Cause of Death (14 page)

"I can't let you do much for me." He cleared his throat.

"Right now especially. For pretty much the next year. This guy she's with likes money and knows I have some, you know, from my family. I don't want to lose everything."

"I don't see how you can, in light of what she's done."

"It's complicated. I have to be careful. I want my children to still care about me, to respect me." He looked at me and withdrew his hand. "You know how I feel. Please try to just leave it at that."

"Did you know about her in December, when we decided to stop- He interrupted me, "Yes. I knew."

"I see." My voice was tight. "I wish you could have told me. It might have made it easier."

"I don't think anything could have made it easier."

"Good night, Benton," I said as I got out of his car, and I did not turn around to watch him drive away.

Inside, Lucy was playing Melissa Etheridge, and I was glad my niece was here and that there was music in the house. I forced myself to not think about him, as if I could walk into a different room in my mind and lock him out.

Lucy was inside the kitchen, and I took my coat off and set my pocketbook on the counter.

"Everything okay?" She shut the refrigerator door with a shoulder and carried eggs to the sink.

"Actually, everything's pretty rotten," I said.

"What you need is something to eat, and as luck would have it, I'm cooking."

"Lucy"-I leaned against the counter--if someone is trying to disguise Eddings' death as an accident or suicide, then I can see how subsequent threats or intrigue concerning my Norfolk office might make sense. But why would threats have been made to any member of my staff in the past? Your deductive skills are good. You tell me."

She was beating egg whites into a bowl and thawing a bagel in the microwave. Her nonfat routines were depressing, and I did not know how she kept them up.

"You don't know that anyone was threatened in the past," she matter-of-factly said.

"I realize I don't know, at least not yet." I had begun making Viennese coffee. "But I'm simply trying to reason this out. I'm looking for a motive and coming up emptyhanded. Why don't you add a little onion, parsley and ground pepper to that? A pinch of salt can't hurt you, either.

"You want me to fix you one?" she asked as she whisked.

"I'm not very hungry. Maybe I'll eat soup later."

She glanced up at me. "Sorry everything's rotten."

I knew she referred to Wesley, and she knew I wasn't going to discuss him.

"Eddings' mother lives near here," I said. "I think I should talk to her."

"Tonight'? At the last minute?" The whisk lightly clicked against the sides of the bowl.

"She very well may want to talk tonight, at the last minute," I said. "She's been told her son is dead and not much more.

"Yeah," Lucy muttered. "Happy New Year."

Chapter
7

I DID NOT HAVE TO ASK ANYONE FOR A RESIDENTIAL LISTing or telephone number because the dead reporter's mother was the only Eddings with a Windsor Farms address. According to the city directory, she lived on the lovely tree-lined street of Sulgrave, which was well known for wealthy estates and the sixteenth-century manors called Virginia House and Agecroft that in the 1920s had been shipped from England in crates. The night was still young when I called, but she sounded as if she had been asleep.

"Mrs. Eddings?" I said, and I told her who I was.

"I'm afraid I drifted off." She sounded frightened. "I'm sitting in my living room watching TV. Goodness, I don't even know what's on now. It was My Brilliant Career on PBS. Have you seen that?"

"Mrs. Eddings," I said again, "I have questions about your son, Ted. I'm the medical examiner for his case. And I was hopeful we might talk. I live but a few blocks from YOU."

"Someone told me you did." Her thick Southern voice got thicker with tears. "That you lived close by."

"Would now be a convenient time?" I asked after a pause.

"Well, I would appreciate it very much. And my name is Elizabeth Glenn," she said as she began to cry.

I reached Marino at his home, where his television was turned up so high I did not know how he could hear anything else. He was on the other line and clearly did not want to keep whoever it was on hold.

"Sure, see what you can find out," he said when I told him what I was about to do. "Me, I'm up to my ass right now. Got a situation down in Mosby Court that could turn into a riot."

"That's all we need," I said.

"I'm on my way over there. Otherwise I'd go with you."

We hung up and I dressed for the weather because I did not have a car. Lucy was on the phone in my office, talking to Janet, I suspected, based on her intense demeanor and quiet tone. I waved from the hallway and indicated by pointing at my watch I'd be back in about an hour. As I left my house and started walking in the cold, wet dark my spirit began to crawl inside me like a creature trying to' hide. Coping with the loved ones tragedy leaves behind remained one of the cruelest features of my career.

Over the years, I had experienced a multitude of reactions ranging from my being turned into a scapegoat to families begging me to somehow make the death untrue. I had seen people weep, wall, rant, rage and not react in the least, and throughout I was always the physician, always appropriately dispassionate yet kind, for that was what I was trained to be.

My own responses had to be mine. Those moments no one saw, not even when I was married, when I became expert at covering moods or crying in the shower. I remembered breaking out in hives one year and telling Tony I was allergic to plants, shellfish, the sulfite in red wine. My former husband was so easy because he did not want to hear.

Windsor Farms was eerily still as I entered it from the back, near the river. Fog clung to Victorian iron lamps reminiscent of England, and although windows were lighted in most of the stately homes, it did not seem anyone was up or out. Leaves were like soggy paper on pavement, rain lightly smacking and beginning to freeze. It occurred to me that I had foolishly walked out of my house with no umbrella.

When I reached the Sulgrave address, it was familiar, for I knew the judge who lived next door and had been to many of his parties. Three-story brick, the Eddings home was Federal-style with paired end chimneys, arched dormer windows and an elliptical fanlight over the paneled front door. To the left of the entry porch was the same stone lion that had been standing guard for years. I climbed slick steps, and had to ring the bell twice before a voice sounded faintly on the other side of thick wood.

"It's Dr. Scarpetta," I answered, and the door slowly opened.

"I thought it would be you." An anxious face peered out as the space got wider. "Please come in and get warm.

It is a terrible night."

"It's getting very icy," I said as I stepped inside.

Mrs. Eddings was attractive in a well-bred, vain way, with refined features, and spun-white hair swept back from a high, smooth brow. She had dressed in a Black Watch suit and cashmere turtleneck sweater, as if she had been bravely receiving company all day. But her eyes could not hide her irrecoverable loss, and as she led me into the foyer, her gait was unsteady and I suspected she had been drinking.

"This is gorgeous," I said as she took my coat. "I've walked and driven past your house I don't know how many times and had no idea who lives here."

"And you live where?"

"Over there. Just west of Windsor Farms." I pointed.

"My house is new. In fact, I just moved in last fall."

"Oh yes, I know where you are." She closed the closet door and led me down a hall. "I know quite a number of people over there."

The gathering room she showed me was a museum of antique Persian rugs, Tiffany lamps and yew wood furniture in the style of Biedermeier. I sat on a black-upholstered couch that was lovely but stiff, and was already beginning to wonder how well mother had gotten along with son. The decors of both their dwellings painted portraits of people who could be stubborn and disconnected.

"Your son interviewed me a number of times," I began our conversation as we got seated.

"Oh, did he?" She tried to smile but her expression collapsed.

"I'm sorry. I know this is hard," I gently said as she tried to compose herself in her red leather chair. "Ted was someone I happened to like quite a lot. My staff liked him, too."

"Everyone likes Ted," she said. "From day one, he could charm. I remember the first big interview he got in Richmond." She stared into the fire, hands tightly clasped.

"It was with Governor Meadows, and I'm sure you remember him. Ted got him to talk when no one else could.

That was when everyone was saying the governor was using drugs and associating with immoral women."

"Oh, yes," I replied as if the same had never been said of other governors.

She stared off, her face distressed, and her hand trembled as she reached up to smooth her hair. "How could this happen? Oh Lord, how could he drown?"

"Mrs. Eddings, I don't think he did."

Startled, she stared at me with wide eyes. "Then what happened?"

"I'm not sure yet. There are tests to be done."

"What else could it be?" She began dabbing tears with a tissue. "The policeman who came to see me said it happened underwater. Ted was diving in the river with that contraption of his."

"There could be a number of possible causes," I answered. "A malfunction of the breathing apparatus he was using, for example. He could have been overcome by fumes. I don't know right this minute."

"I told him not to use that thing. I can't tell you how many times I begged him not to go off and dive with that thing."

"Then he had used it before."

"He loved to look for Civil War relics. He'd go diving almost anywhere with one of those metal detectors. I believe he found a few cannonballs in the James last year.

I'm surprised you didn't know. He's written several stories about his adventures."

"Generally, divers have a partner with them, a buddy," I said. "Do you know who he usually went with?"

"Well, he may have taken someone with him now and then. I really don't know because he didn't discuss his friends with me very much."

"Did he ever say anything to you about going diving in the Elizabeth River to look for Civil War relics?" I asked.

"I don't know anything about him going there. He never mentioned it to me. I thought he was coming here today."

She shut her eyes, brow furrowed, and her bosom deeply rose and fell as if there were not enough air in the room.

"What about these Civil War relics he collected?" I went on. "Do you know where he kept them?"

She did not respond.

"Mrs. Eddings," I went on, "we found nothing like that in his house. Not a single button, belt buckle or minis ball.

Nor did we find a metal detector."

She was silent, hands shaking as she clutched the tissue hard.

"It is very important that we establish what your son might have been doing at the Inactive Ship Yard in Chesapeake," I spoke to her again. "He was diving in a classified area around Navy decommissioned ships and no one seems to know why. It's hard to imagine he was looking for Civil War relics there."

She stared at the fire and in a distant voice said, "Ted goes through phases. Once he collected butterflies. When he was ten. Then he gave them all away and started collecting gems. I remember he would pan for gold in the oddest places and pluck up garnets from the roadside with a pair of tweezers. He went from that to coins, and those he mostly spent because the Coke machine doesn't care if the quarter's pure silver or not. Baseball cards, stamps, girls. He never kept anything long. He told me he likes journalism because it's never the same."

I listened as she tragically went on.

. "Why, I think he would have traded in his mother for a different one if that could have been arranged.- A tear slid down her cheek. "I know he must have gotten so bored with me."

"Too bored to accept your financial help, Mrs. Eddings?" I delicately said.

She lifted her chin. "Now I believe you're getting a bit too personal."

Yes, I am, and I regret that you have to be subjected to it. But I am a doctor, and right now, your son is my patient. It is my mission to do everything I can to determine what might have happened to him."

She took a deep, tremulous breath and fingered the top button of her jacket. I waited as she fought back tears.

"I sent him money every month. You know how inheritance taxes are, and Ted was accustomed to living beyond his means. I suppose his father and I are to blame." She could barely continue. "Life was not hard enough for my sons. I don't suppose life was very hard for me until Arthur passed on."

"What did your husband do?"

"He worked in tobacco. We met during the war when most of the world's cigarettes were made around here and you could find hardly a one, or stockings either."

Her reminiscing soothed her, and I did not interrupt.