The Body Farm by Patricia Cornwell
“That’s all we need,” I said.
“I’m on my way over there. Otherwise I’d go with you.”
We hung up and I dressed for the weather because I did not have a car. Lucy was on the phone in my office, talking to Janet, I suspected, based on her intense demeanor and quiet tone. I waved from the hallway and indicated by pointing at my watch I’d be back in about an hour. As I left my house and started walking in the cold, wet dark, my spirit began to crawl inside me like a creature trying to hide. Coping with the loved ones tragedy leaves behind remained one of the cruelest features of my career.
Over the years, I had experienced a multitude of reactions ranging from my being turned into a scapegoat to families begging me to somehow make the death untrue. I had seen people weep, wail, rant, rage and not react in the least, and throughout I was always the physician, always appropriately dispassionate yet kind, for that was what I was trained to be.
My own responses had to be mine. Those moments no one saw, not even when I was married, when I became expert at covering moods or crying in the shower. I remembered breaking out in hives one year and telling Tony I was allergic to plants, shellfish, the sulfite in red wine. My former husband was so easy because he did not want to hear.
Windsor Farms was eerily still as I entered it from the back, near the river. Fog clung to Victorian iron lamps reminiscent of England, and although windows were lighted in most of the stately homes, it did not seem anyone was up or out. Leaves were like soggy paper on pavement, rain lightly smacking and beginning to freeze. It occurred to me that I had foolishly walked out of my house with no umbrella.
When I reached the Sulgrave address, it was familiar, for I knew the judge who lived next door and had been to many of his parties. Three-story brick, the Eddings home was Federal-style with paired end chimneys, arched dormer windows and an elliptical fanlight over the paneled front door. To the left of the entry porch was the same stone lion that had been standing guard for years. I climbed slick steps, and had to ring the bell twice before a voice sounded faintly on the other side of thick wood.
“It’s Dr. Scarpetta,” I answered, and the door slowly opened.
“I thought it would be you.” An anxious face peered out as the space got wider. “Please come in and get warm. It is a terrible night.”
“It’s getting very icy,” I said as I stepped inside.
Mrs. Eddings was attractive in a well-bred, vain way, with refined features, and spun-white hair swept back from a high, smooth brow. She had dressed in a Black Watch suit and cashmere turtleneck sweater, as if she had been bravely receiving company all day. But her eyes could not hide her irrecoverable loss, and as she led me into the foyer, her gait was unsteady and I suspected she had been drinking.
“This is gorgeous,” I said as she took my coat. “I’ve walked and driven past your house I don’t know how many times and had no idea who lives here.”
“And you live where?”
“Over there. Just west of Windsor Farms.” I pointed. “My house is new. In fact, I just moved in last fall.”
“Oh yes, I know where you are.” She closed the closet door and led me down a hall. “I know quite a number of people over there.”
The gathering room she showed me was a museum of antique Persian rugs, Tiffany lamps and yew wood furniture in the style of Biedermeier. I sat on a black-upholstered couch that was lovely but stiff, and was already beginning to wonder how well mother had gotten along with son. The decors of both their dwellings painted portraits of people who could be stubborn and disconnected.
“Your son interviewed me a number of times,” I began our conversation as we got seated.
“Oh, did he?” She tried to smile but her expression collapsed.
“I’m sorry. I know this is hard,” I gently said as she tried to compose herself in her red leather chair. “Ted was someone I happened to like quite a lot. My staff liked him, too.”
“Everyone likes Ted,” she said. “From day one, he could charm. I remember the first big interview he got in Richmond.” She stared into the fire, hands tightly clasped. “It was with Governor Meadows, and I’m sure you remember him. Ted got him to talk when no one else could. That was when everyone was saying the governor was using drugs and associating with immoral women.”
“Oh, yes,” I replied as if the same had never been said of other governors.
She stared off, her face distressed, and her hand trembled as she reached up to smooth her hair. “How could this happen? Oh Lord, how could he drown?”
“Mrs. Eddings, I don’t think he did.”
Startled, she stared at me with wide eyes. “Then what happened?”
“I’m not sure yet. There are tests to be done.”
“What else could it be?” She began dabbing tears with a tissue. “The policeman who came to see me said it happened underwater. Ted was diving in the river with that contraption of his.”
“There could be a number of possible causes,” I answered. “A malfunction of the breathing apparatus he was using, for example. He could have been overcome by fumes. I don’t know right this minute.”
“I told him not to use that thing. I can’t tell you how many times I begged him not to go off and dive with that thing.”
“Then he had used it before.”
“He loved to look for Civil War relics. He’d go diving almost anywhere with one of those metal detectors. I believe he found a few cannonballs in the James last year. I’m surprised you didn’t know. He’s written several stories about his adventures.”
“Generally, divers have a partner with them, a buddy,” I said. “Do you know who he usually went with?”
“Well, he may have taken someone with him now and then. I really don’t know because he didn’t discuss his friends with me very much.”
“Did he ever say anything to you about going diving in the Elizabeth River to look for Civil War relics?” I asked.
“I don’t know anything about him going there. He never mentioned it to me. I thought he was coming here today.” She shut her eyes, brow furrowed, and her bosom deeply rose and fell as if there were not enough air in the room.
“What about these Civil War relics he collected?” I went on. “Do you know where he kept them?”
She did not respond.
“Mrs. Eddings,” I went on, “we found nothing like that in his house. Not a single button, belt buckle or minié ball. Nor did we find a metal detector.”
She was silent, hands shaking as she clutched the tissue hard.
“It is very important that we establish what your son might have been doing at the Inactive Ship Yard in Chesapeake,” I spoke to her again. “He was diving in a classified area around Navy decommissioned ships and no one seems to know why. It’s hard to imagine he was looking for Civil War relics there.”
She stared at the fire and in a distant voice said, “Ted goes through phases. Once he collected butterflies. When he was ten. Then he gave them all away and started collecting gems. I remember he would pan for gold in the oddest places and pluck up garnets from the roadside with a pair of tweezers. He went from that to coins, and those he mostly spent because the Coke machine doesn’t care if the quarter’s pure silver or not. Baseball cards, stamps, girls. He never kept anything long. He told me he likes journalism because it’s never the same.”
I listened as she tragically went on.
“Why, I think he would have traded in his mother for a different one if that could have been arranged.” A tear slid down her cheek. “I know he must have gotten so bored with me.”
“Too bored to accept your financial help, Mrs. Eddings?” I delicately said.
She lifted her chin. “Now I believe you’re getting a bit too personal.”
“Yes, I am, and I regret that you have to be subjected to it. But I am a doctor, and right now, your son is my patient. It is my mission to do everything I can to determine what might have happened to him.”
She took a deep, tremulous br
“I sent him money every month. You know how inheritance taxes are, and Ted was accustomed to living beyond his means. I suppose his father and I are to blame.” She could barely continue. “Life was not hard enough for my sons. I don’t suppose life was very hard for me until Arthur passed on.”
“What did your husband do?”
“He worked in tobacco. We met during the war when most of the world’s cigarettes were made around here and you could find hardly a one, or stockings either.”
Her reminiscing soothed her, and I did not interrupt.
“One night I went to a party at the Officers’ Service Club at the Jefferson Hotel. Arthur was a captain in a unit of the Army called the Richmond Grays, and he could dance.” She smiled. “Oh, he could dance like he breathed music and had it in his veins, and I spotted him right away. Our eyes needed to meet but once, and then we were never without each other.”
She stared off, and the fire snapped and waved as if it had something important to say.
“Of course, that was part of the problem,” she went on. “Arthur and I never stopped being absorbed with each other and I think the boys sometimes felt they were in the way.” She was looking directly at me now. “I didn’t even ask if you’d like tea or perhaps a touch of something stronger.”
“Thank you. I’m fine. Was Ted close to his brother?”
“I already gave the policeman Jeff’s number. What was his name? Martino or something. I actually found him rather rude. You know, a little Goldschlager is good on a night like this.”
“No, thank you.”
“I discovered it through Ted,” she oddly went on as tears suddenly spilled down. “He found it when he was skiing out west and brought a bottle home. It tastes like liquid fire with a little cinnamon. That’s what he said when he gave it to me. He was always bringing me little things.”
“Did he ever bring you champagne?”
She delicately blew her nose.
“You said he was to have visited you today,” I reminded her.
“He was supposed to come for lunch,” she said.
“There is a very nice bottle of champagne in his refrigerator. It has a bow tied around it, and I’m wondering if this might have been something he had intended to bring when he came by for lunch today.”
“Oh my.” Her voice shook. “That must have been for some other celebration he planned. I don’t drink champagne. It gives me a headache.”
“We’re looking for his computer disks,” I said. “We’re looking for any notes pertaining to what he might have been recently writing. Did he ever ask you to store anything for him here?”
“Some of his athletic equipment is in the attic but it’s old as Methuselah.” Her voice caught and she cleared it. “And papers from school.”
“Are you aware of his having a safe deposit box, perhaps?”
“No.” She shook her head.
“What about a friend he might have entrusted these things to?”
“I don’t know about his friends,” she said again as freezing rain clicked against glass.
“And he didn’t mention any romantic interests. You’re saying he had none?”
She pressed her lips tight.
“Please tell me if I am misunderstanding something.”
“There was a girl he brought by some months back. I guess it was in the summer and apparently she’s some sort of scientist.” She paused. “Seems he was doing a story or something, they met that way. We had a bit of a disagreement over her.”
“Why?”
“She was attractive and one of these academic types. Maybe she’s a professor. I can’t recall but she’s from overseas somewhere.”
I waited, but she had nothing more to say.
“What was your disagreement?” I asked.
“I knew the minute I met her that she was not of good character, and she was not permitted in my home,” Mrs. Eddings replied.
“Does she live in this area?” I asked.
“One would expect so, but I wouldn’t know where she is.”
“But he might have still been seeing her.”
“I have no idea who Ted was seeing,” she said, and I believed she was lying.
“Mrs. Eddings,” I said, “by all appearances, your son was not home much.”
She just looked at me.
“Did he have a housekeeper? For example, someone who took care of his plants?”
“I sent my housekeeper by when needed,” she said. “Corian. Sometimes she brings him food. Ted can never bother with cooking.”
“When was the last time she went by?”
“I don’t know,” she said, and I could tell she was getting weary of questions. “Some time before Christmas, I suspect, because she’s had the flu.”
“Did Corian ever mention to you what is in his house?”
“I guess you mean his guns,” she said. “Just another something he started to collect a year or so back. That’s all he wanted for his birthday—a gift certificate for one of those gun stores around here. As if a woman would dare walk into such a place.”
It was pointless to probe further, for she had the single desire for her son to be alive. Beyond that, any activity or inquiry was simply an invasion she was determined to sidestep. At close to ten, I headed home, and almost slipped twice on vacant streets where it was too dark to see. The night was bitterly cold and filled with sharp wet sounds as ice coated trees and glazed the ground.
I felt discouraged because it did not seem anyone knew Eddings beyond what he had been like on the surface or in the past. I had learned he had collected coins and butterflies and had always been charming. He was an ambitious reporter with a limited attention span, and I thought how odd it was that I should be walking through his old neighborhood in such weather to talk about this man. I wondered what he would think could I tell him, and I felt very sad.
I did not want to chat with anyone when I walked into my house, but went straight to my room. I was warming my hands with hot water and washing my face when Lucy appeared in the doorway. I knew instantly that she was in one of her moods.
“Did you get enough to eat?” I looked at her in the mirror over the sink.
“I never get enough to eat,” she irritably replied. “Someone named Danny from your Norfolk office called. He said the answering service was contacted about our cars.”
For a moment my mind went blank. Then I remembered. “I gave the towing service the office number.” I dried my face with a towel. “So I guess the answering service reached Danny at home.”
“Whatever. He wants you to call.” She stared at me in the mirror as if I had done something wrong.
“What is it?” I stared back.
“I’ve just got to get out of here.”
“I’ll try to get the cars here tomorrow,” I said, stung.
I walked out of the bathroom, and she followed.
“I need to get back to UVA.”
“Of course you do, Lucy,” I said.
“You don’t understand. I’ve got so much to do.”
“I didn’t realize your independent study or whatever it is had already started.” I walked into the gathering room and headed for the bar.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s started. I’ve got a lot to set up. And I don’t understand how you’re going to get the cars here. Maybe Marino can take me to get mine.”
“Marino is very busy and my plan is simple,” I said. “Danny will drive my car to Richmond and he has a reliable friend who will drive your Suburban. Then Danny and his friend will take the bus back to Norfolk.”
“What time?”
“That’s the only snag. I can’t permit Danny to do any of this until after hours, because he can’t deliver my personal car on state time.” I was opening a bottle of Chardonnay.
“Shit,” Lucy impatiently said. “So I won’t have transportation tomorrow, either?”
“I?
“And what are you going to do, then?”
I handed her a glass of wine. “I’ll be going into my office and probably spending a lot of time on the phone. Anything you might be able to do at the field office here?”
She shrugged. “I know a couple people who went through the Academy with me.”
At the very least she could find another agent to take her to the gym so she could work off her ugly mood, I started to say, but held my tongue.
“I don’t want wine.” She set the glass down on the bar. “I think I’ll just drink beer for a while.”
“Why are you so angry?”
“I’m not angry.” She got a Beck’s Light out of the small refrigerator and popped off the cap.
“Do you want to sit down?”
“No,” she said. “By the way, I’ve got the Book, so don’t get alarmed when you don’t find it in your briefcase.”
“What do you mean, you have it?” I looked uneasily at her.
“I was reading it while you were out talking to Mrs. Eddings.” She took a swallow of beer. “I thought it would be a good idea to go over it again in case there’s something we didn’t notice.”
“I think you’ve looked at it quite enough,” I flatly said. “In fact, I think all of us have.”
“There’s a lot of Old Testament–type stuff in there. I mean, it’s not like it’s satanic, really.”
I watched her in silence as I wondered what was really going on in that incredibly complicated brain.
“I actually find it rather interesting, and believe it has power only if you allow it to have power. I don’t allow it, so it doesn’t bother me,” she was saying.
I set down my glass. “Well, something certainly is.”
“Only thing bothering me is I’m stranded and tired. So I guess I’ll just go to bed,” she said. “I hope you sleep well.”
But I did not. Instead, I sat before the fire worrying about her, for I probably knew my niece better than anyone did. Perhaps she and Janet had simply had a fight and repairs would be made in the morning, or maybe she really did have too much to do, and not being able to return to Charlottesville was more of a problem than I knew.