Return to Dust (14 page)

Chapter Seventeen

Two days later, a Saturday, I drove to Amherst, about an hour's drive up the highway from Hartford. Marta supposedly had gone there to visit Joshua, at least once, and had been rebuffed—if I could believe Hattie's description of a pale, stricken Marta freshly returned from her brief, futile trip. I wanted to find someone who'd talked with her—or seen her that day. I'd called Hattie back for any other memories, and over the phone she remembered that Marta's visit took place after Labor Day. It was the weekend after the holiday, she remembered, because they'd gone away—“We went to Atlantic City for a quick breather”—and had just come back.

“She ruined the whole long weekend,” Hattie said, “talking about Joshua moving away from us like that.”

“Were you surprised she went to Amherst?”

“Well, I didn't know it till she got back.”

“But why did she wait until September? After all, he'd moved the beginning of April.”

Hattie said she had no idea, but then added, “Marta was angry all summer. She was downright
mad
at him. Then she got real down. She always expected him to apologize. Or forgive her.”

“But that didn't happen.”

“No, it didn't.”

Hank came along for the ride. He'd called the night before, checking in. “Aunt Marie called Grandma—said you behaved yourself.”

I smiled. “I am trainable.”

A ripple of laughter. “I haven't seen evidence of that.”

When I told him I'd be heading to Amherst early in the morning, he invited himself along. I welcomed his company on the ride, a young man who'd listen and watch the people I talked with.

“You need me there.” That made little sense, but I always liked his observations because they were intelligent. On the money.

We arrived at mid-morning, parked my car in a lot across from Emily Dickinson's ancestral home, and strolled up a busy Main Street, at the edge of Amherst College. I liked the place, a vibrant college town. Old New England stability mixing happily with breezy modern collegiate life. Two aging tie-dyed middle-aged radicals chatted with old friends in front of a Puritan church, a severe backdrop for the ponytailed spirits. A happy lesbian couple, arms linked, sipped sodas on sidewalk ice-cream chairs, oblivious of the November chill. Frantic Amherst students rushed across the green. UMass undergrads browsed in a video game store. Students with protest buttons, street corner advocates for world peace, a young man with a faded Free Tibet T-shirt. This was not Sinclair Lewis'
Main Street.

“I used to come here with Liz,” I told Hank. “Here—and over to Northampton. Once or twice we came with Vinnie and Marcie. We'd browse the old bookstores, eat at a new Thai or Mexican restaurant, watch the people, maybe drive over to the Iron Horse Café to catch a concert—we listened to Jackson Browne once—and then back to Hartford. For us, it was civilization. New York City without the wino's scowl and the freak's anxious hard-on.”

“For God's sake!”

I shrugged.

So Hank and I were enjoying our easy, gentle stroll up and down Main Street, stopping at a coffee bar for strong espresso and a blueberry muffin. I smelled bittersweet incense and perfume—the intoxication of flowers for sale and the curious cloying scents that seemed obligatory in any college shop. I hadn't been here in a while, a long while, and I was loving it. Hank's head swung around, taking it all in.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“Cool.”

It
was
cool.

We walked to the address the Farmington Boys' Academy records office provided. The careful, discriminating Joshua had located what I considered an ideal retirement village on a narrow side street off Main Street—quiet, tree-sheltered, a series of tiny clapboard cottages and two-or-three-room apartment complexes, weaving lanes and English boxwood hedges, thick shielding maples, an oasis removed from the bustle of the street. Yet everything was in walking distance for an old man—town library, college bookstores, benches in the park, theater, street fairs, restaurants. An old professor's paradise. Joshua would be at home here. Frankly, I'd be at home here, and joyous.

I rapped on the door of the small white-clapboard administrative building, labeled as such by the discreet sign over the door. No one answered so we walked in. I heard humming from the back room.

“Hello,” I yelled. Still no response.

“Hello.” Louder this time.

“Yep?” a voice responded. “I'll be right out.”

I smelled pungent coffee brewing back there, and warm yeasty bread. Finally a man appeared, youngish, in his twenties, with a scrubby beard, wide flaring nostrils in a wide pale face. Full lips. Gold loop earrings in both ears. He nodded at me, raising a wide hand that held a Boston Red Sox mug of steaming coffee. He looked as if he'd just fallen out of bed. His blue-denim work shirt was half out of his pants.

“Help you?” He was smiling, and I saw shiny even teeth with braces.

I identified myself, showing him my laminated license with my picture on it, introduced Hank—who was staring at the coffee mug—and asked about Joshua Jennings.

“Yeah, I heard he died.” He made his voice appropriately somber, running his tongue over his lips after a sip of the coffee.

“Do you remember him here?”

“Vaguely. I was new then. I'm a grad student at UMass in biotechnology, and this, well, pays some of the bills. We come and go—if you know what I mean. But him I remember.”

“Were you here when he moved in?”

“No. Just afterwards, I guess. Quiet man, friendly. A little creaky and remote, but most are like that. They're either too talkative and in-your-business, or they hide away, like wounded animals.”

“But you say you remember him?”

A long pause. He ran his fingers around the rim of the cup. “Hey, you want coffee by the way? I'm being rude.”

I shook my head no. Hank did the same.

“I sort of remember him. One time he had these books and dropped them. I walked him back to his home. He never said thank you. His cottage was a rental unit in the back, near the lane just off Main Street and the park. A couple of times I saw him on Main Street, though, coming back from the library, arms loaded with books. A reader, he was. But he had trouble walking, stooped over and all. I think he used a cane. Now that it's cold, they all hide indoors. Summer's too short a season for the old folks. Once I nodded to him as he sat alone in a luncheonette, sipping tea and eating a sandwich. He looked old and tired. And, I guess, lonely.”

“No visitors?”

“I wouldn't know.”

“You don't keep a log?”

He laughed. “No, we don't. This is not, you know, a group home or something. These people have money. Lots of money. We have medical staff on call, but most have private doctors and private nurses and…”

“Could you check any records you have on him?”

He scratched the back of his hand. “Well, I don't know.”

“He's dead,” I stressed.

He strolled to a computer terminal and typed in Joshua's name. “He moved in on April 4. He asked that he have hired help in unloading and packing. Wanted special care for an old desk. We provide that service.” He smiled. “He complained on June 2 that the air-conditioning wasn't working. He called again on June 3. Problem taken care of that afternoon.” The young man looked up. “I came on board just about that time.” He scrolled up the screen. “He'd paid for three months, didn't renew, and he moved out on July first.

“Does it say why?”

“Hold a sec.” He disappeared into the back room, returning with an uncut loaf of warm bread. He cut off a slab. “No, but I remember. He was too lonely here. One of the kids who helped him pack for the move told me, I remember. He was moving to some place back in Connecticut for the summer. Then he planned to be back in Farmington. I guess he had his family or something. Like he had a niece, I remember, who was here that last day, helping him and all.”

“Any forwarding address?”

He cut a slice of bread and handed it to me. Thick oatmeal bread with cinnamon. Delicious. I nodded toward his coffee, and he read my gesture, pouring me a cup. He grinned. “I knew you were someone who could be tempted.” He nodded to Hank, then poured him a cup of coffee.

He returned to the computer and found an address for a place in Clinton, Connecticut, on the water. And the grand niece's name: Mary Powell.

“She packed him in blankets, I remember.” A pause. “She didn't seem happy, like she wanted to get away from him.”

“Ever see the niece here before?” I was sitting now, having my snack.

“That was the first I saw her, but she could have driven by me a hundred times. They're not required to stop, you know.”

“Did he have any other visitors?”

“None I know of. As I say…”

I cut in. “I know, I know. They don't have to report.”

“Exactly.”

“On the weekend after this past Labor Day an older woman came to visit him—Marta…”

He cut me off. His hands slapped each other. He spilled coffee. “My God, I'd forgotten her. Can you believe it? Holy shit. I remember
that
visit, all right.”

I smiled.

“I was in the office that day, and I remember it was hot. Real hot. Like August still. Blistering. This woman, all dressed up and with what my mom calls high perfume, she walks in looking for Joshua Jennings. I could tell she was nervous, fluttery, but she was also a little angry. I remember that I tried to calm her down, offered her something cold to drink, which she took. I said it was hot, even for September.”

I leaned forward. “This was the weekend after Labor Day?”

“Positive. And I was sort of waiting for it.”

“Meaning?”

“Old Joshua had stopped into the office one afternoon and told me some woman might try to reach him. He got this letter from her or something. It shook him up. I think he was mainly talking telephone—he had this unlisted number, they all do—but he also said she might show up. And he described her in detail. Down to this matronly hairdo and the old-lady perfume. He told me that she was hounding him, that I was to keep her away from him.”

“Did he say why?”

“‘Done him dirt.' That's what he said. I remember 'cause he didn't look like a guy who'd say it that way.”

“Meaning?”

“Slang. The guy was like upper-crust.” He chuckled. “Imagine—an old lady stalking him. Tell her anything, he said. But she never did show up.”

“But she did.”

“But she came way after he moved out. He left on July first. And I told her that. And I mean she flipped out. Raged around, then started crying. I mean, I read it as a lover's quarrel, like they were an old married couple way back when. He was an old-timer, wheezed when he talked. A weird, squeaky voice, a real old man. She was—well, lively as hell. I think it got to her that he was already gone
two
months and she thought he was still here. And him back in Connecticut. Then she left.”

“Did you give her his new address?”

He nodded. “Bingo. I did. Sorry 'bout that.” A sheepish grin. “It was my only way of getting her out of here. I figured he gave the same instructions wherever he moved to. Maybe the niece could put the brakes on her. She was real nice—the niece. Mary Powell. Imagine that—an old lady stalking an old dying man.”

“How did you know he died?” Hank asked.

“He had a neighbor here—an old lady who collected his mail sometimes. She read about it in the Connecticut papers. She was originally from the Hartford area.”

“What's her name?” I asked. “I'd like to talk to her.”

He shook his head. “Sorry, man. She died a week or so back. Maybe a month ago.”

“Of what?”

“Of being ninety-nine years old.”

***

Back in Connecticut, I called the Boys' Academy, but no one had information on Mary Powell. I checked Manhattan information, but there was none listed. Five Powells with first-name initial. “M.” I made a list.

“How do you know she lives in Manhattan?” Hank asked.

I sighed. “Christ, it could be one of the other boroughs.”

“A long list.”

I groaned. “Thanks.”

I dialed Hattie's number.

She answered on the second ring. “Who is it?”

“Rick Van Lam.”

Her voice became wary. “Yes?”

“A quick question. I just got back from Amherst. The guard at the gate remembered that Marta went there to see Joshua.”

“I told you she'd gone there. Came back in a huff.”

“He wasn't even there. He'd already moved back to Connecticut.”

Surprise in her voice. “You're kidding?”

“No, she never saw him.”

“Can you beat that? No wonder she had nothing to say. Just fumed…cried.” A barely suppressed giggle. “I stopped listening to her.”

“Did she mention Clinton?”

“The president?”

I smiled. “No, the town on the Connecticut coast.”

A long pause. “As a matter of fact, I think she did. But not then. One time. For some reason. Maybe not. I can't remember.” There was a deep intake of breath. “What does that mean?”

“Joshua moved to Clinton to be with his niece.”

“Really? A niece?”

“A great-niece.”

I could tell she was lighting a cigarette because I heard the snap of a lighter, her words spoken through tightened lips.

“Whatever. I got tired of Marta talking about him—his life—so much. I just tuned her out after a while. She…” She inhaled.

“Did you know if Marta traveled to Clinton?”

“I can't remember—she was starting to get so secretive.”

“Secretive?”

“You know, not answering questions, staring off into space. This was right near the end.” Hattie grunted. “I do remember that she drove to New Haven, but she didn't ask me to go. Maybe she went to Clinton—it's nearby and all.”