The Affliction Page 11

  “Yes.”

  “How long will you be here?”

  “That depends. Two weeks at least, and then we’ll see where we are.”

  “Big expense for a struggling school,” Lyndon said.

  “Not really,” Maggie said calmly. “A promising young school head is worth some investment.”

  Hugo and McCartney looked at each other. “Investment being rather a hot topic for our board, these days,” Hugo said. “You find us having an impromptu meeting of the Finance Committee. Since my wife had a breakfast date, we thought we’d get some work done. I think better on my feet.”

  Maggie, who had been practicing lip reading for years, knew that in fact McCartney had been talking to Hugo with some urgency about something else entirely. She said only, “I imagine the vista is helpful as well.”

  “For the long view, yes. Certainly better than the science lab,” said Hugo.

  McCartney said, “I better be moving along. Nice to see you, Mrs. Detweiler.” And he departed.

  “Is that where the board meets? The science lab?” Maggie asked. She took her seat again on the bench and made a gesture with her hand. Hugo sat.

  “We do when we’re all together. Committees meet wherever. This is my chosen venue.” He gestured to the astounding sweep of scenery before them.

  “I see the point. Are many of the board members local?” Maggie asked.

  “No. McCartney’s a little unusual in that he asked to join the board. Usually we have to beg people, especially when they find out there’s a financial commitment.”

  Maggie looked after the departing McCartney. In her experience, if a person asks to join a school’s board it almost always meant the candidate wants some kind of control or power that did not in fact properly go with the territory.

  “What’s his interest in the school?”

  “He’s fairly new here, as I understand it. I just think that, that, that he saw it as a way to get involved with the community.”

  When he stammered, Hugo would spread the fingers of both hands and bounce the tips together, as if trying to get some gears to mesh. When he got traction and made it to the next word and then on into the sentence, the hands would slide together and clasp before him. It was a rather fascinating phenomenon. She wondered if he was aware he was doing it.

  “And has he been a good trustee? McCartney?” She already had an opinion on this subject, after a talk with Emily George during the evaluation, but wanted to hear Hugo’s view.

  “He’s been helpful to me. And he doesn’t try to interfere in internal matters, since he doesn’t have kids in the school.”

  “What is the financial commitment for a board member?”

  “Oh, it’s not bad. Ten thousand a year, give or raise.”

  If Maggie could have whistled inwardly, she would have. Glad he didn’t think that was a big commitment. But, of course, he had Caroline and her piles of money.

  “McCartney said he’s in real estate. Does that make him a competitor of Todd Goldsmith?”

  “Todd Goldsmith,” said Hugo, as if trying to place the name.

  “Married to Marcia Goldsmith, the French teacher? He’s a Realtor here in the village.”

  “Oh, Goldsmith. Yes, no, he’s he’s he’s a retail broker, isn’t he?” He did the finger meshing thing again. “Lyndon is more of a developer, I believe.”

  “What brought him to this area? You said he was new here.”

  Hugo looked at his watch.

  “You’re right,” said Maggie, standing. “We should be getting back.”

  “I just want to be sure Lily is settling in all right.”

  “Of course. How does she seem to you?”

  “Shaken. But she’s strong, like her mother. She wanted to come back. She wanted to get back in the pool.”

  “Brave girl.”

  They walked for several minutes downhill in silence, each with plenty to occupy the mind. Then Hugo said, “Oh! To answer your question about the McCartneys, they had friends in the area. They decided to move here when Lyndon gave up flying.”

  “Flying?”

  “Yes, he was a pilot. He flew for American Airlines, I think. Maybe Delta. I can’t keep the airlines straight, I don’t fly myself.”

  “You mean you’re not a pilot?” Maggie asked, thinking it was an odd thing to say, since so few people were.

  “No, I mean I, I, I”—fingertips bouncing at each other—“don’t get into airplanes. I don’t get off terra firma in any way if I can help it. I tried to rise above it when Caroline and I went on our honeymoon, but they had to carry me off the plane on a stretcher in London, stiff as a board. It was agony.”

  “Forgive me for laughing.”

  “No, you’re right. It’s ridiculous. I hadn’t wanted to tell Caroline, she was so keen to go to Europe. I thought I could overcome it with force of will.”

  “How did you get home?”

  “QE2.”

  “But you told me when we met you can’t go on boats.”

  “Good memory. It was the biggest boat we could find, and I was on heavy drugs the whole way. I wasn’t very good company. And now I go no more a-roving.”

  * * *

  “Come in, it’s open,” Hope called in what Maggie thought was a slightly strangled tone, when she knocked on the door of Hope’s room back at the Manor House Inn.

  Maggie pushed the door open and found Hope upside down, doing a headstand against the wall of her sitting room. Hope had taken the corner suite, not very grand but the best the hotel had to offer, because her investments had done well, and her accountant had told her that she should travel first class, or her children would.

  “I’m impressed,” said Maggie.

  “I’m very glad to see you, I forgot I don’t know how to get down without my yoga teacher holding my legs. Come help, would you?”

  When Hope had gotten right side up again, which she managed with surprising grace for an old bag, Maggie asked, “How was breakfast?”

  “Loved it. She’s not a beauty, Caroline, but all wool and a yard wide, as my father used to say.”

  “What a great expression. Meaning?”

  “The real goods and exactly what she claims to be. She reassures me that I made the right call about her brother, much as she loves him. He bores everyone cross-eyed. What have you been up to?”

  Maggie told her about her chance meeting with Hugo and Lyndon.

  “Hmmm,” said Hope. “Hugo’s a funny one.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know what I mean. I just don’t quite see Caroline as his type. But she seems very amused and happy, and he’s devoted to Lily. I’m just going to get dressed. What should we do today?”

  “I was thinking we should have another talk with Greta Scheinerlein. Whoever dumped Florence’s body in the pool knew how to get into the gym. Let’s find out how.”

  Maggie was pleased to see that school seemed to be humming along with an appearance of normalcy as she and Hope entered the administration building. Groundskeepers were mowing the lawns, loosing the shimmering green smell of spring grass into the warm air. Classroom windows were open. Flowering pear trees along Main Street looked as if their branches were full of warm snow. Somewhere down the slope, someone was whistling.

  “Good morning, Mrs. D,” said Sharon. “Are you here for Christina?”

  “No, I’ll see her this afternoon. We wondered where we might find Ms. Scheinerlein at this hour.”

  Sharon reached for the phone. After four or five rings, she said, “She’s not in her office. Let’s see, it’s Monday,” she said, pulling up a spreadsheet on her screen. “Unless she has private coaching sessions that aren’t on my schedule, she’s probably down in the faculty room, or at home.”

  “We’ll check downstairs. If that fails, could you tell us where she lives?”

  “Right up Woodland Road there,” said Sharon. “She shares an apartment with Honey Marcus above the stable.”

  “I kno
w how to get there. Thank you.”

  On the way downstairs, Hope said, “Does that surprise you? Have you met Honey Marcus?”

  “Yes and no. I’ll tell you later.”

  The faculty room was empty except for Pam the housemother attempting to photocopy that day’s crossword puzzle on the room’s ancient copy machine.

  “I see you’re performing your public service,” said Maggie.

  “Oh, hello. Yes. Except this thing jams every three pages. Not that I bother with the Monday puzzle, but there are those who love it.”

  “I love it,” said Hope. “I like challenges I know aren’t going to defeat me.”

  Pam gave her a look. “Well I see the point of that,” she said. “Soothing at bedtime.”

  Maggie introduced them to each other.

  “We were looking for Greta Scheinerlein.”

  “Coffee?” said Pam.

  “Love some,” said Hope just as Maggie had been about to decline. Hope, much more than Maggie, believed that the interesting things in life arose in the interstices between plans and appointments.

  Pam poured three mugs and offered milk and sugar, and they settled into chairs. Down the hall, someone was attempting Mozart’s piano variations on the tune we know as “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.”

  Maggie asked, “Are music lessons given in this building?” She knew that there was a dedicated music building for lessons and practice on the other side of campus. It had once been the cottage of the founder’s kennel man, however, and was not very grand, or very convenient

  “No,” said Pam. “That’s the spinet in the staff dining room. The chef plays for relaxation. She doesn’t usually need relaxation so early in the week, though.”

  “I guess the stress has gotten to everyone.”

  “Yep. There was way too much salt in the oatmeal this morning. Always a bad sign. And we’re supposed to have Field Day on Wednesday, but now no one knows if we will, how would it look with poor Florence still lying in a drawer in a morgue somewhere? Field Day is a secret, by the way. The girls aren’t supposed to know when it’s coming until it’s announced the morning of. Girls are supposed to enjoy surprises. I think they’d rather know what’s going on, myself, but that’s why I don’t run the school. Or anything else. Apparently.”

  “Does Field Day mean the kitchen has to turn out box lunches instead of the normal meal in the dining room?”

  “Exactly.” The piano down the hall abruptly fell silent. Pam asked, “What do you want with Greta Scheinerlein?”

  “Tell us about her,” said Hope.

  “I don’t know much,” said Pam. “She was one of Christina Liggett’s first hires. She and Honey Marcus came here together. They’re both Olympians, I know that. Honey medaled in dressage. Medaled. Is that a verb?”

  “It is now,” said Maggie, who rather enjoyed the language of sportscasters. She’d been collecting neologisms since a moment long ago when she heard Howard Cosell, broadcasting a boxing match, announce that the judges were total-upping the scores.

  “Christina saw that if we were going to have that pool, we needed a first-class coach,” said Pam. “On the salaries here that wasn’t easy to find, but Greta and Honey were looking for a place where they could both teach. It was some kind of package deal.”

  “Interesting. When?”

  “Three years ago? I think that’s right. Old Mr. Cadbury, the last head, was carted off after the evaluation disaster five years ago. Then we had an interim head, who did nothing, then we got Christina. I feel like one of those Apache historians who remember the tribe’s history by memorizing famous battles and terrible winters.”

  “What a gorgeous building,” said Hope as they approached the horse barn. “I love that Richardson Romanesque.”

  “I’m told the horses prefer it as well,” said Maggie. They stepped into the warm loamy half-light of the interior. The same training jump Maggie had seen before was set up in the middle of the vast dirt floor. Light filtered down from dusty windows high above them in the haylofts, and beamed through a huge circular window above the wide door. Far down the row stood a large garden cart, into which someone was pitching mucky straw from inside a box stall.

  “Hello!” Maggie called.

  A figure in jeans and a T-shirt appeared from the stall. Small and wiry, with lean, well-defined muscles in her bare arms. Honey Marcus. She was holding a pitchfork. Her auburn hair was tied back with a blue bandanna.

  She waited for them to approach her; no need to point out that they had interrupted her work.

  “We met the other day,” said Maggie. “This is Hope Babbin.”

  Honey took off her work glove and shook hands with each in turn, her expression impassive. Her eyes were large and hazel with yellowish flecks, most unusual, Maggie noted. “We were hoping to talk with Greta.”

  “That looks like great exercise,” Hope said, pointing at the pitchfork.

  “You think?” said Honey wryly, and handed Hope the pitchfork. Hope, wearing a starched white blouse, a linen skirt, and a pair of pale blue espadrilles, went immediately into the stall and dug the long tines into the straw. She came up with a forkful of stall bedding and horse apples, pivoted gingerly, and managed to shake her load into the waiting garden barrow without losing any of it on the floor. Proudly returning the pitchfork to Honey, she said, “My goodness, that’s wonderful! I feel it all down my spine. May I come back after lunch and help when I’m dressed for it?”

  Honey said, “Lady—be my guest.” She added, “Greta’s up in the apartment. Go out that back door and you’ll see the stairs.”

  “You never cease to amaze me,” Maggie said as they climbed the outside staircase to the apartment above the tack rooms.

  “Well doesn’t it make more sense to do something useful than spend an hour on the StairMaster?”

  “It does, indeed.”

  “Especially since we don’t have a StairMaster here.”

  There was no doorbell, so Maggie knocked. Then she knocked again. Before the door opened, they heard the sound of heavy locking braces being shifted on the other side of the door, followed by a second smaller bolt being turned. Greta opened the door to them in a bathrobe with a towel wrapped around her head. She looked surprised.

  “I’m sorry, is this a bad time?”

  “No, it’s . . . Just give me a minute, would you? Come in. Sorry about the mess. Sorry. I’ll be right out.” She showed them into the small untidy sitting room, which was dominated by a massive and very out-of-date television set. There was a heap of back issues of The Chronicle of the Horse in a basket beside one tattered armchair, and a spaniel-mix taffy-colored dog asleep in the other. Dog hair was everywhere, and by the look of the stuffing coming out of the shredded fabric on the arms of the chair, there was at least one cat here somewhere too.

  Maggie sat down on something she thought was called a davenport and studied the room. Hope was on her feet examining the framed pictures on the shelves. There were snapshots of Greta with a boy who must be her brother on a beach as teenagers, in a tin washtub on a lawn as small children, and with an older couple and Greta in cap and gown, a high school graduation.

  On the far side of the television was the Honey wall. A newspaper photograph of Honey in top hat, tails, and white breeches, with a huge smile and a medal around her neck. Many pictures of Honey on horseback, her mount in some balletic pose with leg flexed, neck arched. Sometimes Honey was in full regalia but often just in jeans and jodhpur boots and a hoodie. Testament to the hours and hours of practice that went into her sport. There was one snap of Honey and Greta together, sunburned and smiling with the Golden Gate Bridge behind them.

  Greta returned, wearing khakis and a work shirt, her wet hair slicked back to keep it out of her eyes. Her feet were bare, and her toenails were painted a metallic color of blue-black that made it look as if she’d slammed her toes in a car door.

  “Can I get you something? Tea, coffee, water?”

  “No, thank you,” M
aggie said before Hope could ask for a mint julep or toasted scones, or anything that would take Greta away to the kitchen again. “We just wanted to see how you are. That was an ugly thing you went through.”

  “Kind of you.” Greta scooped the dog off its chair and sat down. “I’m all right. I haven’t been sleeping very well, but it’s getting better.”

  “And Steph? Is she holding her own?”

  “Seems to be. Both Steph and Lily are back in the pool. Kids surprise you, they can bounce like rubber.”

  “Particularly athletes,” said Maggie. “The grit it takes to excel serves them well in life, I’ve noticed.”

  Greta gave a quick smile that flashed and disappeared. Her face in repose was handsome, but seemed troubled. Sad, or anxious, unless it was just the way her features were arranged; it was hard to tell which.

  “You’re sure I can’t get you anything?”

  “I’d love some tea,” said Hope. “But stay here, I’ll get it.” Greta half-rose to protest, but then subsided. Hope was already in the kitchen, banging around, and how hard could it be to heat some water and find the tea bags?

  Maggie said, “I noticed that when you described your thoughts when you first heard Lily scream, that you thought she might have hurt herself diving.”

  “I don’t remember saying that. But it sounds right.”

  “Even though she wasn’t allowed in the water when no one else was with her.”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s given to risky behavior? Lily Hollister?”

  Greta hesitated. Then she said, “You know kids. They don’t think anything bad can happen to them.”

  “I do know. Menaces to themselves, all of them. But Lily, more than most?”

  “Well,” Greta conceded, “yes, more than most. She wants to practice when she needs to rest, and to try things she’s not ready for. She’s driven.”

  “By what?”

  Greta ran a hand through her drying hair and tousled it. Her eyes flicked to a corner of the room. Remembering something, or briefly dissociating, Maggie thought.

  “Lily has found the thing she’s good at. She’s had years of being the pretty little rich girl who couldn’t read. Now she’s Lily the athlete and she’s going to show them.”