Return to Dust

by Andrew Lanh

  He scratched the back of his hand. “Well, I don’t know.”

  “He’s dead,” I stressed.

  He strolled to a computer terminal and typed in Joshua’s name. “He moved in on April 4. He asked that he have hired help in unloading and packing. Wanted special care for an old desk. We provide that service.” He smiled. “He complained on June 2 that the air-conditioning wasn’t working. He called again on June 3. Problem taken care of that afternoon.” The young man looked up. “I came on board just about that time.” He scrolled up the screen. “He’d paid for three months, didn’t renew, and he moved out on July first.

  “Does it say why?”

  “Hold a sec.” He disappeared into the back room, returning with an uncut loaf of warm bread. He cut off a slab. “No, but I remember. He was too lonely here. One of the kids who helped him pack for the move told me, I remember. He was moving to some place back in Connecticut for the summer. Then he planned to be back in Farmington. I guess he had his family or something. Like he had a niece, I remember, who was here that last day, helping him and all.”

  “Any forwarding address?”

  He cut a slice of bread and handed it to me. Thick oatmeal bread with cinnamon. Delicious. I nodded toward his coffee, and he read my gesture, pouring me a cup. He grinned. “I knew you were someone who could be tempted.” He nodded to Hank, then poured him a cup of coffee.

  He returned to the computer and found an address for a place in Clinton, Connecticut, on the water. And the grand niece’s name: Mary Powell.

  “She packed him in blankets, I remember.” A pause. “She didn’t seem happy, like she wanted to get away from him.”

  “Ever see the niece here before?” I was sitting now, having my snack.

  “That was the first I saw her, but she could have driven by me a hundred times. They’re not required to stop, you know.”

  “Did he have any other visitors?”

  “None I know of. As I say…”

  I cut in. “I know, I know. They don’t have to report.”

  “Exactly.”

  “On the weekend after this past Labor Day an older woman came to visit him—Marta…”

  He cut me off. His hands slapped each other. He spilled coffee. “My God, I’d forgotten her. Can you believe it? Holy shit. I remember that visit, all right.”

  I smiled.

  “I was in the office that day, and I remember it was hot. Real hot. Like August still. Blistering. This woman, all dressed up and with what my mom calls high perfume, she walks in looking for Joshua Jennings. I could tell she was nervous, fluttery, but she was also a little angry. I remember that I tried to calm her down, offered her something cold to drink, which she took. I said it was hot, even for September.”

  I leaned forward. “This was the weekend after Labor Day?”

  “Positive. And I was sort of waiting for it.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Old Joshua had stopped into the office one afternoon and told me some woman might try to reach him. He got this letter from her or something. It shook him up. I think he was mainly talking telephone—he had this unlisted number, they all do—but he also said she might show up. And he described her in detail. Down to this matronly hairdo and the old-lady perfume. He told me that she was hounding him, that I was to keep her away from him.”

  “Did he say why?”

  “‘Done him dirt.’ That’s what he said. I remember ’cause he didn’t look like a guy who’d say it that way.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Slang. The guy was like upper-crust.” He chuckled. “Imagine—an old lady stalking him. Tell her anything, he said. But she never did show up.”

  “But she did.”

  “But she came way after he moved out. He left on July first. And I told her that. And I mean she flipped out. Raged around, then started crying. I mean, I read it as a lover’s quarrel, like they were an old married couple way back when. He was an old-timer, wheezed when he talked. A weird, squeaky voice, a real old man. She was—well, lively as hell. I think it got to her that he was already gone two months and she thought he was still here. And him back in Connecticut. Then she left.”

  “Did you give her his new address?”

  He nodded. “Bingo. I did. Sorry ’bout that.” A sheepish grin. “It was my only way of getting her out of here. I figured he gave the same instructions wherever he moved to. Maybe the niece could put the brakes on her. She was real nice—the niece. Mary Powell. Imagine that—an old lady stalking an old dying man.”

  “How did you know he died?” Hank asked.

  “He had a neighbor here—an old lady who collected his mail sometimes. She read about it in the Connecticut papers. She was originally from the Hartford area.”

  “What’s her name?” I asked. “I’d like to talk to her.”

  He shook his head. “Sorry, man. She died a week or so back. Maybe a month ago.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of being ninety-nine years old.”

  ***

  Back in Connecticut, I called the Boys’ Academy, but no one had information on Mary Powell. I checked Manhattan information, but there was none listed. Five Powells with first-name initial. “M.” I made a list.

  “How do you know she lives in Manhattan?” Hank asked.

  I sighed. “Christ, it could be one of the other boroughs.”

  “A long list.”

  I groaned. “Thanks.”

  I dialed Hattie’s number.

  She answered on the second ring. “Who is it?”

  “Rick Van Lam.”

  Her voice became wary. “Yes?”

  “A quick question. I just got back from Amherst. The guard at the gate remembered that Marta went there to see Joshua.”

  “I told you she’d gone there. Came back in a huff.”

  “He wasn’t even there. He’d already moved back to Connecticut.”

  Surprise in her voice. “You’re kidding?”

  “No, she never saw him.”

  “Can you beat that? No wonder she had nothing to say. Just fumed…cried.” A barely suppressed giggle. “I stopped listening to her.”

  “Did she mention Clinton?”

  “The president?”

  I smiled. “No, the town on the Connecticut coast.”

  A long pause. “As a matter of fact, I think she did. But not then. One time. For some reason. Maybe not. I can’t remember.” There was a deep intake of breath. “What does that mean?”

  “Joshua moved to Clinton to be with his niece.”

  “Really? A niece?”

  “A great-niece.”

  I could tell she was lighting a cigarette because I heard the snap of a lighter, her words spoken through tightened lips.

  “Whatever. I got tired of Marta talking about him—his life—so much. I just tuned her out after a while. She…” She inhaled.

  “Did you know if Marta traveled to Clinton?”

  “I can’t remember—she was starting to get so secretive.”

  “Secretive?”

  “You know, not answering questions, staring off into space. This was right near the end.” Hattie grunted. “I do remember that she drove to New Haven, but she didn’t ask me to go. Maybe she went to Clinton—it’s nearby and all.”

  “When was that?”

  “About the same time. Back in September.”

  “She never said why she went?”

  Hattie was ready to end the conversation, her words running together. “Look, maybe Marta was a little overboard about Joshua. I tell you that outright. A silly woman dreaming about a silly man. I’ve been there, but not that silly. Joshua was a pompous fool who led her on. Old folks acting like spring chickens.”

  I waited, drumming my fingers.

  “That,” she added in a cackle,
“and the fact that she was drinking too heavily after he left. I knew the woman—she was my friend, you know—but she could tip that elbow something fierce. I like my little cocktail now and then, but there’s a limit. It may not have been suicide, young man.”

  “No?”

  “No. Maybe she toppled off that bridge in a drunken stupor. Let me tell you this, sonny. I’ve seen her fall into the all-you-can-eat buffet at Caesar’s Palace in Vegas.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  I wandered into Zeke’s Olde Tavern on a lazy Sunday afternoon, meeting up with Marcie and Vinnie. Manic laughter and loud backslapping assailed me. A crowd of folks, mostly college kids, watched a football game on TV, and the noise slammed me in the face.

  This was not my favorite time of day at the Tavern. I liked it later at night, near closing time, a few regulars crowding the bar, the ancient jukebox filling the corners with early Motown and soft rock from, say, The Delfonics. Music to miss the old days you never really had.

  Vinnie pushed a chair at me. “Have a seat, sleuth.”

  “You making fun of me?”

  “Of course.”

  “I want to be taken seriously.”

  “No chance of that.” Marcie leaned into me, drumming her fingers on my arm, flashing me a big smile.

  “You both been drinking here a while?”

  “Your tone suggests a new temperance campaign,” Vinnie said soberly. “Carrie Nation lives.”

  “We’re married to each other. He votes Republican,” Marcie laughed. “I—we—have to drink.”

  Vinnie raised his glass in tribute.

  Marcie smiled again. “Vinnie and I both have our pet theories on your little murder. You want to hear?”

  “No.” I waved the barmaid to the table. I wanted a long, cool scotch.

  Marcie didn’t stop. “Of course you do. There is absolutely no proof, but I know it was murder. It has to be. For one reason alone. Women don’t throw themselves off bridges when they’re on the way to a man’s house. They throw themselves off bridges when they leave men’s houses. Then they have reason to.”

  Vinnie scoffed. “And my theory. Simple desperation. Depression. She wanted a man to marry her, and he moved away—rejected her. Women die when men reject them.” Of course, he pronounced this last bit of wisdom facing his wife.

  They went back and forth, light-hearted, throwing frivolous barbs. But genially. It amazed me that they had been able to locate and settle into some middle ground where their marriage could survive and thrive. Humor, I guess, and genuine love. I envied them. But then I stopped because you don’t envy friends. Buddha said: Your true friend is only that part of you that is love. I smiled.

  Marcie was denouncing Vinnie as “deplorably sexist,” adding, “Women no longer kill because of what men do to them. Women kill to get rid of men. Men are barnacles on the H.M.S. Sisterhood.”

  Vinnie insisted women die for love. “In Victorian times they just pined away.”

  “Because,” Marcie insisted, “men refused to bathe more than once a year.”

  “Women still die for love.”

  “Rick, look who’s the romantic in the family. Vinnie, you should write Harlequin romances. E-books for the emotionally challenged. The supermarket shelves await your purple prose.”

  Finally, realizing I was sitting there silently, nursing a scotch in which the ice had melted, Marcie turned to me. “And what do you think?”

  “Simple. She killed herself to get away from friends who never stopped talking about her private business.”

  “Well,” both roared at once, looking at each other and laughing.

  “Well,” I concluded, “sometimes bridges look inviting.”

  Marcie sneered. “Then you should tell your girlfriends to keep their mouths wide open.”

  “That makes no sense,” Vinnie told her.

  The afternoon drifted by. Around seven o’clock—long after I’d planned on leaving—I stepped outside and dialed Karen. Marcie and Vinnie were headed off to get pizza in West Hartford after failing to persuade me to join them.

  “Did something happen?” Karen asked.

  “No, checking in.”

  “Come over. Rick. We can go for a ride or something. I’m going crazy here.”

  I deliberated. “All right.”

  “Just come over.”

  “I don’t have anything new to tell you. A little, maybe. My trip to Amherst.”

  “I don’t care. I need to talk to a human being.”

  “I don’t know…”

  Before she hung up she surprised me. “No talk of Aunt Marta. Not one word tonight. Promise me.”

  So we didn’t. We caught the late movie at Trinity College, a French farce that bored me. Near the end Karen nudged me, and so we left. She smiled. “I couldn’t follow the plot.”

  “I kept spotting grammatical errors in the subtitles.”

  She didn’t want to stop for coffee and a snack—we’d munched on leftover pasta at her place just before leaving for the movies—but she didn’t want to go home yet.

  “No,” she kept saying, “drive.”

  Drive, she said. So I drove. She fiddled with the radio dial and turned up the music. She settled for the Hartford retro seventies station, complete with inane disco patter and soft-rock musings. Turn the beat around…like to hear percussion. She twisted in her seat, but her movements didn’t seem to be in time with the music’s insistent rhythm: in and out of love. This time, baby. Karen mumbled the words. She ignored me.

  “I was happy then.” The joke I always made whenever some forgettable decade from the past intruded on my present life. People were always pulling me into their past lives. High times at the old high school. Or senior prom. Or sorority dance. It didn’t matter what past event. I was happy then. Deliriously.

  Of course, I was a rag-tag boy running the streets of Saigon during that decade. Ho Chi Minh City.

  …boogie nights…

  Karen faced me, alarmed. “Why did you stop being happy?”

  I didn’t answer her.

  She turned the music louder when the Bee Gees suddenly somersaulted from the backseat into the front. I almost went off the road. Stayin’ Alive. Stayin’ alive…ooh ooh ooh…I thought of crisp white suits and black dress shirts.

  Karen made me drive aimlessly for an hour. When I stopped to refill the tank, she bought junk food and soda. Then I took her home. Watching me closely, she invited me into the apartment, but I hesitated. I didn’t know why.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked.

  We stood for a moment on the sidewalk while she groped for keys. It was bone-marrow cold, with knife-like wind, and I suddenly felt the coming assault of winter. I got depressed standing in the ink-black night, the groaning wind rustling in the trees nearby. I was staring at Karen who looked helpless, fumbling in her purse, swearing, twitching her head in frustration. She looked ready to cry, her jaw tight, tucked into her neck.

  Inside, she seemed relieved to be out of the cold. Taking her time, measuring and nodding, she made me delicious hot chocolate laced with real cream. I was still chilled, and my body shook from a cold spasm. I remembered a line my adopted mother used to say late at night when a chill went through her body: Somebody just walked on my grave. That was always a conversation stopper in the old New Jersey household.

  But now I think I understood it. I slurped down the hot drink while Karen watched me, peering over her cup. She took the cup from me and refilled it. She poured herself some liqueur that looked sticky and smelled sweet. It seemed medicinal, so I refused the glass she offered me.

  I hated her apartment, a sterile modern box, all angles and lines, none of them graceful, with redundant off-white walls. Everything was in block form, from the square windows to the boxy kitchen cabinets. The awful sameness was lightened, but only slightly, by
her own huge abstract oil paintings gracing every wall. Phantasmagoric splashes of primary color. It was the stuff of serious nightmare. I tried to convince myself it all dated from an earlier, disturbed period, now happily past.

  “Are you nervous?” she asked, sitting down near me, her arms folded against her chest.

  “No.”

  “You look nervous.”

  But I wasn’t. In fact, she looked nervous, squirming around, sitting, standing, folding and unfolding her arms, tossing her head back, pursing her lips. I sat stone-like, concentrating on my hot drink, happy with it, and my head swam a bit. I was relaxed now. I wasn’t cold any longer.

  “You look nervous,” I told her.

  “I’m not nervous.” Too loud. She suddenly jumped up and walked behind me. Had I been some devotee of Hollywood’s Friday the 13th/Nightmare on Elm Street horror flicks, I would have expected a brutal cleaver severing my fragile neck. That was really the way she moved. Instead I felt a soft hand on my shoulder and I smelled a hint of sweet perfume. Roses, I thought. And sweet powder. Her breath was hot with sweetness—that green liqueur. I closed my eyes.

  She leaned over and kissed the nape of my neck, her hair brushing my cheek. She had her hands on my shoulders, so I reached back and covered them with mine. Her skin was soft but the hands, fluttery now, slid out from under mine and disappeared back into the folds of her dress. I turned to face her. Eyes closed, mouth open, she looked drugged, a face melting from its own warmth.

  I left the chair and walked back to her, taking her hands into mine. She opened her eyes and for a moment looked startled, as if seeing me for the first time, as if coming out of a narcotic stupor. But then there was the slight sliver of a smile, the gray-blue of her eyes becoming dark and cloudy.

  I kissed her and felt her mouth tighten. She didn’t seem to want this, but then slowly, as though forcing herself, she slackened her mouth, her jaw.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  She kissed me, almost panicky, out of breath, and then stopped, afraid of something. She didn’t move. A chill spread through me.

  She said nothing but her hand lifted to her face, and she sighed.

  “Karen.”

  Silence for an answer.