Page 76 of Don’t Tell Me How to Die

SEVENTY-FOUR

four days after the funeral

Monday, September 11, arrived blistering hot and summery, defiantly refusing to offer up even a hint of the fact that autumn was waiting in the wings.

It was, of course, a hallowed day in America, a time for reflection and resolve, prayer and tribute.

Coincidentally it was a significant day in the history of our little town, albeit not nearly as solemn. Magic Pond, the mystical elixir vitae in the heart of Heartstone, was about to be dredged. According to our official records, the last time it had its toxins treated, its sediments suctioned, and its eco balance restored was in 1952. And while some local residents applauded the fact that the water quality would be vastly improved, most of my constituency was curious about how many thousands of dollars in coins had accumulated on the bottom, and what would the town do with the loot.

September 11 was also what Alex called his other birthday. The forty-fifth anniversary of the day he was left in a Dillon’s grocery store shopping basket at fire station 6 in Hutchinson, Kansas.

One day. An auspicious trinity of reasons to embrace it.

I arrived at Town Hall at 7:30 a.m. At 8:46 a.m., the exact time that American Airlines Flight 11 hit the North Tower, twenty people from my office, along with about a hundred locals, stood outside in silence as a group of men from the American Legion raised the flag, then lowered it to half-staff.

I spoke to the crowd briefly, then a man wearing a Vietnam Veteran’s cap read the names of the seven Heartstone citizens who had been killed in the attack, the final name being his daughter. A bugler played Taps, and the ceremony was over.

I went back to the office and the growing pile of work that had taken a back seat to Alex’s disappearance and his subsequent funeral. At 1:15 p.m., my landline rang, and Wanda, my secretary, picked it up.

“It’s Chief Vanderbergen,” she called out from her desk. “He says it’s urgent.”

I grabbed the phone. “Chief, what’s going on?” I said.

“I tried to reach your father, but he didn’t pick up, so I’m calling you.”

“Is he all right?”

“Oh, I’m sure he is. It’s lunchtime, so he’s probably too busy at the restaurant to answer the phone. It’s not an emergency, but it’s so damn weird that I had to call you.”

“You’ve got my undivided attention.”

“On December 2, 1997, your father reported a car stolen. It was a 1996 red Mustang GT convertible that was registered to your mother, Katherine McCormick.”

“It was a great car, Chief. But it wound up in the hands of a horrible woman.”

“It might just still be in her hands,” he said.

“I don’t understand.”

“A few hours ago I got a call from the engineers over at the hospital construction site. Your mom’s car was just dredged up from the bottom of Magic Pond.”

“My mom’s car? The Mustang? Are you sure?”

“Positive. The VIN checks out. It’s been underwater for a long time, so it’s covered with silt, but the air hasn’t touched it, so it’s still in good shape.”

“That’s crazy... but wait—how did it wind up in the pond?”

“That may take a while to figure out, but there are human remains in the driver’s seat. Female. I’m betting it’s the same woman who stole it. There’s a waterlogged purse on the front seat. We’re going through it now. How soon can you get here?”

“Fifteen minutes.”

I got through to my father, conferenced in my sister, and told them both the news. Finn was out the door of the restaurant and on his Harley before I hung up.

By the time I got there, Magic Pond looked like a war zone. The landscape was dotted with heavy equipment. A dam had been built in the middle of the pond so that water from one end could be temporarily stored on the opposite side while the excavators cleaned away a hundred years of sediment and debris, using a massive pump that sat atop a barge. They were only in the early stages of the operation, but they had already dredged the serenity, the tranquility, and the magic right out of it.

The north end of the pond had been lowered by twenty feet, and two wreckers had towed the muck-encrusted Mustang to the shore.

As I worked my way through the flash mob of onlookers, emergency vehicles, and media trucks, I could make out two men at the center of it all—Van and my father.

My mind flashed back to that night on Crystal Avenue when Misty and I drove home drunk from the midnight rave at the Pits, and we were confronted with the aftermath of Arnold Sinclair’s insanity. And just as I did then, I called out to the one person I trusted to help me make sense of a world turned upside down.

“Daaa-aaaad,” I yelled, running toward him.

“Maggie,” he said, wrapping his arms around me. “This is insane. It’s Mom’s car. Connie... she just drove...” He stopped, unable to put a coherent sentence together.

“Is it Connie?” I asked Van.

“We went through the purse,” Van said. “The driver’s license and credit cards are still legible, and they’re all in the name of Constance Gilchrist, but we won’t be able to ID the remains until we get it to the lab.”

“I don’t need the lab to tell me who it is,” my father said. “It’s her.”

There was a commotion in the crowd, and Van yelled out to his officers. “Hey, hey, move those people back. This is a crime scene.”

I’d almost forgotten. I’d spent so much of my day anticipating the moment of discovery that I hadn’t thought a lot about the investigation that would follow.

But Johnny and I had discussed it at length once we knew the pond would be dredged.

Eventually the medical examiner would conclude that the bones behind the wheel belonged to Connie. He’d see her cracked skull where she’d hit the stone fireplace, but there wouldn’t be enough left of her to determine whether that happened before or after the car plunged into the water.

The crime scene team would find Connie’s suitcases in the trunk, packed with as many of her clothes as I could jam in, and they’d conclude that she was planning to leave Heartstone permanently. They’d also find my mother’s missing jewelry, carefully wrapped in plastic. It would be nice to get them back after all these years. I couldn’t wait to show my daughter the pink-sapphire-and-diamond teardrop earrings that one day would be hers.

“Maggie! Dad!”

It was Lizzie. Van gave a wave, and the cops let her through.

“This is insane,” she said, using the very words my father had used. And while I can’t be positive, I suspect they were the same words I’d said when Johnny and I launched the Mustang into the pond on that frigid November night a quarter of a century ago.

Johnny . I scanned the crowd. He’d be there. Looking curious and blending in with all the other fascinated spectators.

And then I spotted him standing silently behind the barricade. Several hundred yards behind him was another set of bones—the steel skeleton of the new building that would one day become the Dr. Alex Dillon Dunn Trauma Center at Heartstone Medical Center.

Despite what was going on at the pond, the construction site was still a beehive of activity. The cement trucks were lined up, their drums rotating, as one by one they continued their round-the-clock pour, dumping thousands of tons of concrete into the vast cavities that were becoming the impenetrable foundation, walls, and subfloors of the building Alex had fought so hard to see completed.

Johnny saw what I was staring at, and he gave me a subtle smile. I smiled back, remembering the last words he had said to me as I climbed aboard the sailboat, my dead husband’s wallet, cell phone, key fob, and ID badge in my gloved hand.

“Don’t worry, Maggie. In another few weeks, they’ll find Connie,” he said, his rubber work boots splattered with cement. “But they’ll never find Alex.”