Marcia Talley - This Enemy Town

Paul backed himself into a chair, then patted the seat of the chair next to him. I sat down and with no preamble told my husband that Jennifer Goodall was dead.

Paul blinked once, slowly. A muscle twitched along his jaw. “Jesus,” he said.

I folded my hands to keep them from shaking and rested my forearms on the table in front of me. I gave him the details, watching his face as I rattled on.

I told him how the paramedics gave way to campus security who locked all the doors and hustled everyone-actors, orchestra, directors, and crew-into seats in the auditorium. I described how they secured the scene, awaiting the arrival of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, who took down our names and telephone numbers. Eventually NCIS kicked us out, one by one, and told us to go home. They’d be calling later for our statements.

“How…?” Paul asked.

“A horrible head injury,” I said. “What caused it, I don’t know.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. Paul drew a long breath. “This’ll be a major headache for the Academy, of course.”

I nodded, hating the press corps that invariably materialized at the merest suspicion of a scandal, fully formed and hungry, out of Annapolis’s cobblestones.

“Who…?” Paul was working his way through the five Ws. We’d established the what, where, and when of it; but only time could answer the questions that were nagging at him now. “Who would do such a thing? And why?”

I shrugged, at a loss for words.

After a few moments he added, “When they know why, I suppose they’ll know who.”

“They’ll be looking for people with motive,” I said, following that train of thought to its logical conclusion.

Paul had been studying his thumbnail. He gazed up at me with a wistful smile. “Are you asking if I have an alibi, my dear?” The smile, such as it was, vanished. “It’s not much of one, I’m afraid,” he continued, not waiting for me to reply. “I’ve been home all afternoon, alone, playing with myself.”

I smiled at his little joke, stalling for time. I had told Paul about speaking to Jennifer Goodall, of course, but I conveniently forgot to mention my blowup. I was ashamed of it, for one thing, embarrassed that I’d let her get under my skin like that. But my marriage wouldn’t be worth a plugged nickel if I waited for the cops to come along and tell him about it first.

“Actually, I was thinking about my alibi,” I told him.

Paul’s eyebrows came together. “Oh?”

“That conversation Jennifer and I had the other day? The one where she made up that lie about you?”

“Go on.”

“It wasn’t exactly a conversation, Paul. It was an old-fashioned, back-stabbing, mud-slinging, your-mother-swims-after-troop-ships kind of shouting match.” I flopped back in my chair, rested my head against the rungs. “Oh God, Paul, after what she said to me, I could have cheerfully drawn and quartered the witch.”

“I’ve shouted at a lot of people, Hannah,” Paul said, dismissing my confession, “but I’ve never killed any of them.”

“Yes, but Jennifer’s and my little tête-à-tête was overheard by Midshipman Small and practically everybody in the cast.”

“I see.” Paul squinted at the wall clock. “I suppose a lot will depend on exactly when she died.”

I looked at the clock, too. Eleven forty-five? Nearly midnight. It felt like three in the morning. “She must have died shortly before her body was found. Tim told me her body was still warm.” I shivered, remembering the young man’s valiant but failed attempt at CPR.

A new thought occurred to me. “Jennifer could have been alive when the killer threw her into the trunk, Paul! She might have been lying in there unconscious, all through the first act. It might have taken hours for her to bleed to death.” I remembered the blood covering her face, a dark glistening red.

I buried my face in my palms. “God, Paul, anyone could have done it.”

The teakettle began to scream. Paul rose from his chair to shut it off. “But wait a minute, Hannah,” he said gently. “I’m confused. I thought you told me that the set’s been off-limits to anyone but the tech crew since last night’s rehearsal.”

I followed my husband to the stove, reached into a cupboard and selected two mugs. After I’d dropped the tea bags in, Paul filled the mugs with boiling water.

“That’s true,” I said, plunging my tea bag up and down. “But there’s no security at all, really. The doors were not locked. Aside from the tech crew, anybody could have wandered into the auditorium, even a lost tourist.”

I ran down a mental list of the tech crew. With the exception of me, I couldn’t think of anybody who had a beef with Lieutenant Goodall. They probably didn’t even know her.

As for the cast, the only midshipmen I’d seen talking to Jennifer Goodall had been Kevin and Emma. Had Kevin killed Jennifer to keep her from reporting him for harassing Emma? On the other had, if Emma had confided in Jennifer about her sexual orientation, and Jennifer had threatened to out her, that could have driven Emma to murder her, too.

“What happens now?” Paul wondered, taking his seat.

“We’ll be interviewed, of course. NCIS told us to expect that.”

“When?”

I shrugged. “I don’t have the vaguest idea.”

We finished our tea in silence, while variations on the theme of Kevin and Emma played themselves out in my head.

Paul finally coaxed me to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. As he snored gently beside me, I lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling. The numbers on the digital clock clicked from three to four to five before I mumbled, “This is ridiculous,” crawled out of bed and headed for the bathroom. I filled the tub with hot water, dumped in a quarter cup of lavender bath salts, added another tablespoon for good measure, and settled in for a good long soak.

I was standing at the sink, my head wrapped in a towel, brushing my teeth, when the telephone rang. It was 6:00 A.M.: way too early for someone to be calling. It had to be bad news.

I dove for the telephone, trying to silence it before it could ring a second time. “Hello?” I croaked, and braced myself for the worst.

It was Dorothy, her voice surprisingly bright. “Hannah, I’m sorry to be calling you so early, but I just had to let you know right away!”

“Let me know what?” I whispered, turning my back to my sleeping husband and sitting down carefully on the edge of the mattress.

Incredibly, the Academy had reached a decision about the show. “That woman had nothing to do with the musical,” Dorothy reported. “They think it may be just a coincidence that her body was left there.”

“And, so?”

“We’re still on! They’re finished collecting evidence,” she continued. “We’ll have to get a new trunk for Sweeney, of course, since they’ve taken ours away. Wasn’t there one at Echos and Accents, that place off Chincoteague?”

Quite frankly, I couldn’t remember.

“I’m sure that’s the place!” Dorothy chugged on. “Could you pick it up for me, Hannah? You live so much closer than me.”

Like a good little Do-Bee, I agreed even though I knew that the only way I’d fit that trunk in my LeBaron was on end, and I’d have to put the convertible top down. That would be an adventure in February.

“See you tonight,” she chirped, and hung up without saying good-bye.

I stared at the receiver, too dumbfounded to speak. It was six in the ever-lovin’ morning. How could she possibly know…? Maybe it would make some sense after I’d had some coffee.

I rinsed out my toothbrush and had just hung it up to dry when Paul stumbled into the bathroom, bleary-eyed, his cheeks and chin dark with stubble. “To whom do I owe that wake-up call?”