by Ann Ripley
“About thirty were there. Dick Elkins and wife, just home from London; four or five more couples from State; Maria Doren, the novelist—know her? Some friends from Bethesda from the last time we lived here. Some of the neighbors, including Roger Kendricks of the Post. A couple of doctors, one shrink.”
“And they all liked him?”
“Yep. Hoffman is very brash but skilled in Washington small talk. Charmed the ladies. And earned the admiration of the men. Eyes dart about a lot, but so do lots of people’s. His wife is an intelligent woman, although somewhat hard—maybe mercenary’s the word.”
Paschen chuckled maliciously on the other end of the phone line. “That makes two mercenaries in the family.”
Bill laughed briefly. “So, as I said, it was only Louise who put her finger on something.”
“What’s that?”
“She and Hoffman were eating dessert in Janie’s bedroom at a table.”
“Janie—that’s gotta be your daughter, right?”
“Right.”
“Why were they taking their créme brûlée in the bedroom?” he asked snappily.
Bill was annoyed. He knew full well that Paschen lived on an estate in the horse country near Middleburg. He might have a tough time understanding that Bill and Louise, for whatever reason, could not afford a mansion.
“The place was crowded,” said Bill, no apology in his voice. “No other place to roost. They were talking about a variety of things. First, he asked her some questions about the body parts found in the yard.”
“Is that unusual?” said Paschen. “I would think everybody would ask that kind of question.”
“They do. Everybody who meets us or knows us wants an update on the situation. We constantly answer people’s questions about how the investigation is going: ‘Don’t they know whose body that was?’ et cetera. It’s not that; it’s how the guy acted when he met our Janie.”
“So what’d he do?”
Bill shifted in his seat. “I don’t even like to talk about it. When he met her, he came on like Don Juan. Very noticeable to Louise. All her alarm bells went off. Now, Louise wouldn’t feel like that unless there was a reason.”
He wasn’t going to tell Paschen that Louise was also a little drunk, the first time she’d been drunk since the time years ago in Florence. Suddenly his tired mind went back to that sunny vacation, filled with footsore, wonderful walks on the cobblestone streets, dinners with too much wine, lovemaking each night in their rooms in an ancient castle-cum-hotel.
“All right. So back to my question, Bill: What exactly did he do?”
Bill tried to focus back on his story. “Janie and a neighbor boy were popping in and out of the party. And Hoffman hadn’t had a chance to meet her until this particular moment. Apparently he tilted her chin up and gazed in her eyes … and he touched her hair …” All of a sudden, Bill’s stomach felt queasy. “It doesn’t sound so serious. But Louise said he acted as if he would have thrown Janie on the bed and … taken her if he’d had the chance. What’s strange is that most people there saw a completely different man.”
At the other end of the line, in Chief of Staff Paschen’s White House office, there was a long silence. Finally, one word: “Lecher.”
“Lecher,” repeated Bill. “But that’s not necessarily illegal. Depends on where you go with it.” He sighed. “Look, Tom, you have the proper agencies to run this guy to ground. You decide what you do next; it’s your baby. That’s all I have.”
Off the hook. What a relief. But a sense of decency made him say more. “One more thing. As a father I don’t like to say this, but maybe this isn’t fair to the guy. I mean, to a man, everybody was noticing Janie the other night.” He paused.
“Yeh. Why?”
“Look, Janie’s almost sixteen. An innocent, well-behaved girl. It was only yesterday”—his voice broke. This was his baby he was talking about—“she was a skinny kid. But Saturday night she was a knockout. All of a sudden here’s this beautiful young creature just coming into womanhood. Peter Hoffman wasn’t the only man who was caught in her spell. As a father, the whole thing made me damned nervous. But I said to myself, remember, that’s what happens with daughters. So I don’t know what to say, Tom. Maybe he’s just normal. Or maybe somewhere down the line he’ll get into woman trouble.”
There was another long pause on Paschen’s end of the line. “The FBI tail’s been pulled for a couple of months; he’s been leading such a dull life lately….” Another pause. Bill could imagine Paschen on his feet again, impatient for action, like an animal ready to stalk its prey.
The president’s chief of staff said, “I’m standing here thinking hard, Bill. What you told me—not much to go on. But I’m going to resume surveillance on him anyway. Just on general principles. I’ll send someone down to his offices in Alexandria today.”
“Yeah,” said Bill. “He works near us; he lives near us. I don’t like it.”
Paschen’s voice was dreamy. “I wish I could get that bastard on something.”
Bill leaned forward and clutched the phone and his hands around his head as if shielding himself from a blow. “Tom, let’s backtrack. When did you pull the tail on this guy?”
“Oh, I don’t know … sometime in September.”
“I don’t know why, but I’m damned glad to hear you’re resuming the tail. The guy just doesn’t—”
“Track. That’s it exactly, Bill. He doesn’t track. And thank you. And thank Louise for me. I’ll keep you posted.”
After he hung up the phone, Bill stared for a long moment at the pool of soft green light. Interesting, beautiful. Like Louise, who had given it to him. He couldn’t unlink Louise from his thoughts about Peter Hoffman. This guy had been right on hand all the time, in Alexandria and Sylvan Valley, and Bill hadn’t been sensitive to it until now.
The neighborhood with the mulch murder. The questions about the police investigation. Coming on to young girls. Stories of missing women. Couldn’t be … or could it?
He grabbed the phone and punched out his home number. Then he sat very still and prayed with every ring that she would answer. She was home; he knew that. She had a deadline she had to meet today.
“Damn it, answer!” he yelled.
Someone knocked on his door. Ed from the next office. “Everything okay in there?” Bill ignored him.
Louise’s recorded voice said, “We can’t come to the phone right now …” Bill slammed down the receiver.
He sat for a minute quietly. He had to keep his head. He was probably being silly: too little sleep lately. He punched in Information and asked for the Fairfax Police number. At last he had an out-of-breath Detective Geraghty on the line.
“Mike Geraghty? Bill Eldridge here. Now, you may think this is totally off the wall—”
“No, I don’t,” Geraghty curtly interrupted.
27
Among the Bromeliads
LOUISE WAS SURPRISED WHEN SHE LOOKED UP and saw a white world outside. She had vaguely noted it was snowing, but in the past hour or so it had come down in such quantities that the ground was white, and even the skeletal trees were as if hung with cotton.
She felt an instant of panic: her child. Then she remembered gratefully that Janie had gone off this morning in warm clothes and hiking boots. Why could she never relinquish this motherly concern about the children getting their feet wet?
She shivered. The stove had died down, and the temperature had dropped. She opened the stove’s small door. Only a little bed of embers—orange, squirmy worms—remained. She put in more kindling, and a piece of paper for good luck, then the bulk of her wood in the prescribed fashion. Once lit, she clamped the door shut, keeping the damper open just a crack. “C’mon, baby,” she urged, “do it again for me.”
She sat down and slouched back in her chair. Like a cat waking from a sleep, she stretched out her legs and her arms and yawned. She looked at the apple on the tray and considered eating it, but chewing a Granny Smith seemed too l
arge an effort right now. Yet it must be lunchtime, or was it later? She had no watch on. And she had forgotten to bring the phone out. Bill probably had called and gotten no answer.
She picked up a Fig Newton and took a bite through its gentle protective exterior. As usual, it tasted ordinary until she got to the fig part, exotic as Morocco.
With her free hand, she cursored through her story and felt better than she had in a long time. It was a good piece of writing, and she was almost finished with it. As if thanking it for providing good vibrations, she touched the plant nearest to her, the billbergia. She ran her finger carefully along one of its swordlike leaves. They were ratcheted like devilish daggers. Its graceful, looping pink and blue blossoms were traced with purple accents. She liked it the best; it was the roughest and at the same time the most beautiful.
Then she looked over at the glass doors. The bulk of the snow surprised her; it had accumulated to what looked like three or four inches. The now-white woods would have been picture-perfect if it weren’t for the threatening sky. She thought she saw a flicker of movement in the backyard. A bird, perhaps, not used to winter yet.
Then came the series of knocks.
She realized her little joke about the protection provided by the sound of crunching leaves was moot. Whoever was here had traveled here soundlessly. The leaves were covered with a snowy blanket and gave no warning. And in spite of Bill’s admonitions, the door to the hut was unlocked.
These realizations didn’t worry her, because she was almost certain it was Nora. She sat up straight and, with some reluctance, came out of her writing daze.
Another rat-a-tat-tat of knocks. Suddenly she went cold. It couldn’t be Nora. Too demanding and impolite. Every nerve in her body came alive.
Suddenly the door flew open and a thin burst of snow flew in, as if attracted by her or the fire. There stood a big man in mirrored ski goggles and white hooded Goretex ski outfit. A stranger from an alien planet. Louise immediately conjured up a memory of spooky-looking white-clad Finnish soldiers in World War II, fighting Russians, on skis with rifles strapped across their backs.
With one hand the man threw back his hood, lifted his goggles onto his forehead, and pulled down the scarf that covered his lower face. His other hand was bunched in his deep coat pocket.
It was Peter Hoffman, with blue eyes glittering, blond hair in disarray, and what looked like two days’ worth of gray-blond beard.
He stamped in, unbidden, the snow that hung on him cascading onto the flagstone floor.
Louise remained seated, both hands over her heart. “Oh, it’s only you. You about scared me to death! What are you doing here?”
He smiled down at her. Again using only one hand, he unsnapped his jacket, removed the goggles, and stuffed them in a pocket. From the same pocket he extricated a pair of bifocals and slipped them in place on his nose. He looked around the room as if to memorize its furniture plan. “Louise. It’s a helluva day, isn’t it? I’m sorry—didn’t mean to scare you.” He looked at the rapidly melting snow he had dragged in. “Didn’t mean to mess up this place, either. But it won’t hurt these flagstones, will it?”
Louise, who was beginning to recover her composure, reflected that she had just waxed those flagstones. She said, “No, don’t worry about it.” She looked at him with her forehead furrowed. “What on earth brought you over here? You really scared me, you know.”
He looked at a nearby chair. “Can I sit down?”
Her solitude was gone, and Louise could hardly conceal her impatience at the loss. “Of course. I’m sorry I’m so short; I’m working. I don’t have a lot of time. But do sit down. Although I think I might have to go soon. The weather looks so bad that I may have to pick Janie up at school.”
“You’re going to have trouble driving. Roads are a mess. Very slippery.”
“Then I wonder how—oh, I suppose the school buses—or maybe they’ll just …” She stopped.
“They’ll just what? They won’t walk all the way home, will they?”
“I doubt it,” she lied. She would love to see the teenagers walk in right now. With an effort, she sought a cordial tone: “So, you walked here, from your house?”
“Yes. You know good and well that my house is less than a mile from here.”
“How did you know I’d be home?”
Hoffman sat back comfortably. “You told me Saturday night. Don’t you remember? You told me lots of things Saturday night.”
Louise quietly pulled herself up in her chair. “Mr. Hoffman …”
“Peter,” he said, cajolingly.
“Well, Peter, then. I may have been a bit tipsy, but I can remember our conversation in Janie’s bedroom.” A flash of anger came over her. She glared at him. “Do you think I’m some fool?”
“To the contrary, my dear.” His voice had become low and sexy. “I think you are smart. You are also a very hot woman. And I think your pantywaist State Department husband doesn’t realize just how hot you are.”
She got out of her chair and walked toward him, her teeth clenched with anger. She stood over him, her arms akimbo. “You are so … inappropriate I can’t find words for it. Who do you think I am? You have a dirty mind, mister. And I guess it’s because you’re such a macho guy that you don’t even know the difference between a ‘pantywaist,’ as you call it, and a real man. Which is what my husband is, and which you obviously are not. So please leave. Neighbor or no neighbor, big shot or no big shot, I don’t want you here.” As she strode past him toward the door he jumped up from his chair and grabbed her arm as if it were tinder. Pain ran through her body, a rank intruder. She couldn’t move without hurting herself.
“How dare you!” she cried. “Goddamn you! This is my house!”
She looked down when she felt the gun barrel in her stomach. A large black pistol. She felt dizzy and knew she would fall. He maneuvered her backward with an iron hand and pushed her awkwardly into her chair. Mouth agape, she breathed in little, short gasps. As if warning her too late of danger, her heart started to palpitate, so hard she was sure that her adversary could see the motion. She lowered her head and willed it to stop. How could she handle all this and a palpitating heart as well! As if the prayer were answered, the irregular, nervous rhythm stopped, then was followed a millisecond later with one familiar, dull pain in her chest. She sighed with relief.
He looked down at her. “Is something wrong with you?” he asked crossly.
She shook her head. In a quiet voice she said, “No, I’m just … surprised.”
“Can I trust you now not to do anything foolish?” he pursued, as if talking to a misbehaving child.
Louise’s voice was low. “What on earth are you doing this for? What do you want from me?”
Watching her, he walked to the end of the room and pulled the draperies across the glass doors that looked into the woods. As he came back to his chair, he gave her a smile and said, “It’s so damned cold and wet out there. I like the feeling of this place, all closed in, just the two of us.”
She stared at him. She felt as if every synapse were at the ready. Did this bastard want to do something to Janie? If so, he had her to take care of first.
“Let’s get down to it, Louise. I didn’t come here to rape you … or Janie … Janie, that’s who you’re afraid for now, isn’t it? Just because I admired her the other night. You’re such a clucking mother. Don’t you know every man at that party wanted to fuck her? She’s a little old to be a virgin—how old is she, fifteen? She cried out, in that basal way young females do, ‘I’m ready to be taken, take me.’”
“You bastard,” Louise whispered.
“And you, baby. You have the same quality; you’re just a little better at covering it up. But I know you’d love it.”
She put her hands over her ears and stared at the now prosaic-looking plants that sat in front of her on the table.
He snarled it: “Louise!”
She snapped her head toward him, frightened again, and a w
himper escaped her. Her heart threatened to resume its irregular beat, and again she tried to fool it, to pull a veil of calm over her body. Again the palpitations receded.
“Baby, I’ll lay that aside for a bit,” he said, smiling. His tone, she noticed, had softened. “Maybe later we’ll get better acquainted. Not enough time right now. ‘I’m here on serious business.” His tone turned nasal, matter-of-fact.
“You have the key to the little mystery that turned up in your backyard. A mystery that hasn’t been too pleasant, has it? Newspapers, police. Neighbors always asking you about it. You didn’t expect to be the center of such a, shall we say, disjointed affair.” He laughed uncontrollably at his joke, putting one hand on his belly as if to control its movement, rocking back and forth a little with enjoyment. The other hand attempted to keep the gun level with her head.
She looked at him, her mouth curled down. Her hands were clutched to the inside of either thigh as if to give her some inner support.
“Lighten up, Louise,” he snapped. “I’m telling you a story. I’m honoring you by telling you my story.”
Suddenly it fell into place. She realized she had only one weapon. This man was attracted to her. Liked to teach her things. Like a Svengali. With an effort she let the sneer melt from her face. She crossed her legs, slowly relaxed her hands, and turned them up in her lap. Her survival could depend on how well she did this.
“Ah, better. You were so angry I’d thought you’d burst. Well, to move along … there’s not much time. We have to get outta here.”
“You’re telling me I know something about the body in the bags?”
“Yes. You know what kind of a car was pulling out of Martha’s Lane the night you were there.”
“No. I just remember the headlights.”
“But if you’d gone to the police—I was afraid you might go first thing this morning. I discredited the information, but I still couldn’t count on you. They could have helped you identify my Porsche 911 Carrera II, the one with the distinctive lights.”