When I got home, I began to work quickly, crushing fresh garlic into a bowl of red wine and olive oil. Though my mother had always admonished me about “ruining a good steak,” I was spoiled by my own culinary skills. Honestly, I made the best marinade in town, and no cut of meat could resist being improved by it. Rinsing Boston lettuce and draining it on paper towels, I sliced mushrooms, onions, and the last Hanover tomato as I fortified myself to tend to the grill. Unable to put off the task any longer, I stepped out onto the brick patio.
For a moment, I felt like a fugitive on my own property as I surveyed the flower gardens and trees of my backyard. I fetched a bottle of 409 and a sponge and began vigorously to scrub the outdoor furniture before taking a Brillo pad to the grill, which I had not used since the Saturday night in May when Mark and I last had been together. I attacked sooty grease until my elbows hurt. Images and voices invaded my mind. Arguing. Fighting. Then a retreat into angry silence that ended with making frantic love.
I almost did not recognize Abby when she arrived at my front door shortly before six-thirty. When she had worked the police beat in Richmond, her hair had been to her shoulders and streaked with gray, giving her a washed-out, gaunt appearance that made her seem older than her forty-odd years. Now the gray was gone. Her hair was cut short and smartly styled to emphasize the fine bones of her face and her eyes, which were two different shades of green, an irregularity I had always found intriguing. She wore a dark blue silk suit and ivory silk blouse, and carried a sleek black leather briefcase.
“You look very Washingtonian,” I said, giving her a hug.
“It’s so good to see you, Kay.”
She remembered hiked Scotch and had brought a bottle of Glenfiddich, which we wasted no time in uncorking. Then we sipped drinks on the patio and talked nonstop as I lit the grill beneath a dusky late summer sky.
“Yes; I do miss Richmond in some ways,” she was explaining. “Washington is exciting, but the pits. I indulged myself and bought a Saab, right? It’s already been broken into once, had the hubcaps stolen, the hell beaten out of the doors. I pay a hundred and fifty bucks a month to park the damn thing, and we’re talking four blocks from my apartment. Forget parking at the Post. I walk to work and use a staff car. Washington’s definitely not Richmond.”
She added a little too resolutely, “But I don’t regret leaving.”
“You’re still working evenings?”
Steaks sizzled as I placed them on the grill.
“No. It’s somebody else’s turn. The young reporters race around after dark and I follow up during the day. I get called after hours only if something really big goes down.”
“I’ve been keeping up with your byline,” I told her. “They sell the Post in the cafeteria. I usually pick it up during lunch.”
“I don’t always know what you’re working on,” she confessed. “But I’m aware of some things.”
“Explaining why you’re in Richmond?”
I ventured, as I brushed marinade over the meat.
“Yes. The Harvey case.”
I did not reply.
“Marino hasn’t changed.”
“You’ve talked to him?”
I asked, glancing up at her.
She replied with a wry smile, “Tried to. And several other investigators. And, of course, Benton Wesley. In other words, forget it.”
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, Abby, nobody’s talking much to me, either. And that’s off the record.”
“This entire conversation is off the record, Kay,” she said seriously. “I didn’t come to see you because I wanted to pick your brain for my story.”
She paused. “I’ve been aware of what’s been going on here in Virginia. I was a lot more concerned about it than my editor was until Deborah Harvey and her boyfriend disappeared. Now it’s gotten hot, real hot.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“I’m not quite sure where to begin.”
She looked unsettled. “There are things I’ve not told anybody, Kay. But I have a sense that I’m walking on ground somebody doesn’t want me on.”