Early the next morning I jogged. Last night’s bottles of beer had jumbled my thinking, slowed down my body. Stomach sick, I woke feeling the way I used to when I chain-smoked cigarettes or indulged in party weed at Columbia College, late night on the campus quad, sitting on the steps in the shadow of Low Library. The next morning I would stumble from my dorm room to class, hoping for rain to wake me up. So now I suited up, and jogged. Sweat suit, hood up against the fierce November day. The morning was clean and whole and crisp. It diminished the dark corners of Louie’s and the slimy beer ache in my stomach.
Showered, refreshed, I fixed myself a light breakfast of scrambled eggs and whole-wheat toast, fresh-squeezed orange juice, and settled into the garage-sale leather armchair. Outside the wind blew. This was a morning for phone calls.
I was in search of Mary Powell, that Johnny-come-lately niece who provided such anonymity and possibility. I’d tried her number at various times since my morning in Clinton, but it rang and rang. Or was busy. Had she also moved? The old address, I knew, was a curious one. I knew New York streets. Her building was east of Broadway in the midst of a dense, noisy Spanish neighborhood. Bodegas busy with playful children and old women sitting outside in the cold on beat-up kitchen chairs. I couldn’t imagine a relative of the aristocratic Joshua Jennings living there. But who knew? I might have to take a trip to New York.
I dialed the number and let the phone ring for a long time. Then, just when I was ready to hang up, a tentative, almost whispered voice said, “Hello.”
“Mary Powell?”
Silence. I waited.
“Who’s this?” she asked, keeping her voice barely above a whisper.
I told her my name, that I was a PI, that I was calling from Connecticut, trying to get information on someone recently dead. All matter of fact.
“I don’t know…”
I thought I detected a slight accent in her voice.
She sounded ready to hang up. “Wait.”
“I gotta go…”
“I got your name from a real estate agent in Clinton.”
I could hear another voice behind her, a man’s voice, sharp and edgy, but I couldn’t make out the words. I sensed Mary Powell tightening up, breathing heavier.
“What did you say?” she whispered into the phone.
I explained again that I was looking for Mary Powell, blood relative of Joshua Jennings, now dead, and that I’d gotten her address from the realtor in Clinton. I might as well have spoken Farsi to her because I heard her mumbling to someone nearby, her hand covering the receiver.
“No, you got the wrong person.”
But her words had something wrong with them. I didn’t know whether she was lying because something else was there: wariness, uncertainty. I was scaring her. I also realized she sounded young.
A man’s voice nearby. “Hang up.”
“Wait, please. You are…”
“No, I don’t…never been in Connecticut. Never.” She whispered. “And I moved so…”
“Maybe someone else. Your mother? Is she Mary Powell?”
Hesitation. “Yes, but…”
“Maybe she…”
“Ma is in a home on Staten Island.”
It was wrong, I knew. The manner, the voice, the carelessness, the confusion. The call caught her by surprise—and alarmed her. And that man with her—who?
“Joshua Jennings,” I repeated.
“I never heard of him,” she said, her voice shaky.
“Hang up now.” The angry voice behind her.
“But…”
Somehow I believed her. She was never a part of Joshua’s world. Not this Mary Powell.
“You got the wrong girl.”
The voice behind her. “Now, baby.”
“I gotta go.” She hung up.
It made no sense.
Money.
All along I’d thought someone was in it for the money—someone Joshua contacted, perhaps by error, someone who saw a chance to cash in on the old man’s loneliness. Maybe. It was still a possibility.
But was it money? I brought up the files on my laptop: Joshua’s money—at least the money everyone knew about—had gone to the boys’ school. All of it, and lots of it. Stock portfolios, money markets, bonds, even his simple savings account. All of it. But maybe there was other money that no one knew of. After all, Joshua was an old man, eccentric, a man willful and stubborn, a flirt and deceiver, a pain in the ass. Maybe there were assets removed from the security of a bank vault or a lawyer’s office. Maybe Mary Powell had discovered—how?—something that Joshua owned that made it all worthwhile. Maybe that man with the gruff voice was somehow behind a scheme. Joshua and Mary. Maybe it was something she could steal away from him. Maybe they’d met somewhere. Joshua used to go into New York for museums, for theater. Of course, these excursions happened before he toppled over that last time. Maybe this Mary Powell, meeting him, was part of an elaborate rip-off scheme. A cagey waitress and her slimebag boyfriend, some con artists…
Maybe.
Who was Mary Powell?
I reread the local obit. My frayed photocopy of the obit mentioned that he’d died in New York City while visiting his niece. I couldn’t imagine the venerable Joshua squirreled away in an apartment in a borderline neighborhood, the bam bam boom street noise wafting into his solitude, the aroma of burnt bacon and cheesy fries permeating the bland diet of his bland life.
I made myself a note to get hold of a death certificate. Perhaps there was information there to lead me to the lost and mysterious Mary Powell.