Cause of Death

12

Greenville Station is an old town that teeters between shabby and quaint, the proportion hovering around sixty/forty. For every bakery and bookstore and antique shop, there’s a dim former mill, a warehouse storing only dust, the eponymous train station, derelict and probably unused since the days of the steam locomotive. A pier juts into the dun Oneida River, which moves with some speed to a concrete dam that is about three feet high and serves no purpose that I can figure out.

I went to Edwards Mills because of the hugs-and-kisses receipt. I’ve come here because of the letter to Pax I opened last night.

The envelope contained two folded twenty-dollar bills. And a note on the letterhead of Greenville Station’s Main Street Inn, written in block printing.

The town is livelier than Edwards Mills so I have to park up the block from the inn. I’m sweating by the time I get there and enjoy stepping into the air conditioning. It’s an old place and I didn’t expect this refreshing level of cool. The cozy lobby is largely rose and white and polished mahogany. Old-time pen-and-ink drawings dot the walls, which are covered with paisley paper. The clerk, who strikes me as looking a bit like Edgar Allan Poe, nods.

“Hi,” I say.

“You interested in a room?”

“No. Just have a question or two.” I show him Pax’s picture. “You remember this guest? Ms. Addison.”

“Sure. She was doing some charity work around here, I think.”

“I know she wasn’t by herself.”

One of you two...

He looks at my wedding ring. He’s making deductions just like an Edgar Allan detective.

“Oh, hey, sir...”

This is the stuff of film noir. And he doesn’t want any part of it. I’m glad he hasn’t heard that Pax is dead. My appearance, coupled with that intelligence, could lead to an awkward moment or two. And might even result in a call to the police.

I debated putting the hundred-dollar bills — five of them — into an envelope. But dealing them out one by one on the counter seems more dramatic.

It certainly is effective.

They vanish into his pocket. “I don’t want any trouble.”

“No trouble. It’s all good. Was he white, over six feet, blond hair, good shape?”

“Yeah.”

“Sunglasses?”

“Aviator sort, you know.”

“Wearing a gray jacket?” Long shot, but I try.

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“How often did she stay here?”

“Every Thursday for the past three, four weeks. Sometimes Friday too.”

“And he was with her that whole time?”

“I really couldn’t tell you.”

“What I’m interested in is a name and address.”

“Mister, really, I don’t have a name. He wasn’t registered. We don’t have a bar or restaurant, so there’s no credit card records.”

“Anything else you can recall about him?”

I believe I’m starting to lose my witness. But remain silent and simply gaze into his eyes. He looks away. “A tattoo. On his inside wrist.”

“What was it of?”

“A leaf.”

I pull out my phone and download a picture of a ginkgo leaf. It’s a drawing and could have been the model for the tat on my wife’s ankle, the second printout the medical examiner offered as he sat bent forward beside the plastic flowers.

“Yeah. That was it.” He pauses and his buyability has expired. “That’s all I’m doing for you.” He’s defiant.

I look him over. He’s telling the truth, I decide. Professors are forever investigating students’ possible plagiarism and cheating; we learn the body language of deceit early in our careers.

I thank him and walk outside, leaving him with a juicy story for his wife over a very nice dinner that I just paid for.

In the car, I fluff my polo shirt, sweat stained, and crank the AC up high. Then press my head back into the rest, digesting the news.

Thinking of the Man in Gray...

And, to my shock, with that thought, I see him.

Ahead of me an ice cream delivery truck has pulled from the curb into traffic, revealing the black car. He’s in the driver’s seat, his distinctive sunglasses pointed toward me. He’s followed me here — all the way from Dover Hills. So he was the one I spotted.

The man seems to freeze in a way that suggests he’s as surprised as I am by this chance stare-down.

He pulls into the traffic quickly, without signaling, cutting another vehicle off. I snap the seat belt on. It takes me a minute to extricate the SUV from the tight parking space. Then I hit the gas. The limit is twenty-five here, in town. Spotting no police, though, I nudge up to forty, then fifty, swerving around somebody in a no-passing zone. Stupid. But no sirens ensue.

Soon I’ve left the town and the speed limit rises to forty-five, or, for me, sixty.

In the distance I see a vehicle. I think it’s black. It has to be him. I hit seventy.

In a quarter mile I drive up a rise and at the crest I find empty road ahead of me, no cars at all. I slow at an intersection, where a cluster of people are out for a stroll. There’s a bearded man who might be a slim Santa Claus with wild hair and beard and rosy cheeks. A portly man is with him, wearing a suit with a clerical collar. A pregnant woman with braided hair and wearing a lumpy brown dress is walking a Labrador retriever.

I pull up. “Excuse me?”

They turn.

“There was a black sedan just went by here. He backed into my car in the parking lot and took off. Did you see him?”

The trio regard one another. The reverend says, “I’m sorry that happened, sir. No excuse for that. Well, there was a car. But I didn’t pay it any mind.”

The woman: “It was going fast, too fast, I thought. Dark. Might’ve been black.”

Skinny Santa offers, “This road takes you to the interstate. I’ll bet he’s headed that way. You know, get lost in traffic. You call the police?”

“I wanted to get his plate first.” The improvisation is coming easily.

I thank them and pull into the road, heading for the highway myself, though now only five miles over the limit.

At seven that evening I’m back home.

I’m surprised neither Terry Garner nor Detective Bragg has called. Maybe they’re leaning toward the conclusion that my theory is nonsense.

Deer and skid marks...

I put the law enforcers out of my mind and go back into Pax’s office.

On a mission. I am going to find the identity of my wife’s lover.

The burner phone is locked, her iPhone and computer are gone. He, of course, stole them to eliminate any evidence of their connection. So, I’ll do my historian detective work the old-fashioned way. Paperwork. I’ll find a letter, a present with a gift enclosure, a Post-it with his name.

My book on methods of historical research explains the technique I follow. I look at each minute of history, rather than eras, avoiding drab, dreaded generalities. Micro, not macro. You can talk about the “Balkan unrest” leading to the carnage of the First World War, and not be wrong. But I would rather point out that at 11:15 a.m., June 28, 1914, in the Romanesque city of Sarajevo, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was alive, and at 11:30 a.m. he was dead, felled by the assassin Gavrilo Princip, who used a Belgium-made .380 semiautomatic pistol. And you then look at each of the dominoes that fell, one after the other, day by day, until the first cannon shot of the war was fired at Port Phillip Heads, Melbourne, Australia, August 5, 1914.

I am taking this minute-by-minute approach now. Carefully examining each item in Pax’s office, not letting a single sentence, phrase, photo or doodle slip by without my considering it.

Sometimes it’s dreadfully dull. Sometimes you come across a gem.

As tonight. After four hours I find the photograph.

It’s an old one — six or seven years. In the center of the image is my wife. Her smile is broad and not belittled by her downturned Lady of the Lowlands eyes. Next to her, his arm around her shoulders, is the Man in Gray, though here he wears a black knit shirt and tan slacks. And most helpful, from the analytical, minute-by-minute historian’s point of view, is one other fact: that the third person in the photo is Janet Addison, Pax’s younger sister.