A Quiet Death (26 page)

‘It'll probably please you to hear, then, that Nicholas has fired the creep.'

‘The first sign of common sense I've seen in the boy.'

Realizing my bath was going to be cut short, I pulled the plug. There was no way I'd leave Lilith alone with Jim Hoffner, at least not intentionally. With the phone anchored to my ear, I stood and fumbled for a towel. ‘It'll take me about and hour to get there, maybe an hour and fifteen.'

‘Oh, thank you, Hannah!'

‘My fee is high, Lilith. You might just have to paint me a picture some day.'

‘Hannah, I would be delighted!'

I drove as fast as the speed limit allowed – and at times a bit faster – making it to Lilith's cottage outside Woolford in a little over an hour. Her Toyota was in the drive. I pulled up behind it, pocketed my iPhone which had been recharging in the console, and climbed out.

The sun slanted through the trees, but a bit of early-morning chill still clung to the air. I regretted running out of the house so quickly that I'd forgotten to put a fleece on over my T-shirt and jeans.

Lilith had told me she'd be in her studio, so I jogged through the woods in that direction, but when I stuck my head into the studio and called out, she wasn't there. She wasn't on the patio either, or sitting on the dock near the water.

Lilith had telephoned from her house. I knew that because I had heard the television. Surely she didn't intend for me to meet her there! But if her car was in the drive, I reasoned, she had to be around somewhere.

I jogged back to the house and let myself in through the kitchen door. ‘Lilith! Are you here?'

There was no answer.

I listened to the silence, made even odder by the fact that I couldn't hear the television. ‘Lilith?'

Following the path Lilith had made through the disaster that was her kitchen, with one eye constantly on where I was placing my feet, I stepped carefully into the central hallway, calling her name. She wasn't in the shambles of her living room, or anywhere in the wreck of the hall.

The door to the bathroom was closed. Fearing Lilith had taken a tumble in the tub, I knocked, pushed it open, but she wasn't in the bathroom, either. ‘Lilith!'

While wending my way out of the bathroom, I was distracted by a noise. Was somebody calling my name? I high-stepped cautiously over a pile of folded towels, but didn't see – until it was way too late – the Charmin UltraSoft 2-Ply Jumbo Pack just on the other side. My foot came down on the Charmin, slipped out from under me, and suddenly I was flying head-first across the narrow hallway. My forehead came to a sudden stop against the doorframe of what might have been, in a previous life, a linen closet, knocking me silly.

‘Damn, damn, damn!' I shook my head, trying to dissipate the stars that were doing colorful loop-de-loops behind my eyeballs. With my fingers, I explored the knot on my forehead, already beginning to swell.

Feeling stupid, I struggled to my feet, leaning against the wall for support. I imagined my obituary: Hannah Ives, late of Annapolis, died in a tragic accident when she tripped over a twelve-pack of toilet paper. How embarrassing. Paul would never forgive me.

‘Lilith!'

This time, I thought I heard a reply. The door to the guest bedroom stood ajar, but Lilith wasn't in among the ruins. Still massaging the bump on my head, I staggered over to the master-bedroom door and pushed on it hard, but it refused to open. ‘Lilith!' I called.

‘I'm in here!' Her voice, normally soft, was now only a whisper.

‘I've been looking for you everywhere!' I rattled the doorknob, turned it, pushed, but the door still wouldn't budge.

‘I was searching for the TV remote, so I started moving boxes and suddenly everything fell in on me.' Lilith was in tears.

Oh dear, the domino effect. Having been in Lilith's bedroom, it wasn't hard to imagine. Borrowing a move I'd seen on a dozen cop shows, I stepped back, then rammed the door with my shoulder, but only succeeded in creating a one-inch gap. I put my lips to the opening and called out, ‘Are you hurt?'

‘I think my ankle's broken,' she wailed. ‘Oh, God, it hurts!'

‘I can't get the door open, Lilith! What's blocking it on your side?'

‘Stupid, stupid, stupid! I'm so embarrassed, Hannah!'

‘Lilith, don't worry about that now. Can you crawl over to the door?'

A whimper. ‘No.'

‘OK. I'm going to call for help. Hang in there.'

I reached into the pocket of my jeans to retrieve my iPhone, but it wasn't there. I patted all my pockets, front and back. No luck. I leaned against the doorframe, momentarily confused. I distinctly remembered slipping the phone into the right back pocket of my jeans when I got out of my car. Where the hell had it gone?

The toilet paper, Hannah! Your daredevil dive across hall, like one of the Flying Wallendas, but without a net.

Shit!

I staggered down the hallway to the bathroom, sank to my knees and began pawing through the piles of debris that littered the area. My phone hadn't landed in the Tupperware container of toothbrushes, dental floss and mint-flavored floss picks. It hadn't slipped under a tipsy stack of
Architectural Digests
going back to 1978. It wasn't nestled among the jumble of brand new towels and washcloths, still wearing their price tags, now strewn across the beige shag carpet.

I collapsed against the wall in dismay. I had been traveling at high velocity when I took that header, and so had my iPhone. It could have ended up anywhere among all the rubbish.

‘I've lost my cell phone, Lilith. Do you have yours?'

‘It's on the dresser, but I can't reach it from here. My ankle's pinned.'

Great.

At that point my choices were two. Leave Lilith and drive out to look for help, or stick around and try to rescue her myself. I decided to stay.

‘All right, don't panic. Are you near the door?'

‘No, I'm over by the television. My ankle's
under
the television!'

‘OK, stay put. I'm going to get this door open if it's the last thing I do.'

I stepped back and studied the situation. Lilith's bedroom door opened in, so the hinges were on her side of the door. So much for Plan A: hammering out the hinge pins and simply removing the damn door.

On to Plan B. It took me a few minutes to move a heap of mail-order catalogs aside – Harry & David's Fruit of the Month Club! 1994! – clearing a spot in the hallway where I could sit down. I took a deep breath, braced my back against the wall, placed the bottom of both feet against the door and pushed, hard, so hard that my legs began to tremble. The door rewarded me by moving a scant two inches.

I got down on my hands and knees and slid my hand inside the room, feeling around carefully for the obstruction, expecting something big, a chair for example, but the first thing I touched was a shoebox, then a book, then a pillow, then something square and flat that could have been a picture frame. Keeping my hand through the crack, I stood, feeling my way slowly up, higher and higher, obstruction after obstruction.

‘Tell me what I'm working against, Lilith!'

‘Shoeboxes, blankets, sheets and a bookcase, I'm afraid.'

‘Keep your head down!' I wrapped my hand around something soft near the top of the pile and threw it as hard as I could toward the far corner of the room.

One object down and how many thousands to go?

I sent another object flying, then another. After every ten tosses, I shoved on the door. At the end of five minutes it had moved another half inch, no more.

Breathing hard, I rested my throbbing forehead against the door in frustration. There had to be another way. ‘Lilith! Do you think I can get in through the bedroom window?'

‘Oh, Hannah, I'm sorry. The previous owners nailed the windows shut. And I never got around to, to . . .'

‘Never mind. Just keep your head down.'

After a bit more work, the gap in the door had widened enough so that I could start pulling smaller items – shoes, handbags, cross-stitch embroidery kits – out into the hall with me. I was working on a decorative pillow which gave up the fight with a soft sucking sound, when somebody called out, ‘Anybody home?'

I recognized the voice at once. Jim Hoffner, making his promised appearance. As much as I despised the man, I didn't take the time to engage in any confrontational banter. ‘Hoffner! I need help. Lilith's trapped inside her bedroom and the door is jammed. I can't find my cell phone. Can you call 9-1-1?'

‘Sorry.'

I stood up, pillow in hand. I stared at Hoffner as he weaved down the hallway in my direction, his yellow windbreaker shining like a beacon in the dark. I took his ‘sorry' to mean he didn't have his phone.

‘OK, but you're a strong guy. Help me break this door down, will you?'

Hoffner simply glared. ‘Where are Chandler's love letters?'

‘What's going on out there?' From her bedroom prison, Lilith sounded like a little girl lost.

I ignored Lilith and answered Hoffner instead. ‘How the hell am I supposed to know? I returned the letters to Lilith. You can ask her that question yourself,
after
we get her out of there.'

Hoffner's eyes narrowed dangerously. When he raised a hand, I flinched. I pointed at my eye. ‘I'm already working on a hell of a shiner, Hoffner. You planning on giving me a matched pair?'

Hoffner kicked a pile of wicker baskets out of his way and strong-armed past me. He began pounding on Lilith's bedroom door. ‘Where the hell did you put those letters?'

Her answer was simple. ‘In a safety deposit box.'

‘Where?'

‘They're mine, Mr Hoffner,' she shouted. ‘Why should I tell you?'

‘Fuck!' Hoffner spun on his heel and careened down the hall, scattering Lilith's things in his wake. Instead of leaving by way of the kitchen, though, he hung a right into the living room where I could hear him crashing about in frustration, swearing, giving every profanity in his vast vocabulary an airing before giving up and leaving via the back door, the way he had come.

No way Hoffner could make the mess in the living room any bigger than it already was, so I ignored his rampage and focused on the bedroom door. ‘I think he's gone,' I told Lilith after a while.

The gap between the door and its frame was now about twelve inches. I tried to squeeze my body through sideways, sucking and tucking and regretting, when it didn't work, that I'd eaten three pancakes for breakfast.

Push, grab, toss.

Push, grab, pull.

I stopped work for a moment to catch my breath, inhaled deeply, smelled smoke. A neighbor burning early fall leaves, I thought, or cranking up the wood stove to ward off the morning's chill.

‘Hannah? Are you still there?'

‘I'm still here.'

Just for the sake of variety, not because I thought it would work, I leaned against the bedroom door and tried shoving it with my back instead of my shoulder. Suddenly, something on the other side gave up the fight, the door yawned open another two inches and I was able to ease myself through.

I found myself standing knee-deep in a jumble of boxes and loose clothing. The bookshelf I'd been working against lay askew, its top butted against the footboard of the bed.

‘Lilith? Where are you?'

From around a lopsided aluminum rack hung with plastic-covered dry cleaning, a tiny hand waved like a flag of surrender. ‘Over here.'

I found Lilith, wearing pink silk pajamas, lying on her side between the bed and the window. It was immediately obvious what had happened. The elderly television stand – a K-Mart blue light special, unless I missed my guess – had collapsed, sending a DVD player, a cascade of DVDs and the television itself forward, pinning her legs.

I waded closer, slipping and sliding over plastic storage containers that shifted dangerously under my feet. The television was an ancient, wedge-shaped model, housing a giant cathode ray tube. It was still connected to the DVD player by old-style audio and video cables, snarled and tangled like a platter of colorful spaghetti. I kicked clothing aside until I was standing on solid floor, bent my knees, wrapped my arms around the massive set and tried to raise it. ‘Ooof!' I said, defeated. ‘Damn thing weighs a ton.'

Bracing my back against the footboard of the bed, I shoved the television up and aside with my feet, freeing Lilith at long last.

‘Oh, thank you, thank you!' Lilith breathed. She dragged herself into a sitting position.

I kneeled down to check my friend for damage. Both her shins were scraped and bleeding, her left ankle purple and beginning to swell. I touched the ankle gently. ‘Can you move your foot?'

Wincing, Lilith rotated her foot. ‘It hurts, but I guess it's not broken.'

‘Let me help you out of here.'

‘I'm so embarrassed,' Lilith wept as I pulled her up until she was leaning against me, her injured leg crooked behind her. ‘I didn't want anybody to see this terrible house. Nobody will understand, and I can't explain.' Tears streamed down her face.

‘Can you put weight on your foot?'

She tried it, yelped. ‘Ouch!'

‘Bad idea,' I said.

‘No, I can do it.' She set her foot down experimentally, winced. ‘Lend me a shoulder?'

With Lilith's arm draped around my neck and my arm around her waist, we hobbled toward the bedroom door with me kicking obstructions aside like autumn leaves.

‘I smell smoke,' Lilith said. With her free arm, she pointed. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Look!'