‘You actually wrote to her?’
I shrugged. ‘Why not?’
Connie had picked up my notebook and was studying the handwritten spreadsheet I had made showing where Lilith and Zan had been living at the time each of his letters was mailed. Chicago to Brooklyn. Omaha to Zurich. Mexico City to Rome. The jet-setting pair seemed to have been hopscotching all over the planet.
‘Was Zan wealthy, too?’
‘Possibly. I’m trying to find a pattern, but so far it eludes me. I wish to hell he’d written more about what was going on in his life, rather than sending her sappy poetry.’ I found the envelope I was looking for, opened it and extracted a letter. ‘Listen to this!:
“Your skin is so soft
Your face is so fair
I want to touch
Your raven hair.
I will come
To see you soon
And then I’ll be
Over the moon.”’
Connie groaned. ‘He would have been better off to stick with Elizabeth Barrett-Browning.’
‘You’ll get no argument from me. When did they repeal the law that said that all poetry had to rhyme, anyway?’
‘I don’t know, but clearly Zan didn’t get the memo. It’s that slavish use of rhyming couplets that always slays me.’ She looked up from the spreadsheet. ‘Did you see Miss Saigon?’
‘The musical where a helicopter lands on the stage?’
Connie nodded. ‘As far as I’m concerned, the helicopter is the highlight of the show. How many hours can you take of doggerel like: “No one can stop what I must do; I swear I’d give my life for you.”’
‘Thank you!’ I made a cutting motion across my throat.
‘I really like this picture of Zan, though,’ Connie said, handing the short stack back to me. The color Polaroid on top featured Zan – long-haired, bearded, wearing wire-framed glasses – perched on a log and surrounded by dozens of dark-haired, brown-skinned children.
And then Connie said something that had not occurred to me before. ‘Say, Hannah. Do you suppose Zan was in the Peace Corps?’
NINE
The Peace Corps has a headquarters building on 20th Street between L and M, a comprehensive library, a website, a blog and a fan page on Facebook. They even Tweet. When you show up with no more than a person’s nickname, however, it’s one great big Dead End.
Reluctantly, I put Zan on the back-burner.
Besides, I was distracted. My cast – colorful as it was, and decorated with drawings by my talented grandchildren – hearts and flowers, and airplanes shooting down other airplanes with ack-ack fire – was driving me crazy.
‘It itches,’ I complained to my husband a little over three weeks after the accident as I scrabbled in the utility drawer looking for a chopstick. I was seconds from inserting the chopstick between the cast and my skin so I could indulge myself with a good scratch, when Paul snatched the chopstick out of my hand.
‘No, you don’t! Technical foul! If you open up the skin under there, you’ll be in big trouble, missy.’
The cast cramped my style in the bath, too. No more long, hot, semi-submerged soaks. My cast was supposed to be semi-waterproof, but that didn’t mean that I could go deep-sea diving in it.
In desperation, I sweet-talked a receptionist into moving up the appointment I had made with an orthopedic specialist at the sports medicine center favored by a number of Naval Academy athletes. If they could put an injured quarterback back in action in time for the Army–Navy game, couldn’t they work miracles for me, too?
After taking some X-rays and clucking inscrutably over the results, the doctor made my day by powering up a cast removal saw and releasing me from bondage. Scratching furiously (but oh so gently!) at the skin which had been covered by the cast for so long, I felt like Scarlett O’Hara being released from her stays. The doctor replaced my cast with a brace similar to those used to treat severe cases of carpal tunnel syndrome. Had I died and gone to heaven? Oh yes, indeed, I had.
‘Don’t twist your arm,’ the doctor warned, ‘No screwing, or you’ll be back in my office in no time.’
I nearly fell off the examination table. ‘What?’
‘No screwing.’ He demonstrated, extending his hand and twisting it as if working a screwdriver.
I felt my face redden. ‘Thanks,’ I chuckled. ‘I won’t.’
Having tabled Zan, I decided to run down every lead I had on Lilith before allowing myself to give up on her, too. She’d stayed in a dozen hotels, at least, and I Googled every one. For those hotels still in business, I jotted down their phone numbers and gave them a call:
Mlle Lilith Chaloux, s’il vous plaît,
Por favor, Señorita Lilith Chaloux,
Fräulein Lilith Chaloux, bitte.
I spent a good five minutes practicing my French on the woman who answered the phone at L’Hotel de la Belle Aurore in Ste Maxime – une coude maison rêve sur son rocher au bord du golfe de Saint-Tropez. Ooh la la! I thought I’d hit the jackpot at the posh seaside resort, until the switchboard put me through to a Mlle Lili Charlotte who mistook me for some lackey setting up her photo shoot for a spread in Paris Match. ‘Mille pardons,’ I groveled, and hung up.
I tried snail-mailing the hotels, too. I included a photo of Lilith and a personal note, asking her to get in touch with me so that I could reunite her with her letters and photographs.
It was early days yet, but no dice.
Still no word from Skip, either.
Reluctantly, I packed everything away neatly in the box it had come in and tucked the Garfinkel’s bag away in the closet where I kept my knitting. Winter was coming. If I hurried, the sweater I was working on might be done in time for Christmas.
TEN
I was beginning the collar, picking up stitches around the neck opening on a pair of circular needles, when Emily called, in tears.
‘Mom? Can I bring the kids over tomorrow? I have to attend a memorial service in DC, and Dante’s got an All-Day Autumn Bliss special going on at Paradiso.’
The following day was Saturday, and I had nothing on my plate, not even one of Dante’s Serene Calm half-day spa packages, so I said, ‘Of course I can. Who died, Emily?’
The question set my daughter off on a crying jag. ‘It’s . . . it’s . . . muh . . . muh . . .’
‘Honey, I can’t understand a word you’re saying. Do you want to call me back?’
‘No, no,’ she snuffled. ‘It’s for Meredith Logan.’
‘Meredith Logan? Isn’t she that intern who went missing from Lynx News headquarters? She’s dead? My God, how terrible.’
‘I can’t believe you didn’t know that, Mom,’ Emily sniffed. ‘It’s been all over the news.’
‘I’m sorry, sweetheart, but the television has been off more than on in the Ives household lately. I still find footage of the Metro crash a little hard to deal with.’
‘Sorry, Mom. I didn’t mean to be insensitive. But this is mega upsetting! I’ve known Meredith since Parade Night at Bryn Mawr. You met her, remember? Meredith was our garden party girl at graduation.’
‘Oh my God! That Meredith? I thought Meredith’s last name was Thompson.’
‘Logan is her married name, Mom. That’s why I didn’t know about it sooner. I saw the news reports, sure, but Meredith changed her hair color, you know, and cut it off short and kind of punk, so it wasn’t until I got an email from one of our classmates that I found out that it was our Meredith whose body they’d found. I feel like such a shit.’
‘Just go, sweetie. Don’t worry about a thing. Your father and I will watch the kids. Take them downtown for ice cream or something.’
‘Thanks, Mom,’ Emily sniffed. ‘Oh, damn! Do you think you can handle it with your wonky arm?’ she added, almost as an afterthought.
Classic Emily. I could have been trussed up in a full body cast, hanging from the ceiling by weights and pulleys, and she’d still have asked me if I wouldn’t mind watching the kids.
/> After I’d made pickup arrangements with Emily, I looked up the Meredith Logan case on the Internet. When I saw the girl’s picture, I remembered her well, even though it had been nearly a decade since Emily’s graduation.
Several weeks before, the article said, Meredith’s body had been found stuffed behind a fountain in Lower Senate Park by Capitol Hill K-9 dogs on routine patrol. The autopsy showed that she’d been strangled, but there was no indication that she had been sexually assaulted.
I clicked through from the newspaper article to a Lynx News video clip reporting on the case. According to the reporter, Meredith had told colleagues she was going out to meet somebody for lunch, but she never came back. Lynx News security cameras recorded her leaving the building at 12:45 and turning north on Louisiana Avenue. There were several restaurants in the immediate area where she’d been a regular – Art and Soul, Johnny’s Half Shell, Taqueria Nacional – but nobody at the restaurants remembered seeing her that day. She could have gone further afield, of course, or disappeared into the great maw of the food court at nearby Union Station, but police could turn up no evidence that she had done either.
Conservative Lynx news commentator John Chandler, every silver hair neatly arranged, accused the police of botching the investigation due to jurisdictional squabbles. Interviewed on the set of his show, And Your Point Is?, Chandler hastened to clarify that Meredith was not an intern, as had been reported in the media, but a production assistant. Meredith worked in the And Your Point Is? production office, answering phones, taking deliveries, preparing scripts, picking up lunches, and performing other tasks related to the show. Recently, she had been filling in on the physical set of the production, too. She was a ‘company woman’ with a promising future, Chandler reported, a real trooper, regularly the first to arrive and the last to leave. She would be greatly missed.
Lynx News didn’t exactly have a reputation for giving cops a fair shake, so I clicked over to Channel 4 News where an archived ‘Watch This’ video featured a police spokeswoman responding to Chandler’s stinging on-air criticism. ‘Policing in DC is complicated,’ the woman explained. ‘There are at least twenty-one police jurisdictions in the district. Some overlap and cooperate, while others are exclusive. Meredith Logan’s body was found on Capitol grounds by Capitol Police. The Capitol Police have exclusive jurisdiction within the United States Capitol grounds, and concurrent jurisdiction with other law enforcement agencies including the United States Park Police and the DC Metropolitan Police Force in an area of approximately two hundred blocks around the Capitol complex.’ According to the spokeswoman, all three agencies were co-operating to help bring Meredith Logan’s killer to justice.
Super.
It had taken over ten years of similar ‘cooperation’ before Chandra Levy’s killer was finally brought to trial.
When it came to the Meredith Logan investigation, I was sitting on John Chandler’s side of the fence for once.
The next day, my heart ached as Emily stood on our porch with red-rimmed eyes, her skin so white that her pale yellow hair shone bright by comparison. Pain washed over her face, like when she was a toddler and her Raggedy Ann doll went missing, and the pain was just as real then as it was now.
Emily reached into her tote and pulled out a miniature statue. I recognized it at once – the goddess Athena. A seven-and-a-half-foot tall statue of Athena had graced the Bryn Mawr campus for over a century, and students frequently made offerings to her, asking for her help with papers or exams, or in dealing with the usual vicissitudes of academia. ‘This was Meredith’s,’ Emily explained. ‘She gave it to me, and I’m going to give it to Meredith’s mother. Do you think that will be OK?’
I gave my daughter a hug, kissed her cheek and sent her on her sorrowful errand. ‘I think Meredith’s mother would appreciate it very much.’
ELEVEN
I’d finished the sweater. Blocked the pieces, sewn it together, and attached the buttons. It fit perfectly and had even garnered compliments from Emily, new-age fashionista, when I showed up at Spa Paradiso for the massage she’d arranged to thank me for my babysitting services.
Now I needed another project.
I could rake leaves (would that involve ‘screwing?’) alphabetize my spice rack, or . . .
‘I’m taking the train up to New York City today,’ I announced to my sister, Ruth, as we lingered over our two-egg platters at Chick and Ruth’s Delly (no relation!), a few doors up Main Street from Ruth’s shop, Mother Earth.
Ruth paused, coffee mug halfway to her mouth. ‘And you’re doing this, why?’
‘I considered flying to Paris or Seville, or one of the other exotic locations where Lilith Chaloux preferred to receive her mail, but the most recent address I have for her is in New York City, so I thought I’d start there.’
‘Didn’t you tell me that the letter you addressed to her in New York City came back, addressee unknown.’
‘It did, but Thirty-nine Fifth Avenue is an apartment building. If I’m lucky, somebody still living there now will remember her.’
Ruth set her mug down on the black Formica tabletop, worry lining her normally smooth brow. ‘The train, Hannah? Are you sure?’
I shrugged. ‘Have to climb back on the horse that bucked you.’
‘Does Paul know what you’re up to?’
I rested my knife against the rim of my plate. ‘No. He fussed that I was obsessing over Lilith and Zan, which is true. I was – am – obsessing over their story. Paul put up with it while I was recovering from the accident because it kept me home and out of trouble, but I think he was secretly pleased when I put the letters away and got back to my knitting.’
‘So to speak,’ Ruth grinned.
‘No, really,’ I grinned back. ‘I actually finished a sweater.’
‘Won’t Paul notice that you’re missing?’
I shook my head. ‘Paul’s in Colorado Springs.’
‘What the hell’s he doing in Colorado?’
I tore off a bit of toast and dredged it through the egg yolk remaining on my plate. ‘The Navy–Air Force game is today. He’s flown out on a party plane with a bunch of his Naval Academy buddies.’
Ruth gave me a look that I’d often seen on our mother’s face whenever we were trying to pull a fast one. ‘He’s going to have a cow when he finds out!’
I shrugged. ‘“It’s much easier to apologize than it is to get permission,”’ I said, quoting Grace Hopper.
‘So, how come you’re not going to the game, Hannah?’
‘No scientific instrument yet invented is sensitive enough to measure how little I care about football.’
Ruth smothered a laugh with her napkin. ‘Want me to come to New York with you? I could get Neelie to cover the store for the day.’
Cornelia – nicknamed Neelie – was my widowed father’s girlfriend. The Alexander girls – my sisters, Ruth and Georgina, and I – thoroughly approved of Cornelia Gibbs and couldn’t imagine why our father hadn’t asked her to marry him yet. It had been almost a decade since our mother’s death. But we knew from experience that there was little to be gained from pushing the man. There’s not much you can tell a retired navy captain. They’re accustomed to being in charge.
‘I appreciate the concern, Big Sis, but some challenges simply have to be faced alone.’
The waitress appeared, and Ruth held out her mug for a refill. ‘It’s your funeral, Hannah, but for heaven’s sake, be careful!’
An hour and a half later, I parked my car in the Amtrak garage at BWI and bought a ticket on the next train to New York City. I thought I had the Train Thing under control until the Northeaster actually pulled into the station and it was time to climb aboard.
One step forward, two steps back, the heebie-jeebies had taken hold. Except for the conductor, I was alone on the platform.
‘Are we holding you up?’ asked the conductor. ‘You getting on or just sightseeing?’
I took a deep breath, and dashed up the steps into one
of the middle cars before I had a chance to change my mind.
Three hours later, I got off at Penn Station.
Miraculously unscathed.
It’s a twenty-five minute hike from Penn Station to 39 Fifth, but cabs can be expensive, so I ruled them out. I had no appointments, no schedule to keep, so I’d planned a leisurely stroll along a route that would take me past Macy’s windows and down Broadway. I took my time doing it, too, zigging across town on the numbered streets and zagging down the avenues, enjoying the exercise and the crisp fall air.
Thirty-nine Fifth turned out to be a handsome, seventeen-story apartment building situated between 10th and 11th streets on the edge of Greenwich Village, just a couple of blocks north of Washington Square. Unusual terracotta frescos decorated the façade at the building’s third-floor level. I ducked under the fancy green awning that sheltered the entrance from the elements and rang the bell.
When the doorman appeared on the other side of the glass, my heart sank. He was probably in his early thirties. At the time Lilith Chaloux lived here, he would have been struggling with fractions in elementary school.
The door opened a crack, and he peered out, followed by a blast of superheated air.
‘Can I help you, ma’am?’
‘I hope so. My name’s Hannah Ives, and I’m organizing a high school reunion. One of my classmates used to live in this building. Apartment Four-B? Lilith Chaloux?’
‘Which high school?’ he asked.
A Quiet Death Page 6
