The Headmaster's Wife(34)

“But there’s nothing wrong with that either,” Gregor said. “None of this sounds in the least bit negative—”

“It’s because I can’t explain it very well,” Walter said.

“It’s, I don’t know, very—fake, in a way. It’s hard to put a finger on it. Are you intending to go up there?”

“I was thinking of it, yes.”

“You’ll see in a day or two. It’s impossible not to see. It’s an attitude. It’s like a miasma almost.”

“You’ve been there?”

“We took our daughter up to look at the place,” Walter said. “She ended up at Exeter with a nice scholarship. We’re very proud of her.”

“You must be.”

“She hated Windsor on sight,” Walter said, “and I don’t blame her. It’s all so—forced. As if everything’s intentional. It’s all so self-consciously on the right side. I’m making a hash of this. The thing is, about the kid who died.”

“Michael Feyre.” Gregor had written it down.

“Right, Michael Feyre,” Walter said. “He’s the kind of kid Windsor goes looking for, except that he’s white, which means they never would have had him if he hadn’t had money. I’m making even more of a hash of this. Michael Feyre was born to a single mother in some godforsaken small town in northwest Connecticut, one of those women who get pregnant for the first time at fifteen and work in convenience stores. Windsor likes poor kids, but Windsor prefers their poor kids to be minorities. You know what I mean? It was one of the things my daughter picked up on and didn’t like.”

“But they accepted this Michael Feyre,” Gregor said.

“Not as a poor kid,” Walter said, “that’s the intriguing thing. Michael Feyre’s mother is named Delilah. She goes by ‘Dee.’ She’s famous in New England. She was all over the papers here because she won the lottery. And not just the lottery. She won a nine-figure Powerball jackpot.”

“Nine figures?”

“Something like three hundred million dollars,” Walter said. “I don’t remember the exact amount. She worked in this convenience store. One night she got off work and bought six Powerball tickets—and kazam. Trailer park to anything she wants in half an hour. She went on Jay Leno, I think.”

“My God,” Gregor said.

“Well, people do win the damn things,” Walter said. “And she did the kind of thing people do when they win, I guess, including sending the kids to private schools. I don’t know why she sent Michael to Windsor, but she did. And now he’s dead. And she’s not much interested in fading into the sunset.”

“She thinks he was murdered?” Gregor said.

“Not exactly, from what I can figure out,” Walter said, “but she thinks something is screwy up there and that there are things they aren’t telling her, and she’s probably right. Those schools have a near mania about lawsuits, and she’s in a position to launch a good one and never feel the pain. And that’s why the Windsor cops are so nervous. On the one side, they’ve got the school, with serious old money and serious power behind it. On the other side, they’ve got Dee Feyre, who’s hopping mad and possessed of huge gobs of money, plus pretty damned savvy about how to use the papers to get her story out. The school has managed to keep the lid on it for the past week, but that’s not going to last long. I’ll bet you anything that by Saturday, the story’s going to be all over everywhere, and then the shit is really going to hit the fan. You going to go up there and make it worse?”

“Maybe,” Gregor said.

“You want a contact in the Windsor Police?”

“I don’t want them to feel that I’m stepping on their toes,” Gregor said. “I’m not going up there to interfere with their investigation. I happen to know the family of Michael Feyre’s roommate.”

“DeAvecca,” Walter said, laughing. “I forgot about that. The roommate is Elizabeth Toliver’s son and Jimmy Card’s stepson. More shit-hits-the-fan material.”

“I agree. Mark’s distraught.”

“I can bet. And high as a kite, if my guy is to be believed. Listen, let me give you Brian Sheehy’s number. He’s chief of police. He won’t mind your coming up. Hell, he just might welcome it. It wouldn’t hurt him any to have somebody to take the heat off when the going gets rough, and it most definitely is going to get rough,”

“I’m not going up to investigate,” Gregor said.