A Quiet Death (29 page)

‘Don't look at me.' She burst into tears. ‘My face is a mess,' she sobbed. ‘And I'm still wearing my pajamas!'

Chandler simply smiled. ‘After all these long years, do you think I care about a little soot?' He wiped her cheeks gently, one at a time with his thumb. ‘Will you have me, my darling? I don't need to imagine life without you. It's been a purgatory of my own making.'

‘But, but . . . what about Dorothea? Your girls?'

‘One of your American naval officers had a saying for this, I think. “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.”'

Lilith bowed her head, as if accepting to share the burden. ‘But your job, your show?'

Chandler tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow. ‘Mike Huckabee has agreed to fill in for me on
And Your Point Is?
while I'm officially on assignment.'

Lilith grasped his arm. ‘Assignment? What assignment?'

Chandler smiled the famous smile that launched his broadcasting career, the smile that stole the hearts of thousands of female viewers at nine o'clock every weekday evening. ‘You, my dear.'

Underneath the veneer of soot, Lilith blushed crimson. ‘But afterwards, Zan, what then? Will Lynx News take you back?'

Chandler laughed. ‘Eliot Spitzer seems to have landed on his feet.'

Lilith looked confused. ‘Who's Eliot Spitzer?'

‘A former New York state governor who threw his career away by spending tens of thousands of dollars on expensive call girls,' Chandler explained.

I nudged Lilith with my elbow. ‘He charged them on his VISA or something.'

‘And he's now . . . ?'

‘A primetime commentator on CNN. Go figure.'

While Chandler excused himself to telephone the DC police, I stayed with Lilith. In spite of the firefighters' best efforts, her cottage had been converted to a steaming, stinking, smoldering ruin. Hoffner had lost a gun to the flames, I'd lost another iPhone, and, except for her studio, Lilith had lost everything.

‘Well, I guess that solves the problem of cleaning out the house,' Lilith joked. ‘Bring in the bulldozers! I'm relieved that Zan will never have to see the mess I'd allowed my life to become.'

‘Lilith,' I said gently, ‘there are therapists who can help you deal with the hoarding.'

She waved me off, just as I had waved Paul off when he had suggested I might seek outside help for post-traumatic stress. ‘I watch reality TV, too, Hannah. I analyzed myself. Stuff was filling the emptiness in my life. I'd let Zan go, I'd turned my son over to others to raise, and I couldn't bear to let go of anything else. By the time I figured that out,' she added with a grim smile, ‘the situation had gotten entirely out of hand. Just thinking about what needed to be done sent me into a state of paralysis.

‘I didn't think it mattered,' she continued. ‘What I bought, what I kept, what I didn't keep. It was nobody's business but my own. It wasn't hurting anybody.'

‘It was hurting
you
, Lilith. That house nearly killed you.' I touched the knot on my forehead. ‘And it nearly killed
me
!'

Lilith touched my arm. ‘I'm sorry about that, Hannah, truly. And I can't tell you how grateful I am for your help. I lied, you know. Zan's letters aren't in the bank.'

‘Surely you're kidding. Where are they?'

She pointed to the smoking ruins of her kitchen. ‘In my oven.'

‘Oh, Lilith!'

‘It's all right.' She tapped her forehead. ‘The memories, they're all right here. I know all of Zan's letters by heart, even the dopey poems. What do you think has sustained me all these years?'

‘Love?' It wasn't really a question.

Next to me, Lilith nodded.

A sudden flare-up near the blackened hulk that used to be a refrigerator was quickly doused by one of the firefighters. I remembered its contents – champagne, caviar – and wondered if any of it had survived. Glancing sidewise at Lilith, at her beautiful face, radiant under all the soot, I suddenly understood. ‘The champagne,' I said. ‘You kept it for Zan, didn't you? Not
if
he came back, but
when
.'

‘You are a perceptive woman, Hannah Ives.'

‘Where are you going to sleep tonight?' I asked after a moment.

‘Where I usually do. On the chaise lounge in the studio.'

Coming up behind us, Zan had overheard. ‘I don't think so. We need to get you to a doctor. Have him take a look at that ankle.'

‘I'll be fine. I've got some Ace bandages.' She paused, giggled. ‘I
had
some Ace bandages.'

‘Like fifty of them?' I said.

Lilith blushed. ‘Would somebody like to drive me to the drug store?'

‘How far can he get in that boat, Ms Chaloux?' Detective Terry Hughes leaned against the fender of his white Taurus, its hood still hot after the hundred-mile drive from Washington, DC.

‘There's a cup of gas, maybe two in the tank,' Lilith told him.

The detective nodded. ‘Out of Fishing Creek into the Little Choptank, then. Maybe as far as the Bay. A few miles more, then he's screwed.'

‘Oars?' I wondered.

Lilith laughed. ‘I'm not that well organized.'

The Coast Guard located James Hoffner six hours later, floating in circles on the flats near James Island. He was cold and he was hungry. A bos'n gave him a blanket and a granola bar, which he ate huddled in the cabin of a twenty-five foot RBS with his hands cuffed in front of him. Detective Hughes was waiting for the boat in Cambridge, very pleased to take delivery.

TWENTY-SEVEN

P
aul was stretched out in a canvas lounge chair on our patio, a bowl of mixed nuts balanced on his chest and a Bloody Mary within easy reach on the glass-topped table between us.

‘Do you dream about your old girlfriends?' I asked, sipping my rum and Coke.

Paul squinted into what remained of an early-November sun. ‘“Now that I am become a man, I put away childish things,”' he quoted.

‘I sometimes dream about Billy,' I said, just to jerk my husband's chain.

‘Billy?'

‘I was ten and Billy was eleven. An older man!' I waggled my eyebrows. ‘Billy was crazy about me. Snitched my winter coat during choir practice and hid it in the baptismal font.'

‘“The course of true love never did run smooth.”'

‘If you are going to speak in proverbs all night, Mr Ives, I'm going to leave you sitting out here and go watch TV.'

Paul grunted. ‘So, who are you this time, Hannah Ives?'

The earth shuddered to a halt in its rotation around the sun. ‘What are you talking about?'

Paul reached under his chair, pulled out a section of the
Washington Post
, folded open to the Style section, page seven, featuring a picture of me with Jeanette, Helen Sue and all the usual suspects. ‘Splain, Lucy.'

I groaned. Everyone morning since that Talk & Tea at the Women's Democratic League, I'd been out on our doorstep early, intercepting the newspaper before Paul could get his hands on it, checking the social notices for any articles about the event. First, we'd been trumped by a star-studded premier at the Kennedy Center, later by a fund-raiser for the Children's National Medical Center, featuring a clown, a magician, and a jester who could twist balloons into animal shapes while standing on his head, an event not unlike your typical political fund-raiser, I thought at the time. Impersonating Lilith Chaloux was no crime, of course, but I didn't feel like explaining my motives to Paul, especially since I wasn't entirely sure exactly what had motivated me to slap Lilith's name tag on my chest in the first place.

‘The devil made me do it,' I said at last.

‘That's what you always say.' Paul took a sip of his drink, refusing to meet my eyes.

I got up from my chair and went over to him, tapped his outstretched legs with the rolled-up newspaper. ‘Move over.' When he obliged, I sat down at the foot of the lounge chair and faced him. ‘People were being murdered, Paul. Somebody had to bring the sonofabitch who was doing it down.'

‘That's why we have policemen, Hannah. It makes me crazy when you go off half-cocked like that.'

‘It seemed like a good idea at the time.' I laid a hand on his leg, squeezed. ‘Besides, I don't do it all that often.'

‘Oh yeah? How about the time you dressed up as a trophy wife and dragged your poor father along, forcing him to pretend he was a Texas oil millionaire?'

‘String tie and all, as I recall.' I smiled, remembering how much Dad had enjoyed his part in bringing down the kingpin in a deadly life insurance scam.

‘Seems I'm living with a chameleon.' Paul captured my hand, pressed it against his chest, closed his eyes against the last rays of the dying sun. ‘I know I should be used to it by now, but I worry about you, Hannah.'

I studied his face, thoroughly in love with every crease, line, and wrinkle, wondering how many of them I was directly responsible for, rather than, say, Mother Nature.

‘John Chandler's coming on in twenty minutes,' I reminded him, checking my watch.

Paul opened an eye. ‘“Come back. All is forgiven. Signed Lynx News?”'

‘Nope. CNN called and John Chandler answered. He's got a new show.
To The Limit
premieres tonight.'

‘What's that mean,
To The Limit
?'

‘Extremes of all kinds. Religion, politics, sports. Individuals who push the envelope in order to succeed.'

‘Can't wait,' Paul said, closing his eyes again. ‘Like extreme paintball?'

‘You're making that up!'

‘I am not. Extreme paintballers are deadly serious individuals. Wannabe jihadists have trained at US paintball ranges.'

‘America, land of opportunity,' I said. I reached out for my drink and polished it off. ‘Tonight Chandler's taking on that whacko pastor in Florida who thought it'd be a brilliant idea to burn a Koran on the anniversary of 9/11.'

‘Well, I'm glad Chandler's got work,' Paul said. ‘What's happening with Lilith?'

‘She's still in Woolford, rebuilding.'

‘Her house or her life?'

‘Both, I think.'

‘And Chandler?'

‘His wife left him. Rather publicly as it turns out, via a press conference on the steps of the Congressional Country Club.'

‘Not a Stand-By-Your-Man kind of gal, huh?'

‘Not at all. According to Lilith, Dorothea Chandler's been having a bit on the side with the tennis pro.' I shrugged. ‘What's good for the gander is good for the goose, apparently.'

‘My, my, my . . .'

We sat silently for a moment, watching the sun sink behind the wall that surrounds our garden. ‘When's Hoffner's trial?' Paul wanted to know.

‘It's scheduled to start in January.'

‘What about Nick?'

‘For once, he listened to his mother and hired a decent attorney, somebody who doesn't have to advertise in the
Yellow Pages
. The DA tried charging Nick with blackmail, but couldn't make it stick. The blackmail was Hoffner's idea, not Nick's. Nick just wanted Chandler to man up, admit to being his father.

‘As for obstruction of justice, what did Nick know? He was hovering near death in intensive care when Hoffner murdered Meredith. If you'd
seen
Nick after the accident, Paul.' I shuddered. ‘Pass his picture around to the jury and –
doink-doink
– case dismissed. Nick's testifying against Hoffner, though.'

‘One thing I'm curious about. Did Hoffner attack those other two girls?'

‘No, just Meredith Logan.'

Paul finished his Bloody Mary, then flipped his celery stalk into the shrubbery. ‘I thought the police were looking for a serial killer.'

‘That's what the
media
said, not the police. The police knew all along that Meredith's murder was the work of a different killer.'

‘And you know this, how?'

‘Dennis told me.'

Paul snorted. ‘I should have known. Can you be more specific?'

‘Nope. Dennis told me to hold my horses. It would all come out in the trial.'

Paul reached out and captured my hand. He squeezed it three times:

I

Love

You.

Still holding my hand, he asked, ‘Would you ever leave me for a tennis pro?'

‘You're forgetting, Mr Ives. I don't play tennis.'

‘So I'm safe.'

‘Perfectly.' And I squeezed his hand three times, too.