A Quiet Death

NINETEEN

It’s a hundred times easier to find a missing accident victim when you know the fellow’s name, even if you work for the Chesapeake County police department. Armed with the name Nicholas Ryan Aupry, we’d invited ourselves to dinner at the Ives family farm where Dennis (according to Connie) was enjoying a rare Tuesday afternoon off.

‘Paul, my man!’ Dennis greeted us warmly as we hiked up the drive. ‘Come to meet the cows?’

‘Cows? What cows?’ I wanted to know.

‘Dexters. Smaller than your average cow. Dual-purpose animals, really. Good for milk or beef.’

‘The cows and I vote for milk!’ I called after the boys as they wandered out to the back forty to converse with the livestock.

Carrying the lasagne I’d brought as an offering, I followed Connie into the kitchen. ‘Three-hundred-fifty degrees for about an hour,’ I instructed as she slid the casserole dish into the oven. ‘How go the gourds?’

For some time, Connie had been earning a modest income constructing figures out of ornamental gourds she grew in her garden. ‘Come see for yourself,’ she said, and led me down the narrow hallway to her workshop where pots of paints and brushes waited, lined up in orderly rows on her workbench. The smell of oil paint and shellac permeated the air, warring with the aroma of cinnamon and cloves from several dozen pomander balls dangling from a clothesline strung across one end of the room. This season’s batch of gourds had a Christmas theme – Santa Claus, the elves, his reindeer, and Mrs Santa, too.

I fingered the price tag on Rudolph’s ear – $65 – and thought, damn, I’m in the wrong business. Dasher and Dancer were similarly priced. Add Prancer and Vixen and the rest of the team, plus Santa and his sleigh and an assortment of elves, and you’d have a major investment in folk art. ‘I can afford Comet,’ I said, fingering the fifty-dollar price tag on the whimsical reindeer, ‘but it’d be a shame to break up the set.’

Connie selected an elf and dabbed a spot of pink on each of his cheeks. ‘Sorry, Han, the whole family’s spoken for. They’re going to Homestead Gardens for the holidays,’ she said, naming an upscale garden center south of Annapolis whose Christmas light display rivaled that of Rockefeller Center. ‘We’re part of the decorations.’

Mrs Santa had been assembled from more than a dozen gourds. I moved in to examine her more closely. ‘How do you do it, Connie?’ I asked, admiring the way a sleeve had been constructed out of a slice of dried squash.

Connie passed me a gourd that looked like an apple with warts. ‘Her sleeve’s from one of these. It’s called a bule,’ she explained. ‘And I made her skirt from a hollowed out crown of thorns.’

‘Next to you, I have zero talent,’ I whined.

‘Do, too. You knit,’ she said, pointing at my new sweater with the business end of her paintbrush.

‘That’s not talent, it’s mechanical. You follow a pattern. Knit, purl.’ I set Mrs Santa back down on the worktable next to her chubby hubby. ‘How do you keep all those pieces from falling apart?’

‘I am the Hot Glue Gun Queen of the Western World,’ Connie claimed, brandishing her brush like a scepter.

Back in the living room, over cocktails, everybody seemed to be tiptoeing around the Metro crash, so I brought it up myself at the dining table over the barley vegetable soup. ‘You remember that guy I met on the Metro, named Skip?’

Connie’s soup spoon paused in mid-air. ‘“Met” isn’t the word I’d choose, Hannah. You held the guy’s hand and prayed with him while he died. God, I admire your composure. I’d have freaked under the same circumstances.’

‘I did. Freak, that is. But, I’m beginning to think he didn’t die.’

‘No kidding!’

‘Using those letters I showed you, I was finally able to track down his mother. She tells me his name is Nicholas Ryan Aupry.’

I passed the basket of rolls to my brother-in-law. ‘I know I’m always asking you for favors, Dennis, but do you think you can find out where they’ve taken him? It’s not for me,’ I added quickly. ‘It’s for his mother.’

Dennis dabbed at his mouth with his napkin. ‘Excuse me, I’ll be right back.’ He disappeared into the kitchen where, after a few seconds, I could hear him talking on the phone. Two minutes later, he was back. ‘Stay tuned,’ he said, and returned to his soup.

By the time we had finished the lasagne and were helping ourselves to seconds of gingerbread with warm applesauce topping, I had my answer.

Dennis’s cell phone buzzed. He took the call in the living room, then returned to the dining table with good news. ‘They took Aupry to P.G. in critical condition, but once he was stabilized, they transferred him to Kernan up in Baltimore.’

‘What’s Kernan?’ Connie asked.

‘It’s the biggest rehabilitation hospital in Maryland,’ Dennis explained. ‘They specialize in trauma of all kinds. Brain, spinal cord, multiple fractures, you name it.’

‘His condition?’

‘Upgraded to serious, but they expect him to survive.’

‘Thank you, Dennis.’ Relief washed over me in waves.

He saluted me with a spoon. ‘No problem. So, Hannah,’ he asked before attacking his dessert once again, ‘what do you plan to do now?’

‘Telephone his mother, of course. That’s step number one.’

‘Why hasn’t that happened already?’ Dennis wondered.

‘I suspect he didn’t want his mother to know.’ I said. ‘They weren’t on the best of terms.’

‘What’s step number two?’ Connie wondered.

‘I’m going to buy some flowers and a Wishes-for-a-Speedy-Recovery balloon and pay Mr Aupry a visit.’

‘Hannah thinks she’s found evidence that John Chandler is Aupry’s biological father.’ Paul tipped his chair back from the table and laced his hands across his chest.

‘Chandler? The And Your Point Is? Chandler?’ Connie whooped.

‘It’s true,’ I said. ‘I’m absolutely convinced of it. But I went to see him the other day, and Chandler’s not owning up to it.’

Dennis scowled. ‘Why should he? Chandler is your enigmatic Zan? Preposterous!’

‘The information’s out there, Dennis. I found it on the Internet. And it’s persuasive.’

Paul held his wine glass out for a refill and Dennis obliged. ‘Nicholas Aupry had access to the same basic information you did, Hannah – his mother’s letters and the Internet. I wonder if he’s reached the same conclusion as you have about Zan?’

‘Only one way to find out, I guess. When I pay a call on the patient, I’ll grill him. But Aupry didn’t hold the trump card like I did.’

‘Trump card? What trump card?’ Connie wanted to know.

‘Elspeth and Claire Simon.’ I stole a quick look at my husband. ‘And the clue of the squiggles.’

I left it to Paul to explain about čárkas and háčeks and went off to the kitchen to telephone Lilith with the good news and brew up another pot of decaf.

Whenever I get within ten miles of Baltimore, I have to drop in on my little sister, or when she finds out, I never hear the end of it. Georgina, the baby of our family, lived with her husband and four kids in the Roland Park section of the city.

When I called to say I was stopping by, Georgina told me that the twins were at soccer practice with their dad, a successful CPA, but that ‘the girls’ were at home.

When I let myself in through the kitchen door, I found my niece Julie, now eleven going on thirty, perched on a stool at the kitchen counter playing a game on the family computer. ‘Where’s your mom?’ I asked, peering at the screen over Julie’s shoulder.

‘Doing laundry in the basement.’ She manipulated the mouse, and a panel of miniature chairs appeared on the screen, each with a price tag attached. Julie clicked, then dragged an ornate chair into a house she was building on the screen.

‘What are you playing?’

‘The Sims.’ She tapped the screen with a chubby index finger. ‘Look, Aunt Hannah, that’s you and that’s Uncle Paul.’

On the screen, the avatar known as Paul seemed to be preparing a meal in a vast Jacobean-style kitchen, while Hannah swam laps in a backyard swimming pool. Julie clicked her mouse a few times and the swim ladder disappeared from the pool. ‘If I do that,’ Julie grinned impishly, ‘Hannah will drown! She’ll turn into a tombstone in the back yard!’

‘Oh, I hope not!’

‘Just kidding.’ Julie giggled, clicked the mouse a few times and restored the ladder.

As I watched, Hannah used the ladder to climb out of the pool. She turned around three times like Diana Prince transforming into Wonder Woman, and emerged wearing a gray business suit. ‘Off to work, now!’ Julie ordered as Hannah rode off in a car. Back in the virtual kitchen, Paul was washing his dirty dishes.

‘I’ve made houses for everybody,’ Julie told me. ‘Aunt Ruth has a store in Pleasantville, too.’ She looked up, wide-eyed. ‘Wanna play?’

‘Sweetie, a game like that would eat my brain right up. Although it would be nice if your Uncle Paul did the dishes like that.’

Georgina suddenly materialized from the basement carrying a wicker basket heaped with clean laundry. ‘Have you done your homework, Miss?’

Julie looked ceiling-ward, rolled her eyes elaborately, and flounced off to her room. Obviously not.

On the computer screen, Paul and Hannah’s life seemed to go on. Hannah returned from work and took a shower. Paul watched TV. Eventually he headed for the exercise equipment Julie had installed for him in the family room and Hannah picked up the telephone to order some pizza. Maybe I should build a cottage and move a Sim named Lilith Chaloux into it; construct a house nearby for John and Dorothea Chandler; add a condo for Skip then click ‘Play,’ stand back and wait to see what happens.

‘How’s everyone?’ I asked Georgina as I helped her fold a king-sized sheet into a compact, origami-like package.

‘Hunky dory. And I’m volunteering as a tour guide at Evergreen House, so that keeps me out of trouble.’

Evergreen House was a Baltimore gem, a magnificent nineteenth-century Gilded Age mansion formerly owned by John Garrett, a B &O railroad tycoon. Its exterior, Georgina told me, had been the inspiration for the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. She oohed and ahhed over the library, the theater and the twenty-three-carat gold-plated bathroom, then segued into the current exhibit called ‘Cheers! The Culture of Drink in Early Maryland,’ which must have reminded her of the upcoming holidays because she suddenly switched gears and asked, ‘You’re coming to us for Thanksgiving, right?’

‘Well, duh.’ I put the towel I had folded on top of the pile.

‘Good. Which reminds me, why are you here today? When you called, you didn’t say.’

‘I’m going to visit somebody in the hospital. At Kernan.’

She snapped the wrinkles out of an undershirt, folded it into neat thirds. ‘Anybody I know?’

‘No. It’s the guy I was sitting next to when the Metro train crashed.’

Georgina’s head shot up. ‘Wow! You found him, then!’

‘Dennis did,’ I said, giving my brother-in-law full marks.

‘It’s certainly an advantage having a cop in the family, that’s what I always say.’ Georgina stacked the folded laundry in the basket, picked the basket up, and balanced it on one hip. ‘I’m glad the guy made it. How’s he doing, anyway?’

‘As soon as I find out, I’ll let you know.’

From Georgina’s, it was a quick six-mile drive to the sprawling, multi-acre Kernan Hospital campus just off Windsor Mill Road. I parked in the visitors’ lot.

I hadn’t been kidding about the flowers and balloons. Before I left Annapolis, I’d popped into the Giant near I97 and made what I thought was a suitable selection – an arrangement called Autumn Daze, and a Mylar ‘Get Well’ balloon in a cheerful yellow. I hauled them out of my trunk, locked, then strolled up the sidewalk past a flagpole and into the main entrance of the hospital, with the balloon bobbing gaily overhead.

‘I’m here to visit Nick Aupry,’ I told the volunteer at the information desk. ‘I’m his Aunt Hannah, from Iowa. I just got off the plane, and hoo-boy! I don’t know why I bother to fly. I could have walked here faster than that. I was supposed to be here yesterday,’ I rattled on. ‘And Delta Airlines? Don’t get me started! You know what they say?’ I paused for breath. ‘They say Delta means Don’t Expect Luggage to Arrive!’ I chuckled. ‘Isn’t that good?’

The woman behind the counter smiled indulgently. ‘I’m sure he’ll be glad to see you. He hasn’t had very many visitors since they transferred him up here from trauma.’

‘We’re a small family, all spread out. Go where the jobs are, you know! I just found out about Nick’s accident! Can you believe it?’

The woman handed me a visitor’s pass. ‘He’s in 129B. Just down the hallway there, and take the first left.’

I found the man I knew as Skip in a private room, lying flat on his back with a brace like a halo encircling his head. From the halo, four long metal rods extended, screwing the device directly into his skull. Other metal bars stretched from the halo down to a stabilizing shoulder brace.

The TV was tuned to the Discovery Channel where MythBusters appeared to be exploring the dangers of taking a shower during a thunderstorm.

I walked into his line of sight. ‘Hello, Skip. Remember me?’

Skip closed his eyes for a long second, then opened them again, and blinked as if trying to focus. ‘The lady on the train.’

‘That’s right. Hannah Ives. I came to see how you’re doing.’ I still held the flowers in one hand and the balloon in the other.

Skip’s hand rose slightly, then fell back on to the covers. ‘As you see.’

‘That looks like a medieval torture device,’ I said, indicating the head brace.

‘It is.’

‘I’m very glad you survived the crash,’ I told him as I set my autumn bouquet on the windowsill next to another similar arrangement. ‘These are pretty,’ I told him, touching a yellow chrysanthemum.

‘They’re from my mother.’

‘Ah. Well, now you have a matched pair!’ Keeping my back to the window, I added, ‘You’re incredibly lucky, you know. When you passed out on me… well, I thought you had, you know…’

‘Died?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Only the good die young,’ he said.

The TV remote lay next to his hand. He patted his way over to it, fumbled for a moment, then switched off the set.

‘What’s wrong with you, if you don’t mind my asking. Your legs…?’

‘I have a C5 contusion,’ he said. ‘The legs are the least of my worries.’ He whacked his right leg with the remote. ‘Smashed, but healing.’

‘What’s a C5 contusion?’’

‘A spinal injury. To begin with, I was pretty much paralyzed from the chest down. I’ve come a long way since then.’

‘Kernan is as good as it gets, I understand.’

‘So they tell me.’

I pointed to the halo. ‘How long do you have to wear that contraption strapped to your head? Is it really screwed into the bone? My God.’

‘Dr Frankenstein’s finest invention. It might come off in a week or two, they tell me, but I’ll still have to wear a neck brace of some sort.’

‘Can you walk?’

‘That remains to be seen.’ Beneath the blanket, he wiggled his toes. ‘They’re coming back, slowly, but they are coming back.’

‘Do you remember the crash?’ I watched his face closely. With his head completely immobile, the eyes said it all. They stared back at me vacantly.

‘I spend my days just lying here, trying to remember, but it’s all a blank. I remember the heat. God, it was hot! I remember sitting next to you on the train, lusting after your iPhone. Asking about the weather. After that, nothing, until I woke up here.’

‘Ah. Probably just as well. It was pretty horrific.’

‘So they tell me.’

‘I was attending a charity luncheon that day, Skip. I’m curious. What were you doing in DC?’

Skip closed his eyes as if the answer to my question was written on the insides of his eyelids. ‘I was doing genealogical research at the Library of Congress.’

‘In the Adams Building?’ I asked, feeling a little mean about trying to trip such a sick man up.

‘No. The Genealogy Library is in the Thomas Jefferson Building. The one with the dome.’

‘Oh, you’re right.’ And he was, too. I’d visited the Genealogy Library on several occasions.

An aide slipped into the room to top up Skip’s water pitcher with fresh ice. After he’d gone, I said breezily, ‘Say, Skip. A guy named James Hoffner came to see me the other day.’

‘Hoffner, yes. He’s my attorney.’

‘Oh.’ What else could I say? Who is that asshole you hired?

‘You probably don’t remember, but I was carrying a bag on the train. A ratty old one from Julius Garfinkels.’

‘I remember it well,’ I told him. ‘We chatted briefly about the store. Do you remember that?’

Skip nodded. ‘Hoffner’s supposed to be helping me get it back. It’s got family stuff in it.’

‘I know. There was a mix-up at the hospital and they gave the bag to me by mistake.’

Skip’s eyes widened in what seemed like genuine surprise. I made a mental note to check if he’d majored in theater at Stanford. ‘Great! Do you have it with you?’

‘No, but relax! Don’t worry about it. I was able to locate your mother, and I returned the bag to her. It’s perfectly safe.’

If Skip was alarmed by this news, he didn’t show it. ‘It’s her birthday coming up,’ he rushed to explain. ‘I was having some old photographs restored as a surprise. Re-colored. Matted and put in a nice frame. You know.’

‘Sure,’ I said, catching him in the fib almost at once. I’d seen his mother’s passport, but he didn’t know that. Lilith’s birthday was on April 4th, some six months away. Unless Skip was a guy who really planned ahead, his birthday surprise story was pretty fishy.

‘I had to look at a couple of letters,’ I confessed. ‘You know, to track the owner down.’ I imagined Skip, left alone in his mother’s appalling house, tossing clothes and shoes and unopened boxes around the cluttered house in disgust, frustration and rage. I pictured him finding the bag, opening the shirt box, going through it with growing shock and surprise.

‘Who is Zan, do you know?’ I asked.

‘My mother’s old boyfriend.’

‘Do you know his full name?’

‘What’s it to you?’

I shrugged, but probably not very convincingly. ‘Just curious. I guess I thought Zan was your dad. Is he?’

Skip stared past me at the dark and silent TV. ‘I don’t have a father. I was conceived spontaneously by the process of parthenogenesis,’ he said bitterly.

‘My dad’s still alive,’ I said conversationally. ‘But I lost my mother a long time ago.’ I reached out and laid my hand very gently on the blanket covering his good leg. ‘Take care of your mother, Skip. She needs you.’

‘She doesn’t need anybody,’ he snarled.

‘We all need somebody, Skip. Do you have a wife?’

He snorted.

‘A girlfriend?’

‘She decided that Maryland was a foreign country, and that leaving the beaches of sunny California would be worse then living naked among the Tlingit in Alaska. So, fuck her.’

‘Well, OK then!’ I had to laugh. ‘So, tell me how you really feel.’

‘Do you remember praying with me?’ I asked after a moment of silence.

Skip’s eyes flicked to the right, in the general direction of the bedside table where a rosary hung from the knob of the drawer. ‘Sorry, I don’t,’ he said.

I pointed. ‘Would you like me to hand you the rosary?’

When he said yes, I gently unhooked it from the knob and held it up. I fingered the rosary, running the cool, smooth black beads between my fingers before dangling the crucifix over his open palm. I let it fall, and his hand closed over it. Skip’s eyelids drooped. He breathed in deeply, held his breath for a moment, then let it out slowly.

‘I am tiring you,’ I said. ‘I better be going.’

Skip’s eyes flew open. ‘I’m sorry. How are you?’ he asked, which I appreciated, even as an afterthought.

I raised my arm, still encased in the brace. ‘Broken arm. Almost completely healed.’

‘Good, good.’

‘Would you like me to visit again?’ I asked.

‘Yes, please. The cable channels are fascinating, but I honestly think King Tut has given up all his secrets. The Titanic, too, you know?’ His eyes closed, his chest rose and fell, slowly, rhythmically.

I was tiptoeing toward the door when somebody in the hall outside bellowed, ‘Nick, buddy,’ and barged into the room. When the man saw me, he stopped dead, as if his shoes had suddenly hit a patch of superglue.

‘Well, well, well. This must be your mother.’

‘Shhh,’ I warned, tapping an index finger against my lips like the proverbial librarian, although I’d never seen a real librarian actually do that. ‘He’s asleep. Can we talk in the hall?’

‘And you are?’ I asked as I pulled the door shut behind me.

‘Jim Hoffner, Ms Chaloux. I’m working for Nick.’ He held out his hand.

I didn’t think much of Hoffner’s investigative skills if he mistook me for the elfin Lilith Chaloux. ‘Sorry, my name is Hannah Ives. We’ve spoken on the phone.’

Hoffner’s hand retracted as if I’d zapped him with a gag hand buzzer.

‘And I believe you have visited my home on a couple of occasions.’ I sent icy shards in his direction. After what he’d had done to my house, I wanted to slap the jerk silly, but, for the moment, I was enjoying making the worm squirm. ‘I believe you may have left something behind the last time you were there.’

‘Oh?’

‘Your fingerprints.’

‘I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about Mrs Ives.’ His face grew red beneath a tan that owed more to a tanning bed in a strip mall somewhere, than it did to a week spent lounging on a Florida beach.

‘Your goons, then. I should send you the cleaning bill. Do you know how hard it is to get fingerprint powder off wallpaper?’

‘I…’ he began.

I raised a warning finger. ‘Just stay away from me, Mr Hoffner. Concentrate on squeezing whatever you can out of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, take your thirty, forty percent, whatever, and stay out of my life.

‘I have nothing to interest you now,’ I announced airily. ‘I just stopped by to tell Nicholas that I was able to locate his mother and return the box of letters you were so interested in getting your hands on directly to her. So…’ I rubbed my palms together. ‘They’re back home where they belong. All’s well that ends well, don’t you agree?’

I left Hoffner sputtering in my wake.

Out in the parking lot I passed a green Ford pickup. The state of Maryland allows seven characters on a vanity plate and James Hoffner had managed to use them all: GOTALAW.

I stopped, peered through the window into the cab. Tossed carelessly on the front seat was a New York Yankees baseball cap. A pair of sunglasses with ice-blue lenses dangled by one earpiece from the sun visor. My heart flopped. Had Hoffner followed me to New York City? Had he been the guy watching me from the corner of 5th Avenue and 11th Street the day I found the Simon sisters?