In Death's Shadow

CHAPTER SIX

In the days immediately following my first marathon, I ran another marathon… of sorts. I vacuumed the house; paid the bills; tossed out my jogging shoes and bought a new pair, on-line, from LadyFootLocker.com; sanded and repainted the patio table in a color grandly named "manor green"; and helped Paul get ready for another famous race, this one from Annapolis, Maryland, to Newport, Rhode Island. On a sailboat. Following a gala reception on Friday evening, Paul would step aboard Northern Lights with the rest of her crew, making sure every sail, halyard, sheet, line, and cleat on the old Pearson 37 was shipshape and ready for a perfect getaway when the starter's pistol sounded in Annapolis Harbor on Saturday at noon.

Wednesday morning I was down in the basement up to my eyebrows in laundry, doing my part, when Paul materialized behind me. "Do I have any clean underwear?"

I'd been rooting for a stray sock in the dryer and bumped my head on the way out. "Ouch!"

"Sorry, love."

I stood up, rubbing my head. "That's okay. I'll live."

"I'm packing and couldn't find any underwear."

"That's because it's all down here." I handed him a laundry basket. "Sort away."

Paul's idea of sorting was to paw through the basket and select items he recognized, leaving the rest-my permanent press slacks and knit tops, for example-in a tangled heap. I watched him lay waste to three basketsful before asking, "Do you need a duffel bag?"

"No. Just a pillowcase."

I rummaged through a basket on the dryer and came up with three. "Which do you want? Laura Ashley, Ralph Lauren, or Bart Simpson?"

He added a neatly folded T-shirt to his pile, rested a paternal hand on top, looked down at me and smiled. "Ralph, I think."

"Ah-ha," I said, handing it to him. "Designer luggage."

I watched with amusement as Paul slid three piles of clothing into the pillowcase, gathered up the open end and swung the pillowcase over his shoulder like a buccaneer, making off with his plunder. Sailor's luggage. A matter of pride with my husband. Anything that wouldn't fit into a pillowcase stayed home.

To tell the truth, I was missing him already. The house seemed so vast and empty when Paul was away, so I'd made plans to keep busy. There was my project at St. John's, of course. And shopping for drapery fabric with Emily. I might even take in a movie or three.

I'd gotten in touch with Valerie, too, confirming my promise to join her on Thursday for a run through the park, followed by lunch at Domino's. It'd be missionary work for Valerie, of course. She'd have to gear down, for one thing, running with me, like driving 40 in a 65 mph zone. As soon as they were posted, I'd checked the race results online. Valerie's time had been truly amazing: 212th in the twenty to twenty-nine age group. I was an embarrassing 1,394th in mine.

After Paul and his pillowcase set out for the Academy, I headed over to the St. John's College library, where I was wrapping up a long-term project organizing and cataloging the extensive collection of the famous mystery writer, L.K. Bromley. The author, a sprightly eighty-something whose real name was Nadine Smith Gray, had retired several years ago to Ginger Cove, an upscale retirement community just outside Annapolis. Since I began working on her collection, we'd become friends.

Presently I was tasked with tracking down Mrs. Bromley's short stories-most of which had appeared in Collier's and The Saturday Evening Post during the fifties and sixties-with the aim of reissuing them in a single volume. Working through Mrs. Bromley's literary agent, a taciturn New Yorker with a smoker's cough whose clients had mostly predeceased him, we'd identified several publishers, and he was now pressuring me for a proposal.

It had been slow going. We didn't have a title, for one thing. When I'd brought this up the last time we met for lunch, Mrs. Bromley had promised to think about it and get back to me. I was still waiting.

I grabbed a cup of coffee in the staff area of the library, then retreated to the quiet room at the southeast corner of the main floor that served as my office. Since she hadn't called me, I would call her.

"How about that title?" I asked the author after the usual pleasantries.

Mrs. Bromley moaned. "I'm simply no good with titles, Hannah. It's a sad, sad truth, but my publishers always picked them for me."

"There's a review here somewhere," I said. "It describes you as… just a minute." I scrabbled around in the folder marked Reviews. "Ah, here it is. 'She is the consummate wordsmith,'" I read, "'whose writing style always has touches of poetry even when her subject is greed, power, murder, and retribution-and, as in Death Be Not Proud, the story of one woman's search for justice.'" I paused. "I am so disillusioned!"

Mrs. Bromley laughed. "How about 'The Collected Short Stories of L. K. Bromley,' then?"

"Borrrrrr-ing!" I paused for a moment. "You are a writer," I chided. "Words are your business."

"They've dried up, I'm afraid. When I traded in my pen for a paintbrush, Hannah, something happened. I'm having a hard time even remembering names."

"They say the proper nouns are the first to go," I chirped, regretting the words the instant they fell out of my mouth.

"That's supposed to be reassuring?" She chuckled, so I knew she hadn't taken it the wrong way. "So, Hannah, what do 'they' say about looking at your wristwatch and calling it a clock. I did that yesterday." She sighed. "Even the common nouns are deserting me. Discouraging."

"Noun deficiency anemia?" I quipped.

She laughed. "Yes, you might say that. Perhaps I should take up crossword puzzles. Use it or lose it, you know."

I doubted Mrs. Bromley had time for crossword puzzles. For the past year she'd been teaching art classes at Anne Arundel Community College three days a week. This semester, I knew, it was watercolors. Her students adored her.

"Okay, Mrs. B. Let's use it," I prodded. "First, I think we've got enough stories for two collections. Thirteen stories each."

"Really?" she said. "I'm amazed I wrote that many."

"More," I told her. "This is just the cream of the crop."

We batted titles around for a while, each more ridiculous than the last, before settling on "Maryland Is Murder" and "Chesapeake Crimes," the Collected Short Stories of L. K. Bromley, Volumes One and Two, respectively. We laughed, agreeing that the publisher would probably change the title anyway, to something more sexy, like "Bra Full of Bullets," and put a cartoon of a French maid blowing smoke off a revolver on the cover, but at least I'd checked one more thing off my To Do list.

Around four o'clock I took a break and brewed myself a cup of tea. Tina, the student aide, had just brought a copy of The Capital into the staff lounge. She checked the show times for movies at Annapolis Mall, then slid the newspaper toward me across the table.

Sipping my tea, I scanned the headlines. I don't know why I bothered. The SARS epidemic was still raging in the Far East, U.S. and British forces were still under fire in Iraq. Construction was still tying up traffic on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Depressing. With my cup to my lips, I turned the pages, checking the local news, gradually making my way back to the Letters to the Editor, which in our town were usually good for a laugh.

Since my recovery, I didn't normally read the obituaries. Too depressing, like Iraq. Three years to live, I'd think, if the deceased were older than me or, Whoops, should have been dead five years ago, if not. I hadn't any intention of reading the obituaries that day, either, but while skimming an article about a brave local dog that had lost his leg to cancer, a picture halfway down the right-hand side of the page caught my eye. A woman who looked a lot like Valerie Stone. Fuller face, though, and longer hair.

I stared at the picture, hard. I set my cup down unsteadily, sloshing hot tea all over the table. It looks like Valerie Stone because it is Valerie Stone, you idiot! I started to hyperventilate.

No, I told myself. It can't be Valerie. You just talked to her!

I folded the paper until I was staring at the headlines again. I counted slowly to ten, breathing deeply. Maybe I'd dreamed it.

But when I opened the paper to the obituaries again, there she was: Valerie Padgett Stone. On Monday, June 9, after a long battle with cancer. There was more, of course, about her father, the Honorable Fletcher J. Padgett of Saddle River, New Jersey. About the family receiving visitors on Friday at Kramer's Funeral Home. Something about in lieu of flowers that seemed to separate into individual letters that swam around the page, rearranging themselves like Scrabble tiles until they lost all meaning.

I blinked, eyes dry, too stunned, I think, to cry. Valerie can't be dead! We're going running tomorrow! I pictured Valerie as I'd seen her on Saturday, smiling at me and waving from the doorway of her beautiful new home, holding Miranda, who was sound asleep, in her arms.

Not Valerie, who could run a mile in six minutes flat. Not Valerie with her yoga-in-the-morning-Pilates-in-the-afternoon body. Not Valerie. No way. Valerie was in perfect health.

Still in denial, I scurried to my office and dug my cell phone out of my purse. I stared at the buttons for a while, then paged through my phone book until VAL-CELL appeared in the lighted window. I'll call her, I thought. She'll pick up.

But deep down I knew she wouldn't. I threw myself into my chair and dialed Paul at his office instead. It wasn't until I heard his cheerful voice saying "Ives" that I came completely unglued. "Valerie died!"

"What? Hannah, calm down! I can't understand a word you're saying."

"It's Valerie!" I sobbed. "Valerie Stone is dead."