‘Anything I can do to help?’
‘No, thanks, Hannah. The rest of me may be a mess, but my dialing finger isn’t broken. Yet.’
Nick studied me over the rim of his wine glass which was beaded with condensation. I watched his face carefully as I shared with him the next bit of news. ‘The DC police are looking for you.’
Nick sputtered, choked as he aspirated his wine. He pounded his chest with the flat of his hand, coughing, trying to clear his lungs. ‘What did you say?’
‘It has something to do with the investigation into the murder of Meredith Logan.’
Nick set his wine glass down on the table casually, too casually. ‘Who?’
‘Meredith Logan. The PA at Lynx News who went missing.’
Nick’s eyes narrowed. ‘What could I possibly know about that?
I waited him out, slowly sipping.
‘I don’t even know her,’ he added, twirling his wine glass, making wet circles on the table.
‘She was John Chandler’s production assistant.’
‘So?’ He was indifferent, or wanted me to think so.
‘Honestly, Nick, if I know you’re lying through your teeth, don’t you think the DC police will know it, too?’
While Nick gawped at me, I pressed on. ‘You told me you were doing research at the Library of Congress on the day of the crash. But guess what? You were caught on the security cameras in the lobby of Lynx News. The detectives showed me your picture.’
Nick screwed up his face, as if I’d just asked him to solve a particularly difficult equation. ‘I was only at Lynx News once, on the Friday before… well, before I met you.’
‘Why did you go there, Nick?’
Nick chortled. ‘Don’t play dumb with me, Hannah. You know very well why I paid a visit to Lynx News. I wanted to see John Chandler.’
‘Your father.’
And the truth came out, in one breathless burst. ‘Yes, my hotshot father who’s too famous to see anybody unless they make an appointment first! That woman, Meredith whatever, she came down to meet to me, but said I couldn’t talk to Chandler. She told me he was taping a show, but I didn’t believe her. Then she asked how she could help. I didn’t know how best to get the great man’s attention, so I gave her a photocopy of one of Zan’s letters to Mother.’
Nick had been leaning forward in his chair as he delivered his speech, but when it was done, he collapsed, melting into the upholstery.
‘What did Meredith say when you gave her the letter?’
‘She asked who Lilith was, so I told her. She kept me standing in the lobby while she stared at the letter, people coming and going, swerving around us, and I’m feeling like a fricking salesman or something. After a bit, she told me she’d see to it that Mr Chandler got the letter, took my contact information, said Mr Chandler would be in touch, blah blah blah. Of course, he never called. Big surprise.’
Nick blinked rapidly, and I thought he might be fighting back tears. ‘I swear to you, Hannah! That’s the first and only time I saw that woman. Until you told me just now, I didn’t even know she was dead!’
Actually, I could believe that. By the time Nick was out of the woods, the story had left the headlines.
‘Murdered? Jesus. That’s terrible!’ he said.
I finished my wine and set the glass down. ‘What will you tell the police when they show up?’
‘Just what I told you.’
‘And what if they say maybe you telephoned Meredith, asked her to come out and meet you on that day?’
Nick made a fist and pounded it lightly on the table. ‘No, no, no, no! That simply didn’t happen! I was totally at the Library of Congress. Somebody will remember seeing me there.’
He opened his mouth, took a breath and I thought he was winding up to tell me something else, but he slammed his lips shut instead.
‘At least we agree on one thing, you and I, Skip.’ I raised my empty glass. ‘John Chandler is your father, isn’t he?’
Nick simply nodded, not looking directly at me, but at the ridges and swirls on the textured wall, still absent-mindedly twirling his wine glass.
‘What a pair!’ I said, referring to Zan and Lilith. ‘He’s denying and your mother’s not telling, but facts is facts is facts.’
‘Amen!’ Nick said, hoisting his glass. He raised it to his lips and emptied the remaining wine in one gulp, then slammed the glass down on the table. If there’d been a fireplace in the room, no doubt he would have dashed the glass against the hearth and shouted Prost!
But Nick was in no mood for celebrating. ‘Do you know what it’s like to be rejected? No father, an absentee mother, and a fossil of an uncle who squeezed every nickel until the buffalo pooped? Spending every Christmas with the families of friends because my mother was living…’ He whipped his glasses off and massaged his eyes. ‘Well, I’m not going there.’
I could only imagine. I came from a close-knit military family that moved, together, all over the world. Even when our father was deployed, we stayed in touch with cassette-tape recordings sent back and forth through the mail. It hadn’t seemed important when we lost the tapes in one of our many moves, but I would give anything to hear my late mother say ‘I love you’ again.
At that moment, Nick looked so lost and vulnerable that my own motherly instinct kicked in, big time. I pictured Lilith’s house as I had last seen it. Thanksgiving dinner hadn’t been prepared in that kitchen for a very long time, perhaps not since the early pilgrims.
‘Do me a favor, will you, Nick?’
‘What’s that?’
‘Let me take you to dinner downstairs. It’s an Indian restaurant. I’ve looked at the menu, and I think there’s a chicken vindaloo with my name on it.’ Holding my wine glass, I popped up from my chair and whisked his empty glass off the table. ‘Let me rinse these out.’
In the bathroom, I ran hot water into the glasses, swirled it around, then dumped it out, shaking off the excess drops over the sink. As I reached for a towel on the rack behind the toilet, I noticed scraps of paper on the floor. Neatnick that I am, I bent down for a closer look.
Each piece was a ragged one-half inch square. I scooped up a handful and examined them closely. ‘Waiting for’ was written on one scrap; ‘I dream’ on another; ‘Venice we’ on a third. I recognized the handwriting. It was Zan’s.
The scraps were from a photocopy, not an original letter, I noticed with relief. When I checked the trash can, I found thousands more bits which, had they been put together, would chronicle Zan’s love for a beautiful young woman named Lilith. Leaving our wine glasses sitting on the edge of the sink, I picked up the trash bin and took it out to Nick. ‘What’s this?’ I asked, practically waving the bin under his nose.
Nick smiled ruefully. ‘That’s what Hoffner and I had our little disagreement about.’
‘Photocopies of your mother’s letters?’
‘Yeah. Before the crash, he had the originals, but I felt uncomfortable about that, so he made copies. For security, he said. He gave me back the originals. That’s why I was carrying them that day.’
‘I’m puzzled. Why did Hoffner want the photocopies? They’re not his letters.’
‘Well, I hired him to find my father, so I guess he figured he needed copies of the letters in order to do his job.’
I shook the basket. It rustled like a cheerleader’s pompom on homecoming night. ‘Why did you tear the photocopies up? I’m assuming this is your work.’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t need them. I know who my father is, and that’s all I wanted to know. Whether he’ll ever get around to acknowledging me or not doesn’t change that fact.’
‘You said there was a disagreement between you and Hoffner.’
‘Hoffner was pissed. He had some hare-brained idea that Chandler… Well, never mind.’
‘Please, Nick. Go ahead. I’m interested.’
Nick seemed to be gathering himself together. With the business end of his cane, he repositioned his footstool. Then, using both hands, he lifted his braced leg and rested it on top of the stool. That done, he leaned back, looking considerably more relaxed than when I first entered the room.