Death In Paradise

by Carolyn G. Hart

  It meant Richard was murdered. Or it meant someone suspected that Richard was murdered. Or, level upon level upon level, someone wanted me to think Richard was murdered.

  But it meant more than what happened to Richard. It obviously was intended to propel me into action. Because I had to know the answer. I couldn’t simply shrug it away.

  My unknown correspondent was counting on that.

  I don’t like to be manipulated. By anyone. And now someone had bulled into my life, plunging me into a frenzy of uncertainty and anger.

  I flung the poster down, came to my feet, began to pace.

  The phone rang.

  I ignored it. After four peals, the answering machine picked up. “…heard about a job on a small daily near L.A. But no smog. Thousand Oaks. A ritzy community. Let me know if you want…” Dennis Duffy’s brash voice continued. Nice of Dennis. He was the city editor of the University newspaper. I’d done him some favors in the past. He knew I was looking for a job.

  But right now I didn’t care about a job. I wanted to fling myself out of this house. I wanted to track down the unknown figure who had willfully plunged me back into heartbreak and pain. I wanted to grab that person, demand, “Who are you? What do you know? Who killed my husband?”

  I was breathing hard. My chest ached as if I’d run a race. Questions caromed helter-skelter in my mind. I stopped, gripped the back of the chair. Hold on. Hold on, calm down. Uncontrolled anger is an enemy. I would not outwit the cold intelligence that created the poster if possessed by anger.

  No. I had to be cold, too, cold and thoughtful and logical and smart. All right. I’d approach it as if I were writing an article. I would distance myself from the anguish churning within me, the anguish and ever-present sorrow, hold fast to the discipline I knew so well. Who? What? When? Where?

  Why? and How? I would try to steel my mind even though anger and pain throbbed within me.

  Oh, Richard, dear God, Richard, did someone take away from you bright days we could have shared? Nothing is more ordinary than a breakfast table and the smell of pancakes and the dark rich roast of brewing coffee. So ordinary, but that moment when shared is suffused with magic; that moment alone is sterile. We had so many more mornings—and nights—that should have belonged to us.

  As if he stood beside me, I could hear Richard’s voice: “Easy does it, Henrie O, easy does it.” It was an echo from our past that steadied me.

  Who, what, when, where, why and how. The familiar questions slipped through my mind like beads worn slick by years of devotion.

  Easy does it.

  All right, Richard, all right. I’d use the questions that worked for me, worked for us, throughout our years together. Using every bit of strength I possessed, I forced my mind to function as if this were an assignment. There would be time for blazing anger later, when I faced my unknown correspondent.

  And, damn you, whoever you are, face you I will.

  But first, first I had to find the source. That was always the objective. Find the source.

  How was as intriguing a question as any, a good, concrete, specific place to start.

  How?

  I sat down and looked carefully at the exterior of the mailer. There was no return address. I squinted. A Chicago postmark.

  I didn’t get excited. It’s quite easy to send a mailer to a postal station, requesting the postmaster to mail the enclosed, properly stamped envelope from that site. If this had indeed been done, there was no way I could trace it.

  I dismissed Chicago from my mind. Richard’s final days had no connection with Chicago. The mailer could have come from Anywhere, U.S.A.

  More interestingly, the mailer came directly to me in Derry Hills. But that, too, was easy to understand. Anyone with a computer and a modem could obtain Richard’s obituary from newspaper archives. I was listed as a survivor in the obituary. Once that was known, a little further effort would yield my present location. There are a number of directories and reference works that contain my current address. No, that told me nothing about the sender.

  I understood how the mailer reached me.

  When?

  The postmark was dated March 21. Today was Monday, March 24. Richard had died six years earlier. What prompted the timing? Why should anyone sound an alarm now?

  What?

  The message told me that my husband was murdered. But it was more than that, much more. It was a prod, a device to move me. That made it doubly challenging, doubly enraging, not only its actuality, but its purpose.

  Where?

  I shook my head impatiently. Not where did the package come from. The where that mattered was the scene of Richard’s death: Kauai.

  Why?

  That was the critical question. Why was the mailer sent? What did my unknown correspondent hope to achieve?

  Obviously, the objective wasn’t simply to upset me. No, my correspondent must want—desperately—to set into motion a series of events, culminating in…

  The unmasking of Richard’s murderer?

  I scooped up the cardboard pieces of the tombstone, slipped them into the plastic bag.

  No. If the objective was to punish Richard’s murderer, if that’s what mattered to the shadowy figure who had so painstakingly created the poster, it could have been done much more simply. An anonymous tip to the police in Lihue would have been much more to the point.

  So, justice wasn’t the motivation.

  But there had to be motivation, compelling, urgent, and intense, to account for this macabre display. Of course, this collection was purposefully gruesome. The better to rivet me.

  Somehow, someone would benefit. It would satisfy an as yet obscure but definite design for me to come to Kauai. Because that had to be my ultimate destination if I responded to this call.

  Who?

  Somewhere, a hundred or a thousand or several thousand miles away, an unknown, anonymous creature must be wondering: Has it arrived? Has she opened it? What will she do?

  “All right.” I said it aloud. Crisply. I was talking to my…opponent? conspirator? nemesis? “All right. But there’s something about letting genies out of the bottle, you know. I think I will come. I’m almost certain I will. But I will be prepared.”

  The sunlight is always thin in March and the earth is cold. I felt a chill. Surely it was nothing more than the sun slipping behind a cloud, the kitchen darkening as it did so. The posterboard was in shadow. I couldn’t see Richard’s photograph clearly. But the falling figure on the poster was clear and distinct and heartbreaking. I closed my eyes and pressed my hands hard against my face.

  And still, I saw that falling figure.

  two

  The television film flickered on the screen. The whop-whop of a helicopter sounded, urgent and raucous, the ugly duckling of the air. The ungainly craft bumped onto the Tarmac. In a moment, the door swung out and Richard stood framed in the opening. Black smudges streaked his unshaven face. The residue of an explosion? Mud caked his Army-issue fatigues. His eyes had the emptiness of a man bone-tired and emotionally drained. He turned to grasp the hand of a slim, blond woman. She held tight to Richard as they clambered tiredly down the steps. She turned a haggard face toward the camera. Her too-large fatigues gave her a gallant, gamine air. On the runway they walked arm-in-arm, stumbling in exhaustion, helping each other.

  And yes, I resented his arm around her, resented the bond they’d shared that I’d never fully understood, resented ferociously that Richard had died so far from me, so near to Belle.

  It is an odd trick of age that there is a calming of old en-mities—until you plunge back in time, assume again the emotions that you lived through. And perhaps thought safely entombed.

  As I watched the flickering film, it was as though the years had sheared away and I was waiting for Richard to call from Saigon, praying for his safety, missing him with every fiber of my heart and body.

  The voice-over droned: “Among the correspondents covering the Tet offensive were Richard Collins o
f Midwest Syndicated News and Belle Ericcson of the New York Daily News.”

  A line of heavily camouflaged trucks cut them from view.

  I punched the “off” button. My eyes burned. I’d spent several hours in the Thorndyke University archives, studying television film from the Vietnam War, the war that had appeared nightly on America’s television sets and plunged the nation into division, alienating the generations.

  Vietnam was the war that James Reston of The New York Times remembered bleakly in his memoirs. Reston wrote, “From first to last, I felt that war involved so many lies, cost so many lives, and raised so many questions about the judgment of our officials that I hated to think about raking through the rubble one last time.”

  But Reston recalled the correspondents who covered that war with respect and admiration.

  Yes, they were brave, and they told a reluctant America the truth, showing them in words and on film the bloody bodies of young American soldiers and the flayed skin of napalm-burned children and the villages turned to ashes.

  Richard was one of the first to reveal the “secret” bombing of Cambodia. Belle was among the first to tell readers about the false body counts, the statistics created by the U.S.

  Army to convince those at home that America was winning the war.

  I punched the “eject” button, returned the cassette to its holder. The University archives contained almost twenty-six filmed reports that included Belle, five of Richard.

  One of Belle’s Vietnam stories vaulted her to the Pulitzer short list.

  It took only a moment to call up the story. I nodded in appreciation as I read the lead:

  “The ARVN major’s gaunt face was empty of expression as he lifted the stubby revolver and shot the shackled Vietcong prisoner in the face.”

  Yes, Belle and Richard and hundreds of other correspondents found the truth and reported it, no matter how ugly, unpleasant, and grim. They told the stories of gallant American GIs, doing their best, fighting bravely, dying by the hundreds.

  And Belle had style. Definitely I had to grant that Belle Ericcson possessed style and flair. And courage.

  I stacked the videocassettes, remembering a war I hadn’t covered.

  I shrugged into my coat. The sharp March air was welcome when I walked swiftly down the library’s shallow stone steps. Film always makes me feel headachy. But it wasn’t simply the stuffiness of the small cubicle where I’d watched the past unfold that bothered me.

  As I slid into my MG, tossing my notepad into the passenger seat, I wondered at decisions. And chance.

  One cool spring day many years ago in Mexico City, Richard and I had tossed a coin in our apartment on Re-forma, not far from the Angel. Richard had been offered a bureau spot in Hong Kong and I could easily string for the English-language newspaper there. The other possibility was a return to D.C. We wanted to leave Mexico after the car wreck that killed Bobby.

  The coin came up heads—and Hong Kong.

  When the war heated up in Vietnam, Richard headed for Saigon. I stayed in Hong Kong with our daughter Emily.

  It was in Saigon that Richard first met Belle Ericcson.

  Heads for Hong Kong.

  Had Richard ultimately lost his life because of that long-ago gamble? I didn’t know. I wondered if Belle Ericcson knew.

  It was dark in the attic. I’d waited until after dinner to come up here. I knew why I’d delayed. This was going to hurt. All through the day, I’d moved swiftly, automatically, looking where I should look: the University film archives, my computer, the morgue of The Clarion, speeding through my fingers those old familiar beads, finding comfort in totting up facts. If you immerse yourself in facts, you keep emotion at bay.

  I’d printed out a Who’s Who bio of Belle Ericcson. The bio listed her nonfiction books, including her autobiography, Belle on Belle. I’d called a local bookstore. They were holding a copy for me.

  I moved hesitantly in the cramped, dark space until I found the dangling chain and pulled it. I blinked in the sudden sharp light from the 200-watt bulb.

  Yes, I was following every avenue. But this was going to be the toughest road.

  I tugged the box free from a stack toward the rear of the attic, startling a daddy longlegs into flight. The box held Richard’s daybooks from 1940 until his death.

  In the year after Richard died, I’d donated most of his clothes to Goodwill. I’d kept a worn russet leather jacket that he’d treasured. It hung in my closet, wherever that closet might be—in an apartment, a rented house, wherever I went.

  The jacket was too large for me, but I often wore it on solitary walks, my hands jammed in the pockets that had known his touch, my shoulders caressed by the silk lining, now gossamer-thin, faded from gold to a delicate saffron. I’d kept his Washington Senators ball cap, his favorite fountain pen, a tartan muffler I’d bought for him in Edinburgh. In my jewel box was a set of cuff links in heavy Mexican silver. They were shaped like the old upright Smith-Corona typewriter. Our daughter Emily gave them to him on his sixtieth birthday. He’d first worn them to a dinner at the National Press Club.

  Throughout my house, wherever I lived, were mementos of our years together: photographs, books we’d shared, trinkets we’d chosen.

  I’d boxed up all of his papers, the thousands and thousands of words he’d written from his first story as a reporter in Paris, the March 7, 1940, meeting of American Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles with French Premier Deladier, to the last story he’d covered, a March 1991 interview with Ed Turner, the news wizard who made CNN a reporter’s joy.

  I opened the box. Dust drifted up, tickling my nose. I smothered a sneeze. I picked up the 1991 daybook. I stared down at the black softcover book.

  Richard had held this book. His swift, certain hands had flipped open these pages. He’d written concisely, neatly, the little details of his days: interviews scheduled, story lines to consider, comments to remember—suppositions, declarations, weather—and had had no hint that his days were dwindling down.

  I’d not looked in any of the books until today. Not because I didn’t care. Because I cared too much.

  I could not permit myself to cling to a yesterday that was beyond my reach. If I focused on what was over, I would not have the strength to face each lonely day. I’d deliberately immersed myself in the reality of the present, forced myself to look forward, not back. I’d taken another job, made new friends, enjoyed a romantic liaison.

  But yes, I was tempted to pull out the volume for 1940. I’d like to search through Richard’s elegantly spare sentences for his description of the moment when we met.

  But I didn’t need to read his words. The memory was indelible: a sunny day in Montmartre and Richard buying a balloon for the thin, dark-haired, dazzled daughter of his bureau chief. We’d laughed together and I’d thought him gloriously handsome, a young girl’s dream of an older man. He was all of twenty-two.

  I’d always thought him gloriously handsome: short hair with reddish glints like sunlight glancing on a Florentine villa; a broad, open face, a mouth that easily stretched into a smile; eyes with a glint of ebullient, rollicking humor. But a mouth that could be stubborn and stern when needed and eyes willing to dare the world for what was right and good and decent.

  No, I didn’t need to read his sketch of the day we met. It was part and parcel of my heart, a heart that ached anew when I flipped open his last daybook. Richard’s small square printing was easy to read, clear and distinct.

  I turned to the month of March.

  I had not wanted, after his death, to read the entries for his last days, entries that would include Belle Ericcson. Yes, anger still flickered because he’d spent his last moments with Belle. I’d not wanted to think about that. Not ever.

  Richard fell to his death from Belle’s cliffside home on the island of Kauai six years ago on April 1.

  It took every ounce of will to turn the pages.

  But there were no entries for the last week in March. None.

>   How odd.

  Richard had returned to Washington from Atlanta on March 20. I flipped back; yes, on March 21 a description of Ed Turner’s wry humor and clear-eyed news sense and what a fascinating interview it had been. Richard noted dinner with an old friend from The Times.

  I plucked one paragraph from the page: “Henrie O called. She’ll be home next week. I love her.”

  I smoothed my fingertips over the words.

  The last entry was on Friday, March 22:

  Johnnie Rodriguez called. I could scarcely hear him although the connection was clear. Voice subdued. Hesitant. But determined. And sober. He said he had to tell someone the truth about the day CeeCee Burke was kidnapped. He asked me to come to the lake.

  Oh, God, of course! Now I understood the dates on the poster.

  April 1, the day Richard died.

  March 30, the day one year earlier when Belle Ericcson’s oldest daughter was kidnapped.

  Kidnapping. It is like tipping over a stone and watching plump, white slugs quiver away from the light, like waking in the night to a banshee’s wail, like opening a door and smelling death.

  Kidnapping. As ugly a crime as ever occurs.

  I should have known. I remembered well enough the days after CeeCee Burke’s kidnapping when Richard went to Texas to be with Belle, her husband, Keith Scanlon, and her five remaining children.

  But Richard and I never talked about that. Sometimes in a happy marriage there are subjects not broached. You cannot quarrel if you do not raise a question.

  Richard knew I disapproved of his role after the kidnapping. But I would never voice that disapproval. He had to make his own decisions and sometimes those decisions could not be to my liking. And I could not—how could anyone?—begrudge a man going to a friend in time of terrible trouble.

  Now I wished desperately that I had opened my heart when CeeCee Burke was kidnapped. I should have told Richard that I admired him. I might have disagreed with his action, but I admired him.

  I wondered now if he would have told me of the call from Johnnie Rodriguez if I’d been at home when it came.

  I’d never know.

  But something within me—the part of me that looks with icy clarity at reality—thought not. I had not been there for Richard when CeeCee was kidnapped. He could scarcely be blamed for assuming I would not want him to pursue that case.