Body of Evidence (8 page)

"Very true. I suppose I'm one of the few people who knew her identity--because of Joe."

"Your husband?"

"He and Mr. Harper were friends," she answered. "Well, as much as anyone is really Mr. Harper's friend. They were connected through foe's business. That's how it started."

"What was your husband's business?" I asked, deciding that my hostess was much less confused than I had previously assumed.

"Construction. When Mr. Harper bought Cutler Grove, the house was badly in need of restoration. Joe spent the better part of two years out there overseeing the work."

I should have made the connection right away. Mc-Tigue Contractors and McTigue Lumber Company were the biggest construction companies in Richmond, with offices throughout the commonwealth.

"This was well over fifteen years ago," Mrs. McTigue went on. "And it was during the time Joe was working at the Grove that he first met Beryl. She came to the site several times with Mr. Harper, and soon moved into the house. She was very young."

She paused. "I remember Joe telling me back then that Mr. Harper had adopted a beautiful young girl who was a very talented writer. I think she was an orphan. Something sad like that. This was all kept very quiet, of course."

She carefully set down her glass and slowly made her way across the room to the secretary. Sliding open a drawer, she pulled out a legal-size creamy envelope.

"Here," she said. Her hands trembled as she presented it to me. "It's the only picture of them I have."

Inside the envelope was a blank sheet of heavy rag stationery, an old, slightly overexposed black-and-white photograph protected within its folds. On either side of a delicately pretty blond teen-age girl were two men, imposing and tan and dressed for outdoors. The three figures stood close to each other, squinting in the glare of a brilliant sun.

"That's Joe," Mrs. McTigue said, pointing to the man standing to the left of a girl I was certain was the young Beryl Madison. The sleeves of his khaki shirt were rolled up to the elbows of his muscular arms, his eyes shielded by the brim of an International Harvester cap. To Beryl's right was a big white-haired man who Mrs. McTigue went on to explain was Gary Harper.

"It was taken by the river," she said. "Back then when Joe was working on the house. Mr. Harper had white hair even then. I 'spect you've heard the stories. Supposely his hair turned white while he was writing The Jagged Corner, when he was barely in his thirties."

"This was taken at Cutler Grove?"

"Yes, at Cutler Grove," she answered.

I was haunted by Beryl's face. It was a face too wise and knowing for one so young, a wistful face of longing and sadness that I associate with children who have been mistreated and abandoned.

"Beryl was just a child then," Mrs. McTigue said.

"I suppose she would have been sixteen, maybe seventeen?"

"Well, yes. That sounds about right," she replied, watching me fold the sheet of paper around the photograph and tuck both back inside the envelope. "I didn't find this until after Joe passed on. I 'spect one of the members of his crew must have taken it."

She returned the envelope to its drawer, and when she had reseated herself, she added, "I think one of the reasons Joe got on so well with Mr. Harper is Joe was a one-way street when it came to other people's business. There was quite a lot I'm sure he never even told me."

Smiling wanly, she stared off at the wall.

"Apparently, Mr. Harper told your husband about Beryl's books when they began to get published," I commented.

She shifted her attention back to me and looked surprised. "You know, I'm not sure Joe ever told me how he knew that, Dr. Scarpetta--such a lovely name. Spanish?"

"Italian."

"Oh! I'll bet you're quite a cook, then."

"It's something I enjoy," I said, sipping my port. "So apparently Mr. Harper told your husband about Beryl's books."

"Oh, my."

She frowned. "How curious you should bring that up. It's something I never considered. But Mr. Harper must have told him at some point. Why, yes, I can't think of how else Joe would have known. But he did. When Flag of Honor first came out, he gave me a copy of it for Christmas."

She got up again. Searching several bookshelves, she pulled out a thick volume and carried it over to me. "It's autographed," she added proudly.

I opened it and looked at the generous signature of "Emily Stratton," which had been penned in December ten years before.

"Her first book," I said.

"Possibly one of the few she ever signed."

Mrs. Mc-Tigue beamed. "I believe Joe got it through Mr. Harper. Of course, there's no other way he could have gotten it."

"Do you have any other signed editions?"

"Not of hers. Now, I have all of her books, have read every one of them, most of them two or three times."

She hesitated, her eyes widening. "Did it happen the way the papers depicted?"

"Yes."

I wasn't telling the whole truth. Beryl's death was much more brutal than anything reported by the news.

She reached for another cheese biscuit, and for an instant seemed on the verge of tears.

"Tell me about last November," I said. "It was almost a year ago when she came to speak to your group, Mrs. McTigue. This was for the Daughters of the American Revolution?"

"It was our annual author's luncheon. The highlight of the year, when we have in a special speaker, an author usually someone quite well known. It was my turn to head the committee, to work out the arrangements, find the speaker. I knew from the start I wanted Beryl, but immediately ran into obstacles. I had no idea how to locate her. She didn't have a listed telephone number and I had no idea where she lived, had no earthly idea she lived right here in Richmond! Finally, I asked Joe to help me out."

She hesitated, laughing uncomfortably. "You know, I 'spect I wanted to see if I could take care of the matter on my own. And Joe was so busy. Well, he called Mr. Harper one night, and the very next morning my telephone rang. I'll never forget my surprise. Why, I was almost speechless when she identified herself."

Her telephone. It hadn't occurred to me that Beryl's number was unlisted. There was no mention of this detail in the reports Officer Reed had taken. Did Marino know?

"She accepted the invitation, much to my delight, then asked the usual questions," Mrs. McTigue said. "What size group we expected. I told her between two and three hundred. The time, how long she should talk, that sort of thing. She was most gracious, charming. Not chatty, though. And it was unusual. She didn't care to bring books. Authors always want to bring books, don't you know. They sell them afterward, autograph them. Beryl said that wasn't her practice, and she refused the honorarium as well. It was quite out of the ordinary. She was very sweet and modest, I thought."

"Was your group all women?" I asked.

She tried to remember. "I think a few members did bring their husbands, but most of those who attended were women. Almost always are."

I expected as much. It was improbable Beryl's killer had been among her admirers that November day.

"Did she accept invitations like yours very often?" I asked.

"Oh, no," Mrs. McTigue was quick to say. "I know she didn't, at least not around here. I would have heard about something like that and been the first to sign up. She struck me as a very private young woman, someone who wrote for the joy of it and didn't really care for the attention. Explaining why she used pen names. Writers who mask their identities the way she did rarely venture out in public. And I'm sure she wouldn't have made the exception in my case had it not been for foe's connections with Mr. Harper."

"Sounds like he would do most anything for Mr. Harper," I commented.

"Why, yes. I 'spect that's so."

"Have you ever met him?"

"Yes."

"What was your impression of him?"

"I 'spect he may have been shy," she said. "But I sometimes thought he was an unhappy man and perhaps considered himself a bit better than everybody else. I will say he cut an impressive figure."

She was staring off again, and the light had gone out of her eyes. "Certainly my husband was devoted to him."

"When was the last time you saw Mr. Harper?"asked.

"Joe passed away last spring."

"You haven't seen Mr. Harper since your husband died?"

She shook her head and left me for a private bitter place I knew nothing of. I wondered what had really transpired between Gary Harper and Mr. McTigue. Bad business deals? An influence on Mr. McTigue that eventually made him less than the man his wife had loved? Perhaps it was simply that Harper was egotistical and rude.

"He has a sister, I understand. Gary Harper lives with his sister?" I said.

Mrs. McTigue baffled me by pressing her lips together, her eyes tearing up. Setting my glass on an end table, I reached for my pocketbook. She followed me to the door.I persisted, carefully. "Did Beryl ever write to you or perhaps to your husband?"

She shook her head.

"Are you aware of any other friends she had? Did your husband ever mention anyone?"

Again, she shook her head.

"What about anyone she may have referred to as 'M,' the initial M?"

Mrs. McTigue stared sadly into the empty hallway, her hand on the door. When she looked at me, her eyes were weepy and unfocused. "There's a 'P' and an 'A' in two of her novels. Union spies, I believe. Oh, my. I don't think I turned the oven off."

She blinked several times as if staring into sunlight. "You'll come see me again, I hope?"

"That would be very nice."

Kindly touching her arm, I thanked her and left.

I called my mother as soon as I got home and for once was relieved to receive the usual lectures and reminders, to hear that strong voice loving me in its no-nonsense way.

"It's been in the eighties all week and I saw on the news it's been dropping as low as forty in Richmond," she said. "That's almost freezing. It hasn't snowed yet?"

"No, Mother. It hasn't snowed. How's your hip?"

"As well as can be expected. I'm crocheting a lap robe, thought you could cover your legs with it while you work in your office. Lucy's been asking about you."

I hadn't talked to my niece in weeks.

"She's working on some science project at school right now," my mother went on. "A talking robot, of all things. Brought it over the other night and scared poor Sinbad under the bed-----"

Sinbad was a sinful, bad, mean, nasty cat, a gray- and black-striped stray who had tenaciously begun following Mother while she was shopping in Miami Beach one morning. Whenever I came to visit, Sinbad's hospitality extended to his perching on top of the refrigerator like a vulture and giving me the fish-eye.

"You'll never guess who I saw the other day," I began a little too breezily. The need to tell someone was overwhelming. My mother knew my past, or at least most of it. "Do you remember Mark James?"

Silence.

"He was in Washington and stopped by."

"Of course I remember him."

"He stopped by to discuss a case. You remember, he's a lawyer. Uh, in Chicago."

I was rapidly retreating. "He was on business in D. C."

The more I said, the more her disapproving silence closed in on me.

"Huh. What I remember is he nearly killed you, Katie."

When she called me "Katie" I was ten years old again.

An obvious advantage of having the forensic science labs inside my building was I didn't have to wait for paper reports. Like me, the scientists often knew a lot before they began writing anything down. I had submitted Beryl Madison's trace evidence exactly one week ago. It would probably be several more weeks before the report was on my desk, but Joni Hamm would already have her opinions and private interpretations. Having finished the morning's cases and in a mood to speculate, I keyed myself up to the fourth floor, a cup of coffee in hand.

Joni's "office" was little more than an alcove sandwiched between the trace and drug analysis labs at the end of the hall. When I walked in she was sitting at a black countertop peering into the ocular lens of a stereoscopic microscope, a spiral notebook at her elbow filled with neatly written notes. "A bad time?"

I inquired.

"No worse than any other time," she said, glancing around distractedly.

I pulled up a chair.

Joni was a petite young woman with short black hair and wide, dark eyes. A Ph. D. candidate taking classes at night and the mother of two young children, she always looked tired and a bit harried. But then, most of the lab workers did, and in fact the same was often said of me.

"Checking in on Beryl Madison," I said. "What have you found?"

"More than you bargained for, I have a feeling."

She turned back through pages in the notebook. "Beryl Madison's trace is a nightmare."

I wasn't surprised. I had turned in a multitude of envelopes and evidence buttons. Beryl's body was so bloody it had picked up debris like flypaper. Fibers, in particular, were difficult to examine because they had to be cleaned before Joni could put them under the scope. This required placing each individual fiber inside a container of soapy solution, which in turn was placed inside an ultrasound bath. After blood and dirt were gently agitated free, the solution was strained through sterile filter paper and each fiber was mounted on a glass slide.