Shades of Grey (7 page)

‘The dead guy’s brother?’ Joanie looked at her with new respect as they squeezed into the crowded elevator. ‘Cool!’

‘Oh!’ That’s when it hit her. She’d been so annoyed about the sweater and then so caught up in work and, to be honest, thoughts of Luke, that she’d never called the cops.

‘What?’ Joanie was bouncing with eagerness, but Dulcie waited till they were down in the lobby.

‘I’ve got to call the cops,’ she whispered. ‘The detective in charge gave me his card and I found out something.’

‘You found out something?’ Sally Putnam was behind her. She must have been further back in the elevator, or coiled under a nearby rock. ‘Have you been prying into the system?’ Next to her stood two men in suits that looked out of place on their block-like bodies.

‘Mrs Putnam!’ Dulcie took a step back. ‘I was meaning to talk to you.’ She’d been trying to get up her nerve to ask about the sweater all day.

‘I see, and now you think you’ll just sidestep the corporate chain of command? Go directly to the police?’

None of this made sense. ‘But the detectives said—’

‘If Priority has had a breach of protocol, Priority executives will handle it themselves. Securely.’ The sibilant hissed between her thin lips. ‘So if you have any desire to continue working here, you will respect our rules.’ She stared down at Dulcie without blinking.

Dulcie stood there, mouth open, while for the second time that day the executive spun on her toe and marched away.

‘Hey, Dulce.’

She’d forgotten Joanie standing beside her.

‘Isn’t that your sweater?’

It wasn’t until she was about to descend into the Government Center T that Dulcie got through to someone at the Cambridge Police.

‘No, it’s not an emergency,’ she repeated for the tenth time and expected to be put on hold again.

‘I gather,’ said an amused voice on the other end. ‘But you were calling for Detective Scavetti?’

Feeling a little foolish, Dulcie explained what had happened. Standing on a busy sidewalk, surrounded by tired office workers, it sounded weak. Yes, her room-mate had been murdered. And, yes, the detective had told her to call if she remembered anything else. But was a high school memory from the dead room-mate’s brother really anything? Well, she was on the phone now, trying to explain.

‘So, the victim’s brother told you that the victim had sold a little pot while he was in high school?’

‘Yes, while he was at prep school at Andover.’ She could almost feel the detective sigh. So, Tim wasn’t a major league drug lord. He was a spoiled rich kid. Maybe that would have made him more vulnerable. ‘His brother said he could usually figure out where Tim had hidden his stash, and he’d looked. So maybe he was in over his head, you know, dealing here in the city, and he got killed for it?’ It was a weak theory, but someone had killed her room-mate. ‘Isn’t that a possibility?’

The voice on the other end of the phone sounded tired. ‘Yes, it is a possibility, and I will pass along your theory to Detective Scavetti. But I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. This doesn’t look like a gang killing, and frankly, gangs control the drug traffic in this town.’

‘But that’s just it.’ She couldn’t let go. ‘I mean, what if this one upstart was—’

‘Selling a little pot to his friends? Frankly, they wouldn’t care.’

But what if he hadn’t paid his wholesaler? What if he’d tried to rip someone off? It was too late. ‘Thank you very much for calling in, Ms Schwartz.’ The line went dead – and then immediately hummed back to life.

‘Yes?’ She clicked on without looking. Her idea had made sense!

‘Dulcie?’ The female voice on the other end was familiar, but she couldn’t place it. ‘Dulcie Schwartz?’

‘Speaking.’ If this was a telemarketer, she’d just shut the phone. She was still being jostled by brain-dead commuters seeking the T, and the late afternoon had baked the city like a casserole.

‘This is Alana – you know, Tim’s fiancée?’

Dulcie noted the elevation in status and toyed with the idea of descending into the cool shadow of the subway stop. Maybe Alana wouldn’t even notice that she’d lost the signal.

‘Anyway, I’m calling because I’m having a little get-together on Thursday,’ Alana continued. ‘It’s just been such a horrible, horrible week, and Stacia and I thought it would do everyone good.’

Dulcie couldn’t tell which thought was making her speechless: that Alana would have a party a week after her boyfriend’s murder, or that she’d think to invite Dulcie. ‘A party?’ She managed not to stutter.

‘Just drinks. Just to cheer everyone up.’

Dulcie found herself staring at a T map like a lost tourist, noticing for the first time how the lines of color spread out like trickles of blood and bile against the white. What was Alana thinking of? She closed her eyes and once again saw the hand, the puddle. Alana was still talking, and Dulcie made herself focus. Alana hadn’t seen Tim the way she had – so bloody, so still. Nobody had, except for the police. To Alana and her friends, Tim was just gone – his absence rather like an inconvenient holiday, as if he’d gone off-trail skiing in Aspen. She swallowed hard and felt her stomach begin to settle.

Alana hadn’t missed a beat. ‘I mean, Tim would be the first one to tell us that life goes on. Especially in summer! My folks have a shade up over most of the roof deck, and they’re going away for the weekend.’

Aha, thought Dulcie, the truth was out.

‘So, would you care to drop by?’

Would I care to swim with sharks? Even well-dressed sharks? Dulcie paused before answering. It couldn’t be simple kindness that had prompted Alana to invite her. Stupid as she seemed, the willowy blonde had to have an ulterior motive. And, Dulcie had to admit to herself, she was a bit curious. Curious enough to give up a night of reading?

‘Um, well, thank you, Alana. I’ll have to check my calendar.’ Dulcie was rather proud of her stalling technique. ‘But why don’t I take down your info?’

Alana didn’t seem to notice her bluff and gave her the address of a Beacon Hill town house. The invitation was for cocktails at seven. ‘We really would love for you to come.’

Dulcie was touched, despite her misgivings. ‘Thanks, Alana. And, hey—’ She could throw the girl a bone. ‘Thought I’d let you know. I talked to the cops about what Luke said and they didn’t buy it.’ She heard a puzzled noise. ‘They don’t think that Tim was a dealer.’

‘Well, of course not!’ Dulcie could hear the refined sniff of disapproval, as if Alana had smelled something distasteful. Maybe this party wouldn’t be such a good idea after all.

‘Well, uh, thought you should know. See you.’ That didn’t commit her, did it?

‘You’re going to that party!’ Suze had perked right up when Dulcie had told her about it later that night. ‘One of us should have a social life!’

Suze wasn’t exactly in a bad patch, just a slow one. Dulcie had been hearing about it for weeks. Suze loved research, and had finished a master’s in philosophy before turning toward the law. But being someone else’s researcher was strenuous, the Washington summer stifling, and the long hours were getting to her. Plus, as she’d just told Dulcie, Tom – the really cute guy from Justice – had turned out to be gay.

‘Suze, don’t you think it’s ghoulish, though? I mean, really?’ No matter how Dulcie tried to see Alana’s planned party as a wake, as a commemoration, the image just wouldn’t come. Even Hermetria wouldn’t have jumped right into party mode, would she?

‘Yeah, that Alana is a piece of work all right.’ She heard Suze grunt as she slipped off her running shoes. She’d needed the exercise, she told Dulcie, after the stresses of work, coupled with the romantic disappointment. ‘But that’s not your problem. There will be
other
people there.’

‘Well, with that hostess, they aren’t likely to be my kind of people.’ Dulcie kicked back on the sofa.

‘They don’t have fur, you mean?’ Suze had grown fond of Mr Grey. How could she not? But beyond referring to the silvery feline as ‘our third room-mate’, Dulcie suspected that her friend wasn’t really a cat person.

‘They don’t have
brains.
I mean, did you ever meet Alana? I don’t think she’s ever read a book for pleasure in her life.’

‘So much the better for you, Dulce.’ She could hear her friend settling into her own easy chair. ‘Some men like brains.’

At that, Dulcie had to pause. It was true that she didn’t have a great social record. When she had been with Jonah, it hadn’t mattered. They had hung out with his friends and seen movies. When he had moved away, she had tended to work on weekends – the better to avoid temptation. Or to avoid noticing that there was no temptation. And then Mr Grey had started on his decline, and she hadn’t wanted to leave the house at all. This was a chance to get out. Plus, if she was totally honest with herself, she wouldn’t mind seeing Luke again. Would he be there? Judging from Alana’s comments, probably not. But there was a chance . . .

‘Ah, am I hearing some wheels turning?’ Suze always had been attuned to Dulcie’s moods. ‘Is there a possibility here?’

‘Probably not.’ She was smiling as she said it.

‘So there
is
!’

Dulcie remained silent, despite several entreaties, and finally Suze relented.

‘But you’ll go, right?’

‘Yeah. Unless something else comes up, I’ll go.’

The idea of seeing Luke again did have a certain appeal, Dulcie admitted. He’d said he was taking a seminar in Cambridge next month, so maybe he had hung around. For now, though, what she really wanted to do was return to the library.

Dulcie had called Suze after two stolen hours in the Widener stacks, and that had been just long enough to remind her of how much she missed it. Deep in the book-friendly 68-degrees air of the library’s innards, Dulcie had begun to feel like herself again. As she padded down to Level A, the third of ten that descended deep below Harvard Yard, her soft flip-flops barely made a sound. The building, home to three and a half million books, hummed softly, like a giant purring beast, and as she had edged down one narrow aisle, books shelved on either side, she’d begun to shed the all-around weirdness of the day. Never mind the data entry, mind numbing as it was, but why was she repeating it? And to think that her boss, a woman who probably could pay Dulcie’s loans with a personal check, had stolen her sweater . . . it was all just too odd.

Twenty minutes chasing down a half-remembered quote, and she’d felt like a scholar again. Flipping past the marbleized paper frontispiece, she’d ended up taking the relatively ‘modern’ anthology – dating from 1890 – over to a study carrel and rereading both of the existing bits of
The Ravages of Umbria,
as well as an essay on the book’s possible authorship
.
Dulcie knew she should be spending her time on something more valuable. Her own adviser scoffed whenever she brought up
The Ravages
, and Dulcie knew he had reason. To remind herself of why, she made herself focus on one of the story’s weakest scenes, when Hermetria confides in her attendant about her romantic and financial dilemmas, and Demetria responds with a long-winded and hackneyed speech, largely in verse. It was lousy writing, Dulcie admitted. But something in it drew her. While Hermetria’s part was quite touching, the attendant – more of a companion than a maid – replies with rote sympathy:

The woman was always tearing up with some ‘sublime emotion’ or other. Maybe it was all the dramatic scenery.

‘Maybe she simply meant to go back and rework that part,’ Dulcie thought, flipping ahead. Dulcie always imagined the author of
The Ravages
to be a woman, one of the so-called ‘She-Authors’ who had made their mark with this kind of popular fiction. Perhaps this was what drew her, a sisterly sympathy for any author whose work was either unfinished or lost to time. Had the unknown author abandoned the work; published a first volume, hoping for readers who never came? Legitimate thesis topic or not,
The Ravages of Umbria
had drama built right into every part of it. Dulcie put her feet up and kept on reading. Returning once again to an imaginary Italy and the real peace of Widener – the low whirr of the library breathing – had given her room to think again, to be herself.

Sure, even on a summer evening, the library wasn’t empty. The coveted offices that bookended the long, metal aisles down here were largely locked up, the pebbled-glass windows dark in the wooden doors. Tenured professors did tend to abandon the city in summer, preferring to compose their scholarly articles from the deep, shaded porches of their houses on Nantucket or the Cape. And Dulcie had had her pick of the bare-bones study carrels, even though the molded desk-and-shelf units were usually reserved for scholars far more advanced through their theses or post-doc research. She shuffled a bit in the hard plastic seat and then, from memory, froze. Counting the seconds, she remembered other nights down here, long-ago evenings when she and Jonah would wait to see how long it would be before the motion-sensor lights went dark, their private game leading as often to giggles as to romance. Ten seconds; no, fifteen. Or was it twenty?

But Dulcie wasn’t entirely alone down here this evening. She’d heard the occasional footstep, the squelched sneeze, and these small signs of life made the peace sweeter. It was a respectful peace, a shared quiet. And even the odd shock – when someone peered into her aisle, causing another row of overhead fluorescents to click on – was part of the polite scholarly world.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ an impossibly skinny, balding man had whispered, as he retreated.

‘No problem,’ she’d whispered back. But he’d kept walking, the echo of his sneakers on the metal frame floor fading. At the far end of the hall, a hinged door squealed. He must be one of those special few who could get into the ‘cages’, the locked sections cordoned off by floor-to-ceiling chain-link fence, where rare and particularly fragile texts were kept. She heard the creak of the door closing, a click, and then silence again.

Dulcie had spent an idyllic two hours there, reading and rereading the ‘disputed pages’, as the later fragments of
The Ravages
were called
.
These read like an epilogue, telling of one particular ‘jealous spirit, worn lean with longing’. That was the last legible line before ‘spells most potent for their proximity had robbed you of your patrimony. Beware the jealous spirit of —’