Janet poured herself a glass, took a sip, smacked her lips. ‘It’s not exactly cooking wine, is it?’
‘Not even close,’ I said, feeling mellower by the minute.
We shared another long cry, during the course of which the box of tissues became empty and the second bottle of wine magically opened itself. Janet topped off our glasses, slopping a bit of wine on the oriental carpet. ‘Never mind. It’s the same color as the rug,’ she said, rubbing it into the thick pile with the toe of her shoe.
I don’t remember much after that, except declaring emphatically to Alan when he wandered in from the Cherub somewhere around midnight that no matter what the police had to say, I was in complete agreement with the woman in the pink warm-up suit. Susan’s death had been no accident.
Janet, bless her, had the presence of mind to stumble to the kitchen and fetch me a tall glass of water and a packet of liver salts. She watched while I dumped the contents of the packet into the water, waited for it to fizz, then drink the mixture down before sending me upstairs to bed, like a good mother.
Janet should have taken some liver salts herself. Although I was in rough shape the following day, I managed to crawl out of bed, shower, and show up for breakfast around nine o’clock, only to find that Janet was so hungover that Alan was manning the kitchen, cooking breakfast for the guests.
I slid into my chair and made it easy for him by ordering hot tea and a slice of wholewheat toast.
While I nibbled on the crust, I could hear Sam and Vicky playing with Bruce in the kitchen. Their delighted squeals made my head hurt. I hoped the girls would get to keep the dog, and that the little fellow didn’t get tied up – like Susan’s estate was likely to, considering what she’d said about her ex-husband – in a lawsuit.
After breakfast, I decided to take a walk, hoping the fresh morning air would clear my head. I stopped at the boat float, the artificial harbor where several dozen wooden boats bobbed in postcard-perfect perfection, struck by the way the sky and a scattering of clouds were perfectly mirrored by the water on that calm, windless day.
On the off-chance that somebody would tell me something about the investigation into Susan’s death, I headed for the police station on the corner across from the Flavel Arts Centre. In contrast to the modern, but thoughtfully designed cinema/theater/art gallery/library, the police station was part of a relentlessly ugly, glass and concrete, post-nuclear style building, housed in a corner storefront tacked on like an afterthought, having all the style of, say, a Tandoori takeaway. Although a police car was parked in a reserved spot nearby, I found the door to the station locked. Shading my eyes, I peered though the window at a short row of chairs opposite a closed door and a ticket booth-style window. Nobody was home. When I stepped back, I noticed a sign on the door that informed me of the number I should dial in case of an emergency.
‘Damn!’
Back home in Maryland, I had an inside track with law enforcement. Paul’s sister, Connie, was married to a Chesapeake County police lieutenant. In England, though, I was on my own.
Trusting that all of Dartmouth’s Finest were out investigating Susan Parker’s death, I turned my back on the empty police station and took a stroll through the lush, sub-tropical beauty of Royal Park Gardens, ending up at the bandstand. I plopped myself down on the top step and closed my eyes, turning my face toward the sun. Somewhere behind me, a busker began playing ‘Fly Me To The Moon’ on a harmonica, the instrument making the tune sound so plaintive and haunting that I fought back a fresh flood of tears.
As much as I had wanted to cry on his shoulder, I hadn’t called Paul. I knew he’d put on his Supportive Husband hat and insist on rushing back to Dartmouth, but the last thing in the world I wanted was for him to abandon his adventure – man against the sea – to rescue a damsel, no matter how keen her distress. I must have been sending out melancholy vibes, however, because my cell phone picked that moment to ring.
‘Hannah! I just heard about Susan Parker. Dreadful news!’
So I got to cry on his shoulder after all, but had the surprisingly great presence of mind not to mention that I’d actually been at the scene of the accident. That would have brought Paul back to Dartmouth with a rocket tied to his tail.
After we said goodbye, I found myself inexplicably drawn to the Embankment, to the place where it happened. When I got there, barely twenty-four hours after Susan’s death, the spot was already covered with mounds of flowers, everything from single buds to elaborate bouquets from Smith Street Flowers, even a wreath which someone had apparently liberated from a local cemetery bearing the inscription ‘RIP Mother’. Stuffed animals, photographs of Susan torn from fan magazines, letters of condolence encased in plastic spilled out over the pavement. I flashed back to the floral tributes at Kensington Gardens following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, then to the impromptu memorial on the banks of the South River at the spot where the body of my friend Melanie Fosher had washed ashore. Overwhelmed with sadness, I made my way to the nearest park bench and sat down on it.
And I watched them come. Middle-aged women, young twenty-somethings, girls in their teens, even the occasional man showed up to pay their respects to the late medium and clairvoyant. As the sun climbed higher in the sky, warming Kingswear across the Dart until its buildings glowed as if lit from within, I sat glued to the bench, watching the pile of floral tributes grow.
Would Susan’s murderer return to the scene of the crime?
Spookily, just as that thought entered my head, I noticed someone familiar loitering at the fringes of the crowd. It was the red headband that first caught my eye, the same headband she had been wearing outside the Palace Theatre in Paignton: Olivia Sandman. Today she was dressed in a long-sleeved cotton top, and I could see the shadows of thin legs through the lightweight fabric of a flowered skirt that swished about her ankles.
I remembered the brochure Olivia had given me and fished it out of my handbag. WTL: Way, Truth and Life. I unfolded it for the first time, and scanned the contents.
Like Mikey from the old Life cereal advertising campaign, the WTL Guardians seemed to hate everything. Animal cruelty, abortion, gays, witchcraft, Muslims, wi-fi networks, the rock star Lady Gaga, and the Bishop Administrator of the Anglican Shrine of our Lady of Walsingham in particular. It was a peculiarly comprehensive catalog. As far as I could tell, the only thing WTL loved was Jesus.
Could one of the Guardians have run Susan down? Susan had always blown the group off, and yet fanatics of any religious persuasion could prove dangerous. Perhaps Susan’s flippant dismissal of Alf and his band of tiny-minded men (and women) had been misguided. On the BRNC episode of Dead Reckoning, she’d seemed more concerned about her ex – what was his name? Greg? – than about the demonstrators.
So how about Greg Parker himself? But he was in California. Or was he?
I decided it wouldn’t hurt to talk with Olivia, shake her tree, and see what fell out of it, so I wandered ever-so-casually over to the palm tree planter where the young woman was sitting and plopped myself down on the warm stones next to her. ‘Hi, Olivia. I’m Hannah. Remember me from the other night?’
Olivia considered me through the lenses of a pair of rimless eyeglasses. ‘In front of the Palace Theatre, right?’
‘Uh huh.’
‘It’s terrible what happened, innit? That accident.’ Olivia nodded in the direction of the floral memorial.
‘Very upsetting,’ I agreed.
‘Someone driving drunk, I bet.’
‘I’m sure the police want everyone to think it was one of your garden-variety hit and runs, but I understand that they’re looking into the possibility that someone ran Susan Parker down intentionally.’ I was making it up as I went along.