Mistress

Chapter 12

I take a rental car from the Dane County Regional Airport to this place, the Partridge Funeral Home, which is bordered on the north by its cemetery, on the south by residential housing, and across the street by some kind of forest preserve or park. The building looks like an elementary school, a one-story structure of faded brown brick with simple shrubbery and a small lawn that’s withering in the blasting summer heat.

I slow my pace as I approach the front door. Through the glass door I see a blown-up photograph, placed on an easel, of Diana from long ago, a high schooler in her purple homecoming dress, her hair poofy and sprayed, wearing a gaudy white corsage and, as always, that carefree, crooked smile.

A tremble runs through my body. I stifle the instinct to turn and run, to return to the capital. But I have to do this.

There are some things in life you just have to do. That from my dear father as he knotted my tie on the morning of Mother’s funeral. I always thought that was a stupid thing to say, but now I guess I understand what he meant.

I enter the building, take one more look at the photo of the smiling Diana, and follow the directions on a sign. At the end of the hallway, a large parlor area hums with the quiet, respectful tones of those paying their last respects. There are flowers everywhere. More photographs are displayed throughout the room: Diana as a newborn; as a toddler in a Halloween princess costume; as a teenager setting a volleyball; as a graduate in a posed yearbook photo, her eyes full of promise as they look off into the distance. In the middle of the room, several women who look to be Diana’s age gather around a laptop computer that plays a slide show of images.

Where’s the casket? With my question comes relief. I’m not sure I’m ready to see her lifeless. It was one thing to see her facedown in the dark; it would be another to see her posed in cruel artificial lighting, broken and damaged and on display.

Then it hits me. Diana’s body isn’t in Madison. It’s in DC, in the custody of the Metropolitan Police Department. They haven’t released the corpse. For now, they’re only having a visitation, to be followed by a funeral at a future time after they determine the cause of death.

Just as they did with Mother.

To the far right of the room, an elderly couple and a guy in his midthirties shake hands with well-wishers. Her parents and brother, a receiving line.

I do another survey of the room. About thirty people here and I don’t recognize a soul. It’s probably asking a lot for people from DC to trek out here to Wisconsin. Most people don’t have a trust fund, as I do.

A woman in a crisp black suit, somewhere around forty, stands in a corner, looking at a collage of photos of Diana. Except she’s not really looking. Her eyes move casually about the room, keeping an eye on the entrance. She’s chosen the corner that maximizes her view of the entire parlor. She avoids eye contact with me when I try to establish it. She’s pleasant-looking and unremarkable, which is smart-she’s a good choice, somebody who won’t stick out. Whoever sent her, they aren’t stupid.

I mean, in The Firm, one of the henchmen, the one who killed Gary Busey and the lawyers in the Caymans, and who tried to kill Tom Cruise-that guy was an albino. If you were going to pick someone to anonymously carry out your wet work, would you choose an albino? Anybody, but anybody, could identify him: Well, let’s see…don’t remember much, ’cept, oh, yeah, he had white hair and red eyes and was completely pale.

This woman here-dirty-blond hair, normal-looking, medium height, simple black outfit, etc. She could be anybody.

I take a breath. Okay. I can do this.

I stand in a small line of people waiting to speak with Diana’s family, my heartbeat accelerating. Why would an albino go into acting in the first place? Are there a lot of roles out there for people lacking pigment? Maybe you figure you have a niche, and you do minor roles just to put food on the table, awaiting that one part, that film that will define your career, The Color of Nothing, the story of the albino kid from Detroit who everyone said wouldn’t amount to anything, who lifted himself up by his bootstraps working at carnivals and tanning salons until he rose to prominence as Alfie the Clown, the star of a Nickelodeon-

“Hello.”

I turn to see a woman standing behind me, alone, dressed in a loose-fitting blouse and blue jeans, more casual than I might have expected for a visitation. She looks to be about Diana’s age, so I’m guessing local, a high school classmate or neighbor.

“Hi,” I manage. It comes out weak, through a full throat.

“I’m Emma.”

“Ben.”

“You’re from DC?” Emma asks. She’s a tad overweight, a round stomach, possibly pregnant, but I don’t dare ask. I’m not that stupid.

I nod. “You?”

“High school,” says Emma. “I still live in town. My husband’s a math professor at the university. Do you work at the same PR firm as Diana?”

PR firm? Diana didn’t work at a PR firm.

“Yes,” I answer. “I do.”

She shakes her head-bemusement, not admiration. “That must be something, living out there. All the fighting and spinning and talking heads.”

“Diana-Diana talked about it a lot?”

“Oh, I don’t know about ‘a lot.’ We’d lost touch. I’d see her when she came back in town, maybe once a year around holidays, that sort of thing.” She smiles absently, recalling a memory. “I remember when she graduated from UVA-”

She didn’t graduate from UVA. She didn’t even go to UVA.

“-and she took that job on the Hill.”

She didn’t take a job on the Hill after college.

Here: Diana was a sophomore at Wake Forest, a poli-sci major, when she got pregnant. The history professor who knocked her up talked her into an abortion. She complied, it tortured her, and she dropped out of school and moved to DC. She was a housekeeper at then-congressman Craig Carney’s apartment. Then, history repeating itself, she started an affair with Congressman Carney. He recognized her brains as well as her beauty, and when Carney became deputy director of the CIA he elevated her to her current position as a CIA White House liaison. He also put her up in a nice place in Georgetown. The affair ended, Diana picked up the rental payments on her own, and she kept the job with the CIA.

“That’s what she called it, the Hill. She was so excited. She said she might run for Congress someday.” Emma shakes her head, lifts her shoulders in frustration. “What-I mean, does anyone know why she would take her own life?”

I look up at the ceiling. This is an interesting development.

“Sometimes,” I say, “you just don’t know a person.”