The woman behind the desk rose to greet them. She was a thin, driven-looking woman with hair much too black for her face, or for nature, but other than that she looked like hundreds of “professional” women in small towns across the country: a tailored blazer and equally tailored blouse topped a wide, floral-print skirt that fell low on her leg. She could have been on the cover of the latest Talbot’s catalogue.
“Well,” she said as they came in. “Kyle. Introduce me.”
“Right,” Kyle said. “Nancy Quayde, this is Gregor Demarkian. Gregor Demarkian, this is Nancy Quayde.”
“Dr. Quayde,” Nancy said.
“Dr. Quayde,” Gregor repeated politely.
“I just don’t see what the point is of going through all the trouble to get yourself a Ph.D. if you’re going to be ashamed of it,” she said. “Oh, never mind. Sit down. I’m not having a good day. Do you know there isn’t any way to sue somebody for telling lies about you to the newspapers ? I’ve been on the phone to my attorneys for half the day.”
“Who’s telling lies about you to the newspapers?” Kyle asked.
“Never you mind. The parent of a student. God, I hate parents. I really do. They are such self-righteous sons of bitches. And don’t look at me like that. I don’t talk that way in front of the students. Although I should. God only knows they talk that way, and to my face, too. They don’t give a damn. And then there’s Peggy. Whatever the hell am I supposed to do about Peggy?”
“I heard she was out sick,” Kyle said mildly.
“Out sick?” Nancy Quayde nearly exploded. “You know as well as I do what she’s out for, Kyle. Stu bashed her face in again last night and now she’s got a shiner the size of a dinner plate and she’s afraid to be seen with it. That’s the third time this term. If she didn’t have tenure, she’d be out on her ass. If he ever shows up here looking for her, she will be out on her ass. God, that whole situation drives me insane. Why doesn’t she leave him? Why doesn’t she turn him the hell in? Christ, given the amount of cocaine that man snorts, she ought to be able to put him away for thirty years. If she’d turned him in thirty years ago, she’d be much better off.”
“Thirty years ago?” Gregor asked.
“Thirty years ago,” Nancy said. Then she laughed. “God, don’t you know? Stu sold marijuana to the entire senior class. Well, not all of it, just the ‘cool’ people and the hoods. Peggy thought he was going through a phase. But you could see it even then. You could tell he was going to end up an addict. It was written all over him.”
“Well, not so I could read it,” Kyle said. “Maybe we ought to go a little easy on just who Stu was selling marijuana to senior year.”
“You mean because it included you?” Nancy said.
“Never mind. It included me, too. It was a novelty, at the time. Now we practically execute people for smoking a couple of joints. We’re all so afraid they’ll end up like Stu. Christ. So what do you want to know? I was here yesterday. I didn’t have anything to do with what happened to Chris.”
“Right,” Kyle said. “Mostly, I think what we want to know is what has been going on with Chris for the past few days. We could ask Dan, but he’s been in Hawaii, and besides—”
“Besides, he probably wouldn’t know,” Nancy said. “That was a marriage of convenience. Or mutual assistance. I don’t know. Anyway, what’s been going on with Chris is what’s been going on with the rest of us. Betsy Wetsy triumphantly returns. Chris was organizing a cocktail party for her.”
“Are you serious?” Kyle said. “That’s crazy. Whatever made Chris think she’d come?”
“Well, that’s the point, isn’t it?” Nancy said. “That’s why Chris went out there yesterday, to try to talk to Betsy face-to-face. She was the best one to send, really. I don’t have the patience, and the rest of them—” Nancy shrugged.
“When you say she was the best one to send,” Gregor said, “do you mean this was something you all cooked up together? It was a group project?”
“Well, sort of,” Nancy said. “It was—well, she was going to be here. And she’s famous. And a lot of people, the superintendent of schools, the head librarian, thought it would be a good thing to have her speak, you know, to classes and to the Friends of the Library and like that. And we thought—Chris and I thought—that we ought to do something to calm everything down.”