Helen Hath No Fury (19 page)

No wonder Helen had no longer felt comfortable in the book group. I’d seen the strain in her snapped responses to Denise that evening, but I’d had no way of imagining how serious it must have been, or its reasons. Looking back, I was sure that Denise had shown up only because she was the presenter, and Denise met her obligations.

“Letters,” I murmured.

“Threats, more like. ‘If you don’t speak up, I will have no choice.’ Blackmail. I don’t stand for blackmail.”

I listened hard in the small silence that followed his words, listened for any sound of life in the building—a voice, a chair scraping, a door’s creak and whine. Even, revolting as the thought was, sounds of lovemaking from the supply room. But it was only the occasional snippet of music—so soft that I could have been imagining it—I heard. That, and my own pulse pounding in my ears.

“It isn’t blackmail when you ask somebody to tell the truth and your threat is that if they don’t, you will,” I said. Whenever I tried a direct stare, his eyes flitted to the side, away.

“You mean
her?
Those were lies! She’s a liar! Have you ever
listened
to my father speak? Do you think that while my
mother
was dying—” He pounded a fist on the counter again. Even his fingers had muscles.

“Did your father tell you to do those things?”

His face colored. “I’m not a kid anymore. I’m an adult—I can decide what has to be done on my own.”

“Who did you pretend to be?” I asked him.

“What?”

“How did you get that appointment with Helen?”

A glint of cold amusement sparked in his eyes. “An inspector. A building-permit inspector,” he said. “I had to check the progress of the work on the roof. I don’t even know if there are such things, but Helen sure made it clear she considered herself a good citizen, all right. I knew she’d say yes.” He paused, as if waiting for me to congratulate him on his cleverness. When I didn’t, his voice changed into a low growl. “Now get out of there,” he said. “We’re leaving.”

I gave up on anybody riding to my rescue.

“It was really immature of you to spray-paint the
Dumpster,” I said. “Like a signature. Advice to the police: look for somebody who’ll never grow up. A
big baby! Now you get out of here!
”

He didn’t listen. Never had, never would. Instead, he came closer. He looked around the room, spotted the swinging half door that was official entry to Helga’s hallowed ground.

I felt my pulse in my neck, heard it pounding.

If he came into this space, I was trapped.

If I left this space, I was trapped.

If I went outside with him, I wouldn’t make it past the first quiet spot, where I, too, would be made to look mugged.

Which is to say, I was trapped.

I couldn’t believe this lout, this miserable excuse for a man, was going to protect his cushy, unearned future by making me his fourth victim. My blood roared in my ears, drowning whatever he was saying, whatever else was around, except—I couldn’t believe it—a snip, a fragment of “Feelings” drifting out of the supply closet. I thought to go pound on its door, but what good would that do at this point?

It was over. I have nothing to lose, I thought. Nothing.

Which was when the office doors were flung open and Mr. Hall, terrified, jumped into the room. The custodian, a frail man in his sixties armed with a mop, braced himself with one hand on the wall. He raised the mop. Its wet gray strands flopped. It looked like he was toting a sharpei on a stick. Mr. Hall, with his limp and his arthritis.

“Leave, Mr. Hall!” I screamed. “Get out—call the police!”

But Zachary had wheeled around and was hell-bent now on getting poor Mr. Hall, who looked as if he’d just suffered a stroke. He stood, motionless, gulping, his mop straight out in front of him. My own Don Quixote.

He’d distracted Zachary. That was enough. “Just a
minute
, young man!” I bellowed, hoping it would activate high school nightmares.
“What do you think you’re doing?”

While I shouted, I ducked and grabbed one—then two—of the hideous brass trophies. When I popped up with them, I saw Zachary, his back stiff, stuck between wanting to go after that teacher-voice and go after poor old Mr. Hall, as well. Blessed criminal indecision.

I hurled a centurion, praying that Zachary’s bulk made him the target, not the quavering man with the mop.

Zachary ducked and the trophy crashed into the wall.

“Again!”
I screamed—and to my amazement, Zachary stayed down and put his hands over his head—

—at which moment, Mr. Hall raised the mop and solidly landed it on Zachary’s thick skull. And then did it again for good measure.

I dialed 911. I knew that even if I didn’t get to say a word, the police would come. So I left the receiver on the counter and raced around, and as Zachary Harris, murderer and would-be murderer, climbed back up to his feet, I raised a knee, and in a most unpedagogical fashion, I gave him a much-deserved what-for. He doubled over and I pushed him from behind till he was sprawled on the floor; then I sat down on his back and patted the space beside me. Mr. Hall, who still hadn’t said a word—he simply gulped—joined me. “The police are coming,” I said.

Mr. Hall nodded.

“You’re terrific. You saved me. Saved both of us.”

Mr. Hall nodded again.

I didn’t think Zachary, who was hurting in several body parts, could toss both of us off before the police arrived. I drew my first semieasy breath. I looked at the
mangled centurion and thought about victory. I didn’t feel any of it, just relief. Too much had been lost, starting with Helen. If this was victory, it was bittersweet indeed.

Just then, the supply room door opened, and out came Helga and Dr. Havermeyer.

Both feigned surprise that anyone was there. “What’s this?” Dr. H. said. “Mr. Hall? Miss Pepper? What are you doing here—and who is this? What’s going on here?” He was revving up into his supercilious role, but was still too flustered to lapse into his usual unintelligible jargon.

They must have been listening in terror when I jiggled their love nest’s door in all innocence. Now I imagined them in the dark, surrounded by shelves of supplies, and then I gave it up. I love stationery and wasn’t about to sully its status in my heart by associating it with them. Imagining these dreadful people joining forces—joining anything—was too ludicrous to contemplate. Did Havermeyer use pedagogical mumbo jumbo as love talk? Did Helga ever remove her omnipresent cardigan? Did they know that they deserved each other? That they were fitting punishment for their collective sins?

“This is Zachary Harris,” I said. “A Philly Prep alumnus. He killed a friend of mine. Tried to kill two more of them, then came here to kill me, but Mr. Hall and I—”

“We were taking inventory, you understand. The door there is solid. That must be it. We didn’t hear a thing …” Dr. Havermeyer’s jowls looked mottled. Bits of him were blushing. “Imagine! If I’d known anything was going on …”

I looked at him, keeping my expression blank, something akin to “that look” with which teens wither adults. More pink blotches appeared on his chins.

“The trophies!” Helga screamed. “Oh, my beautiful
trophies!” She rushed over and lifted a decapitated centurion and cradled its torso to her breast. “Look what you’ve done!”

I heard the sweet music of police sirens and I smiled. Maybe it was relief, and just a touch of hysteria, but I suddenly felt so good I thought perhaps I’d never stop smiling. I’d turn into a Have a Nice Day button. Because it was all too funny, this part.

“Look what I’ve done?” I asked sweetly. “Oh, no, Helga. Look what
you’ve
done! Your skirt’s on inside out!”

Another bittersweet victory, true. But a victory nonetheless.

I was willing to bet I’d have no trouble getting paper supplies in the future.

I wondered if Helga kept raincoats back there, too.

M
ACKENZIE MADE ME POPCORN
. “T
HANK YOU
,
FIANCÉ,”
I said. The word gave me the giggles.

“No luxury is too great for my intended, my betrothed,” he said.

I was bone tired. I’d answered several sets of questions to what seemed the police’s satisfaction—at least for today. The book club’s emergency meeting was canceled, which had given me a bonus evening with my
fiancé.
I wanted to do nothing more than sit back, eat popcorn, and stare at something amusing.

“Look what’s on. How good, how appropriate.” Mackenzie held up the TV page of the paper. “You’ll never guess.”

“Absolutely true. My mind is gone, so don’t torture me; tell me.”

“The Philadelphia Story.
My very favorite, too.”

Right. Appropriate not only because of its locale, but because Mackenzie had told me that he’d grown up in a household run by Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant fanatics. His mother even collected their movie posters. Well, it would do. Anything would do that didn’t require thinking. I needed a break. I needed to regain my breath and my strength. My parents were returning to Florida the next day.

“She’s going to ask, you know,” I said.

“Who? What?”

“My mother. Your name.”

“Too tired for full sentences?”

I nodded.

“No problem.”

“Easy for you to say, Caesar.”

“You’re funny. I like that in a wife.”

“Guess I’ll see the entire name on the marriage license.”

“Guess so.”

“That’s reason enough to go ahead with this.”

“But if it turns out not to be to your likin’, you’re amazingly creative at renaming me. That’ll come in handy when we have kids. Don’t want to use my parents’ system.”

“Which was what?”

“Obviously derivative,” he said. “But my mother was a small-small-town girl. In fact, where she grew up wasn’t even big enough to be a town. She learned about the world from the movies. Hepburn and Grant were like nothing and nobody she’d ever seen, the epitome of glamour and sophistication. She didn’t know they were like nothing and nobody anybody’d ever seen offscreen.”

“Yes, and?” I asked.

He gestured toward the TV screen. The movie had started. His family narrative would be continued later. I sighed in contentment as the credits filled the screen, right at the beginning in that nice old-fashioned way, so you didn’t have to sit through the whole movie wondering who was that actor playing so-and-so.

“Wait a minute!” I said as the credits disappeared. “Wait—what did that say? Roll it back!”

“This isn’t a tape, Mandy. I can’t.”

I watched Hepburn toss Grant—her first husband, Dexter—out of her house and life, and then cut forward
two years to her impending second marriage. Maybe I’d imagined what I’d seen on the credits?

And then, minutes into the film, when her handsome ex is mentioned, Katharine Hepburn said the name I’d thought I’d seen in the cast of characters. “Mother,” she said, “if I never see Mr. C. K. Dexter Haven again …”

I looked at my C. K., my mouth slightly agape.

He smiled and nodded. “Those glamorous people’s names—not even theirs, not Kate and Cary, but the names of the characters they played, people who lived in mansions and were clever with words—that was something special she could afford to give her children. In fact, just about the only thing she could afford.”

“Your name is C. K. As in C. K. Dexter Haven.”

“I thought you knew. Named for a fictional and feckless playboy,” he said. “Can you believe it?”

“Your name is C.KJ”

“The Dexter Haven’s silent. And aren’t we glad she left it off? It sounds like a rest home. After all, like I told you, one of my sisters got Bunny, a name she has hated since age two. And another is Lutie, which isn’t much better.”

“C. K. stands for C. K. I cannot believe it.”

“You’re kidding, right? I thought you just enjoyed the jokin’. The game.”

I looked at him, open mouthed.

“How clever you could be with alternative names. The weirder the better.” When I didn’t say something clever or alternative, he shook his head in wonderment. “It’s
The Philadelphia Story
, after all. What could be more appropriate? It’s part of the reason I wandered up here in the first place. Saw the movie so often. I thought it’d be just like that. Mansions and all.”

I burst out laughing. I guess nothing could be more appropriate, even if it was going to take me a long time to
get used to the fact that the name by which I knew him was in fact his name.

The mystery was solved.

I laughed again, then settled closer to my fiancé-with-an-entire-name to watch somebody else’s Philadelphia story while I enjoyed my own.

This story was born of affection for my book group. Obviously, in crafting a mystery, I had to change the peaceful real-life atmosphere of women discussing books to one that included the violent death of a member. It was a plot requirement; it was fictional; it was acceptable.

Then one of the group was killed in a tragic accident.

I put the manuscript aside. It felt wrong—and impossible—to forge an entertainment out of grief. But the mourning process made me realize with new force how much the group meant to me, and I decided to try to put that, and the great sense of loss, onto the page.

And so, with hopes that some of that came through despite the necessary mayhem surrounding it, and hopes that none of the pain and loss was trivialized, I dedicate this to all those who join together to celebrate what books can do and mean, to all book groups, but in particular to my engaging, talented, interesting book group (none of whom are depicted in these pages!): Kate Baker, Sharon Bass, Dorothy Breiner, Carol Burnham, Karla Clark, Betsy Cutler, Judith Ets-Hokin, Laurel Feigenbaum, Peggy Harrington, Ann Jeffrey, Kay Matan, Bunny Petroff, Ann Rivo, Ann Turner, Alice Steinman, and with special love and grief, Ann Neeley, who is missed every time we meet, and in between times as well.

CAUGHT DEAD IN PHILADELPHIA
Winner of the Anthony Award for
Best First Mystery Novel

PHILLY STAKES

I’D RATHER BE IN PHILADELPHIA

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE …

HOW I SPENT MY
SUMMER VACATION

IN THE DEAD OF SUMMER

THE MUMMERS’ CURSE

THE BLUEST BLOOD

ADAM AND EVIL

HELEN HATH NO FURY

CLAIRE AND PRESENT DANGER

Published by Ballantine Books.
Available at bookstores everywhere.