A Penny for Your Thoughts (5 page)

“Yes. It has an exit out the other side, though.”

“Do you know CPR?”

“Y-yes.”

“Take over.”

She was frozen in shock. I grabbed her wrist and pulled her down next to me—that seemed to jolt her into action. She leaned forward over Wendell’s body and slid her hands into place on his chest, taking over my rhythm. I got up and ran to the bathroom
door, knocking loudly. There was no reply, but I thought I could hear movement from the other side. I tried the knob, but it was locked.

“Is someone in there?” I yelled, pounding on the door. There was no answer, just the faint sound of another door opening and then closing.

I stepped back and tried kicking the door open, but it wouldn’t budge. I pulled my shoes off and was about to try a harder kick when Gwen called out.

“Wait!” she said, still pounding in vain on Wendell’s chest. “A pencil…the hole in the doorknob…”

I pulled a pen from my pocket and poked it into a small hole in the center of the doorknob. I heard a click and twisted the knob.

“Got it.”

The door swung open to reveal a very large and elaborate executive bathroom. It was empty. Across from me was another door, and I stepped through it to find a long, narrow hallway. I ran down the hallway to a metal door marked Exit—a door that was only now slowly falling to a close. Swinging it open revealed a stairwell, and from below I could hear the brisk patter of feet going down the cement steps. I looked down through the center of the stairwell but couldn’t see the person running.

“Stop!” I called out, my voice echoing in the cement chamber. There was no reply except the hastening of the footsteps on the stairs. Glad I had already kicked off my high heels, I started my descent in stocking feet, hiking my narrow skirt high enough to allow my legs full range of motion.

I had gone down about three floors when I heard a door somewhere below me open and then close. Then all was silent except for my gasping breath and the pounding of my heart. I continued down three more flights, then burst through the door into the busy first-floor lobby.

There were plenty of people there, heading in all directions, though no one that looked suspicious or out of place. Glancing around, I could find no doorman or security guard. It was just a
typical downtown office building, anonymous and vaguely chaotic.

Still in my stocking feet, I ran out of the front door and looked up and down the street, hoping to catch sight of someone running away, but again there was no one running, nothing unusual. There was a cab parked in front of the building, the driver leaning lazily against the hood.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Did you see someone come out of this building just a moment ago?”

He looked down at my bare feet, then back at my face.

“Why ya wanna know?”

“It’s an emergency,” I rasped. “Did someone come running out of here ahead of me?”

He shrugged.

“Lotsa people been in and out. Nobody running.”

“Out of breath, maybe? Sweating?”

“Not that I noticed. Say, what happened? Somebody steal your shoes or something?”

I didn’t bother to reply. I returned to the lobby and walked around it, trying to decide which way I would’ve gone if someone had been pursuing me. There weren’t that many choices, really, just the elevators, the front doors, or the stairwell on the opposite side of the lobby. I opened the door to that other stairwell and listened, but I couldn’t hear any movement overhead.

I closed the door to the stairs and walked around the lobby one more time, looking for some sort of video surveillance cameras, but there were none that I could see. Finally, I gave up, stepping into the stairwell just as I heard sirens drawing closer in the distance.

Wearily, I started back up the stairs. There was always the chance that what I’d heard was not the person getting out of the stairwell at the first floor, but at the second. When I reached that door, I stepped through and let the door fall shut behind me.

It was a quiet hallway, lined on each side with small offices. I walked slowly down the hall, peering into each office door. There
were a variety of businesses, all of them calm and quiet and seemingly normal. Nothing out of the ordinary on this floor.

Finally, I gave up and returned to the stairwell, slowly walking up the remaining five flights to where I had begun.

When I reached Wendell Smythe’s office, my shoes were right where I had left them, though now the room was filled with people and commotion. I pulled the shoes on as I observed the paramedics working over Wendell’s body, cops milling about the room, curious onlookers crowding in the doorway. There was a buzz of nervous energy—almost panic—and things seemed on the verge of getting out of control when one of the cops took charge and herded the crowd away, finally closing the door in their faces.

Gwen hovered in the corner, sobbing.

“Oh no! Oh no!” she kept saying, two dark black streaks of mascara running down her wrinkled cheeks. I went to her and kept a comforting arm about her shoulders as we watched.

Wendell was dead, that was for certain. The paramedics had already checked for vital signs—feeling his pulse, pulling back his eyelids, flexing his stiffening fingers. Now, taped to his chest were wires that led to a small machine. As they studied the machine, one of the cops pulled out a notebook and began jotting down some notes.

“Estimated time of death?” the note taker asked.

“Not too long ago,” one of the paramedics answered, reading from a piece of paper that had printed out from the machine. “Body’s still warm. I’d say he’s been dead ’bout 30 minutes. An hour at the most.”

I could’ve told them the same thing: Wendell Smythe had met his end during the brief period of time I had sat in another man’s office, talking on the phone, typing on my computer, tinkering with a stupid loan contract.

“Anybody call the coroner yet?” the cop asked, scribbling into his notebook.

“He’s on his way.”

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, turning my gaze from the man’s body to the lovely view out of his window.

The man was
dead
. Incredible.

I felt a lump lodge in my throat, a lump I couldn’t seem to swallow away no matter how hard I tried.

Four

I felt guilty, but there it was: All I really wanted to do was go home. The whole time the police questioned me, I had to work hard not to picture my dog, my house, my little hand-hewn canoe sitting forlornly in my shed, just waiting for me to slide it out into the water and climb aboard. How I longed to be out on the water, paddling away the knots in my shoulders, breathing in the scents of peace and quiet and wilderness, falling into the rhythm that comes over me like a trance—wiping away all other pain, all other feelings except a oneness with myself and my Creator.

Instead, I sat in a spare office of Feed the Need in my itchy wool suit, describing for the fourth time exactly what had transpired from the moment I entered Wendell Smythe’s office until the moment the paramedics arrived. Even as I spoke, I felt overwhelmed with a pervasive sense of sadness and loss. I had spent no more than five or ten minutes with Wendell Smythe in total, but even in that short time I had found him to be a charming and vibrant man. The fact that his life had ended at some point during the one hour we were apart boggled my mind.

“So not only were you one of the last two people to see Mr. Smythe alive,” Detective Keegan said, “you’re also the one that came back and discovered his body an hour later?”

Detective Keegan was a short man, his aged but boyish-looking face topped by coarse, reddish hair that bristled out over his ears. Though I knew what he was insinuating, I wasn’t worried about being incriminated in any sort of crime here—if, indeed, a crime had even been committed. Wendell’s secretary, Gwen, had seen me leave Wendell’s office while he was still perfectly alive and well. She could attest to the fact that I hadn’t returned for an hour—as could any number of people in the Smythe offices, including Alan Bennet, who had found me working away at his desk.

As we talked, the detective seemed to figure out that I wasn’t someone of whom to be suspicious, but in fact quite the opposite—someone who could provide valuable information about the entire situation. Though the medical examiner still hadn’t identified the cause of death, it seemed as if the detective suspected foul play, particularly when I described the sounds from the bathroom and my subsequent pursuit of someone running from the office. All in all, we seemed to agree: Something just wasn’t quite right about the death of Wendell Smythe.

Luckily for me, having grown up surrounded by cops, I knew the lingo of an investigation, not to mention the fact that I was a licensed private investigator myself. I made sure to mention my lieutenant father and my detective brother more than once. I didn’t bring up my own experience in investigations or my law degree. You never knew how information like that might go over with cops; I thought it would be best to just coast along on my family’s laurels for the time being.

When Keegan was finished with his questions, he thanked me for my cooperation.

“Of course, I’m sure we’ll be speaking with you again,” he said as he swung the door open. “So you’ll understand why we have to ask you to remain in the area, at least for the next few days.”

I had known it would be coming, but that still didn’t make it any easier to hear.

“I live near DC,” I said, feeling guilty and selfish even as I pleaded with him to let me leave. “Surely I can go on home and then come back up here if necessary.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Keegan replied. “For the time being, I’m afraid I must insist that you remain nearby.”

“But I don’t have any clothes, I don’t have anywhere to stay, I don’t—”

“Excuse me, Detective,” a woman interrupted, suddenly standing before us. “Mrs. Webber will stay with me. There’s plenty of room.”

I looked at the woman, wondering why she seemed familiar to me. She was petite and attractive in a well-preserved sort of way, with expensive hair and clothes, a meticulous manicure, and a rock the size of Gibraltar on the ring finger of her left hand.

“I’m Mrs. Wendell Smythe,” she said to me, holding out her hand. “Marion.”

Of course. The portrait on the wall in Wendell’s office. She had been striking in her 20s and was now an elegant beauty in what I guessed to be her late 60s.

“Thank you, Mrs. Smythe—” I said, shaking her hand.

“Call me Marion, please.”

“Marion. But I couldn’t possibly impose. I’ll get a hotel room—”

“Nonsense,” she interrupted. “My house is huge, with tons of empty bedrooms. Sticking you in a hotel after what you’ve been through today would be unspeakable. I won’t take no for an answer. And Wendell wouldn’t have had it any other way.”

I had a feeling she was right about that. I studied the woman in front of me, wondering how she could be so strong. Then I noticed the shaking of her fingers and the pale face beneath her carefully applied makeup. Something told me to accept her gracious offer, that the kindest thing I could do under the circumstances was to become a temporary guest in her home.

I thought about that as we drove through the city. She had a large beautiful Cadillac with a driver, and I followed behind in my
Saturn, wondering if I could be of particular comfort to her because I was a widow, too. Though it wasn’t a condition I would wish on anyone, I did have to admit that it gave me a certain empathy. Bryan had been dead for three years, and I still found myself sometimes awakening in the middle of the night, then gasping with pain when I became fully awake and realized he wasn’t there next to me—and wouldn’t ever be again.

Now I tagged along as Marion’s Caddy sped westward out of the city under a gray cloudy sky. We drove for about half an hour before turning onto local roads that wound through suburbs dense with new housing developments. Once we reached a more rural area, I realized that the terrain itself was lovely, with rolling hills and thick trees bursting with the colors of autumn. We finally began passing what could only be called “estates”—gorgeous properties with beautiful stone houses and acres of fence-lined pastures. We slowed and then turned into a long winding driveway that led to one of the most beautiful estates of all. From what I could see as I parked the car, there was a huge main house, several other smaller buildings, a pool, a greenhouse, and, around back, what looked like a barn and some pastures.

It was all a little much, considering the fact that half of their business was supposedly the
non
profit kind.

I reached the front door just as the driver of Marion’s car was helping her up the front steps. He was a huge man, tall and quite heavy, though I couldn’t tell if his bulk was mostly fat or muscle. He had dark eyes and hair, with a neatly trimmed beard and a slightly stooped posture. Once inside, Marion dismissed him with a thank-you and then took my arm, leaning on me for support as we headed through the foyer, the elegant, antique-laden decor not unlike that at the Smythe offices.

I learned a long time ago not to be impressed with money—how much a person made, how much a person owned. It seemed to me that the Bible had a lot to say about the things of this world, and I really did believe that the only important treasures were the ones we stored up in heaven. On the other hand, I wasn’t
immune to the aesthetic pleasures that money and good taste could provide, and I looked around at our gracious surroundings as we walked.