Marcia Talley - Through the Darkness

“Off Bestgate Road?”

“Right. She drives a Toyota Corolla, white in color. Right?”

“Bingo!” I said, enormously relieved that I’d gotten the number right. The car Donna described was a perfect match to the one I’d seen Joanna Barnhorst driving. “Donna, I can’t thank you enough.”

“Good luck, Hannah. And how about lunch soon?”

After I made a date for lunch in two weeks time and said good-bye to Donna, I sat back in my chair, staring at the name I’d written down: Joanna Barnhorst.

I’d never heard of her.

I tripped downstairs to the computer room and Googled “Joanna Barnhorst.” Except for some genealogical data going back to the 1830s, and a girl who was a star lacrosse player for her high school in New Jersey, there was nothing. I considered clicking on a link for one of those fee-based background check services, but what good would information about the woman’s credit history do me? It was probably a rip-off anyway.

While I was on the computer, I located the Barnhorst apartment on Mapquest. Joanna Barnhorst’s condo was just off Medical Drive, one of a series of condominium developments that had sprung up like weeds along the cut-through from Bestgate to Jennifer Road when the hospital moved from downtown Annapolis to a multi-acre campus that adjoined the mall in Parole. A good move for the hospital, I felt sure, but not for the patient suffering a heart attack if the ambulance got stuck in traffic during the holiday shopping season.

I flopped back in my desk chair. I wanted to run right out to Scott Circle, bang on Barnhorst’s door, and demand to see her child. Except it was nearly dark.

First thing in the morning I’d get Paul to run the carpool. Then I’d check this Barnhorst woman out.

Early the next morning, with a cappuccino grandescrewed into the cup holder on my console and a bag of doughnuts from Carlson’s on the seat beside me, I waited in the parking lot outside of 303-B Scott Circle for Joanna Barnhorst to make an appearance. Her Toyota was parked in a space just outside her building, so unless she’d gone out for a pre-dawn stroll, I knew she had to be at home.

An hour later I was down to half a cup of lukewarm coffee and one doughnut, still staring at her apartment window and seeing nothing but white lace curtains, tightly drawn.

Thirty minutes after that I had an empty paper cup and traces of powdered sugar on my lips.

Feeling a bit reckless, I climbed out of my car and tested the glass door that led to the vestibule of Barnhorst’s apartment tower. Naturally, it was locked. Her name, J. Barnhorst, was written on a scrap of paper in a slot on the intercom panel outside the door, next to a big white button. I could press the button, of course, but what would I say if Joanna answered? Candygram? UPS?

I could wait until the next resident came in or out, and slip in after him. Or I could push all the buttons until someone buzzed me in, but people stupid enough to do that only lived on the other side of the television screen, right?

Besides, what would I do once I got into the building? Stand outside Joanna Barnhorst’s apartment with my ear cupped to the door, waiting to overhear something incriminating?

I could call her on my cell phone. I had her number-thanks again to Google-but if she had caller ID, “Hannah Ives” would scroll across her display panel clear as day.

Discouraged, I leaned against the aluminum siding and toyed briefly with the idea of pulling the fire alarm. I’d already used my Get Out of Jail Free card on that one, though. Pull that trick again, and the cops would probably swoop down, lock me up, and double the fine, just to teach me a lesson, and I certainly didn’t have a spare ten thousand dollars lying about.

I groaned. Manning a stakeout was certainly easier on television. Didn’t P.I.’s ever need to eat? Sleep? Go to the bathroom? Elliot and Olivia would have found a parking place right in front of Barnhorst’s building, too, rather than at the end of a line of parked cars, next to a tacky ornamental fountain, and so far away from a direct line of sight to her door that I had to sit in the passenger seat in order to keep an eye on her building.

I returned to my car, slid into the seat, readjusted the sideview mirror, and plugged my iPod into the cigarette lighter: “Wake Up Little Susie” segued into “Moi, Je ne regrette rien,” followed by “Spem in alium” and “Sheep May Safely Graze.” The iTunes party shuffle certainly made for strange bedfellows. I listened to Robin Blaze’s exquisite countertenor voice soar through “So Parted You” with one eye glued to the sideview mirror. Watching. Waiting. Hoping.

Tom Lehrer’s gravely voice jolted me awake with “Fight Fiercely Harvard.” According to the dashboard clock, I’d been asleep for twenty minutes. Damn! I sat up in panic. What if I’d missed her? But angels must have been watching over me because Barnhorst’s car was still in its parking space.

My stomach rumbled, responding to the aroma of fried dumplings wafting over from the Joy Luck carryout in the strip mall across the street. Joy Luck prepared some of the best Chinese food in the Annapolis area, and they delivered. I gazed wistfully at my cell phone, wondering if they’d deliver hot and sour soup to my car.

I rummaged in my purse, looking for a granola bar, a roll of LifeSavers, a stick of gum, anything to tide me over until dinnertime, if, God forbid, I had to sit in Joanna Barnhorst’s stupid parking lot that long, when something red flashed in the mirror. I glanced up from the dark maw of my purse to see Joanna walking toward her car, balancing the baby on her hip.

Today, Jenny was a symphony in pink: pink-checked dress with crimson smocking, pink bonnet, and pink socks, trimmed with white lace. Ugh. No wonder Jenny looked so solemn. All that pink would make even the most girly-girl barf.

I scrunched down in my seat, watching in the mirror, as Joanna Barnhorst crossed behind me to her car. In her free hand, Joanna carried an old-fashioned plastic infant seat, the kind with a handle that doubled as a stand when you wanted to prop your kid up in front of the TV to watch Sesame Street . I scowled in disapproval at the molded plastic and cheap metal. Not U.S. DOT-approved, that was for sure. I doubted they even made child seats like that anymore, and wondered if she’d picked it up secondhand at the Salvation Army Store.

I watched as Joanna strapped Jennifer into the infant carrier, positioned it in the backseat, fussed with the seat belt for a bit, then climbed in the car herself and drove away.

I started my car and followed at a prudent distance as Barnhorst turned left on Bestgate Road, left again on Generals Highway, circled the mall, and pulled into the parking lot of Toys ’R’ Us. She emerged from the store twenty minutes later pushing one shopping cart containing Jenny, two boxes of disposable diapers, a case of Similac, and a Britax car seat. She dragged a second shopping cart behind her, this one containing a box that identified its contents as a Jeep brand stroller.

For the child’s sake, I was happy to see the Britax, arguably the Rolls Royce of infant car seats, but the combination of items in Barnhorst’s two carts pegged the meter on my suspicionometer. Surely these were items that the mother of a ten-month-old child should have had all along?

I watched Barnhorst install the Britax in the backseat of her Toyota, a complicated procedure, I knew from experience, that involved the use of seat belts and anchor straps. While she struggled with that, Jenny played happily in the shopping cart, sucking on the ear of a stuffed rabbit.

I held my breath, then let it out slowly.

Lots of children chew on their toys that way, Hannah .