Ashes To Ashes

by Gwen Hunter

  He had swept me up from my dorm and carried me to his car, much to the amusement of my friends hanging out the windows. And though he hadn’t called in over two days prior to that, and though I had been both frantic with worry and furious with him, and though I had determined to ignore him completely when he did finally call, I wrapped my arms around his neck and held on.

  "I wanted to wait till you were out of school, but since I can’t stand it when we aren’t together, and since we managed to get you pregnant with my son and heir, I decided it needed to be now." He dumped me into the front seat and ran to the driver’s side, gunned the motor and took off down the road. He proposed as he drove, a reckless grin on his face, the wind tearing through his hair.

  "Marry me. And wear this." He tossed me a velvet ring box. "I haven’t had it sized yet, so don’t lose it."

  "Marry you? I haven’t heard from you in two days. I thought you were dumping me," I wailed. "Why haven’t you called? Or come by?"

  Jack looked at me a moment before snapping his eyes back to the road. There was a devilish glint in his eyes. "I had to buy the ring. And get the preacher. And make the honeymoon plans. I’ve been busy. What do you think about Italy? I’ve never been there. Do you have a passport? And by the way, if it isn’t a son, don’t worry about it. We can always do that next time."

  I had laughed then, through my tears, and placed the ring on my finger. Jack had taken care of everything from then on. My parents, my future, my very life. And now he was gone.

  Bill’s voice on the machine forced me back to the present. My smile slipped away. "It’s been four weeks and two days, Jack. Call me." He hung up. I had never heard anyone order Jack around. US senators were polite to Jack. Bankers were polite to Jack. Even my mother was polite to Jack, and my mother . . . well . . . was my mother.

  Then Peter Howell again. He sounded desperate, needing checks written, or access to the accounts. I stood there, in my T-shirt and bare feet, ashamed. I looked at Esther’s desk. It was locked, the checkbooks in the side drawer. The message was two weeks old. Why hadn’t someone come to the house? They all knew where I was.

  Bret McDermott had left a message just after Peter’s. Bret, DavInc’s banker, was a local boy made good. Starting out as a teller in the Dawkins County Savings and Loan, he had moved up fast through promotions and mergers. Now, he held a vice-presidency in the prestigious First America Bank, working in the bank’s Charlotte headquarters some thirty-five miles away.

  Bret had solved Peter’s dilemma, transferring funds from DavInc’s line of credit into Peter’s petty cash account. Bret could do that without Jack’s signature, although the petty cash account had never been intended to handle such large sums of money. It was a financial loophole Jack would have closed had he spotted it, and it was a smart move on Bret’s part.

  I hadn’t known Bret and Peter were acquainted. Interesting. I’d have to tell Jac— The thought cut off, mid-conception.

  "Jack, it’s been five weeks. I have bills and problems of my own. My lawyers are getting antsy and want to hear from you. Don’t make me take this to court. I don’t want the legal fees, and I don’t really want to see you ruined. Call me." Bill hung up.

  "Court?" I murmured to the quiet office. It was the same thing he had said earlier, about seeing Jack in Columbia, in front of a judge. Only Federal Criminal Court and large Civil Court cases met in the state capitol.

  The next three messages were from Bill, each one more vituperative and angry than the last. But not once did he explain the nature of the problem. Jack had known what was going on. Jack had been handling . . . something.

  I looked around the dusty office. It offered no clues.

  The last message from Bill was left the night before. It was similar to the threat I had heard on the personal line only an hour past.

  "Jack. This’s Bill. When you cheat a man, you have two options. One is to make restitution. The other is to go to court and be exposed as the thieving bastard you are. Either way, I’ll get what’s mine." His voice sounded slurred, as if he had stopped off at the local bar before placing the call. "And if the courts wont handle it, I’ll handle it myself. Just you and me." The phone went dead, the little red light no longer blinking up at me. I opened the door of the machine and removed the incoming digital message card and replaced it with a spare from the drawer beneath.

  "Court." Jack would never cheat anyone. He had been a deacon in the First Baptist Church of Dorsey City. Jack was a trustee. A member of the County Council. Jack had a reputation as an honest man. Jack was gone.

  The tremor was back in my fingers.

  I walked down the hallway, into the master suite, yanked on a pair of old jeans and sneakers. Changed T-shirts. Pulled a nurse’s scrub suit from the closet at random and tossed it on the chair beside the unmade bed. It no longer seemed important what I would wear back to work this afternoon. Any old thing would do.

  Upstairs, it was silent, Jasmine already at the barn, helping Jimmy Ray feed the horses—if he bothered to show up for work, that is. Jimmy Ray, a twenty-year-old, high school dropout, helped out at the farm whenever he was sober, which was less and less often these days. Even he seemed to fall apart after Jack died. After checking to see that Jimmy’s battered old truck was indeed parked out back, I returned to the office and flipped on an overhead light. Where to start?

  Esther, Jack’s secretary, had once kept the office up to date and organized, but I didn’t want to call her. Not about this. Not until I knew what was going on.

  There were two sets of file cabinets in Jack’s fireproof room. One set housed old business. The other cabinet held newer stuff. And this definitely was a new problem.

  The top two drawers were for Davenport Hills, the most ambitious real estate project Jack had ever undertaken. It was so huge, it would one day be a town, just off I-77, between Charlotte, North Carolina and Columbia, South Carolina. It involved hundreds of acres and millions of dollars. And I knew it was beyond me the moment I started on the files.

  Contracts full of legal mumbo-jumbo, I set on the worktable in the conference room. Computer printouts of overhead costs went nearby. The list of investors in the project I studied, recognizing a few names. There was no Bill. No William either. Setting the list of investors aside, I plowed through the file cabinet, not recognizing half of the contents. Until I found a file of letters from the investors. They were careful letters, offering support and help, but which actually said little of substance; the only thing they had in common was Davenport Hills and some problem. It had to be a major problem, to have the investors all tiptoeing around it.

  Jack had never mentioned a problem of any great importance to me. But then, Jack had never mentioned a Bill to me either. Bill who?

  At the back of the file, I found a letter written by Jack. It was a memo, the kind of thing he would compose before giving his notes to Esther to key in and revise. Unfinished, unsigned, undated, it was handwritten in Jack’s careful script on company letterhead, the errors scratched out with neat x’s the way Jack always did.

  I wanted no part of this. You gave me your solemn assurance that no one would be hurt, and now the inspector is dead. It should have been a paper problem, not something that needed your special talents and connections. xxxx It shouldn’t have required such extreme measures to clear the way for use of the land. Because of your incompetence, the entire project is in danger. But be aware, xxxx I have managed to retain the evidence. All of it. If this comes to light, you will take the lion’s share of responsibility, and criminal consequences will fall on you and your man. I will not go to jail for murder.

  I sat down slowly on the leather chair. It sighed beneath me, a melancholy sound, half grief, half shock. A numb heat flushed through me and was gone. Placing the file on the table, I went through the investors’ letters again. Surprisingly, some were from Senator Vance Waldrop, a democrat from South Carolina. Reading them carefully, I tried to fit the word "murder" in place of "problem," tried to read
between the lines. But nothing fit. Nothing made sense.

  Shaking, though no longer from the cold, I gathered up the file and the list of investors and went to Jack’s desk. I sat in Jack’s chair, the file with his letter on top, open before me on the desk. Dust motes wafted in the pinkish, early light from the windows.

  I read the letter again, carefully, hoping for some other interpretation. Hoping for something to wipe away the meaning of the last word. Murder. The words were the same the second time I read them. And the third. I looked away from Jack’s writing, my eyes unfocused in the dim room. After a long moment, I paged through the files, studying each piece of paper for . . . something. I wasn’t certain what.

  The financing for the development was provided half by private investors, half by First America Bank through Bret McDermott. The individual investors comprised a small list put together by Jack:

  Virginia Reaburn Waldrop (Wife of Senator Vance Waldrop. Vance was a flamboyant elected official of the old style, dealing in good-ol-boy, homegrown rhetoric and convenient politics. I didn’t like Vance, but Jack had liked his influence in government circles.)

  Taylor, Inc. (A rival investment company whose appearance on the list was surprising.)

  S&B Investments, Inc. (A company put together by the husband of an old school friend, Monica Beck. S&B had invested with Jack for years.)

  Caldwell and Caldwell, Inc. (My parent’s company.)

  Hamilton Holdings (My Nana’s company.)

  MJM Investments

  Enterprise Investments

  Carolina First, Inc.

  All companies I didn’t recognize. And no "Bill".

  And then there was Bret McDermott.

  I had a feeling it wasn’t exactly ethical for Bret to have a finger in the pie as an individual as well as a banking big-wig, but then ethics were bent so often in this business that if you could actually see them, they would all look like pretzels. Jack’s words. I smiled at the memory. Jack, of course, was above such bending. Wasn’t he? A small voice at the back of my mind whispered the question. My smile faltered.

  Tilting the desk lamp, I reached beneath it and removed the key that opened Jack’s desk. A singularly simple hiding place, but then, this part of Dawkins County was practically crime free. Security measures were more trouble than they were worth out here, as Jack had discovered after he had the tamperproof safe installed in the vault room. It had been an expensive lesson.

  The center desk drawer opened with a slight click and revealed little of interest. Paper clips, a box of staples, White-Out, several of the fine-tipped pens Jack used, a nail clipper, phone book, small calculator and electronic address book programmed with Jack’s subcontractors. There was a leather business card folder, tape, a New Testament, small calendar, checkbook, his cell phone, the battery long dead. Stuff. Nothing helpful. Nothing that said "Murder. Look here."

  Jack’s briefcase was on top of the desk, the clasps open. I lifted the lid and peered inside. Just the usual jumble of bits of paper, two business checkbooks, pens, several sets of folded houseplans. A miniature road map of Davenport Hills with the velum overlay he had been working on the night he died. A lot of contractors went with CAD, a computerized program for builders and developers, but Jack liked hands-on plans.

  This set of papers and vellum contained the solution to a standing-water problem on the newest golf course. A costly problem to correct, but nothing to do with murder. I closed the lid. Opened the bottom side drawer. There were weekly and monthly company record books. Paperwork for the different corporations. Tax notices. More stuff, but not murder stuff. Closing it, I opened the top drawer.

  My eyes settled on the photograph, focused and stayed still. A hot sweat broke out, beading around my chest. I tried to take a breath and couldn’t. A suffocating heat cloaked me. Long seconds went by. All I could see was the photograph.

  The air conditioning came on, cooling my suddenly hot skin. I blinked. In a stretchy, elastic moment, time dilated and condensed, whorled and steadied. I reached into the drawer and removed the photograph. All of the photographs.

  The one on top was a woman. A tall, slender, beautiful woman, stretched out on beach sand in the sun, her skin glistening with oil. Her dark hair was braided and curled around to lie between her naked breasts.

  It was Robyn. Jack’s former secretary. My best friend.

  I forced a breath into my lungs. The air made a tortured sound. The second photograph was more revealing. Robyn, naked, playing in the surf, on some deserted beach, long ago. I studied it, not thinking, not feeling. Just seeing. I scanned slowly through the rest of the shots, feeling breathless . . . fouled.

  There were perhaps sixty photographs, most of them of Robyn in various stages of undress. In some of them, she was with Jack. These photos were tilted or slightly out of focus, as if they had been taken on a timer. Jack and Robyn were making love.

  I felt nothing. A curious, sterile, lack of feeling. Slowly, I went back through the photos, studying each one carefully. Memorizing the play of light on Robyn’s skin. Seeing for the first time what her face looked like in passion. Learning all over again what Jack’s face looked like when he was aroused.

  When I had searched each face, each expression, when I had examined each photo with painstaking deliberation, I stacked them carefully against the desk top. Aligning the edges, my fingers moving in the strange light like a card sharp at a dusty poker table.

  When they were perfectly stacked, I stood, and carrying the files and the photos, I left the office, shutting off the lights. Closing the door. In the kitchen, I chose a plastic grocery bag the cleaning crew had folded and put in the recycling basket beneath the sink. Inside, I placed the photos, the file of letters, the list of investors, and the murder letter. I tied the handles and hid the bag in my bedroom closet beneath my winter boots.

  I didn’t stop to think about my mother, who would have done the same thing to block out an unpleasantness. I didn’t consider that I was hiding from a truth I needed to face. My only consideration was Jasmine. That she not discover any of this. That she never know about her father and his affair.

  Firmly, I closed the closet doors, my palms flat on the painted raised panels. They made a solid sound, final and hollow.

  A light tap sounded on the bedroom door. Jas’ knock. Three beats, a pause, and three beats. Before I could answer, she entered. Jas was taller than I, slender, and bronzed by the sun, but she looked older than I remembered from just weeks ago. Somber. Her face was marked with grief and drawn tight with tears; my heart turned over at the sight.

  We had grieved together for the first few days after Jack died, leaning on one another, crying and comforting one another. But since then, Jas had stayed apart from me, mourning in solitude with only the horses for comfort—Jack’s horses, the huge, black Friesian work horses my husband had bred. It was a habit she acquired as a child, withdrawing from people, clinging to horses when life went wrong. This time, solitude had not been good for my baby.

  "Mom?" Tentative tones, so unlike my usually decisive, strong-willed child. "Mama?"

  My hands were still on the closet doors, and Jas didn’t immediately see me. Her large brown eyes took in the unmade bed, sheets soiled, unchanged since before the funeral. Jack’s dirty jeans piled on the floor, his shoes beside the bed, one on its side, unmoved since he died. There was a layer of dust over everything. She grimaced.

  I almost smiled, but my skin felt stiff, frozen by old tears into a chapped mask. Jas was neatness personified. She and Jack had regularly straightened up the house between visits by the cleaning crew. I never had.

  "Looks like a museum," she muttered.

  I did smile then, and my face didn’t crack. The motion just pulled unused muscles against my skin. "Yes, it does," I agreed. Jas jumped. "Want to help me clean it up?"

  She stared at me, my ratty hair pulled back into a ponytail, my tear-chapped skin and out-of-date clothes. I thought she might comment on my appearance. Instead,
a peculiar expression crossed her face, a look heavy with shades of emotion. Tenderness. Fear. Determination—as if she had reached a decision and was here to follow through with it. And then the emotions vanished, and only tears remained, misery swimming in her eyes.

  She shrugged and whispered, "I miss Daddy," wretched and fighting tears I hadn’t seen in days. "And I’m worried . . ." she took a deep breath, ". . . about you."

  I suddenly recognized the extra burden I had placed on my child when I allowed her to grieve alone. Perhaps it was her nature to turn to horses instead of people, but Jas needed my comfort, whether she knew it or not. My child needed security and stability, not the worry of whether I would survive Jack’s death.

  Holding out my arms, I reached for my baby girl. My nearly grown, only child. I held her as she cried, my own eyes dry and hot, our arms around each other for comfort, Jasmine’s tears falling into my tangled hair from her greater height. The tears fell for only a short time, as if she had used up all the heavy grieving. As if she needed only this small moment in my arms to find a reassurance she had lost. Afterward, we simply stood there, silent, sharing our warmth.

  When we stepped apart, Jas was smiling, a smudge I hadn’t noticed before smeared across her cheek. "Daddy would have really hated this mess, you know."

  I frowned, looking at the room. "Are you volunteering to help?"

  "Sure. And we can go to Miccah’s for lunch. And then we can buy groceries." Her eyebrows went up, making the point that the kitchen pantry was empty. Jas sounded like her old self again, resolute and determined, and just a little bit bossy. "And if we have time, we could walk down to Nana’s," she added, pointing out that I hadn’t been to visit my grandmother in weeks.