Marcia Talley - This Enemy Town

“Well, sure, but who’s gonna believe that ?” She scrunched farther down into the doughnut-shaped cushion. “‘Where there’s smoke, there’s fire,’” she singsonged. “That’s what they’ll think.”

I wanted to reassure the young woman, but I knew, too well, that what she was saying was true. People in the military were notoriously hard to turn. See an opening, they’d drive a wedge into it, and keep pounding and pounding and pounding until you broke, or simply gave up and went away. I’d seen it too many times before.

Then Emma surprised me again. “Lieutenant Goodall wanted me to be some sort of test case about the whole harassment issue, but I didn’t want to rock the boat any more than it’d already been rocked. I told her to forget it.”

Emma drew her legs up, wrapped her arms around them and rested her chin on her knees. “So, I decided to create a diversion. That’s where Kevin came in.” She looked up at me and beamed. “You know what he did?”

I shook my head.

“He cornered the firstie in the basement of Bancroft and beat the shit out of him. Told him to leave his girlfriend alone or else he’d cut off his balls and… well, never mind. It was pretty graphic.”

Normally I don’t condone resorting to violence to solve problems, but the way things were going for me lately, violence was looking like an attractive alternative. “Good for Kevin,” I said with some conviction.

“Now Kevin is stuck with taking me to the Ring Dance.” She smiled. “But I told him I’d step aside if the right girl came along. That goes for me, too, of course.”

I laughed, then helped Emma load her laundry into the washing machine. Shortly afterward, I sent her back to Bancroft Hall with a Ziploc bag full of cookies.

After she left, I began to wonder. Had the seed Chris Donovan planted in Jennifer’s mind taken root, grown and blossomed? If Jennifer Goodall had been on a mission, looking for cases to test the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, perhaps another one of her clients hadn’t been so sanguine about it.

In his landmark study, Alfred Kinsey claimed that homosexuals make up ten percent of the population. The Academy has four thousand students. If we believe Alfred Kinsey-and who am I to argue with an expert?-the list of suspects in Jennifer Goodall’s murder had just grown by another four hundred. Pretty soon we’d need Alumni Hall to hold them all.

I have no way of knowing for sure, but I suspectPaul and our daughter, Emily, are in cahoots. How else-other than the most unlikely of coincidences-to explain her phone call on Monday evening.

Plans for the spa were proceeding apace, Emily said. Dante and Phyllis Strother, the woman who was his major investor, were meeting on Wednesday, along with an architect and a platoon of lawyers. They had found a piece of property. Would I care to come see it?

“I’m supposed to be laying low,” I reminded my daughter.

“I can really use your help, Mom. I feel like shit in the morning.”

“Pregnancy can do that to you,” I offered helpfully.

Emily groaned.

It would have been nice to see my grandchildren, of course, but I didn’t feel like driving for hours and hours to Virginia just to pat Chloe and Jake on the head, turn right around and come back.

That wasn’t going to be a problem, Emily said, because Phyllis was footing the bill. Food, hotel rooms. There’d be a separate room for Grandma, too.

It was tempting, but I was already in enough trouble with the law. “Emily, I’d love to, but I’m out on bail. I’m not supposed to leave the state.”

“Oh pooh, Mother. They’ll never know.”

“Oh, yes they will,” I said, and told her about my Sunday adventure, caught red-handed by the FBI, hot-footing around northern Virginia.

Emily listened, oh-ing and ah-ing and laughing at all the right places. Then the little scamp played her trump card. “Well, you’re not off the hook yet, ha-ha-ha, because the property we’re looking at is in Maryland, so you just can’t say no. Pleeeeeeease?”

I’d heard that tone of voice before. When Emily just wanted to go to a rave. When she only needed $150 for a ski trip. When all her friends were spending the weekend in Ocean City and I was the meanest mommy in the world.

And then I did what mommies down through the centuries have done. I weakened. “Tell me about it.”

Emily knew she had me. “Oh, thank you!” she gushed. “It’s in a development called Charlesmeade, down in Indian Head, Maryland. The realtor says it was built as a country club for one of those golf course housing developments. The developer built the club first, to attract buyers for his homes, I suppose. But then his company went belly up.”

Indian Head is a charming waterfront community in southern Maryland, about twenty-five miles south of the Capital Beltway, where Mattawoman Creek meets the Potomac River. I’d visited several times, most recently when my father-a retired naval officer with decades of experience in the aerospace industry-had been considering a job at NAVSEA. “How come nobody’s bought the developer out?” I asked.

“Phyllis says there have been a number of interested parties, but nobody’s come up with the money so far. The realtor thinks they may be willing to sell the club in a separate parcel. Oh, Mom, it’s perfect!” she raved. “It’s twenty-five acres, and right on the water! You should see the pictures!” Emily was in full exclamation mark mode.

Truthfully, I loved to look at model homes and homes under construction. And visiting with the grandkids was an added incentive.

Once I had agreed to go, Emily got serious. “Mom, do me a favor.”

“What’s that?”

“Now don’t take this wrong.”

Don’t take this wrong . I knew for sure that I wasn’t going to like what was coming.

“Phyllis doesn’t know anything about your present, um, predicament, so I’d appreciate your not mentioning it.”

I felt as if I’d been slapped, and considered reneging on the spot. “You think I’m proud of being arrested, Emily?” I sputtered. “What do you think I’d say? ‘Good morning, Mrs. Strother. So pleased to meet you. I’ll very much look forward to having tea with you after I get out on parole.’”

“Mooooother!”

“Well?” There was a long silence during which I was left to fill in the blanks.

“Okay. Maybe I’m being silly, but I don’t want anything to jeopardize this deal. Dante has worked soooooo hard to put it together, and Phyllis is soooooo enthusiastic.”

I bet. Even the name Phyllis Strother sounded like it belonged to an astute businesswoman who recognized a good thing when she saw it. Whatever else you may say about my son-in-law, Daniel Shemanski, Haverford College dropout, from shiatsu to rolfing, the man knew his massage. New Life Spa had hired him away from the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, one of the most prestigious spas in the country. At New Life, nestled in the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia, he’d gone on to make himself quite a reputation, attracting a regular Who’s Who of clients, including Exhibit A, Phyllis Strother.

I had no idea what went into running a health spa. My only qualifying experience was the occasional massage that I managed to squeeze in while on vacation.

Thinking about Indian Head, I said, “Emily, southern Maryland is kind of provincial. Do you think there’ll be enough customers who are willing to pay-”

Emily cut me off. “I know what you’re thinking, but the place is growing by leaps and bounds. And the Navy’s got all kinds of things in the vicinity.”

“But what if Congress cuts Navy funding?”