Shadow Notes by Laurel Peterson (cool books to read txt) 📗

all hoity-toity on me. I don’t mean anything racist, but I don’t know why your mother felt she had to go out of state to find a new chief.”

Petulance didn’t suit him.

“I don’t know anything about that.”

He held up the rejected hand and counted off on his fingers. “Motive: She and Hugh recently broke up. Hugh took it hard. Means: Anyone could have picked up that poker, but she’d used it before. Opportunity: She had keys to his house and/or,” he switched up a new finger, “he would open the door to her, ex cetera, ex cetera.”

I resisted correcting his Latin. “All circumstantial.”

“DNA will prove it.”

“Where’d you get DNA?” My arm throbbed again and I rubbed it.

He looked the tiniest bit smug, but softened it by cocking his head. “Skin under his fingernails. Results should be back this week.”

“Mother and Hugh were having an affair. There are all sorts of reasons for her DNA to be on him.”

“Maybe,” he said, “but they’d already broken up. That means he scratched his killer.”

“Did Mother have scratches on her?”

He shook his head. “I can’t talk about that.”

“People have sex after they’re broken up. Sometimes it’s rough.”

His eyes flicked over the V in my silk shirt. “Mrs. Montague told Chief DuPont she’d met someone new—and unmarried—and she wanted a different kind of relationship.”

“She’s got a new boyfriend? Who?” Why hadn’t she told me?

He picked up his fork and speared a cube of beef. “She won’t say. The chief’s going ballistic, as you might imagine.” He looked sideways at me.

I pretended Kyle was just another man. “Oh, I can imagine all right. But if she had moved on, why kill Hugh?”

“He was hanging on to her, messing things up.”

“That doesn’t sound like Hugh. Or my mother.”

Pete shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. We’ve got enough to make our case.”

Pete’s confidence, like a curtain of ice, descended between me and the future. Had Mother really killed Hugh? If she had, why would someone be worried about my checking into her past? The pain in my arm migrated up to my shoulder.

“Enough about your mom,” Pete said. “Just reassure me you’re not going to poke your nose in any further. Stay safe, Clara. You’re better off leaving it to us to handle.”

I couldn’t do that. My little voice was muttering something I couldn’t quite hear, something ornery and contradictory, something that refused to believe Mother was a murderer.

So I rallied, because that’s what good Connecticut girls did, and we drifted into small talk about weather and politics. Pete, a die-hard Republican, supported Andrew Winters. As we drove home through the dark, I heard how Winters could get people jobs—the right people, of course, not those illegal immigrants—and help us keep our hard-earned money, if we would only elect him to the Senate. I wasn’t sure if the evening had been worth it or what I’d learned, but I figured I was pretty safe from another date with Pete Samuels, especially since, the moment he dropped me off, my arm felt fine.

Chapter 12

I called Gary Hankin’s office the next morning to make an appointment. I had to find out what the notations in Mother’s medical file meant. At first, his receptionist refused to schedule me, claiming the doctor wasn’t taking new patients. After I explained what I wanted and waited for seventeen minutes on hold, she gave me an appointment five weeks out. Feeling desperate, I thought about what I needed to know and who could help me. At the core of it all was still my ignorance of Mother’s trauma. If I could understand that, understand her, I might understand why she refused to talk to me, why she refused to talk at all.

Why did other people get to know more about my mother than I did? And why hadn’t their knowledge seeped out into gossip? Surely, some kid in school should have heard adults talking and made up some miserable name to call me like WitchyPoo or LoserMama’s Baby. Or Paul and Richard would have heard and told me, right? Then again, maybe only a few knew: Mary Ellen, Mayor Nat, and the Hankins, perhaps.

Mother had said I should learn to meditate. Last night’s arm pain was my body’s way of trying to warn me, but about what? Maybe learning to meditate would help me figure it out. Maybe the meditation would help me figure out how to get Dr. Hankin to talk in sooner than five weeks. Yeah, sure.

I called Paul. His receptionist gave me an appointment in thirty seconds for five o’clock that afternoon. I wondered if I could persuade him to give me the file we’d stolen at Hugh’s funeral…or at least tell me what was in it.

At ten o’clock, I left to work at the campaign office. The day passed in the usual tedium as I surreptitiously wrote a stream of notes in a tiny notebook I’d secreted in my purse. I’d created a spreadsheet on my laptop, and started entering the data I was collecting from the campaign and from my conversations, hoping a pattern would emerge. Eventually, some little item would appear, and when I typed it into my list, all the seemingly random items might make sense.

Around noon, the office registered that their Democratic competition had gained in the polls. Claims about Winters integrity were getting airplay, stories about city contracts and trading favors during his time on the city council. Suddenly, everyone wanted updates on everything, including my progress. I had long experience placating an exacting taskmaster, and reassured Mary Ellen at least seven times that I was “on it.” At a quarter to five, I collected my coat and left.

Paul’s ground-floor office was located in an old Victorian house two blocks off the main street, and abutted a backyard garden where he grew medicinal herbs. He was always researching the best herbal combinations to treat his patients, and had begun corresponding with ethnobotanists about possible traditional medicines that could treat HIV. We didn’t talk about it