Peter Clement - Mortal Remains

Mark shook his head at the sorrow of it all, then changed the topic to what he hoped would be more fertile ground, asking her questions about the week of Kelly’s disappearance, specifically if Nell had seen or heard anything of Chaz Braden being around when he normally should have been in New York. “Remember, it was the Monday we didn’t have Richard Nixon to kick around anymore,” he reminded her, knowing she was a staunch Democrat.

Nothing.

He inquired about Samantha McShane and if anyone had seen her in the vicinity around that time.

Nell gave an indignant snort. “The woman hardly ever came into Hampton Junction. Like she was too good for us. The few occasions she did, when Kelly was little, I mostly saw her in Tim Madden’s drugstore buying medicine while going on about how sick her child was. One day word got around that she tried that act with your father, and he set her straight. Kelly seemed to be more visible after that set-to, riding her bike into town and playing with local kids as she got older. But once Kelly grew up, left home, and married Chaz Braden, her parents weren’t down here much, and eventually they sold the place. Probably because the Bradens virtually blackballed them from the social circuit. I used to play cards with a number of housekeepers who worked for that set, and they told me anyone who wanted a Braden at their party didn’t dare invite Samantha or Walter McShane. From what I heard she became pretty much a recluse in her New York place as well. But why are you asking about her? You think she had something to do with the murder?”

“Now don’t you start that story, Nell.”

And so it went. Nothing she told him even hinted at a lead.

As it grew darker outside, snow flew horizontally against a double row of little squared panes that overlooked the Hudson Valley. He got up and peered outside. In the growing darkness snow clouds seemed to be building up over the mountains to the east, yet he could still see the river below, gray as a snake as it coiled through the hills. Despite the smallness and age of the cabin, it looked as solid as a well-made ship, and the wind driving the flakes couldn’t disturb the quiet coziness within. He returned to his chair, accepted another cup of tea, and their talk moved on to the coming of winter.

“There were some funny things, though, come to think of it,” she said after a pause in the conversation.

“Funny things?”

“About that home. You’d think with all the charitable spirit behind it, they’d have done more to make the place a little bit nicer.”

“How could they, with a forbidding building like that to start with?”

“They had enough land to make it like a park in there, or at least put in a garden. I remember Ginny Strang, God bless her dear departed soul, telling me she suggested as much when she worked in the place. The women would have liked tending it for something to do, she figured. As it was, they only had a half-finished lawn to walk on and pretty much nothing to occupy them. Well, the idea was turned down flat.”

All part of their punishment, he thought, more ghosts from the cryptlike rooms rising to stir his anger. “Obviously, you should have been running the place, Nell.”

“I would have been glad to. But that’s another thing. The way they hired people. Very few locals. And they never took anyone full-time.”

“Oh?”

“I don’t know why. Lots were willing to work from here, nurses trained in the war, but they only gave people two or three shifts a week, and mostly picked outsiders over us from Hampton Junction.” She sniffed as if freshly offended. “I guess once again we weren’t good enough.”

“Now, Nell, it could be just as they did with your friend – their wanting to ensure the privacy of the mothers,” he said, trying to mollify her. “With different staff all the time, and none of them likely to have any social contacts beyond the place of work, the patients would probably feel more anonymous.”

She puckered her face at what he said and continued to look miffed.

“Come on, don’t get upset over nothing,” he pressed. Maybe he couldn’t “cure” her knee, but he at least should be able to get her out of a snit. “I know it backfired for her, but given the censorious climate of those days, it makes a sick kind of sense. It’s certainly the opposite of how we hire today, bending over backward to keep the same people around so the patients get to know who’s taking care of them.”

“Then how come it was identical to what happened at that fancy-schmancy maternity center the Bradens ran in Saratoga? No need for women to feel ashamed there.”

“How do you mean?”

“They hired a few former nurses from Hampton Junction to work there as well, but none of them could get a full-time job at that place either.” She finished with her scrawny head as erect as an eagle’s and a so-there glare.

Snow made the dusk luminous. Even with four-wheel drive, whenever he topped thirty miles an hour the Jeep started to fishtail toward the ditch, and he had to wrestle the wheel against the pull of the slush. The road out to Nell’s place was so infrequently traveled it was the last priority for the plows.

He rummaged through his CD holder and soon he crawled along to the breathy voice of Diana Krall singing “The Look of Love.” The car heater quickly warmed the interior of the Jeep to the point he could open his jacket, and the wipers beat a steady rhythm against the storm. With his headlights switched low to reduce their glare against the flakes, he easily distinguished the swell of the road from the steep drop of its shoulders on either side. Better straddle the middle, he decided, having the highway all to himself and not wanting to skid anywhere near the edge.

He continued to feel disappointed that, pleasant as his visit with Nell had been, she’d told him nothing new about Kelly’s murder or why his father might have been interested in either the maternity center or the home. Somehow, after his initial good luck with Kelly’s old file and spotting Earl Garnet’s role in her life, he’d assumed he was on a roll, that he’d continue to round up leads at the same speed.

Now he felt at a dead end, the next step as obscure and dark as the woods on either side of him.

He hoped Earl had fared better today. He patted his cellular phone in the breast pocket of his shirt, wishing he knew Earl’s number, which lay safely buried in the wallet he was sitting on and would be hell to get out. No matter. He’d be home soon. The traction felt more secure now that he hogged the center of the highway, and he gently eased his speed up to forty miles an hour.

Settling back, he watched the sweep of flakes across his windshield as Krall drifted into another song. She seemed to be whispering it into his ear.

“… I get along without you very well…”

A loud thwack sounded on his right, something stung the side of his face, and the glass immediately in front of him shattered into a silvery web of cracks around a small black hole.

“Jesus!” He jumped in fright against the restraints of his seat belt and inadvertently floored the accelerator. The Jeep lurched ahead, immediately swiveling to the left. He instinctively jammed on the brakes, and felt the staccato pump of the antilock system, but too late. In the snow-spotted blaze of his headlights, he glimpsed the edge of the road as it flew under him and the hood of his car nose-dived down a ten-foot embankment toward a ravine of open water lined with rocks. Amidst a deafening bam of impact and crunch of crumpling metal, he flew forward against the chest strap of his seat belt only to be pounded backward by the airbag exploding out of the steering wheel.