Helen Hath No Fury (7 page)

After Louisa left, Susan stared at the closed door awhile before she spoke again. “While we were making the tape, I kept thinking that if I died in a way that surprised or confused my friends, I’d hope they didn’t accept it the way we seem to be doing. I sure hope they’d push a little, that they’d wonder and ask. It’s awful to think of disappearing, that so few people would have a clue as to who I am that something horrible could be done to me and nobody would notice.”

I took a deep breath and jumped in. “I think that together we could do something. We could try to figure out what was going on in her life the last few days, or weeks. The sum would be lots greater than the parts.”

“Maybe we could. We all seem to know a piece of the whole. If we put together our pieces …?” Tess didn’t look convinced of what she was saying.

“I don’t know if we can,” I said. “But I want to try. For
Gretchen. Having your mother kill herself is as bad as it gets. The ultimate rejection.”

Tess nodded, her expression solemn.

“Living with that has to be hard,” I continued. “But if you had to live with that and it wasn’t true … that’d be … unthinkable. That’s punishment Gretchen doesn’t deserve.”

“And don’t forget,” Susan said in a near whisper. “If that’s true, there’s a killer who gets away with it.”

“All right,” Roxanne said. “But what do we do? What do we actually do?”

We looked at each other, searching for the master plan. But none of us had it, certainly not me. “We pool knowledge,” I said. “We ask questions and combine what we learn. Tell each other. We
try,”
I said. “We try this, then that. We just try. And then, if we put together a portrait that feels convincing, that says this woman would not jump off her roof, had no reason to, we can go to the police. We can show them why they have to investigate.”

And given no better idea, we nodded and called it a plan.

I
T WASN’T RAINING THE NEXT DAY
. T
HEREFORE, WITH IMPORTANT
things to consider, and pressing obligations, I seized the least significant and most trivial item to do. Also the one that had a chance of being solved. At lunchtime, I called the Coulter household, to make sure I wouldn’t be intruding when I retrieved my raincoat.

“Coulters,” an accented feminine voice answered.

I explained who I was, what had happened to my raincoat, and what time I’d like to stop by and pick it up.

No response. I tried again, summarizing what I’d already said, and then I waited again. “No,” the voice said. “No
es
—”

Damn. Studying Latin and French, as I had, has not proven useful. Half my non-English language skills apply to a long-gone culture, and the other half would be useful only if I could afford to travel.

“Se habla inglés?”
I asked, stretching my Spanish to its futile limits, because when the person on the other end answered my question with a gush of noninglés, I had no idea what she said. Except for the
no.
I decided I’d stop by and rely on body language and hand signals. Meanwhile, I heartily agreed to something, or several somethings, saying,
“Gracias, sí,”
and finally,
“adiós.”

Once again I underlined
learn Spanish
on my mental to-do list and returned to the teachers’ lunchroom.

When I first started at Philly Prep, I thought lunchtime and free-period discussions would concern, of all things, teaching. A few weeks into the year, I thought that they might now and then concern teaching. Nowadays, I was shocked if they ever touched on anything that had to do with school—except complaints. Therefore, when I sat down, I was shocked. Rachel Leary, the school counselor, and Flora Jones, our resident computer expert, were so engrossed in their discussion they didn’t notice that I’d joined them. And they were talking about a student. My student, Petra Yates.

“If I ever have children,” Flora was saying, “I will use Mr. and Mrs. Yates as examples of how not to be. They appear quite normal, even concerned. Even like good parents, but have you tried talking to them? I complimented Petra’s skills—she did terrifically in my class.” She shook her head, looking as weary as she could, which isn’t very. Flora’s engine is high-powered and fueled by something better than mine is. She’s that supposedly impossible female icon, the one who has and does it all, except she’s for real. She’s finishing her MBA at Wharton and teaching computer skills part-time at Philly Prep, in her spare time she runs marathons, and once, when she stopped long enough to blink, she won the Miss Black Teenage something or other contest. It’s a wonder I can stand her.

“No mystery why she ran away,” Flora said.

“Any news?” I asked. Both women turned their heads. There was a moment’s acknowledgment of my presence, and then both shook their heads.

“The police have been called in,” Flora said. “But it’s next to impossible to find a kid who doesn’t want to be found. She could be in California by now. She could be any kid on any street in any city.”

Any pregnant kid in any city, I thought. And beyond
that, I couldn’t bear to think. I knew that none of this situation was of my making, and I hadn’t even had time to fail to help it. But I’m a grown-up and Petra is not, and it always feels like a failure when neither I nor my peer group helps a kid in distress. That’s our central job, isn’t it, and more or less the baseline for survival of the species.

“Her parents stormed Havermeyer’s office this morning, and of course, he handled it by storming mine,” Rachel said. “Apparently, the school’s to blame for their daughter’s disappearance.”

Flora speared the lettuce of her salad with a violence I was sure she was sparing the older Yateses. “Of all the moral hypocrites! That wife of his barely bothers to hide how much she hates his children. Her kids don’t even go here, but when we had our parents’ conference, they were all she wanted to talk about. She countered every good thing I said about Petra with something about her children, whom she identified that way. ‘My son won his eighth-grade science competition,’ she’d say. I wanted to shake her. Or really, I wanted her husband to shake her, to remind her that we were talking about Petra. Does he have any idea what this is doing to his daughter?” She made a sweeping motion with her hand, ridding herself of the Yates family.

“By what odd logic is the school responsible?” I asked.

Rachel shrugged. “Apparently, we have a student body of less than sterling, all-American quality here.”

A moment of silent despair. “They bring their problem kids to a school that specializes in them, then complain there are problem kids in the school? But if our school atmosphere encouraged Petra to run away, how come everybody else hasn’t run away?”

“It’s all bluster and show,” Rachel said. “So we’ll apologize—for what, I don’t know—and look ashamed
and make the Yateses feel better about their own failings. They had to know that their performance wouldn’t solve a damn thing or bring their daughter back home sooner, or make her safer meanwhile. But all the same, they had to go through with their act.”

I kept being on the brink of telling them what I knew about Petra’s motives for fleeing, but I’d been entrusted with a secret, and until I knew for certain why I should break the trust, I wasn’t going to. Small potatoes indeed, and cold ones, too—but it was one thing I could do.

Or maybe I could do something more, with Rachel’s help. Make a plan—assuming Petra resurfaced—for an end run around the hateful stepmother and the fearsome grandmother. Maybe Mr. Yates had to be made aware that his home atmosphere was poisonous to his oldest daughter. Maybe—without breaking Petra’s trust—we could shake him back to consciousness. He cared. There was material to work with.

Mr. Yates was worried about “family values.” He was probably voting for Roy Stanton Harris, who also claimed to miss sleep worrying about whatever that really meant. I wished it meant valuing their families, but I knew it didn’t.

All afternoon, while my classes more or less did their thing, I worked on the idea. Helen’s supposed suicide prompted it. Petra had said she wished she were dead.

First, of course, we had to find Petra and know, please God, that she hadn’t followed through on her suicidal threats.

And then, another workday was over. A beautiful day it had been, spring as we fantasize but seldom experience. The air had the charged texture of impending love, and I stood still, inhaling with my eyes closed, feeling sunshine on my lids, and for the first time that day, at one with the world.

“Er, ah, I don’t want to bother you but … Miss Pepper?”

For a sun-glazed moment, the forlorn, short girl didn’t register.

“Bonnie,” she said. “Petra’s friend? I’m sorry if you were meditating or something. Were you?”

“Meditating?” Automatically, I shook my head, then reconsidered the blissful connection I’d felt to the day. “Maybe. In any case, have you heard from her?”

Bonnie lowered her gaze to the pavement. I was glad she wasn’t looking at me and couldn’t see the disappointment I was unable to hide.

Had she sought me out to tell me this nothing?

“I think about her all the time.” Bonnie’s voice was muffled as she directed her words to the paving. “I try to imagine her in a safe place, but I can’t think of where it would be. She isn’t … I don’t know what to call it.” She raised her eyes and looked at me intently. “Like she isn’t dumb, but she isn’t smart some ways, either. You wouldn’t believe the stupid stuff she’ll listen to, just because somebody says so. And she’s afraid of a lot. Much more than I ever am, so how could she …?”

“Oh, Bonnie, I don’t know either. I’m worried, too.”

“Some ways she’s brave,” Bonnie said, talking to herself, I thought. “Like stuff that would freak other people, like being hurt. Once last summer, I went to the country, to her grandmother’s with her, and I saw her grandmother hit her with a wooden spoon. Petra said that once, she hit her with a broomstick.”

I must have shown how appalled I was, and Bonnie nodded. “Petra’s brave. She didn’t even cry. It had to hurt—it turned all purple and yellow.” She sighed. “Her grandmother’s a witch, and you can’t tell what’ll make her mad.” She shrugged. “Practically everything does.”

We stood in silence. “Maybe she’s found a place she
can wait this out,” I said. “There are such places.” I wondered how many. In my mother’s time, maybe even my sister’s, there were homes for unwed mothers all over the map. There was also a level of shame, of being “ruined” that necessitated hiding out. That was gone, and along with it, most sanctuaries.

Bonnie made her expression blank. “The look” I used to call it—silent teen-speak for “I cannot believe you said such an absolutely stupid thing.”

I remembered how she’d prefaced our talk of Petra with “But” and then had grown silent. “Something else is on your mind about her, isn’t there?” I asked softly.

Her attention flicked over my face, then to the ground, and then to the park across the street, where azaleas bloomed hot pink against the new greens of the trees. “I found out his name.”

“His?”

“The boy. The one who—”

“The father?”

Bonnie winced. The term made her uncomfortable. I hoped it made the father uncomfortable, too. “Ethan Mueller.”

“Petra said he didn’t know.”

“I think maybe she changed her mind and told him. I knew his friend, the one who brought us to the party, so I checked. Asked questions. I didn’t say why. Or even who I was. I was afraid if his friend knew, he wouldn’t tell me.”

I nodded.

“But that wasn’t true. In fact, he said Ethan must be quite the Romeo, because I was the second girl this week to call about him.”

“Petra was the other one?”

“I have to think so. Anyway, I got Ethan’s phone number, too.”

“Good for you. That was clever.”

“I thought maybe he’d know where she was. But he wasn’t there. He was back at college, in D.C. Finals. His mother gave me his dorm number, but he wasn’t in.”

We stood on the pavement, our heads bowed, almost as if in prayer, or mourning the lost girl. Bonnie had sought me out in order to tell me that she knew no more of use than she’d known before. And yet I understood why it had felt imperative to share the nonnews. It was the same impulse that had brought my book group back together after Helen’s death. Saying Petra’s name, reinforcing her missingness, the fact of our worries, felt like something. Acknowledging the effort Bonnie had made to find her friend meant something.

But ultimately, our hands were still empty. “Thanks,” I said. “It’s good that you tried. His finals will soon be over, although it doesn’t look like he’d know much, does it? I wish I could think of something else to do myself. And if you have any other ideas—tell me, all right? You still have my number?”

Bonnie nodded. I watched her as she walked to the bus stop, and I thought how sad it was that neither of us had mentioned Petra’s parents as resources or people who needed to know whatever we did.

I
RANG THE
C
OULTERS’ DOORBELL AND WAITED
. I
DIDN’T
want to intrude on their mourning, so I hoped I could easily get to the closet, claim my coat, and leave. I’d see the bereaved in a few days, whenever the memorial service was held.

That was my plan, and a simple one it was, but even so, it didn’t work. A diminutive brown-skinned woman opened the door a crack, looked me up and down, then shouted, “Go ’way!”

Undoubtedly the woman I’d so miserably failed to talk to on the phone. Now I was miserably failing to talk to her in person. “Please,” I said, “I only—”

“No! No—” Her eyes rolled upward, as if she were searching her brain, then she glared at me. “—No papers! No! No!”

“But I’m not—I don’t have any—”

The door slammed shut. I stared at it, unwilling to believe that I had failed at this minuscule task, too. I might still be staring at the closed door, my mind equally slammed shut and unable to decide what to do next, had I not heard my name. I was still so involved in my failed storming of the Coulter house that I looked up, expecting to see a face peering out of a window.

At the second call of my name, I realized the voice was
behind me. Roxanne Parisi’s voice, from across the street.

She rushed over. “I was just running to the cleaners,” she said. “But I
thought
it was you. Everything okay?”

I walked down the front steps and shrugged. “Sure. I left my raincoat here Monday, and I don’t know how to explain it to the housekeeper.”

Roxanne made a dismissive gesture. “She’s impossible. Means well, but she gets things backwards. Besides, they’ve been deluged by the less tactful members of my profession.”

I tended to forget that Roxanne was a journalist, because she seemed so lackadaisical about it, as if it were a game.

“Ivan, understandably, told her not to open the door unless she knew the person.” Roxanne’s Bordeaux hair fell in haphazard waves to her shoulders. She was fond of emphasizing her words with a toss of the mane, which, along with her flowing garments, suggested a more bohemian lifestyle than she actually possessed.

“It’s not the dim housekeeper’s fault,” she said with a wide smile. “I think she was one of Helen’s many kindnesses.” Roxanne was a pretty, likable woman in her early forties, and I’d have felt more comfortable if I didn’t feel she was overly aware of herself, on stage all the time, performing for all of us. “It’s not anybody’s fault,” she said. “It’s been dreadful.”

I understood all that, but that didn’t reconcile me to the loss of my raincoat.

“Actually,” Roxanne said. She slurred out the syllables, and I shivered. That
actually
meant our civilities, however brief, had been only a prequel. The time and location of this encounter might have been fortuitous, but Roxanne had an agenda and she would have made this happen.

I suspected that I wasn’t going to be overly happy with whatever was on her mind. And finally, it meant that Roxanne wasn’t going to be interested in retrieving my raincoat for me.

“Actually,” she repeated, “I’m glad you happened by. Convenient for me.” She smiled. I didn’t. “I was going to get in touch. I feel bad about last night.”

We paused at the corner—or I did, and Roxanne was forced to do the same. My car was two streets over, and I couldn’t think why I should go out of my way to accompany Roxanne to the dry cleaners. Particularly with this anticipatory bad taste in my mouth. “About the taping?” I asked. “Why?”

She studied a sapling at the curb. “I wasn’t totally honest.” She bit her top lip and kept her eyes on the baby tree’s one budding limb. “And now it’s apparent that people don’t think she jumped.”

“Helen,” I said, feeling a need to give the dead woman her name. “Well, we don’t understand it. I thought that included you.”

Roxanne sighed. “I had a couple of things I didn’t want to say last night. Not for the tape, not even off the tape. After all, Clary was there.” Her expression begged that I intuit her real meaning.

Lacking paranormal powers along with a raincoat, I set her straight. “You probably think I’m following your train of thought, but I’m about three stations back, Roxanne.”

She reverted to the look-everywhere-but-at-me eye movements. Over the tree—it wasn’t much to study for long. Down to the ground, eyes sweeping from left of my feet to the Dumpster—Helen’s first coffin—and then quickly away. I didn’t blame her; the Dumpster was a hideous reminder of what had happened, but there it sat, dominating the sidewalk around the corner.

Roxanne sighed, and for a minute I was afraid she wasn’t going to say anything more, but then I reconsidered. People who say
actually
the way Roxanne had deliver the message that prompted it.

“Look, I know some people think that I … that just because my husband’s away so much … that something was going on between Ivan and me,” she said at a suddenly rapid clip. “That’s why I didn’t bring this up last night. Couldn’t handle whatever …”

I was obviously outside the gossip loop. Roxanne and Ivan. What a dreadful spin that put on everything. And Roxanne was probably lonely. Her husband did something in Saudi Arabia connected with the oil business, and he did it for months at a stretch.

“It isn’t true.”

“Okay,” I said. “It’s clear.”

“You believe me, don’t you?”

I nodded. I wasn’t sure if I did, but agreeing seemed the only way to get her to the point.

“Good.” She looked excessively relieved, as if I’d just eradicated the rumors. “Helen and Ivan—the thing is, they’d been going through a bad time.”

“Because of …?”

Roxanne’s forehead furrowed. “To tell the truth, you know how you listen for the idea—your friend’s upset—but you don’t pay enough attention to the details right away? Something was giving her a hard time. Maybe her business. Maybe that affected her home life. Maybe that’s why she wanted me to do the article, put a positive spin on the company? Makes sense, doesn’t it? But I didn’t want to say that last night with her partner and supposed best friend sitting right there.”

Supposed? Why
supposed?
But I didn’t feel like asking. There were altogether too many maybes in Roxanne’s theory. “You sure?”

Roxanne shook her head, bouncing her purply waves. “If I were sure, I would have said so last night. Or told the police. All I know is she said she was going through a difficult time.”

She
now. Not they. Maybe business. Maybe home. I had to be careful not to let Roxanne tilt whatever she knew into something else altogether. I had to consider her motives, why she was telling me this. I wished she hadn’t mentioned the gossip I was to ignore, because now I couldn’t get it out of my head.

“She was freaking about money and was really on Ivan’s case. Ivan had a chance to become a partner in a big development plan in Jersey. The one Wendy’s working on. Major money involved. Huge potential. It was more or less a done deal, and then Helen put the kibosh on it. I don’t know what precisely she did to prevent it, but he dropped out, just like that.”

I know how it is for a hapless bug bungling into a spider’s web. Too many sticky strands encased me. Helen and Ivan and Roxanne and Wendy and even Clary.

Wendy Loeb was involved in real estate development. Ivan Coulter was a developer. They’d worked together once; Wendy had said so last night. But it ended badly, even though time had apparently healed all old injuries. Now, another failure because of Helen’s interference?

On the other hand, Helen might well have objected because Wendy Loeb’s ten-year engagement was to a man reputed to be “connected.” Somebody like Helen—somebody like me—might well object to being connected to those connections.

If Wendy was sufficiently upset or economically injured by this pullout, would her friends help out by tossing Helen over a roof ledge?

“Did you see anything that day?” I asked. “Anybody? I mean living right across the street …” And where were
you?
I wished I could ask. Helen would have gone up on the roof with a friend. And the deed done, the friend and neighbor could saunter home. Nobody would notice, and it could have been done in seconds.

Roxanne shook her head. “I had a lunch date on Nineteenth. Left around a quarter of. When I think hard, which I’ve been doing, I think I remember somebody in white overalls, you know those things they wear. And a hard hat. I told the police, but I don’t know if I really saw him or am just remembering a year’s worth of men in overalls floating around that house.”

A weak-enough alibi. She could have done it, and then she could be with Ivan Coulter, her long-lost college love, because now I did half believe the rumors. “I’m not sure I’m clear what precisely you’re suggesting.” Well, I was, but I needed to hear it from her.

She had oversize features, a great face for a caricaturist, and now she opened her large eyes as if stunned that I hadn’t gotten it. “Mandy,” she said. “Isn’t it obvious? Helen was under siege. In trouble with her business, maybe in trouble with the law. Consequently, in trouble in her marriage, as well. Think of the expenses going on in that house lately—and her financial crisis and …” She sighed heavily, and her mouth twisted down at the corners. “It seems obvious to me,” she said. “Helen jumped. Helen committed suicide. Hope you don’t mind my saying so, or suggesting that you—”

“I accept reality?” I smiled.

“More or less.” She nodded and looked at her wrist—as if there was a watch there, which there was not—and said, “Gotta run.” And she proceeded up Delancey.

I felt sprayed with debris. I’d have to sort through the bits and pieces she’d tossed at me.

I crossed the street and turned the corner, walking toward my car, and realized I was shaking my head,
trying in vain to get rid of the unsettling barrage of confusing, and possibly doubtful, data.

Ah, Helen, I thought. What’s really the truth? Almost involuntarily, I looked back at her house. So impressive and substantial. You’d think misery couldn’t find a way in.

My breath, sympathy, and thoughts froze as I looked directly at the Dumpster, Helen’s early tomb. I’d seen only the far edge earlier, but now I saw it full-on and saw a message that had not been there when Helen lived, or when Helen died.

In oversize red and dripping letters was sprayed:
R.I.P. LIAR
.

I stared for the longest time, fearful and apprehensive, trying to decipher the message behind the message. Was this mean-spirited but essentially meaningless graffiti—or a new form of the writing on the wall?