“One of those is his mother’s guilt,” Hannibal said. “Dean told me Oscar’s murder looked just like his father’s. Do you believe there’s any chance Dean’s mother did kill again?”
Roberts dragged his fingers through his beard and his voice wandered from its usual even timber. “Mister Jones I’m still not convinced Mrs. Edwards killed anyone. And if she did, to imagine she would repeat her crime within a year of release from prison is the merest fantasy.”
Hannibal nodded. “Doctor, do you have any reason to believe that Grant Edwards had another woman when he lived in his sister’s house?”
“Oh, I for one am quite sure he did.” Roberts stopped walking and looked around as if he might be overheard. Hannibal guessed he was wondering how far into client confidentiality he would allow himself to be pushed. “That is another issue Dean has to resolve, Mister Jones. A part of him feels his father deserved to be punished. You see, he was aware of his father’s affair with his baby-sitter.”
16
It wasn’t that often that Hannibal wondered just what he was doing or why. Most often his professional work involved some variation of protecting a sensible person from a bully. A person is threatened, something very dear to them is stolen, or a child is involved with a gang and parents don’t know what to do. Other people’s troubles became his own. That was how he made his living since he resigned from the Treasury Department.
The sequence of events that lead him to an uncomfortable seat in the customs area of Reagan National Airport at ten in the evening was not so clear. It really had nothing to do with Dean Edwards, the man he was being paid to help out of a terrible situation. Nor did it have anything to do with the murder of Dean’s father. That wasn’t his job, but the news about Dean’s baby-sitter did provide another suspect for that killing. Another jealous woman may be lurking out there. And if Grant Edwards’ death and Oscar’s were related, clearing Dean’s mother of the earlier murder would help clear her of the second.
The twin doors popped open and Hannibal stood with the rest of those lining the velvet ropes that formed a chute for the international travelers to flow through. First out were the families pushing mounds of luggage stacked on carts, all military from the men’s haircuts, arriving at the end of a permanent change of station. Then came a few European tourists, just as easily identified by their clothing and an air of unfamiliarity. A few vacationers followed, looking exhausted, as if they had tried to see all of Europe in their few days off.
Among the last to enter the cool but brightly lit cavern was a lone woman carrying a single suitcase. Florescent lights gave her hair a bluish tint. Her slightly bent posture and slow shuffling gait made her appear older than Hannibal thought she must be. But something in her soft, warm features told him this had to be Oscar’s mother.
“Mrs. Peters?” he asked to be sure. When she nodded with a numb smile he took her suitcase.
“Thank you, young man,” Mrs. Peters said. Her makeup had almost worn away during the long flight. “And thank you so much for meeting me like this. I haven’t been in my own country for almost twenty years. I’ve been moving for more than thirteen hours and I’m just about all in. You work with, I mean, you work for the company my Oscar…”
“No ma’am,” Hannibal said, not wanting to make her finish the sentence. “I’m Hannibal Jones and I’m involved in the investigation. The people your son worked for asked me to meet you and get you to your hotel. I had no idea your trip was so long.”
Mrs. Peters shuffled along sticking close to Hannibal as they headed out into the parking lot. “Oh my, yes. Crossing the Atlantic was more than a ten-hour flight because from Frankfurt they don’t fly into New York, but rather go straight to Atlanta. Then you sit there for a couple of hours before the final hour and a half flight here, and then there’s the customs nonsense, like I was some kind of foreigner. Although after twenty years, maybe I am.”
“I flew out of Templehof when I left Germany for the last time,” Hannibal said as he pushed her suitcase into his trunk. “We lived up in Berlin.”
The night sky was unusually clear and a mass of stars crowded together to comfort one another over the river. It appeared that there was no one to comfort Mrs. Peters. She seemed very alone, but then she looked as if she was used to it. Hannibal thought his charge should be in her mid-sixties at most, but everything about her seemed from the previous generation. Hannibal waited until he had his passenger settled in his car and belted in place before he broached a new subject.
“Tired, ma’am?”
Ruth Peters looked at her watch, a diamond studded lady’s Waltham that might have been there for the whole twenty years abroad. “A bit. I guess my body thinks it’s about three a.m.”
“I was surprised to learn you were traveling alone.” Hannibal said while she reset her watch. “Your husband is ill?”
“Yes, but that’s not why he didn’t come. My husband hasn’t spoken to Oscar since our son ran away from home. He couldn’t face this.”
Hannibal guided his car down the darkened tunnel that was the tree-lined George Washington Parkway into Alexandria. “Must have been some disagreement to last all these years. I’m sorry.” He decided not to pry further.
“Oscar’s father was an MP, Mister Jones. You know what that is?”
Hannibal smiled. “Yes ma’am. My dad was military police as well.”
“Really?” Ruth seemed to look at him with new eyes. “Well, Foster is a conservative man as you can imagine. Very proud of his position, his duties. When Oscar accused him of covering up a murder, well, that was the end of it for the two of them. I tried, but I could never bring them together again.”
There was that word again, and Hannibal’s resolve quickly evaporated. Another murder? He did not believe in coincidences. “Oscar had information about a murder?”
“Oh, no,” Ruth said with a wave of a withered hand. “But he certainly thought he did. The truth is, poor Carla’s death was accidental. But my Oscar was only sixteen, and he had such a crush on her, he could never accept that, well, that God could be so cruel I guess.”
“Carla?” Hannibal asked as he turned onto Route 1 toward the towering hotels of the Crystal City district. “Someone you knew, then?”
Ruth nodded, and leaned back, as if reviewing slides being shown on the Volvo’s ceiling. “Oh, yes, the whole family did. Her husband, Gil Donner, was the Provost marshal at the time. Sort of Foster’s boss, really, but we socialized from time to time. I think it was hard for poor Oscar sometimes, since Carla was one of his teachers. Freshman social studies, I believe. I remember that one organization day. A big picnic and we and the Donners…”
Hannibal parked in front of the Hyatt Regency hotel and popped his trunk. In the light from the lobby he could see the recollection had brought a tear to her eye. Perhaps this one happy memory of her son was lonely in there. He grabbed her suitcase from the bellhop, handing him a tip anyway, and got Ruth checked in. Then he followed her to her room door. Exhaustion hung across her shoulders like a shawl, and he figured she would be asleep as soon as she found her bed. But as he opened the door she stopped and more of the story bubbled up out of her.
“They fought after poor Carla died. He was at that age, raging hormones and rebellion, you know. I remember he called Foster a commie, said it was all a plot. Oh, he flew into such a rage that day. How he hated communists. It was the worst thing Oscar could have said, if he wanted to hurt his father.”
Hannibal carried her suitcase into the room, watching her face. Ruth did not look sad, but rather warmed as if she clung to these memories for company. He considered that maybe any memory of her husband and son together was valuable after all these years. She settled onto the bed but seemed unaware that Hannibal was about to leave.
“Funny, a freshman in high school and he thought he knew everything,” she said. “He was a, well today they’d call Oscar a conspiracy theorist I think.”
“Ma’am I have to get going now.”
“He even said he knew a witness, an eyewitness to Carla’s death. Actually, assassination was the word he used.”
