6
August 12
The Following Sunday
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ouise paced around the living room of the rented beach house, not hungry, for she'd already snacked on cheese crackers and ginger ale, and not sleepy, because she'd napped. She was bored, sated with vacation. She went out on the big wraparound porch and balked for a moment as she stared into pitch darkness. Out there was a lovely white sand beach and beyond it, the world's second largest ocean. Then Europe. But who knew what dangers were on that beach? Normally, she would have fearlessly set out for a walk in bare feet, daring the waves to wash over them. But recent events had spooked her, and she was afraid of darkness.
Seven days at the beach was quite enough for her, but Bill and the girls were still enjoying themselves. They'd all had a new burst of enthusiasm since their twenty-year-old, Martha, had flown home from Chicago and then caught a ride to Rehoboth to join the family.
Louise went back into the living room, catching a glimpse of herself in an old mirror tacked to the door, noting that her arms and her long, bare legs in shorts were a rich brown. Martha, also a brunette, would look like her mother in a matter of days. Bill and Janie, being blond, had turned golden brown. A few more days here and they would all be overexposed to ultraviolet rays. At the moment, Bill and the two girls were out on an overnight charter fishing trip. When Louise announced that she wouldn't join them, Bill had looked down at her with concern. “That's okay, if you still want to be alone. And I know you'll be safe here. But remember, you have to get back to the real world eventually. I have to return to Vienna soon, and you'll soon be due back at the studio.”
He was right. Bill would continue his work with the International Atomic Energy Agency, and in two weeks, she'd be on location for one of her television garden shows. Though it was only a two-day trip to the Philadelphia Botanical Gardens, it took lots of prep. And she was behind. She hadn't consulted with the associate producer about logistics yet or even read the script. She shook her long hair, as if trying to shake away the demons of paranoia, but her darkest fear was that if she didn't watch out, her producer, Marty Corbin, might decide that her coanchor, John Bachelder, should take a larger role in the show. She should be spending her vacation time reviewing the script. But she'd left it on the Winthrop desk in their living room in Sylvan Valley.
The thought propelled Louise to grab her purse and take the car keys off a utility shelf in the kitchen. As she stepped outside the beach house and locked the door, she looked at the clear sky with its half-moon and stars shining down on her and saw that it would be a great night for a two-hour road trip.
Nevertheless, she dodged from bush to bush in the scrub-filled yard, like a soldier eluding enemy bullets, as she made her way to the safety of Bill's Camry. A girl couldn't be too careful.
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With Caetano Veloso singing in the background, Louise found it a soothing drive back to Washington. There was enough traffic through the pastoral country so that she wasn't afraid, and then she stopped at a crab place, still open at ten-thirty, where she ate two large crabs with butter and vinegar and drank an iced tea. It was an unusual but pleasant experience. Eating alone was something she rarely did. In fact, taking a trip longer than fifty miles without her husband was something she rarely did. But crabs were one of her favorite foods. Messy, but she hardly cared what happened to the old sweatshirt and shorts she wore. She rounded the Beltway and, feeling like a horse anxious to return to the barn, hurried the twelve miles straight south on the George Washington Parkway to her home.
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Her trepidation increased as she pulled into Sylvan Valley. The houses were all dark except for the gleam of a dim light through an occasional window and a few backyard floodlights. Still, the night was quiet, and things seemed safe. She focused on the routine of taking the keys out of the ignition and opening and closing the car door, details to fill her mind so she wouldn't think of Peter Hoffman.
Louise went into the house and walked straight to the Winthrop desk. She found the script as she'd left it, on top of a pile of perfectly stacked papers. She was nothing if not neat. Her gaze wandered out through the tall dining room window that she had shattered with her misfired pitcher. In the family's absence, the big pane had been replaced by a glass company. She saw it needed touch-up cleaning to remove the fingerprints of the workmen. Not wanting it in that condition when they returned from vacation, she found her bottle of window cleaner and a rag and rubbed the inside pane until it was spotless.
Her gaze reluctantly turned outward toward the garden, and she could feel her heartbeat quicken. She didn't want to admit that she was scared to walk into her own yard.
“Come on, scaredy-cat,” she told herself, and walked over and turned on the patio light. Nothing out there but a lot of innocent-looking garden furniture and her beguiling patio garden filled with peonies, astilbe, cimicifuga and daylilies. Breathing hard, she unlocked the door, went out just a few steps and, keeping her eyes forward, cleaned the other side of the glass. So far, so good. She set down her cleaning supplies, stepped a few paces further onto the patio and stared into the dark woods. One thing concerned her. Since there had been drought this summer and no rain since they left town, she wondered if Sam Rosen had remembered to water her native azaleas. They were in an outlying garden in the deepest part of the woods in an easy-to-forget spot. With her mind now on gardening, her body began to relax.
She made her way down the two timber steps into the darkness of the backyard, treading carefully over the woods floor so that she didn't trip on twigs or downed branches. Through the dark shadows, she could see that the azaleas looked perky and fresh. But who could tell for sure without touching? Crouching down, she burrowed her fingers beneath the piney mulch and made pleasant contact with the soil. It was damp but not sodden. Her good gardening buddy had not forgotten.
She made her way back across the yard and into the house, wandering through the living room, the dining room and then the kitchen, where she stopped and looked around. She straightened the towel with the Grand Hotel logo and looked at the empty spot on the counter where the “Paris” pitcher had stood. When they got back from vacation, she intended to go out and buy another one.
Suddenly Louise felt better, as if she had regained possession of her own property.
She locked the doors, grabbed the script and her purse and left, anxious now to return to the cottage on the beach and her long-suffering family. She'd been a party-pooper on this vacation, but now she intended to go back and enjoy herself.
7
Thursday, August 16
Four Days Later
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artha Eldridge sat in the backseat with her mother on the trip home from the beach. “Pretty humdrum scenery, don't you think?” she said, just to make conversation. Her mind was on other, more important things.
“Do you think so?” said her mother, in a surprised voice. “I like the open countryside and these small towns. It's a welcome change from the city.”
“Well, you know me, Ma,” replied Martha, really meaning
You don't understand me at all.
She was a bit impatient at her parents' lack of understanding of her urban preferences, but of course she and her mother had less contact with each other the past few years, so how was she to know how fiercely Martha espoused a different set of values from the suburban upper-middle-class values of which her parents reeked. “Give me a high-rise any day. I favor cities. Chicago. Zurich. Prague. Rome.” She paused, then added, “Paris, of course,” and couldn't help chuckling.
Louise looked at Martha over her sunglasses. “You're laughing at me because I bought those French accessories for the kitchen. But that rough tile inspired me. I feel like I'm in a European kitchen now.”
Martha couldn't resist the dig. “Maybe so, but I doubt a Frenchwoman would spread a towel reading âGrand Hotel' behind her new faucet. Or have a pitcher with âParis' written on it sitting on the counter.”
Her mother smiled. “I don't care. I love my gadgets, just like you love your cities. That's obviously why you majored in urban studies.”
“Anyway,” added Martha, ready to end this discussion, “I saw all this countryside on the way here.” Behind her sunglasses, she shot a sideways glance at her mother, wondering if this was the time to drop her bombshells. She had to do it soon, because she had a flight back to Chicago the next day. Martha had decided to suspend her studies at Northwestern for a year and marry Jim Daley. She was twenty, almost twenty-one, with her combined B.A.-M.A. degree a year from being finished, while Jim was twenty-five. He already had a bachelor's and a law degree from DePaul University and was working as an assistant district attorney in Chicago. He was straining like a horse in a stall, ready to gallop forth and launch his political career.
Jim had pushed her to tell the folks some time during this unexpected family vacation. “It's the ideal moment,” he'd said in a private phone conversation while the rest of her family was out looking for shells on the beach. “Just lay it on 'em. Everybody'll be laid back and just accept it. Anyway, your dad loves me.” She told him she'd have to gauge the situation and decide when to break the news. Their plan was for them to marry soon so Martha could help Jim in his campaign for city alderman. After that, win or lose, she'd resume her own university classes.
Each day at the beach house, Martha had waited to see her mother return to normal so she could relate the news. The “normal” Louise Eldridge, her daughter knew, was a feisty, attractive woman who hadn't collapsed just because she'd passed the age of forty-five. Martha was secretly pleased that she resembled her mother so much and liked the idea that she might wear as well as her parent did.
But this parent still wasn't herself after that creep Peter Hoffman had done his damage. Her mother wasn't sleeping well. Martha knew it because she herself was a night reader and she heard her mother prowling the ocean cottage at all hours.
And her hands shook. Today was the first day they appeared to be steady.
When have my mother's hands ever shaken before? Not even those other times when she was in some crazy jam, the kind she always seems to get in.
Finally, at the beach house, Martha had lassoed Janie to help, and they'd taken over the obvious chores like cooking and setting and clearing the table to spare her mom the embarrassment of fumbling with cooking equipment and silverware.
Now her mother grabbed her arm and pointed out the car window. “Look, Martha, at that flock of birds. There must be thousands of them. I bet you can't see that in the city.”
“Pretty cool, I'll admit,” said Martha, giving them a fleeting look. Though of course she wanted to help her mother bail out of this funk she was in, she was not totally sympathetic. She knew no man would intimidate her the way this jerk had intimidated her mother. Martha was tougher than that. Her mother was always looking into the fate of every sparrow, anguishing over friends in trouble and obsessing about the future of her career as a TV garden show host. Martha was different, and she was glad. Both she and Jim looked at the bigger picture, at the plight of cities and counties, even nations.
Her thoughts suddenly returned to the birds. “You know what they make me think of? Voters going to the polls.”
Her mother laughed. “Do people go to the polls in such an orderly fashion?” She turned a little in her seat and looked at Martha. “You're working for Jim, aren't you?”
“Of course,” said Martha. “What would you expect? We've been engaged for months now; we just haven't bothered with a ring because there were lots more important things to do.” She added proudly, “Jim's a great candidate. He'd probably make it without my help, but I want to be there by his side.”
“That will make it hard to keep up with your classes.”
“Yes.”
“So you're dropping them?”
Martha looked at her mother. She was making this almost too easy. “Just for the fall quarter.”
“That makes sense. What happens if he wins? Doesn't a politician need a wife?”
Martha's jaw dropped. Was she this transparent, or did her mother have telepathic powers? “He could use one to good advantage. And of course I love him terribly. You already know that.”
“Where do you want the wedding, and when?”
Martha reached over and grabbed her mother's well-tanned hand. Maybe it was because of the surprise of her touch, but Martha could feel the slight tremble in the fingers. She clasped it even tighter. “Did I ever tell you you were great? The wedding? Soon, Ma. Low-key. And wherever you think. Here in Washington?”
They received a long look from her sister Janie in the front seat. Had she heard? No, her younger sister couldn't hear over the music that was playing up there, but she knew something important was going on in the backseat.
Her mother said, “I bet you'd rather have it in Chicago where all your political and college friends are.”
“Yes, but you and Dad have first choice,” said Martha.
Her mother looked deeply into her daughter's eyes. “My dear, we'll do what's easiest and best for you. It's your life that has to be accommodated.”
They rode on in silence for a while. Then Martha stirred and said, “I'm curious. How long did you guess that this was our plan?”
“Oh, I don't know. From the moment you arrived here. You had the look of a woman who had her life all figured out.” A nod of approval brought a broad smile from Martha. “I'd say that's pretty good for a twenty-year-old.”
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At five, the Eldridge car pulled into the family driveway. They stepped from the coolness of the car into the high-nineties heat and stood amidst the pile of luggage and bags of groceries they'd stopped to get at the Belleview Market. Louise strayed for a moment to the edge of the property to look with pleasure at her front garden bed, prospering despite the heat with speckled toad lilies, daylilies in pale rose and mahonia heavy with clusters of blueberries. Her neighbor Sam had done a good job of keeping everything watered.
In the traditional family fashion, Bill began to hand out suitcases and bags to each of them. They had their hands full by the time the neighbors closed in.
Louise was happy to see Mary and Richard Mougey come through the moon gate and stroll slowly up the driveway, but discomforted to notice that Mike Cunningham had emerged from his house in the far corner of Dogwood Court and was striding across the cul-de-sac.
Mary Mougey embraced first Louise, then Bill, then Martha and Janie. Their neighbor, a fundraiser for the Children and Families Foundation, had established a link with each member of the family, especially with Martha, whom she often advised on school and career decisions. “My favorite people are home again,” said Mary in her mellifluous voice. “We missed you.” The small blond woman, stylish in her pantsuit, looked warily at the approaching Cunningham. “Quickly, let us share the news with you so that you won't be too shocked when Mike gets here with his blunderbuss ways. Peter Hoffman has gone missing. Had you heard?” Her concerned gaze turned on to Louise.
“No,” said Louise. “How long has he been missing?”
“Since last Sunday. Poor Phyllis, I have to feel sorry for her. She's been calling me hysterically because the police can find no trace of him.” Mary gently urged her husband forward with a slim hand. “But Richard can give you details.”
Bill glanced politely at Richard, his colleague at the State Department, and so did Louise and the girls. Louise knew he hardly would have an answer his wife didn't, but Mary was anxious for her depressed husband to get involved in the conversation. He shrugged his narrow shoulders and cocked his long head in a dramatic fashion, stepping right up to the role as neighborhood raconteur. “Peter popped in on that Radebaugh party two Saturdays ago, as you recall. Then, apparently, he lived a normal life for a week. He was missing last Sunday night. Phyllis reported it Monday morning. Cops have been grilling everybody in the neighborhood. Pretty damned hard, too.”
Janie, looking unaccountably like a young blond goddess in her sweaty, sandy beach dishabille, stepped over. Richard smiled and took her hands in his for a moment. “My dear Janie,” he said.
“Mr. Mougey,” said Janie, “why would people around here be expected to know where he disappeared?”
Richard shook his head. “I don't know for sure. Because it's his home base, I guess. If it were someone else, they might have just thought he took a powder and moved to Europe. But this is a little different. He has this murder in his background.”
Bill expelled a breath, obviously disgusted. “I'm sure the police are checking out his other connections as well. I can only hope he isn't up to some new trick. Good, he's gone. Now we won't have to get a restraining order. Maybe we can forget about him.”
“Oh, I doubt that,” said a loud voice. Mike Cunningham had arrived, looking as if he were straight out of
GQ
in his classic white sport shirt and tan chinos.
Too bad the exterior is so pretty and the interior so defective
, thought Louise. He came up and stood close to her, but cast admiring glances at Martha and Janie. Louise realized that, in the few months he'd lived in Dogwood Court, he had never had the chance to meet them, with Janie busy with her life and Martha away most of the time in Chicago.
“Why don't you introduce me to your daughters, Louise?”
Reluctantly, she did so. The man's eyes lit on Janie, and then, probably realizing she was a little young for him, transferred his gaze to Martha. He said, “I don't think we need worry just yet. It's my theory that Peter will show up just when we've all despaired.”
Richard Mougey shook his head. “I'm not so sure about that. The man has a complicated and cloudy business past from what I hear. But then you ought to know all about that, Mike. Aren't you still Hoffman's financial advisor?”
Cunningham flushed under his even tan, and his brown eyes focused on the ground, as if to avoid eye contact with his probing neighbors. “I've advised him, that's right, and defended him in court, but I don't know everything about the man.” He chuckled and looked about the group, settling his glance on Louise. “I only hope the guy hasn't run into some woman determined to kill him.”
Louise looked up, affronted, though she didn't know why. Yes, she did; Cunningham always went for the stereotypical phrase. It's a wonder he didn't claim that Phyllis, the “little woman,” was responsible. As for herself, Louise was sure that some woman somewhere felt like doing Peter Hoffman in. “What a thought,” she said, sarcastically. “Isn't it just as likely to think he's fled the country? He seems the sort who might do that.” She leaned down and picked up the luggage to which she'd been assigned. “Anyway, I'm not wasting my time speculating. We need to get in the house.” She marched off, calling back to her friends. “Mary and Richard, want to come in for a drink?”
The implied exclusion of Mike Cunningham didn't bother her a bit. Though a boor, Mike was smart enough to know that Louise disliked him.
Richard spoke for the couple. “We'll take a raincheck, Louise.”
“Same with me,” Cunningham called out. “And nice to meet the girls.” He fell in step with the Mougeys and returned to the other side of the cul-de-sac.
As she walked up the flagstone path, Louise gave Bill a weary glance and said, “Some neighbor.”