Laura Lippman - To The Power Of Three

“I could tell you-”

“But then you’d have to kill me, I know.”

“No. But if you knew all our secrets, you’d be even more irresistible, have more women chasing you. That’s not what you want.” A pause. “Right, Sarge? That’s not what you want?”

“I can barely handle the two I have.”

“Two?” She furrowed her brow, worried for him.

“Marcia and Jessica.”

They shared a laugh, but then Nancy started to hiccup, and Andy came in, a bottle of water clutched in his giant hands. Lenhardt let himself out, embarrassed that he had imposed on Nancy at such a time. She had too much on her mind to tend to his conscience.

But he had really wanted to know-not just where women learn such things but what he should do about his own daughter, how he could prepare her for this world without sheltering her from it. He didn’t want to think of his daughter in her twenties all but propositioning a married man old enough to be her father. He didn’t want to think about the man who might say yes.

What Lenhardt didn’t want to know was the truth about himself: If he could have gotten away with it, he would have. Under the right circumstances, if he could have had a fling with a girl like that and be assured he could never, ever get caught, he would have done it in a second. But Infante, with his two broken marriages-and, yes, marriage two was to the woman who broke marriage one-was proof that men did get caught.

And Infante wasn’t the only one who could smell crazy on a woman. There was more than a whiff of it on that teacher-not crazy-crazy, but romantic-crazy, the kind of girl who went in saying she knew the rules, and then, next thing you knew, she was calling your house, indifferent to caller ID. A woman like that claimed to be free and easy, but you paid in the end.

Still, if he could have gotten away with it-if there was some parallel universe where actions had no consequences-he would have. Wouldn’t anyone?

His phone rang, and he almost didn’t grab it. Probably Marcia, busting his balls for not making the swim meet. But he weakened and flipped it open, and the female voice that greeted his was refreshingly businesslike-Holly Varitek, the lab tech.

“Tell me something good,” he said.

“Can’t,” she said. “I’m sorry. I can’t tell you anything definitive. There are at least three sets of fingerprints on the gun, but I’ve only identified two.”

“Perri Kahn and Josie Patel,” he guessed.

“Yup. And not Kat Hartigan. We’ll have to bring the owner in, I guess.”

“What about-”

“Blood type on the tampon doesn’t match Perri, Josie, or Kat. But, fresh as it appeared to be, I can’t place it within a time frame that eliminates the very real possibility that someone else came in, did her business, and left. Sorry, Lenhardt, but it’s not like that damn television show, where a single pubic hair unlocks all the mysteries of the world.”

“I know. Problem is, juries expect it to be that way. So as long as that…that thing is floating around, it raises all sorts of questions without answering any. What do you think, Holly?”

“Sorry, you don’t pay me enough to think. And if you put me in front of a grand jury, all I could swear is that someone changed her tampon that morning.”

If I’d slept with that teacher, he thought, she would have told me the name. Maybe not the first time, but eventually.

When he got home,both Jessica and Marcia were giving him the silent treatment, which was infuriating. So he had missed the swim meet. It had been for work-at least, he thought it was for work when he headed out. And he hadn’t slept with her, had he? A young blonde had all but offered herself up, asking nothing more from him than help in moving a piece of furniture, and he had sent her on her way. A man was always getting in trouble for things he didn’t do, but he never got rewarded for the gauntlets he ran every day. Marcia might have him firmly in the debit column, but Lenhardt knew he had a million credits on his balance sheet.

Old Giff, as theater teacherTed Gifford was known throughout the school, was not old, and his name was not Gifford. He had changed it legally at twenty-two, aware that the Polish surname he carried out of the western hills of Pennsylvania -Stolcyarcz-would never work for an actor. So he became Ted Gifford, a name designed to be so bland that casting directors would have no fixed idea of who he was or what he could play.

But the name change was not enough to transform him. Giff landed a few cop roles, playing middle-aged men while still in his twenties. Playing old made him feel old, which he did not enjoy. Meanwhile he was still too callow to play the parts he felt he was born to play, Falstaff and Lear. So he went back to school and got a teaching certificate. A thirty-something man could feel old or young surrounded by teenagers, and Old Giff felt young.

Or so he told his students every new school year when he launched into his long-winded explanation of why Glendale staged its musical in the fall instead of the spring, as other high schools did.

“Tradition is merely habit hardened into ritual,” he began. “We assume there must be a rational basis, but often there is none. Or if there was a reason, it disappeared long ago, became obsolete.”

There was simply no basis for the schedule used by most other public schools in the state, Gifford told his students, and many arguments to be made for its inversion. Students were fresher in the fall, energetic and more capable of concentration, especially those who had spent the summer in Sylvia Archer-Bliss’s theater program. The end of the year had too many competing interests, particularly for seniors. England had a long history of Christmastime extravaganzas, and a fall musical was a good substitution, as it provided a secular entertainment and bypassed the increasingly contentious debates over holiday programs.

“In England these productions were known as pantomimes,” he said.

Here, every year, every time, some budding class clown did his rendition of Marcel Marceau and the wall, or walking-into-wind. Griff would wait patiently for the laughter to die down, then explain that it wasn’t the same thing. A pantomime was actually a pageant, something bright and gay -he always let this word linger a little longer than necessary, as if testing his students.

“As the days grow shorter and darker, we need something bright and festive,” he continued. “So why not create a tradition with meaning, one tied to the calendar, to the earth’s natural cycles? At Glendale High School, we do our musical in the fall-and we let the students have a hand in choosing it.”

He didn’t bother to disguise his amusement at the debate that followed, with students trying not to reveal their self-interest as they lobbied for this or that play. They all attempted to sound altruistic, to pretend that their only interest was what was best for the drama department. The most vociferous were often the most deluded when it came to their own abilities. Some short, skinny boy with a merely decent voice was always pushing to be Don Quixote in Man of La Mancha, while terribly plain girls yearned to play the Gwen Verdon sexpots- Sweet Charity and Damn Yankees . If they could see me now indeed.

The fall of Perri’s senior year, she clearly was bursting with an idea, but she was shrewd and strategic, waiting for everyone else to speak first. Josie watched her, curious, for Perri had not confided in her or Kat what her plan was. Come to think of it, Perri had not spent much time with them since the school year began.

Man of La Mancha was touted, as it was almost every year, and Giff undercut it. “It’s not the right climate to have a gang rape onstage.” A new girl, a junior transfer, April something, had a Cats fixation, which was unfortunate for her, as everyone else knew that Giff hated, hated, hated Andrew Lloyd Webber. Still, he listed them all on the board- Man of La Mancha, Cats, West Side Story, Gypsy . (The last was clearly Giff’s preferred choice, and Giff’s favorite somehow always won, despite his seemingly democratic method.)