Die Job(56)
Althea dropped me at my apartment, both of us tacitly agreeing that it might be best to avoid Mom until we’d had a chance to calm down a bit. I watched Althea speed away before tottering into my apartment. I put off calling Dillon while I made myself an early dinner—grilled cheese sandwich—and drank a big glass of milk at my dinette. Hoping to distract myself from the image of Lonnie on the roadside holding a gun, I pulled some papers from the Rothmere box and scanned them, careful not to drip cheese on the brittle pages.
20 October 1831
Dear Quentin,
Oh, my love, I wish you were here. I am prey to such fears! I have had conversation with Matilda, the maid who found my father, and I am afraid he did not die of natural causes. Matilda spoke of vomit on the landing. I will tell you all when next I see you, but I am afraid that my brother, so burdened with his debts, may have had a hand in my father’s death. How it pains me to write such words! And I must admit that I have even had doubts about my mother. Mr. Angus Carlisle has been much about the plantation, visiting with my mother and helping her with estate issues, she says. I cannot like the way he looks at her, nor, if I am honest, the way she looks at him. Come soon, my dearest Quentin. I long for you more with each day that passes.
Your perturbed Clarissa
I checked the date and saw that this letter preceded the one from Quentin I’d read earlier. I was dying to know what Matilda had told Clarissa that convinced her her father was murdered. For the briefest of seconds, I thought that if Avaline van Tassel really had a link to the spirits, she could get Cyril to tell us what happened. I brushed the foolish thought away as the phone rang. I grabbed it up.
“Hey, sweetheart, what’s this I hear about you playing lifeguard in the Atlantic in the middle of a hurricane? I couldn’t believe the story when it came across the wire.”
Marty. I smiled involuntarily. “How did you—” I remembered the reporter. “Just a little morning swim,” I said. “Swimming is excellent exercise, you know.”
“Hm.” The words “venti” and “cappuccino” filtered through the phone. “I was worried about you.”
“I’m fine,” I said. Silence fell. “So, where are you—Timbuktu? Kiev?”
“Nothing so exotic.” He laughed. “Albuquerque. I’m probably stuck here for the next two or three days, though. My source needs some coaxing. You could evacuate here . . . I can pretty well guarantee the hurricane won’t reach Santa Fe. It’s so brown here I’m convinced they haven’t had rain since Nixon resigned.”
“I wish I could,” I said wistfully. “But I can’t desert Mom. And this thing with Braden—”
“How’s that going?” Marty asked. The chink of coins reached me and Marty said, “Thanks,” in a muffled voice, presumably to the barista.
I filled him in. “It’s not your fault, you know,” he said when I finished.
His comment surprised me. “What?”
“You’re trying to ID the killer because you think you were somehow responsible for the kid getting killed. He died in the hospital, Grace, with dozens of medical professionals around. You’re—”
“If I hadn’t let him get pushed down the stairs, he wouldn’t have been in the hospital,” I said, my voice near tears. No one else had guessed how much I blamed myself for Braden’s death, not even Mom or Vonda. “I should have—”
“You were one of four adults responsible for—What? Twenty, twenty-two kids spread across a mansion the size of Mount Vernon? And—”
“It’s not that big. And that’s not the point.”
“It is,” Marty insisted. I could hear him more clearly and thought he might have moved outside. For a moment I let myself imagine the stark blue of the New Mexico sky, unmuddied by clouds and humidity. “It’s—Oh, damn. There’s the senator. Look, Grace, I’ll call you tonight, tomorrow at the latest.”
I didn’t know if he heard my “Thank you,” as he hung up. I was truly grateful to him for trying to absolve me, even thought I couldn’t accept the absolution.
My hand was still on the phone when it rang again. It was Lucy Mortimer, demanding the return of the box of documents so that Avaline van Tassel could use them for her TV project. “She’s in my office right now,” Lucy said, “and has agreed to review the documents right here since I was reluctant to have her keep them in a hotel room. So, if you could bring them by—”
“I’ll have them there within the hour.” I hung up, scooped up the box, and headed to a copy center on the far side of Bedford Square from Violetta’s. I might have to give up the box, but I wasn’t willing to let go of my “relationship” with Clarissa, so I tamped down the guilty feeling that told me Lucy would have a conniption fit if she knew I was making copies, and told the clerk what I needed. He gave me the fob for a machine and a quick tutorial. There was no way I could copy everything, and the ledgers and old sales receipts held little interest for me, so I fished out anything that looked like a letter and pressed it gently on the platen to copy it. In all, I had only fifteen pages when I finished, including the letters I’d already read. The thin stack seemed a pitiful legacy of the family’s life, and I wondered if other correspondence existed elsewhere.