That reminded me that I didn’t have a set of keys for Cara’s car. I remembered Cara telling me, however, not long after she moved into the Easton Arms, that she had given a set of car keys to Gina in the rental office. It seemed Cara once had managed to lock herself out of her car, with her purse and her spare set of keys inside, one morning before she left for work. After that, she had given Gina the extra set of keys so she could get to them if she ever made the mistake of locking herself out again. In the shock of Cara’s death and the trashing of her apartment, I had forgotten to ask for the keys back. I felt certain Gina had forgotten about them too, which meant she should still have them. So I drove out to the Easton Arms before heading into D.C.
“Oh my goodness,” Gina said when I told her what I needed. Looking flustered, she opened a desk drawer and started sorting through its contents. “You’re right,” she said a minute later, looking at me and smiling in triumph, “I do still have them.”
She pulled out a small manila envelope and laid it on the desk. I saw that it had Cara’s name and apartment number on it in my sister’s handwriting. My heart turned over at the sight of that familiar script.
“I’m so sorry I forgot about those,” Gina said as I picked up the envelope, feeling the keys slide around inside with a clinking noise. “You had to make an extra trip back out here to get them. And I should have remembered them because Cara just used them last week.”
“Did she lock herself out of her car again?” I asked.
“I guess,” Gina replied. “It was one night the week before last. Friday, I think. She came in just as I was leaving and said she needed the envelope for a couple of minutes. I got them for her and left, so I guess she returned them to Charlie. That’s probably why I didn’t think about needing to return them to you.”
“That’s okay,” I told her. “I’d forgotten them, too. I only remembered last night when the police called about her car. They’re done with it, and I’m selling it. It’s not something I want to have around reminding me of what happened to her.”
I put the envelope in my purse, which already held the title to the car and a copy of Cara’s death certificate, and thanked Gina. Hoping that I was closing at least one chapter in the seemingly endless saga of the aftermath of Cara’s death, I went back to my car to drive through the tail end of rush-hour traffic going into the District up I-395.
Half an hour after I made it to the newsroom, a tall, thin black guy, who looked to be about nineteen, with a shaved head and wearing a Washington Redskins jacket over his jeans, found his way to my desk.
“You Sutton McPhee?” he asked, towering over me and removing the tiny headphones that had been in his ears. I nodded.
“I’m from Greenbelt Auto Auctions. My dad sent me for the stuff on the car you want picked up from the cops.”
“Oh good,” I said, getting my purse out of the desk drawer. “Thanks for doing this. It saves me a really unpleasant trip.” I took out the things he needed and handed them to him. “Here’s the title, which I’ve signed as the executor of her estate, and a copy of the death certifícate. And here are the keys.”
He put the paperwork down on the desk and tore open the envelope to check the keys, which he shook out into his left hand.
“This don’t look like a car key,” he said, picking up a small green cardboard square and holding it up for my inspection. I took it from him and saw that it was actually a tiny envelope. On the front were the words Century Bank. On the back, the flap was closed with a small metal snap. I opened the snap and reached inside, pulling out a long key, completely unlike Cara’s car keys, and which had a number engraved on it.
“It’s a good thing you’re thinking straighter than I am this morning,” I said to the driver. “This must go to something else of hers. I didn’t even think to look in the envelope.”
“No prob,” he said, picking up the papers again and walking away.
It went to something else all right, I thought as I looked back at the key in my hand. Clearly it was a key to a safe-deposit box at Cara’s bank. But I hadn’t known Cara had a safe-deposit box. I remembered my insistence that she ought to put our mother’s jewelry in one and Cara’s equally stubborn insistence on keeping the jewelry with her in the apartment. Perhaps the jewelry had not been stolen after all. Had Cara finally relented and taken the jewelry to the bank? I wondered. She probably hadn’t mentioned it because she didn’t want me to think she had decided I was right. Although I had notified the bank of Cara’s death so they would stop all activity on her account, I had not yet had a chance to go there in person to take care of closing the account. Which meant I hadn’t learned about the safe-deposit box she also had rented. Clearly, it was time to take care of it now, and to find out what Cara had kept there besides her money. At lunchtime, I made the drive back out to Springfield, to the bank branch where Cara did business, just down the street from the Easton Arms Apartments.
John Kingman, a handsome man in his late thirties whose closely cropped hair was just beginning to show some threads of early gray that went well against his coffee-hued skin, was the Century Bank officer who showed me over to his desk off the bank lobby and took the small green envelope when I held it out and asked about it.
“Yes,” he said, “it clearly is from Century. Let me check and see if your sister rented a box at this branch.” He put the key envelope on his desk and turned to his computer screen, where he typed a number of words and commands.
“The computer shows your sister did have a safe-deposit box here, so the key must be ours,” he said finally, looking up from the computer. “In fact, she rented the box only two weeks ago, so we will refund most of the annual rental fee to you.” He picked up the envelope. “Would you like to clean the box out first and then we’ll take care of closing her account?”
I told him I would, and we rose and crossed the blue-carpeted lobby, where a handful of people stood in line for the next available teller. We went through the door of a glass dividing wall and stopped at the open outer steel door of the bank vault, which revealed safe-deposit boxes in stainless-steel rows along the wall, visible through the metal bars of the vault’s locked inner door. Kingman took a signature card out of a file drawer next to the vault, asked for my mother’s maiden name, and had me sign the card in Cara’s stead. Then he unlocked the inner vault door and went into the vault ahead of me. From his ring of keys, he chose another to insert into the first of the two locks on box 177 and then took Cara’s key from the envelope to unlock the second lock. From behind the small door that opened, he pulled out a long metal drawer with a covered top and handed the drawer to me.
“You can use one of the rooms right out here,” he said, leading me back out of the vault and locking the barred door behind him. Next to the vault were two wooden doors. Kingman unlocked the first one, reached inside to flip a light switch, and gestured into the tiny room that was illuminated by the flickering of the fluorescent overhead lights.
“Just let me know when you’re done,” Kingman told me, “and we’ll get her account closed out.”
I thanked him, stepped into the room, which held a desk-high shelf along the right-hand wall and one chair, and closed the door behind me. I put the metal drawer on the shelf and sat down to find out what Cara had valued enough to put in a bank vault. I raised the lid gingerly, expecting to find my mother’s jewelry.
Inside, there was only a single sheet of paper, folded lengthwise to fit in the narrow drawer and showing signs of additional creasing as if it once had been folded down to pocket size. I took the paper out and opened it. On it was a list of three names, which looked to have been printed on a laser or ink-jet printer. The first two were names I didn’t know: Neal Pursell and James Kelton. The third name was Nash Marshall.
I’m not certain just how long I sat there, staring at the short list of names. Several minutes. But I know it was during those minutes that I became convinced I could feel something of the fear that I suddenly knew Cara had felt
in the days before she was killed. She had been afraid of something, I knew without a doubt. It was as if the paper itself still held some powerful residue of her fear, which now was flowing off the sheet and up my arms to my heart and brain. I realized the hairs on my arms had raised in response to the sensation. I felt nauseated. I dropped the sheet on the counter and rubbed my forearms briskly, then wiped my palms on my skirt before picking the list up again.
I had no idea what the list was. But clearly it had been very important to Cara. Important enough that she had felt the need to protect it in a bank vault to which only she had access. And there was no longer any question in my mind that whatever Cara was upset about, whatever was worrying her, whatever it was she had feared, it had something to do with Nash Marshall and his death. The subject matter of the argument between Marshall and Daniel Brant took on a new importance.
And who were the other two men on the list? Had Cara put this list together herself, or had she gotten it from someplace or someone else? And if she really had been afraid—if I wasn’t slipping into hallucination—why in hell hadn’t she talked to me about it? How could I not have known?
I picked up the list again, folded it, and put it in my purse. I took the empty safe-deposit box outside to Kingman and spent the next few minutes going over Cara’s checking and savings accounts and signing the necessary forms to close them. But I don’t remember much of our conversation, which was perfunctory on my side, and I made the drive back to the paper on automatic pilot. My mind was still seeing Nash Marshall’s name on the list Cara had secreted away.
Fourteen
The bright white light of the photocopy machine flashed out from under the edges of the cover, and then half a dozen copies of Cara’s list shuffled into the tray. I handed one to Cooper Diggs, who was standing next to me at the library photocopier.
“I need to know about these other two men,” I told him. “Anything you can find. Especially anything they have in common with Marshall.”
Cooper looked the list over, blinking twice when he got to Nash Marshall’s name.
“What is this?” he asked, looking back up at me from the page.
I lifted the copier’s cover to retrieve the original list, then turned and walked back into his cubicle and sat down in his extra chair at the end of the desk. Cooper followed me and, for a change, sat down, too.
“I got it this morning from a safe-deposit box at Cara’s bank,” I explained. “A box she rented only two weeks ago. Three days before she was killed. That list was the only thing in the box, so she clearly rented it just for that. I need to know why it required a bank vault for safekeeping. And I need to know who these other two men are and how they’re connected to Nash Marshall.”
“If I’m not crossing the bounds of propriety to ask, what was your sister to Nash Marshall?” Cooper wanted to know.
“That’s just it,” I told him. “As far as I can find out, she was just barely an acquaintance, if even that. She started working at the Bread of Life Church just about the time he quit going. But she apparently was very bothered by his death.” I gave Cooper the brief version of Marlee’s story about Cara overhearing the Marshall-Brant argument, about her going home that day, and about her reaction when Marshall was killed in the car crash.
“But everybody,” I explained, “including Marlee and Phoebe Marshall, say Marshall and Cara barely knew each other.”
“Yet your sister gets real upset when he dies, and now you find his name on this”—he held up the copy of the list—“hidden away in a safe-deposit box rented by your sister. Odd. Really odd,” he concluded.
I nodded in agreement and stood up.
“I’ll be at my desk, making some school-board calls,” I told him. “I’ll take anything you can find.”
“It’ll take a while, but I’ll get you everything I can.”
Marlee Evans had left a message on my voice mail, asking me to call her regarding the next day’s memorial service for Cara. I groaned to myself, thinking about what kind of ordeal that service was going to be. It was bad enough to have to go through another session of public mourning for my sister, but even worse to have to do it considering the kinds of questions I now had about whether her minister was someone very different from the man he claimed to be. I didn’t know what he really was, but the thought of having to listen to him eulogize my sister, however genuinely he might have felt about her, made me uncomfortable, to say the least. Still, I knew there were other people at the church, sincere people, who wanted a chance to show that they had cared about Cara, a chance to say good-bye.
Ambivalent, I returned the call, and Marlee and I reviewed the list of people who would speak. Daniel Brant and myself, of course, Marlee said, and a couple of friends from Cara’s Sunday-school class and church social activities had asked to say something. Marlee already had arranged for an organist to play beforehand as people arrived and for a flower arrangement at the front of the chapel, next to the large photo of Cara that Marlee had had printed up from a photo I had couriered over earlier.
With the details agreed upon, we hung up, and I started making a round of phone calls to several school sources while I waited for Cooper to get back to me.
I was in the middle of selling Rob Perry on a Sunday feature idea about the prominent roles that women play on area school boards when Cooper called. I told him I’d stop by his cubicle in a few minutes on my way home, then went back to the conversation with Rob. He finally agreed to the story, then gave me his hard look that says no one is getting anything by him.
“Now, tell me what’s really going on, McPhee,” he ordered finally. “Are you still trying to find out what happened with your sister?”
“There’s something there, Rob. I’m sure of it,” I told him. “I don’t know what yet, but there was something wrong. I think something frightened Cara, and I’ve got to find out what. And whether it was connected to her murder. I know the police think otherwise, but I’m becoming convinced that she wasn’t just a random victim.”
“Have you discussed this with that detective?”
“Peterson? Briefly, but their investigation hasn’t turned up anything that says it was more than just bad luck on her part. I’m going to need something concrete to show him before he’ll be convinced. I guess they probably deal all the time with distraught family members who want a more meaningful explanation than just bad luck for why someone they cared about died.”
Rob gave me another of his long, assessing looks.
“If there’s something there, I think you can find it if anybody can,” he said finally. “But, McPhee?”
“Yes?”
“I want you to keep me posted on what’s happening. And for God’s sake, be careful. If you turn out to be right, and someone really did have a reason to kill your sister, they aren’t going to appreciate your trying to find out what that reason was.”
I nodded agreement. It was good advice, I knew. But good advice that could get me only so far. At some point, I might have to face the person who killed Cara, might have to confront them with an accusation.
Tell the truth, McPhee, my little voice chimed in as Rob went back to his office. You want to face the person who killed her… and then rip his face right off.
And that’s just for starters, I told it grimly as I took my purse out of the desk. To hell with careful. I wanted the truth, whatever it cost me. And I wanted the truth out in the open, for everyone to see. When I could finally point to someone and say, “This is the man who killed my sister,” I intended to make sure that he paid a very public price for what he had done.
This time Cooper wasn’t smiling. In fact, he looked spooked.
“Well,” he said when I sat down at his desk and propped my chin in a hand, “the guys on this list have some things in common that seem pretty innocuous. For example, all three were prominent businessmen in northern Virginia.”
“Were?”
“Ah, yeah, that brings up what else they have in common. First,
like Nash Marshall, this Pursell and Kelton both went to the Bread of Life Church.”
“And second?”
Cooper got an odd pinched look around the eyes that I hadn’t seen before.
“Second, they’re both dead, too.”
I sat back in the chair, my hands falling to my lap. I looked at Cooper, wondering if he now saw the same pinched look on my face. I was almost afraid to pose the next question.
“How did they die?” I asked finally.
“One bought it when his private plane crashed. The other fried his brain in his garage with a hose hooked up to his car exhaust.”
Immediately, I could hear Phoebe Marshall again, telling me through her hurt and anger that she thought her husband might have killed himself after practically bankrupting his family.
Cooper handed me copies of the articles that had run when each of the other two men died.
According to several brief news items that had appeared in the area papers, Neal Pursell, forty-eight, the owner of a small but up-and-coming computer software company, had died a year ago in the crash of his small plane, which he piloted himself. He had been on his way to a conference in Chicago, and his plane had gone down in the Shenandoahs. The obituary included the information, which Cooper had highlighted, that Pursell had belonged to Daniel Brant’s church, and that his only survivor was an aunt who lived in Fort Lauderdale.
James Kelton was the fifty-six-year-old president and CEO of a local chain of day-care centers. Six months ago Kelton’s housekeeper had shown up at his Vienna home for her weekly cleaning visit. After a couple of hours she went into the garage to take out a bag of trash and found Kelton dead in his car, one end of a hose hooked up to the car’s exhaust and the other stuck through the window on the driver’s side. The medical examiner said that Kelton probably had been dead since sometime the previous evening. The car eventually had run out of gas sometime during the night, which was why the housekeeper hadn’t heard the engine running and found the body sooner.
Corruption of Faith Page 13
