Free A Quiet Death by Marcia Talley

I could reunite her with her letters and photographs.
    It was early days yet, but no dice.
    Still no word from Skip, either.
    Reluctantly, I packed everything away neatly in the box it had come in and tucked the Garfinkel’s bag away in the closet where I kept my knitting. Winter was coming. If I hurried, the sweater I was working on might be done in time for Christmas.

TEN
    I was beginning the collar, picking up stitches around the neck opening on a pair of circular needles, when Emily called, in tears.
    â€˜Mom? Can I bring the kids over tomorrow? I have to attend a memorial service in DC, and Dante’s got an All-Day Autumn Bliss special going on at Paradiso.’
    The following day was Saturday, and I had nothing on my plate, not even one of Dante’s Serene Calm half-day spa packages, so I said, ‘Of course I can. Who died, Emily?’
    The question set my daughter off on a crying jag. ‘It’s . . . it’s . . . muh . . . muh . . .’
    â€˜Honey, I can’t understand a word you’re saying. Do you want to call me back?’
    â€˜No, no,’ she snuffled. ‘It’s for Meredith Logan.’
    â€˜Meredith Logan? Isn’t she that intern who went missing from Lynx News headquarters? She’s dead ? My God, how terrible.’
    â€˜I can’t believe you didn’t know that, Mom,’ Emily sniffed. ‘It’s been all over the news.’
    â€˜I’m sorry, sweetheart, but the television has been off more than on in the Ives household lately. I still find footage of the Metro crash a little hard to deal with.’
    â€˜Sorry, Mom. I didn’t mean to be insensitive. But this is mega upsetting! I’ve known Meredith since Parade Night at Bryn Mawr. You met her, remember? Meredith was our garden party girl at graduation.’
    â€˜Oh my God! That Meredith? I thought Meredith’s last name was Thompson.’
    â€˜Logan is her married name, Mom. That’s why I didn’t know about it sooner. I saw the news reports, sure, but Meredith changed her hair color, you know, and cut it off short and kind of punk, so it wasn’t until I got an email from one of our classmates that I found out that it was our Meredith whose body they’d found. I feel like such a shit.’
    â€˜Just go, sweetie. Don’t worry about a thing. Your father and I will watch the kids. Take them downtown for ice cream or something.’
    â€˜Thanks, Mom,’ Emily sniffed. ‘Oh, damn! Do you think you can handle it with your wonky arm?’ she added, almost as an afterthought.
    Classic Emily. I could have been trussed up in a full body cast, hanging from the ceiling by weights and pulleys, and she’d still have asked me if I wouldn’t mind watching the kids.
    After I’d made pickup arrangements with Emily, I looked up the Meredith Logan case on the Internet. When I saw the girl’s picture, I remembered her well, even though it had been nearly a decade since Emily’s graduation.
    Several weeks before, the article said, Meredith’s body had been found stuffed behind a fountain in Lower Senate Park by Capitol Hill K-9 dogs on routine patrol. The autopsy showed that she’d been strangled, but there was no indication that she had been sexually assaulted.
    I clicked through from the newspaper article to a Lynx News video clip reporting on the case. According to the reporter, Meredith had told colleagues she was going out to meet somebody for lunch, but she never came back. Lynx News security cameras recorded her leaving the building at 12:45 and turning north on Louisiana Avenue. There were several restaurants in the immediate area where she’d been a regular – Art and Soul, Johnny’s Half Shell, Taqueria Nacional – but nobody at the restaurants remembered seeing her that day. She could have gone further afield, of course, or disappeared into the great maw of the food