Sing It to Her Bones

9

I raided Connie’s medicine cabinet that night-slim pickings, I can tell you-rooting through leftover vials of prescription medication that had been lying around since the Nixon administration. My hopes were raised when I discovered a brown plastic container labeled “Percocet” hidden behind a blue jar that might once have held Noxzema, but with the exception of some telltale dust at the bottom, the Percocet container was empty. I fought the urge to dip into it with a wet finger. I had to settle for a nearly empty bottle of aspirin that had expired in 1995. Praying that vintage aspirin wouldn’t kill me, I swallowed three tablets with a swig of bottled water and two hours later took three more, which turned down the fire in my chest until 4:00 A.M., when the tablets ran out. This allowed me to lie uncomfortably awake, watching the numerals on the digital clock flip over one by one while I rehearsed what I was going to say when I telephoned Paul in the morning.

How is it, I wondered later, that a plan with such good intentions could go so terribly wrong? In the hour or so before dawn, I had carefully worked out my she-said-he-said scenario, but once on the telephone with my husband, the conversation galloped off in directions I hadn’t anticipated.

– I said I was coming home.

– He said I wasn’t.

– I said I was, too.

– He said he didn’t want me there.

– I said I didn’t care whether he wanted me there or not. As his wife I would be standing with him the next time the press showed up.

– He said there wouldn’t be a next time. He was going away.

– I said well, thanks very much for telling me and why couldn’t he come away to the farm?

– He said it was too close to Annapolis. They’d find him.

– I said well, where then?

– He said he didn’t know where just yet, but away.

Things rapidly deteriorated after that. We didn’t stoop to hurling insults at one another like “So’s your old man!” or “Your mother swims after troopships!” but it was close. I hung up, deeply regretting that I had called and so pissed off that I forgot to tell him about falling overboard.

Connie, who had overheard the last part of this heated discussion, silently handed me a glass of orange juice.

I sipped it gratefully. “Now he’s mad at me. He said he doesn’t want me to come home.”

“So I gathered.”

“I feel so useless, Connie. I want to help, but I don’t know how. Everything I suggest, he shoots down.”

“Paul knows how stubborn you can be, Hannah, and he wants to protect you. I’m sure he’s doing what he thinks is best-for him as well as for you. I think you’re just going to have to trust him on this.”

I watched Connie crack three eggs into a bowl, using one hand, and tried to imagine what it would be like living under the constant scrutiny of the press. I would be looking for a job soon. I had classifieds to read. Letters to write. Phone calls to make. I decided that appearing on the nightly news wouldn’t look good on my résumé. When Connie started beating the eggs furiously with a fork, I said, “I have to confess that it’s a relief in a way that Paul doesn’t think I’m needed at home. I don’t picture myself as the type of woman who gazes adoringly at her man while he’s being grilled on 60 Minutes about his sex life. I guess I just wanted to be given the opportunity to try.”

Connie poured the eggs into a cast-iron skillet that had been heating on the stove. “You sound like you don’t believe him!”

“You want the truth? At this point I’m so tired and sore that I don’t know what to believe.”

Connie checked her spatula in mid-stir and turned her cool green eyes on me. “I’ve known Paul far longer than you have, Hannah, and if there’s one thing I would stake my life on, it’s his fidelity. He would never cheat on you. Never!”

During this conversation I had been sitting at the kitchen table, busily folding and refolding my napkin. Connie’s attempt to pull rank on me stung. While she stirred the eggs, I sulked, trying to think of a good excuse to get out of the house. I didn’t want to think about Paul today; the wound was too fresh. I wanted to go into town and talk with Angie about her argument with Chip. But Connie was in one of her bossy, mother hen moods, and she’d probably insist that I stay home and take it easy.

When I had coaxed the napkin into a shape like a duck, I propped it up against my plate. I decided to ignore my bad mood and try the direct approach. “Honestly, Connie, your medicine cabinet is pathetic! You have dried-up Dippity-Do dating back to the Flood, but no decent drugs. After breakfast I’m driving into town to pick up something a little stronger than aspirin. And Ellie will give me a cold beer to take it with and won’t even mention that it’s not yet lunchtime.”

Connie popped some bread into the toaster. “I hate to burst your bubble, Hannah, my love, but Ellie doesn’t sell beer.”

“Pooh! Iced tea then. And I’d like to talk to Angie. Do you think she’ll be there?”

“She almost always is. I doubt the poor creature has any place else to go,” Connie said pleasantly. I couldn’t believe she wasn’t giving me grief about my plan. Maybe I was getting on her nerves, too.

After a plate of Connie’s excellent scrambled eggs-not too wet, not too dry-I cranked up the car, told a droop-tailed, disappointed Colonel that he couldn’t go with me, and headed into town.

Ellie’s Country Store had just opened. Through the screen door I could see Bill Taylor moving a broom around, sweeping dust between the cracks of the old hardwood floor. A bell attached to the top of the door jangled when I entered. Bill looked up.

“Hi, Bill. What do you have in the way of painkillers? I pulled a muscle in my, uh, arm yesterday.” I didn’t feel much like discussing my medical history with him.

“Gee, Mrs. Ives. Sorry to hear that. How’d it happen?”

“Carelessness, I guess. I fell overboard.”

He pointed to a shelf marked “Sundries.” “Take a look over there. Heard you’d gone sailing after the funeral.”

“Pretty dumb idea, huh?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I would have preferred it to cleaning up after the reception.” He pushed the broom forward another six inches or so. “Story of my life.” He sighed and continued sweeping. “After the University of Maryland I worked for Hal a bit, back when he and his dad still built boats. Old Mr. Calvert taught me everything I know about woodworking.” He paused and propped the broom against a nearby shelf. “But nobody builds boats like that anymore. It’s all molded fiberglass now.”

It seemed to me that a sizable teak tree had been sacrificed to construct the handsome cabin and provide the exterior trim on Sea Song, but I didn’t mention it. “And after that?”

Bill straightened the canned soup display. “After that I worked as a computer programmer for the army down at Fort Belvoir in Virginia, but I quit about a year ago, so I could write full-time.”

“Oh? What are you writing, Bill?”

“A novel.”

“That’s ambitious.”

“I figured I wasn’t getting any younger. I’m almost finished with the first draft.”

“What’s it about?”

“It’s a suspense thriller. Like, John Grisham meets Stephen King.”

“What happens? A lawyer goes berserk and starts eating his clients?”

Bill didn’t laugh and looked so serious that I was almost sorry I teased him. “Oh, no! All this guy’s family starts disappearing without a trace, so naturally the police are suspicious, and so he hires this lawyer to defend him. It’s called Vanished.”

How could I tell him that Fletcher Knebel had beaten him to that title twenty-some years ago? “Sounds promising,” I lied. I didn’t think Vanished would find its way onto my towering bedside pile of to-be-reads anytime soon.

“Thanks.” He resumed sweeping.

I couldn’t resist. “Danny DeVito in the lead and Harrison Ford as the lawyer.”

“I wish,” Bill mumbled.

I looked over the shelf he had indicated, where a limited selection of pain relievers was flanked by laundry powders and dish soap on the one side and notebook paper and Magic Markers on the other. I ticked them off: “Bayer, Advil, Tylenol. What I really need, Bill, is some good drugs.”

Behind me the sound of sweeping stopped abruptly. I turned to smile at him. “Just kidding. I think!”

I had selected a bottle of Motrin and pulled a bottle of iced tea out of the cooler to take it with when Ellie suddenly appeared from the direction of the kitchen. “Poor you! Hal was in earlier and told me about the accident. How are you feeling?”

“Not too bad. It walks. It talks. I think I’ll live.” I opened the bottle of Motrin-damn thing was sealed up like Fort Knox-pulled out the cotton wadding, and tipped two tablets into my palm. I swallowed them with the tea. “Ugh!”

“Excuse me for butting in, Hannah, but I think you should see a doctor.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Look, Dr. Chase’s office opens in just ten minutes. It’s only a few doors down. He probably won’t charge you more than twenty-five dollars or so.”

“It’s not the money I’m worried about. I just don’t want to waste his time.” I rotated my shoulder to demonstrate how nearly cured I was, then winced and sucked air in through my teeth as a hot arrow of pain shot down my arm. Ellie gave me an I-told-you-so look.

“Your argument is persuasive.” I pushed the tablets toward her on the counter and saluted with my half-empty drink bottle. “I’ll just get these, then, and head on over to the good doctor’s.”

Ellie patted my hand and yelled toward the kitchen. “Angie! I need you out here!” She turned back to me. “Sorry. I’ve got the UPS guy coming in five minutes. Angie’ll take care of you. Gotta run.” She disappeared in back.

Almost immediately Angie appeared, wearing a chef’s apron over a pink V-neck T-shirt and a faded denim skirt. Tennis socks the same hot pink as her shirt peeked out over the tops of her tennis shoes. “Oh, hi, Mrs. Ives.” She raised a hinged section of the counter and squeezed through the narrow opening.

“Please call me Hannah. Between you and Bill here, this Mrs. Ives business is making me feel ancient.”

“I’ll try to remember that.”

While Angie tapped the amount of my purchase into the cash register, I tried to figure out exactly what I was going to say. “Angie, could I talk to you for a minute? In private?”

She had bent over to search for a paper bag. Her head popped halfway up over the counter so I could see only small dark eyes and luxurious eyebrows with a deepening furrow in between. “I guess so. Why?”

“I just wanted to ask you a question.” Angie straightened and was staring at me now. “A question about Katie.”

She accepted my money, made a long job of counting out my change, then closed the cash drawer with a firm shove with the palm of her hand. From the body language, I expected her to clam up, tell me to mind my own business. Instead, she leaned back against her stool. “You know, after Katie disappeared, a lot of years went by before one day I stopped to realize that I had actually gone through a whole day without thinking about her even once. But now, now I just can’t stop thinking about her!”

I was aware of Bill busily sweeping next to the nearby rack of candy bars, practically breathing down my neck. “I know that, Angie, and I’m really sorry.” I waited until Bill moved around to the other side of the shelves before asking. “Can we go out on the porch?”

“I guess so. Mom!” Ellie’s head appeared from behind the UPS counter. “I’m stepping outside with Hannah. Be back in a minute. Do you mind?”

Ellie, a piece of packing tape clamped firmly between her teeth, simply waved a limp hand.

I followed Angie’s broad, swaying hips as she pulled open the screen door and passed through. I caught the door with my hand so that it didn’t slam shut behind me. Angie pulled a paper towel from the pocket of her apron and used it to wipe the dust off a slatted wooden chair, then eased her ample bottom into it as the chair loudly complained. I sat on the end of a wooden bench and faced her.

“Angie, when we talked yesterday at the funeral, you claimed you barely knew Chip. But I saw you afterward, walking down High Street with him and the other basketball players.”

“Oh, that. That wasn’t anything. They were just going my way.”

I knew that Angie and her mother lived behind the store, the opposite direction from where Chip and the Wildcats had been headed, so I tried to remember what else was out on the road toward the high school. The fire station for sure. The Royal Farms store. But nothing had been on fire, and she’d certainly had plenty to eat and drink at the reception. The library then? Angie didn’t seem the type to pass her days in the stacks. While I thought, Angie sat fidgeting with the paper towel, twisting it into a corkscrew and weaving the results around the fingers of her left hand. “Angie, I’m not going to beat around the bush here. When I saw you with Chip, it looked very much like you two were having an argument.”

Angie shrugged and glanced away. “It wasn’t an argument, Hannah.”

“You could have fooled me. You were shouting so loudly I could hear your voice all the way from here.” Angie stared at the bank across the street where a short queue was waiting to use the ATM. A teardrop materialized in the corner of her eye, and I suddenly felt sorry for her. I touched Angie’s hand where it lay, restless on her knee. “Tell me what you and Chip were arguing about, Angie.”

She pressed her full lips firmly together and shook her head, like a stubborn and unhappy child. Two big tears coursed down her pale cheeks. “Angie,” I said. She turned her head to look at me then, her face a mask of misery.

“I promised Katie I wouldn’t tell. Ever.”

“But Katie’s dead, Angie. Surely the secret can’t matter now.”

“It matters to me.” Her body sagged. “At first I thought she’d just run away and that she’d come back. Even after all these years with no word, I thought she’d come back. I expected her to walk into the store with that funny, lopsided smile of hers and say, ‘Hey, Ange. Guess who?’ But now she’s dead, and it’s all Chip’s fault.” Her shoulders shook as she sobbed.

“But the police talked to Chip, Angie. Don’t you think they’d have arrested him by now if they thought he had anything to do with Katie’s death?”

“Maybe they would have if they knew what I know.”

“Angie, if you have information that would help the police find out who murdered Katie, you shouldn’t be keeping it to yourself.”

Her face was red now, bloated and unattractive. Between her plump cheeks and swollen eyelids the tiny eyes she turned in my direction had nearly disappeared. “Even if it would hurt Katie?”

“There’s nothing anybody can do anymore to hurt Katie.”

Angie seemed to have reached a decision. She untwisted the paper towel and used it to wipe her eyes and blow her nose. “You’re right, Hannah. I was mad at Chip. I was absolutely furious with him. You see, it’s all his fault that Katie’s dead.”

“What do you mean?”

“A couple of nights before the prom Katie came over to my house all excited. She dragged me into my bedroom and shut the door. Then she told me that she was pregnant. It blew my mind! She said that Chip was the father!” Angie threw both her hands into the air. “How can he deny it, Hannah? Yesterday he looked me straight in the face and denied ever having sex with Katie.” She leaned her head back against the chair and blew a slow stream of air out through her lips. “And I certainly know that wasn’t true! Katie told me everything!”

“So she was having sex with Chip?”

“Like rabbits. In his car, in the locker room after school. He was crazy about her.”

“But wouldn’t she have used some sort of birth control?”

“Katie told me that Chip used a condom, but it broke.”

I sat in silence, digesting this bit of news. I thought about what Chip had told Dennis. It made me wonder if Katie had made up the story about the baby. Somebody was lying, that was for sure.

“She wanted the baby, you know. You should have seen her at the dance, Hannah. Her feet were so far off the ground… she was so happy!” Angie pressed her hands together and giggled. “Katie told me in the rest room that she was sure that when she told Chip about the baby, he would be happy about it, too. She knew he would marry her. But then she disappeared and-”

“And you thought something had gone wrong with her plans?”

“I thought Chip had refused to marry her and that she’d decided to run away and have the baby on her own. Put it up for adoption, maybe. I thought she’d come back after that. I always thought she’d come back.”

“And now? What do you think now, Angie?”

“I don’t know! I think Chip’s lying through his teeth! He claims he didn’t have anything to do with any baby. He says Katie never said one word to him about being pregnant, and if she was pregnant, it certainly wasn’t with his child!” Angie’s balled-up fists pounded on the arms of her chair. “All that religion! All that ‘Thou shalt not’ crap. What a crock! So I hit him and kept hitting him until David Wilson made me stop. He grabbed my hands… oh, they all thought that was so funny. They just laughed and laughed. Jerks!”

“Angie, you need to tell Lieutenant Rutherford what you just told me.” Angie’s head drooped, and she whispered something into her lap. “Angie…”

She looked up at me sideways through dark lashes glistening with tears. “But then he’ll know that I lied to him when he interviewed me the other day.”

“If you don’t tell, he’s going to find out anyway.”

She played with her ring, a star sapphire set in gold, twisting it around and around her finger with her thumb.

“Angie?”

“Okay. I’ll call him.”

I wasn’t entirely convinced. It was like reasoning with a child. “Call him right now, Angie.”

“I’ll need to tell Mom first. Then I’ll tell the police.” She stood up and extended a hand. “I promise. And thanks, Hannah. You can’t imagine what a relief it is to get this off my chest. You’re so much easier to talk to than my mom. I’d give you a hug, but-” She nodded toward my injured arm.

“Oh, that!” I shrugged. “I’m heading over to Dr. Chase’s in a few minutes. I’m sure he’ll fix me up as good as new.” The Motrin had kicked in and was taking the edge off, but I found myself very much looking forward to my visit with the doctor. I could kill two birds with one stone; maybe Dr. Chase could ease the discomfort in my body as well as in my mind. After my conversation with Angie, I had something very important I needed to ask him.