Shadow Image

by Martin J. Smith

  “Help yourselves,” Ford said to the others, offering the pitcher. “Why don’t I just start with an update on Mother?”

  Chapter 4

  Ford reached across his wife’s lap and patted his father’s arm. “Dad just came from Mount Mercy, so this is as of two hours ago,” he said. “But it’s pretty good news.”

  Vincent Underhill’s eyes shifted, focusing somewhere beneath the table.

  “Mother is conscious but heavily sedated because of the injuries,” Ford said. “The X-rays show a spinal fracture, but she’s regained feeling in her toes. So we think we’ve cleared that hurdle.”

  Nods and smiles all around.

  “Her left arm is broken just above the elbow. At her age, that’s a wait-and-see. She’s tough as an old shoe, so we expect it to heal okay.” Ford shifted in his chair. “Brain imaging tests show no damage there other than what we know is the result of her condition. She told the sheriff’s people she doesn’t remember anything about what happened, but that’s not surprising.”

  Vincent Underhill leaned forward with a sad smile. “Last night she didn’t know how she ended up in the ravine,” he said. “By this morning, she was talking about how Brindle balked at a seven-foot jump and threw her.”

  Ford seemed to sense Brenna’s confusion. “Alzheimer’s,” he said. “Brindle was a big mare, a champion show-jumper Mother rode when she was younger. She’s been dead for, what, thirty-five years, Dad?” He paused for his father’s nod. “Bottom line, Brenna, we still have no idea why she did this.”

  Brenna scanned the faces at the table. Leigh Underhill was listening to her husband with rapt attention, the time-honored pose of a woman who has adopted her husband’s ambitions as her own. The others, too, seemed attentive and concerned. Only Vincent Underhill reacted to his son’s report. He twisted off his reading glasses and drew a sharp breath, then fixed his eyes on the timbered patio roof above his head.

  “Forgive my lack of background,” Brenna said, “but I’m not really up to speed either on what happened yesterday or on Mrs. Underhill.”

  Ford stared. “No, please forgive me. I wasn’t sure how much information Mr.—”

  “Flaherty.”

  “—your partner, had passed on. Yes, Mother’s a late Stage Two Alzheimer’s patient, more unpredictable than usual in the past few months.”

  “Stage Two?” Brenna said.

  “There are only three stages,” he said, letting the implications settle. “At this point, her short-term memory is a disaster; long-term is unreliable, at best. She still recognizes us, sometimes, but beyond that she struggles. What memories she has are sort of free-floating, without context. Nothing seems connected.”

  His words reminded Brenna how easily a patient’s family learns the terminology of disease. Within days of her mother’s ovarian cancer diagnosis, Brenna could speak with authority about cell migration and colon blockage percentages.

  “At any rate, Mother had a terrible fall yesterday afternoon, into the ravine out past the back gardens. We’re still trying to sort out what happened. Dad says she was with him in the house one minute, and then gone the next. He didn’t think she’d go outside because of the rain, but she’d been very agitated—”

  Vincent Underhill stood up suddenly. “I’m sorry. If you’ll excuse me—” He turned to go, then turned back. “Very sorry.”

  Ford didn’t continue until his father was well into the house and out of sight. “We, ah, this thing has sort of kicked us all in the ass. We just can’t figure it. Never a hint that she was considering suicide. And the timing couldn’t have been worse for me—”

  “Ten days before the goddamned spring primary,” Raskin said.

  “Phil, please,” Ford said. “I’d started to say how insignificant that is compared to what Dad’s going through. He’s blaming himself for losing track of her, and it’s really tormenting him. He’s just been—” His voice trailed off.

  “You were saying about your mother?” Brenna prompted, waiting for someone to bring up the witness, or the crime lab’s apparent interest.

  “Yes, she gets that way. Agitated. So many things upset her and there’s just no way to predict it.” Ford pointed toward the gardens, which covered at least two acres behind the house. “It drops off pretty abruptly out there near the gazebo.”

  Brenna squinted into the distance. The gardens ended in a clean line at the edge of the property. The ravine, she figured. A large filigreed gazebo sat on its edge like the top of some enormous wedding cake. Beyond the dropoff, she saw nothing but the gentle chop of forested western Pennsylvania hills rolling like a green ocean to the horizon.

  “As I said, we’re still trying to understand what happened out there. But the short version is that Mother ended up at the bottom of a pretty sheer twenty-foot drop.”

  “She’s how old again?” Brenna asked.

  “Seventy,” Ford said. “It’s remarkable she’s alive.”

  Leigh Underhill leaned forward. “A miracle, really.”

  Ford nodded. “Not surprising, in some ways. Before she was diagnosed six years ago, Mother used to talk about how she intended to die in the show ring at a hundred and five. So this little episode simply won’t do. Mother hates script changes.”

  Brenna pulled a legal pad from her briefcase and laid it on the table, then uncapped her Mont Blanc, a gift from Jim. This might be the one place she wouldn’t feel self-conscious using a $400 pen. She needed specific information, sooner rather than later. “What law-enforcement agency did you say is involved?”

  Ford reached for the pitcher of tea and poured himself a glass before answering. “Allegheny County Sheriff.”

  “Did you or anyone in the family speak to the investigators?” Brenna felt herself tense, anticipating the answer.

  “They took statements from everyone who was on the property at the time,” he said. “Mother, too, down at the hospital. Like I said, she wasn’t much help. Everyone else answered their questions as best they could. We have nothing to hide.”

  Probably nothing to worry about either, she thought. Despite the crime lab’s interest in Floss’s fingernails, Sheriff Sherman Mercer wasn’t called “Sherm the Worm” without reason. The man’s whole career was made possible by the thick Pittsburgh accent that made him a favorite with the electorate and his willingness to serve as an obliging toady to Allegheny County’s entrenched powers. Her favorite image of Mercer came to mind: On the advice of his television consultants before his last election, the 400-pound sheriff had permed his thinning hair into a sorry mass of dyed-brown curls. The effort was the video-age equivalent of draping earrings on a pig. Brenna stifled a smile.

  “Who spoke with them?” she said.

  “Leigh and I were hosting a small fund-raiser at our home in Sewickley Heights when we got the call,” Ford said. “We were just back from a rally in Erie, I think, or was it Williamsport? At any rate, they questioned my father even though he was terribly distraught. Lottie, of course. Mr. Staggers. And Enrique and Selena.”

  “The groundskeeper and his wife,” Staggers interrupted. He turned to Brenna. “Says he heard some commotion on the gazebo deck, but he was, like, way the hell out by the greenhouses. A hundred yards, maybe. I mean, from there, how much could he have perceived auditorily?”

  The table went silent. Staggers’s odd turn of phrase hovered like a garish piñata. No one bothered to take a swing.

  “What’s Enrique’s last name?” Brenna asked.

  Ford and his wife shrugged. Staggers pulled a small black notebook from inside his suit jacket and riffled its pages. “Chembergo,” he said.

  Brenna wrote the couple’s names beneath Vincent Underhill’s. “And Lottie’s?”

  Staggers flipped his pages again, then sh
rugged.

  “We’ll get that for you,” Ford said.

  She added Lottie the maid and Alton Staggers, then counted the names of the five people on the property at the time Floss Underhill fell. Thinking like a cop always helped. “Now, let me go back a second,” she said. “You said the investigators were just taking statements. But you also said they were asking specific questions.”

  Raskin sucked an ice cube from his highball glass, then spit it back in. “Ah, the complication,” he said.

  Leigh Underhill sipped her tea. Raskin and Staggers exchanged an indecipherable glance.

  “They had some specific questions,” Ford said. “Is that a problem?”

  “Cops don’t ask specific questions unless they’re after specific information,” she said, thinking: Sherm the Worm would never authorize his people to ask uncomfortable questions of one of the state’s most powerful families unless the investigators found serious inconsistencies in the Underhills’ version of events. If Mercer loosed his guys to find out what happened to Floss Underhill, he must have been damned sure there was more to the story.

  “We understand there’s some concern about the groundskeeper’s statement,” Ford said, as though he’d been reading her mind. “That’s one of the reasons we contacted you, Brenna. As I said, we’ve nothing to hide here. But we’re told there are some unexplained inconsistencies that raised suspicions, apparently, and that’s why the police took so many pictures out at the gazebo, why they’re talking to some of our neighbors and friends about my parents. Never mind that my parents have reprimanded Mr. Chembergo at least twice for his drinking. We don’t blame the investigators for following up.”

  “They’re thinking faultily,” Staggers said, adjusting his ring.

  Brenna said, “Explain ‘inconsistencies.’ Those have a nasty way of coming back to bite you.”

  “It’s just Dagnolo’s usual bullshit,” Raskin interrupted. “We all know where this is coming from. Our goddamned district attorney.”

  The Underhills’ political consultant stepped to center stage without hesitation. Ford tried to interject, but Raskin ignored him. “I’m sorry, but the guy’s just a whore. Ford jumped into the Democratic primary six months ago and blew Dagnolo’s doomed little plan to run for governor right out of the water, and ever since he’s been looking for a way to fuck us. So now, nine days before the election, he’s got that slug of a sheriff stomping around and making noise about all this so Dagnolo can come off like some man-of-the-people giant-killer. I mean, there’s no mystery to all this, folks.”

  Brenna scribbled some notes and set down her pen. “Okay, slow down. Let’s deal with what happened here first.”

  “Look, Phil,” Ford said, “we’re all pretty much on edge here. Let’s let Brenna get the information she needs right now and save the editorializing for some other time.” He ran a finger around the lip of his glass, creating the unmistakable song of fine crystal, then took a deep breath.

  “My parents have been married for forty-eight years, Brenna. Married right out there in that gazebo, as a matter of fact, and they’d be the first to tell you it wasn’t a perfect union. You probably know Mother didn’t go with him to Harrisburg when he was governor.”

  “I remember the big media fuss,” she said.

  “Mother said she wouldn’t live in that, quote, city without a soul, unquote, and she didn’t mind talking about it to any reporter who asked.”

  Brenna smiled, remembering Floss Underhill’s reputation for plain-spoken independence at a time when politicians’ wives were expected to behave like Jackie Kennedy.

  “But if you watch them long enough, Brenna, even since Mother got sick, you’ll still catch them holding hands, walking together arm in arm, sharing some private laugh at the dinner table. We should all be so lucky.”

  Ford reached for his wife’s hand just as she reached for her tea glass. She offered him a vague smile instead. “I tell you all that not to create some fantasy love story, but to give you some context,” he said. The maid stepped quietly onto the patio, and Ford seemed to sense her presence behind him. “We’re fine, Lottie, thank you,” he said, waving her away.

  “When this disease began stealing my mother’s mind—and you could see it, bit by bit, over those first couple of years—my father reacted in a way I’m told is quite typical of Alzheimer’s spouses. Since he couldn’t control what was happening to her mind, he decided to control her body as best he could. He took the lead role in her care then, and that hasn’t changed.”

  Brenna was lost. “The point being?”

  “We’re not ruling out any possibilities, that’s all. I’m convinced that Mother had a rare moment of clarity and realized what was happening to her. Believe me, if that was the case, suicide might seem pretty appealing. But I think we’re all familiar with the term ‘caregiver burnout.’ ”

  Brenna spoke without thinking. “Your father?”

  “A possibility, that’s all,” Ford said. “Mother hasn’t been sleeping. She’s been up at all hours. He’s been exhausted. He was there day and night—bathing, feeding, dressing, everything. Sometimes people in those situations just—” He snapped his fingers. “Of course, there’s no evidence to suggest that happened here. But I’m just trying to reconcile Mr. Chembergo’s statement with what we know happened. Dad was the last one with her.”

  Brenna swallowed hard. She knew the caregiver’s dilemma. Her mother was diagnosed the same week Brenna started work in the public defender’s office. During the next year, as she struggled to launch her career, she and her mother fell into a wounded silence. Brenna knew that her touch, once so tender, grew rougher as her mother’s condition eroded. Eventually, she couldn’t insert the catheter or roll her mother’s wasted body off the soiled bedclothes fast enough. Claire Kennedy knew that her disease was derailing her daughter’s powerful ambitions, knew that Brenna resented it. And Brenna knew the exact moment when her reason had been lost to rage. Her mother’s gaunt face took shape in Brenna’s mind. Before she could will the memory away, she saw her own hand sweep across it, hard, an involuntary open-handed slap. Her mother’s face crumpled into tears, just as it had that horrible, frustrating day more than a decade ago.

  “Brenna?” Ford said.

  She blinked. “Sorry.” She cleared her throat. “Do you think your father is capable of hurting her?”

  Ford shook his head. “Never, at least not consciously. We’re just trying to be open with you. I know the last two months she’s been especially difficult. And I’ve been so busy with the campaign, I could have overlooked any warning signs. Dad’s so damned stoic—the Underhill way, you know. But like I said, except for Mr. Chembergo’s strange statement, there’s no evidence we know of that suggests she did anything but jump.”

  “So,” she baited, “no signs of a struggle or anything?”

  “Nothing we’re aware of.”

  Brenna looked around the table. Everyone shrugged at the same time. “Any reason to think the groundskeeper is lying to cover up his own involvement?” she asked.

  Ford Underhill leaned back in his chair and folded his hands in his lap, apparently considering the idea. Finally, he shook his head. “Why would he hurt Mother? He’s treated well here.”

  “Okay, then,” Brenna said. “Let’s get back to what we know happened yesterday.”

  “Of course, sorry,” Ford said. “I don’t mean to get ahead of you. We’re still just sorting this out.”

  “What time did it happen?”

  “Shortly after four. It was still light. The groundskeeper says he heard something in the gazebo, a thumping he said, and came out of the greenhouse to see what it was. He told the sheriff’s people he saw something, a form, maybe a man, walking away from the gazebo. That’s when he heard Mother down in the ravine.
She was crying.”

  Brenna held up her hand to slow the story. “Didn’t you say before that the groundskeeper just heard something?”

  “He called 911 immediately.” Leigh shook her head. “His coming along right then probably saved her life. If she’d been unconscious, she could have laid down there for days.”

  Four nodding heads. “And that’s it,” Ford said. “They got her back up and helicoptered her out. She was on her way to Mount Mercy when we got the call.”

  Ford glanced at his watch. Raskin checked his as well.

  “We’ve got the Hill District ministers and ward leaders in forty minutes,” Raskin reminded. “Reverend Pratt and company hate to wait.” He turned to Brenna. “The black vote in Pittsburgh and Philly is gonna be critical.”

  She waited through an uncomfortable silence until Ford stood up. “Brenna, again, thank you for coming on short notice,” he said. “I really think we needed someone with a clear head on this. Is there anything else you need from us right now?”

  Brenna studied the faces around her. They seemed to be waiting for her response. She scratched a few notes, collecting her thoughts, then peeked at her watch. Jim had planned their first dinner together in the new house as a family, but it might have to wait until tomorrow. She reached into her purse, pulled one of her business cards from its leather holder, and wrote her home number on the back.

  “This has all my numbers,” she said, pushing it across the table to Ford Underhill. “Office, home, cell phone.”

  He looked it over and handed it to Staggers, then shifted from foot to foot. Brenna studied the man, so powerful, but at the moment apparently looking for reassurance she wasn’t in a position to give.

  “I’d like to speak privately with your father,” she said.