All The Pretty Dead Girls Page 6

  “And get ten demerits your first day back,” Malika reminded her. “Sandy, this is Sue. Sue, Sandy.”

  The girls shook hands.

  “It’s time we radicalize this campus,” Sandy was saying, even as she let go of Sue’s hand. “I’ve petitioned the dean to let us form a group—”

  “Excuse me,” a woman said, interrupting them. All three girls turned to look at her. She was a thickset young blond woman in a white blouse and blue skirt. “I’m looking for Sue Barlow.”

  Sue glanced at her companions, then said, “I’m Sue Barlow.”

  “Ms. Davenport would like to see you. Will you come with me?”

  “What?”

  “How do you know Joyce Davenport?” Sandy asked, leering suspiciously at Sue.

  “I don’t,” Sue said.

  Malika just looked at her oddly.

  The woman in front of them narrowed her eyes at Sue. “She’s waiting.”

  “I don’t know her,” Sue protested.

  “Apparently, she knows you,” Malika said, her voice cold.

  Sue turned to look at her. “It’s got to be my grandfather. His firm…”

  Malika just shrugged. “Go see what she wants.”

  Sue turned back to Davenport’s emissary. “Okay, take me to her.”

  The woman smiled. Sue didn’t like her smile. Not at all.

  “Follow me,” she said.

  7

  Sue followed the woman around the building and up a short flight of stairs that led to the back of the stage. They pushed through the curtains and down a narrow hallway. Finally, they stopped in front of a door, and the woman rapped on it before letting herself in.

  “Ms. Davenport?” she called. “I have Sue Barlow.”

  “Send her in!” It was the same voice Sue had just heard over the microphone. Her heart beating a little faster, she walked into the room.

  It was dingy and cramped, mirrors on both walls and a long counter on the wall to her left. The walls were plaster, and in places paint was missing where notices had been taped and later ripped down. The place smelled slightly musty, and the floor was yellowed with coats of wax. Round bulbs surrounded the long mirror. Behind a partition, Sue spotted the woman who had summoned her.

  “Hello.” Sue’s words were awkward. “You wanted to see me?”

  Joyce Davenport was sitting on top of a stool, smoking a cigarette and drinking white wine from a fluted glass. Her legs were crossed at the knee, hiking her skirt up to her upper thighs. A long run showed in her stockings on her left leg. She smiled and tilted her head, narrowing her dark eyes. “So you’re Sue Barlow.” She set the wineglass down and gestured to her. “Come closer.”

  Sue took a hesitant step forward.

  Joyce stood up. Up close, her face was long and narrow, almost horsy, with a pinched nose and thin wide lips. Her eyes were brown and round, and the whites were shot through with red. Heavy makeup could not disguise the small lines around her eyes and mouth.

  Joyce tossed her head to get her long hair out of her face. She threw her arms around Sue and hugged her, then stepped back and searched her face.

  “Yes, I can see traces of Mariclare in you.” The woman smiled deeply. “I was kind of hoping you’d be like a twin to her, but I can see her in your face—your eyes, you have the same eyes.”

  Sue’s heart jumped. “You—you knew my mother?”

  Joyce laughed. “Yes, I knew your mother. In fact, we were roommates here at Wilbourne. I was very, very fond of her. And I’ve been waiting for years to meet her daughter.” Her smile got bigger. “And you are so pretty. Are you as smart as your mother, too?”

  “I don’t know how smart I am, or how smart she was, to be honest.” Sue replied, staring at the older woman.

  No matter what Malika had said about Joyce Davenport, Sue was suddenly thrilled to be standing before her. She knew my mother! She was my mother’s roommate! Thoughts flashed through her head—here was someone, at last, with whom she could talk openly about her mother…to whom she could direct questions…from whom she could maybe get some answers…

  “Well, you’re here at Wilbourne, aren’t you?” Joyce let out a hoot. “And they don’t take idiots here!” She smirked. “The occasional lefty moron, of course—you can’t get away from that in academia, of course, especially here in the Northeast—but I have no doubt you’re going to do just fine.”

  Sue managed a smile.

  Joyce reached into a worn Louis Vuitton bag on the floor. “Unfortunately, I can’t visit with you as long as I would like—I have to be in D.C. tonight, which means driving over to Albany and catching a flight, and I should be gone already—but I so wanted to meet you.”

  “I don’t know much about my mother. I’d love to hear what you remember about her.”

  Joyce had pulled out a book from her bag. She opened it to the title page and scrawled quickly on it with a pen. “Here you go,” she said, handing it to Sue. “A copy of my latest book, just for you. I wrote my cell phone number on there as well as my private e-mail address. I want you to call me night or day if you need anything, okay? Or e-mail me—I will always answer you. Anything for Mariclare’s little girl.”

  “Did you know her long? And my fath—”

  “Sweetie, I can’t talk now. I promise to be back up here soon to really get to know you better. Maybe in a few weeks. Then we can talk endlessly about Mariclare. My schedule is just so insane right now.” She slipped her bag over her shoulder. “But read the book in the meantime…and I’ll give you a call to set up dinner when I can get back up here.”

  Sue tried to say something, but the words wouldn’t come.

  “Okay, move on out!” Joyce barked to her assistants, who suddenly came running into the room, scooping up boxes and suitcases. Joyce reached over to give Sue another hug. “So good to finally meet you, sweetheart.” Then she swept out of the room, leaving Sue standing there alone.

  Sue glanced down at the cover of the book. There was Joyce, dressed pretty much the same as she had been tonight, with her hands on her hips. She was standing in front of a chalkboard, where the word SMEAR was written in green chalk. Across the bottom were the words How Liberals Have Perfected the Art of Libel.

  In the upper left-hand corner inside a black balloon, it read, The latest from New York Times best-selling author Joyce Davenport!

  She opened the book to the title page.

  For Sue, I hope this is the start of a beautiful friendship, Love, Joyce.

  Her cell phone number and e-mail address, as promised, were written underneath the signature.

  Sue walked out, holding the book, and headed across the campus. The auditorium had emptied out, and a cold wind had blown up. There was a full moon so there was plenty of light, but it seemed weird how fast the entire campus had emptied. There were no girls milling about now. Everyone was back in their dorm rooms, unpacking and preparing for the first day of classes, and anyone who wasn’t would be shooed inside. It seemed Sue’s grandparents weren’t the only ones to set curfews. Sue walked faster, rubbing her arms to warm them up as she headed down the path to Bentley Hall.

  She was lost in thoughts of her mother.

  She’d always, always, felt something missing in her life. Her grandparents had loved her, but she’d never been able to feel close to them. Whenever she was at a friend’s home—even Becca Stansfield’s—she’d missed the camaraderie, the closeness she sensed between her friends and their mothers. Her friends might complain about busybody moms, they might fight with them, even call them monsters—but every time Sue listened to them complain, all she could think was, I’d give anything to have a fight with my mother.

  Her eyes filled with tears, but she wiped them away.

  Suddenly, she wished she’d asked Joyce Davenport in which dorm her mother had lived.

  Stopping in front of Bentley Hall, however, Sue knew the answer to that question.

  Her eyes flickered up to that third-floor window where she’d seen that
face earlier. Where she’d thought she’d seen a face, that is—the face of a woman screaming.

  That was my mother’s room.

  How she knew that for certain, she couldn’t say. It was impossible to know such a thing, but she knew.

  And the woman who screamed?

  Had that been in her mother?

  Had that been Mariclare?

  The campus was suddenly very cold. Looking around her, at the deserted walkways and windows so black that seemed to blot out the light behind them, Sue felt as if she were the only one left alive at Wilbourne.

  She pushed through the front door and headed for her room.

  8

  The town of Lebanon went dark no later than nine every night.

  Every night of the week, with the exception of the Yellow Bird Café around the town square, the 7/11 near the high school, and Earl’s Tavern out on the county road, every business within the city limits was locked up and closed no later than nine. The streets fell silent, and the only signs of life to anyone driving through town would be the occasional light in the windows of a house. It made the sheriff’s life much easier, and the night shift for the deputies was generally slow and quiet, disrupted only by occasional acts of vandalism or a drunk driver every once in a while. Lebanon was a quiet town, and as the mayor, Robbie Kendall, was fond of saying whenever making a speech, “a fine place to raise a family.”

  Unlike other small towns around the country, Lebanon wasn’t drying up and blowing away. Sure, every year after graduation, a high percentage of teenagers hit the road and never looked back—an interesting mix of the slackers and the top students. The top students went away for college, incurring years of debt in student loans, and the slackers headed for bigger cities—New York, Philadelphia, Boston, or Albany. Some of the college-bound kids came back after graduation if there was a job to bring them back—working in the Walgreen’s pharmacy or teaching, for example. But the slacker kids didn’t come back, and outside of their families, no one really cared. Those kids were lazy, a bad element, and the ones the adults in town automatically thought of whenever drug use came up in conversation. The sooner they left town, the better.

  Yet enough of their classmates stayed around and went to work after getting their diplomas, settling into life in Lebanon as adults. They married and had enough kids to keep the population steady each year as another group of kids left. The town folk worked hard. They paid their bills, and rarely complained. If there wasn’t a decent job in town, there were the paper mills and meatpacking plants forty minutes north on the highway in Senandaga, the county seat. The only people who didn’t work were just lazy or drunks.

  So far, the scourge of drugs plaguing other small towns had stayed away from Lebanon. Sure, some of the kids smoked pot or drank, but it wasn’t a big problem and for the most part, other than an occasional car wreck, they didn’t bother anyone. Lebanon High School provided a decent education, and had turned out some championship teams in football and girls’ basketball. Robbie Kendall was right. Lebanon was a good place to raise a family. The last murder had been seven years ago, and pretty much everyone agreed Wade DeBolt had had it coming. If he hadn’t been slapping his wife Norma around, she wouldn’t have needed to shoot him.

  Still, even if folks in Lebanon didn’t need to lock their doors at night, they did anyway. Better safe than sorry, was the general thought, and above all else, Lebanon folks were practical. There was a great big crazy world out there, and who knows when someone from outside might blow into town and cause trouble?

  There were nine churches in Lebanon, and they were all well attended every Sunday. The churches were the centers of social activity in town, with picnics and potlucks and dances for the teenagers. They were all Protestant—the few Catholics in town attended Mass up at St. Dominic’s in Senandaga. There wasn’t any friction between the different congregations, except at the Church League softball games in the summer, and that was just good fun. There were no minorities in Lebanon, other than the Asian family who owned the 7/11 and the video store. Some people considered the French Canadians a minority, but other than their weirdly accented English and statues of saints, most people never gave them a second thought. The majority of them worked at the factories in Senandaga, they didn’t cause any trouble, and they pretty much kept their religion to themselves.

  Lebanon took pride in not only being a good place to raise a family, but in being a clean town. People kept up their yards and houses. The homes in Lebanon were like the people themselves: nothing ostentatious or overly ornate; solid and strong, built to weather the humid summers and the bitterly cold winters. Property values were low, as they were in most small towns, but the cost of living was also quite a bit lower than it was even up the highway in Senandaga—let alone Manhattan or Boston. It was a town where everyone knew everyone else, where neighbors talked over coffee in the mornings, where you took care of your neighbors when they were sick or laid up, and people just did for each other in general.

  Sure, there was a neighborhood—as there is in every town—far away from the town square, where the houses needed painting and the yards were mostly dirt, where it wasn’t unusual to see a beat-up car up on blocks in the yard, but nobody ever had to drive through that part of town on their way to somewhere else. When they did, they just clucked their tongues and shook their heads at the lack of pride revealed by the run-down houses and dead yards and beat-up cars, but at the same time patting themselves on the back for not winding up in one of those houses. It was where the low-wage-earners lived, where every month was a struggle to pay the bills and buy food, where every ring of the telephone could be a bill collector calling with insults and threats. It was very easy to pretend that part of town didn’t exist, which is what most people in Lebanon did. This part of Lebanon was collectively known as “the Banks,” because it was the closest part of town to the shallow Frontenac River. It was generally presumed that any child from the Banks was destined for a bad end—drugs, alcohol, or an early shotgun marriage.

  With the college that loomed just west of town over the rolling hills, the town maintained a friendly if distant relationship. The students were all well behaved for the most part (although there was some worry when the school started admitting male graduate students, but so far there’d been no trouble). Best thing about Wilbourne was that the people on campus spent money in town. They bought food at the A&P, got their cars worked on at Mike’s Firestone or Bud’s Shell, bought their makeup at the Rexall, ate at the local diners and restaurants, and opened accounts at the local banks. Many of them, true to the school’s religious traditions, went to the local churches, where they dutifully dropped their money into the collection plates. And there were jobs on the campus as well—groundskeepers and janitors and cooks and secretaries and research assistants—that went to Lebanon locals.

  Yet while, as a rule, the members of the college faculty were liked by the members Lebanon natives, they never really quite fit into the fabric of the town. They tended to subscribe to The New York Times, watch movies with subtitles, and their living rooms were filled with books most of their neighbors had never heard of—by authors like Proust and Sartre and Faulkner, instead of Janet Evanovich and Nora Roberts and James Patterson. Dean Gregory himself was a deacon at the local Lutheran Church, and very dedicated to his position there. He was pretty well known and liked by the Lutherans, but outside of church matters, the other church members didn’t have a lot to talk to him about.

  The town also took great pride in knowing that Wilbourne College was one of the best in the country—even though no local student had ever been admitted through its gates. The majority of local kids who went to college went to the junior college or the branch of the state university in Senandaga, and there was no disgrace in that—both were fine schools, and affordable.

  No one resented the college on the outskirts of town, and it had been there so long it was just thought of as another part of the fabric of Lebanon, like the town square, the high
school, or the library. But it was something apart. There was no question about that.

  9

  The Yellow Bird Café was always the last business around the town square to close, and the only one that stayed open late on Sunday evenings. The Yellow Bird closed every night at ten, even on Sunday. Wally Bingham, who’d bought the place in the 1970s when he came home from Vietnam, didn’t go to church and thought it might not be a bad idea to keep the café open late. Most people had huge meals after morning services, and sometimes wanted something different after evening services rather than the leftovers. So, on Sunday nights, Wally himself worked the grill. Marjorie Pequod, his night-shift waitress for nearly twenty years, stayed with him even on slow nights. She hadn’t set foot in a church since she was a teenager, and would rather work.

  Deputy Sheriff Perry Holland was glad the Yellow Bird was open late. As he pulled into a vertical parking spot right in front of the café, he could see Marjorie reading a paperback novel at the counter and Wally washing dishes back in the kitchen. The place was deserted. Perry turned off the car and sat there for a moment. He’d gone off duty at seven after a quiet day. He’d popped home to his small apartment for a quick shower but, hungry as a horse, he’d known he’d be heading out again. His kitchen cabinets were bare of food as usual. Once again, he’d put off going to the A&P until there was nothing in the house to eat. He glanced at his watch, and sighed. The A&P was already closed, so it was either the Yellow Bird or one of the fast-food joints out at the highway junction. The Yellow Bird, Perry decided.

  The town was quiet as he headed over to the café—which he pretty much expected. Lebanon was a quiet town, not much excitement. Lights were on in the houses he drove past; sometimes all he saw was the blue glow of a television set. The worst Perry ever had to deal with since joining the force nine years earlier was the occasional drunk driver, or a bunch of teenagers who thought it would be funny to knock down mailboxes with a baseball bat on Saturday nights. Violent crime was pretty much nonexistent in Lebanon, other than an occasional fistfight over at Earl’s Tavern, which was usually over before he pulled into their parking lot. No, if Perry wanted something to break the routine of his life, he had to head up the highway to Senandaga—or the hundred miles or so to Albany.