She did not want to see remnants of a life no more. His favorite coffee mug. The Ben &: Jerry’s Chocolate Chip
Cookie Dough ice cream he’d never had a chance to eat. The antique sterling-silver letter opener he had given her the Christmas of 1972, still on the desk in her study.
Cahoon heard the bell from his master suite upstairs, where his view above sculpted boxwoods and old magnolia trees included his building encrusted with jewels and topped by a crown. He threw back fine monogrammed sheets, wondering who on earth would dare to drop by his home at this obscene hour. Cahoon went to the Aiphone on the wall, and picked up the receiver. He was startled to see Chief Hammer on the video monitor.
“Judy?” he said.
“I know it’s late, Sol.” She looked into the camera and spoke over the intercom.
“But I need to talk to you.”
“Is everything all right?” Alarmed, he thought of his children. He knew Rachael was in bed. But his two older sons could be anywhere.
“I’m afraid not,” Hammer told him.
Cahoon grabbed his robe from the bedpost, and flung it around himself.
His slippers patted along the endless antique Persian runner covering stairs. His index finger danced over the burglar alarm keypad, turning off glass breakers, motion sensors, contacts in all windows and doors, and bypassing his vault and priceless art collection, which were in separate wings and on separate systems. He let Hammer in. Cahoon squinted in the glare of bright lights that blazed on whenever anything more than a foot tall moved within a six-foot radius of his house. Hammer did not look good. Cahoon could not imagine why the chief was out so early in the morning, so soon after her husband’s sudden death.
“Please come in,” he said, wide awake now and more gentle than usual.
“Can I get you a drink?”
She followed him into the great room, where he repaired to the bar. Hammer had been inside Cahoon’s mansion but once, at a splendid party complete with a string quartet and huge silver bowls filled with jumbo shrimp on ice. The CEO liked English antiques and collected old books with beautiful leather covers and marbled pages.
“Bourbon,” Hammer decided.
That sounded good to Cahoon, who was on a regimen of no fat, no alcohol, and no fun. He might have a double, straight up, no ice. He pulled the cork out of a bottle of Blanton’s Kentucky single barrel, and didn’t bother with the monogrammed cocktail napkins his wife liked so much. He knew he needed to be medicated because Hammer wasn’t here to hand him good news. Dear Lord, don’t let anything bad have happened to either of the boys. Did a day go by when their father didn’t worry about their partying, and flying through life in their sports cars or Kawasaki one-hundred horsepower Jet Skis?
Please let them be okay and I promise I’ll be a better person, Cahoon silently prayed.
“I heard on the news about your…” he started to say.
Thank you. He had so much amputated, Sol. ” Hammer cleared her throat.
She sipped bourbon and was soothed by its heat.
“He wouldn’t have had a quality of life, had they been able to clear up the disease. I’m just grateful he didn’t suffer any more than he did.” She typically looked on the bright side as her heart trembled like something wounded and afraid.
Hammer had not and could not yet accept that when the sun rose this morning and each one after the next, there would be silence in her house. There would be no night sounds of someone rattling in cupboards and turning on the TV. She would have no one to answer to, report to, or call when she was late or not going to make it home for dinner, as usual. She had not been a good wife. She had not even been a particularly good friend. Cahoon was struck speechless by the sight of this mighty woman in tears. She was trying hard to muster up that steely control of hers, but her spirit simply could not take it. He got up from his leather wing chair and dimmed the sconces on dark mahogany that he had salvaged from a sixteenth-century Tudor manor in England. He went to her and sat on the ottoman, taking one of her hands.