by Jill Orr
My conversation with Holman played over again in my mind. On the one hand, if Jordan had been the victim of foul play, it would explain why no one in her life seemed to know she was suicidal. On the other hand, it seemed extremely unlikely that there was some big, bad wolf in Tuttle County running around snuffing out junior reporters. But everything I learned about Jordan—her ambition, her stubbornness, her love for animals—none of it squared with a person who would kill herself. My mind flipped back and forth; one minute sure I was onto some undiscovered truth, the next sure I was destined for the loony bin.
The next morning before work, Mrs. James called to see if I could come by and talk with her. She said she had some stuff of Jordan’s she wanted me to see. I told myself that no matter what questions I had about how she died, I needed to focus on the job at hand. I had to stick to my role as obituary writer, not amateur sleuth. The truth was that the way Jordan died had no bearing on her obituary. As Granddaddy always said, obituaries are about life, not death. But if Mrs. James just happened to know if Jordan had been seeing anyone and just happened to share that information with me, then that would be okay.
I rang the Jameses’ doorbell, the same one they’d had when we were kids, with the orange light on the inside of the button so you could always find it, even in the dark. As soon as I pushed it, a chorus of barking dogs rang out. I heard Mrs. James trying to quiet them as she came to the door.
“I’m sorry,” she said while holding the collar of a large German shepherd who most certainly would have knocked me over had he not been properly restrained. “Come on in.”
I stepped inside the house, my first time in more than seven years, and was transported back in time. They say scent is the strongest sense tied to memory, and the smell of the Jameses’s house, with its combination of Chanel No. 5 and Pledge, acted like a time machine. I felt like I was in sixth grade again and ached to see Jordan bounding down the stairs to greet me.
As soon as Mrs. James let go, the dog gave me a thorough vetting. “This is Coltrane, Jordan’s most recent rescue.” Once he gave me his approval by way of enthusiastic tail wagging, I scratched behind his ears and patted his thick head.
“He’s having a hard time without her,” she said. “Was a police dog, discharged after a year and a half for being gun-shy. He’s been in and out of lots of places, but I think he finally felt at home with Jordan.” She stared at the dog, who turned to face her. A sad, silent understanding seemed to pass between them.
Within seconds, two other dogs, whom I recognized from Jordan’s office pictures, came barreling in from the sliding door at the back of the house, tongues out, ears flapping, nails scratching against wood. They were a tornado of canine energy, unbridled exuberance on eight legs. They were the Wild West to Coltrane’s Age of Enlightenment.
“Woodward, Bernstein, go to your room!” Mrs. James pointed a stern finger at the two wildlings. “Go!” They made an abrupt stop and trotted off toward the laundry room. Coltrane stayed right by Mrs. James’s side the whole time. He was clearly above being cast out for bad manners.
Once the dogs had gone, she turned to me. “Let’s sit in the den.”
We spent the next forty-five minutes going through photo albums and scrapbooks containing Jordan’s numerous awards and newspaper mentions. Everything I saw confirmed that not only had Jordan remained the same driven, confident person I remembered her being, and she’d only grown more so with age.
“Thank you for sharing this with me,” I said to Mrs. James after we’d closed the last scrapbook.
Her eyes had been misting on and off during our visit, and they shone as she looked at me. “Thank you for agreeing to help me.”
I paused, summoning my courage. “Um, could I ask you a couple more questions before I go?”
“Of course.”
I scrambled to think of an easy question before I worked up to the harder stuff. “Um, did Jordan have a catchphrase or anything she used to say a lot?”
“A catchphrase?” She looked at me blankly. “No. No, I don’t think so.”
Oh my God, why would I ask that? Who has a catchphrase? What was she—a doofus on a sitcom? Think, Riley. I scolded myself internally as I pretended to jot down notes on my pad.
“Did Jordan have a favorite place? Like, for example, my mother loves the teacups at Disney World. If she could, I think she’d spend all day just riding around and around and around.” I smiled to lighten the mood.
“Hilton Head Island.” She was definitive. “That was her happy place. We have a condo down there. She loved the sand and shelling—and the lighthouses, of course.” She walked to the mantle and took hold of a large framed picture. “This was from our twenty-fifth anniversary three years ago.” It was a beautiful picture of Debbie and Robert with Jordan between them. The backdrop was a tall, white metal lighthouse, sinewy and strong, rising above the thick tree line.
“It’s a lovely picture.”
“We chose the location of this picture because of Jordan. Everyone gets their photos taken by the Harbor Town Lighthouse—you know the red and white one?”
I knew it well. My parents and I had visited and done just that when I was fifteen.
“But Jordan preferred the lesser-known Rear Range Lighthouse. It’s actually closed to the public, but since we belong to the golf club where it sits, the superintendent let us use it for these pictures.” She was looking down at the photo in her hand, lost in thought. I flipped to a new page in my notepad, ready to take notes as she continued. “It’s rumored to be haunted, did you know that?”
I shook my head.
She nodded. “Legend has it that in the late 1800s the lighthouse keeper suffered a heart attack during a bad storm. His daughter, a young girl named Caroline, went looking for him after he’d been gone for hours. They say she climbed to the top of the tower during the storm wearing a long blue dress and found her father at the top, dying. Apparently, with his last breath he begged Caroline to keep the light burning, no matter what. He was a proud man, and his job was important to him. So Caroline followed her father’s wishes, making several trips up and down the lighthouse to gather oil for the lamps as the wind and the rain and the sea raged around her. Hours later, though she had been successful in keeping the lighthouse functioning, her sorrow and exhaustion proved too much for her, and she died shortly after the storm cleared.”
I looked up. Mrs. James’s eyes were unfocused, like she was in some kind of a trance from the memory.
“For generations, people have said that on stormy nights you can see the outline of a little girl in a blue dress on the tall skeletal tower keeping watch over the island. Her ghost supposedly lives there, keeping the island safe from storms, fulfilling her father’s dying wish.”
Coltrane sat beside Mrs. James, his long black nose nudging her hand that hung limply at her side. She absently stroked his head. “Jordan loved that story. She said it was sad and mysterious and hopeful all at the same time.” Her voice was just above a whisper. “She was such an independent woman, but a true romantic at heart.”
I thought back to the wire replica of a lighthouse I’d seen at Jordan’s cubicle. That must be the one she’s talking about.
I looked directly into Mrs. James’s pain-ravaged eyes and asked the question I’d been dying to ask since I first learned of Jordan’s suicide. “Was there a note?”
She sat motionless, except for her eyes that slid over to meet mine. “There was.” I thought I detected a small sense of relief in her words.
“I’m not trying to pry, but I just haven’t been able to understand why.…”
Tears welled in Mrs. James’s eyes; she blinked and one rolled down her left cheek. She didn’t wipe it away. Without a word, she turned and walked into the office, which was off the foyer down a short hallway. Coltrane stayed with me and nudged me to pet him, which I did, happy for the distraction. Within a minute, she was back. She held a folded sheet of yellow legal-pad paper out to me.
I
took it without a word and opened it. I immediately recognized Jordan’s handwriting, the bubbled half-cursive, half-print that she’d used since junior high. I read:
Good by. I feel I can not go on. Life is to hard for me.
That was it. Thirteen words. Half of which were misspelled. This could not be the suicide note from a well-educated perfectionist like Jordan, who meticulously managed a career, two dogs, and a complicated disease like diabetes. I was so stunned I couldn’t think of anything to say.
Mrs. James read the shock on my face. “I think she must have written it after she took the insulin and before…” she paused. “As you can see, it doesn’t really provide any insight.”
“Thank you for showing it to me.” I folded it and handed it back to her.
She took it from me, her fingers tracing the edges of the folds. This was the last thing her daughter ever wrote, and however incompatible it may have been, it was all she had left. “Riley,” she started to say, but she stopped herself and shook her head.
“Yes?” I prodded her.
Another tear fell from her eye, and this time she swabbed it away, as if erasing the evidence of her heartbreak. She took a deep breath. “Nothing. I just…I just want you to know that Jordan hadn’t changed that much since the time you two were close.”
I nodded, not sure of what to say.
“This…her dying the way she did…well, it shocked us all. It just came out of nowhere.”
I immediately thought of Holman’s theory and felt goose bumps flash onto the back of my neck.
“I remember when your grandpa passed,” she said, her eyes searching mine. “Did you ever get any answers?”
It broke my heart to tell her no, that we had to live with the official version of what happened to my granddad even though I knew down to my bones it wasn’t right.
She lowered her eyes. “I guess I may never know what was really going on in her life…I just wish I had asked more questions. Paid more attention.…”
I put my hand over hers. “This wasn’t your fault.” I remembered the feelings of guilt and responsibility my family struggled with after Granddaddy’s death. It was torture.
After a few quiet seconds, she sat up straight and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.” She stood, a clear sign that this conversation needed to end. “I’m okay now.”
When we got to the front door, I remembered Holman’s directive to find out about a mystery man. “Before I go,” I said, “can I ask if there was anyone special in Jordan’s life?”
A ghost of a smile crossed her face. “Not that she talked to us about. She was fairly private about that stuff—and Robert always put her up on such a pedestal. He never thought anyone was good enough for her. But I know she had recently signed up for that Click.com. She didn’t really like to talk about it though. I suppose she might have felt embarrassed having to use the computer to meet a man.”
“But it’s not embarrassing at all. It’s practical! And efficient!” In retrospect, it’s possible I was a little too enthusiastic in my response.
Mrs. James gave me a measured look. “Yes, well, that’s what she said.” She cleared her throat. “Anyway, I thought she might have started seeing someone because she hadn’t been over as much as usual. We’d been watching the dogs for her a lot on weekends. Then again, she’d been traveling for work, so maybe that was it? Do you know the Times made her travel to DC on Memorial Day weekend to cover the national parade?”
“Really?”
“And in the end, they didn’t even give her the byline,” she tsked.
While Mrs. James was talking, the dog nudged my hand to pet him again. “Coltrane, off,” she said, snapping her fingers. The dog immediately went back to her side, sat down, and looked at her (literally) with puppy-dog eyes. She petted his head. “Poor thing needs a lot of attention. They say dogs grieve deeply when they lose their humans.” She looked at Coltrane and scratched under his chin. From the other room, I could hear Woodward and Bernstein barking and play-growling. She sighed and said with a weary smile, “Well, I’d better go.”
CHAPTER 11
I still had a little bit of time until I was due at work. The day was too hot and the drive too short for the AC to even kick in, so I began to walk from the Jameses’ house to the library. On a last-minute whim, I ditched into the sheriff’s office. I was counting on the fact that Joe Tackett would be out sheriffing (or whatever it was he did) and not in the office. A deputy sheriff there was a friend from high school who’d also been a friend of Jordan’s, and I wondered if he might have heard any rumblings about criminal activity in the area, possibly involving Juan Pablo Romero or taco trucks.
“Hey Gail, is Carl around?” Gail York worked at reception, and her father was a distant cousin of Ryan’s mother.
“Sure thing, Riley. Come on back.”
“Deputy Sheriff Haight?” I said when I got to the edge of his office. Carl Haight had been the quintessential hall monitor, so none of us were surprised when he went into law enforcement. And even though we used to play dress-up together in preschool, he didn’t like for me to be too familiar with him when he was at work. He said it undermined his authority.
“Oh, hey Riley.” He looked up from his paperwork. “Everything okay?” Carl was a nice guy, a bit officious, but genuinely concerned for the welfare of Tuttle Corner.
“Sure,” I said, walking into his office like we were good friends who visited like this all the time. “I was just on my way to the library and thought I’d stop and say hello.”
He arched one brow. “Really?”
I dropped into the seat across from his desk. “How’s Lisa? And the baby?”
“They’re real good. Now, why don’t you tell me why you’re really here?” He wasn’t angry, but he also wasn’t buying my I just wanted to stop and chat routine.
“Well,” I said, looking over my shoulder. “Don’t know if you’ve heard, but I’ve been asked to write Jordan James’s obituary.”
“Sad situation.” Carl shook his head. “That girl was a force to be reckoned with back in school.”
“She certainly was.”
“Do you remember the time she had that huge ‘For Sale’ banner made for the school on senior prank day?”
I had forgotten about that. “Only Jordan could have done that and not gotten in trouble.”
“Teachers loved her,” Carl said, then added with a sad smile, “Everybody did.”
“I know.” I paused, working up my nerve. “It was so out of character for her to have committed suicide, right?”
“Riley.” Carl sighed. “Please tell me you’re not here trying to turn this into something it isn’t.”
“What?” I feigned shock. “Why would you say that?”
Carl raised one eyebrow again. My reputation around this department had been well established. In fact, I was surprised they didn’t have a poster of me inside a red circle with a line through it.
“Even if I did know something—which I don’t—I couldn’t tell you,” Carl said.
“I know, I know, but the thing is,” I said, leaning forward, “I’ve been talking to a reporter she worked with who said she was onto something kind of big, something possibly to do with Juan Pablo—”
“Haight?” A thin, flint-edged voice skidded into the room. “What is she doing here?”
I turned my head to see Sheriff Joe Tackett standing in the doorway, one bony finger pointing at me like I was a stray cat. With fleas.
“Riley just came by to say hey,” Carl said, color creeping up his neck. He kept his voice light and even, but I could tell Tackett made him nervous. Joe Tackett had been sheriff for three consecutive terms. My theory on why he kept winning elections was down to good word play: slogans like “Tackett for Tuttle” and “Tuttle for Tackett.” Not exactly Keats, but it stuck with you. Last election, his opponent was George Longenecker. Poor guy never even stood a chance.
Despite his ability to win elections, Tackett had a reputation for
being tough to work for. On the surface, there was nothing particularly intimidating about him. He was probably in his late forties, slight build, thinning hair, but he carried himself in such a way that people paid attention when he walked into a room. And it wasn’t just because he had a badge. When he looked at you, it felt like an indictment—even when you weren’t doing anything wrong. Or at least that’s how it felt to me.
“Uh-huh,” he said, turning to me. “Why don’t I believe that?”
“In my experience, you’ve always had a hard time seeing the truth.”
I saw a flash of anger ripple across his narrow face. “Unless you are here on business, Miss Ellison, I think you ought to go ahead and let Carl get back to work.” He smiled so his upper and lower teeth were visible at the same time. It made him look like a hyena. “I know you’re lonely and all, but Carl here is a busy man. And a married one, too.”
My face flushed instantly. Carl’s did too. Only Joe Tackett could make two innocent people feel guilty. I was so embarrassed I couldn’t think of a comeback. So I just glared at him as I hitched my purse onto my shoulder. “See you later, Carl.”
“In the future, Riley,” Tackett said to my back as I was walking out, “don’t come back here unless you’re in some kind of trouble.” I could practically see the smile on his lips as he said it.
“I find the mere chronology of a life really doesn’t sum up that life for me. I want to get the texture and the sound and even the smell of someone—you know, get right inside the essence of that person.”
—ANN WROE, obituaries editor of The Economist, speaking on NPR’s Morning Edition
CHAPTER 12
I walked out of the sheriff’s office, ruffled by my encounter with Tackett. I was thinking about all the things I should have said, all the snappy comebacks I wish I would have made. I was so preoccupied, I didn’t even see the man walking into the building as I walked out and ran right into his left shoulder.
