Marcia Talley: Sing It to Her Bones

I took the opportunity to bathe. With the tub half full and steam already clouding the mirror, I settled into the water, first resting my back against the cool porcelain, then sliding down until I was lying almost flat. I adjusted the hot-water tap to a trickle and watched as the water level slowly rose to cover my thighs and arms, my feet, my chest, and finally, my breast. The right one had once been small, round, and perky like the left one until cancer and a surgeon’s knife had reduced it to a rough, red rope across my chest. I ran a finger gently along the knotted scar and thought about the reconstructive surgery I was considering.

I sat up, soaked a washcloth in the hot water from the tap, wrung it out, and placed it over my face, covering it completely, breathing in the hot, moist air, breathing slowly, evenly, feeling my body melt into the water. Under the washcloth scenes from yesterday played and replayed behind my closed eyelids. I tried to clear my mind, but images of that white, floating thing kept swimming to the surface. I flung the washcloth aside and tried to concentrate on Connie’s elaborate floral wallpaper, following the wandering vines as they snaked over the medicine cabinet and curled around the light fixtures, but even that didn’t banish the visions. So I meditated, focusing on my mantra instead.

A knock on the bathroom door jolted me awake. “Hannah, are you all right?”

“Sorry, Connie. I must have fallen asleep. I’ll be right out.”

I emerged, wrapped in an oversize terry-cloth bathrobe I found hanging from a hook on the back of the bathroom door, my skin flushed with the heat. Connie sat at the kitchen table surrounded by paper cups of fresh coffee plus a box of assorted doughnuts she told me she had picked up at Ellie’s.

I peeked inside. “Crullers!” My favorite. I took a bite and mumbled, “You are a doll.”

Connie finished the last of a chocolate-covered doughnut, sipped her coffee, then wiped her mouth with a napkin. “Gawd, just think of the calories!”

“Crullers don’t have any calories,” I said. I showed her the hollow core. “See, they’re full of air.”

“Dream on, Hannah. You might as well just paste it on your thighs.”

Connie had purchased three newspapers and spread them out on the table. “I knew you’d be interested in seeing these.” The Washington Post didn’t mention our murder at all, at least not that we could find. The Baltimore Sun had a small article in the Maryland section, but we had made it big in the Chesapeake Times , with pictures. There it was, solidly occupying the treasured spot on the front page usually reserved for marijuana busts, boat fires, fatal traffic accidents, or farmers who had grown misshapened vegetables resembling Newt Gingrich. “Here.” Connie moved her mug aside and smoothed the paper out.

“What does it say?” I leaned forward, still licking the sticky glaze from my fingers.

In the Sun I was described as “a woman visiting from Annapolis,” but the Times mentioned my name and my hometown and had a small picture of me and Connie, talking to Ellie. I peered at it. “Connie, why didn’t you tell me I looked so dreadful? My wig is crooked.”

“Don’t be silly. It’s your imagination. You look fine.”

“Liar!” I tossed my empty cup into the trash. “Does it say anything about Chip Lambert?”

Connie adjusted her reading glasses and leaned over the page. “Let’s see. ‘The partially calcified body of a young woman’ blah-de-blah-de-blah. Oh, here we are. ‘Katherine Dunbar was last seen on October 13, 1990, leaving a dance at Jonas Green High School with her date, Charles “Chip” Lambert, also sixteen. Police are awaiting a positive identification of the body before reopening the case.’ ”

I turned the paper slightly toward me. BODY FOUND IN CISTERN, shouted the headline, and in smaller type below, FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED. Another photograph filled most of the page below the headline: Mrs. Dunbar gazed out from the window of her husband’s truck with sad, unfocused eyes. He stood outside the door, holding her hand.

“I think that image will haunt me forever, Connie. It’s the personification of grief. Even though it’s been a long time since Emily put us through hell on earth by running off after that rock band, one doesn’t easily forget. I know exactly what is running through that poor woman’s mind.” I pushed the newspaper back toward my sister-in-law. “It could have been Emily lying down there at the bottom of that cistern.” My eyes stung with tears. “Eight years she’s been living this nightmare, Connie. Eight years.” I touched the photograph of Mrs. Dunbar. “But by the time this is all over, at least she’ll know, one way or the other.”

While Connie did the laundry and painted, I spent the rest of the day trying to make sense out of her accounts, which consisted of a spiral-bound notebook full of nearly indecipherable scribbles and a shoe box stuffed full of invoices, check stubs, and receipts. I was so caught up alternately worrying about Connie’s slovenly bookkeeping habits and the poor Dunbar family that I forgot to worry about why Paul still hadn’t returned my call.

It rained all the next night. Great explosionsof thunder rattled the windows, followed before I could finish chanting “one one thousand” by zigzags of lightning that sliced through the dark and scented the air with ozone. When I awoke at eight, the rain had stopped, but clouds still plastered the slate gray sky and patches of fog hovered over the low-lying fields. I breathed in the sweet, damp air and felt immensely content. Until I remembered. Rain. The cistern would be full again.

I had planned to spend the day lounging around the house reading one of the paperbacks I had brought with me. A dozen mysteries lay under my bed, jumbled up in a plastic grocery bag. I never dreamed when I packed them up in Annapolis that I’d be walking right into a real-life mystery a few days later. I was sitting cross-legged on the floor, browsing through the pile, trying to decide whether to revisit a favorite Dick Francis, Reflex , or to launch into the latest Sue Grafton when Connie tapped lightly on the door.

“Hannah? You up?” The door eased open, and Connie’s tousled head appeared.

“Just picking out the day’s reading material.” I waved the Sue Grafton at her, NIs for Noose . “What do you suppose she’ll do for titles after she gets to the end of the alphabet?”

Connie plucked the book from my outstretched hand and scanned the blurbs on the back flap. “Oh, I don’t know. How about starting over? AA is for Alcoholics Anonymous, BB is for Gun.” She set the book down on top of the dresser. “I gave up on Grafton somewhere around the letter J, I think.” Connie turned apologetic. “Hannah, I was wondering. Could you help me pack up my gourds this morning?”

I saw my nice, quiet day sliding down the tubes. I shrugged. “Sure. Why not?” I tried to sound enthusiastic about helping prepare the shipment, but I really just wanted to get it over with.

A few minutes later, in the kitchen, I grabbed a bagel and a cup of coffee and tried to call Paul at home. I got the message you get when the line is busy, which meant he was either talking on the phone or logged on to the Internet. I suppose the phone could have been off the hook, too, or out of order, but my bet was he was slogging through his E-mail. So what the hell was going on? Paul might have missed seeing the article in the Sun , but there was no way he could have missed my messages. I was becoming seriously annoyed. Too bad Connie didn’t have a computer and a modem. I could have E-mailed my husband a nasty-gram.