A Quiet Death

SEVENTEEN

Early the following afternoon I’d finished returning the house to its usual state of gracious clutter and was scrubbing spaghetti sauce off the inside of the microwave – lunch leftovers had gone volcanic – when the miracle happened.

The telephone rang. ‘Hannah, this is Elspeth Simon. In New York.’

‘Oh, yes. I’m so glad you called.’

‘Claire was sorting through some old Christmas cards the other day and you’ll never guess what she found!’

‘A Christmas card from Lilith?’ I guessed, my heart pounding.

‘The next best thing. A postcard from the dear girl.’

‘That’s wonderful!’

‘There’s no return address on it, unfortunately, but there’s a picture of a deer on the front.’ Elspeth paused for a moment. ‘I’m looking at it now. A Sika deer, it says. Never heard of Sika deer, have you?’

‘Actually, I have. We have them here in Maryland. They’re not native, of course. They originally came from Japan.’

‘Well, this postcard came from Maryland, too. A place called the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge.’

I sat down on a kitchen chair and tried to catch my breath. Lilith had moved to Maryland? How could I be so lucky? The Blackwater refuge was on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, just south of Cambridge. I’d visited it often, sometimes taking the grandchildren along for wildlife drives, bird walks and the annual eagle festival. What would be the chances that Lilith was still there?

‘Is there a date?’

‘The postmark is faded, but it looks like it could be 1988.’

‘What does Lilith say on the postcard?’

‘I’ll read it to you.’ Elspeth gave a ladylike cough and began. ‘“Elspeth and Claire, Darlings.” She always called us that – darlings. “You will be surprised to hear that your big city girl is loving country life. Today, while I was painting, a doe stuck her nose right through the open cottage door! Give Pedro a cuddle for me! Love” – then she writes “X O X O X” – and an “L.”’

‘Elspeth, could you do me a big favor? Could you fax me a copy of the postcard?’

‘We don’t have a fax machine, dear.’

Of course they wouldn’t have a fax machine. The sisters had to be in their eighties. What was I thinking?

‘But,’ Elspeth continued, ‘I’ll be happy to scan it for you. What’s your email address?’

I had to laugh. ‘Elspeth, you are a gem.’

‘That’s what all my boyfriends tell me.’

Elspeth Simon was as good as her word. Two days later, an email arrived from TwoOldBiddies@nyc.rr.com, with two attachments, PDF versions of the front and back of Lilith’s postcard. I printed them out, but they didn’t tell me anything I hadn’t already learned from talking to Elspeth Simon on the telephone.

All I knew now was that approximately twenty-two years ago, in 1988, a young woman, then in her middle thirties, had settled down in a cottage, most likely in Dorchester County, Maryland, intending to paint.

Even after the Chesapeake Bay Bridge had connected the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay to Kent Island and beyond to Delaware, Virginia and the Atlantic Ocean beaches, Dorchester County had remained rural. With the exception of a ghastly commercial stretch paralleling Route 50 that had seen the recent addition of the Hyatt Regency Chesapeake Bay Golf Resort, Spa and Marina – say that three times fast – bucolic rusticity still pretty much ruled the day.

I popped out to the car, found my Rand McNally and spread it open on the kitchen table. Cambridge – population 12,000 – was always a possibility, but the word cottage suggested a more pastoral setting, so I decided to start with the smaller communities and work my way up.

And I really wanted a partner in crime.

I picked up the phone and called my sister. ‘Ruth, what are you doing today?’

Shouting over the roar of a vacuum cleaner, she said, ‘Hutch and I are working on our routine for the Dancesport Festival at College Park in November, but he just called to say he’s got a deposition to prepare, so I guess I’m free.’

‘You’re not working at the store?’

‘Neelie’s got the con at Mother Earth today.’

‘Good! You don’t want to spend the day cleaning house, do you?’

Ruth switched off the vac. ‘So, what’s up, Nancy Drew?’ she wondered aloud.

‘You know me too well. I have a good lead on Lilith Chaloux. There’s evidence she may have settled down in Dorchester County and I’d like company while I go poke around over there.’

‘Dorchester County’s a big place, Hannah.’

‘From a postcard Lilith sent to the Simon sisters, I think she might have bought a cottage in the vicinity of the Blackwater Preserve, near Cambridge.’

‘Oh, well, that really narrows it down!’

‘I know, but I’d like to give it a shot. Come with me, please. It’s a gorgeous day. The worse thing that will happen is that we’ll have a lovely drive, stop for a lunch somewhere, and swing by one of the farm stands on Route 50 to buy some of the last tomatoes of the season. Vine-ripened.’

‘You drive a hard bargain, Hannah. I was teetering on the fence until you mentioned the tomatoes. I’ll be over in about an hour.’

As we drove over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, my sister and I discussed strategy.

‘What do you plan to do if you find her?’ Ruth wanted to know. She flipped down the mirror on the sun visor and began fluffing up her gray hair with her fingers.

‘I’ve got her letters in the trunk. I plan to return them.’

‘I hate to burst your balloon, Hannah, but my theory is that she’s passed away.’

‘What? Lilith is young, only fifty-eight.’

‘If she’s still alive,’ Ruth argued, ‘why is this Skip person carrying her letters around with him?’

‘Well, if Lilith is Skip’s mother, or aunt – related to her, anyway – perhaps she asked him to have them scanned, to preserve them for the family archives or something.’

‘Would you ask Emily to help you scan love letters from Paul?’

I thought about the letters Paul had written when we were separated one summer – both the letters and the summer sizzled – and said, ‘No way.’

‘OK. So do we agree? If Lilith is still alive, Skip probably stole them.’

‘That’s my working theory, too. Especially since somebody broke into our house looking for them.’

Ruth gasped, offended. ‘When? You didn’t tell me that!’

After I shared the gory details, Ruth said, ‘That creeps me out! You must feel so violated.’

‘I do. We’d been putting off installing a security system, but this pushed us over the edge. A consultant’s coming to talk to us about it this weekend.’

Ruth and Hutch had installed a security system in their Conduit Street home, so Ruth educated me on the finer points of ADT until we reached Kent Narrows, at which point she suddenly switched horses to ask, ‘So, what’s your plan, Hannah?’

I pointed to a six-by-nine manila envelope propped up on the console between us. ‘I made copies of two of the photographs of Lilith. I plan to show them around and ask if anybody’s seen her.’

Ruth hooked a thumb through the chest strap on her seatbelt, tugging it out a couple of inches so she could turn in the passenger seat to face me. ‘And what street corner are you planning to stand on, pray tell?’

‘Think about it, Ruth,’ I said as I took the exit toward Cambridge at the 50/301 split. ‘If Lilith is still living around here, she has to buy groceries somewhere. Send and receive mail. Get her car serviced.’ I shrugged. ‘It’s worth a shot, anyway. And if that doesn’t pan out, I’ll ask at some of the local art galleries. Lilith was an artist, remember.’

‘Well, frankly, I think it’s a long shot, Hannah. I’m just along because you promised me lunch. And the tomatoes, of course. Where are we going for the aforementioned lunch, by the way?’

‘Portside in Cambridge.’

‘That place right on the water?’

‘Yes.’

Ruth clapped her hands like a four-year-old. ‘Goody, goody.’

An hour later, we crossed the bridge that took us over the Choptank River, turned right into Cambridge, and pulled into the parking lot at Portside. Soon, Ruth and I were sharing an order of the restaurant’s award-winning hot crab dip, followed by fish and chips for me and spinach salad for Ruth.

On the off chance that Lilith might have dined at Portside, I showed her picture to the waitress when she came to refill our glasses with iced tea.

The waitress held the picture by the corner between a French-manicured thumb and forefinger, studied it briefly, then glanced back at me. ‘You a private detective or something?’

‘She’s Nancy Drew,’ said my sister.

The waitress grinned, displaying a full set of pearly whites. ‘Get out!’ She looked at the photo again. ‘Wish I could help you, but I can’t. Don’t think I’ve ever seen this girl before, and I’ve worked here pretty much every day since the place opened.’ She handed the photo back.

‘Thanks anyway,’ I said, tucking the photo into its envelope.

Ocean Gateway. Sunburst Highway. Route 50 to you and me. A strip of unrelenting concrete, bordered on both sides by gas stations, fast food restaurants, cut-rate motels, and big-box drug stores. From the CVS you could hit the Rite Aid with a well-aimed prescription bottle.

No surprise, then, that I decided to avoid Route 50 altogether and head out into the countryside the back way. I drove Ruth across the Market Street bridge, then took a slow loop through the historic colonial town before heading south on Race Street. We were driving through farmland in no time. Where Church Creek Road intersected with Golden Hill Road at the Church Creek community proper, I pulled into the parking lot in front of the tiny post office and stuck my nose in.

When the postmistress finished with a customer, I approached the counter, trotted out my high school reunion story, and showed her Lilith’s picture. ‘Her name is Lilith Chaloux, at least it was when I knew her.’

The postmistress shook her head. ‘She doesn’t keep a box here. If she did, I’d certainly know about it.’ She handed the picture back. ‘You might try Woolford.’ She pointed west. ‘Continue on that way. From this point on, it’s Taylor’s Island Road. Winds around a bit, but in about two miles you’ll get to the Country Store. It’s on the right. If your friend lives anywhere around there, that’s where she’ll do business.’

I thanked the woman and headed back to the car.

Five minutes later, Ruth and I pulled into the parking lot of the Woolford Country Store, a three-story, white-frame structure with dark chocolate trim. I recognized the post office by the American flag flying from a pole out front, otherwise I might have missed it. The single-story building was attached to one side of the store like an afterthought, which it probably was.

While Ruth popped into the store to see if she could hook up with an Eskimo Pie, I ducked in to the post office.

The woman on duty behind the counter looked up from a form she was filling out and asked if she could help me.

‘I’m trying to find this woman,’ I said, handing her Lilith’s picture.

The postmistress studied it for a moment, then said, ‘She’s older now, of course, but this looks a lot like Lilith Chaloux.’ She pronounced the name Shall-locks. ‘She’s such a pretty girl, isn’t she? Absolutely enchanting.’

My heart flip-flopped inside my chest. ‘How long has Lilith lived here?’

‘Oh, quite a while.’ She handed the picture back across the counter. ‘More than twenty years, I’d say. Isn’t that right, Penny?’

The postmistress was addressing a woman standing at a chest-high table near the window, patiently peeling stamps out of a booklet and applying them with scientific exactness to the upper right-hand corner of a pile of bright orange envelopes. In the bad old days, her tongue would have been heavy with glue, and she wouldn’t have been able to answer so quickly. ‘Lilith? The artist? Oh, I say twenty years at least!’

‘Can you tell me where I might find her?’

The postmistress frowned, but not in an unfriendly way. ‘It would be against federal regulations for me to tell you any more than that, now wouldn’t it?’ She brightened. ‘But you could write her a letter and I could slip it into her post office box. You’ll need to stamp it, of course.’

‘Well,’ Penny interrupted, mashing her fist down on top of one of her stamps like a hammer. ‘I certainly don’t operate under federal government regulations. Why are you looking for Lilith? Do you mind telling me?’

‘We went to the same high school, but we’ve lost track of one another. I’m trying to find her for our fortieth reunion.’ With one eye still on the helpful postmistress, I added, ‘I’d love to talk to her in person, of course. It’s been too long.’

Penny pushed her stamped envelopes through the Outgoing Mail slot, then said, ‘Lilith keeps pretty much to herself, always did, but when she comes to town, she’s friendly enough. She lives off Deep Point Road, in a cottage that looks out over Fishing Creek. Woods all around. Very isolated. Haven’t seen her recently, though.’

‘Have you ever been to the cottage? Is it easy to find?’

Penny managed a crooked grin. ‘It’s up the road just a bit. Keep looking for Deep Point. It’ll turn off to the right. You can’t miss it. There’s a green street sign. The cottage, now, it’s on a dirt lane that turns off to the left between two fields. If you get to Deep Water Road, you’ve gone too far.’ She whirled her index finger in the air. ‘Just turn around and come back.’

‘Good luck!’ she said as I headed toward the door. ‘I hope you find her.’

I smiled. ‘If she’s not at home, I’ll just leave a note. Thank you both, so much.’

As I left the post office, Penny called after me, ‘I hope your car has a good suspension system!’

I found Ruth still in the grocery, paying the cashier for two Eskimo Pies.

‘I’ve found her!’ I whispered in her ear.

‘Oh my God! You are a witch!’

Because the day was still sunny, we decided to eat our ice cream on the front porch while I brought Ruth up to speed on what I’d learned. Eager to get underway, I wolfed down my ice cream so fast I got an excruciating case of sinus freeze. While squeezing the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger, I tossed the wrapper in the trash. I practically dragged Ruth, who was still licking ice cream off her fingers, from the porch by the intricate gold hoop dangling from her ear.

‘Look for a dirt road between two fields,’ I instructed my sister ten minutes later as we inched along Deep Point Road following the directions Penny had given me. ‘It’ll be on the left.’

After a short distance, Ruth’s arm shot out across the dashboard. ‘There!’ she said, pointing.

I slowed to a crawl. Two ruts led off the road to our left. After approximately five hundred yards, they disappeared into the trees.

‘Does that count as a road?’ Ruth wondered.

I wasn’t sure, so we drove a bit further. At Deep Water Road, I groaned, executed a three-point turn and headed back in the direction we’d just come, pulling to a stop at the rutted road we’d spotted earlier. ‘I guess that’s it.’

We turned right and bumped along for about half a mile, undergrowth brushing our undercarriage, the trees closing in, dark and dense, all around us. Eventually, the road opened into a clearing.

Perched on a low bank above the creek was an English country cottage built of stone, so English, in fact, that I suspected it had been standing there since 1750, built by one of our founding fathers. Two pairs of windows flanked a central door, all facing away from the water, which was another clue that the cottage hadn’t been built in the twenty-first century, where water views sold at a premium. The road ended at a covered carport, but there was no car in the drive. ‘I guess she’s not home,’ Ruth said. She looked as crestfallen as I felt. ‘Do you suppose we should come back later?’

‘Come on, Ruth,’ I hissed. ‘Moment of truth.’

As we approached the cottage, we could hear a conversation going on inside. ‘She is home,’ I said. ‘Oh, ye of little faith.’

‘Do you think Lilith has company?’ Ruth wondered as we climbed the brick steps that led up to the front door. ‘If so, where are the cars? Are we to assume that everybody walked? Not very likely.’

My sister and I paused on the narrow porch, listening, straining our ears. Men’s voices in heated discussion.

I leaned to one side and peeked through one of the windows, but the curtains were drawn and no light shone through from the room inside. ‘I think she has the TV on,’ I said after a moment, feeling foolish. I tapped Ruth on the arm. ‘Knock, silly.’

There was no answer.

‘Maybe she can’t hear you over the blare of the television.’

Ruth knocked again, harder this time, and as we stood on the doorstep gaping, the front door swung slowly open. ‘Ooops,’ she said.

I pushed against the door with the flat of my hand, but it wouldn’t open more than a few inches. ‘Something’s blocking it from the inside,’ I said, beginning to get worried.

‘Let’s try around back,’ Ruth suggested, and headed off at a trot.

When I caught up with my sister, she was waiting for me by the back door. It stood wide open.

‘She could be in trouble,’ I reasoned. ‘We should probably go in. Agreed?’

When Ruth nodded, I stepped inside.

Lilith’s back door opened on to a narrow passageway which was piled nearly to the ceiling on both sides with cardboard boxes. Fearing an avalanche, we picked our way carefully through the tunnel, expecting it to lead to the kitchen.

It did.

One look at what lay ahead made me stop so suddenly that Ruth crashed into me from behind. ‘Oh my God!’ I said. ‘How can anyone cook in this place?’

Like the hallway we’d just passed through, the kitchen was littered with boxes, some stacked, others leaning haphazardly against one another, their contents spilled, mingling with the contents of the box below. By the light of a single bulb in an overhead fixture designed for six, we could see that every surface – the kitchen counters, the stovetop – was littered with stuff with a capital ‘S.’ A mountain of newspapers, magazines and junk mail in the corner could have hidden a kitchen table, but it would have taken a forklift to tell.

I picked a pile of mail off the top of – what? – a toaster oven? – relieved to see that it was addressed to Lilith Chaloux. In 2006. We were definitely in the right house, I thought with relief, but where was Lilith?

I stepped carefully around a collection of Fiestaware mixing bowls – brand new – nested on the floor. I opened the oven. Inside I found hundreds of frozen food cartons – Lean Cuisine, Healthy Choice, Amy’s Kitchen, Linda McCartney – washed, folded flat and stacked.

Ruth peered over my shoulder. ‘What the hell is she saving those for?’

‘I’m afraid Lilith’s a hoarder, like those people on reality TV.’ I closed the oven door, wiped my hands on my jeans. ‘How can people live like this?’

‘Oh my God,’ Ruth said, indicating some Styrofoam containers stacked six high that were filled with – she peeked into the one on top – unopened bags of Oreo cookies. Ruth held up a grocery store receipt. ‘Can you believe it? These cookies were purchased on special in 1992.’ She squinted at the receipt. ‘Thirty packages of them.’

Lilith had kept a path clear between the refrigerator and the microwave, and from the microwave to the sink. Otherwise, it would have been impossible to move around the room.

I opened the refrigerator. Aside from a carton of eggs and a half gallon of milk two weeks past its sell-by date, all it contained were a dozen bottles of Veuve Clicquot Brut and ten 250g cans of Royal Beluga caviar.

That was a stumper.

I must be Alice, I thought, well and truly trapped on the other side of the looking glass.

At a signal from me, Ruth began to wade through the clutter toward the front of the house, stepping high. ‘This is downright dangerous,’ she complained, side-stepping an old typewriter table that was listing to starboard under the weight of a dot matrix computer printer and maybe a decade’s worth of telephone books. ‘Lilith could be in trouble.’

‘Is anybody here?’ Ruth yelled as she disappeared around the corner.

I hurried, bucking and weaving, to catch up. On the way, I popped into the living room and discovered why the front door refused to budge when we pushed on it. Over time, boxes from QVC and HSN had been stacked, still unopened, around the door. Plastic mailers from L.L. Bean and Lands’ End had been piled on top, adding to the accumulation. At some point, the piles had collapsed, partially blocking the entrance.

To my right, under the window, a sofa and chair were heaped with unopened boxes from Amazon. And if you needed to reach the front door, like in an emergency, you’d have to first clear a path through the forest of light bulbs, toilet paper, paper towels, and batteries still in their plastic shopping bags from Target that were strewn over the carpet. Either that, or hire a guide.

I hurried as fast as I could after Ruth, kicking aside boxes of envelopes, paper clips and three-and-a-quarter-inch floppy disks as I went. I was surround by evidence of Lilith’s aborted attempts to tame the chaos – Rubbermaid tubs in all shapes and sizes, nested Tupperware containers (still nested), space bags, desktop organizers – purchased with every good intention for $19.95 plus shipping and handling, from companies that advertised on late-night television that their amazing products were ‘Not available in stores!’

I found my sister standing in front of the bathroom at the end of the cluttered hall, looking bewildered. Boxes loomed over her dangerously, like the walls of the Grand Canyon. She raised both arms. ‘There’s a bedroom on each side. Nobody’s here,’ she reported, ‘but the TV is sure on.’

The television in the bedroom was cube-like and huge, a model so ancient that I expected it could receive Howdy Doody, I Love Lucy or Bonanza direct. On the screen, though, modern-day Lynx News social commentator Candace Kelly, every Titian hair perfectly contained, was nattering on about some girls who had been turned away from their homecoming dance because the school found their dresses unsuitable. ‘Does everybody watch Lynx News?’ I wondered.

‘Why don’t we turn it off?’ Ruth suggested.

While Ruth floundered around the bedroom looking for the remote, I watched the crawl at the bottom of the screen where I learned that ‘Hiccup girl’ had been charged with murder and L’il Wayne was ready to party after his release from jail; pseudo-news that ran the gamut from ‘What the hell?’ to ‘Who cares?’

‘You’ll need to send out a search party for the remote, I’m afraid.’ Ruth waved an arm, taking in the piles of clothing draped over every available surface, including the bed, some still wearing their price tags. ‘And good luck even reaching the TV. My bet? She leaves it on all the time.’

‘Where the hell does she sleep?’ I wondered, backing out into the hall and pushing open the door to the second bedroom. It, too, was chock-a-block with unopened boxes containing God only knew what. If there was a bed in the room it would take Lewis and Clark, maybe Sacajawea too, to find it.

I bent over, out of habit, to pick up a pair of red leather gloves, still connected at the wrists by a plastic clip, that lay on the carpet at my feet. I held them in my hand for a moment, then tossed them over my shoulder. Even if Ruth and I became overcome by an irresistible urge to pick up, where on earth would we begin?

‘Come on, Ruth. Let’s get out of here.’

‘Where does Lilith paint?’ Ruth wondered aloud, as we ran the gauntlet, winding our way out of Lilith’s pathetic cottage the way we had come.

‘Unless she’s given it up, she probably has a studio somewhere. Perhaps that’s where she is now. The Simon sisters told me she kept a separate studio when she lived in New York.’

Once outside, I breathed deeply, expelling the dark and the dust. Face to the sun, I inhaled the fresh fall air in grateful gulps. To our left, a narrow path led off through the trees. Through the branches, just now beginning to shed their leaves, I could see the late-afternoon sun glittering on the waters of what my map had told me was a little cove off Fishing Creek. ‘We’re so close to finding her,’ I said. ‘I just hate to leave.’

‘Hannah, for all we know, Lilith’s away on vacation, sunning herself on a beach in the south of France. Who knows when she’ll get back.’

‘But the house is unlocked,’ I reasoned.

Ruth snorted. ‘Why lock it? Any self-respecting thief would take one look at that place, throw up his hands and high tail it out of there.’ She grinned wickedly. ‘Maybe that’s Lilith secret plan to clear the place out!’

I laughed. ‘You’re right, of course. I’m going to leave a note. Ask her to call me.’ I tore a sheet of paper out of the notebook I keep in the glove compartment to write down important things like the license plate numbers of cars that cut me off in traffic and the vehicle identification numbers of negligent trucks that spew out gravel and pockmark my windshield. On it I wrote: ‘My name is Hannah Ives and I live in Annapolis. I have something that belongs to you. Please call me so that I can arrange to return it.’

I added my telephone number, stuffed the note into a Ziploc bag I had snitched from a box of one hundred on the floor of the kitchen, then tucked the note between the back door and the frame, closing the door securely over it.

‘What now, Nancy Drew?’

‘Now, we go home and wait.’