Marcia Talley - A Quiet Death

‘Oh, I agree. He’s polite and Catholic to the core. Yes Father, no Father, let me kiss your ring, Father.’

‘Since when do you have a problem with Catholics?’

‘I don’t! But Chandler’s right up there with Pope Benedict on keeping the ban against allowing priests to marry. Mother Church better wake up, in my opinion, or pretty soon every Catholic priest in the United States will come from South America. Or, he’ll be a disgruntled Anglican who left the Episcopal Church because he objected to either women and/or gay and lesbian people in the priesthood. In that case, it’s OK if you’re already married. Pope Benedict said so.’

Paul opened his mouth to put in his two cents’ worth, but was interrupted by the telephone. I raised an eyebrow. ‘Maybe that’s Hoffner!’

Paul answered, listened for a second, gave me a thumbs up, then handed the phone to me.

‘Hannah Ives?’ the caller said.

‘Yes. James Hoffner, I presume.’

Hoffner cleared his throat. ‘I represent a client who tells me that you have some papers that belong to him.’

‘Who might that be?’

‘I’m not at liberty to say.’

‘Then, I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to tell you whether I have any papers that belong to your client or not.’

‘Mrs Ives. These papers are treasured family items. Old letters and photographs. My client would like to have them back.’

‘How do I know that these letters and photographs actually belong to your client?’ I asked. ‘How do I know he didn’t find them on the street? For that matter, how do I know they aren’t stolen?’

On the other end of the line, Hoffner sighed. ‘Just as I said, we’re talking about my client’s family heirlooms here.’

‘How is your client recovering from his injuries?’ I asked, hoping to catch the attorney off guard.

‘I’m not at liberty to say.’

‘May I speak to your client?’

‘Not at this time.’

‘Does that mean he’s not able to speak to me?’

‘I’m not at liberty to say.’

‘Look, Mr Hoffner. You tell Skip, or whatever his name is, that I’ll be happy to return the papers, but it will have to be either to Skip himself, or to his certified representative.’

‘I can assure you, Mrs Ives, that I have full power of attorney to represent my client in this matter.’

‘Good. Mail me a copy of your power of attorney, then. You know where I live. And, in the meantime, you might ask your client why his attorney was trying to pass himself off as somebody he is not. When you called at my house, you told my husband that those papers were yours. We both know that they are not.’

‘Your husband simply misunderstood me, I’m afraid. I said I was representing the owner.’

I listened as Hoffner dug the hole deeper. When he’d run out of lame excuses, I said, ‘Look, call me when Skip is well enough to see visitors, and if he can convince me that he’s the legal owner of that box of material, I’ll be happy to arrange a meeting.’ And I hung up on the jerk.

Paul rolled his eyes. ‘Don’t mess with Hannah when she’s interrupted in the middle of homophobic bishop bashing.’

‘Ah, yes. It can get ugly.’

When you need to take it down a notch, nothing tops walking a dog. Dogs take pleasure in such basic things: barking, chewing, digging and burying, endless games of SniffMe-SmellYou, wagging their tails off from the sheer excitement of being alive.

To make best use of dog therapy, however, it helps to have a dog, so sometimes we borrow Coco, our daughter’s irrepressible labradoodle, and walk her in nearby Quiet Waters Park.

Paul and I had returned Coco to her owners – muddy-pawed but refreshed – and headed home, leaving our filthy running shoes outside the back door.

‘Funny. I thought I locked the door,’ Paul said as we let ourselves into the kitchen.

‘I better get the pork chops out of the freezer, or we’ll never eat tonight,’ I commented as I laid my handbag on the kitchen table.

‘Thaw them in the microwave.’ Paul tossed the remark over his shoulder as he headed upstairs to shower and change. He’d been gone only a few seconds when I heard him bellow, ‘Hannah! Come here!’

‘What?’ I dropped the pork chops on the kitchen counter and hurried to see what was bothering him.

Paul stood in the dining room, flailing his arms. Every drawer in the sideboard stood open, and my linen tablecloths and napkins – which had been ironed and neatly folded, a task I hate – were strewn all over the carpet.

‘Shit, shit, shit!’ I started toward the living room when Paul’s arm shot out, holding me back. ‘They may still be in the house,’ he cautioned. ‘Go back to the kitchen and call 9-1-1.’

The Annapolis Police must have been sitting in their squad car right outside our door, because they appeared in less than five minutes. While we waited anxiously in the kitchen, two officers checked the house upstairs and down. The burglars were, of course, long gone. A neatly cut hole near the latch in the kitchen window illustrated where they’d come in. They’d obviously let themselves out through the back door.

‘Is anything missing?’ the older of the two officers wanted to know.

‘Nothing that I see in the dining room.’ Together we wandered into the living room where the decorative pillows had been tossed aside and the sofa cushions upended, but thankfully nothing appeared to be missing, not even our expensive hi-def TV.

We have three bedrooms upstairs, and they’d all been tossed. Drawers yawning open. Mattresses hauled off the box springs. Bedding in untidy heaps.

‘My jewelry!’ I cried. I rushed to the dresser and opened the teakwood box that contained all my treasures. I pawed through the box and was relieved to find that everything appeared to be there, including the sterling silver sweetheart bracelet my late mother had given me on my sixteenth birthday. I clutched it to my chest, tears of relief hazing my vision.

My closet, however, was a mess. Clothes had been ripped from their hangers and tossed unceremoniously on the floor. Shoe boxes which I’d labeled and neatly arranged on the upper shelf now yawned open on the bedroom floor; wedges, flats and dressy heels lay strewn about in a jumble. It was all too much. I perched on the foot of the bed and began to weep.

By the time the police had finished their investigation, handed us a copy of their report and promised to check back with us, I’d gotten my act together. ‘This is worse than when the FBI trashed the joint back in 2005,’ I complained, picking up a heap of blouses, still on their hangers and returning them to the closet.

Paul stood, hands on hips, surveying the wreckage of our bedroom. ‘Looks like a hurricane blew through. And we have some experience with hurricanes.’

‘And equally fruitless,’ I sniffed. ‘Lilith’s letters are locked in the trunk of my car.’

‘Is that what they were looking for?’ Paul gave me a look.

‘What else?’ I returned the little French chair that I’d found at an antique store in Galesville to its normal and upright position next to my dresser and sat down in it. ‘But who’d go to all this trouble just for a bunch of old photos and love letters?’

‘My guess? Your friend, Skip. Or his “legal representative.”’ Paul made quote marks in the air.

‘If Skip survived the crash, and that’s a very big if in my opinion, all he has to do is contact me, prove he has a right to these papers, and I’ll happily arrange to give them back.’

‘Do you think that Jim Hoffner is actually working for Skip, or for somebody else?’

I thought back to my conversation with the lawyer. ‘He didn’t say, did he? But Hoffner had to have gotten my contact information from the hospital, right? So why not come out and say that he’s working on Skip Whatchamacallit’s behalf?’