I stumbled blindly back to my room at the nearby lodge. Unable to deal with the immensity of what had happened, I forced myself to focus on the practical. Call Jack, call the kids. Cancel the cleaning service for Thursday. Pack my suitcase. Cancel my room for the rest of the week and see if I can get a refund for my company.
I sat on the edge of the bed, wondering how I would tell Jack. Ann was his second mother. He was her only son.
She spent Thanksgiving and Christmas with us each year. Years after her husband Carroll died, she came to Jack when she began dating, seeking his approval. She ran business deals by him. He had been the executor of her will until a year or so ago when she decided that, since we lived so far away, it would be stressful for Jack to handle the details of her large estate. She had an insurance policy with Jack as the beneficiary—he was her son every way but biologically.
Our children and grandchildren treated Ann like a grandmother. She was part of our immediate family. How could I tell my family that someone had broken into Ann’s home and killed her?
I sat on the bed until I thought Jack would be home from work. This wasn’t the type of news I wanted him to hear at his office or while driving through traffic.
I called our home phone. Busy. Jack was probably on the Internet. But I knew he was home and it was safe to call.
“Honey?” I said when he answered his cell.
“Hey, babe. What’s up?”
My pause communicated the seriousness of the call.
“Is everything okay?” Jack asked cautiously.
“It’s Anna Mae.” Not as skilled with phrasing as Iva Ray, I blurted out, “She’s been murdered. That’s all I know right now.”
Jack listened in shocked silence, so I continued. I often jokingly described Jack as “edgy and sometimes volatile,” but in times of extreme stress, he reverted to his family’s quiet, stoic and emotionless demeanor.
“Honey, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I’m not there with you, but I’ll get home as fast as I can. And I’ll call the kids and tell them.”
We said we loved each other, and hung up.
I called our daughter Penny’s cell and got her voicemail. She’s probably still at work, I thought. So I forced the panic from my voice as I said brightly: “Hi, Pen. It’s me. Give me a call as soon as you get home. It’s NOT an emergency. The boys are fine. Dave’s fine. Dad and I are fine. Granny Ive and Mom Mom are fine. I just need to talk to you.”
I hoped Penny wouldn’t notice that I’d omitted Aunt Ann from the list of safe family members. I hoped she’d just hear the message of assurance and wait till she was home to call.
I left a similar message on Dave’s cell.
Still at work, Penny picked up a land line and called her dad as she sometimes does, wanting to tell him some bit of trivia—something she’d heard on the news, something the boys said or did.
When Jack heard Penny’s upbeat conversation, he realized she didn’t know about Ann. Summoning all his remaining emotional strength he said, “I have some bad news. Aunt Ann’s been murdered.”
Penny screamed hysterically. The sound of his daughter in such anguish was more than Jack could bear. He quietly hung up the phone. Co-workers had to drive Penny home. In the midst of her own grief, she had to explain to her seven and ten-year-old boys that their beloved aunt was dead.
I was able to tell our son Dave the news myself. At that time, a young bachelor, Dave lived alone, and I hated that he had no one to share his grief. I knew Jack was alone, too, and I wanted so much to be there for all of them.
My administrative assistant, Nancy, came to my room just as I was finishing the call to the cleaning service. She took over just when I had expended my last particle of energy. She loaded the rental car and led me to it.
All the way home, I talked about Ann. Nancy listened and asked questions, keeping my mind off the immediate issues. We laughed at the outlandish Ann stories that bounced in and out of my mind. Ann still wore false eyelashes and leg makeup. She had a closet filled with mink and chinchilla coats, relishing their elegance and ignoring the anti-fur protesters. For years, she drank a daily tonic, made with honey and an array of lesser ingredients, and claimed it kept her young. She had an extensive collection of antique dolls and she happily mixed them with the inexpensive ones Dave occasionally gave her for Christmas.
Finally, Nancy pulled into the parking lot of our company, where Jack had agreed to meet us. I immediately saw Jack’s bright blue Corvette, purchased just months earlier to feed his penchant for fast cars. As a Special Agent for the Department of the Treasury, he’d driven a lot of amazing cars seized from dopers, but his favorite government car was an emerald green Firebird. Soon after being assigned the Firebird, he surprised me with a gold Trans Am, which I told him was like Elliott buying me a Lego set for Christmas.
As soon as Jack recognized the rental car, he was out of the ‘Vette and moving toward us. He was wearing his federal “uniform”—khakis and a tan many-pocketed vest similar to those worn by photographers. Agents often wear them to cover their weapons when not wearing suits. Since Jack always, without fail, carries his SIG 229, I was used to seeing him in these vests.
A high-school-trim six footer, with thick blond hair just graying at the temple, Jack still made my heart race after thirty-five years of marriage. Tonight, he looked even more appealing than usual.
Seeing Jack made the evening more bearable. We drove the thirty minutes home, cliché-ing the quiet with “I can’t believe this has happened” and “I hope this is a nightmare and pretty soon we’ll wake up.”
Typical of Jack, he’d spent the past hours investigating the case. Like most men, he had a strong desire to fix a problem by taking concrete steps. But unlike most men, Jack had the ability to fix this type of problem. Though he’d never worked a murder case, nineteen years as a federal agent made investigating crimes second nature for him.
After calling Iva Ray and Earl and getting as much information from them as possible, he called Marc Boggs, a friend who worked for the Madisonville Police Department. We’d lived in Madisonville years ago, before Jack became an agent, and he still knew a couple of officers.
“Marc said Anna Mae was stabbed,” Jack told me. “He said there’d been a struggle. Her hands were cut up pretty bad, and that usually means the victim tried to protect herself from the knife.”
“I don’t know why her hands were cut,” I told Jack. “But I know this: There was no struggle. She was dead instantly.”
I shared with Jack my confidence that Ann had not suffered. And no matter what evidence we heard to the contrary, I encouraged him to have that same trust.
In the weeks, months and years that followed, I’ve thought about that January 12 night more times than I can count. Though I shudder at the incredible violence of the crime, I know that the damage was done to a shell, because Ann’s spirit had already gone to be with the Father.
Jack and I couldn’t sleep that night, so we talked a long time. We talked about Ann, about how he’d always felt as though he’d grown up with two sets of parents, how she was a part of nearly all his childhood memories.
Wishing I could have told Jack the awful news in person, I wondered how he had handled it alone. “What’s the first thing you did when you hung up the phone after we talked, the first thing you did after learning that Ann had been murdered?” I asked.
“I made a promise to Ann that I’d find her killer,” Jack said quietly.