This Enemy Town (9 page)

Sweeney Todd
was a smash, selling out from its
first night on. Standing room only, too. Morbid curiosity might have driven ticket sales into the stratosphere, of course, but each night after the curtain went down, no one could argue that the show wasn't worth the price of admission. The collective intake of breath, the seconds of stunned silence, followed by a standing ovation of
bravos
and
ooh-rah-ooh-rahs
that seemed to go on forever were proof enough of that.

The Naval Criminal Investigative Service had been busy, as well. Even before the post opening night congratulatory beers we'd downed at Ramshead Tavern on West Street had worked their way out of our systems, two NCIS agents had gathered up their notebooks, tape recorders, and video cameras, and moved from their permanent second floor offices in Halligan Hall to a small conference room in the Academy's Administration Building. There, in the shadow of the Naval Academy Chapel dome, they could conduct their interviews in neutral (and far more central) territory.

It was late in the second week of the show before Dorothy and I met to compare notes at Drydock, the snack bar in Dahlgren Hall. By then it seemed that everyone we knew had run the NCIS gauntlet.

“How'd they conduct the interviews?” I wondered
aloud as we merged into the end of the sandwich line. “A to Z? By rank?”

Dorothy shook her head. “I don't think so. I'm an H and they didn't get to me until today. Kevin says they talked to him on Monday, so I think midshipmen were the first priority.”

I grabbed a plastic tray and a packet of potato chips and inched forward. “Makes sense, Goodall being the SAVI officer and all, although I hate to think of a midshipman being responsible. It was so …” I paused, involuntarily shivered. There were no words to describe the horror of what had been done to that poor woman's head. “There was so much
rage
in it.”

Dorothy set her tray down on the tray track. Using both hands, she yanked open her packet of chips and offered me one. “I worried about you,” she said just as I stuffed a chip into my mouth.

I chewed and swallowed quickly before answering, not wanting to deliver a shower of crumbs along with my reply. “Because of the argument, you mean?”

Dorothy nodded.

“I told NCIS about the fight right up front,” I confessed, “so the interview wasn't too bad. They called my husband in at the same time, so I had Paul along for moral support. At least as far as the door,” I added. “NCIS kept him cooling his heels in the hall while they interviewed me and vice versa.”

“Next!” One of the servers behind the sandwich counter was looking up at me expectantly.

“Seafood salad sub,” I said. “For here. Lettuce and tomato.”

I watched quietly, remembering, while the server used an ice cream scoop to dip salad out of a huge plastic tub and heap it on a submarine roll. With gloved fingers she added a pale pink slice of tomato and a single frill of lettuce, before smashing the top down with the flat of her
hand and skewering the whole thing together with a fringed toothpick.

That's how I'd felt, I thought, after I finally got out of that conference room—squashed and skewered. I'd dreaded the interview, of course, not least because of my very public argument with Lieutenant Goodall. But I'd been as forthcoming as I could, even going so far as to admit that I loathed the woman, figuring that NCIS would be up to speed on my checkered history with Jennifer Goodall anyway.

Describe what you did that afternoon.

I honestly couldn't remember. After lunch—had it been a cheese and garlic potato at Potato Valley, or had I skipped lunch that day?—I'd gone downtown shopping, but for what, I couldn't say. A greeting card, perhaps? Or a funky pair of socks at Goodies?

Around two I'd stopped in at Mother Earth, I knew that for sure, to check out the new feng shui paraphernalia my sister Ruth had for sale: five element aroma candles—water, earth, wood, metal, and fire!—and the glass and light “fogger” fountains that Ruth claimed would not only add beneficial moisture to the dry winter air in my home, but freshen, purify, and energize it by neutralizing free-roaming negative ions or some such nonsense. The agents' eyes had glazed over by that point, but I soldiered on, confessing that I found the fountains beautiful, though, like Chihuly glass bowls on tripods, wafting clouds of super-fine mist into the air, a far cry from the turquoise plastic humidifier I stored under the bathroom sink, I can tell you, and $200 more expensive, too. Frankly, I think they were glad to see me go.

I picked up my sandwich and set it on my tray. A tent card propped up on the counter advertised a
COACH DENNIS JACKSON
—a steak and cheese sub—and I watched as the server began assembling one for Dorothy.

“I wracked my brain trying to remember what I was do
ing that day,” I commented to Dorothy as we pushed our trays farther on down the line.

“Me, too,” Dorothy said. “In all the confusion, I nearly forgot that I was getting my nails done. And thank God for that,” she added, reaching for her sandwich. “At least the manicurist can vouch for me.” She curled her fingers loosely around her thumb and stared at her fingertips. “Damn. Look at that. I need to go back.” Then she held her fingers out for my inspection. “Big Apple Red. Do you like it?”

I stared in silence at the spot where the glossy crimson enamel had chipped off her pinky.
Somebody's dead and she's worrying about her fingernails?
I was glad I kept mine short.

“I wonder what time they think Jennifer was attacked?” I said, trying to turn the conversation away from beauty tips and get it back on track.

“They did the autopsy at Bethesda,” Dorothy told me. “They think maybe four in the afternoon.”

I picked up my tray and headed for the drinks station, mulling over what Dorothy had just said. She seemed to be much more in-the-know than Paul and I, not that we hadn't tried. Our usual ace-in-the-hole had turned out to be a deuce. Paul had tried to worm information about the investigation out of his brother-in-law, Dennis Rutherford, with a singular lack of success. NCIS didn't share information with Chesapeake County police lieutenants, it turns out, or with anyone else, for that matter.

Admirals, apparently, were an exception.

“Ted made a few calls to Bethesda,” Dorothy explained as she joined me in front of the ice tea machine. She pulled a plastic cup out of the dispenser and held it under the spigot, while I pushed down helpfully on the lever. “They know she died within an hour or two of being thrown into Sweeney's trunk, but they believe she may have been attacked somewhere else. They're still looking for where.”

We paid for our food and found an empty table not far from the wall that separated the snack bar's dining area from the ice rink. A hockey game was going on behind the glass. Shouts, whistles, the
sloosh
of skates on ice and the persistent
thwack
of sticks against puck would punctuate our conversation over the next several minutes.

“Ted says there's high-level pressure from Washington to make an arrest in the case,” Dorothy added as we set down our trays and settled into our chairs.

“I'll bet,” I said. I stared at the salad oozing over the edges of my sandwich. “Whoops, forgot the napkins. Want one?”

Dorothy nodded.

In front of the napkin dispenser, I stopped to ponder. If Jennifer had been killed elsewhere, that meant the murderer had to carry her body from that elsewhere, up five steps to the stage and up another twelve steps—I helped build every one—that led to Sweeney's tonsorial parlor.
Why?
Why not leave the body where it lay?

Was the murderer trying to draw attention away from himself?

Or maybe he intended to discredit the musical, hoping to shut it down?

I'd put nothing past some of those right-wing nut jobs. One year they campaigned to shut down an Academy production of
Cabaret,
complaining in letters to the editor that the Nazis were “scary.” I remembered Paul's dark eyes glowering over the top of the newspaper and his wry, “And their point might be?”

The second question was,
How?
Stuffing Jennifer's body into that trunk would require strength—she had been no lightweight. Kevin could have done it easily, I thought, but so could just about any midshipman, male or female. Mids were as fit as they come.

On my way back to the table with the napkins, I studied my friend. Dorothy's clothes hung loosely on her body, as if she'd bought them several sizes too large. At Goodwill.
No way could she have managed anything heavier than a bag of dirty laundry, I decided, and I wasn't even sure about that.

“How well did you know her?” I asked, settling into my chair once again.

“Who?”

“Jennifer Goodall, of course.”

Dorothy shrugged. “I saw her hanging around the set is all. I didn't exactly
know
her.”

“How about Kevin?” I ventured.

Using both hands, Dorothy lay her sandwich down on her plate. “Well, speak of the devil….”

I turned to look. Emma Kirby was approaching from the direction of the soda dispenser carrying a large cup in each hand. Behind her came Dorothy's son, Kevin, balancing a pizza box on the flat of one hand. “May we join you?” Kevin asked, using his free hand to pull a chair out for Emma.

“Of course you may,” Dorothy purred, patting the seat of the chair to her left, smiling proudly, as if to say,
See, my son knows the difference between
can
and
may.

Kevin took the seat his mother had designated. He lifted the lid on the pizza box to reveal a pie heaped so high with toppings that I wondered how he had had the strength to carry it from the kitchen to the table. He scooped up a slice tethered to the mother ship by a long string of cheese. Kevin caught the string with a finger, twisted it around until it broke, then slid the slice into his mouth, point first.

Dorothy observed this operation without comment. “You going to eat all that?”

Emma grinned. “I'm planning to help.” She leaned forward and peered into the box. “Pineapple. Ick!”

Kevin studied the pizza like a surgeon about to make an incision. He plucked pineapple bits off several slices and piled them up in the space where the slice he had just inhaled had so recently lain. “Happy now?”

A look I couldn't read passed between the two midshipmen.

None of this was making any sense. One minute Emma's telling Kevin to get lost, the next he's her new best friend, even bowing to her preference in pizza toppings. Had they settled their differences?

“What's wrong, Kev? You look a bit down,” commented his mother.

Emma licked tomato sauce off her fingers. “Kevin was hoping to step into the role of the Beadle this weekend,” she said. “Adam's been S.I.R. for the past few days.”

“S.I.R.?” I hadn't heard that expression before.

“Sick in room.”

“Yeah, but at the last minute the S.O.B. rallied.” Kevin's lips curled into a smile around his third slice of pizza. “Joke!” he added.

I wasn't so sure.

Emma shot out of her chair, waggling her fingers. “Gotta wash my hands.”

I saw an opportunity to speak with Emma alone. “Me, too,” I said. I pushed the remains of my sandwich aside and hustled off after her.

I caught up with Emma near the trophy case, stopping her with a light hand on her shoulder. “What is going
on
?” I whispered. “One minute you're talking about taking out a restraining order against Kevin, the next minute he's your best pal.”

Keeping her greasy fingertips well clear of her uniform, Emma shrugged. “It's all right, Hannah. Kevin knows.”

“He knows?

“Uh-huh.”

“That you're gay?”

“Uh-huh.”

Behind Emma's head a plaque the size of a turkey platter announced that in 1976 a midshipman named Ian Markwood had been named Most Valuable Player. I
stared at the engraved bronze and wondered how one broke the news that you were gay to somebody who was sweet on you.

“How did Kevin react?”

Emma leaned back against the trophy case. “He didn't say anything at first, but then he smiled and said he understood.”

“I would have thought he'd be crushed.”

Emma shook her head. “It's an ego thing. Kevin said he couldn't figure out what he was doing wrong. Now he knows that it's not
his
fault I'm not attracted to him
that way
. To tell you the truth, Hannah, I think he was relieved. And now that all the sexual tension is gone from the relationship, we can be friends. You know?”

“Wasn't coming out to him a bit risky?” I asked, thinking how easily it could have gone the other way. Kevin could have taken his bruised ego straight to the Commandant of Midshipman and Emma's naval career would have been toast.

“I trust Kevin,” she said. “We have this pact.”

“Pact?”

“Sorry, Hannah, that's just between the two of us. But I can tell you this.” Her dark eyes grew wide and serious. “Kevin is like a big brother to me now, and I couldn't be happier.”

I'd always wanted a big brother—so he'd bring home his cute friends, for one thing—but my parents had been completely uncooperative and I'd ended up the middle child of three sisters. “Big brothers can come in handy,” I said.

She winked. “Exactly.”

I shivered, hoping that Kevin hadn't helped his “little sister” cover up a murder.

“Go wash your hands,” I ordered, sensing that Emma had made her point and wouldn't be inclined to elaborate, at least not here in Dahlgren Hall with people to-ing and fro-ing past us on their way to the restrooms. “I'll see you back at the table.”