In Death's Shadow (2 page)

CHAPTER TWO

When I got home, I made a beeline for the computer and Googled "QE2" on the Internet: £16,999 per person. $25,500 U.S. plus change. And that was for an inside cabin. A Room with No View.

That night, over a second helping of his favorite lasagna—my late mother's special recipe—I asked Paul what he thought about circumnavigating the globe on a luxury liner. "In your dreams," he mumbled, eyes closed, clearly savoring his last meatball.

"Spoken by a man who has no
prayer
of getting dessert," I commented, rising from my chair to collect his empty plate. I slid the dirty dishes into the sink, then crossed the kitchen to the blackboard that Emily had decorated with sunflowers as an art project in third grade. Paul, supervised by Emily, had installed it to the left of the back door, where it had hung ever since.
Milk
, I wrote in bright pink chalk,
½ n ½.
At the bottom I scrawled:
lottery ticket
. One never knows.

Paul was using an iced tea spoon to mine the bottom of a freezer-worn, nearly empty carton of vanilla ice cream, and I was finishing up the dishes, when the telephone rang. Paul tipped the carton to his mouth, tapped the bottom and ignored the ringing. I kissed his cheek as I went by. "You are pitiful," I teased.

The caller was Janey Madigan, begging out of Saturday's Race for the Cure®
 
in Washington, D.C. Over the past several months, I'd put together a Go Navy/Beat Cancer team that would participate in the annual race to raise money for breast cancer research. Not only had I counted on Janey, I'd counted on her van. But, unfortunately, her mother had just broken a hip and Janey and Kip were heading off to her place in Maine. Janey was absurdly confident I'd find somebody to run in her place.

Ha. Ha. Ha. I'd already strong-armed Paul, his sister Connie, and her husband, Chesapeake County police lieutenant Dennis Rutherford, into joining the team. Not to mention my daughter Emily, with my grandchildren in tow. The rest of my family had bailed out.

Dad was on an Elderhostel, exploring Anasazi archaeological ruins at Mesa Verde National Park when he wasn't filling our mailbox with tacky postcards featuring wigwam-style motels with marquees promising !!
a telephone in every room!!

My sister, Ruth, claimed to be tied up doing inventory at Mother Earth, the New Age shop she owns in downtown Annapolis. A lame excuse, I thought, but even so, I never considered Ruth seriously. The closest Ruth ever comes to exercise is this Indonesian thing she's into—Pancha Tanmantra—picked up from a Buddhist monk on her last trip to Bali.

And, poor Georgina! My younger sister was pregnant. Again. As if she didn't have enough to do what with six-year-old Julie, and Sean and Dylan, the hyperactive twins, who had just turned eight. Somebody ought to wrestle Georgina's husband, Scott, to the ground and tie
his
tubes!

"Damn." I poured myself a second glass of merlot and carried it into the living room where Paul had settled down in front of the television with the newspaper and a cup of decaf. I sprawled on the sofa, resting the stem of the wineglass on my chest. "Damn," I said again, hoping he'd notice this time.

Paul peered at me over the top of the paper. "Who was that?”

"Janey and Kip have to go to Maine," I complained. "Who do we know with a van?"

"Just about everybody has an SUV," Paul muttered into the Business section of
The Capital
. "Nobody drives a regular car these days."

"I don't mean an SUV, Paul. I mean a van van, like one of those Ford Econolines."

"Whatever for?"

"Getting everybody to the race on Saturday."

Paul shrugged. "Use cars."

I shook my head. "Parking will be impossible in the District." I sipped my wine and thought for a moment. "Maybe I'll ask everyone to meet at New Carrollton and we'll ride the Metro in."

Paul nodded. "Suits me."

I relaxed into the cushions. "Well, that solves one problem, but who do I get to run in Janey's place?"

"How about that new friend of yours? The one you ran into at Dr. W's?"

"Valerie?" I hadn't considered Valerie. I didn't know what shape she was in after her cancer treatments, for one thing, although she certainly
looked
healthy. Then again, what did I have to lose? If Valerie didn't want to run the race, I thought, maybe she could join in the Fun Walk with Paul and the grandkids.

I got up to find the business card Valerie had given me.

Purses should come with locator devices, like cordless phones. Mine had eluded me again. I spent several frustrating minutes searching for it in all the usual places—the kitchen, our entrance hall, the powder room tucked into the triangle under the front stairs—before finding it where I'd dumped it, next to the sofa I had just been sitting on. Chemo brain had struck again.

My purse has more pockets than a pool hall, and I spent some time rummaging through them. I was about to give up and call directory assistance when the card finally surfaced, sandwiched neatly between my Giant Shoppers card and a similar one from Sam's Club.

I took it to the phone, then paused, my finger hovering over the 4 button. Was I being presumptuous in assuming that Valerie might be well enough to join us? I remembered days following my reconstructive surgery when I could barely climb the stairs to my bedroom. Even weeks later, walking all the way around the block had been a triumph. I didn't want to put Valerie on the spot. But she'd driven herself to the doctor's office, I reasoned, and she seemed enthusiastic about meeting me for lunch. And I
had
promised to call. Besides, I was fresh out of friends whose arms hadn't been twisted practically out of their sockets.

I dialed her number.

After six rings I was expecting the answering machine to kick in, when a child I took to be Miranda picked up the phone. "Hello?" she whispered.

"Miranda?"

"Yeth?"

"Is your mommy there?"

"Yeth."

"Can I speak to her?"

"Yeth."

I listened to Miranda's gentle breathing on the other end of the line, and after a long minute, when there seemed to be no indication that the little girl was going to summon her mother to the telephone I said, "Miranda?"

"Yeth?"

"Will you go get your mommy, please?"

"Okay."

The phone thumped against a wall; as I waited, a clock chimed seven and I could hear a television playing the
Law and Order
theme song. Clearly, Miranda was going to keep me on hold for eternity. To pass the time I reread Brian's business card and considered sending Valerie an e-mail.

A door slammed. There were footsteps, raising my hopes, followed by the distinctive sound of a coffee grinder, water running, the squeak of a tap being twisted. Eventually the room grew quiet.

"Hello?" I shouted, hoping to penetrate the silence on the other end of the line. "Hello? Hello? Hello?"

A muffled, "What the . . ." and hurried footsteps.

I had attracted someone's attention at last.

"Who's there?" From the soft drawl and the way "there" became a two syllable word, there was no doubt the speaker was Valerie.

"It's me, Valerie. Hannah Ives."

"Hannah, I'm
so
sorry! Have you been waiting long?"

"Couple of hours."

"You're . . ." She paused, then giggled. "You're kidding, right?"

"Right."

"I'm so glad you called! Usually when somebody says 'Let's do lunch,' it never happens."

"It's not lunch that I'm calling about, exactly. I was wondering if you'd ever heard of the Komen Race for the Cure®
?"

"Of course I've heard of it! Brian and me, we're from Dallas. There isn't anybody in Dallas who hasn't heard of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. My mother participated in the very first run, in fact. Golly, that must have been twenty years ago, long before they moved to New Jersey!"

I told Valerie about my Go Navy/Beat Cancer team and invited her to participate in the race. To my surprise, not only did she agree, but she volunteered Brian to fill in for the absent Kip. "I
think
he'll still be in town," she added. "He's driving to West Virginia to interview someone for a story, but I'm pretty sure that's not until Monday.

"What do we do about getting T-shirts and bib numbers?" she asked, suddenly shifting gears.

I lifted my eyes heavenward and mouthed a grateful
Thank you
. "You must have run marathons before!"

"Oh, yes. I was training for the Marine Corps Marathon before . . . before I got sick," Valerie told me. "I hope to qualify for the Boston one day, God willing. It's slow, but I'm gradually coming back. This race will be good for me," she added. "Is it 5K?"

"Approximately. They modified the route because of beefed-up security around the White House, so it's about eight hundred feet shorter, but it still counts as a 5K race."

"It'll be fun," Valerie enthused. "It depends on whether I can get a babysitter for Miranda, of course."

Of course.

The dreaded B-word.

Reliable babysitters were harder than ever to find these days, and of the reliable few, how many would agree to show up at Valerie's house at the crack of dawn? Before allowing my newly snagged volunteers to slip away, I improvised. "Paul is doing the walk with our grandchildren. I'm sure they wouldn't mind including Miranda." As I said this I glanced at Paul, who waggled his fingers and grinned toothily. "Paul says sure. We'll pick you up," I added, "but it will have to be early. I'm participating in the Parade of Pink, which starts at seven-fifteen, so we'll need to get to the Metro by the time it opens. I hate to tell you this, but that means we'll be knocking on your door at five-thirty a.m
.”

Valerie chuckled. "Not a problem. We're up before then anyway. Brian's muse is pretty demanding. She rousts him out of bed around four every morning."

"How lucky for you."

"It is, really," she replied with a laugh. "I just love sitting on the porch with my coffee and the newspaper, watching the sun come up."

The last time I'd watched the sun rise was . . . frankly, I couldn't remember. Since abandoning my grueling commute, rising early had not been high on my agenda. I assured Valerie that I'd bring the bibs and the T-shirts, and then, because Brian's card had listed only a post office box number, I asked where they lived.

"We're in Hillsmere," she said, and gave me directions.

I knew Hillsmere Shores, a well-established, middle-class neighborhood on the Annapolis Neck peninsula, adjoining Quiet Waters Park. The park had a cafe, art gallery, playgrounds, a skating rink, and a paved bike/jogging trail, five miles long if you took all the loops.

"I feel bad about asking you to drive all the way out here," Valerie added.

"Don't be silly," I said. "There won't be any traffic at that time of morning.”

“True. . ." Valerie let her voice trail off, as if she weren't really convinced. "Hannah?"

"Yes?"

"Thanks. Thanks for thinking of me."

I had to pause and clear my throat to let my next words out. "I should have stayed in touch."

"We both had a lot on our minds," she said simply.

That was an understatement. Immediately following my chemotherapy, I'd gone to stay with my husband's sister, Connie, on the family farm to wait for my hair to grow out. Instead of the rest and relaxation I was looking for, I found a body in a well. Things got a bit crazy after that.

When I had time to think about Valerie again, months had gone by. Her prognosis had been so poor that I was afraid she'd already died. And if I didn't bother to track her down, nobody could give me the bad news.

"Hannah? You still there?"

"Sorry. I thought I heard someone at the door," I lied.

"We'll do better this time around, won't we?"

"You can count on it," I promised.

CHAPTER THREE

At 4:00 a.m. Saturday morning, the alarm clock
practically self-destructed, but I refused to budge until the smell of coffee drifted upstairs from the high-tech coffee maker Connie had given me the previous Christmas. Consisting of one glass globe perched atop another, it operated on the vacuum principle—quietly hissing and gurgling, then erupting like Mount St. Helens—turning coffee-making into a spectator sport. Usually I was downstairs to enjoy the show, but I opened my eyes only long enough to see that it was still dark outside, turned over in bed, and drew a corner of the quilt over my head.

When I opened my eyes again, Paul was already awake, sitting up in bed with his pillow folded double behind him watching the Weather Channel with the sound turned off. "Bad news, Hannah. It's supposed to rain all day."

I wriggled across the sheet until I was nestled next to him, propped my chin on his chest and stared at the screen. An amorphous green blob hovered over a satellite map of the greater Baltimore/Washington area. "Rats!" I muttered. I waited for the image to refresh itself, praying for a change, but the blob just sat there, if anything, denser and greener. "I can't watch. It's too horrible."

Paul grunted.

"Want coffee?” I asked.

"Yup." Paul tapped a button on the remote and switched to CNN. "You sure the race is still on?"

"They said 'rain or shine,'" I grumbled as I slid out of bed and reached for my robe.

"Okay by me, but I'm not so sure I want to take the kids out in this weather."

By "kids" Paul meant our granddaughter, Chloe, age three, and her little brother, Jake, who was ten months old. And Miranda, of course. "I'm sure Emily will bring rain hats and slickers," I called out over my shoulder, "but if the weather gets too bad, you can always hang out in the Old Post Office Building, terrorizing tourists in the food court."

I had fetched the coffee and climbed back into bed when the first phone call came. Paul's friend from the history department bugging out. "Another one bites the dust," I grumped. "What's the matter? Afraid he'll get his beard wet?"

"Well, at least he'd already paid," Paul said.

"There's that," I agreed, sipping my coffee. "Paul?"

"Hmmm?"

"How do you suppose Valerie and Brian managed that cruise?"

"Cut it out, Hannah. You're obsessed with this woman's bank account."

"Not obsessed," I protested. "Just curious. Two years ago Valerie drove a ten-year-old Honda. Now it's designer clothes, a Mercedes-Benz, and trips around the world. Like they said in that movie, I want what she's having.”

"Why don't you ask her?"

"Ask her what?"

"How she did it."

"I wouldn't have the nerve."

Paul snorted. "You? Don't make me laugh, Hannah. You have more nerve than a snake charmer."

I set my cup on the bedside table and rolled over until my cheek rested against Paul's shoulder. I flung my arm loosely across his chest. "Sometimes I worry that—”

Paul's lips moved against the top of my head. "What is there to worry about?"

With my finger, I traced little circles in his slightly graying chest hair. "Maybe you're too polite to say it, but I worry that you're upset with me for not going back to work full-time."

He turned on his side to smile at me. "What's the matter, Hannah? Tired of being a kept woman?"

"No. I just need to be sure you're comfortable with my hanging around the house, working temp jobs for peanuts."

"What's not to like?" he said, gently caressing my cheek with his thumb. He tipped up my chin until I was staring straight into his bottomless cup of coffee eyes. "Back in the Bad Old Days you would already be on the road, halfway to D.C. by now." His lips brushed my mouth.

"Mmmm. This is better," I said, melting into him.

Needless to say, we got a late start.

While I showered and threw on my running clothes, Paul dressed, grabbed two apples out of the fridge, and filled a thermos with hot coffee. By the time I flew out the front door, wasting a few precious seconds to turn around and lock it, Paul had already fetched the Volvo from where he had parked it—directly across from the William Paca House, halfway down Prince George Street—and was waiting for me with the engine running.

Dawn had turned the morning pale gray, just light enough to distinguish malevolent thunderclouds piling up darkly on the horizon. Paul turned right on Maryland Avenue, squinting through the condensation on the inside of the windshield. I turned the defroster up a notch.

He circled Market Space at a crawl, pulling cautiously through intersections where traffic lights that would normally hold us up for five minutes at a time were solemnly blinking amber. By the time we crossed the Spa Creek bridge into Eastport, the rain was sluicing sideways against the windshield, and Paul had to switch the wipers from fast to frantic.

Outside, the pavement glistened like wet coal, curving gently as it wound through Hillsmere's alley of tall cedars, mature trees that had once marked the approach to the old Smith estate. Now the drive was lined on both sides by single-family homes on well-maintained, heavily wooded lots. Just past the Key School, Hillsmere Drive ended in a T at the river. On an ordinary day we would have had a panoramic view of the South River all the way across to Turkey Point. That day, though, the rain came down so hard it flattened the whitecaps and frightened away the usual sails that dotted the bay. As the wiper swept across my window, I was just able to distinguish the orange hulk of a container ship making its slow way up the bay to Baltimore harbor.

I consulted the directions Valerie had given me over the phone and instructed Paul to turn east on Bay View. On both sides of the street, modest, ranch-style homes hunkered down, dead center on quarter-acre lots. I wiped the inside of the windshield with my hand, squinting through the monsoon, trying to make out the numbers on the mailboxes. "They'll be on the right," I said, "just past the marina." As I spoke, the road curved gently to the left and I spotted a short gravel road with a cluster of masts at the end of it. "Gotta be around here somewhere," I muttered as we drew even with a dark green mailbox partially hidden by a plush boxwood hedge. "Wait! Turn here!"

Paul wheeled past the mailbox and into the driveway, tires spinning dangerously on the wet gravel. Before I could catch my breath, he slammed his foot on the brake, hard, jerking the vehicle to a halt just inches from the door of a massive three-car garage. If I hadn't been held so tightly against the seat by my seat belt, I'd have slid into a heap on the floor mat.

"Golly," I said when I pulled myself together, looked up and saw Valerie's house.

In the footprint of what had probably been a modest, sixties-style vacation home, Valerie and Brian had built a brand-new, Mediterranean-style, white stucco McMansion. Palladian windows flanked a central three-story atrium, a two-story wing meandered off into the left distance, balancing the hulk of the garage on the right, and the whole, huge wedding cake was topped by a roof of terra-cotta tile that would have looked more at home in Sardinia than on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay.

A house on steroids, I thought. It stretched nearly to the property line, towering over the water and its neighbors. The house next door looked like their tool shed.

"Golly, indeed," Paul agreed. "Now that's making a statement."

"What statement?" I asked, unfastening my seat belt.

Paul tugged on the zipper of his windbreaker, zipping it all the way up to his chin. "Nah, nah, nah-nah-nah," he singsonged. "I've got more money than you do!"

I had to laugh. "I don't think I'd want that monster garage defining the front of my dream house."

"Me, either," Paul agreed. "Unless you're sending the message that your cars are more important than your home itself."

"Probably needed to save room out back for the patio," I mused, growing ever more envious of Valerie's good fortune. "And the swimming pool."

On the way over we had agreed that Paul would brave the elements and make a dash to the door and ring the bell, but after seeing the exterior of the Stone estate, there was no way I was going to miss sneaking a peek inside. "Wait for me!" I called. Pulling my raincoat over my head, I dashed after him up the flagstone path that snaked through Valerie's impeccably landscaped lot.

Before Paul's finger could find the doorbell, Brian swung the door wide. Damn. I had just bet Paul that it would play Tchaikovsky's
1812 Overture
, complete with cannon.

"Hi, Hannah," Brian said. "Come in, come in." He extended his hand. "You must be Paul."

While Paul shook Brian's hand I stepped over the threshold, dripping rainwater all over Valerie's spotless marble foyer. At first I thought that Brian had cut his hair short, but when he turned his head, I noticed he'd pulled it back into a neat ponytail at the nape of his neck. He'd grown a mustache, too. He looked like a spokesmodel for IKEA.

"Valerie will be down in a second," Brian told us. "Miranda was a little late getting out of bed this morning."

My eyes followed the gentle curve of the staircase as it wound its way up to a balcony-style landing. Over my head an ornate chandelier, dripping prisms, blazed in the early morning light. Why on earth did Valerie need to get a babysitter? I wondered. I could only assume that the Stones were between nannies.

"Gorgeous house, Brian," I commented dryly. "How long have you lived here?"

"Just moved in," he said, pointing to the living room where several packing boxes sat open on the parquet near a casual grouping of overstuffed white leather furniture. The north wall was dominated by a floor-to-ceiling fieldstone fireplace, and on the opposite side of the room, a picture window overlooked the bay. Even in the wretched weather, the view was spectacular. I could see now why Valerie liked to drink her coffee on the patio.

"Big," said Paul.

Brian laughed. "Yeah. Why just the other day I went looking for my glasses and discovered a bedroom I didn't even know we had!"

"Oh, Bry, you are impossible!" Valerie called down from the landing. "Don't you believe a word of what he says! It's only thirty-five hundred square feet, and Brian designed every square inch of it."

"Impressive," I said. I wasn't particularly good at math, but counting the atrium, and with twelve-foot ceilings everywhere else, I figured the cubic footage of Brian's humble abode probably approached that of Buckingham Palace.

With a hint of a smile on his lips, Brian turned to watch his wife and daughter skip down the stairs. Miranda's white-blond hair was bound with fat, pink rubber bands into two ponytails that coiled like springs on either side of her head. She hopscotched across the tiles, then stood, feet primly together, on the plush Bokhara carpet.

Behind her, Valerie looked fresh-scrubbed and radiant in a hot pink Spandex jogging bra and matching shorts, an outfit that rendered my husband temporarily speechless. I jabbed him in the ribs with my elbow. "Paul, this is my friend Valerie."

Valerie bent at the waist to whisper in Miranda's ear. "Say hello to Mr. and Mrs. Ives, Miranda."

Miranda looked up at me sideways through a fringe of colorless lashes. "Hello." She stuck out a foot. "I have new shoes."

"Indeed you do," I said. "What a pretty pink."

Miranda tapped her foot on the carpet and the heel of her tennis shoe lit up like an emergency vehicle. "They flash."

Brian laid a broad hand on the top of his daughter's head. "'All the better to see you with, my dear,'" he quoted.

Valerie produced a Little Red Riding Hood slicker from the hall closet and helped Miranda into it. All the child needed was a basket of goodies and she'd be ready to set off through the woods to grandmother's house.

Valerie slung a duffel bag over her shoulder. "Ready or not, here we come!"

"Prepare yourself," I said.

Laughing, Brian scooped Miranda up in his arms and we followed him out, into the fury of the storm.