Rhonda Collins is a spherical redhead with an open smile, a cheerful laugh, and green eyes that miss nothing. Her brow is furrowed with lines, the corners of her eyes with crow’s feet. Her office is sparsely furnished and liberally inhabited by houseplants. The Easter cactus is getting ready to bloom and a philodendron drapes its leafy tresses along the edge of a bookcase filled with yearbooks, textbooks, and assorted three-ring binders. She gestures me to a squarish visitor’s chair and leans back in her own upholstered throne, folding her hands on her belly.
“So, you are a private investigator.”
“More like a consultant. I’m not technically a P. I.”
“What are you investigating? I hope there’s been no trouble with any of our students.” She makes the statement an interrogative and cocks her head.
“Not a current student, no. I’m looking for information on a past student, one I’m hoping you knew personally.”
This interests her, as I thought it would. But she says, “I hope you realize I can’t share any information about students without parents’ permission. Or a court order.” She smiles brightly.
“And I’m hoping in this case you’ll bend the rules.” I recross my legs and straighten my jacket. I left my weapon in the car because bringing a gun into the school might send the wrong message, but I miss its comforting weight on my shoulder.
She laughs a rolling Irish laugh. “Oh dear, Ms. Lake. What on earth makes you think I would do that?”
“Because this student — former student — is dead.”
She stops laughing. “Oh.” She runs her tongue along the front of her teeth, puckering her forehead. She’s thinking. I let her.
“Who is it?” she asks.
“Victoria Harkness,” I say.
“Oh,” she says again, and shakes her head. “Oh. Poor little Vicky. I remember her.” There’s a pause while she looks back into the past.
“Her body was recently pulled from the river.”
She snaps to attention. “I heard something about that. That was Vicky? Oh, dear. How tragic.” Her face pales, and she looks her age, which is probably late fifties.
“Were you her teacher?”
“English. Back in the day. Way before all this.” She waves a hand, indicating her surroundings. “I was still hoping to discover an incipient Virginia Woolf. Or Graham Greene.” She rolls her eyes at her own naïveté. “No such luck. But there were occasional sparks in the darkness.”
I ask her about teaching, the rewards, funny stories, anything to get her comfortable with reminiscing. Plus, it’s interesting. I admire her long-ago dedication to the art and craft of reading and writing, her ingenious plots to interest her students who really just cared about TV and sports and their own budding hormones. Finally, I wonder in a conversational tone, “Why did you call her ‘poor little Vicky’?”
I learn that young Victoria was one of those sparks in the dark. That even back then she had a shine. When the class had to write and give speeches, she was the only one who enjoyed the assignment and treated it seriously.
“I still remember her speech,” says Rhonda. “It was on the meaning of life.”
“Pretty esoteric for a thirteen-year-old,” I say.
“Yes, well. She wasn’t ordinary.” The principal’s smile is melancholic. “It’s so sad to hear this.”
“And then she moved away.”
“Not quite then. It was afterwards.” Smile goes away.
“Afterwards?” I hate it when people parrot other people, so I say, “After what?”
Rhonda pauses, a small frown on her face. The clouds outside part and a ray of sunshine illuminates the Easter cactus and its tiny pink buds. I wonder if she’s going to answer, or if she’s going to go all private with ‘I’ve already said too much.’ Instead, she says, “If I’d had more experience I would’ve noticed the signs. Recognized the problem. Helped her.”
“What do you mean?”
“She just shut down. Became incommunicative. Stopped doing her homework. I thought she was just being a rebellious brat, like thirteen-year-olds will.” She shakes her head. “I wish I’d been more on top of it. But we know so much more now than we did then. And I was still seeing my students as children with all their little quirks, not as potential victims.”
Her meaning is still fluttering just out of reach. “When you say victim, you mean…”
She sighs and steeples her fingers against her mouth. “I’m sorry, I can’t say with any certainty, so you’ll have to draw your own conclusions. Let’s say, with twenty years of hindsight, that I think there was some trauma in her life.”
I take a moment to digest her words. “So what happened? Do you know?”
“No. I don’t. All I know is that for the last couple of months of seventh grade she turned into an automaton, and then the family moved away. Or at least, Vicky and her mother did. Telling, in retrospect.” She looks out the window. “I should have seen it. Should have realized.” Another pause. “It haunts me.”
A silence grows between us. I don’t know what else to ask her. So I stand up.
“Thank you for your time, Ms. Collins.”
She walks me to the door without further conversation. I’ve only gotten a crumb, but maybe if I go deeper into the woods I’ll find another.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
SOMEONE ELSE KNOWS about Victoria’s past: her mother. I call her up. Ask if I can meet her back at Victoria’s apartment. She agrees with great reluctance. I’m not thrilled with it myself, but once again I climb the stairs and enter the dead woman’s home. Elizabeth Harkness is going through papers, as evidenced by the stacks on the dining table. Like my first visit, the blinds are closed, and the room is dim.
This time, she doesn’t offer me a beverage.
“All this,” she gestures at the papers. “It’s all that’s left of my daughter.”
I don’t know what to say to that. So instead, I repeat my request to talk about Victoria.
“Please, Detective. Have some respect for my privacy. You can’t imagine what I’m going through.”
“Maybe I
