Рита Браун - The Hunt Ball

This caught Pamela off guard. “You think?”

“Yeah,” Valentina backed Tootie up.

“You couldn’t hunt your horses every day.” Pamela was curious as to what she missed.

“Sister let us ride hers!” Felicity boasted.

“She said, ‘Light hands, keep out of his mouth, and be still,’ ” Tootie added.

“Wish I’d been there.” Pamela told the truth.

This struck all three friends because they knew enough about Pamela to know she went to great pains to hide her emotions. What you saw was not what you got.

“Maybe she’ll let us have a sleepover some weekend after Christmas,” Felicity suggested.

“Sister might but I don’t know if my adviser will let me go. They’re all mad at me. The administration and the faculty, too.” Pamela overstated the case.

“Maybe some are, but Mrs. Norton isn’t like that. If your grades are good and Bunny says ‘okay,’ Mrs. Norton will flash you the green light.” Valentina liked the headmistress.

“Dad says I’m costing Custis Hall money. He says I’m right to raise the issue but wrong the way I did it. And he said I should never have gone behind Mrs. Norton’s back to find Professor Kennedy.” The usual defiance wasn’t in Pamela’s voice.

“What’d your mother say?” Tootie asked.

“She didn’t care. I’m overweight. Okay, maybe I’m ten pounds overweight but I’m not Queen Latifah. She doesn’t care what I think or what I do. She cares about how I look and that I meet ‘the right people.’ ” Pamela’s voice dripped with sarcasm.

“You are meeting the right people.” Valentina smiled her politician’s smile. “Hey, you’re with us, aren’t you?”

“You’re so modest, Val.” Pamela listened as the bells chimed noon. “Lunch. I’m starved.”

“Me, too,” Valentina and Felicity said in unison.

They fell in step, walking to the dining hall.

Pamela remarked, “I can’t wait for Professor Kennedy’s report.”

“You missed the point, Pamela.” Val sounded as though she were talking to a child. “The stuff in those cases is just stuff. What matters is how Professor Kennedy interprets it, and I still don’t see how she can be sure who made what.”

Felicity countered Valentina. “If a bit was made by slaves she’ll know. That’s her field, Val. It is evidence, not interpretation.”

“Oh, come on, F.” Valentina was impatient, an impatience intensified by hunger. “She can identify some things, sure, but most of it? No one will ever know. And face it, what’s a piece of old plate to us?”

Pamela’s face darkened. “That’s just like you, Valentina.”

“What? You’re going to pitch a fit over a broken teacup? The stuff is junk. It just happens to be two-hundred-year-old junk, that’s all.”

“My dad said the real reason this junk, as you call it, is going to cost Custis Hall so much money is once Professor Kennedy’s report is delivered, the school will realize the whole security system is inadequate to protect it. He said some items might even be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

“So you’d rather have the school raise money to save broken teacups than build a new gym?” Valentina stepped toward Pamela.

“You’re so white,” Pamela fired right at her.

“And you are so fucked up.”

“One dollar.”

“Felicity, not now!” Tootie stepped between the two antagonists. “Pamela, it’s our heritage, white and black. It’s important. Valentina doesn’t care about history and it wouldn’t matter what color she was. She thinks the world began the day she entered it.”

“Tootie!” Valentina raised her voice.

“Hey, Val, that’s the truth, but in a sense, you’re right. The world began for you, anyway.” Tootie returned to Pamela. “But if you’re as political as you say you are, then maybe you need to think about the right use of resources. Do you preserve the past or prepare for the future? If you have tons of money, great, do both. If you don’t, then I guess I’m with Val, build the gym.”

“I knew you’d stick together.” Pamela brushed by Valentina with her shoulder as she stomped toward the dining hall, the archway crowded with students hurrying to get in.

“I can’t believe you said that about me.” Valentina turned on Tootie.

“Look, Val, self-esteem isn’t your problem. Do I care about what’s in those cases? I do. Let’s eat.”

“If we go in riding clothes, Mrs. Childers will give us demerits,” Felicity warned.

“Mrs. Childers can stuff it.” Valentina’s face reddened. “It’s a stupid rule.”

“Come on, F., what’s two demerits?” Tootie cajoled the normally placid Felicity. “We don’t have time to change. I’m starved.”

“All right.” Felicity hated getting demerits.

As they walked toward the graceful archway, Valentina asked Tootie, “Why’d you apply to Virginia Tech?”

“If I don’t get into Princeton, Bucknell, or Duke, I’ll go to Virginia Tech and stay there. That’s where I want to go to veterinary school once I get my B.A.”

“Your father isn’t going to like that,” Felicity said as she shook her head. “He told you he wouldn’t pay for it.”

“How come I don’t know all this?” Val threw up her hands in exasperation. She hated feeling left out.

“Because I only had this discussion with my dad last night and I didn’t see you until now. Dad says I’m too smart to be an equine vet; he wants me to be an investment banker. He’s being a real shit.”

“One dollar.” Felicity commiserated but stuck to her mission.

“I owe you one, too.” Valentina paid up, as did Tootie.

“Sorry.” Valentina was, too. She was blessed with parents who felt she needed to make her own choices, even bad ones. Sometimes a person learns more from a bad choice than a good one, but the important thing was that Valentina’s parents trusted her and loved her.

Tootie’s father loved her, too, but he pushed her. Her mother, more sympathetic, had ideas about one’s place in the world that weren’t too dissimilar from Pamela’s mother’s, although Tootie’s mother wasn’t quite the snob that Mrs. Rene was.

Felicity’s parents, like Valentina’s, were one hundred percent supportive. However, if Felicity wanted to do something unusual like take a year off before college and walk through Europe, she would have to earn the money for it. They were very firm that they would pay for her education and only her education.

They walked in silence. Then Felicity piped up, “I think your father is a shit, Tootie.” She then took a dollar from her right pocket and put it in her left with the other money.

The administration and the faculty convened at their own tables, which faced the students’ tables. Dining under the watchful eye of the adults usually ensured good behavior. The girls would sing but at least there were no food fights, and the singing was quite spirited.

Charlotte knew from Ben Sidel that the corpse was most likely that of Professor Kennedy. He told Charlotte not to reveal this until the tests proved conclusively that it was Professor Kennedy. This would give them both an opportunity to try to pick up the scent.

Charlotte asked if she herself was a suspect. Ben had replied that she shouldn’t worry about it. Of course, everyone must be questioned, the answers examined and compared to those of others. That was police work, lots and lots of tiny bits of information pieced together.

She then asked if she or the students were in danger. He said he didn’t think the students were but if she came across whatever or whoever was behind this, yes, she was.

Charlotte struggled to act as though all was well. She didn’t even confide in her husband because she was told to just wait until the I.D. was confirmed. However, the strain in her face made her look tired, older.