Marcia Talley - This Enemy Town

“Dorothy Hart.” I wrapped my arms around him and squeezed. “Sorry.”

Paul rested his chin on the top of my head and hugged me back. “What did she want at this ungodly hour?”

“It was good news,” I said, feeling a bit light-headed from the combination of heat, steam, and lack of sleep. “The Academy’s decided.” I took a step backward and waved my hand with a flourish. “In the best of theater traditions, sir, the show must go on.”

Sweeney Todd was a smash, selling out from itsfirst night on. Standing room only, too. Morbid curiosity might have driven ticket sales into the stratosphere, of course, but each night after the curtain went down, no one could argue that the show wasn’t worth the price of admission. The collective intake of breath, the seconds of stunned silence, followed by a standing ovation of bravos and ooh-rah-ooh-rahs that seemed to go on forever were proof enough of that.

The Naval Criminal Investigative Service had been busy, as well. Even before the post opening night congratulatory beers we’d downed at Ramshead Tavern on West Street had worked their way out of our systems, two NCIS agents had gathered up their notebooks, tape recorders, and video cameras, and moved from their permanent second floor offices in Halligan Hall to a small conference room in the Academy’s Administration Building. There, in the shadow of the Naval Academy Chapel dome, they could conduct their interviews in neutral (and far more central) territory.

It was late in the second week of the show before Dorothy and I met to compare notes at Drydock, the snack bar in Dahlgren Hall. By then it seemed that everyone we knew had run the NCIS gauntlet.

“How’d they conduct the interviews?” I wondered aloud as we merged into the end of the sandwich line. “A to Z? By rank?”

Dorothy shook her head. “I don’t think so. I’m an H and they didn’t get to me until today. Kevin says they talked to him on Monday, so I think midshipmen were the first priority.”

I grabbed a plastic tray and a packet of potato chips and inched forward. “Makes sense, Goodall being the SAVI officer and all, although I hate to think of a midshipman being responsible. It was so…” I paused, involuntarily shivered. There were no words to describe the horror of what had been done to that poor woman’s head. “There was so much rage in it.”

Dorothy set her tray down on the tray track. Using both hands, she yanked open her packet of chips and offered me one. “I worried about you,” she said just as I stuffed a chip into my mouth.

I chewed and swallowed quickly before answering, not wanting to deliver a shower of crumbs along with my reply. “Because of the argument, you mean?”

Dorothy nodded.

“I told NCIS about the fight right up front,” I confessed, “so the interview wasn’t too bad. They called my husband in at the same time, so I had Paul along for moral support. At least as far as the door,” I added. “NCIS kept him cooling his heels in the hall while they interviewed me and vice versa.”

“Next!” One of the servers behind the sandwich counter was looking up at me expectantly.

“Seafood salad sub,” I said. “For here. Lettuce and tomato.”

I watched quietly, remembering, while the server used an ice cream scoop to dip salad out of a huge plastic tub and heap it on a submarine roll. With gloved fingers she added a pale pink slice of tomato and a single frill of lettuce, before smashing the top down with the flat of her hand and skewering the whole thing together with a fringed toothpick.

That’s how I’d felt, I thought, after I finally got out of that conference room-squashed and skewered. I’d dreaded the interview, of course, not least because of my very public argument with Lieutenant Goodall. But I’d been as forthcoming as I could, even going so far as to admit that I loathed the woman, figuring that NCIS would be up to speed on my checkered history with Jennifer Goodall anyway.

Describe what you did that afternoon.

I honestly couldn’t remember. After lunch-had it been a cheese and garlic potato at Potato Valley, or had I skipped lunch that day?-I’d gone downtown shopping, but for what, I couldn’t say. A greeting card, perhaps? Or a funky pair of socks at Goodies?

Around two I’d stopped in at Mother Earth, I knew that for sure, to check out the new feng shui paraphernalia my sister Ruth had for sale: five element aroma candles-water, earth, wood, metal, and fire!-and the glass and light “fogger” fountains that Ruth claimed would not only add beneficial moisture to the dry winter air in my home, but freshen, purify, and energize it by neutralizing free-roaming negative ions or some such nonsense. The agents’ eyes had glazed over by that point, but I soldiered on, confessing that I found the fountains beautiful, though, like Chihuly glass bowls on tripods, wafting clouds of super-fine mist into the air, a far cry from the turquoise plastic humidifier I stored under the bathroom sink, I can tell you, and $200 more expensive, too. Frankly, I think they were glad to see me go.

I picked up my sandwich and set it on my tray. A tent card propped up on the counter advertised a COACH DENNIS JACKSON-a steak and cheese sub-and I watched as the server began assembling one for Dorothy.

“I wracked my brain trying to remember what I was doing that day,” I commented to Dorothy as we pushed our trays farther on down the line.

“Me, too,” Dorothy said. “In all the confusion, I nearly forgot that I was getting my nails done. And thank God for that,” she added, reaching for her sandwich. “At least the manicurist can vouch for me.” She curled her fingers loosely around her thumb and stared at her fingertips. “Damn. Look at that. I need to go back.” Then she held her fingers out for my inspection. “Big Apple Red. Do you like it?”

I stared in silence at the spot where the glossy crimson enamel had chipped off her pinky. Somebody’s dead and she’s worrying about her fingernails? I was glad I kept mine short.

“I wonder what time they think Jennifer was attacked?” I said, trying to turn the conversation away from beauty tips and get it back on track.

“They did the autopsy at Bethesda,” Dorothy told me. “They think maybe four in the afternoon.”

I picked up my tray and headed for the drinks station, mulling over what Dorothy had just said. She seemed to be much more in-the-know than Paul and I, not that we hadn’t tried. Our usual ace-in-the-hole had turned out to be a deuce. Paul had tried to worm information about the investigation out of his brother-in-law, Dennis Rutherford, with a singular lack of success. NCIS didn’t share information with Chesapeake County police lieutenants, it turns out, or with anyone else, for that matter.

Admirals, apparently, were an exception.

“Ted made a few calls to Bethesda,” Dorothy explained as she joined me in front of the ice tea machine. She pulled a plastic cup out of the dispenser and held it under the spigot, while I pushed down helpfully on the lever. “They know she died within an hour or two of being thrown into Sweeney’s trunk, but they believe she may have been attacked somewhere else. They’re still looking for where.”

We paid for our food and found an empty table not far from the wall that separated the snack bar’s dining area from the ice rink. A hockey game was going on behind the glass. Shouts, whistles, the sloosh of skates on ice and the persistent thwack of sticks against puck would punctuate our conversation over the next several minutes.

“Ted says there’s high-level pressure from Washington to make an arrest in the case,” Dorothy added as we set down our trays and settled into our chairs.