Mistress (4 page)

I take a rental car from the Dane County Regional Airport to this place, the Partridge Funeral Home, which is bordered on the north by its cemetery, on the south by residential housing, and across the street by some kind of forest preserve or park. The building looks like an elementary school, a one-story structure of faded brown brick with simple shrubbery and a small lawn that’s withering in the blasting summer heat.

I slow my pace as I approach the front door. Through the glass door I see a blown-up photograph, placed on an easel, of Diana from long ago, a high schooler in her purple homecoming dress, her hair poofy and sprayed, wearing a gaudy white corsage and, as always, that carefree, crooked smile.

A tremble runs through my body. I stifle the instinct to turn and run, to return to the capital. But I have to do this.

There are some things in life you just have to do
. That from my dear father as he knotted my tie on the morning of Mother’s funeral. I always thought that was a stupid thing to say, but now I guess I understand what he meant.

I enter the building, take one more look at the photo of the smiling Diana, and follow the directions on a sign. At the end of the hallway, a large parlor area hums with the quiet, respectful tones of those paying their last respects. There are flowers everywhere. More photographs are displayed throughout the room: Diana as a newborn; as a toddler in a Halloween princess costume; as a teenager setting a volleyball; as a graduate in a posed yearbook photo, her eyes full of promise as they look off into the distance. In the middle of the room, several women who look to be Diana’s age gather around a laptop computer that plays a slide show of images.

Where’s the casket? With my question comes relief. I’m not sure I’m ready to see her lifeless. It was one thing to see her facedown in the dark; it would be another to see her posed in cruel artificial lighting, broken and damaged and on display.

Then it hits me. Diana’s body isn’t in Madison. It’s in DC, in the custody of the Metropolitan Police Department. They haven’t released the corpse. For now, they’re only having a visitation, to be followed by a funeral at a future time after they determine the cause of death.

Just as they did with Mother.

To the far right of the room, an elderly couple and a guy in his midthirties shake hands with well-wishers. Her parents and brother, a receiving line.

I do another survey of the room. About thirty people here and I don’t recognize a soul. It’s probably asking a lot for people from DC to trek out here to Wisconsin. Most people don’t have a trust fund, as I do.

A woman in a crisp black suit, somewhere around forty, stands in a corner, looking at a collage of photos of Diana. Except she’s not really looking. Her eyes move casually about the room, keeping an eye on the entrance. She’s chosen the corner that maximizes her view of the entire parlor. She avoids eye contact with me when I try to establish it. She’s pleasant-looking and unremarkable, which is smart—she’s a good choice, somebody who won’t stick out. Whoever sent her, they aren’t stupid.

I mean, in
The Firm,
one of the henchmen, the one who killed Gary Busey and the lawyers in the Caymans, and who tried to kill Tom Cruise—that guy was an albino. If you were going to pick someone to anonymously carry out your wet work, would you choose an albino? Anybody, but anybody, could identify him:
Well, let’s see…don’t remember much, ’cept, oh, yeah, he had white hair and red eyes and was completely pale.

This woman here—dirty-blond hair, normal-looking, medium height, simple black outfit, etc. She could be anybody.

I take a breath. Okay. I can do this.

I stand in a small line of people waiting to speak with Diana’s family, my heartbeat accelerating. Why would an albino go into acting in the first place? Are there a lot of roles out there for people lacking pigment? Maybe you figure you have a niche, and you do minor roles just to put food on the table, awaiting that one part, that film that will define your career,
The Color of Nothing,
the story of the albino kid from Detroit who everyone said wouldn’t amount to anything, who lifted himself up by his bootstraps working at carnivals and tanning salons until he rose to prominence as Alfie the Clown, the star of a Nickelodeon—

“Hello.”

I turn to see a woman standing behind me, alone, dressed in a loose-fitting blouse and blue jeans, more casual than I might have expected for a visitation. She looks to be about Diana’s age, so I’m guessing local, a high school classmate or neighbor.

“Hi,” I manage. It comes out weak, through a full throat.

“I’m Emma.”

“Ben.”

“You’re from DC?” Emma asks. She’s a tad overweight, a round stomach, possibly pregnant, but I don’t dare ask. I’m not
that
stupid.

I nod. “You?”

“High school,” says Emma. “I still live in town. My husband’s a math professor at the university. Do you work at the same PR firm as Diana?”

PR firm? Diana didn’t work at a PR firm.

“Yes,” I answer. “I do.”

She shakes her head—bemusement, not admiration. “That must be something, living out there. All the fighting and spinning and talking heads.”

“Diana—Diana talked about it a lot?”

“Oh, I don’t know about ‘a lot.’ We’d lost touch. I’d see her when she came back in town, maybe once a year around holidays, that sort of thing.” She smiles absently, recalling a memory. “I remember when she graduated from UVA—”

She didn’t graduate from UVA. She didn’t even
go
to UVA.

“—and she took that job on the Hill.”

She didn’t take a job on the Hill after college.

Here: Diana was a sophomore at Wake Forest, a poli-sci major, when she got pregnant. The history professor who knocked her up talked her into an abortion. She complied, it tortured her, and she dropped out of school and moved to DC. She was a housekeeper at then-congressman Craig Carney’s apartment. Then, history repeating itself, she started an affair with Congressman Carney. He recognized her brains as well as her beauty, and when Carney became deputy director of the CIA he elevated her to her current position as a CIA White House liaison. He also put her up in a nice place in Georgetown. The affair ended, Diana picked up the rental payments on her own, and she kept the job with the CIA.

“That’s what she called it, the Hill. She was so excited. She said she might run for Congress someday.” Emma shakes her head, lifts her shoulders in frustration. “What—I mean, does anyone know why she would take her own life?”

I look up at the ceiling. This is an interesting development.

“Sometimes,” I say, “you just don’t know a person.”

George Hotchkiss is retired, a former middle manager with Madison Gas and Electric. He was born in pre–World War II London and came to America in the 1950s to study engineering at Purdue University. There he met Bonnie Sturgis, whom he married on November 23, 1963, the day after JFK’s assassination.

He’s also a domineering, violent prick, according to Diana.

“George Hotchkiss,” he says to me with a dour expression, slowly extending his hand. He looks like he once had significant upper body strength, probably pumped iron, but now has about twenty pounds layered over that flabby muscle.

“Ben Casper, Mr. Hotchkiss. I’m very—”

“Say the name again?”

That stops me a moment. “Benjamin…Casper.”

It doesn’t register with him. “How did you know Di?”

Cognizant of Emma, whom I’d just told that I worked with Diana, I keep it vague. “I was a friend of hers in DC,” I say. “She was wonderful,” I add, to change the subject. “The best.”

He takes the measure of me. I don’t get the sense he’s coming back with a positive read. The feeling is mutual.

“She never mentioned you,” he informs me, which is sweet of him.

“Well, she loved you very much, sir.” That’s a lie. Diana couldn’t wait to get out of Madison. It had nothing to do with the town and everything to do with her parents.

Moving right along. Diana’s mother, Bonnie, is no picnic, either. She appears to be a couple of vodka martinis past the intersection of sober and appropriate. Her eyes are bloodshot and her words are a bit slurred. I’m offended for Diana’s sake. A mother should be strong for her daughter at a time like this, right?

We have to be strong today, Ben. It’s what Mother would have wanted.

Well, maybe I’m being too judgmental. Everyone grieves differently.

“I don’t remember ever hearing your name,” Bonnie tells me.

“Right, your husband mentioned.”

Next up, brother Randy. Diana had a weakness for the kid. He had a rough patch in his early twenties. He’s supposedly interning now at a local TV news station in the sports department, though as I look at him—short, rough complexion, small, liquid eyes, hair in all directions—I see that he has a face for radio.

“She talked about you all the time,” I say, which is a stretch. “All good.”

“I doubt that.”

I almost laugh. “It’s a very nice visitation.”

“Wake,” he says.

“I’m sorry?”

“It’s a wake. We’re Catholic. We call it a wake.”

Well, then. “I’m very sorry for your loss.”

His eyes narrow. “You knew her how?”

“We were friends.”

“Good friends?”

I think of many ways to answer that but just say, “Yeah.”

“Hmph.” He nods slowly. “Well, if you were good friends with her, Mike—”

Ben. My name’s Ben.

“—then maybe you can tell me why she would kill herself.”

Another one I could answer many ways. What does he expect me to say? How about,
Murder can be made to look like suicide, and suicide can be made to look like murder
. I opt for respectful silence instead.

“So maybe
not
such a good friend.” He dismisses me with a pat on the arm. “Thanks for coming, Mike.”

I don’t say anything in response, though I’d like to. This guy just lost his sister, so he gets a long rope.

So! That was the family. Can’t imagine why Diana didn’t like coming back home.

The fortyish woman in the stylish black suit is still loitering at the other end of the room. She looks up every time someone new enters the parlor and studies him or her a moment. She finally catches on that I’m watching her, but she still won’t lock eyes with me.

Detective LaTaglia did the same thing at Mother’s visitation. Except she didn’t watch the other people entering and exiting the funeral home in Rockville, Maryland. She didn’t even watch my father.

She watched only me.

You’re a strong little boy, Benjamin. Eight years old and all grown up! Your mother would be proud.

She loved you a lot, didn’t she?

You loved her, too, right?

“They’re grieving.”

I spin around. It’s Emma again, the possibly pregnant high school friend. She likes to sneak up on me.

“The family,” she says. “Especially Randy. He can be nice, believe it or not. But it’s gotta be tough for him right now.”

It must be tough, Ben
.
Not being able to give your mother a proper Christian burial. They say your soul doesn’t go to heaven until your body is buried.

“Yeah,” I tell Emma. “It must be tough.”

But here’s the thing, Ben. We can’t let your mother be buried until we figure out what happened to her.

Do you know what happened to her, Ben? I kinda think you do.

Emma smiles at me, subdued for the occasion. “A bunch of people are getting together later,” she says. “Someone rented a room at Jack’s. If you want to stop by?”

I glance back at black-suit lady. For the moment, at least, she is gone.

“I just might do that,” I tell Emma.

Jack’s Pub is an off-campus bar populated by grown-ups and students from UW who have decided they’re too mature to be hanging out at a campus bar. They would be the outcasts, the rebels, the ones who didn’t go Greek, didn’t play a sport, didn’t join the student council or any of the clubs, who lived off campus and made the decision to rebel before they knew what it was they were rebelling against.

They would be me.

Someone rented the back room so we could celebrate the life of Diana in the proper way, meaning with alcohol. In my experience—as an adult—wakes and funerals provide an opportunity for reunions, and despite the depressing premise for the occasion, people are generally happy to reconnect with old friends.

The back room is all brick, with televisions in the corners, well lit, full of maybe fifty or sixty people, with music from the ’90s—a rap song, then a dance song—playing overhead. Almost everyone in here is the same age. They are, presumably, members of the class of ’95 from Edgewood High School of the Sacred Heart, or their significant others.

I love that PC term “significant other.” It means you’re someone special—you’re significant!—but either you can’t get married because you’re gay, which nowadays is only true in some states, or you’re unmarried and for some reason object to the word
boyfriend
or
girlfriend
. The next time the person you’re with says, “I love you,” respond by saying, “You’re very, very significant to me.”

I slip between some people and head toward the bar when I hear someone say, “That’s the guy who worked with Diana at the PR firm.” I turn to a group of people looking my way, including Emma and Randy, sitting on a bar stool in the center of the pack.

“Is that right?” Randy says too loudly. He’s had more than his share already tonight. “Hey, Mike—”

Ben. My name’s Ben.

“—what was the name of that PR firm again?”

In
Spy Game
,
Robert Redford taught Brad Pitt the fine points of espionage, including how to recruit foreigners to be undercover spies for the United States. Don’t lie to them, he advised Brad, because from that point on, that lie will have to be true.

I wave a hand. “I don’t want to talk business.”

“I don’t wanna talk business, either, Mike. I just wanna know the name of that PR firm you worked at with my sister.”

I prefer some of Pitt’s earlier roles—the felon in
Thelma & Louise
and the stoner in
True Romance
. He was great in
Seven
,
too.

I move to the bar. Randy calls after me, “Hey, Mike,” and I hear Emma say, “I thought his name was Ben,” and then Randy calls, “Hey, Ben!”

I order a vodka and pay too much for it. Then I head back, trying to decide if I should talk to Randy or not. That is, in fact, my primary reason for sticking around Madison tonight. I’m a reporter, after all, and if I’m looking for the skinny on someone, the chance to talk to that someone’s brother is irresistible.

“There he is—Mike-or-Ben.” Randy salutes me by raising his pint. He’s goading me. But I’m not in the mood.

“I prefer Ben-or-Mike,” I answer. A couple of ladies in the group like that. Randy doesn’t, but that’s too bad for Randy. It’s my parting shot, so I part.

I see the lady in the black suit nursing a Bud Light at a corner table, fending off a couple of boozers who think she’s the cat’s meow.

I stop dead. Cinnamon. Who’s taking care of Diana’s cat?

The lady in black senses a hitch in my giddyap. She doesn’t know why, but it interests her. She’s pretty good, but not as good as Detective LaTaglia thirty years ago.

Tell me what happened, Ben, and your mother’s soul can go to heaven.

Now, Robert Redford, as much as I loved
The Sting
and
Butch Cassidy
and
The Natural
—actually I thought
The Natural
was boring, but everyone else raved about it so I went along—to me his most amazing work was behind the camera on
Quiz Show
and especially
Ordinary People
.

I find a table not far from black-suit lady and watch her and everybody else for a long hour. Luckily the music is decent, and, even more important, there’s a waitress walking around (my “significant other”), so I’m four drinks in when I see Diana’s brother part the crowd and sit next to me.

“Please have a seat,” I say after he already did.

He whacks my arm with the back of his hand. “Hey, man, didn’t mean to come on so strong. I was just—Diana didn’t say a lot about what she did, y’know? So I was wondering, if she worked at a PR firm, maybe I could, at least, know the name of it.”

Overhead the song changes from “Groove Is in the Heart” to “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Someone has dimmed the lights without me noticing.

Randy probably wouldn’t be good at this kind of sleight of hand on a good day, but with half a gallon of booze in him, he can hardly keep a straight face.

I lean in and speak directly into his ear. “I don’t feel like being tested, Randy. I don’t know who or what you think I am, but I’m really, truly, a friend of Diana’s. We both know she never worked at a PR firm, and she didn’t attend UVA, either. But that’s what she told everyone around here, and I, for one, am not going to contradict her.”

Randy, his eyes forward while I speak into his ear, remains motionless.

“She loved the hell out of you,” I say. “I can’t imagine why, but she did. And my guess is she would be unhappy to see you drinking yourself down a hole tonight, especially after she spent all that money sending you to New Roads that summer while your parents thought you were living with her and interning on the Hill.”

With that, Randy’s face contorts and he lets out a low moan. He covers his face with a hand and has himself a good cry. I pat his back a couple of times but generally leave him to himself. I hardly know the guy, after all, and I’m not a big hugger.

After ten minutes or so, Randy takes some deep breaths and rights himself in his chair. “I couldn’t be sure of you,” he said.

The hair on the back of my neck stands at attention.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

“Hey, don’t ask me. Nobody tells the dopey brother anything.” He spits out the words like he’s expelling a pill. He pushes himself off the chair and starts to leave.

“Well, who
should
I ask?” I try.

Randy turns and looks at me. “Ask the guy she was fucking,” he answers. “Ask Jonathan Liu.”