A Quiet Death

TWENTY-SEVEN

Paul was stretched out in a canvas lounge chair on our patio, a bowl of mixed nuts balanced on his chest and a Bloody Mary within easy reach on the glass-topped table between us.

‘Do you dream about your old girlfriends?’ I asked, sipping my rum and Coke.

Paul squinted into what remained of an early-November sun. ‘“Now that I am become a man, I put away childish things,”’ he quoted.

‘I sometimes dream about Billy,’ I said, just to jerk my husband’s chain.

‘Billy?’

‘I was ten and Billy was eleven. An older man!’ I waggled my eyebrows. ‘Billy was crazy about me. Snitched my winter coat during choir practice and hid it in the baptismal font.’

‘“The course of true love never did run smooth.”’

‘If you are going to speak in proverbs all night, Mr Ives, I’m going to leave you sitting out here and go watch TV.’

Paul grunted. ‘So, who are you this time, Hannah Ives?’

The earth shuddered to a halt in its rotation around the sun. ‘What are you talking about?’

Paul reached under his chair, pulled out a section of the Washington Post, folded open to the Style section, page seven, featuring a picture of me with Jeanette, Helen Sue and all the usual suspects. ‘Splain, Lucy.’

I groaned. Everyone morning since that Talk & Tea at the Women’s Democratic League, I’d been out on our doorstep early, intercepting the newspaper before Paul could get his hands on it, checking the social notices for any articles about the event. First, we’d been trumped by a star-studded premier at the Kennedy Center, later by a fund-raiser for the Children’s National Medical Center, featuring a clown, a magician, and a jester who could twist balloons into animal shapes while standing on his head, an event not unlike your typical political fund-raiser, I thought at the time. Impersonating Lilith Chaloux was no crime, of course, but I didn’t feel like explaining my motives to Paul, especially since I wasn’t entirely sure exactly what had motivated me to slap Lilith’s name tag on my chest in the first place.

‘The devil made me do it,’ I said at last.

‘That’s what you always say.’ Paul took a sip of his drink, refusing to meet my eyes.

I got up from my chair and went over to him, tapped his outstretched legs with the rolled-up newspaper. ‘Move over.’ When he obliged, I sat down at the foot of the lounge chair and faced him. ‘People were being murdered, Paul. Somebody had to bring the sonofabitch who was doing it down.’

‘That’s why we have policemen, Hannah. It makes me crazy when you go off half-cocked like that.’

‘It seemed like a good idea at the time.’ I laid a hand on his leg, squeezed. ‘Besides, I don’t do it all that often.’

‘Oh yeah? How about the time you dressed up as a trophy wife and dragged your poor father along, forcing him to pretend he was a Texas oil millionaire?’

‘String tie and all, as I recall.’ I smiled, remembering how much Dad had enjoyed his part in bringing down the kingpin in a deadly life insurance scam.

‘Seems I’m living with a chameleon.’ Paul captured my hand, pressed it against his chest, closed his eyes against the last rays of the dying sun. ‘I know I should be used to it by now, but I worry about you, Hannah.’

I studied his face, thoroughly in love with every crease, line, and wrinkle, wondering how many of them I was directly responsible for, rather than, say, Mother Nature.

‘John Chandler’s coming on in twenty minutes,’ I reminded him, checking my watch.

Paul opened an eye. ‘“Come back. All is forgiven. Signed Lynx News?”’

‘Nope. CNN called and John Chandler answered. He’s got a new show. To The Limit premieres tonight.’

‘What’s that mean, To The Limit?’

‘Extremes of all kinds. Religion, politics, sports. Individuals who push the envelope in order to succeed.’

‘Can’t wait,’ Paul said, closing his eyes again. ‘Like extreme paintball?’

‘You’re making that up!’

‘I am not. Extreme paintballers are deadly serious individuals. Wannabe jihadists have trained at US paintball ranges.’

‘America, land of opportunity,’ I said. I reached out for my drink and polished it off. ‘Tonight Chandler’s taking on that whacko pastor in Florida who thought it’d be a brilliant idea to burn a Koran on the anniversary of 9/11.’

‘Well, I’m glad Chandler’s got work,’ Paul said. ‘What’s happening with Lilith?’

‘She’s still in Woolford, rebuilding.’

‘Her house or her life?’

‘Both, I think.’

‘And Chandler?’

‘His wife left him. Rather publicly as it turns out, via a press conference on the steps of the Congressional Country Club.’

‘Not a Stand-By-Your-Man kind of gal, huh?’

‘Not at all. According to Lilith, Dorothea Chandler’s been having a bit on the side with the tennis pro.’ I shrugged. ‘What’s good for the gander is good for the goose, apparently.’

‘My, my, my…’

We sat silently for a moment, watching the sun sink behind the wall that surrounds our garden. ‘When’s Hoffner’s trial?’ Paul wanted to know.

‘It’s scheduled to start in January.’

‘What about Nick?’

‘For once, he listened to his mother and hired a decent attorney, somebody who doesn’t have to advertise in the Yellow Pages. The DA tried charging Nick with blackmail, but couldn’t make it stick. The blackmail was Hoffner’s idea, not Nick’s. Nick just wanted Chandler to man up, admit to being his father.

‘As for obstruction of justice, what did Nick know? He was hovering near death in intensive care when Hoffner murdered Meredith. If you’d seen Nick after the accident, Paul.’ I shuddered. ‘Pass his picture around to the jury and – doink-doink – case dismissed. Nick’s testifying against Hoffner, though.’

‘One thing I’m curious about. Did Hoffner attack those other two girls?’

‘No, just Meredith Logan.’

Paul finished his Bloody Mary, then flipped his celery stalk into the shrubbery. ‘I thought the police were looking for a serial killer.’

‘That’s what the media said, not the police. The police knew all along that Meredith’s murder was the work of a different killer.’

‘And you know this, how?’

‘Dennis told me.’

Paul snorted. ‘I should have known. Can you be more specific?’

‘Nope. Dennis told me to hold my horses. It would all come out in the trial.’

Paul reached out and captured my hand. He squeezed it three times:

I

Love

You.

Still holding my hand, he asked, ‘Would you ever leave me for a tennis pro?’

‘You’re forgetting, Mr Ives. I don’t play tennis.’

‘So I’m safe.’

‘Perfectly.’ And I squeezed his hand three times, too.