Marcia Talley - Daughter of Ashes

I nodded, encouraging him to continue.

‘Caitlyn had trained him, for Christ’s sake.’

‘I saw how upset she was at the picnic,’ I told Boyd. ‘But going from upset to murder is quite a leap.’

‘Oh, Caitlyn didn’t kill Kendall, Mrs Ives. She wouldn’t kill anybody. We’ve got three kids! She couldn’t… wouldn’t do that to them.’

‘On what evidence are they holding her, then?’

‘Apparently they have witnesses. One of the musicians was on a break, having a smoke by the pool. He claims to have seen Caitlyn on the patio by the swimming pool, yelling at Kendall in front of one of the cabanas. Some kids hanging around the pool claim to have seen it, too.’

‘Are the witnesses sure it was Caitlyn?’ I asked.

‘There was no mistaking my wife, not in that red poppy sundress she was wearing.’

‘Right. I see.’

‘Anyway, Caitlyn admits to a lot of shouting and arm waving, says she told Kendall she could take her job and shove it where the sun don’t shine, but that’s all.’

By this time I’d stopped breathing altogether. ‘And?’ I prodded.

‘According to this drummer’s story, in the middle of all the shouting, Caitlyn grabbed Kendall’s scarf. Caitlyn denies this, of course.’

‘Ouch!’ I said. ‘But did this drummer actually see Caitlyn strangle Kendall?’

Boyd bowed his head and spoke into his hands. ‘No. His break was over. He got called back to the bandstand so he doesn’t know what happened after that.’

‘I’m no expert, Boyd, but I honestly don’t see how they can charge Caitlyn with murder based on such circumstantial evidence.’

‘That’s what I told the cops, but unfortunately there’s more.’

‘More?’

‘They found one of Caitlyn’s fingernails caught up in Kendall’s scarf. They matched it to Caitlyn’s DNA.’

I flashed back to the picnic, to Caitlyn’s ruined patriotic manicure. ‘Damn.’

‘What am I going to do, Mrs Ives?’

‘Well, first, you can start calling me Hannah.’ After a moment, I asked, ‘Do you have a good lawyer?’

Boyd nodded. ‘Caitlyn’s father has connections. The guy left a dinner party in Baltimore to drive over here and meet with her. He’s there with her now.’

‘Excellent. I’m sure he’ll be able to get Caitlyn out on bail.’ I stood, walked behind his chair and rested a comforting hand on his shoulder. ‘I’ll bet she’ll be home by dinnertime on Monday.’

Boyd studied me with sad eyes. ‘I hope you’re right.’

‘Of course I’m right. Now, you’re going upstairs to wake up those children and tell them they’re going out for breakfast.’

‘Breakfast? Where?’

‘Where else? McDonalds.’

‘Did that woman, could that woman, somehow know that here before her very eyes… sat a Negro? Absurd! Impossible! White people were so stupid about such things for all that they usually asserted that they were able to tell and by the most ridiculous means: fingernails, palms of hands, shapes of ears, teeth, and other equally silly rot. They always took her for an Italian, a Spaniard, a Mexican, or a gipsy. Never, when she was alone, had they even remotely seemed to suspect that she was a Negro.’

Nella Larson, Passing , Knopf, 1929, pp. 18-19

With three unfamiliar children in the house, it had been a long, restless night. After Boyd belted his kids into the Honda and drove them off to McDonalds, I went back to bed, fully dressed, sleeping through the alarm that would have gotten me up in time to go to church.

Shortly after noon, I crawled out from under the covers, dazed and blinking into the sunlight streaming in through the bedroom window. I wolfed down a peanut butter sandwich and a bowl of tomato soup, then checked in with Paul.

‘Boyd came for the children,’ I told him. ‘And Caitlyn’s father has sent over a hot shot lawyer, so things are under control for the moment.’

After commiserating with me for a minute or two, Paul told me he was going sailing with his sister, Connie and her husband, Dennis.

‘I hate you,’ I said. ‘I hate you all. Tell them I said so.’

Paul laughed. ‘What are you planning to do today?’

Before Caitlyn’s arrest had thrown everything out of kilter, item number one on my To Do list was interviewing Ronald and Bernadette Nightingale in Sturgis, Maryland. There was nothing more I could do to help Caitlyn, so visiting the Nightingales had just shot back to the top of the list. ‘I’m planning to drop in on a couple who almost certainly knew Nancy Hazlett as a teen,’ I told him. ‘They were in their twenties back then, so that means they’re pushing ninety now. If I’m lucky they’ll still be at that address and they’ll still have, you know, all their marbles.’

In recent years, I’d volunteered in the memory unit at Calvert Colony, a high-end continuing care retirement community near my home in Annapolis. I knew, first hand, what havoc old age could wreak on the mind. ‘Time, as they say, may be of the essence.’

‘Good luck, then. Be careful, my dear.’

‘Always,’ I said. I blew a kiss into the telephone and hung up.

The drive from my home to Sturgis took less than twenty minutes. Following the advice of my GPS – in the voice of comedian John Cleese – I entered the town and turned left onto a quiet, tree-lined and curb-less street.

Your destination is ahead, on the right.

I slowed and studied the house numbers. Number 308 Oysterbay Road was a neat, one-story rancher immediately next door to a modest, white clapboard church. An oversized white sign installed on the lawn in front of the church told me in big red letters that I’d reached Bayside Methodist Church. Smaller black letters below invited me to worship there on Sunday at eleven a.m. or, if I preferred, to attend a praise service at seven p.m. on Wednesday night. ‘Taste and see that the Lord is good,’ read the bottom of the sign and, below that: Pastor John Neal.

Although it was Sunday, church was long over, the parking lot empty. I pulled in, parked, walked the short distance back to number 308 and climbed the front steps. There was no sign of a doorbell, so I opened the screen door and knocked briskly on the solid wood door behind it.

My knock was answered by an apple dumpling of a woman wearing a blue-checked apron dusted with flour. ‘Sorry,’ she said, wiping her hands clean of flour on the apron. ‘You caught me making cookies for the bake sale on Saturday.’

I introduced myself. ‘And you must be Bernadette Nightingale.’

‘I am indeed. Come in, come in,’ she said, stepping aside to let me pass. ‘I need a break anyway. Would you care for some iced tea?’

‘I don’t want to put you to any trouble.’

Bernadette’s gray eyes peered at me from behind a pair of round tortoiseshell eyeglasses. That, plus the no-nonsense, short-cropped hair gave her an old-fashioned scholarly look. ‘No trouble at all, Hannah,’ she said. ‘I’ve just brewed a pitcher. It’ll only take a minute to get it together.’

‘I’d love some tea, then,’ I told her. ‘It’s been a hot day.’

‘So, how can we help you?’ she asked as she led me past the kitchen. My stomach rumbled as the unmistakable smell of warm chocolate and vanilla wafted into the hallway, teasing my nostrils and making me regret my skimpy lunch.

We. That was a good sign. Ronald Nightingale must still be alive.

‘My husband and I just moved to Elizabethtown,’ I told her as she opened the screen door leading to the back porch and we stepped through.

‘Are you looking for a church home, then?’ she asked, smiling. ‘Although Sturgis is a bit out of the way for Elizabethtown, isn’t it?’