Shades of Grey (23 page)

‘OK, it’s not so bad.’ She knew she was talking out loud. At this point, she didn’t care. ‘I mean, maybe the no-messages are just wrong numbers, right? And if the cops really thought I was a suspect, they’d pick me up, right?’ There was no answer, and even when she wiggled her toes, she could feel no soft fur, no batting of leather paw pads. Well, maybe the visions of Mr Grey had been just that: flights of fancy when life had gotten too hard to bear. Considering how much time she spent reading about ghosts and beleaguered maidens, it made sense, right? At least she was sane. Nor, despite the silence in her apartment, was she completely alone and friendless. She’d left a semi-frantic message for Suze. And, she remembered, Luke was due any minute. Well, if Suze didn’t call back in time, she could always pick his brain for legal advice.

If only he didn’t seem sweet on Stacia . . . Dulcie closed her eyes. She might as well wish for the moon; or that she’d never agreed to sublet to Tim; or that she had listened when that eerie voice had told her not to go inside. Dulcie pulled the sofa cushion over her face. She couldn’t go there. She couldn’t. And, holding on to that resolve, she fell asleep.

She was in such a deep sleep that the doorbell made her jump. On her feet before she thought about it, Dulcie also realized that she was still wearing her drab office dress – and she hadn’t so much as washed her face. Well, there was nothing she could do now.

‘Hi, Luke. Sorry about this.’ She gestured to her hair, sure that it had taken on a life of its own, and probably of an asymmetrical, lopsided kind. ‘Got home from work and fell asleep.’

‘It’s the weather. Not fit for man or beast.’ He handed her an empty box and grabbed two others off the stoop. ‘But you look fine. We’re still on for dinner, right?’

Dulcie smiled, and immediately worried about her breath. ‘Thanks, yeah. Uh, do you mind if I wash up while you start?’

‘No problem. No reason you should have to deal with Tim’s crap, anyway.’

Dulcie led the way up to the top floor and left the box by the closed bedroom door. She could hear him muttering as she splashed cold water on her face, trying to wake up, and found herself staring into the mirror. She was too pale, too . . . Dulcie. But after a moment’s hesitation, she rejected the strange mascara. Luke had just seen her without it. If he noticed her wearing some, it would seem too obvious. Instead, she ducked into her own bedroom to change, looking back to see him emptying out the bottom drawer of the old dresser Suze had cleared for her temporary replacement.

‘You OK in here?’ She peeked around the half-opened door a few minutes later. Although Luke had already taken a carload of stuff, Tim’s possessions seemed to have multiplied.

‘Yeah, I think I’ll take these sweaters directly to the dry cleaner.’ He was folding a baby-blue cashmere. ‘We’ll probably end up donating them anyway.’

Someone will get lucky, thought Dulcie, as she watched Luke pile two identical pullovers – one a soft lemon yellow, the other pale cream – on the first. ‘I didn’t realize he had so much stuff.’

‘That’s the Worthingtons. Rich in stuff,’ said Luke, bending over for one more sweater. ‘At least, clothes. I think Mother had all of Tim’s measurements on file at the Andover Shop. She still sends me sweaters occasionally.’

‘That’s sweet.’ Dulcie leaned back against the desk, to be out of his way.

Luke snorted. ‘It’s all image.
Her
boys wore Pendleton. Besides, she likes to shop. Hey, while you’re sitting there . . .’ He handed her the remaining empty box. ‘Would you look through the desk? I think I grabbed most of his papers last time. But if you see anything there that you think might be his, would you throw it in here?’

‘Sure.’ She started leafing through the papers on the desk’s surface. Suze was not much neater than she was, but she had tried to tidy everything away before she left for the summer. Odds were that anything out here was Tim’s. ‘These look like course papers.’ She found a stack of Xeroxed notes on statistics. Some kind of study guide from Luisa probably.

‘Throw ’em in. Who knows? Maybe someone else can use them.’

‘Maybe.’ Leafing through the notes, Dulcie had the distinct impression that they’d not been touched. Perhaps, she acknowledged, that was just because she couldn’t remember Tim ever studying. But then she came across two pages stuck together, as if they’d gone through the printer together. The type that started on one ended on the other. Nobody had even bothered to pull them apart. At least Luisa had been trying to tutor him. Maybe he would have come to care for her. Maybe he had.

Dulcie pulled open the top desk drawer. Suze had made a point of emptying it out completely, not that Tim had much use for a workspace – or for pens and pencils for that matter. She pulled a bunch of loose papers out and reached back into the drawer. All she could find was a box of matches. She thought then of the huge diamond and sapphire ring that Stacia had found up here.

‘Luke, do you know about that ring, the one Tim supposedly bought for Alana?’

‘How could I help it?’ He didn’t look up. ‘Alana was shoving it under everyone’s face at that party of hers.’

‘Don’t you think it’s funny that we didn’t find it? I mean, when we were turning this place upside down?’ She emptied out the top right-hand drawer. More matches, a package of condoms, and some pens. Including, she noted, one of her favorites: a refillable fountain pen that she’d been missing since July.

He shrugged. ‘We weren’t looking for it. Neither of us were; we were looking for a plastic bag of weed or a hidden compartment in the floor or the closet.’

‘But still, that’s a pretty big find.’

He shrugged again, and she was reminded: money meant less to his family than to hers, because they had so much more of it. ‘If I’d seen a velvet box, I might have assumed it was his cufflinks or his tuxedo studs.’

The image of Tim in a tuxedo startled Dulcie enough so that she let out a questioning noise. ‘Huh?’

‘Yup, Tim in a tux. Hard to believe, I know. But that’s how we were raised.’

She tried to picture her former room-mate formally dressed. She’d seen his suits – three, all custom tailored – when the funeral home representative had come by to pick them up. But even those had seemed foreign. And a tuxedo? All that came to mind was Luke. She could see him in a shawl-collared tux, looking a bit like James Bond, ready to go to some wonderful event . . .

‘Did that bother you?’ Dulcie’s voice had gone quiet and, for a moment, she thought Luke hadn’t heard her. ‘I mean, the party? That Alana would have people over so soon after?’

‘Yeah,’ he said finally. ‘But I wasn’t surprised. I’d met her last Christmas and, in a way, they were the perfect couple. She didn’t seem like the most warm or caring woman, to put it mildly. In fact, I doubt Tim was ever real to Alana. He was a prize. Someone who would propel her to the next stage of life.’ He looked up at Dulcie. ‘But Tim wasn’t any better. I mean, to him Alana was just a blonde – the blonde of the moment. She came from the right background and the right family, so maybe he was planning on marrying her. But that never stopped him from having a brunette on the side. Or a redhead, for that matter.’ He looked at her and Dulcie was horrified to realize that she was blushing. Luke either didn’t notice or was too polite to comment. ‘Even if he had married her, it probably wouldn’t have stopped him from chasing after any other woman who caught his eye.’ He turned back to his boxes. ‘I don’t think I ever heard him say he loved her.’

She returned to shuffling papers. Anything to keep busy. ‘I didn’t know you two talked that much.’ Truth was, she had barely been aware that her room-mate had a brother.

‘I didn’t.’ He looked down. ‘And I’m sorry that I didn’t. Maybe I’d have made a difference. I mean, it’s not like Tim learned any different at home.’ Folding the last of the sweaters, he avoided Dulcie’s eyes. ‘My folks were never what you would call nurturing. They didn’t really care what we got up to, as long as it didn’t embarrass them. We were the classic “heir and a spare”. And, well, if we were just status symbols to them, where was Tim going to learn to treat people any differently?’

‘But you’re not like that!’ The words burst out of her. ‘I mean, you were just in Asia helping out and now you’re doing the legal clinic and everything.’ He kept packing. ‘And, well, you obviously loved Tim.’

He did meet her eyes then, with a wry smile. ‘Maybe that’s what saved me. I’m the big brother. I was the one who was there when he fell off his bike. I was the one he ran to when he got picked on. He was a chubby kid, did you know that?’ Luke grabbed another box. ‘Anyway, for a while there, he would come to me. I liked it, I guess. I liked being responsible, having that connection with somebody.’

Dulcie looked at him, unsure how to ask the obvious next question. ‘So, did you two . . . drift?’

‘Did we have a falling out, you mean? Not in so many words. I mean, I was still bailing him out when he was prepping. That’s how I know about his little side business. But then I went off to “find myself”, and he hit his growth spurt, slimmed down, and discovered he could be the big man on campus. I don’t know, I think maybe I still saw him as a screwed-up little fat kid, and he could tell that I saw him that way. He didn’t want much to do with me the last few years. Spent more time with his school buddies, and pretty soon he’d got an in at finals clubs and eating clubs at every college on the East Coast.’ Luke shrugged. ‘Maybe I could have tried harder, but he seemed to be doing OK for himself. I mean, until I got the call from the folks that he was flunking out, I thought he had found his level.’

They were quiet then, as Luke continued to fold clothes and Dulcie worked the papers into one big pile. One page stuck out, and she pulled it out for a look. It was better quality paper, more like stationery than printer paper. No wonder it didn’t slide neatly in with the others. ‘You don’t think his tutor would want these back, do you?’

He took a step closer and looked over her shoulder. ‘What is that, some kind of computer code?’

‘I think it’s statistics.’ The page Dulcie was holding didn’t have much type on it, just a couple of lines of nonsense, maybe shorthand or instant messaging. Maybe it was a tip sheet. ‘This looks like it was a first-generation printout, not a copy. Could be his tutor’s original.’

‘Whatever it is, it’s not statistics. I had to take that, too, didn’t you?’ Dulcie shrugged and shook her head. She had a vague memory of tables and percentages. But any mathematics she’d once known had long ago been pushed out of her mind by author biographies, varieties of typefaces, and the ever-present search for a thesis topic. She looked down at the odd lines, wondering if maybe something there would ring a bell.

None of it made sense to her. She looked up at Luke. ‘Maybe it’s gibberish?’

‘Maybe.’ Luke went back to the clothes. His box was nearly full.

Dulcie kept reading: “sweetheart:))) use //linecode.”

If it wasn’t homework, maybe it was a love note; some kind of code between Tim and his smitten tutor. She thought of the distraught Luisa. If she saw her again, she’d ask. In the meantime, she folded the page up and slipped it into the pocket of her jeans. Whatever this was, nobody else had to see it.

‘That’s it, I think.’ Luke stood up and looked around. Dulcie handed him the last pile of papers, and he squashed down the clothes to make room for them. Finally, the mess was gone, all somehow contained in the four large boxes that Luke had stacked by the wall. The furniture, once distinctively Suze’s and then for a short while covered in her temporary room-mate’s clutter, now looked barren and dorm-like. The last of Tim’s life had been packed away.

‘It wasn’t much, was it? Once you’d packed it up, that is.’ Dulcie found herself talking softly, as if she were back at the funeral. ‘I mean, it’s just stuff.’

‘But he didn’t have much of a life, did he?’ Luke’s face was set and grim. He grabbed one of the boxes and hoisted it on to his shoulder. ‘Let me hump these down to the car. You still up for some dinner?’

‘Definitely.’ Whatever else was going on with him, this man had just cleaned out his dead brother’s room. At the very least, she could keep him company. ‘I can even help with these.’ The box might contain only clothes but it was still heavy. Nevertheless, Dulcie got it up to waist level and headed into the hall.

‘Careful on the stairs!’ he yelled up to her. She heard her own front door open.

‘Watch out for—’ Dulcie stopped herself. Would she ever stop asking visitors to watch out for the cat? But Luke was already outside, loading the box into the back of a Mini Cooper. She slipped on her flip-flops and joined him.

Two trips later, the little car was full and she was about to lock the apartment door behind them when she remembered. ‘Oh, Luke? Did you bring Tim’s laptop?’

‘Next best thing.’ He leaned back against the cute little car, sweating from the exertion. The night had cooled, but the humidity remained high. ‘Tim’s old tutor wanted to look at it and came by my folks’ place. Said she’d made some notes on testing for him that she needed. Since she wasn’t likely to get a recommendation, I figured it was the least I could do. But I told her you had dibs on it. She promised to be done with it by tonight. In fact, she said she’d meet us in the Square.’

Luisa? Dulcie bit her lip in thought. Maybe the tutor did want copies of her test tips. More likely though, she was hoping to destroy any trace of her relationship with Tim before Bruce could find out. If the printout in Dulcie’s pocket was any indication, Luisa and Tim had at least exchanged some unscholarly notes. And, based on what Stacia had told her, maybe there was photographic evidence of the relationship as well. Whatever the truth of the matter, it wasn’t like Dulcie had any choice.

‘Sure, where are we meeting her?’

‘I’ll give her a call now.’ He pulled out his cell and punched in a number while Dulcie finished locking up and tried not to eavesdrop.

‘You have access? Oh, sure. Fine. Fifteen minutes then? Great.’ Luke closed the phone. ‘She’s got a dinner date in the Square, too, I guess. Anyway, she’s meeting her friend on the Widener steps, so we can pick up the laptop when we get in. Is that OK?’ He opened the car door for her.