Marcia Talley - A Quiet Death

Chandler blanched. ‘I didn’t know, I swear.’

‘Yeah, sure. I’ve seen the photographs. I’ve read the letters. You and my mother didn’t keep secrets from one another. There must be another box of letters somewhere. Hell, a trunk full of letters for all I know. An affair like that. You don’t just cut it off cold turkey.’

‘Zan didn’t know about you, Nicholas. I never told him.’

Nicholas scowled. ‘Why not?’

‘You wouldn’t understand.’

‘Try me.’

‘It’s too late now,’ his mother said.

‘I’ll say.’ Nicholas turned away from his mother, sneered. ‘What will it do to your reputation, Chandler, if the world finds out that Mr Family Values has a bastard son?’

‘Nicholas…’ Lilith lurched toward her son.

Chandler grasped her arm, holding her back. ‘No, Lilith. Let me handle this.’

The look Nicholas gave his father was pure venom. ‘Bastard! That’s what they used to call me at school. But you are the bastard, Chandler, not me!’

Nicholas swung his cane in a wide arc, striking Chandler on the temple. Chandler stumbled, his knees buckled, blood began to stain his white hair crimson.

‘Zan!’ Lilith screamed.

Nick staggered back, looking bewildered. ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean…’

Incredibly, Chandler smiled. He whipped a handkerchief out of his back pocket and pressed it to his head. ‘Don’t worry. It’s only a flesh wound.’ He caught Nick in a steel-blue gaze and held him there, saying nothing, until Nick slumped and averted his eyes. ‘I understand, Nick. Completely. If I’d been you, I might have done the same thing.’

I wasn’t inclined to similar understanding. I glowered at Nick. ‘I think it’s time everybody told the truth, don’t you?’

‘What do you mean?’ Nick seemed genuinely puzzled.

‘I didn’t think much of that maniac you sent to my house, Nicholas.’ I waved, indicating the patch of woods into which Hoffner had so recently disappeared.

‘Hoffner?’

‘Yes, Hoffner. He tore my house apart, looking for your mother’s letters.’

‘Christ! I didn’t ask him to do that. How was I supposed to know he’d come unhinged like that? After the train crash, Hoffner tracked me down. Said he’d take my case, help me sue Metro and its board of directors. I was mostly out of it, drugged up and trussed up, so it was almost a week before I noticed that the bag with Mother’s letters in it was missing. Hoffner showed up at Kernan with some documents for me to sign, so I sent him to the trauma center to see if he could locate the Garfinkel’s bag. They gave him the note from you.

‘I couldn’t very well come and get them myself, could I?’ Nick rapped the cane against his bum leg where it rang hollowly in contact with the metal brace. ‘Can’t say I approve of his tactics, though. Never pick a lawyer off the Internet.’

‘We have attorneys, Nicholas,’ his mother said.

‘Listen to your mother, Nick. You’re going to need an attorney, aren’t you? Do you remember what you told me?’

Nick gaped at me in confusion. ‘Told you?’

‘On the train. You said, “I think I killed somebody.”’

Nick squinted, deepening the lines between his brows. ‘I did?’

‘You did. Just before you asked for your rosary.’

Nick sucked air in through his teeth. ‘God, no. Not me. I must have meant Hoffner. Ever since he returned Mother’s letters, I’ve had my suspicions. It’s been eating me up, thinking that it’s my fault he did it.’

‘Who did Hoffner kill, Nicholas?’ I asked, although I was certain I already knew the answer.

And so did Chandler. He’d done his homework, too. Before Nick could reply, Chandler said, ‘Hoffner killed Meredith Logan, my production assistant. When Nicholas showed up that Friday armed with one of my letters to Lilith, Meredith had to have recognized the handwriting.’ Chandler shot a glance at me. ‘So when Hoffner telephoned on Tuesday intending to make a deal, the stupid girl arranged an off-site meeting.’ Chandler cleared his throat. ‘Meredith was in love with me.’ He stole a glance at Lilith. ‘One of those surrogate father things, I assure you. There wasn’t anything she wouldn’t have done to protect my reputation.

‘Unless Hoffner talks, we’ll never know exactly what happened at that meeting, but I think it’s fair to say it went badly, and Meredith ended up dead.’

Chandler turned to me. ‘I have good news. Capitol police caught Hoffner on a security camera, leaving Lower Senate Park via the parallel parking area on New Jersey Avenue not far from the Taft Carillon. There’s a warrant out for his arrest.’

Balanced on her good leg, the other hooked up daintily behind her like a ballerina, Lilith reached up and touched Chandler’s face. ‘Zan, I’m so sorry. I’m sure she was a very special young woman.’

Chandler cupped Lilith’s chin, tipped it up until he could meet her eyes.

‘Don’t look at me.’ She burst into tears. ‘My face is a mess,’ she sobbed. ‘And I’m still wearing my pajamas!’

Chandler simply smiled. ‘After all these long years, do you think I care about a little soot?’ He wiped her cheeks gently, one at a time with his thumb. ‘Will you have me, my darling? I don’t need to imagine life without you. It’s been a purgatory of my own making.’

‘But, but… what about Dorothea? Your girls?’

‘One of your American naval officers had a saying for this, I think. “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.”’

Lilith bowed her head, as if accepting to share the burden. ‘But your job, your show?’

Chandler tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow. ‘Mike Huckabee has agreed to fill in for me on And Your Point Is? while I’m officially on assignment.’

Lilith grasped his arm. ‘Assignment? What assignment?’

Chandler smiled the famous smile that launched his broadcasting career, the smile that stole the hearts of thousands of female viewers at nine o’clock every weekday evening. ‘You, my dear.’

Underneath the veneer of soot, Lilith blushed crimson. ‘But afterwards, Zan, what then? Will Lynx News take you back?’

Chandler laughed. ‘Eliot Spitzer seems to have landed on his feet.’

Lilith looked confused. ‘Who’s Eliot Spitzer?’

‘A former New York state governor who threw his career away by spending tens of thousands of dollars on expensive call girls,’ Chandler explained.

I nudged Lilith with my elbow. ‘He charged them on his VISA or something.’

‘And he’s now…?’

‘A primetime commentator on CNN. Go figure.’

While Chandler excused himself to telephone the DC police, I stayed with Lilith. In spite of the firefighters’ best efforts, her cottage had been converted to a steaming, stinking, smoldering ruin. Hoffner had lost a gun to the flames, I’d lost another iPhone, and, except for her studio, Lilith had lost everything.

‘Well, I guess that solves the problem of cleaning out the house,’ Lilith joked. ‘Bring in the bulldozers! I’m relieved that Zan will never have to see the mess I’d allowed my life to become.’

‘Lilith,’ I said gently, ‘there are therapists who can help you deal with the hoarding.’

She waved me off, just as I had waved Paul off when he had suggested I might seek outside help for post-traumatic stress. ‘I watch reality TV, too, Hannah. I analyzed myself. Stuff was filling the emptiness in my life. I’d let Zan go, I’d turned my son over to others to raise, and I couldn’t bear to let go of anything else. By the time I figured that out,’ she added with a grim smile, ‘the situation had gotten entirely out of hand. Just thinking about what needed to be done sent me into a state of paralysis.