The Headmaster's Wife(151)

Fear, Peter thought again. He picked up the phone and felt the weight of it in his hand. It was an old-fashioned sort of phone. It was heavy. He wished he could get Steve back, right now, just to talk to him. He wished he remembered some of the things Steve had been so enthusiastic about, the authors, the television shows, the music. He thought about going out to exit 30 on 1-95 and getting himself a Big Mac, but he couldn’t really see himself eating it. He’d never developed the taste for that kind of thing. He’d trained himself too well to think of that kind of tiling as anything but a walking heart attack.

Fear, he thought again. He just wanted to break free, one time, and not be running on fear. Fear of the past. Fear of the present. Fear of the future. Fear of living, because the longer you lived the more chances you had to screw up.

He put the phone down, picked up the receiver, and punched in the number for Jason Barclay’s Manhattan office. Jason Barclay was the president of the Windsor Academy Board of Trustees. Peter was sure he was expecting this call. Somebody would have been keeping him informed about the progress of the police investigation. He would have heard about the police tape going up around Maverick Pond, even if he hadn’t seen it for himself on CNN.

The phone was picked up on the other end by Adele, Jason’s secretary. Peter told her who he was and waited. He did not have to wait long.

“Well,” Jason said, when he came on the line, “what’s going on?”

“The best information is that they’re going to make an arrest sometime this afternoon,” Peter said.

“Arrest of who?” Jason asked.

Peter corrected the pronoun in his head. Then he wondered why the women who graduated from “good schools” had no trouble remembering the grammar they were taught as students, but the men always did.

“I don’t know who the chief suspect is at the moment,” Peter said. “It’s not the kind of thing they’re telling me.”

“You should have made it your business to find out.”

“I have made it my business to find out,” Peter said, “but as far as I can tell, Demarkian isn’t telling anybody—not even the police.”

“We have somebody in the Windsor Police Service, don’t we?”

“In the mayor’s office,” Peter said. “And in the prosecutor’s office. It works, most of the time.”

“I hope it’s going to work this time,” Jason said. “We’ve got to do something. It’s all over the national news.”

“I don’t think there’s much you can do with a murder investigation. And this is a murder investigation now that Edith is dead. You might as well be prepared for it. It may turn out that Michael Feyre was murdered, too.”

“I’m more interested in that other one, the kid who didn’t die. The one whose mother is a newspaper reporter or whatever she is.”

“She’s a columnist. I think you’re very intelligent. That’s the one I’d worry about, too.”

“And?”

“And we have absolutely no control over her whatsoever and probably can’t get it. I think we’re going to have to face the fact that we lost the ability to control this mess days ago, and we’re not going to get it back. Parents have been arriving all day taking their children out of school. I think they’ll go on arriving for some time now.”

“Taking their children out permanently?”

“I don’t know. You’d have to talk to the bursar, or the dean of academic affairs, or whoever they’re talking to. They’re not talking to me.”

“Are they talking to Alice?”

“I doubt it. She isn’t the kind of woman people confide in.”

There was a silence on the other end of the line. Peter could imagine what was going on in Jason’s head. Jason had had an affair with Alice himself that first year they were at Windsor before he’d been elevated to the chairmanship of the board. That was back before Alice had settled on her modus operandi, and her conviction that only working-class boys could give her real orgasms.

“Peter?”

“I’m here.”

“Say something. You’re close to this situation. I’m not. Tell me what you’re thinking about. Give me a clue.”

“I was thinking about orgasms.”

“What?”

“Orgasms,” Peter repeated. “Orgasms are supposed to be great releases. You’re supposed to lose all sense of yourself, to get lost in the moment. I don’t think I’ve ever had one, although I’ve ejaculated often enough.”

“I think you’re losing your grip.”