by Sharon Short
I got to Stillwater and found the front gate open, with no one nearby. I guessed that since Tyra wouldn’t be giving her press conference here today, the reporters’ attention was turned elsewhere—probably to bugging law enforcement agents about what they’d figured out about Tyra’s murder.
I parked in visitor parking, near the main building, and rushed on in. Susan was waiting for me.
“Don is anxious to see you,” she said. Susan gave a long, hard stare at my head, which was covered in a cap, but it didn’t take more than a glance around the edges to figure out that it wasn’t covering anything other than skin. She gave her head a little shake, as if to remind herself that she had more important things to deal with than my radical change in looks. “Vivian Denlinger is already in with him. I don’t know how this happened—I’m so sorry—”
We started walking toward Don’s office.
“Have you called the police?” I asked “Started a search?”
“We’ve contacted the sheriff,” Susan said. “And we’ve been assured they’ll start a search soon. But with Tyra Grimes’s murder—” her voice trailed off.
I nodded. “They’re too busy, helping to work on that, aren’t they?”
Her “yes” was tiny and miserable. We were now outside Don’s door. Susan knocked, opened the door, looked in. “Josie’s here,” she said.
I went into Don’s office. Vivian sat in one of the two visitor chairs across from Don. She was speaking quietly, but tears were streaming down her face. And she was shredding a tissue. “I don’t understand. One of the reasons I chose this facility for Verbenia was it seems so secure—”
“Secure, yes,” Don said, nervously straightening an already straightened stack of papers on an overly neat desk. I slipped into the other visitor chair. “But not a prison, of course. The sense of living freely is one of Stillwater’s features. We’ve never had anything like this happen before—”
Vivian thumped her fists on the desk, making the papers jump. “I don’t need to hear your sales pitch! I already know the supposed features of this place!” Her voice was still low, but sharp, too tight, like it was about to break—like she was about to break. “And I don’t care whether this has ever happened before or not! My sister is missing, and—”
“So is Josie’s cousin,” Don said, giving me a nod, hesitating as he stared at my ball cap. Vivian didn’t even look my way. “I called you both here not just to assure you we’re doing everything possible—”
“Oh, really?” Vivian asked. “Then where are the police?”
“They are occupied with another urgent matter, but assure us—”
“The murder of Tyra Grimes,” Vivian said, her face drawing into a frightening sneer. “It’s been all over TV this morning.”
“Yes,” said Don. “But I can assure you—”
“Stop assuring me!” Vivian hollered, her voice finally going up a notch. I could see her point on this one. I didn’t want to be assured either. I wanted to find Guy.
Don sighed. “Look, I have as many of my people as I can spare canvasing the grounds, looking for Guy and Verbenia. It’s what we can do until the police get back to us—later this afternoon, I’ve been told. What I need to know from each of you is if you can think of anything—anything at all that would have motivated Guy and Verbenia to take off like this.” He looked at me. “Josie?”
I thought. The last time I’d visited Guy, he’d been fine. “I can’t think of anything.”
“He wasn’t upset about anything, as far as you know?”
“No,” I said. “I’m sure the storm upset him, though.” I felt guilty, remembering with a pang that Guy is terrified of storms—and I hadn’t even thought of him during last night’s tornado.
“We’re guessing they left sometime after the storm,” Don said. “Their beds haven’t been slept in. We had everyone in our tornado shelter area until the storm passed. Then everyone had a snack, and went on back to their rooms.”
“How did they seem then?” I asked.
“Everyone was jittery because of the storm. Guy was especially upset, but calmed down after we got him some pistachio ice cream.” Tears pricked my eyes. Pistachio is Guy’s favorite ice cream flavor. “He kept asking if the storm would come back out during the night, and we told him no. Verbenia didn’t seem bothered by the storm at all. Eventually, everyone went on back to their rooms.”
“Susan said they’ve been missing since breakfast,” I said. “Were they at breakfast, or—”
“No, they weren’t, so we went to check on them—”
“He took her!” Vivian stared at me with horror. “Somewhere in the middle of the night, he took her—”
“No, Vivian, Guy wouldn’t do that,” I said. “If they left together it was because they chose to do so together.”
“Can you think of any reason Verbenia would have wanted to leave?” Don asked.
“No,” Vivian snapped. “You yourself said she was calm, even after yesterday’s storm.”
“Last night she was calm,” Don said. “But right after your visit yesterday afternoon, she was agitated. I’m wondering if—”
“What are you trying to imply? It’s not my fault my sister is missing!”
“No, of course not, Vivian, but you’ve come to see her twice this week on days you normally don’t visit,” Don said. “You spent a lot of time with her yesterday. Was there anything during your visit with her that might help us figure out why she’d leave with Guy? Did she seem upset? Say anything?”
“She barely talks at all, you know that,” Vivian said, suddenly crossing her arms, and pressing back into her chair. “And she wasn’t upset when she was with me. She was glad to see me—very glad, as always.”
“Verbenia was upset after you left,” Don said quietly. “She started scratching her arms at dinner, pulling at her hair, shrieking repeatedly. We couldn’t get her to calm down, or figure out what was upsetting her. We finally had to restrain her for a time.”
Vivian burst out sobbing. “I don’t—I don’t know what was upsetting her—I just want her back! And you can go over theories all you want, but while you’re just sitting here, and the police are worried about some dead media star, I’m going to look for my sister!”
She stood up, shoved past me, fled from the room.
Don sighed again, then looked at me. “Josie—are you sure you can’t think of why Guy would leave with Verbenia?”
“I think that Guy might want to leave if Verbenia were leaving. They’re—” I didn’t want to say friends, exactly. People with autism don’t connect with other people in the way that people without it do. But Guy and Verbenia were always together when they could be. They rarely talked. They’d just rather be together than not. And people with autism like order. Maybe Verbenia leaving seemed like too much of a change at Stillwater for Guy, and so he followed her. Or went with her. I shook my head. “I don’t know. It’s next to impossible to guess why either of them would do this.”
“Can you think of anywhere Guy would go? Any favorite places you take him on your outings away from here? I wanted to ask Vivian that question too, but—”
Just like Vivian, I jumped up. There was only one place Guy would go. I wasn’t sure if he’d know how to get there on his own. And I didn’t know if he was following Verbenia, or if she’d followed him, or if they’d actually left together. But one of Guy’s favorite places was the old orphanage.
“There’s something I want to check out,” I said. “I’ll be back in touch as soon as possible, okay?”
I, too, left Don’s office.
I left the building and started in a trot toward the visitor’s lot. And then I stopped.
For one thing, it struck me that if Guy and Verbenia really were at the orphanage, they were probably okay there. And that if they weren’t there now, me rushing over there wasn’t going to help find them.
For another thing, I saw Vivian, heading across the front grounds toward the residential wing. And I h
ad lots of questions for her. Plus, with my idea about where Guy and Verbenia might be, I had a little carrot to dangle before her to get her to talk to me.
Not real nice, I know, thinking of using emotional blackmail to get Vivian to talk. But I had to find out about her connection to Lewis and Tyra.
I followed her. She went into the residents’ building, and I went in too, right behind her. It was totally quiet. I glanced at my watch. Nearly noon. Everyone was at lunch.
She turned left down a hall, opened a door that was locked at night but not in the day. I followed and opened the door a wee crack, peeking down the hall at her. This was the women’s wing, smaller than the men’s, since there were always more men that lived here than women. Autism happens more often in men.
I watched Vivian, working at a door. Verbenia’s room, I guessed. But Vivian wasn’t using a key to open it. She was picking the lock—which meant for whatever reason she hadn’t wanted to get Don’s permission and the key to go to Verbenia’s room.
I waited until Vivian got Verbenia’s door open, glanced around, went inside. Then I opened the women’s wing door, slipped through, and shut the door behind me very quietly.
I went on down to the door Vivian had just picked open. I didn’t bother to knock. I just opened it, and stepped in.
Verbenia’s room, like Guy’s and all the other residents’ rooms here, was small, but comfortable. It had a desk with some drawing paper, and a box of colored pencils, neatly on the desk’s center. On a bulletin board over the desk were drawings—perfect still life copies of vegetables and flowers and fruits. The drawings were signed with a childish “V” that didn’t match the sophistication of the art.
There were a few simple light fixtures, attached to the walls rather than freestanding. A private bathroom and a nicely sized closet. And a twin bed, made up with a cream crocheted coverlet and an assortment of pastel pillows.
Sitting on the end of the bed was Vivian, staring at me, her hands in her sweater pockets.
The way she stared at me should have been a warning—turn and run, Josie. But I’d come for some answers. So I started to speak—found instead my voice was suddenly gone and my mouth was hanging open.
So Vivian spoke first, in a very flat, very quiet voice, “You followed me. Why did you follow me, Josie?”
“I have a few questions, and I think I can help us both find our loved ones, and—”
Her right hand moved around in her sweater pocket. Then, suddenly, it emerged, holding a gun. Which was pointed right at me.
Oops. I’d identified my suspect, cornered her to ask questions, and managed to get myself cornered instead by being—I admit it—stupid in my overeagerness. That seems to happen to me a lot, and I get myself into messy jams. This was the messiest, though, I’d ever gotten into, seeing as how it involved a gun being pointed at me. Never follow your murder suspect into a closed room, especially if you have no weapon and if it stands to reason that she (being a murder suspect) might.
I swallowed, hard. “Don’t you, um, don’t you even want to know what my questions are?”
Vivian smirked. “You brought her here.”
“Tyra?”
“Of course, Tyra. And she’s why Verbenia’s missing.”
“Tyra’s dead, Vivian. I don’t think she could make Verbenia disappear after she’s already dead. People don’t just pop up again after they’re dead and kidnap people.” I thought, for an uncomfortable moment, of Mrs. Oglevee, who did seem to keep popping up and bugging me. But only in my dreams.
“No. But if Tyra Grimes hadn’t come back to town, then I wouldn’t have had to—” Vivian stopped, shook her head. “Never mind. Her coming to town led to Verbenia leaving, and you’re the one who got her to town. For that, you’re going to die. I figured it could wait until I found Verbenia and carried out my plans for her, but today will do just as well.”
I crossed my arms, trying to look unconcerned by that last comment. Truth be told, I was about to pee my pants, and crossing my arms was an instinctive self-protection gesture.
“Just like you killed Tyra—and Lewis?” I said.
Vivian gasped. Her gun wavered. “I—I didn’t kill Lewis. I would never have killed Lewis.”
That surprised me. Hole number one in my theory. “Okay—but you killed Tyra?”
“Yes.” She sighed as if she was bored. “You’re really annoying, you know that? All I wanted to do was check whether Verbenia had taken the bag I’d packed for her with her, before I go out searching for her. Then you come in here, with all your questions, and I’ve got to deal with you now instead of later.”
“You didn’t have to pull the gun on me now if you wanted to give me another day or so to live,” I said, starting to feel a bit annoyed myself. “And what bag are you talking about? Wait—did you have something to do with Guy and Verbenia disappearing?”
“No, you idiot!” Vivian snapped. “I was planning on moving her from here today! I had packed a bag of her essentials yesterday. It’s still here. I wanted us to leave without anyone knowing ahead of time that we were going. I was going to take her with me, to move out west—” She stopped, shook her head. “Enough of this. We’re going to walk out slowly because I obviously can’t kill you here, but I will if I have to, so don’t try anything funny—”
“No,” I said.
“No?” Vivian echoed, clearly disbelieving. She was standing now, waving the gun in my face. “You’re saying no when I have this gun pointed right at your nose?”
“Yes,” I said. “I mean yes, I’m saying no. No. No. No. I’m not going to be pushed around by you.”
“I killed Tyra. I’ll kill you—”
“No, you won’t. Because I know where Verbenia and Guy are.” I looked as confident as I could, considering I didn’t really know for sure—I just had a pretty good theory—and considering the gun in my face.
“Then—you’d—better—tell—me—”
“No.”
“No?”
“That’s right. No, I won’t tell you. Not until you answer a few questions for me.”
For a long minute, Vivian and I just stared at each other, neither of us budging.
Finally, she sighed. “All right. We’re going to my car. You’re going to drive me to wherever they are, and I’ll answer your questions—”
“Is it a stick shift?”
“What?”
“Your car—is it a stick shift?”
“Yes.”
“Then we’ll have to take mine—actually my boyfriend’s, since mine has a flat tire out on Sweet Potato Ridge, because I don’t drive stick shifts, although I did manage to drive a bookmobile earlier in a high-speed car chase, and—”
“All right, all right. We’ll take your boyfriend’s car.” I think that’s what Vivian said. Her teeth were gritted so hard, it was tough to be sure.
We got out to Owen’s car without anyone noticing us, although Vivian stayed right behind me, gun in my back, sweater draped over her hand to hide the gun.
I was sweating and trembling and needing to pee and throw up, all at once.
I had Tyra’s killer—well, she really had me—and she was going to answer questions for me, but then what? Then she’d probably kill me. Because I had no intention of taking her to the orphanage. If Verbenia and Guy were there, I’d be putting them at risk.
I got in the car, crawling over from the passenger’s side, at Vivian’s insistence, with Vivian right behind me. I got to the driver’s side, strapped in, and waited for Vivian to do the same. She kept her sweater-wrapped hand pointed right at me.
Maybe, I thought, maybe after I got my answers I could drive us to Owen’s. Owen wasn’t there, so I wouldn’t be putting him at risk. Maybe once I got there, I’d think of a way out of this. Or maybe I’d just get shot.
“Start driving,” Vivian said.
I put the car in gear, pulled out of Stillwater. I waited until we were out on the road to ask my first question.
“You
and Lewis and Verbenia and Tyra—you’re all connected somehow, aren’t you?”
To my surprise, Vivian gave a sharp laugh. “That’s not what I expected you to ask. I thought you’d want to know why I’d killed your poor dear hero, Tyra.”
“Well, I figure you’re connected somehow, and so is Lewis, and that the connection is why you killed them both. Although you say you didn’t kill Lewis—”
“Of course I didn’t!” She sighed. “All right—here’s the explanation. You figure we’re all connected? Well, you’re only too right. Verbenia and I—we’re Tyra’s daughters.”
I did a double take that made the car sway. Vivian laughed harshly. “Yes—dear Tyra was our mother. She’s actually from around here. She got pregnant, years ago, by Lewis’s father. Had us, dumped us literally on Lewis’s father’s doorstep, around the time Lewis was fourteen. About two years later, after Lewis’s father—our father—died, Lewis’s mother had us put off in an orphanage. It was terrible—especially after people began to be aware that Verbenia was—different.
“Then, for a long time, we were apart, Verbenia put in an institution, me going from foster home to foster home. Lewis, somehow, kept track of us. When his mother died, when he was in his early twenties, he tracked us down. Finally found a decent foster home for me, a decent place for Verbenia. Eventually, he got Verbenia into Stillwater, and I made a life up in Columbus. He has been a true brother to us. And everything was pretty good—until Tyra came to town.”
My hands tightened around the steering wheel. I resisted the temptation to look at Vivian—I knew she was crying just from how her voice sounded. I focused on the road—going just under the speed limit, taking a few back-country road detours to Owen’s. She didn’t live down here and wouldn’t know the difference until we’d been driving for a while, when she might get suspicious about why it was taking us so long to get anywhere. I just listened to Vivian’s story, which, now that we were on the road, she’d settled into telling. Maybe she needed to tell someone the whole story—even if she was planning to kill that someone (me) as soon as she could.