Page 44 of Don't Tell Me How to Die

“I’m in the bathroom,” he yelled back. “I’m taking a leak.”

Two minutes later he showed up with a pair of silver candlesticks in his hand. “It looks like you’re taking more than a leak,” I said.

“They were buried in the back of a closet,” he said. “She’ll never even know they’re gone, and I can get fifty bucks easy for them.”

“Put them back,” I said, “and help me open these drawers.”

He set the candlesticks down and studied the locks.

“Can you get them open without scratching the paint?” I said.

“Probably.” He dropped to the floor, slid under the desk, and came up ten seconds later with a key in his hand. “Make that definitely. It was taped to the underside of the middle drawer. She’s not exactly a master criminal.”

I unlocked the two file drawers on the left. Empty. Then I tried the pencil drawer. Pencils. Finally, I unlocked the right side and slid open the top drawer. There was a stack of papers in there.

“Take them out one at a time and keep them in order, so you can put them back the way you found them,” Johnny said.

I went through them slowly—receipts, bills, a copy of the support group pamphlet my father had been reading, a catalog from Blick art supplies, and underneath it all, a manila folder about an inch thick.

I opened it, and my stomach wrenched.

“Oh my God,” I said.

“What is it?” Johnny asked.

It was a page out of a newspaper, folded several times, so that what jumped out at me was a black-and-white photograph of a beautiful young woman in her midtwenties.

The camera had caught her just as she threw her head back, spread her arms, and looked up at the sky. Her long, thick hair was captured in midtoss, her smile unfettered by fear or doubt, her eyes radiating with joy and the love of life.

“You know her?” Johnny asked.

“It’s my mother,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “This is her obituary in theHeartstone Gazette.”

I unfolded it. Several sections were highlighted. I began reading.

“Kate McCormick, co-owner with her husband, Finn, of the popular bar and restaurant McCormick’s... two daughters, Margaret, seventeen, and Elizabeth, sixteen... The McCormicks have a long history of generosity to the community...”

“There’s more newspaper clippings under here,” Johnny said.

There were four more, all obituaries, all for women in their forties and early fifties who died over the summer, all highlighted.

“How many men is she stalking?” I said.

“Look closer,” Johnny said. “These four have a littleXat the bottom. Your mom’s obituary has an asterisk. Your father’s the target.”

“This whole thing has been a scam,” I said. “As soon as my mother died women have been coming on strong—practically throwing themselves at my father. He’s managed to keep them at bay. But Connie walked into the bar one night and ordered two drinks—one for her, and one in memory of her dead husband. My father wasn’t ready to date. If a woman said, ‘Let’s go to a movie and dinner, and see where it goes from there,’ he’d have run the other way. But Connie sucked him in with her sad-and-lonely-widow bullshit, and then she brought him to her bereavement group, and held his hand... and...”

“And one thing led to another,” Johnny said. “Your Dad’s a man, Maggie. Cut him some slack. You can’t hold this against him.”

“I won’t,” I said. “He was vulnerable. She preyed on him.”

“I take back what I said about her not being a master criminal,” Johnny said. “This bitch knows what she’s doing.”

“But nowIknow what she’s doing,” I said. “And I’m going to stop her.”

“How?”

I shook my head. I had no idea. I gazed back down at the picture of the beautiful young woman so full of life and promise, and silently asked her to show me the way.

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