Marcia Talley - A Quiet Death

‘But if the tapes show that Nick didn’t leave the library all day,’ I pointed out, ‘then he couldn’t have killed Meredith. Somebody else did.’

‘Exactly.’

‘So, either someone on the library staff gave him that bag, or somebody brought the bag in from outside the library,’ Chandler speculated. ‘Jud, have them check the videos for that, too.’

‘That could take hours,’ I said. ‘Days. Do I get to hang around?’

Jud smiled. ‘We’ve got Mugspot.’

I smiled at the name. ‘Facial recognition software?’

He nodded. ‘I’ll check with our experts, but if it can be programmed to look for a certain face, maybe they can tell it to look for a face that’s square and has Julius Garfinkel written across its forehead.’

Chandler stood. ‘Get on it, Jud, and call me when you have something.’

Jud snapped to attention. ‘Right away, Mr Chandler.’

After Jud left carrying the disks, Chandler turned to me. ‘I’m grateful that you came to us first with this information, Mrs Ives. Meredith was dedicated to her job, perhaps too dedicated. If you’re right, she died in an effort, however misguided, to protect me, to keep someone from tarnishing my reputation. I’m having a tough time dealing with that.’

It didn’t escape my attention that Chandler, smooth-tongued and unflappable, had never admitted to being Zan. He held out his hand. ‘We’ll be in touch, you can be certain of that.’

‘What are you going to do with the information?’ I asked as he accompanied me down the hall.

He hesitated in front of an oversized painting of the Washington Monument, a fitting backdrop, I thought, for a television journalist. Pain lined his face, as if he were about to report on a plane crash, or the death of a president. All he needed was a microphone. ‘We’ll check out the videos, all of them. If Aupry looks like our guy, we contact the police. That goes for Hoffner, too.’

Into the awkward silence that followed, I said, ‘And then?’

Chandler seemed to be studying his reflection in his shoes. Without raising his head, he said. ‘Then? Then we break the story.’

The answer came sooner than I expected. I was still in Union Station, down in the crowded food court, polishing off my creamy chicken at Pasta T’Go-Go when Jud texted my cell phone.

‘Got it. C U soon?’

‘In 10,’ I texted back.

Fifteen minutes later, Jud and I were back in the screening room sitting in front of the large television screen.

‘The suspense is killing me,’ I said, as Jud cued up the video. ‘Can’t you give me a hint?’

Jud smiled enigmatically, aimed, and pressed play.

As I watched, library patrons came and went, waddling through the checkpoint at high speed like cartoon penguins. ‘There!’ Jud said, freezing the frame on the Garfinkel’s bag as it made its way slowly along the conveyor belt and disappeared into the X-ray machine.

I squinted at the faces passing through the checkpoint, but the images were grainy. ‘Who brought it there?’

‘I’m hoping you can tell me.’ Jud diddled with the controls, the camera pulled back, panned, and refocused as somebody picked up the bag at the end of the line. Jud zoomed in on the man’s face.

It was James Hoffner.

‘My God,’ I said. ‘That’s definitely Aupry’s lawyer.’

Jud grinned, fast-forwarding – five, ten, fifteen minutes. ‘And here’s our bad boy again,’ he said, freezing the action. ‘At two fifteen, leaving the way he came. And this time, he’s not carrying the bag.’

I didn’t know that there was a telephone in the room until it warbled like an ill-tempered turkey. Scowling in annoyance at the interruption, Jud punched the speaker button. ‘Yes?’

‘Have you seen John?’ a woman’s voice inquired.

‘He’s taping right now.’ Jud checked his watch. ‘Should be finished in about ten minutes.’

‘Thanks, Jud.’

‘Who was that?’ I asked after the woman hung up.

‘Doro. Dorothea Chandler. Mrs John C. She who must be obeyed.’

‘I take it you don’t get along.’

Jud shrugged. ‘She’s OK, but it drives me crazy how she’s always popping in, fussing about one thing or another. The latest bee in the Missus’s bonnet is her Christmas fundraiser. They’re having an auction, and she’s twisting John’s arm to sign on as auctioneer. John told me he’d rather have a root canal, but short of starting a war in a third world country so he can jet over there to cover it, I think he’s going once, going twice, doomed!’

‘Where is this event taking place?’

‘At her club.’

‘Which one?’ I asked, although, from Chandler’s bio on Wikipedia, I thought I already knew the answer to that.

‘The Women’s Democratic League.’

‘I’d like to meet her,’ I said.

At my comment, Jud rolled his eyes in a you’ll-be-sorry way.

‘Seriously,’ I said. Even though recent developments seemed to be pointing the finger of blame for Meredith’s murder squarely at James Hoffner, Dorothea Chandler, the wronged wife, wasn’t entirely off the hook, at least not in my mind.

Much later, at home, I looked up the Women’s Democratic League on the Internet, clicked on the pull-down menu labeled ‘Events.’ As luck would have it, a Talk & Tea was scheduled for the following day, featuring Susan Woythaler, a woman who’d been active in the women’s rights movement since the early years, a mover and shaker at the 1977 National Conference of Women in Houston, where she’d appeared on the dais with such pioneers as Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan. I made a few phone calls, setting everything else on my calendar – a mani-pedi and lunch with a friend – aside, and hastily made plans to attend.

Pat Nixon had her ‘good cloth Republican coat,’ but what did a good lady Democrat wear to a Talk & Tea these days? Using Hillary Clinton and Tipper Gore as my imaginary fashion consultants, I pawed through my closet, finally settling on a periwinkle-blue pants suit that hadn’t seen daylight since Bush defeated Kerry and a white silk, scoop-necked blouse. I fastened a single strand of pearls around my neck, and added matching ear studs. Standing in front of the full-length mirror in a pair of classic black Ferragamo pumps, I nodded in approval. I looked so Democratic that I’d even vote for myself.

I drove into the District and spent a good twenty minutes cruising the neighborhoods around Dupont Circle searching for a parking space. In spite of the exorbitant hourly rates, I was seriously considering Plan B – one of the hotel parking garages in the vicinity – when an SUV pulled out of a space adjacent to a driveway on Newport Place. I slipped into the spot, pulling as close as I dared to the car in front of me, and climbed out. From the sidewalk, I squinted at my rear bumper, calculated how far it extended into driveway territory and decided that a scant two inches didn’t put me at risk for a ticket. Satisfied, and praying that the meter minder didn’t carry a ruler in his or her pocket, I locked my doors and walked the three blocks to the Women’s Democratic League, located in an imposing red-brick mansion near the corner of 22nd and O Streets, NW, not far from Washington DC’s famed Embassy Row.

Built at the turn of the last century for a former Supreme Court justice whose taste ran to high Victorian, the mansion welcomed visitors into a spacious lobby which would have been as dark as the inside of a coffin had it not been for the light streaming in from a clerestory window on the landing of a grand, central staircase. The staircase itself was a work of art, constructed of dark oak. Poseidon and his twin, complete with tridents, formed the newel posts, and the spindles that supported the banisters were carved naiads, dancing up the stairway in orderly fashion like Radio City Rockettes.