Grave Apparel, page 18
“Was Cassandra upset about anything lately?”
Wendy rolled her eyes. “Yes! That crazy sweater-wearing cookie-baking monster that you don’t want me to talk about.
Why are you protecting her?”
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“I’m not. It’s just too obvious to blame her, too easy. It feels like a cheap set-up.”
“It doesn’t mean she didn’t attack Cassie! Because it’s obvious it can’t be true?”
Lacey sighed and shifted in her seat. She realized that it was getting cold in the house. The temperature outside must be falling. “How close are you to Cassandra?”
“We’re best friends. You don’t think I did it, do you?” Suddenly Wendy was standing up and pressing forward into Lacey’s space, alarm crossing her features.
“Did you ever fight with Cassandra?”
“We’re pacifists! We don’t believe in violence!”
“Really? Garrison of Gaia has a reputation for violence.
Arson at construction sites, sabotage against developers and logging companies. Harassment of employees. Confrontations at demonstrations. Like your stint in the tree.”
“But that’s for the planet!” She punched the air with her fist.
“That’s only to protect the environment from the Earth rapers.
We don’t endorse violence against humans. We tolerate humans!”
Lacey leaned back away from her. The dog banged against the door again and she jumped. “How about someone close to her?” she asked. Wendy hesitated. “What about Alex Markham?
Did they have a good relationship?”
“Alex adores Cassandra,” Wendy said reluctantly. “They’ve always been close. Very close. I’m not sure he’s ever gotten over her.”
“They dated?”
“Oh yes. Friends with benefits, you know, only more so. His feelings got in the way. I think it hurt him a lot when Cassie started seeing Henderson. Things got complicated. Listen, I have things to do.” Wendy moved toward the door, a signal that it was time for Lacey to leave.
“What about Henderson Wilcox then?” Lacey would be
grateful to leave. Bruno could have his sofa back. She reflected that it was funny that people say they want to talk, but then they take their own sweet time to get to the real stuff. And by the time they do, they’re tired of talking to a reporter. “Wilcox said they were getting back together. So they broke up? And now he’s dating Cassandra again? When did all this happen? When did he move out of this house?”
Wendy winced visibly. “I don’t know, he moved out about
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six months ago, he’s been seeing her off and on, but he’s been fair game too, if you know what I mean.”
“Afraid not.” Lacey was glad for her jacket, which she wrapped around her. She hunted for her gloves in her pockets.
“Fair game for whom?” Wendy sighed one of those big you-may-as-well-know-the-truth sighs.
“I’ve been sleeping with Henderson too, all right? Friends with benefits, right? He didn’t tell me anything about getting back together with Cassie. News to me.”
Lacey didn’t know what to say about this furry little hotbed of strange bedfellows. She tried to visualize the odd, prickly Cassandra in this shabby, dog-fur-lined passion pit. She tried to keep her expression neutral. “So are they or are they not getting back together?”
“When he heard she was in the hospital, he went running back to her. Just for the moment, a natural reaction, I think, but who knows.”
“How does that make you feel, about the two of them, I mean?”
“I don’t know! I mean, we’re all just friends, really. The Gaia Movement is bigger than our petty little affairs. We should be able to be adults about this. . . .” She looked as if she were about to cry. Instead, Wendy opened the door. A gust of wintry air blew past them into the dirty little house. It was cold out, but Lacey felt better with the door open. She heard Bruno make one more thundering crash against the basement door.
“Wendy, I need to talk to Alex too. I thought he would be here.”
“He works late a lot. But you can talk to him at Garrison of Gaia. Fourteenth, near T Street. Hope you find the jerk who almost killed Cassandra.”
She slammed the door. Lacey had been dismissed. Again.
Chapter 20
The Garrison of Gaia, or GOG, with its mission to honor, protect, and die for Mother Earth, was headquartered in the District in a converted garage on upper Fourteenth Street near T Street Northwest. The taxi dropped Lacey in front of the building. It had been painted green and emblazoned with the fire-red Garrison of Gaia logo. She was really racking up cab fare for The Eye, she thought, running around the city without a car.
Lacey took stock of her surroundings. The Shaw neighborhood was only a few blocks away, she realized, with the tiny Shiloh Mount Zion Church and its looted Nativity scene. The upper Fourteenth Street neighborhood had once been a funky haven for small independent theatres, down-at-the-heels bars, quirky shops, and long-vacant warehouses, but now it was on the same aggressive fast track to gentrification as the rest of the city.
Stepping through the front door, Lacey noticed everything looked recycled, the furniture, the carpets, the battered cubicle dividers. If Garrison of Gaia was renting this property cheap and didn’t own the building, she wondered when they would face eviction. Soon, she thought. A tangle of plants fought for sun in windows that once had been service bays. The stomach-turning aroma of burnt coffee filled the air. A young man and a younger woman sat on the floor in the reception area next to a battered coffee table overflowing with flyers. They were stuffing envelopes. Plastic bins of stuffed envelopes were piled around them on the floor. Both wore jeans, Garrison of Gaia T-shirts over turtlenecks, and fingerless gloves. They gazed up at her with mild curiosity.
“I’m looking for Alex Markham,” Lacey said. The office
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was as cold as the house she’d just left. These people don’t believe in heat, she realized. Earth: Love It or Leave It.
“Alex!” The woman yelled over her shoulder. “Someone to see you.” She returned to her task of stuffing envelopes with flyers. The phone rang and the man reached one arm up to the reception desk behind him to answer it with a practiced formula.
“Garrison of Gaia. Mother Earth: Love it or leave it! How can you help?”
Lacey was distracted from the rest of this conversation as Alex Markham emerged from a dim hallway. He wore casual slacks and a blue work shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Another in his collection of Jerry Garcia ties hung loosely at his throat.
Apparently he was used to working in this chilly building, or the cold didn’t bother him. He combed his hair back with his fingers and looked as if he were trying to remember who she was.
“Lacey Smithsonian,” she said. “You remember. From The Eye Street Observer. We met at the hospital.”
“Of course, Lacey. Wendy rang me and said you were on your way. I was just thinking I had seen you somewhere else recently. Besides at the hospital today. Were you at the Folger Consort the other night?”
“Yes, I was.” She didn’t remember him, but then Vic and his parents had consumed most of her attention. Markham did look like the type who helped fill the theatre that night, with his neatly trimmed beard and tweedy look. The other two had stopped stuffing envelopes and were listening in.
“I’m a big fan of early music.” Markham indicated that he and Lacey should move out of the reception area. “We have a huge mailing going out soon. Come on back to my office where we can talk.”
They passed a large conference room and a small kitchen aromatic with the ruined brew. Markham’s small windowless office was the last one, next to the restroom. Hardly the luxury she associated with being a D.C. legal mouthpiece, even at a nonprofit.
“Is this about Cassie?” He moved a chair from the hallway into his crowded office. In addition to his desk and ergonomic chair, there were a couple of other chairs full of red law books, open to specific pages. Briefs were stacked on the desk and
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piled high on a small marble coffee table and battered filing cabinets. None of the furniture matched.
“Just a few questions.” This was worse than Mac Jones’s office, Lacey thought. Minus the doughnuts.
“Excuse the mess.” He smiled as if he could read her mind.
“I really do know where everything is, I promise.” Markham seemed to have a slight sense of humor, the first one she had sensed in Cassandra’s crowd. She smiled.
“I’m sure you do.”
He picked up something from the desk and flashed it at her: a CD by the Folger Consort. He put it in an ancient boom box and turned it on softly. “It’s not really the season without the Consort, I think.” Markham had a charming smile when he chose to use it, boyish and friendly.
“You like Christmas? But I thought . . .” The notes of a madrigal filled the small overcrowded office. “After all, Cassandra—”
“Well, Cassandra hates the commercialism, of course, but she tolerates Christmas.”
“Could have fooled me.”
“Cassie doesn’t approve of cutting down a living tree and sticking it in your living room to die, who does? But she celebrates the spirit of peace and goodwill in her own way. She’s not religious though, I wouldn’t want you to get the wrong idea.” Was it possible they were speaking of two different women? “May I take your coat?”
Manners too. So unlike Wendy Townsend. “No, thank you.”
Lacey didn’t want to point out the obvious, that it was freezing in his office. “I can’t stay long.”
She sat down in the chair he had moved for her. After rearranging some piles of books and papers, he perched on the coffee table in front of her, expectantly. Lacey would have preferred him to sit a little farther off. He picked up a cup from his desk and was about to sip, then remembered more of his manners.
“Can I offer you some coffee?”
Today’s blend: Burning landfill! “No, thanks. I’m just here about Cassandra.”
“The doctor said Cassie’s getting stronger. She’ll be fine.
We’re all terribly relieved. But they still won’t let us see her.”
Lacey still had trouble thinking of her as “Cassie,” and
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following the tangled relationships among the housemates.
“She doesn’t remember anything about the attack. She may never remember.”
“Is that really so terrible?” Markham mused. “Should she be forced to remember such an ugly event? Might be better this way, don’t you think?” He took off his glasses, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped them clear. “Our minds protect us from the aftereffects of trauma, you know. Sometimes forgetting is best.”
“But what about the guy who did it? Shouldn’t he be found, shouldn’t he pay?”
“Absolutely. Of course, we’d all like to see him caught.” He gazed into Lacey’s eyes. “But you can’t definitely say it was a him, can you?”
“Maybe not.” Lacy realized she’d been wrong about the little shepherd “boy.” Maybe Jasmine was wrong about the Santa
“Dude.” Her hands were cold. She wondered if she should have accepted a cup of coffee; not to drink the nasty stuff, but just to warm her fingers.
“You see, Lacey, I think anyone who cares about Cassie would want to spare her the trauma of remembering.”
“Especially someone who knew exactly the kind of trauma she might remember.”
“What are you saying?” Markham stiffened his back. “You mean the assailant?”
“Could it have been someone close to her? Usually is, you know.”
“Are you inferring that it was someone here? One of us at GOG?”
Lacey gazed at him. “Maybe. What do you think?”
“I don’t think so. No. Preposterous. Much more likely to be a politically motivated attack.” He suddenly sounded very professorial. He stared around the little office at random. She wondered if he might grab a pad of paper and draw a diagram to show her exactly where she had gone wrong. Or write a brief.
“Assaults are not usually committed by strangers.”
“I see what you’re saying, but it couldn’t have been anyone as close as her friends, as close as, say, Wendy and I are. It’s always been strong between Cassie and me. I suppose I’m feeling guilty that I wasn’t there.”
“She has a habit of taking on fights with people.”
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“Her job, you mean? Is that how you see it? Cassie feels she has a mission. Lucky for us. We find her editorials quite valuable.”
“What about Sweatergate?”
He shook his head. “I don’t really know why she went off on that. It’s not like her. I had no idea she was going to write such a trivial thing. We hadn’t discussed it.”
Discussed it? Was Garrison of Gaia pulling the strings behind Wentworth’s editorials? And did that simply reflect Cassandra’s own beliefs, or had she crossed some ethical line?
Unbylined editorials were supposed to reflect the “official”
view of the newspaper, not that of an individual, or of some lobbying or political pressure group. It was, after all, the “editorial we.”
“Do you have any idea who waylaid her in the alley?” Lacey said.
“Of course not.” He started to rearrange papers on his desk, a sure sign he wanted to cut this meeting short. Lacey often did the same thing, she realized, usually without effect.
“Know of anyone who was capable of attacking her?”
“Sure. That Pickles woman. Cassie was obsessing over the whole sweater thing, the way people indulge in the holiday and waste money and resources. It seems like a small thing, but it’s emblematic of so much in our consumer-driven culture.”
“Just for the record,” Lacey said. “I don’t believe Felicity attacked Cassandra.”
“She’s your friend, then?”
“No. I don’t particularly like her. But it doesn’t make sense.
She’d be happy to kill someone slowly with cholesterol, but I doubt she’s capable of attacking someone in an alley. And leaving her own sweater, as if to claim the credit?” Lacey took a breath and changed direction. “But I understand you and Cassandra had a relationship.”
“I still have a relationship with Cassie and we’re the best of friends. It was even romantic once.” He paused and removed his glasses, putting them in his pocket. “A while ago. We realized we made better friends than we did—You know.”
But Wendy said Markham was still carrying a torch for
“Cassie.” And what was the secret of Cassandra’s magnetic attraction for all these quintessentially Washington men? Aha, Lacey thought. That’s the secret. “Quintessentially Washington
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men.” She couldn’t imagine Cassandra’s elusive allure would play anywhere but in the Nation’s Capital.
The woman who had been stuffing envelopes stuck her head through the office door. “We’re finished for the night, Alex.”
Markham looked up. “That’s fine, Sylvie. Just lock up. I’ll let Ms. Smithsonian out when she’s ready. Be sure to lock up both front and rear on the way out.”
“Will do.” Sylvie gave a short wave and was gone, leaving his office door open. Lacey heard a switch. All the lights in the office, except for a lamp in Markham’s office went out. It startled her. He smiled.
“We try not to waste energy here at Garrison of Gaia.”
No, they just waste coffee, and the heat required to burn it.
Lacey hoped the woman remembered to unplug the coffeepot.
“Who do you know who might have wanted to attack Cassandra? Any recent threats, conflicts, disagreements?”
“Cassie,” he corrected her. “If it wasn’t that loony Pickles woman, it must have been because of her beliefs. Cassandra was always on the attack against the polluters and defilers of the planet. Must have been one of those reactionary loonies who write letters to your paper.”
Same song, different deejay. “Did she get any letters like that at home?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“How did she and Wendy get along?” Lacey rubbed her hands together and reached in her pockets for her gloves, glad she wasn’t trying to write notes with her numb fingers.
“They’re friends. Old friends. We’re all friends.”
“Old friends with a really big dog.”
“Ah, you met Bruno! Bruno’s a sweetheart.”
“Bruno’s a trained killer. Why do you even need a dog?”
Lacey slipped her gloves on and wiggled her fingers to get the blood flowing. Even her nose was cold.
“The women wanted him, originally. They didn’t think the neighborhood was safe. We got him from an abused dog rescue group. Now he’s sort of the house mascot. He’s just an overgrown puppy, really.”
Right. And King Kong was just a monkey. “Worried about anyone in particular?”
“No, Mount Pleasant just used to be that kind of neighbor
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hood. I was mugged once, when we first moved in. Seems a lot safer now.”
“So where were you Friday night?”
“Friday. You mean when Cassie was attacked in the alley.”
Markham shifted uneasily. “Ruling me out as a suspect? Or in? I suppose you must ask these trite questions, mustn’t you?
Nowhere near that alley. I was working on some papers. Here.
And for the record, I’d never hurt her. I love Cassie, as a friend.”
“Where was Wendy?”
“I suppose she was in her office, down the hall. When I get involved in something, I barely come up for air.”
Markham stood up, stretched, and glanced at a large clock on the wall. It was only about six-thirty, but it was dark and cold and it felt much later. “It’s getting late. I don’t want to keep you, I’m sure you have things to do. And I have to get to the hospital and check on Cassie.” He opened his office door. “By the way, there was someone else at the hospital, a man from your newspaper. Who is he?”
