All Things Undying

FIFTEEN

‘In the hierarchy of life forms on this, our earth, the British tabloid journalist lies somewhere between the hagfish and the dung beetle.’Tunku Varadarajan, www.Forbes.com, 2 February 2009

The next morning after breakfast, I nipped back upstairs and managed to catch the news on the tiny flat-screen television in our room. Susan’s death was still a major story, but there had been no progress on the case:‘Police have issued a fresh appeal for information leading to the identification of a hit-and-run driver who left a popular television personality dying on the North Embankment in Dartmouth, Devon, whilst walking her dog. Susan Parker, star of the television show, Dead Reckoning…’

The news reader went on and on, but didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know, so I switched the television off.

I was still sitting on the arm of an overstuffed chair, feeling that I ought to be doing something, but not knowing exactly what, when I felt Paul’s hand on my shoulder. ‘What we need, Hannah, is another medium.’

I managed to dredge up a smile. My husband, in his own backhanded way, was trying to be helpful. ‘Good idea, Paul, but from what I understand, Susan wasn’t on speaking terms with most of them in life, so I doubt she’d be dying to talk to them now.’ I caught my breath. I’d not intended to be punny.

If you’re lookin’ for the bloke what done me in, his name is Greg.

Susan had been joking when she said that, right? And yet, I found myself wondering where Greg Parker had been on Friday morning. Back home in California, presumably. Los Angeles, City of Angels. According to the CNN reporters hanging out at Heathrow Airport, Greg Parker would be stepping off a BA flight from Los Angeles – flying first class on Susan’s dime, no doubt – at any moment.

‘If Susan chooses to talk through a medium,’ Paul was saying when I tuned back in, ‘there’s no shortage of them about.’

Janet kept a pile of daily newspapers on a side table in the dining room. Paul had liberated a copy of the Daily Mirror – the only tabloid Janet would allow in the house – from under The Times and now he handed it to me. ‘Check this out.’

I scanned the headlines. Susan was already communicating with other mediums, it appeared:

Ghost Lady’s Ghost Speaks!

Medium Murder Message!

‘Well, they’re both fakes, we can be sure of that.’

Paul squeezed my shoulder. ‘Basingstoke,’ he whispered.

‘Exactly. When one of those charlatans comes up with the word Basingstoke, she’ll have my undivided attention.’

The following morning, I visited the police station and, once again, found it locked. I seriously swore, using the big F-word. To be fair, solving Susan’s hit-and-run was probably the highest priority on their blotter, so maybe they were all out hunting for Susan’s killer.

I followed the Dartmouth Chronicle, the local weekly. High crimes that week had included the theft of twenty pounds’ worth of groceries from an elderly lady while she was returning her trolley to its bay, and a woman who was evicted from her home for chronic ‘anti-social behavior’. Playing loud music day and night was a crime that paled in comparison with what had happened to my friend Susan, so I’m sure the police had their hands full.

There’s a newsagent on the corner near the boat float. On my way back to the B &B, I popped in and bought a copy of each of the tabloids – the Sun, the Mirror, the Mail, the Express, the Star. I do this at home on occasion, too, but for other reasons. Roll ’em up and tie ’em with a bow. Give them as gifts at office Christmas parties, or to patients in the hospital. Hours of entertaining fiction.

Back at our B &B, I went up to our room and spread the papers out on the bed.

As usual, sleaze was the story of the day. I learned who had been kicked out of the Big Brother house, what ailing actor hated his wife so much that he was divorcing her on his deathbed, and that Britney Spears was heading for rehab. Again.

‘What is this endless fascination with Tom, Katie and Suri Cruise?’ I muttered to Paul as I flipped through the pages of the Mirror. His lanky frame was sprawled on a chaise in the bay window, where he was editing the page proofs of his geometry textbook, Geometric Proof: From Abstract Thought to CGI.

‘Dunno.’ Clearly, he wasn’t paying attention.

If what I read in the Sun was true, competition for Susan’s ITV time slot was already heating up. Two episodes of Dead Reckoning, including the one we’d attended in Paignton, were already in the can, but after that, it’d be reruns from America, starting with Everybody Loves Raymond, temporarily filling Susan’s hour-long time slot. I thought that episodes of Medium, starring Patricia Arquette, might be more appropriate, but network executives weren’t beating down the door in the effort to consult me.

Perhaps they didn’t take counsel from mediums, either, so candidates were auditioning for the job in the press.

‘Look at this one, Paul!’ I folded my copy of the Mirror and held it up. ‘Natasha Madrid. If that isn’t a made-up name, I’ll eat my hat. And check out her getup!’

The last time I’d seen an outfit like that – white peasant blouse, flowered skirt, oversize gold hoop earrings, and heavy-handed eye make-up that would have made Tammy Faye Baker step back and say whoa!- it was being worn by a volunteer in the fortune-telling tent at the Stoke Fleming village fête. ‘You weel ween big prize,’ she had intoned. She was right about that, too. Hannah Ives, first place in the vegetable art competition for a herd of sheep assembled from cauliflower and black olives. But it didn’t take a fortune teller to suss that fortune out, just a visit to the competition tent.

The Mail, Express and Star had zeroed in on Greg, who was a fairly attractive guy, if surfer-boys or Nazi youth turn you on. Caught by the camera as he emerged from airport security, he was hatless, his sun-bleached hair cut in a retro buzz. Greg was shaped like a triangle, with broad shoulders and narrow hips, and for his debut on the world stage he had selected dark pants and a pale yellow polo shirt that displayed his biceps and pecs to advantage. I flipped from one tabloid to the other, thinking that the photos were so similar that the paparazzi must have snapped their shutters at precisely the same moment. Or maybe the papers were owned by the same company.

‘Greg Parker told the Sun that plans are in the works for a memorial service for his wife at Central Lutheran Church in downtown Minneapolis, sometime at the end of August,’ I read aloud.

From the chaise, Paul spoke up. ‘You think the WTL Guardians will approve of that?’

‘Who gives a flying fig what they think?’ I muttered.

Wait a minute. Back up, Hannah. Greg said ‘wife’.

The story in the Star also mentioned the memorial service, but in that article, Susan Parker was described as Greg’s ‘estranged wife’. Had their divorce not been final?

I got my answer by turning to the Express. ‘My wife and I were separated,’ Parker told a reporter. ‘Susan had filed for divorce, but I never stopped loving her, and had hoped for a reconciliation.’ Greg, pictured standing in front of a white stretch limo, was wearing a little-boy-lost expression that could melt ice at the polar caps. Women were probably already queuing up to comfort the poor, grieving widower.

‘Well, damn!’ I tossed the paper on the carpet. ‘It’s an epidemic. Everybody’s shading the truth!’ First Alison, and now Susan.

‘Chill, Hannah.’

I made a face. ‘I’ve never even met the guy, but I already dislike him.’

The Mail reported that Greg had been playing golf in Palm Springs when news of the accident reached him. As much as I wanted to pin Susan’s hit-and-run on the opportunistic so-in-so staring out at me from the front page of the Mirror, unless he could manage a round trip from Los Angeles to London and back at the speed of light, he had a rock-solid alibi. Or an accomplice.

Had one of Susan’s readings hit too close to home? In that case, suspects were legion. All they needed was a car. A dark car, I reminded myself. Either blue or gray. Maybe black. A Ford, or a Vauxhall, or a Fiat. Everybody in England seemed to drive a Ford, Vauxhall or Fiat. How do you spell ‘needle in a haystack’?