Mulch (27 page)

She had always been the model foreign service wife, close to him, never asking questions when none were appropriate. Helping him when he needed her. She made their life a perfect cover, mixing well with whatever international community they were living in.

His job had changed a lot in the past few years. Not only was his life adrift, no longer clearly defined; his wife was drifting away from him, too, not physically but in some other
important way. Something to do with what Nora said Saturday night: “Your wife is not the same woman you married. She is changing.” So simple, almost corny, although not when coming from a woman like Nora. But frightening. He frowned and stared out unseeing at the snow falling on Foggy Bottom.

“Changing,” he said out loud. The word sounded ominous in the quiet room. What was she doing that he didn’t know about?

If the truth were told, he felt a little guilty about Nora. He had had a great time with her Saturday night, forgot his host duties for quite a while as they shared dinner balancing their plates on their laps. It was that feeling he’d had in his teens or early twenties when he’d come upon some young woman who was truly sophisticated, who made him feel totally comfortable, not afraid of saying the wrong thing. As if every word of his were poetic and every gesture admirable. A woman who made him feel as if he could say or do nothing wrong. That was the true essence of Nora. And intellectually challenging as well. That was another thing: Louise’s apparent jealousy. Not because of her attraction for him but almost because he was interfering with the friendship the two of them had developed. Unusual.
He
was the one who usually had to deal with quirks of jealousy. That was because Louise had a way about her that led less sophisticated men to misunderstand. He’d witnessed it many times. There she’d be, warm, accepting, listening—actually, quite a bit like Nora—and the male was sure she was coming on to him. When, in fact, she was merely curious. Her curiosity about people could be damned annoying. Annoying and dangerous. What a wife! He shook his head. Somehow he couldn’t corral his thoughts. All this worrying about Louise
when he should be thinking about Peter Hoffman. That reminded him; he looked down at his list of things to do. “Tom.” The cryptic note at the top of the list was the thing he wanted to do least.

He was put through right away at the White House.

“I was waiting to hear from you,” said Paschen, abruptly. “How was the party?” Bill could picture Paschen in his White House office, in the pose he remembered best: standing, staring out a window, rocking back and forth on expensive Italian shoes, demanding all phone callers be brief and to the point.

“Very successful. Everybody ate a lot, drank a lot, mingled successfully. A good time was had by all.”

“All? Including Hoffman?”

“He’s a party animal. Hardly made a wrong move.”

“Charmed the populace?”

He and Paschen had had some old joke about that years ago, about how politicians had to “charm the populace” to be able to bull through any meaningful legislation that would matter to the country.

“Charmed the populace. Except Louise. She, as far as I know, registered the only nay vote.”

“That’s interesting. Tell me about it. Just a second.” Paschen went off the line. While he waited, Bill turned his chair and stared, as if unseeing, at the snowstorm outside his window.

Paschen came back on the line. “I have plenty of time now to listen, with no interruptions. I’m even sitting down. Tell me every little thing.”

“About thirty were there. Dick Elkins and wife, just home from London; four or five more couples from State; Maria
Doren, the novelist—know her? Some friends from Bethesda from the last time we lived here. Some of the neighbors, including Roger Kendricks of the
Post.
A couple of doctors, one shrink.”

“And they all liked him?”

“Yep. Hoffman is very brash but skilled in Washington small talk. Charmed the ladies. And earned the admiration of the men. Eyes dart about a lot, but so do lots of people’s. His wife is an intelligent woman, although somewhat hard—maybe mercenary’s the word.”

Paschen chuckled maliciously on the other end of the phone line. “That makes two mercenaries in the family.”

Bill laughed briefly. “So, as I said, it was only Louise who put her finger on something.”

“What’s that?”

“She and Hoffman were eating dessert in Janie’s bedroom at a table.”

“Janie—that’s gotta be your daughter, right?”

“Right.”

“Why were they taking their créme brûlée in the bedroom?” he asked snappily.

Bill was annoyed. He knew full well that Paschen lived on an estate in the horse country near Middleburg. He might have a tough time understanding that Bill and Louise, for whatever reason, could not afford a mansion.

“The place was crowded,” said Bill, no apology in his voice. “No other place to roost. They were talking about a variety of things. First, he asked her some questions about the body parts found in the yard.”

“Is that unusual?” said Paschen. “I would think everybody would ask that kind of question.”

“They do. Everybody who meets us or knows us wants an update on the situation. We constantly answer people’s questions about how the investigation is going: ‘Don’t they know whose body that was?’ et cetera. It’s not that; it’s how the guy acted when he met our Janie.”

“So what’d he do?”

Bill shifted in his seat. “I don’t even like to talk about it. When he met her, he came on like Don Juan. Very noticeable to Louise. All her alarm bells went off. Now, Louise wouldn’t feel like that unless there was a reason.”

He wasn’t going to tell Paschen that Louise was also a little drunk, the first time she’d been drunk since the time years ago in Florence. Suddenly his tired mind went back to that sunny vacation, filled with footsore, wonderful walks on the cobblestone streets, dinners with too much wine, lovemaking each night in their rooms in an ancient castle-cum-hotel.

“All right. So back to my question, Bill: What exactly did he do?”

Bill tried to focus back on his story. “Janie and a neighbor boy were popping in and out of the party. And Hoffman hadn’t had a chance to meet her until this particular moment. Apparently he tilted her chin up and gazed in her eyes … and he touched her hair …” All of a sudden, Bill’s stomach felt queasy. “It doesn’t
sound
so serious. But Louise said he acted as if he would have thrown Janie on the bed and … taken her if he’d had the chance. What’s strange is that most people there saw a completely different man.”

At the other end of the line, in Chief of Staff Paschen’s
White House office, there was a long silence. Finally, one word: “Lecher.”

“Lecher,” repeated Bill. “But that’s not necessarily illegal. Depends on where you go with it.” He sighed. “Look, Tom, you have the proper agencies to run this guy to ground. You decide what you do next; it’s your baby. That’s all I have.”

Off the hook. What a relief. But a sense of decency made him say more. “One more thing. As a father I don’t like to say this, but maybe this isn’t fair to the guy. I mean, to a man, everybody was noticing Janie the other night.” He paused.

“Yeh. Why?”

“Look, Janie’s almost sixteen. An innocent, well-behaved girl. It was only yesterday”—his voice broke. This was his baby he was talking about—“she was a skinny kid. But Saturday night she was a knockout. All of a sudden here’s this beautiful young creature just coming into womanhood. Peter Hoffman wasn’t the only man who was caught in her spell. As a father, the whole thing made me damned nervous. But I said to myself, remember, that’s what happens with daughters. So I don’t know what to say, Tom. Maybe he’s just normal. Or maybe somewhere down the line he’ll get into woman trouble.”

There was another long pause on Paschen’s end of the line. “The FBI tail’s been pulled for a couple of months; he’s been leading such a dull life lately….” Another pause. Bill could imagine Paschen on his feet again, impatient for action, like an animal ready to stalk its prey.

The president’s chief of staff said, “I’m standing here thinking hard, Bill. What you told me—not much to go on. But I’m going to resume surveillance on him anyway. Just on
general principles. I’ll send someone down to his offices in Alexandria today.”

“Yeah,” said Bill. “He works near us; he lives near us. I don’t like it.”

Paschen’s voice was dreamy. “I wish I could get that bastard on something.”

Bill leaned forward and clutched the phone and his hands around his head as if shielding himself from a blow. “Tom, let’s backtrack. When did you pull the tail on this guy?”

“Oh, I don’t know … sometime in September.”

“I don’t know why, but I’m damned glad to hear you’re resuming the tail. The guy just doesn’t—”

“Track. That’s it exactly, Bill. He doesn’t track. And thank you. And thank Louise for me. I’ll keep you posted.”

After he hung up the phone, Bill stared for a long moment at the pool of soft green light. Interesting, beautiful. Like Louise, who had given it to him. He couldn’t unlink Louise from his thoughts about Peter Hoffman. This guy had been right on hand all the time, in Alexandria and Sylvan Valley, and Bill hadn’t been sensitive to it until now.

The neighborhood with the mulch murder. The questions about the police investigation. Coming on to young girls. Stories of missing women. Couldn’t be … or could it?

He grabbed the phone and punched out his home number. Then he sat very still and prayed with every ring that she would answer. She was home; he knew that. She had a deadline she had to meet today.

“Damn it, answer!” he yelled.

Someone knocked on his door. Ed from the next office. “Everything okay in there?” Bill ignored him.

Louise’s recorded voice said, “We can’t come to the phone right now …” Bill slammed down the receiver.

He sat for a minute quietly. He had to keep his head. He was probably being silly: too little sleep lately. He punched in Information and asked for the Fairfax Police number. At last he had an out-of-breath Detective Geraghty on the line.

“Mike Geraghty? Bill Eldridge here. Now, you may think this is totally off the wall—”

“No, I don’t,” Geraghty curtly interrupted.

L
OUISE WAS SURPRISED WHEN SHE LOOKED UP
and saw a white world outside. She had vaguely noted it was snowing, but in the past hour or so it had come down in such quantities that the ground was white, and even the skeletal trees were as if hung with cotton.

She felt an instant of panic: her child. Then she remembered gratefully that Janie had gone off this morning in warm clothes and hiking boots. Why could she
never relinquish this motherly concern about the children getting their feet wet?

She shivered. The stove had died down, and the temperature had dropped. She opened the stove’s small door. Only a little bed of embers—orange, squirmy worms—remained. She put in more kindling, and a piece of paper for good luck, then the bulk of her wood in the prescribed fashion. Once lit, she clamped the door shut, keeping the damper open just a crack. “C’mon, baby,” she urged, “do it again for me.”

She sat down and slouched back in her chair. Like a cat waking from a sleep, she stretched out her legs and her arms and yawned. She looked at the apple on the tray and considered eating it, but chewing a Granny Smith seemed too large an effort right now. Yet it must be lunchtime, or was it later? She had no watch on. And she had forgotten to bring the phone out. Bill probably had called and gotten no answer.

She picked up a Fig Newton and took a bite through its gentle protective exterior. As usual, it tasted ordinary until she got to the fig part, exotic as Morocco.

With her free hand, she cursored through her story and felt better than she had in a long time. It was a good piece of writing, and she was almost finished with it. As if thanking it for providing good vibrations, she touched the plant nearest to her, the billbergia. She ran her finger carefully along one of its swordlike leaves. They were ratcheted like devilish daggers. Its graceful, looping pink and blue blossoms were traced with purple accents. She liked it the best; it was the roughest and at the same time the most beautiful.

Then she looked over at the glass doors. The bulk of the snow surprised her; it had accumulated to what looked like
three or four inches. The now-white woods would have been picture-perfect if it weren’t for the threatening sky. She thought she saw a flicker of movement in the backyard. A bird, perhaps, not used to winter yet.

Then came the series of knocks.

She realized her little joke about the protection provided by the sound of crunching leaves was moot. Whoever was here had traveled here soundlessly. The leaves were covered with a snowy blanket and gave no warning. And in spite of Bill’s admonitions, the door to the hut was unlocked.

These realizations didn’t worry her, because she was almost certain it was Nora. She sat up straight and, with some reluctance, came out of her writing daze.

Another rat-a-tat-tat of knocks. Suddenly she went cold. It couldn’t be Nora. Too demanding and impolite. Every nerve in her body came alive.