C.C. led me by the hand to my couch and asked me to sit. He told me he’d provide the needed explanation momentarily but that first he was going to find the Harvey Bristol Cream and pour me a sherry. He said we’d save our tea for calmer times , but that right now he and I both needed the calm that comes with sipping sherry.
Speechless, I watched him locate the sherry and glasses, calmly pour our drinks, and bring them to where he sat down beside me. At that point he revealed that he actually had arrived back in town this morning . Continuing, he described how he had waited in the coffee shop downstairs to be able to see when I arrived home from work. He saw all of the flurry, the comings and goings of police and ambulance. He knew something terrible had happened in the building and could only hope it had nothing to do with me. As time passed his curiosity drew him into the building where he saw that indeed the chaos was centered in my apartment.
He spied my arrival home and was relieved to find me safe, but felt he couldn’t surface when the police were here. It was at this point that I interrupted him, and I must have been angrier than I thought. I demanded to know why he left without any explanation, and what he meant by not being able to surface while the police were here. Was he guilty of something? Did he realize it was his wife in that body bag? Admittedly , he did not. I had neither the time nor the composure to break the horrible news to him gently, but when I told him Lindsey had been brutally murdered right here in this apartment, he actually broke into a smile.
I was at wits end with him. How could he be smiling at all, let alone smiling at the news that his wife had just been murdered? He quickly assured me that his first response to any surprise was a nervous smile, but that he had felt a sense of irony at my news because only this morning he had left Lindsey safely at his mother’s campsite in North Carolina. He had been back home these last two weeks moving Lindsey to safety. She and Wanda were secure in a remote site where no one could find them.
He conveyed that they were more concerned about him and me than for their own safety. He implored me to trust his judgment. At this point he and I looked at each other and said nearly simultaneously, “..then who was in the body bag?”
