The Sixes

6

BACK HOME PHOEBE flipped open her laptop and did a Google search for hex signs. She discovered that they’d been introduced by German settlers in the 1600s, though there wasn’t a consensus as to why. The most common theory, as Phoebe had suspected, was that they were used to ward off evil. The word hex was actually derived from the German word for witch. So wait, Phoebe thought, does it not have anything to do with the Greek word for six? It seemed it didn’t, but as she read more, she learned that many early hex signs had six-pointed stars, and surprise, surprise, one theory held that the name hex had evolved from a mispronunciation of the German word seches—meaning “six.”

So maybe the hex signs in Blair and Gwen’s apartment had nothing to do with witchcraft, but were simply a way for the girls to sneakily announce that they were part of the Sixes. Funny, she thought, how secret organizations always had to make sure they had their damn symbol down, to give members a way to show that they belonged. Because what secret societies invariably wanted was to not be a total secret—they wanted people to whisper about them, to yearn to belong, and in some cases, to be very afraid of them. Phoebe had learned that all too well.

Next, she Googled information about drowned bodies. When a person drowned, she read, the body generally sank at first, but as it decomposed, the resulting gases forced it to the surface. The colder the water, the longer it took for those gases to form. At this time of year it might take well over a week for a body to rise to the surface, even if the weather was as warm as it had been. But a body didn’t always sink to the bottom. Sometimes it got caught on tree roots or wrapped in nautical rope along a dock. Maybe that’s what happened to Lily’s body, Phoebe thought, which would explain why it had been found so quickly.

Then she checked out the story Stockton had mentioned about students dying in the Midwest. He hadn’t exaggerated. In the past five or six years a dozen young men in just a few states had been found drowned after a night out. In all the cases, authorities had declared the deaths accidental, though some family members bought into the notion of a serial killer. Again, Phoebe felt her skin crawl. She instinctively glanced up to the window above the table. How horrible to even consider, she thought. But serial killers did move around. She’d read enough about Ted Bundy to know that he had begun his deadly spree in Oregon, moved on to Colorado, and killed his last victims in Florida. Stockton might be right.

Thinking of Stockton made her remember to check her e-mail. As promised, there was a message from him with the names of the two girls who’d exchanged the look during the committee meeting: Molly Wang and Jen Imbibio.

Bingo, Phoebe thought. Jen Imbibio was in one of the sections of her writing class. It would be easy to find an excuse to talk to the girl after class tomorrow.

She opened the file she kept on her students on her laptop and scrolled down to Jen Imbibio’s name. Jen had earned B-, C, and C+ on her three assignments so far. Phoebe had yet to review and grade Jen’s most recent assignment. She’d asked her students to write a reported article on any topic they wanted, and also a separate, first-person blog on the same subject, done in a much chattier, breezier style. Jen had chosen reality TV as her subject.

Phoebe reached across the table to a stack of papers, located Jen’s two pieces, and read through them. Her research for the reported piece had been decent enough, but the writing was stilted. For the blog, Jen had gone off on a total tear about the girls who were on the shows, girls who flaunted their fake breasts and were famous for nothing. The writing here was sassy and provocative in parts, a refreshing surprise.

Phoebe glanced at her watch. It was close to four o’clock, and she’d done nothing yet for dinner with Duncan. She jumped up from her desk and hurried into the kitchen. She’d decided earlier that she’d make spaghetti carbonara, which she’d planned to prepare for herself that night anyway. There were arugula and lemons in the fridge, which meant she could put together a salad with lemon vinaigrette. What about dessert, though? she wondered. There was still time to make a mad dash to the supermarket before it closed. But that would be trying too hard, turning the evening into more than it should be. There was fruit in the fridge, she realized—grapes and tangerines—and she could get away with serving those.

The doorbell rang at a little past seven thirty, just as she had finished beating the Parmesan cheese into the eggs. She’d already fried the pancetta, and the house was redolent with the scent of meat and garlic. It smells like a damn souvlaki stand in here, she thought with annoyance, wiping her hands quickly on a dish towel.

She swung open the door. Even though she expected Duncan, seeing him on her doorstep startled her a little. She realized that she was still not used to him sans beard and mustache.

“Come in,” she said, offering a smile.

“Sorry I’m a few minutes late. I spent the afternoon with thirty feisty little rats, and I decided I’d better shower again. . . . Wait, this is Herb Jack’s place, isn’t it? At first glance, I’d say you’ve improved on it by about 400 percent.”

Phoebe laughed. “Thanks. Lucky for me he decided to put all his Civil War memorabilia in storage before he went on sabbatical.”

“You are lucky. I can’t really picture you surrounded by bayonets and muskets.” Duncan handed her a bottle in a shiny silver sack. “You said pasta, so I brought a Brunello di Montepulciano.”

“Terrific,” she said, impressed by his choice.

She hung up his coat, opened the wine in the kitchen, and returned to the living room with a glass for each of them. Duncan accepted his and sank into the sofa, one leg crossed over the thigh of the other. Beneath his jeans he was wearing weathered black cowboy boots.

“That must have been tough this morning at the river,” he said, as she took a seat in the old rocker across from him. “How are you doing?”

“It was tough,” she admitted. “And it’s hard to chase the image out of my mind.”

Duncan rubbed his thumb back and forth along the curves of the wineglass. “Have you learned anything about how the girl died?” he asked, looking back at her. “You have the inside track, of course.”

“I know as little as you do. But coincidentally, I had an interesting encounter with Lily two weeks ago.” She described the rushed conversation in the rain, and then decided to share what she learned from Glenda and Stockton about the Sixes.

Duncan placed his wineglass on the coffee table and leaned back into the couch. He was wearing a beige henley shirt with his jeans, the top two buttons undone, and though not tight, it fit his body well enough for Phoebe to see what good shape he was in.

“What do you think?” she said.

“Hmm,” he said. “On one hand, no, I’ve never heard about any secret society. But as soon as you said the words, it pricked a nerve with me. I’ve had the weirdest sensation from time to time—when I’m around some of the students.”

It was the kind of creepy comment, Phoebe thought, that someone makes in a horror movie, when they begin to sense that their house is haunted by a girl who died a hundred years ago.

“What do you mean?” she asked quietly.

“Hard to describe—in fact you’re the first person I’ve even mentioned this to because it’s been so vague. Sometimes when I’m talking to kids—usually outside the classroom—I have a weird sense there’s something they’re just not saying. Have you ever suspected you’re the only person in a group that doesn’t know something? You’ll see someone shoot another person an odd look. That kind of thing.” Tom Stockton had seen a look exchanged, too, Phoebe recalled. “Are you thinking Lily was a member?”

“Yes, she may have been.”

“If the right moment ever presents itself, I’ll probe the students a little.”

“That would be great—I’m trying to find out all I can. Speaking of the right moment, are you hungry?”

“Famished, actually,” he said. “I never broke for lunch today.”

She’d set up the drop-leaf table in the living room for dinner, and while Duncan refilled their wineglasses, she dumped the spaghetti in the pot of boiling water and then served the salads.

“So you know Herb, then?” she asked, after they’d begun to eat.

“Not super well,” Duncan said. “But I’ve been to a couple of his Christmas parties here.”

“Is there a lot of socializing among the faculty?

“About average, I’d say.” He craned his head around. “Why am I remembering a dining room? I keep picturing a big table with a steaming crock-pot of Swedish meat balls.”

Phoebe laughed, though she wondered why he’d been so quick to change the subject.

“It’s through that door over there,” she said, gesturing with her chin. “But I’ve set it up as my office. Herb used the second bedroom upstairs as his, but it’s under the eaves and feels so claustrophobic to me.”

“I can imagine a lot about Lyle makes you feel claustrophobic. Has it been hard leaving Manhattan behind?”

“Definitely a little strange. But I felt I had to get away. I was looking for a place to think, to regroup, that sort of thing.” She smiled, feeling a little self-conscious. “And then Glenda made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

“Someone told me you two went to the same boarding school.”

“More or less.”

He cocked his head in a gesture that said, Please explain. He’s a little like me, Phoebe thought. He likes to go below the surface.

“Glenda graduated from there,” she said. “I ended up staying for just my sophomore year and then finished up back at my hometown high school.” She paused for a moment. “Homesick.”

He narrowed his brown eyes, studying her.

“You don’t seem like the kind of girl that gets homesick.”

“Well, I’ve had my wuss moments in life,” Phoebe said. She looked away involuntarily and kicked herself for it.

“What’s amazing,” Duncan said, “is that you and Glenda stayed friends after knowing each other for just a year when you were, what, fifteen?”

“I know. But she’d helped me through a tough situation, and we forged a pretty strong bond. We did drift apart for a bit—this was before cell phones and e-mail. But right after college we both ended up in New York—I was in the magazine business, and she was getting her doctorate at Columbia—and we started spending time together again. It was fantastic to reconnect, and since then we’ve been very close.”

“And are you glad you accepted her offer to come here?”

“By and large, yes. But like I said, I miss the city.” She smiled. “You cannot get a red velvet cupcake in this town. But at the same time I’ve enjoyed the quiet, the lack of chaos. And teaching has given me something to focus on besides my recent fuckup.”

“I bet the kids find you utterly fascinating.”

“Oh, yeah, but not necessarily in a good way. There’s that whole elephant-in-the-room thing to contend with—with both students and faculty.”

He cocked his head. “Meaning?”

“The whole scandale,” Phoebe said. “The plagiarism charges. I know people start buzzing about me the minute I walk into a room. I feel like Jordan Baker in The Great Gatsby. They’re all wondering whether I really cheated in that golf tournament.”

“Did you?” he asked, holding her eyes intensely. It was the first time she’d been asked so bluntly, and she found it strangely appealing.

“No,” she said, shaking her head with a rueful smile. “A freelance researcher mislabeled some research notes. And yet . . .”

He didn’t say a word, just looked at her. So he knows how to do the pregnant pause just like I do, she thought.

She shrugged. “I’m not blameless. I’ve always been such a stickler for detail, but in this case I hired a person without the right experience and didn’t pay enough attention to the process.”

“Maybe something about the process didn’t interest you anymore.”

“Maybe,” she said.

God, she thought, how did I get into this? He was asking all the questions. Mercifully the timer she’d set for the pasta went off just then.

In the kitchen, she tested a strand of the linguine, drained the pot, and then stirred the creamy sauce into the noodles. Perhaps it was the glass and a half of wine she’d already drunk, but the carbonara smelled heavenly to her.

“Does Tony know you can do this?” Duncan asked after she served the pasta and he’d consumed two big forkfuls. “This is amazingly good.”

“Thank you. I don’t have much of a repertoire as a cook, but I’m generally pretty decent at pasta. My Italian grandmother loved to teach me in her kitchen.”

“You’re adopted, then. You can’t be Italian with that fair skin and blue eyes.”

“I’m just a quarter Italian, the rest is English and Irish.” She needed to get the attention off herself. “Do you like to cook?”

“Some nights, though nothing fancy. A lot of nights I end up working late in the lab and I just grab takeout.”

“Is it strange—working with rats?”

“Why, do you find them unnerving?”

Phoebe shuddered a little. “Yes,” she said. “I—I can’t stand it when I see them on the subway tracks in New York.”

Duncan laughed that deep, melodic laugh of his. It was the kind of laugh that made you want to linger in a room with him.

“They have their charms, believe it or not. One of the things we’ve been studying is how cleverly they teach their pups. They make pretty good mothers, too—except, of course, when they eat their young for reasons we don’t quite understand.” He laughed again. “Sorry about that. Not the kind of comment I should be making over dinner.”

Phoebe smiled. “No problem—it’s very interesting stuff.” But she was anxious to get off that topic, too.

Duncan set down his fork and leaned back in his chair.

“So how did you end up writing about actors?”

“I’ve always found them intriguing—though not so much because of the sexcapades and outrageous behavior. I had a second cousin who had a fair amount of success doing TV and off-Broadway theater, and I could always see that she was desperately trying to be something she wasn’t. I kept wondering what demons she was running from. And as I began to do celebrity profiles, I saw that they all were trying to be something different than they were, that they all had these secrets. I love figuring out what makes them tick; there’s an exhilarating rush when I find a clue that helps me piece everything together.”

For the next few minutes they tossed around several different topics: why Duncan had chosen psychology as a field; Lyle’s issues as a college; and how different Gen Y was from their own generation. I like this, Phoebe thought.

They finished their pasta, and Phoebe realized that the night was going faster than she wanted it to.

“Would you like an espresso?” she asked, rising from the table. “I lugged my machine out here from the city.”

“That would be great,” Duncan said. “Let me help you clear, though.”

“No, no, there’s really so little to do.” She returned from the kitchen a few minutes later with the espresso, the fruit, and a plate of chocolate biscotti she’d discovered while searching quickly through the pantry.

Duncan peeled opened a tangerine, not saying anything but seeming content, comfortable with the silence.

“So how long have you been at the school?” Phoebe asked. “And is it a good fit for you?”

He was the one who looked away this time, as if gathering his thoughts, but she knew from experience that people broke eye contact when the other person’s words had thrown them off.

“About two years,” he said, looking back at her. “And it’s been pretty good. It’s just not the kind of place where I saw myself.”

“I hear it’s hard to get a job in academia these days.”

“It wasn’t that, actually.” He sounded grave. “I take it the campus grapevine hasn’t served up my personal story, then?”

She suddenly felt a prick of anxiety, though she wasn’t sure why. “No,” she said.

“My former wife’s parents were from Lyle. She was diagnosed with terminal cancer two years ago, and she wanted to come back here to die. I’d been teaching at Northwestern—we were living in Chicago—and fortunately a job opened up at the college here not long after we moved back.”

Phoebe realized she’d been holding her breath. She let it out slowly.

“And?” Phoebe asked haltingly.

“She died fifteen months ago. But ironically not from the cancer. She was in the final stages when she fell asleep reading in the bathtub and drowned.”