Through the Darkness Read online

  MARCIA

  TALLEY

  Through the

  Darkness

  A HANNAH IVES MYSTERY

  DEDICATION

  For my daughters,

  Laura Geyer and Sarah Glass

  EPIGRAPH

  Jesus, tender Shepherd, hear me,

  bless thy little lamb tonight;

  through the darkness be thou near me,

  keep me safe till morning light.

  Through this day thy hand has led me,

  and I thank thee for thy care;

  thou hast warmed me, clothed and fed me,

  listen to my evening prayer.

  Let my sins be all forgiven,

  bless the friends I love so well;

  take me, when I die, to heaven,

  happy there with thee to dwell.

  MARY DUNCAN, (1814–1840)

  CONTENTS

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  EPIGRAPH

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PRAISE

  OTHER WORKS

  COPYRIGHT

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  CHAPTER 1

  Crickets. Twittering birds. The patter of rain, gentle as springtime, on a tin roof. Somewhere a violin, electronically enhanced, swooped and soared.

  “Relax, Hannah.”

  I melted, boneless, into the warm flannel sheets. “Ummmm.”

  Fingers, soft, smooth, and sure circled my breast—the good one—compressing here, releasing there. I suppressed an insane urge to giggle. “This feels weird,” I said.

  Garnelle continued working in silence, her fingers gently kneading, stroking, gradually converging on my nipple. As she worked, she’d glance at me from time to time through a waterfall of blunt-cut silver bangs. “This forces toxic fluids out through your lymph nodes.”

  “That feels so good, it should be illegal.”

  Garnelle grinned. “In some states, it is.” She paused, let her fingers linger briefly against my skin, then raised them, gracefully, like a pianist from the keyboard as the last note of a Beethoven sonata faded away.

  “Ah,” I breathed.

  Garnelle drew a corner of the flannel sheet up to cover my newly pink and tingling breast. “Now for the other one.”

  “Hah!” I snorted, shifting my buttocks, the only part of me that wasn’t naked, into a more comfortable position on the massage table. “Fat lot of good it’ll do. It’s a fake, you know. I haven’t had a lymph node on that side since my mastectomy.”

  Through her bangs, Garnelle studied me as if I had two heads. “Haven’t you heard of adhesions?” she asked. I lay still as she peeled the sheet away from my right shoulder, revealing my reconstructed breast in all its lopsided glory. “Regular massage can minimize adhesions.”

  She resumed work, using the same circular motion as before. “You should do this yourself, Hannah. Here.” Garnelle extracted my hand from where it rested, warm and secure under the sheet, and guided it up to my pseudobreast, a flesh-covered mound bisected by a faint scar, with a nipple tattooed on top. “Feel that?”

  I nodded.

  “That tissue’s mobile.” She moved my fingers a centimeter closer to the scar. “That’s not.”

  I was surprised I hadn’t noticed the difference before, but when I did my monthly self-exam, I was looking for lumps, not adhesions.

  “If you don’t watch it, girl, that boob will get hard as a rock.”

  “Wouldn’t want that,” I said, tucking my arm back under the sheet. I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate as Garnelle instructed me on how to stroke, lift, and roll the scar. I wondered if Paul might like to volunteer to work on my adhesions. My husband was a pretty helpful guy.

  “How long’s it been?” Garnelle asked a few moments later as her hands began a slow cha-cha-cha along my upper arm.

  “Six years, three months, and…” Beneath the sheet I tapped my fingers one by one against the leather. “… and seven days.”

  “But who’s counting, right?”

  I opened my eyes and grinned up at her. “Oh, but I do. Every day’s a blessing.”

  “My aunt had breast cancer,” Garnelle said, working my elbow. “Said chemo was the pits, what with the nausea and all.”

  “Can’t say I’d recommend it, either,” I muttered, “but if it puts her into the ‘cured’ category like me, then all the barfing will have been worth it.”

  “Three years out for her.”

  “That’s so good,” I moaned.

  “What? My aunt’s continuing good health, or the effleurage?”

  I opened my mouth to answer, but by then Garnelle had turned her attention to my neck and head, her long fingers moving expertly along my scalp, drawing any thoughts I might have had completely out of my brain. “Ummmm.”

  “Shhhh.”

  Never let it be said that I don’t know how to follow orders.

  As Garnelle’s gentle fingers moved along under my hair, I lay still, half listening to the new age music that drifted at low volume from speakers mounted flush into the walnut cabinets high on the wall. Something by Sayama, I guessed, having pawed through Garnelle’s CD collection a while earlier, with flutes and gongs and tinkling temple bells. If I were wrong, though, and it turned out to be one of her other titles, like Time Temptress, or Spirit of the Wolf, I would be out of there the minute the panpipes kicked in.

  Breathe in, breathe out. In. Out. Nothing existed for me but Garnelle Taylor’s amazing hands and the calming scent of the essential oils she favored, a subtle mix of sandalwood and patchouli, with a touch of bergamot.

  In. Out. Pachelbel’s canon with the ocean crashing on a distant shore. Something by Enya, lyricless and soothing. I was so far away that they’d have to send out a search party to find me.

  Then, out of the speakers, an acoustic flute sustained a note so high and impossibly long that if it had been produced by a human being rather than a synthesizer, the player would have passed out cold a long time ago.

  “Nice trick,” I sighed.

  “You can do this yourself, too,” Garnelle said, misinterpreting my remark. She cradled my head in both her hands and rocked it gently from side to side, stretching the muscles along each side of my neck.

  “What?” I asked, still worrying about the poor flute player.

  “Massage.”

  “Why would I want to,” I asked, “as long as I have you?” My eyelids fluttered open. “Would you cut your own hair?”

  “No, I wouldn’t,” she chuckled.

  I chuckled, too, feeling stupid. Except for her bangs, Garnelle hadn’t cut her hair in years. She wore it today as I suspected she always had, in a single long braid, brown and streaked with silver, down her back. A child of the Woodstock Nation, you might think, but you’d be wrong. Just under forty, Garnelle was far too young for Woodstock or the Summer of Love. If you quizzed her on it, she’d probably guess that Jefferson Airplane was an upstart, cut-rate airline.

  I studied Garnelle’s face hovering upside down over mine, her braid flopped casually over one shoulder, and fantasized about grabbing a pair of scissors, hacking it off, and dragging her down the hall to the salon for an expert cut and blow dry. I’m a sucker for those makeover shows on TV. I imagined the “reveal,” the camera zooming in on all her friends clapping their hands to their cheeks and screaming, “Ohmahgawd, ohmahgawd, you look ten years younger.”

  “Ever think of cutting your hair?” I ventured.

  Garnelle wriggled her fingers. “I’m like Sampson,” she quipped. “It’d sap my strength, destroy my powers.”

  I smiled and closed my eyes, so a few minutes later I only sensed it when Garnelle moved around the table to begin working on my ankles, the arch of my foot, and, incredibly, little-piggy-went-to-market-like on my toes. “This freebie is just a preview of coming attractions, then?” I asked, praying it would be so. “When the spa actually opens, you’re going to stay?”

  “Dante hired me yesterday,” she replied.

  At the mention of my son-in-law, my eyelids flew open and I stared at the ceiling where track lighting with pink bulbs suffused the room with warmth, making the walnut paneling—the best that Dante’s major investor, Phyllis Strother’s money, could buy—glow. Shelves surrounded a porcelain sink that was made, I swear, from an ancient Chinese bowl. With the exception of the exotic oils stored in dark brown bottles that ranged along the shelves, the massage room could just as easily have been the library of a corporate CEO, minus the executive desk and all the leather-bound books. And Paradiso had three more rooms just like it, each situated at the end of a short corridor—north, south, east, and west—off the spa’s focal point, a Roman-inspired Natatorium that featured an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

  “Bravo for Dante.” If my hands hadn’t been trapped underneath the towel, I would have appla
uded.

  Somewhere, a power saw screamed as if hitting a nail. Garnelle squeezed my little toe. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m still not used to all the construction, and that saw, it’s like fingernails on a blackboard.” She began again, working on my other foot. It felt so divine, I wished I had three feet to offer her.

  “Do you think he’s going to make it on time?” Garnelle asked, referring, I knew, to the gala opening of Paradiso, scheduled for the following Saturday, barely a week away.

  “He has to,” I told her. “The invitations are already out. Everyone’s RSVP’d, even the mayor.”

  “So, who’s catering?”

  “Nobody. Dante’s hired a chef, thank God. Frank Lesperance, a guy he knew at Haverford College.”

  “Ah, yes, I think I met said chef when I went scouting for a bottle of water in the kitchen. He was checking out the walk-in freezer.” Garnelle patted my foot and covered it up with the blanket. “Except he introduced himself as François.”

  “Viva la difference,” I said, thinking about the other new hire I’d just met, Wally Jessop, the nail artist. With a name like Wally, I expected somebody butch. Hah! Eyebrowless Wally of the gleaming scalp and multiple piercings would probably do a bang-up job on sculptured fingernails, I supposed, if he didn’t expire in a hissy fit every time the water in the pedi-spa got one degree hotter than 143. I lay on the table and wondered how long any spa could survive being staffed by a ragtag band of former classmates of a guy who was born Daniel Shemansky but always wanted to be called Dante. Just Dante. Like Cher or Madonna or Elvis.

  Dante’s Paradiso. The spa had been a dream of my son-in-law ever since he dropped out of Haverford a year before graduation and eloped with my daughter, Emily, to Colorado. Out West, he’d studied massage as seriously as if it were nanophysics, then apprenticed at the Golden Door before moving east to the New Life Spa in the mountains of Virginia. There, his charm, impeccable manners, and talented fingers had developed such a following that it wasn’t long before grateful clients began urging him to open his own establishment. Some, like Phyllis Strother, putting their money where their mouth was. Paul and I had enough confidence in the enterprise to invest in it, too, although our piece of the corporate pie amounted to the size of a broom closet.

  Listening to the sawing and banging going on outside the room, I wondered if Dante were regretting his decision to venture out so soon on his own. His talented fingers hadn’t touched a client for months, except to shake hands with a new employee or sign a work order for one of the contractors who had been transforming what had once been a restaurant into Dante’s Paradiso, a twenty-thousand-square-foot luxury day spa.

  When I tuned in again, Garnelle had picked up the flannel sheet and was holding it in front of her face like a mother playing peekaboo. “Turn over,” she instructed. Pleased with the way she respected my modesty, I obeyed, settling my face comfortably into a padded doughnut that surrounded a hole cut into the massage table.

  Garnelle’s fingers pressed into the muscles of my shoulder, forcing my face further into the doughnut that cradled it. “What have you been doing? You’re tight as a drum, right here. All knots.”

  I opened my eyes, but instead of a flowering meadow, I stared into the quiet mauve of the carpet where Garnelle’s toes, painted acid green, peeked out from the ends of her Birkenstocks. “Moving furniture,” I moaned. “Oh God, your fingers are magic. They should be insured by Lloyds of London.”

  Garnelle’s big toe twitched. “Speaking of London, it’s that personal trainer with the British accent that I’d like to get my hands on.”

  “You mean Norman Salterelli?”

  “Uh-huh. Abs from here to Christmas.”

  “He’s a former trainer with the U.S. Olympic team.”

  “So I noticed.”

  “He’s also married.”

  Garnelle shrugged. “So what?”

  “With kids.”

  “Rats.”

  Thinking about kids reminded me of my daughter, who had been working flat-out for days on Puddle Ducks, the day care center that would tend to the children of clients while they were being pummeled and steamed and exfoliated. Surprisingly, Puddle Ducks had been Dante’s idea. Providing day care was a necessity if one wished to attract younger clientele, the yummy mummies who had left their high-salaried corporate positions to devote themselves full-time, and with every bit as much attention as they had formerly given to corporate America, to raising their children. As if he knew I was thinking about him, I heard Dante’s voice ricocheting off the hand-painted Mediterranean tiles that decorated the Natatorium just on the other side of the door.

  “The exercise equipment! Thank gawd! Where the hell are you, dude?” Dante seemed to be on his cell phone, shouting directions. “You’re way off! Turn your rig around and get yourself down Forest Drive toward Bay Ridge. Right on Herndon. When you get to the water, look right and you’re there. Ask for Emily. She’ll show you where the stuff goes, get you a cup of cawfee.”

  After six months living north of the Virginia border, the slight drawl Dante had affected while working in the Blue Ridge Mountains was slowly giving way to his native New Jersey twang.

  “Oh, Emily will know where it goes, all right,” I muttered to the floor. “But if she has to keep taking up the slack for her husband, she’ll never get the day care center done.”

  Like a good employee, Garnelle ignored my remark. “I almost didn’t come, you know,” she commented softly a few minutes later.

  “That would have been tragic,” I said, meaning it to the tips of my well-massaged toes.

  “When Dante first called about the job, he told me the spa was going to be built down Indian Head way. Frankly, I didn’t think you’d get a whole lot of business down in that neck of the woods, if you know what I mean.”

  “That’s what Mrs. Strother’s market analysts advised. The golf club was gorgeous, but after they conducted a series of focus groups, they decided to look for property around Annapolis instead. Better demographics. I’m not complaining, mind,” I said. “I enjoy spoiling my grandchildren rotten, and for the first time, I won’t have to drive three hours to do it!”

  “I love it here,” Garnelle commented as she kneaded my left bicep. “The view of the water from the front porch is fantastic. You can see all the way to the Bay Bridge.”

  “I know. Before it became Paradiso, this was the Bay View Inn, a pretty classy restaurant. I can’t tell you how many wedding receptions I attended here over the years. It’s really strange to see Jacuzzis installed in the middle of what used to be the main dining room.”

  “Do you think we’ll be fully staffed by the time we open? Officially, I mean, for the clients?” Garnelle asked, drawing the sheet back over my right arm, and a few seconds later drawing the opposite corner back to expose my left.

  Under her hands, I shrugged. “I don’t know, but I certainly hope so. When I went by the office a few minutes ago, every chair was full, and there were a couple of people sitting out in the hallway.”

  “So, he’s still interviewing? I thought he was finished with that.”

  “He’s looking for an accountant. And I think there are still a couple of openings for guides.” Even as I said it, the word seemed ridiculous, but that’s what Dante’s ad on Monster.com had said:

  Spa guides for upper-demographic, full-service spa near Annapolis, MD. Responsibilities of this role include receiving members at front desk, scheduling services, program registrations, payment processing, and telephone reception. Day, early morning and weekend hours; flexible time schedules available.

  “‘Guides’? For a spa? What’s the world coming to?” Garnelle tut-tutted. “It’s bad enough when ‘associates’ are bagging your groceries.”

  “They’ll be competent, but decorative, too, I suspect, although Emily nixed the skimpy white uniforms that Dante had in mind. Everyone’s going to be wearing khakis and forest green polo shirts embroidered with the spa logo.” Paul’s artist sister, Connie, had designed the logo, a stylized P that morphed into a semireclining female form.

  Garnelle sniffed, then picked up my hand and massaged my fingers, one by one, as I lay, limp as a cooked noodle, on the table.

  “Not there, you idiot!” Dante was disrupting my wah again. Judging by the beep-beep-beep of a truck backing up, the main doors to the spa must have been propped open and my son-in-law had to be directing traffic somewhere along the serpentine drive—laid out by my older sister, Ruth Gannon, and echoing (she said) the natural movement of chi—that led visitors up a gentle slope to the main entrance of the spa. Ruth was probably, even as we spoke, out with the gardener fengshuiing the heck out of the place.