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Footfalls sound behind the door, and I expect a maid to answer and let us in, but it’s a middle-aged woman, maybe about the same age as Pop, and she’s dressed in slacks and the kind of cardigan set my mother favors. “Mr. Davenport?” Her gaze swings between us. We’re both Mr. Davenport, and it’s always an issue.
“Call me Gage, Mrs. Donnelly,” I say, holding out my hand. “Things will be easier.”
“Thank you. I’m Paula, but I prefer Polly. Come in.” She shakes Pop’s hand and opens the door wider.
We follow her into a foyer that could easily fit my whole apartment inside it. The tiled floors gleam, and trinkets cover a lot of table and shelf space. I imagine the Donnellys keep their whole lives in this house.
“My husband, Lionel, doesn’t approve of me hiring you,” Polly says, leading us through the first floor and into a library. Bookshelves are jammed with hardcover books, first editions, I bet, if I could look, and a stone fireplace is built into an entire wall, its flames creating a cozy atmosphere. A coffee tray sits on a coffee table, and she motions for us to sit.
I stand—it’s just the way I am—but I tug off my jacket and drape it over the back of the couch. Pop sits and shrugs out of his jacket, too. He looks relaxed, like he’s come over for a cupof coffee and a chat with an old friend, but his eyes will catch anything of importance. Like the fact that so far, I haven’t seen one picture of JodiAnne.
“Black?” she asks, sitting opposite Pop and pouring out of a silver carafe.
“Please,” Pop says. He leans back and hikes his ankle onto a knee.
“Same, thank you,” I say, and wrap my hands around the sturdy white mug she offers me.
The coffee is hot and rich, but I expect nothing less from a family who can afford to live in a house like this.
“What does your husband do for a living, Polly?” Pop asks to start the ball rolling. Some people need to be eased into questioning, even though they’re the ones who called us.
“He’s the COO of BankOne,” she says. “When all those horrible things started coming out about the Blacks, we were never so grateful we didn’t depend on them for our livelihood.”
“But you did do business with them,” Pop says.
“We did, on occasion. You couldn’t be in business in this city without having to work with Clayton Black, or Kagan Maddox, for that matter. But fortunately, Lionel wasn’t involved in his underhanded deals.”
She speaks clearly and meets our eyes. Either she’s telling the truth, or she thinks she is. But that’s not why we’re here and it’s no concern of mine or Pop’s if Lionel was doing dirty business with the Blacks. He’d be in prison if he was a client of Ash’s escort service, so Polly does have that going for her.
“That’s true,” Pop says easily. “The Blacks had their slimy tentacles everywhere, including Quiet Meadows. Did you know Ashton Black bought the facility after Zarah Maddox was admitted six years ago?”
“No, we had no idea, and we were shocked when that piece of information came out. We knew Quiet Meadows was privatelyowned, and that was a plus as far as we were concerned. Public sanatoriums have such a reputation, don’t they? I have to admit, I’m a big Batman fan, and when I think of state mental facilities, I think of Gotham’s Arkham Asylum, full of violent lunatics. JodiAnne could be violent, and she was just as crazy. I don’t say that as a woman who didn’t love her own child. Her official diagnoses was schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder. She was suicidal and was prone to anorexic lapses.”
I turn toward the window to hide my smile. It’s not often I meet someone who compares an aspect of their lives to a comic book, and I’ve seen pictures of Quiet Meadows. No one would equate a classy facility like that with one of the dirtiest, darkest sanatoriums in fiction.
“I guess mental health facilities in general have a bad reputation,” I say, inserting myself into the conversation.
“Even more so now that it’s come out Quiet Meadows’ clients were not treated properly.”
“Do you believealltheir clients were mistreated? I thought only Zarah Maddox was a victim because of who she was, and who she was to Ashton Black in particular.”
“That’s for the investigators to figure out, I suppose. During the years JodiAnne received treatment there, she didn’t make any progress, but I didn’t expect her to. We were surprised Quiet Meadows closed, and it put us in a pickle as the saying goes. We had to move her home, and that was something Lionel did not want to do. She was dangerous, to herself and others, and I can’t say I blamed him any.” She looks at my dad. “I pray you never know what it’s like to be scared of your own child.”
I lift my eyebrows at Pop. She does know she just implicated her own husband in JodiAnne’s death, didn’t she? Maybe not. Maybe she’s too naïve to consider it.
“How did you provide care for her here?”
Polly stands. “It was to be temporary, until we could find a new facility to admit her. Our top choices didn’t have any availability, and we were reaching out, out of state, I mean. I didn’t want her too far away. We visited regularly, but we were getting to the point we would have put her in a facility in Timbuktu if that’s what it would have taken to find her adequate care. I’ll show you her bedroom.”
“What did the other families do?” I ask. Quiet Meadows was home to over a hundred patients.
Polly looks over her shoulder as she leads us up a wide staircase. “I have no idea. We were too busy dealing with our own situation to be concerned about anyone else.”
She opens a door to a sparse bedroom. A plain bed without a headboard or footboard is pushed against the wall under a window, and a very plain wingback chair sits in the corner. There’s no dresser, no clothing or hangers hanging in the closet. Polly could have cleaned out her daughter’s room already, but I suspect Polly didn’t want JodiAnne to have access to anything that could hurt her.
“JodiAnne attempted suicide on a handful of occasions, and if she could get her hands on something sharp, she was prone to self-harm. We paid a nurse, a male nurse,” she says, looking at me out of the corners of her eyes and assessing my size, “someone who could restrain her if necessary. A psychiatrist contacted us and offered her assistance, and she spoke to JodiAnne twice a week and regulated her medication.”
Pop asks the hard question. “Why do you think JodiAnne was murdered?”