Marcia Talley: The Last Refuge

For the occasion, I chose one of the few remaining everyday gowns in my wardrobe, a yellow silk with green lace trim that had probably looked smashing on Katherine Donovan but only made my skin look sallow, more tired and drained than I already was. I was a winter; yellow didn’t appear anywhere on my color palate.

Through my fund-raising work for breast cancer research, I was already acquainted with the hostess, Mrs Sandra Bordley-Bowen, a local realtor who could trace her ancestry directly back to Stephen Bordley, the eighteenth-century Maryland attorney general, and rarely missed an opportunity to interject that historical fact into any conversation.

When I arrived at the Hammond-Harwood House, an Anglo-Palladian villa built in 1774 by renowned architect William Buckland, Chad the Cameraman took some time to capture the impeccable front door, then ducked in ahead of me the better to record my grand entrance for posterity. A liveried servant took my cloak, and I was shown to the upstairs ballroom where two pianists, a man and a woman, sat at the pianoforte, and were just beginning to play the second movement of a Mozart sonata for four hands.

Mrs Bordley-Bowen’s lips drew away from her laser-white, predatory teeth in what passed for a smile in the over-botoxed set and gushed, ‘Mrs Ives. Delighted you could join us today. May I introduce you to the others?’

‘Of course.’ I scanned the audience and realized that I already knew most of the others, a half-dozen women from Mrs Bordley-Brown’s book club, dressed, like her, in colonial costumes, mob caps perched precariously (and ridiculously) atop their freeze-dried hairdos. Shallow women, these, whose conversations ran the gamut from A to B, as Dorothy Parker famously said, and read Oprah books almost exclusively, depressing novels where life sucks, things get worse, and everybody dies. I didn’t like these women any better now than I would have nearly two and a half centuries ago. Nevertheless I gathered my skirts around me, sat, folded my hands demurely in my lap and prepared to enjoy the music.

The event turned out to be more of a soiree than a tea. There were sandwiches and sweets, of course, and the inevitable ceremonial pouring of the tea. At the end of the Rondo, one of the pianists retired to a Chippendale armchair, and a soprano took her place, treating us to some delightful solos from the ballad operas of Thomas Arne and William Boyce. Following the musicale, when the pianists were finally allowed some refreshment, Mrs B Hyphen B divided us up into two groups with a cheery, ‘It’s time for whist!’

After the card games began, I could no longer avoid their questions about the terrible accident at Patriot House, and how I felt about it.

We had no access to modern-day newspapers at Patriot House, of course, but I quickly learned from the ladies that Alex’s death had been in all the papers. Fortunately, neither The Capital nor The BaltimoreSun had mentioned exactly who had found Alex Mueller’s body, so I could smile wanly, claim shock, and suggest that with time, I might possibly get over it, which was the honest truth.

The sun was low in the sky before I could politely excuse myself, send for my cloak, and hurry home to Patriot House, just two blocks away, with Chad hot on my heels. If Melody had done her part, I would have an appointment with Paul at the back wall, and I didn’t want to miss it. But first, I’d have to ditch Chad.

I paused at the Paca House gate. ‘Don’t you have a place to go home to?’ I inquired sweetly.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ he drawled, ‘and as soon as I lock this camera up, I’m going there.’

At that time of year, the sun set around seven o’clock, but it wasn’t well and truly dark until seven thirty. I waited in my room until the long case clock chimed the half hour, then threw my dark cloak over my neon-yellow dress. I entered the garden through the kitchen, skirted the flower and holly parterres by way of the green houses, scampered as quickly over the footbridge as possible before melding into the darkness of the wilderness plantings along the back wall.

Paul was waiting for me. Through the vertical slit in the wall, we touched hands. ‘I feel like I’m in the visiting room at the Maryland state penitentiary,’ he said as his fingers met mine.

‘It feels that way to me, too.’

‘I got your message,’ Paul said, cutting to the chase. ‘What’s going on?’

‘I have a job for you, and I think it might be dangerous.’

‘Yes?’

‘At the State House ball? I want you to seduce Amy…’

‘What?’ he sputtered before I even had time to finish the sentence. ‘Are you completely out of your mind?’

I squeezed his hand. ‘Sorry, let me rephrase that. I want it to appear as if you’ve got a thing going with Amy.’

‘And that’s different, how?’

‘She will know you don’t mean it, for one thing. What’s even more important, so will I.’

‘Hannah, I’ve gone along with some of your hare-brained schemes before, but this one really takes the cake. No. My answer is No. N, O. No.

‘Amy and I have talked it over, Paul, and it’s the only way we can think of to draw Drew out of hiding, make him show himself. He’ll be at the ball, we feel certain of that.’

‘And suppose I agree?’

‘I’m going to pretend to be outraged, of course. I’m an old hag, tired and worn out. You’re the elder statesman, virile, devastatingly attractive.’

‘What bullshit. Never mind. What does this Drew person look like?’

‘Longish hair, bleached white. Otherwise, I don’t know. Amy had pictures of him on her iPhone, but they disappeared along with the phone. Her Facebook account was hijacked, so the photos on her wall are inaccessible, too. There may be photographs on the Internet, but I doubt it. Drew was, is a SEAL, after all. People in covert ops don’t generally post their mug shots all over cyberspace. Do you have any buddies who can pull something out of the official records?’

‘I’m not sure I have any buddies who are that good, but I’ll try.’

I rested my forehead against the bricks, still radiating heat from the sun. In spite of their warmth, a sudden chill crept over me. I shivered. ‘I feel like someone’s watching us.’ I kept my voice low. ‘Look over my shoulder, Paul. Do you see anything?’

‘Where?’

‘Anywhere!’ I said impatiently. Cautiously, I turned, straining my ears, listening for the rustle of a bush, the snap of a twig, looking for the sudden flick of a curtain in the window of one of the condos in the building next door.

Paul squeezed my fingers. ‘You’re letting your imagination run away with you, sweetheart.’

Again, I shivered. ‘I know that Drew’s out there somewhere, watching, always watching. It gives me the creeps.’

‘Do you think he’s going to rise up out of the fish pond wearing a ghillie suit?’ In the gathering dark, I couldn’t see my husband’s face, but I could tell from his voice that he was smiling.

‘Did you get my note?’ he asked, steering the conversation away from disgruntled SEALs who may or may not be hiding among the bulrushes, dressed like Sasquatch.

‘What note?’

‘The one I left in the bottle.’

I pressed a hand to my mouth. ‘Oh my gosh! I totally forgot. I’d just picked it up and was heading back to the house when I found Alex…’ I took a deep breath. ‘It’s been sitting in my pocket all this time. I’m so sorry, Paul.’

‘Never mind. It wasn’t all that special anyway.’

‘I’m sure I’ll treasure it,’ I said. ‘Once I have enough light to read it by.’ I leaned closer to the opening in the wall. ‘Guess I better be going in.’