“Certainly,” Lacy Settle responded. “What was his name?”
“Daniel Brant, B-R-A-N-T.” Print reporters become compulsive about the spelling of names, since it can help avoid sometimes embarrassing—and potentially actionable—mix-ups.
“Just a moment,” Lacy said, and I could hear the click of computer keys as she called up information.
“Are you sure he went here?” she asked a few seconds later.
“Why yes, at least according to his résumé.”
“Well, that’s very strange, then,” she continued, “because I don’t show any record of anyone by that name.”
“Maybe Daniel is a middle name,” I suggested. “What do you have under Brant?”
“Nothing. I do show a Brantley,” she said, and then immediately added, “Oh my, that’s interesting.”
“What’s that?” I asked, my ears pricking up at the tone of her voice.
“Well, his name is Daniel, too. David Daniel Brantley. Isn’t that a coincidence?”
“Oh, how stupid of me,” I said quickly, not wanting to make her suspicious of my motives. “I just looked back at my notes and the last name is Brantley. That must be him. What year did he graduate?”
“Just one second,” she said, and more keyboard clicking went on at the other end of the telephone line.
“Apparently he didn’t,” Lacy Settle said finally.
“He didn’t?”
“No. According to the records here, he was terminated as a student in his first year.”
“Terminated? You mean he dropped out?”
“No,” she explained patiently, “he was expelled.”
My jaw dropped.
“For what?” I asked.
“If I had the information here, it would be confidential, but I don’t see any reason listed. That was in 1969, you understand, and sometimes information from our earlier records got mixed up or left out when everything was computerized.”
“Is there a way to go back to the original records?” I asked hopefully.
“Sorry, no, they were destroyed a couple of years ago in a fire at the warehouse where they were stored.”
My heart was pounding like a John Philip Sousa score.
“Well, thanks anyway, Lacy,” I told her. “You’ve been very helpful.”
“You’re welcome,” she answered. “Good-bye.” I heard the connection break.
Slowly, I put the telephone back in its cradle. Not only was my heart racing, so was my brain. Reporters will tell you—and I’ve heard the same thing about cops—that many of us develop some sort of extra sense about stories, some kind of radar, if you will. The result is that sometimes we find ourselves in the position of knowing without any doubt that we have stumbled onto something significant, something that says there’s more there, that one and one aren’t adding up to two. Even when we can’t articulate how we know, this sense is what keeps us digging and pushing until the picture comes clear, until we discover what the real story is. Right now my radar screen was going nuts. I didn’t know yet what the conversation I’d just had meant, but my radar knew there was something out there. There was something wrong with the picture at the Bread of Life Church, and I knew I was going to have to find out what, even if for no other reason than to put my mind at ease that it had nothing to do with who killed Cara.
The next question, I decided, was who was this David Daniel Brantley who had attended the Holy Word Divinity College, at least for a short time, and was he the same person as Daniel Brant? I called down to the library.
“Cooper,” I said, when he answered, “it’s Sutton. Listen, I need you to make another call to your helpful newspaper librarian in Ann Arbor.”
“Sure,” Cooper said. “What’s up?”
“I’ve got a new name for her to run through her archives. David Daniel Brantley.”
There was silence on the other end for a beat of five.
“He changed his name, didn’t he?” Cooper asked, sounding delighted. Cooper probably could have been a hell of a reporter in his own right, had he been interested. He met the requirements: curiosity, a wide streak of cynicism, and dog-with-a-bone tenacity when he was after some bit of information. I’d said as much to him on more than one occasion, but he always just gave me his easy grin and said he’d never survive the boredom of covering things like city-council meetings.
“That’s what it looks like to me, too,” I answered, smiling grimly to myself. “And Brant—or Brantley or whatever his name is—not only didn’t graduate from the Holy Word Divinity College, but he also managed to get himself expelled the first year, for unknown reasons.”
“So how did he get to be in charge of this church?”
“He started it himself and lied about his degree.”
“Whoa!” Cooper exclaimed. “A sinister minister!”
I broke up. It felt good to laugh, to laugh out loud. I couldn’t remember the last time I had found anything funny in the last two weeks. Somehow the laughter provided almost as much catharsis as all my recent tears had.
“Stop it, Cooper!” I said, once I could talk again. “The pulpit police are going to come and get you—if the lightning doesn’t get you first.”
“They can try,” Cooper said. “Call you back as soon as I can.”
I had nothing I needed to work on for tomorrow’s paper until the evening, when I had to go out to Mount Vernon High School, just up the road from George Washington’s former digs in the southern part of Fairfax County, and cover a graduation speech by one of the more controversial Supreme Court justices, who also happened to live in that school’s district.
While I waited to hear back from Cooper I spread the copies of the articles he had given me out on my desk. There was something more here somewhere, I felt. My eyes went back and forth across the pages of small print. I found that my attention kept being drawn back to the articles about Nash Marshall—the articles about his accident and death, and his involvement with the Bread of Life Church.
As I wondered again why his death had upset Cara so much, I reread the accident stories and his obituary, which explained that he was survived by his wife, Phoebe, and two children, Samuel and Elizabeth. Perhaps, I thought, it might be worthwhile to talk to Phoebe Marshall. Although the police had a theory about Marshall’s car accident, it was only a theory. Could it have been anything other than what the police thought? I decided to leave a little early for the graduation and make a stop out in Fairfax Station, one of the favorite nesting grounds of successful CEOs, where Phoebe Marshall lived.
Before heading out, I called Cooper back to let him know I’d be gone for several hours and gave him my cellular-phone number in case he came up with something in the meantime.
Finally, I made another phone call to redeem a favor I’d had outstanding for a year. I paged David Edwards, a Fairfax County police officer who works with the school system on crime prevention in the schools. The year before, I had done a very positive profile of Edwards and the program he spearheaded, and he had told me to call if I ever needed a favor. I suspected what I needed was a miracle, but a favor was a start. So I was calling.
“Sutton, it’s David Edwards,” he said when I answered my phone a few minutes later. “It’s good to hear from you.”
“Hi, David,” I answered. “How are things with you?”
“Busy as all hell,” he said. “If I had a kid these days, I swear I think I’d keep him home and teach him myself just to make sure he survived until his eighteenth birthday. And by the way, Sutton, I was really sorry to hear about your sister.”
I guess word travels through the police grapevine just like any other.
“Thanks,” I said. “It hasn’t been easy, especially when we don’t know who killed her.”
“Yeah, that has to be rough,” he sympathized.
“Listen, David,” I said, wanting to change the subject, “I finally need to take advantage of that favor you promised me.”
“I’ll do my best,” he said.<
br />
“I need criminal background checks on some people. And I need them soon and confidential.”
For a moment there was no response.
“That’s quite a favor,” David said finally. “You do realize what you’re asking is illegal and could get me fired?”
I hadn’t.
“No, and I don’t want to get you into trouble,” I told him, “but I really need this information, and you’re the only person I know to ask for help.”
“Does this have something to do with your sister’s murder?” he asked.
“It might.”
Another brief silence while he thought over what I was asking.
“Okay,” he said finally. “I’ll get them for you, but you have to promise to keep them to yourself or you might have to support me while I find another job.”
“No one will see them but me,” I assured him.
“How many people are we talking about?”
“Five names.”
“I should be able to manage that. Let’s have the names.”
I gave them to him: both the Brant and Brantley names, as well as John Brant, Barlow, and Marshall.
“Nash Marshall,” David said. “Isn’t that the high-tech guy who bought it in the car wreck a few weeks ago?”
“That’s him. I don’t expect you to find anything more serious than traffic tickets on him, but I have to be sure.”
“And these others?”
“Barlow, I know, has a record. But I need details. I think Brant and Brantley are the same person, but I don’t know whether there’s a record under either name. His son I don’t know about at all, but he’s worth checking.”
“Okay, Sutton, it may take me a couple of days, but I’ll get this over to you as soon as I can.”
“I can’t thank you enough, David, especially now that I know what a risk you’re taking to get this for me. The favor ball is definitely back in my court, so let me know if I can return it.”
“Oh, I will,” he said, laughing. “Take care, Sutton. You’ll hear from me.”
I hung up, gathered up the scattered articles from my desk, grabbed my purse, and left the paper to drive out to Fairfax Station.
Eleven
There was a “For Sale” sign on the lawn in front of Nash Marshall’s impressive brick Colonial house, and that struck me as odd. Pretty fast work, I thought, considering the man had been dead less than a month. I assumed the memories must be so painful that Marshall’s widow couldn’t bear to live there any longer. Which just goes to show why I should make a point of remembering what Rob Perry always loves to say the first time a new reporter screws up a story and then says, “But I just assumed…” He gives them that old saw about assume making an ass of you and me. In fact, the “For Sale” sign in the Marshalls’ front yard turned out to be a signal flag for a whole new set of questions.
I parked my car in the semicircular driveway and noticed that the yard looked a little ragged, that, in fact, it was overdue for a mowing and shrubbery trim. I pondered this incongruity as I walked up the brick-patterned sidewalk to the double stained-oak front doors, where I rang the bell. In a minute or so the door was answered by a thin, blond woman who looked to be in the process of coming apart at the seams. In spite of her slim build, her face was puffy, and as soon as she spoke, I picked up the sour smell of alcohol. That, combined with the bloodshot eyes, told me she already had spent a good part of the day crying or drinking—or both.
Under better circumstances, I probably would have been intimidated by her. Ordinarily, I suspected, she looked like the women you see all over the northwestern sections of Fairfax County, wives of successful businessmen, perfectly groomed and made up, their clothes from Talbot’s and Saks, their days spent in volunteering for good causes, exercising at their health clubs, picking their children up from their private schools, and generally exuding absolute conviction of their superiority. But there was nothing intimidating about Phoebe Marshall now. She looked like she had found the short road to hell, and it was proving to be a very rough trip.
“Yes?” she said, stepping forward to stand in the doorway, the sort of defensive move women in urban areas learn to make when a stranger appears at their door, a move designed to make it more difficult, physically and psychologically, to get inside.
“Mrs. Marshall?”
“Yes?”
“My name is Sutton McPhee. I’m a reporter with the Washington News. I wondered if I might talk with you for a few minutes.”
“I thought all you people already had said everything there was to say,” she responded in irritation. I gathered that her experience with reporters thus far had not been entirely positive.
“I’m not here about your husband’s accident, Mrs. Marshall,” I told her. “At least not directly. I thought you might be able to help me with some information about my sister, Cara McPhee.”
The woman looked at me blankly.
“She was a secretary at the Bread of Life Church, the one who was killed in the ATM robbery about ten days ago.”
“Oh. Oh, yes, I remember hearing about it on TV.” That seemed to sink in and clear her head a little. Her gaze focused on me more closely, as if only really seeing me for the first time. She looked me up and down. “She was your sister?”
“Yes.”
She stepped back into the foyer. “Come in,” she said, and opened the door wider to let me inside.
I stepped in after her. The house was what one would expect of a man in Nash Marshall’s position. Large, elegant, tastefully furnished in expensive reproduction furniture in a traditional style. But as I followed Mrs. Marshall into her living room, I also noticed there was a layer of dust on the mahogany hall table, and scuff marks on the Italian marble foyer floor. The flowers in the Waterford vase on the table had long since lost their bloom, and I wondered what was happening in this house. I couldn’t imagine that Phoebe Marshall didn’t have a maid at least once a week, if not daily. Yet the whole house and the yard outside spoke of recent neglect, as if the people in it no longer had the heart to make even the minimum effort.
“Please have a seat,” Phoebe Marshall said, dropping tiredly onto one of a pair of off-white sofas that flanked the fireplace on the wall opposite the living-room door. I crossed the dusky blue carpet and sat down opposite her.
“Now, what is it you think I can tell you?” she asked, her recent trauma apparently having worn the finer points of subtlety off her conversational skills. “I was sorry to hear your sister was killed, but frankly, I can’t remember if I’ve ever even met her.”
“I understand Mr. Marshall was very involved in the church. Perhaps he knew Cara better.”
“What are you implying? Are you saying you think there was something between my husband and your sister?” she flared up at me.
“No, no,” I told her quickly, not wanting to alienate her right off the bat. But it did occur to me that she seemed surprisingly touchy about her husband. “I just thought that he might have known Cara well enough to have mentioned it if he noticed anything out of the ordinary recently.”
“Ms. McPhee…” she began.
“Please, call me Sutton.”
“Sutton, my husband had not had much to do with the Bread of Life Church for months and months before he died. Even if there was something to notice, he wasn’t there to see it.”
“Well, that’s the thing, Mrs. Marshall,” I said. She didn’t interrupt to ask me to call her Phoebe. “I had heard he didn’t attend the church anymore, but I understand he was there at least once just before his accident.”
“Oh? He never mentioned it to me.”
“No? I guess I’m surprised, because I was told that he was very angry about something when he came to the church and that he barged into the office and got into an argument with Daniel Brant. Apparently something about that argument unsettled Cara a great deal, to the point that she left the office for the rest of the day. I was hoping you might have some idea why Reverend Brant and your
husband were arguing.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head, which dropped an expensively highlighted clump of hair with noticeably brown roots into her eyes. “No idea. Maybe Daniel was trying to talk Nash into going back to church.”
“It’s none of my business, but can you tell me why you stopped attending?” I asked, hoping the reason might hold some clue to Brant and Marshall’s argument.
“Nash just said he had decided it wasn’t the church for him,” she explained. “I didn’t go very often anyway. I was raised Episcopalian, and I found the mind-set and the sermons to be a little too fundamentalist for my tastes. The children and I usually go to the Episcopal church in Falls Church. That’s why we had his”—she hesitated, as if the words were difficult to say—“his service at the funeral home. I didn’t think either church really was appropriate.”
I suspected that in spite of the house’s current neglect, appropriate probably had been quite important to Phoebe Marshall when her husband was alive.
“Did the police ever come up with a firm explanation for your husband’s accident?” I asked, changing tacks. “Was there ever any reason to think it was something other than an accident?”
She looked at me hard again and gave me a bitter smile.
“For all I know, he killed himself,” she said bluntly.
Well, that sure came out of left field, I thought as I quickly tried to pick my jaw up off the floor and to reorder my thinking.
“I never saw any suggestion to that effect in the stories,” I told her after a moment. “Why would a man as successful and respected as your husband kill himself?”
She laughed. A laugh tinged with acid and anger.
“Because,” she explained, her full mouth twisting around the words as if tasting something unexpectedly sour, “if he didn’t kill himself, he damned well should have!”
“I’m sorry,” I said, trying not to sputter. “I don’t understand.” That was an understatement.
“Neither do I,” she responded. “You wouldn’t think, looking around at this house and knowing who my husband was, that you’re looking at a pauper, would you?”
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