Chapter 13
THIRTEEN
Lieutenant Coleman called Cindy just as she finished wrapping things up at Ryan’s apartment.
Not that there was a lot to wrap up. All she was walking away with was that mutilated article about Timothy Hanson.
There wasn’t any sign that Ryan owned any electronic devices.
Not even a single charging cable, so unless he had all of that with him inside the Hanson home… Though what would be the point of that?
Her next stop was to talk with a woman named Mary Ellison, who reportedly was the executor of Teresa Crawford’s estate.
She climbed the stairs to the woman’s third-floor apartment and knocked. Nothing at first, then some stirring, something bumped into, and a woman cursing. The door flung open.
“Can I help you?” A mature woman was balancing on one leg with the other bent and hovering above the floor, resembling an awkward flamingo.
“Are you Mary Ellison?” Ellison was sixty-three according to her background, but the woman in front of her looked seventy.
“I am.”
“If I could come in for a moment. I’m here with questions about Teresa Crawford.”
Mary poked her head out into the hallway and looked up one end and down the other.
Interesting reaction… “Is there something—”
“What about Teresa?” She leveled her gaze on Cindy.
“Just a few minutes, ma’am, that’s all it will take.”
The woman hesitated but eventually backed up and gestured for Cindy to come inside.
“Thank you. Would you have someplace we could sit?”
“This way.” Mary led the way to a round kitchen table with seating for four. She set one of the chairs right that was sticking out on an angle. Cindy would guess it was what Mary got into an altercation with on the way to the door. “Sit wherever you’d like. Would you like a tea?”
Time was of the essence, but accepting might put Mary at ease and make her more likely to open up. “Sounds nice. Thank you.”
Mary hobbled across the room and flicked on the kettle.
“I could have gotten that.” Her mother’s voice was in her head. From the time she was a little girl, it was instilled in her to care for those older than herself. Not to mention this woman was injured.
“Nah. I’m fine. I will be anyway. I ran right into that blasted chair trying to get to the door.”
As I thought… “Sorry if I played any role in that.”
Mary smiled. “We’ll just blame the chair.
” She walked to a nearby cabinet, took out a shoebox, and set it on the table.
“Have a look. Photographs of Teresa and me. We went all the way back to six years old when her family moved next to us. It’s been three weeks since she passed, and it’s still hard to believe she’s gone. ”
Cindy’s first thought was the box contained a selection of tea bags.
“Sorry for your loss, Ms. Ellison.” Cindy genuinely meant that, but she was also trying to curb her excitement at this potential goldmine.
Who knew what information Mary might give her to aid negotiations?
That detective badge is getting closer, I can feel it!
“Please, just call me Mary. Otherwise, it makes me sound so old.”
Cindy smiled. It didn’t matter if someone was twenty-nine going on thirty, most people didn’t like to think about aging.
Regardless of it being better than the alternative.
She took the lid off the box. A memorial card sat on top with a photograph of Teresa front and center.
It made Cindy’s heart pinch. As Cindy dug into the box, she found it contained a lifetime of memories captured in several hundred photographs.
The two girls at different ages, different poses, different places.
She shuffled through and plucked out one of them as teenagers and held it up to face Mary.
The image was faded, and the edges were creased.
“God, we were so young.” The kettle clicked, and Mary dropped a teabag into two mugs and poured water over them. Then she set the timer on the microwave for three minutes and sat at the table with Cindy. “I suspect you’re fine with Earl Grey.”
“Sounds lovely.” It had been her grandmother’s favorite, and the smell wafting over from it steeping swept her back in time.
Peace, security, contentment, love. All those feelings rushed over her with a memory.
She was seated at her grandmother’s kitchen table, eating orange cake while her grandmother sat across from her, drawing in her sketchbook and drinking the tea.
“What is it you want to discuss about Teresa?”
“Did she talk much about her sister?” Cindy would start there and work her way to talking about Ryan.
“Susan? Enough, I suppose. They were rather close, though more so as adults. As kids, the three-year age difference seemed like far more than that. Teresa was the older of the two. She took in her boy after she passed, felt that was the right thing to do. She really took her sister’s death hard.”
“Obviously growing up next door to Teresa, you got to know Susan too?”
“A bit.”
“She died in a tragic car accident,” Cindy said, laying out the groundwork for the direction she wanted to steer the conversation.
“That’s right.”
“Did Teresa think there was more to it than it just being an accident?”
Mary narrowed her eyes. “I think Teresa was having a hard time accepting her sister was here one day and gone the next. Honestly, it was a miracle in her state she was approved to care for Ryan.”
Cindy took out her notepad and pen. A hard time…
That was the second time Mary parted with the adjective.
Was there more buried in that statement than Teresa struggling to come to grips with her sister’s loss?
Had she suspected Susan was helped along to the grave?
Before pressing the subject, Cindy probed the latter part of Mary’s comment.
“Why was it a miracle she was approved as Ryan’s guardian? ”
“I don’t like speaking ill of the—”
The microwave beeped, and Mary saw to the tea. She dumped the bags into the garbage. “Milk or sugar?”
“One of each, please.” Same way she took her coffee.
Mary grabbed a carton of milk from the fridge and a spoon for stirring. Then she set out the cups on the table next to a sugar bowl. “Please, help yourself.”
“Ah, you said that Teresa was in quite a state after her sister’s death.
In what way?” Cindy couldn’t let it go, and she’d ask any question that came to her with little censoring.
That wasn’t to say she didn’t think them through.
It was a favorable trait that made her excellent detective material.
At least in her mind. Ideally someone in command at the MPD would see that in her value sooner than later.
“Teresa took to the bottle. She became so good at drinking, she turned herself into a high-functioning alcoholic. That’s the only reason she could keep Ryan.
She was able to deceive the social workers.
That’s not to say that Ryan wasn’t safe and provided for, but the home environment wasn’t always the best suited to a young boy.
” Mary now seemed to be speaking to her tea, as she never met Cindy’s eyes once as she spoke.
“Did Teresa ever get sober?”
“She did, then she’d slip. The cycle would repeat. I’d like to say she kicked the disease in the last few years before her death.”
Cindy’s uncle battled with alcoholism. It certainly wasn’t anything a person chose for themselves.
Nor was it the result of any inherent weakness.
Alcohol addiction was a byproduct of an addictive personality, and as she’d learned, once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic.
She’d seen him struggle for years unsuccessfully before cirrhosis of the liver took him at forty-nine.
Far too young to leave this world. “That’s good news. ”
“It was, but too little too late, it would seem. She died from heart disease. Doctors commented that while her heart was healing from the damage done from the drinking, scar tissue remained.”
Cindy wrote this down, finding herself without words. “How well do you know Ryan?”
“Well enough. I watched him grow up. Bought him presents at Christmas and for his birthday. When Teresa lost herself to the bottle, I’d go over and step up, make them meals, get his lunches packed and him ready and off for school.”
“Everyone needs a friend like you.”
Mary’s lips twitched as if she were going to smile, but the expression didn’t birth.
She took a sip of her tea. This reminded Cindy she hadn’t made hers up yet.
She did so now while her mind worked over what she’d learned so far.
There were probably only so many questions she had left before Mary would want a reason for her interest in Susan and her son.
Especially after Cindy had used Teresa to get in the door.
“Do you know anything about Ryan’s father? ”
“Just that he was never, what you say, in the picture from what I understand. Damn shame too. A boy needs his father. But Teresa was talking a lot in the days before she died. A person talks a lot when they think they’re nearing the end.”
If Cindy inched forward anymore, she’d fall off the chair. Now this conversation was getting somewhere. Coleman had mentioned part of what they were curious about was this very thing. “Like a deathbed confessional?”
“I guess you could say that. Something similar anyhow. Near the end, Teresa was reliving the last moments with her sister. I don’t remember that time very well, but it was clearly fresh in Teresa’s mind.” Mary stopped talking and stared into her tea.
“Ms.— Mary, what was fresh in her mind?” Tingles ran through her body, anticipating where this was headed. Would Mary’s next words provide some clarity on why Teresa had such a hard time after her sister’s death? Would it aid the negotiations?
“This was really the only time Teresa mentioned Ryan’s father to me.”
Cindy sat up straighter. “What was his name?”
Mary shook her head. “I only know he was a wealthy man. From the way Teresa talked about him she thought he was dangerous.”
Cindy sipped some tea, trying to tamp down the rush of adrenaline.
The last thing she needed to do was get excited and scare this woman into silence.
Timothy Hanson was as wealthy as they came.
Was he also dangerous? He was married thirty-three years ago.
Did he have an affair with Ryan’s mother and get her pregnant?
Even so, what had Teresa talking about a wealthy man at the end of her life?
Did she blame this man for her sister’s accident? “Dangerous how?”
“That’s the thing, she wasn’t clear about that. She bemoaned the fact he wouldn’t give Susan a few bucks to tide her through. I got the impression Susan went looking for financial help from the dad not long before her death.”
If this man was Timothy, had he felt threatened by this request? Had he seen it as blackmail? Cindy scribbled furiously in her book.
“Officer, it hasn’t escaped my notice that you said you wanted to talk about Teresa, but you seem more interested in her sister and her nephew. Is there something I should know?” Mary sat back, a white-knuckle grip on the handle of her mug.
Coleman had cleared her to divulge basic amounts of information. She feared crossing that line and letting him down. “There is an open investigation. That’s all I can say.”
“Into Susan’s accident?”
“I’m not at liberty to say, ma’am. May I ask, though, did you ever hear Teresa mention Timothy Hanson in any capacity?
” Maybe that is crossing a line… She shoved the concern aside, not wanting to start second-guessing herself.
You go down that path, you’ll lose your sanity right quick.
That was something her training officer had told her.
Besides taking the initiative wasn’t always a bad thing. In her experience, it often paid off.
“Hanson? As in one of the richest people in DC? He passed last week.”
“The very same.”
Mary gripped her mug with two hands. “Why would Teresa talk to me about him?”
Goosebumps rose on Cindy’s arms. The closed-off and guarded body language spoke for Mary.
She was diverting, even possibly afraid to admit her friend spoke of him.
If Cindy attacked this deception head on, Mary would most certainly close off, maybe even show her the door.
Cindy would pace herself. “Revisiting what you asked me a moment ago, I will tell you that Ryan Crawford has found himself in some trouble.” Revealing this tidbit might help open Mary up further.
“Tell me he’s okay.”
“For now. When was the last time you spoke to Ryan?”
“The day after Teresa’s funeral. He showed up here wanting to talk about his mother. He had questions about her death.”
Cindy cautioned herself. No rushing ahead…
If she were to continue to draw Mary out, she needed to ask the right questions and wield them with the skill and tact of a detective.
Recognizing when there was a need for that balance was an art.
“You mentioned that Teresa was talking a lot before she died, like a deathbed confessional. Did Ryan coming here have anything to do with that?”
Mary traced her fingertip along the table. “Yes. She left him a letter to open after she had passed, telling him who his father was and to watch out for him. He wanted me to confirm what his aunt told him.”
“And Timothy Hanson is the father. Am I right?” She set that out there with grace. No accusation that Mary had lied earlier. The woman knew what she had done.
Mary slowly nodded. “I’m sorry I didn’t just come out and say as much a minute ago. It’s just that I clearly remember Teresa talking about how dangerous he was. I didn’t want to…”
“Put yourself in harm’s way?” Now it clicked. This fear could explain why Mary was cagey when Cindy showed up wanting to speak about Teresa. How Mary had looked up and down the hall as if expecting she was being watched.
“That’s right. Timothy might be dead, but people like that live on. You don’t think, though, that he was involved with Susan’s accident? That’s what you’re investigating?”
It didn’t take long for Mary to piece it together. But personal opinion aside, Cindy said, “It’s unclear. But this letter you mentioned, did you read it for yourself or get a copy?”
“No. All I know is what Ryan shared, which wasn’t much.”
Just enough to scare Mary… Cindy closed up her notepad and stood. “I appreciate your time, ma’am.”
“Really? You can’t leave me now. Be honest. Did Timothy Hanson kill my friend’s sister?”
“I’ve told you all I can.” Cindy left Mary to fill in the blanks. That the accident is being reviewed and it’s calling Timothy Hanson into question…
After Cindy left the apartment, she pulled out her phone. She couldn’t wait to hear Lieutenant Coleman’s response to all she’d discovered.