“Maybe he meant the lightning storm,” Cash says.
“Maybe,” Irene says. The helicopter had been struck by lightning. “Or maybe it’s what lies ahead.”
“The investigation,” Cash says.
“Yes.” The week before, only a couple days after they’d arrived home from St. John, an FBI agent named Colette Vasco called Irene, Cash, and Baker to let them know that the Virgin Islands Search and Rescue team had contacted the Bureau with suspicions that there might be more to the helicopter crash than met the eye.
What does that mean, exactly? Irene had asked.
The damage to the helicopter doesn’t match up with a typical lightning strike, Agent Vasco said. There was lightning in the area, but the damage to the helicopter seems to have been caused by an explosive device.
An explosive device, Irene said.
We’re investigating further, Agent Vasco said. What can you tell me about a man named Todd Croft?
Next to nothing, Irene had said. She went on to explain that she had tried any number of ways to reach Todd Croft, to no avail. I probably want to find him more than you do, Irene said. She gave Agent Vasco the number that Todd Croft’s secretary, Marilyn Monroe, had called Irene from. Agent Vasco had thanked her and said she’d be back in touch.
More to the helicopter crash than met the eye. An explosive device. This was turning into something from a movie, Irene thought. Yet she suspected that it was only a matter of time before the next dark door into her husband’s secret life opened.
“Also, there were chickens in the dream,” Irene says to Cash. “A rooster and two hens.”
Cash clears his throat. “Well, yeah.”
Well, yeah? Then Irene gets it: Russ is the rooster, Irene and Rosie the two hens.
Other than Cash and Baker, no one here in Iowa City knows that Russ is dead; Irene hasn’t told anyone, which feels like a huge deception, as though she stuffed Russ’s corpse into one of the house’s nineteen closets and now it’s starting to stink. Irene quiets her conscience by telling herself it’s her own private business. Besides, no one has asked! This isn’t strictly true—Dot, the nurse at the Brown Deer Retirement Community, asked where Russ was, and, in a moment of sheer panic, Irene lied and told Dot he was on a business trip in the Caribbean.
And he couldn’t get away? Dot asked. Even for this? Dot was fond of Russ; she cooed over him at his every visit as though he had forded rivers and climbed mountains to get there, although she took Irene’s daily presence at Brown Deer for granted. Irene perversely enjoyed watching the shadow of disillusionment cross Dot’s face when she learned that Russ had put work before his own dying mother.
Russ’s footprint in Iowa City all but disappeared after he took the job with Ascension thirteen years ago. Russ used to know everybody in town. He worked for the Corn Refiners Association and was a social creature by nature. He would drop off Baker and Cash at school and then go to Pearson’s drugstore on Linn Street for a cup of coffee with “the boys”—the four or five retired gentlemen known as the Midwestern Mafia, who ran Iowa City. Russ’s coffee break with the boys was sacred. They were the ones who had encouraged him to run for the Iowa City school board, and they’d suggested he join the Rotary Club, where he eventually became vice president.
All of the boys were now dead, and Russ hadn’t been involved with local politics or the Rotary Club in over a decade. Irene occasionally bumped into someone from that previous life—Cherie Werner, for example, wife of the former superintendent of schools. Cherie (or whoever) would ask after Russ and then add, “We always knew he would make it big someday,” as though Russ were a movie star or the starting quarterback for the Chicago Bears.
But who from Iowa City remained in Russ’s everyday life? No one, really.
Now that the business of Milly’s death has been handled—her body delivered to the funeral home, her personal effects collected, the probate attorney from Brown Deer enlisted to settle her estate—Irene has no choice but to face the daunting task of contacting the family attorney, Ed Sorley, to tell him about Russ.
“Irene!” Ed says. His voice contains cheerful curiosity. “I didn’t expect to hear from you again so soon. Everything okay?”
Irene is in the amethyst-hued parlor, pacing a Persian rug that the same Chicago carpet dealer who’d sold her the Excelsior-suite rug had described as “Queen Victoria’s jewel box, overturned.” (Irene had bought it immediately despite the fact that it cost even more than the other rug.)
“No, Ed,” Irene says. “It’s not.” She pauses. Russ has been dead for ten days and this is the first time she’s going to say the words out loud to someone other than her sons. “Russ is dead.”
There is a beat of silence. Two beats.
“What?” Ed says. “Irene, what?”
“He was killed in a helicopter crash on New Year’s Day,” Irene says. “Down in the Virgin Islands.” She doesn’t wait for Ed to ask the obvious follow-up question: What was Russ doing on a helicopter in the Virgin Islands? Or maybe: Where are the Virgin Islands? “When I called you last week to ask about Russ’s will, he was already dead. I should have told you then. I’m sorry. It’s just…I was still processing the news myself.”
“Oh, jeez, Irene,” Ed says. “I’m so, so sorry. Russ…” There’s a lengthy pause. “Man…Anita is going to be devastated. You know how she adored Russ. You might not have realized how all the wives in our little group way back when thought Russ was an all-star husband. Anita used to ask me why I couldn’t be more like him.” Ed stops abruptly and Irene can tell he’s fighting back emotion.
Anita should be glad you weren’t more like him, Irene wants to say. Anita and Ed Sorley were part of a group of friends Irene and Russ had made when the kids were small—and yes, Anita had been transparently smitten with Russ. She had always laughed at his jokes and was the most envious on Irene’s fiftieth birthday when Russ hired an airplane to pull a banner declaring his love.
“I need help, Ed,” Irene says. “You’re the first person I’ve told other than my kids. The boys and I flew down to the Caribbean last week. Russ’s body had been cremated and we scattered the ashes.”
“You did?” Ed says. “So are you planning a memorial, then, instead of a funeral?”
“No memorial,” Irene says. “At least not yet.” She knows this will sound strange. “I can’t face everyone with so many unanswered questions. And I need to ask you, Ed, as my attorney, to please keep this news quiet. I don’t even want you to tell Anita.”
There was another significant pause. “I’ll honor your wishes, Irene,” Ed says. “But you can’t keep it a secret forever. Are you going to submit an obituary to the Press-Citizen? Or, I don’t know, post something on Facebook, maybe?”
“Facebook?” Irene says. The mere notion is appalling. “Do I have a legal obligation to tell people?”
“Legal?” Ed says. “No, but I mean…wow. You must still be in shock. I’m in shock myself, I get it. What was… why…”
“Ed,” Irene says. “I called you to find out what legal steps I need to take.”