“Coffee’s fine,” Marcus said.“Thank you.”
Her office was small but cozy — too many plants, a lamp that cast amber circles on the walls, two deep chairs facing each other like sparring partners.Through a half-open door, Marcus could see what looked like a tiny kitchenette.
She poured him coffee with a competence that suggested she ran the place more than the director did.When she sat, she folded one leg over the other and arranged her cardigan neatly, as if preparing for an interview she fully intended to control.
“So.”Ulrike clasped her hands.“You come at this hour about Mr.Hayes.I knew him well.”
“Knew?”
She frowned.“I’m sorry.It’s some mistake on my part perhaps.I thought you were aware.Mr.Hayes died this evening.”
Her face softened immediately — not grief exactly, but the worn tenderness of someone who’d shepherded many people through final hours.“He passed quietly.Peacefully.The attending doctor says it was natural causes.And his daughter did not come.”
Marcus watched her.“You called her?”
“Many times.Late afternoon, again early evening.She was not… enthusiastic.”A tight smile.“I did not have much hope she would come, but I had to try.”
Marcus leant across and showed her the last number on Jennifer Hayes’s phone.She leaned toward him and he felt a strange warmth, as if she was too close.
“Yes, that is my cell.I had tried many times before from the landline so this was a… a last-stitch attempt?”
“Last-ditch.”
“Ditch?Really?”
Marcus shrugged.“And you say you knew Mr.Hayes well.”
“Yes.”She lifted her chin.“I was for a long while his ‘key carer,’ as administration calls it.I knew his rhythms.His bad days, his worse days.His sweet ones.”A pause.“He was not always easy.Dementia is like the tide — sometimes it leaves treasures on the shore, sometimes wreckage.”
“Did he have any altercations with Jennifer tonight?”
Ulrike gave a dry huff.“Altercations require two people to make contact.She has not touched her father, in any sense, for years.”
Marcus leaned forward.“They didn’t get on.”
“Oh, that is diplomatic.No — they were estranged.Bitterly so.And before you ask, I do not know why.”She ticked points on her fingers.“Maybe he treated her mother badly.Maybe he treated her badly.Maybe breakfast cereal preferences tore the family apart.Who knows?People’s private sorrows do not always have narrators.”
“But you think it was serious,” Marcus said.
“I think,” Ulrike said slowly, “that for a daughter to refuse her father’s death-bed — even when I told her he had spoken her name — it must be something large.Something with a great weight.I believe Miss Hayes will regret it, though.”
Marcus took a breath.There was no gentle way to say it.“Ms.Herman… Jennifer Hayes is dead, too.”
For a moment, everything in the room froze — even the plants seemed to hold their breath.
Ulrike’s eyes widened.“Dead?When?”
“About four or five hours ago.Homicide.”
She closed her eyes as if absorbing a blow.When she opened them, something fierce sat behind the shock.“She did not deserve that.But whatever her father did, he also did not deserve to die believing she would not come.”
“Perhaps he died in hope,” Marcus said quietly.“We can’t know, can we?”
Ulrike exhaled hard, bracing an elbow on the arm of her chair.“My God.Poor woman.Poor man.”
She sat like that for a moment, then straightened, regaining her composure with a small shake of her head.
“Your message referred to Leo’s visitors, I believe,” she said.“He had only one.His neighbor Peggy.”
