. But he was joking with me. He was in my room, where he had never come, not in eight years. He had pretended to read something on an empty clipboard. He had touched my arm. He had smiled at me — twice. Today and yesterday.

“Teddy?”

“Oh, sorry. I just had another idea — let me jot it down before I forget it.”

“Maybe I could wait here while you get your thoughts together.”

“Sure, sure.” I went to my desk and sat down, pretending to flip through the notebook. I was trying to arrange my thoughts, but not about the writing. When else had Fred been inauthentic? I remembered his hand trembling as he wrote down the information about Jessica’s death. Was that like him?

And his expression, when he asked me to come into the office with Mr. and Mrs. Halliday — it had looked so miserable, so unlike Fred, who could normally handle any occasion with aplomb.

And what about that day — the day I was in his office? I had left my purse on Fred’s desk. I had been distracted by the Hallidays; Mrs. Halliday had hugged me, talked to me. I was watching Jessica’s journal, because I wondered if they would recognize it. Fred could have taken my key, then used it to break into my apartment. But what would he have been looking for? What was he looking for now? Was it the missing page from Jessica’s printouts? Had he visited her website? Had Kathy asked him about that? She had visited him in his office the day she died.

“So — uh— let’s see. Okay, let me just open the file I had started,” I said. My hands were trembling as I turned to the computer and opened a file I had labeled “Writing Proposal.” There were only a couple of sentences there so far.

“Teddy? Are you upset about something?”

I looked at him, and then found that I couldn’t look at him anymore. His eyes were searching mine, and not in a caring administrator sort of way. This was a man who was seeking information. I strove for any excuse. “Well, the fact is — I’ve been dating Derek Jonas. And I wanted to just confess it to you before you found out through the grapevine. I don’t know what the school policy is—”

Fred laughed. It was horrible, wrong laughter that seemed to conceal a hidden dread. “We’ve had other faculty members who dated. Even married. Remember Tom Mitford and Ava Harkness?”

“Oh — yes. They’re gone now. I thought maybe they had to leave.”

“They got jobs in Alaska. A lifelong dream.” He didn’t sound happy for them.

“Oh. How cool. Let’s see…” I couldn’t concentrate at all. Not at all. Fred was looming over me and I was thinking, Who would be here at school after everyone had left? Anthony Fairchild? Maybe. Fred Bastian? Definitely. Josh always joked that Fred probably had his dry-cleaning delivered here.

“What do you have so far?” He was leaning closer, but not close enough for me to see the empty clipboard that he thought I hadn’t seen.
His prop
. Raskolnikov had used a prop, too, to gain entrance into the pawnbroker’s apartment. And then he had killed her with an axe.

“Uh— you know what? The fact is I can’t concentrate at all while you’re standing over me, Fred!” I made myself laugh and poke him back, with one finger. His arm felt tense.

“How about if I come back in about fifteen minutes?” he said.

“Fifteen? How about thirty, and I’ll have it all done. All nice and wrapped with a bow,” I said, showing my teeth in an attempt at naturalness.

“Teddy, you’re acting very strange today.” He hadn’t moved.

I forced my eyes to meet his. “You know what? I don’t think I’ve gotten over Jessica Halliday’s death.”

He didn’t wince, but his eyes did something — narrowed or twitched or flinched — in his otherwise paralyzed face. “It’s been difficult.”

“Yes. For all of us. Especially you, I would think.”

His brows rose, as though someone had pulled a string to make it happen. “What do you mean by that?”

“Oh, just that you’re the one who had to hear the news first, and then tell everyone and process all the arrangements. Plus weren’t you two pretty close? I mean, all those extracurriculars and stuff. And there were all those photos at the wake — her posing with you and Anthony for all of her awards and events.”

“We pose with many students.”

“Yeah. But Jessica was special, wasn’t she?”

Fred smiled and put a hand on my shoulder, heavily. “Yes. She was very special.” I felt his grip tightening, ever so slightly, when Rosa appeared in the doorway.

“Fred. What are you doing up here? You have a phone call.”

Fred walked stiffly out of the room, not acknowledging either one of us.

I started shaking. “Rosa.”

“Yeah? What’s with the personal visit?”

“Rosa, were you here late the day Jessica died?”

“I don’t think so. I generally leave at four.”

“Fred — did he ever get personal mail in his mailbox? Mail from parents, or students, or—”

“Sure. He gets all kinds of stuff.”

“From Jessica?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe from the Drama Club? When she went here she was always delivering stuff. Especially right before she graduated — it seemed like she was always at those mailboxes, dropping off, picking up.”

“Rosa.”

“Yeah?” She eyed me as if she feared for my sanity. I can’t imagine how I looked.

“The mailboxes down there are numbered, right?”

“Yeah. It starts with Anthony, who’s 100. Fred is 101. And Jessie’s Drama Club — I don’t know—114, maybe?”

“Thanks,” I whispered. All this time we thought that Jessica had been leaving clues, but Jessica had never expected anyone to find them. She’d been insuring herself against harm, or so she thought. Her little notes and messages and cryptic comments. They were as effective as the restraining order that my brother despised so much.

“Do you feel okay?” Rosa asked.

“Getting the flu. I’ll be okay. I’m just going to run to the bathroom.” I watched her go to the door, but then a thought occurred to me — from nowhere. From the Underworld.

I said, “Where is Rosalyn Baxter this period? Would you happen to know by any chance?”

Rosa laughed. “I haven’t memorized all their schedules! But I do know where she is, lucky for you. I had to bring her a message last week. She’s in Chip Henders’ graphic design class.”

“Thanks.”

I waited until she left, her expression still dubious, and then I ran down the hall, all the way down to room 220. I knocked on Chip’s door and twenty students at computers turned curious faces to me. “Mr. Henders? May I borrow Rosalyn Baxter for one moment, please?”

“Sure,” said Chip, although he didn’t look too thrilled about it.

Rosalyn came out into the hall with a frightened expression. “Miss Thurber, what’s wrong? You look weird.”

“Rosalyn, is anyone home at your house?”

“My mom. Why?”

“I want you to call her on your cell phone.”

“Cell phones aren’t allowed during the school day,” she reminded me.

“I want you to call her on your cell phone NOW. Ask her to find that book — the cookbook you and Jessica liked. Ask her to see if there’s anything inside. Okay?”

“Okay. Sure. My phone’s in my locker.”

I escorted her there. I had defined “surreal” for my class many times, but I’d never understood it the way I did now, as I walked next to Rosalyn like an executioner.

“Ms. Thurber, you’re scaring me.”

“I’m sorry. Listen, you make your call, and I’ll stand here so no one hassles you about using the phone.”

Rosalyn nodded, then dialed her little pink phone. “It’s ringing,” she said. We waited. “Four rings and no one answered. I’m getting the machine.”

She left a message for her mother, and I thanked her. “Okay. But now if she calls back, you’ll be in class.”

“I’ll tell her to leave a message at the main office. With Mrs. Martinez.”