Mistress Read online

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

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

  Chapter 13

  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.

  Chapter 14

  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 thou
ght 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.”

  Chapter 15

  I wake up with a nasty hangover in a mediocre hotel room. I need more sleep, but the gong banging in my head won’t allow it, and anyway, I need to get back to DC. I need to learn more about Jonathan Liu.

  The two attendants at the desk at Wisconsin Aviation give me a friendly glance and a wave on my way through to the tarmac. They don’t ask for any kind of identification, even though I’ve never flown from here before this trip. The rules for general aviation just aren’t the same as those for commercial flight. No metal detectors here. As long as I have the pilot “look,” nobody asks any questions. And I’m not even wearing my aviators.

  I know what you’re thinking—a Leo DiCaprio mind-scroll, right? Sorry, too tired.

  I rush through the preflight check, eager to be rid of Madison, of Diana’s family, of the lady in black, of Diana’s diminutive drunk of a little brother, with his furtive reference to the most powerful Chinese lobbyist on the Hill.

  Chocks up, preflight checklist complete, tower cleared for takeoff. I never go to the big airports. Nearly all airports are public, and they can’t refuse to let small aircraft land or take off, but they can leave a tiny plane like mine on the tarmac until I’m roasted or rusted through. Dane County Regional gets me off the ground in an hour.

  Flaps up and trim set for takeoff, I release the brakes and open the throttle to full. About fifteen hundred feet down the runway, I hit sixty-five miles per hour and the wheels are bouncing before we’re airborne, climbing at full power.

  The ground falls away beneath me. Funny how the fire escape at Diana’s makes me shake with fear, but throttling up to eighty knots and hurtling through space, supported by faith in the invisible power of lift, is no problem.

  I reach altitude and check the GPS, banking east and settling into the flight plan, which will take me to Mansfield, Ohio, for a quick refueling stop before the last leg home.

  The engine suddenly brings my mind back to the moment. It sputters. Coughs. I change the fuel mixture to rich, adding more fuel to the mix of fuel and air, and turn on the carburetor heat. The temperature at the airport was ninety degrees when I took off. There can’t be ice in the carburetor. Can there?

  The engine roars for a moment. Then there is a horrible clatter, like the time we were sitting in the café on G Street, Diana, and a city bus making a right turn tore the side mirrors off two parked cars, and you laughed at the crowd that gathered.

  And then, more horrifying than any noise, there is silence. I hear the wind rushing past and nothing more.

  “The Sound of Silence” is a nice song, and a nice thought, too, in moments of contemplation or serenity. But it’s not a nice sound when you’re nine thousand feet off the ground in a single-engine Cessna.

  Easy, Ben. You know what to do.

  Airspeed at eighty miles per hour. Switch fuel tanks. Mixture to full rich. Carb heat on—check. Primer in and locked. Ignition to left, then right, then…start.

  I said, Start.

  Nothing. Not even a click.

  That engine is not going to start.

  I try again, just to be sure.

  My heartbeat kicks into my throat. There are no atheists in Skyhawks that lack engine power. She’s a sturdy aircraft, but she’s no glider. Watertown is too far. There’s no way I can coast all the way there.

  This plane is going down.

  Chapter 16

  Breathe in, Ben. Fly the plane.

  Look around.

  Wind out of the north. I need to find a field. This plane doesn’t need a runway, remember? That crazy kid from flight school landed his on the eighteenth green. Oh, how I’d love to be playing golf right now.

  I have a rendezvous with Death

  On some scarred slope of battered hill,

  When Spring comes round again this year

  And the first meadow-flowers appear.

  Just find someplace flat, Ben.

  I bank left, into the wind. At least my instruments are still working. For now.

  Seat belt and harness tight. I can do this. Just like power-off landings during training. Except without the pesky runway.

  I see a long stretch of two-lane highway, an
d I’m sorely tempted. No, Ben. Power lines. They’d tangle you up like a fly in a spiderweb.

  The most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen appears in front of me—a level pasture, dead ahead. Never have I been so happy to see a bunch of cows.

  I can make it. I prepare for landing: Airspeed down to sixty-five knots. Fuel shutoff valve on. As if that mattered. But an engine fire on landing would complicate things.

  Focus, Ben. This can still have a happy ending.

  Fly the plane. Flaps down. Airspeed to sixty knots.

  I tune the radio to 121.5 MHz. That’s one I never thought I would see on the dial—the international aeronautical emergency frequency.

  I open the frequency, and with a voice so calm that it doesn’t sound like my own, I say the words that haunt a pilot’s dreams:

  “MAYDAY, MAYDAY, MAYDAY. Watertown tower, this is Skyhawk three-one-six-zero Foxtrot. Repeat: Skyhawk three-one-six-zero Foxtrot with total engine failure attempting a forced landing in a pasture. Last known position 43º6′46″ north, 88º42′13″ west, at fifteen hundred feet, heading twenty degrees. One person on board. I require immediate assistance.”

  The radio silence compounds the silence of the engine as the seconds tick away. Don’t panic, Ben. Fly the plane.

  The radio crackles to life. “Cessna three-one-six-zero Foxtrot, this is Watertown tower. I read you five by five. Assistance is en route.”

  Okay, great. Now, if you could please get here in the next five seconds and toss me a parachute.

  The ground hurtles up at me—too fast, too fast. Flaps full down. Nose up, tail down. The wings groan in protest. That’s strange—I didn’t really notice that sound when the engine was running. Slow it down. Float, Ben. Don’t hurtle. Slow it down…but don’t slow down too much or you’ll drop right out of the air altogether and real damage will be done.

  Here it comes, here it comes, here it comes—

  I unlatch the cabin doors and lock them open so that when the frame is twisted on impact I can still get out. The door bangs deafeningly against the frame, flapping open and shut in the gusts of wind. The noise is a relief after the silence. The quiet engine, like the silence of death, with the wind whistling past.