He laughed. “Well, you’re the only one anyone’s fingered. On the other hand, you’re the only one to bring up the blue tux. After lunch tomorrow?”
Helplessly she nodded. He picked up the sheet of paper and returned it to his briefcase, and got up from the table.
“See you in the administration building. Around one?”
She nodded again.
Time spent with her parents usually was a good time; she loved them very much, and they made no attempt to hide their love for her. Her father never had a lot to say, but he smiled at her from the moment she arrived until she left, and her mother always made the things Ellen had loved as a child, and still did. That night she probably had made Ellen’s favorite dishes, but Ellen was not aware of it. She left before nine.
Her father’s store fronted North Main; the residence was behind it, facing First. She kept off Main, where she was likely to run into people she knew; at least on the back streets they were all inside their houses. She knew every house, every occupant, what the kids were up to, where the adults worked, where they had gone to school... The houses were big, with well-cared-for yards and gardens. Where the houses had started out small, they had been added to over the generations until they were an architect’s nightmare, but they were comfortable, suitable for people who preferred the small town to anything else. She could go to any door, knock, be invited in, given a cup of coffee or a glass of wine; they would chat, gossip, be at ease. They were all people who had babysat her, whose kids she had babysat. Kids she had gone to school with, she thought then, had grown up, married, moved. Changed. And there was not a person in town she could talk to.
With some bitterness she thought of the phrase she had grown up believing: a town of eighteen hundred people and no secrets. But how many of these pleasant houses sheltered people as desperate as she was, with secrets as devastating as hers?
Listening to her mother rattle on and on about nothing in particular had made her realize how much she needed to talk to someone, to tell someone about that night, to try to sort it out by talking it out.
Nothing had changed, she thought in wonder. Everything kept getting more complicated, but nothing changed. She had driven off in his van, and he had gone back to the group at the fire.
But what if he hadn’t gone back? What if Patty had told the truth, he never returned? She slowed her pace, no longer noticing the houses or gardens or the scant traffic until she reached Main and had to stop for several cars. She had told the truth, and maybe Patty had told the truth, too. And that meant that someone else had been there, and that person had seen Ellen, and that’s what the note to Haliday was about. She began to hurry, wanting to be home where she could think of what that meant, to think of Janice Ayers, who had known about Philip’s experiment. As a psychologist, would Janice have found that experiment irresistible?
She heard Jordan calling her name and looked around to see him trotting down Main. Not now, she thought, but she stopped and waved, and he crossed the street to catch up.
“I was watching for you to pass Papa’s,” he said. “Good ravioli tonight. Your mom said you’d left already, or I’d have gone by their house. Walk you home?”
“Sure. I had to leave early because I have homework. Hilde loaded me up for tonight and tomorrow.”
He caught her hand and held it as they walked. “Not even Hilde expects you to work twenty-four-hour days,” he said lightly, but his grasp of her hand was hard.
“Just this once. For a special meeting of the trustees on Monday. They’re driving her crazy.” They had reached her building.
“Can I come in?” he asked at the door. When she hesitated he released her hand “I really do have an awful lot of work,” she said, “This won’t go on much longer, and everything will get back to normal.”
“It’s been going on for more than a month,” he said evenly. “It just gets worse. Ellen, I don’t care what happened years ago, what you did, what anyone else did. I simply want you back.”
“Please, let’s talk about it later, next week, not now. I’m tired and I have work to do and I have to get some sleep...” Her voice faltered and she inserted her key in the lock.
“Right,” he said. He walked away.
She looked after him, started to call him back, then bit her lip and went inside Why not? she demanded at the mirror. There was no real answer until she had hung up her jacket and gone to the table to stand regarding the newspapers with loathing. Then she knew why not If he had come in, he would have pressured her to tell him what was wrong, and she probably would have done so, because she was desperate to talk to someone. She realized she had known from the start what he would say: don’t say anything, don’t get any more involved than you already are. It will blow over.
That wasn’t fair, she thought almost wildly, and anyway that was exactly what she had been doing, what she intended to keep doing. Even if that was the only sensible thing to do, she did not want to hear it from him. But what else was there to say?
Angry at the impasse, she sat at the table, ignored the papers, and thought about that night. Whoever painted Philip must have gone either with him or after him to the campsite, and must have been there when he put Ellen in the van and she drove away. And then what? There was no answer, but it no longer was a certainty that Philip had returned to the fire. Also, that person wanted Ellen to talk about it, implicate the others. And that observer, she added, feeling icy, could in apparent innocence mention to any of the six that Ellen was talking to the police, or intended to talk, or that she had hinted she knew something vital. How much of a nudge would it take to goad desperation into action?
If she told Patty or Bev what she suspected, then what? She shook her head. To them it would be the same problem: if Ellen talked, they would be dragged into a police investigation of a sensational murder case that included drugs, an orgy in the woods, a naked teacher and his students... Would they even believe her? As far as they were concerned, she had left with Philip.
“All right,” she said aloud and stood up, knocking some of the newspapers off the table. She had forgotten them. She put on coffee to get her through the next several hours of work, and she was glad that she would have a crack at the microfiches after all. If there were any gossipy items linking any of the current staff to Philip, she wanted to see them. She did not even question her assumption that a woman had painted Philip and later killed him. She didn’t believe it had been a student; it had been someone with a house or an apartment where he could hang out all day and his van not be seen by a passerby.
She assembled the clippings in the morning, sorting them by category, labeling them. By ten she was finished, but it was too early. Haliday had said after lunch. She didn’t need him, she decided; she would deliver this stuff to Hilde and start on the microfiches by herself.
She found Hilde in her office in the administration building and handed her the folder of clippings. The building was deserted. Hilde was dressed in jeans and a sweater, running shoes. The telephone was off the cradle.
“As soon as I wrap up a couple of things here,” Hilde said, “I’m taking off for the cottage. My God, the phone has driven me crazy this week.” She lifted the phone, grimaced, and put it down again on its side. “Thanks, Ellen. You get some rest this weekend. I won’t be in Monday. I’ll just go straight up to Portland, be back in the evening sometime. Maybe if things are settled down here, we can get some real work done.”
They talked briefly about what needed doing on Monday; then Ellen left and headed for the back door and the path to the journalism building.