The Dark Heart

by Julie Cave

  Flora blinked. “Indeed I am,” she said, her voice still strong and clear.

  “I’m wondering if you have a few moments to talk?”

  “What about, dear?”

  “Your granddaughter.”

  Flora almost managed to straighten up as she reared back in alarm. “Rachel? Is she all right?” she whispered.

  “Truthfully, I don’t know,” said Elise. “That’s why I’d like to talk to you. Can we come in?”

  Flora Keenby led the way down a small hallway to a musty kitchen. The house was hot, and Dinah immediately began to sweat. Flora indicated the Formica-topped kitchen table. “Sit down,” she invited. “Something to drink?”

  “No, thanks,” said Elise. “Can I get you something?”

  Flora gestured toward a freshly made pot of tea. “I’ve got what I need,” she said. “Now, is Rachel in some kind of trouble?”

  “Before I explain, could I show you a picture of the woman I believe is Rachel?” asked Elise. Seeing the old woman’s expression of confusion, she added, “In our town she was known by another name. I want to make sure I have the right person.”

  She slid across a photo of Lola.

  Flora picked it up, examined it carefully and nodded. “That’s my Rachel. She went by another name? Why would she do that?”

  “Ms. Keenby,” said Elise. “I’m very sorry to tell you this, but Lo — uh, Rachel, was found murdered a few nights ago.”

  Flora gasped, her hands flying to her mouth. “Oh — are you —?” Her walking stick crashed to the floor.

  “I’m sorry,” said Elise, gently. “Can I get you something?”

  Flora took off her glasses and cried quietly for a few minutes. Then, she seemed to square her shoulders. “All right. Now what happened to my girl?”

  Elise explained how they had come to find Lola/Rachel.

  Flora sighed. “Oh, I had a bad feeling about her, Detective. I used to talk to her on the phone two or three times a week. Unfortunately, I haven’t heard from her in a while — probably more than two weeks. What was unusual was that I couldn’t get through on her phone.”

  “You sent a letter to her recently?”

  “I didn’t know how else to contact her,” said Flora. “Her phone stopped working, and I don’t go in for that email business.”

  “Do you remember the last time you spoke to her?”

  “It’s my hips failing me, not my brain,” said Flora dryly. “Of course I remember.”

  Elise smiled. “How did she sound? Did she sound anxious, depressed, worried?”

  Flora thought about that. “Not that I recall. She sounded her usual self, even got a bit touchy when I brought up the transient nature of her life. She’s never settled down, you know, never really had a decent job.”

  “Do you know why?” Dinah asked. They knew next to nothing about this woman who’d vanished and then reappeared, dead.

  “Well, she was a troublemaker in her younger days,” recalled Flora, shaking her head. “Too wild for any sensible man. But she changed her life in many ways, and I truly believe she’d make an excellent wife and mother now.”

  “How was she a troublemaker?” Elise asked.

  Flora gave a chuckle. “Well, I don’t rightly know. I raised her, you know. Her parents died — my son and his wife — in a car wreck when she was only 12. Poor little thing had nowhere else to go and I was sprightly back then. So I raised her until she turned into the aforementioned troublemaker.” The old woman looked forlorn. “Something happens to a child when her parents die that can never be healed, you know? I don’t think she really was the same after that.”

  “Did she rebel against you?”

  “Well, she waited until she went to college, at least,” Flora said. “I knew she was up to no good there, but she wouldn’t tell me what. It was a gut instinct I had, based on account of her being a smart girl and getting terrible grades. She was getting money from somewhere, even though she didn’t have a job and I wasn’t giving it to her. She would go for months without returning my calls or writing to me. I’m not sure to this day what was happening out there.”

  “Where did she go to college?”

  “UC San Diego,” said Flora. “She was a long way from me. Anyway, eventually she seemed to change back to the sweet girl I knew, moved around a few times before moving to Ten Mile Hollow. She would never speak about college, though. Not even recently. She just would clam up. So I know it was bad, whatever it was. And ever since she came back from college, she seemed much quieter, even sadder than I’d ever seen before.”

  Flora sighed. “You never stop worrying about your kids, that’s for sure.”

  Dinah felt the chord of loss sound deep within her. How I wish I still had my son with me to worry about.

  “Did you ever meet any of her college friends?” Elise asked.

  Flora shook her head. “It was a part of her life she kept firmly to herself. I wasn’t invited in.”

  “Is that why you were worried she’d gotten into trouble again?” Elise asked. “You not hearing from her for six months, did it remind you of the bad old days?”

  Flora chuckled without mirth. “You’re not too dense yourself, Detective. Of course I’ve been worrying about that.”

  “Did it ever occur to you to file a missing person’s report?” Elise asked. “It does seem odd not to hear from your granddaughter for a few months, if you don’t mind me being blunt.”

  “Oh, I know,” said Flora. “But I remember a conversation we had only a few weeks before she disappeared. She sounded pretty sad, which was not uncommon for her. She said to me, ‘Gran, there comes a time when I might feel the need to just vanish for a little while. You won’t need to worry.’ I asked her why, but she wouldn’t say any more. I keep thinking about that now, wondering what she meant.”

  “You think she vanished voluntarily?” Elise asked.

  “Yes, Detective. Knowing her, I think that’s exactly what she did. Not that it did her any good in the end. But you and I will always be wondering from what she was hiding.”

  Elise nodded. “Did you know she was living under a different name in Ten Mile Hollow?”

  “No, I didn’t know that. What was she calling herself?”

  “Lola Albright.”

  Flora shook her head. “I haven’t heard that name before. Why would she do that?”

  “I don’t know. I have a feeling it’s connected to her murder in some way.” Elise closed her notebook.

  “Well, listen,” said Flora, standing up slowly. “Wait right here. Rachel gave me something a little while ago and asked me to keep it for her. I don’t know what’s in it, or whether it might help you.”

  She shuffled slowly away into another part of the house and emerged some time later with a shoebox-sized parcel. “This was one of the last times I saw her,” she said. She took off her glasses and wiped her eyes again.

  “Thank you,” said Dinah, and gave the other woman a sympathetic touch on her shoulder. She couldn’t ease the woman’s pain, and even finding the killer often didn’t ameliorate the grief. Death was part of life and it happened to everybody, but it didn’t make it easy to deal with. Death was the ultimate enemy.

  Elise opened up the package, which was tightly bound. When she at last undid the final wrapping, she showed Dinah: a selection of passports, driver’s licenses, and social security cards lay within.

  “What on earth?” wondered Flora Keenby.

  Dinah looked through them. A passport in the name of Rachel Sutton — her real name. Another passport and a driver’s license in the name of Deirdre Pucci. A driver’s license and social security card in the name of Willa Douglas.

  Dinah thought about Angus walking out of the talent agency with fake identification in a package under his arm, and knew without a doubt that he had obtained these for Lola.

  But why? What or whom were they hiding from? Why had it ended up with the murder of these women?

  Angus knew, Dinah thought.
Angus knew everything.

  Chapter 12

  Flora Keenby looked tired and sick with grief, but Dinah reluctantly had to continue to push the old lady, for at this point in time there was nobody alive who was willing to talk about her.

  “I’d like to ask you more about her time at USC, please,” said Dinah, after making a fresh pot of tea. “Is it fair to say that her time there is when she began to change?”

  “Most certainly,” agreed Flora. “As I said before, losing her parents was terribly hard for her, so she hadn’t always been the easiest child to bring up. But she was a good child, in spite of it all, and we had a good relationship. Of course I was pleased that she got into college, even if it was on the other side of the country.”

  “What did she study there?”

  “Social sciences, I think. Yes, that’s right. She majored in Environmental Studies. Initially, she did very well. Her grades were good, we spoke on the phone often, and she’d come home during her vacations.”

  “How did things change?”

  Flora Keenby frowned. “Then . . . she stopped calling me, or returning my calls. I wasn’t too worried to begin with. You know kids, they like their independence, they like to think they’re in total charge of their own lives.” She gave a sad chuckle. “But then she stopped coming home altogether, and I began to feel worried. It’s not normal to not speak with your child for months on end, in my book. Eventually I rang the vice chancellor’s office. I remember the call clearly because they sounded more worried about her than I did.”

  “Why is that?” Dinah asked, when Flora Keenby paused.

  “Her grades had tumbled,” said Flora, her eyes fixed on the ceiling as she remembered. “They were about to put her on academic probation, and had tried to organize meetings with her to discuss it. But she hadn’t showed up to any meeting. It was like she . . . was checking out. I had no idea who her friends were, if she had any, or where she was. I was frantic with worry. All I could do was keep calling her.”

  “You didn’t fly over to visit her?”

  Flora grimaced and gestured at her walking stick. “I had arthritis then, too. Flying there, or driving there, would have been pure torture.” She dabbed at her eyes. “Part of me wonders if Rachel knew that all along.”

  Dinah wondered that, too.

  “Anyway, one day she finally answered the phone. I don’t know if I caught her at a weak moment, but she answered. I almost burst into tears at the sound of her voice. I remember I asked her over and over if she was all right.” Flora’s voice cracked and she cried quietly, as many of her stoic generation often did.

  Dinah waited patiently, getting up to retrieve a box of tissues.

  “She assured me that she was fine, just busy. She had gotten a job to make ends meet, which sounded reasonable. I certainly didn’t have a lot of money to give her. I asked her about her grades and she said she was trying to fit everything in but she’d do better next semester.” Flora shook her head. “And there was just something terribly . . . wrong with the way she spoke, her tone. I knew I wasn’t talking with the normal, real Rachel.”

  “What did you think was wrong?” Dinah asked.

  “Of course, I thought she was taking drugs,” said Flora. “That was my first thought. I asked her and she laughed. She said she wasn’t. And then I heard. . . .” She trailed off, thinking. “I heard . . . a male voice in the background. And suddenly she sounded fearful, to me. She got off the phone real quick. I kept calling, and eventually we settled into a semi-regular routine. We spoke about twice a month, which I was okay with, and she seemed okay with it, too. But I did notice that whenever I heard a male voice in the background during the phone calls, she would clam up and find an excuse to get off the phone.”

  Dinah exchanged a glance with Elise. “So what did you think was happening?”

  Flora sighed. “Best as I could tell, she’d gotten herself into a bad relationship. I did some reading, I found out that in some abusive relationships, women aren’t allowed to speak to their families or do anything on their own. I thought that’s what had happened. I mean, she didn’t grow up with a father, so it’s not surprising she would fall for any snake oil salesman who came along, you know?”

  Dinah thought about that. What if Rachel had found herself in a relationship with a charismatic and handsome man, like Angus, and what if the bond was so deep that she followed him to Ten Mile Hollow because she couldn’t free herself of him?

  “She wouldn’t come home during school vacations,” continued Flora. “I didn’t know if it was because he wouldn’t let her or because she didn’t want me to ask questions. She always had some excuse or another.” She sighed. “But what can you do? She was a grown woman by then, and I couldn’t make her do anything she didn’t want to do.”

  Dinah nodded sympathetically. She had seen the aftermath of hundreds of cruel, manipulative people who could make other adults do almost anything. But it wouldn’t do to tell Flora that her granddaughter might have suffered like this at the hands of one who was supposed to love her.

  “Her grades improved a little — enough so that she wasn’t kicked out of school. I never saw her, and I barely heard from her. I was desperately worried about her, so all I could think to do was to continue contacting the school, to make sure she was still there and doing okay. Then, in her junior year something terrible happened.”

  “What?” Dinah asked, leaning forward with anticipation.

  Flora sighed. “Well, if you ever find out you’ll know more about it than me.”

  Dinah tried to hide her disappointment. “What do you know?”

  “Well, the school kicked her out, for one thing,” said Flora. “She turned up here one morning — I remember it was bitterly cold, like it is now, and she rings the bell wrapped in this hooded jumper. She looked for all the world like she was 12 years old again. I’ve never seen such a frightened face.”

  “You hadn’t seen her for — how long at this point?”

  “It had been about two years since she’d been home. I’d spoken to her sporadically on the phone during those years, but that contact had lessened. Suddenly, she’s on my doorstep with a duffle bag. I made her some tea and sat her down, so she knew I wasn’t going to brook any nonsense. I asked her what was going on. And — oh, dear.” Flora started to cry again. After a few moments, she went on: “She laid her head on this very kitchen table and sobbed like a little girl. She couldn’t stop. I didn’t know what to do except rub her back and wait it out.”

  Dinah nodded to encourage the old woman along.

  “Eventually, she just said, ‘Gran, I’ve done some terrible things. Things you wouldn’t believe. I don’t want to be that person anymore, so I came home. I’m so sorry.’ ” Flora sighed again.

  “And that’s all she ever said about it. Three years of her life, vanished like they didn’t happen.”

  Dinah wrote down some thoughts furiously in her notebook before she forgot them. A university didn’t kick out a student simply because she was trapped in a bad relationship, or even because she was barely passing. There had to have been a severe breach of the rules — perhaps something she deeply regretted.

  But what did she do?

  ****

  Chloe listened to her mom clanging around wearily in the kitchen, making breakfast. Mom and Dinah had gotten in late last night and Chloe had pretended to be asleep when she heard her walking up the stairs. Now she realized she would have to go downstairs and talk to her, if only for a moment. She ventured downstairs to find her mother hunched over the counter, waiting for the coffee to brew. Her eyes were red and raw-looking, with puffy bags underneath so dark they looked like bruises.

  “Can I make you anything?” she asked, smiling at her daughter.

  “I’ll get it,” said Chloe. Her mother looked so tired she seemed unable to support her own weight, let alone make breakfast. She moved past Mom and slotted some bread into the toaster. It seemed to take an age to toast. What a fine pair we mak
e, thought Chloe. Mom hunched over the coffeemaker, me slumped over the toaster.

  “Where is Dinah?” she asked Mom.

  “I think she went out for a run,” said Mom. “I wish I had her energy.”

  Chloe thought about Dinah’s tall, lean physique. I wish I had her body.

  Chloe scraped some peanut butter onto her toast and sat down at the kitchen table.

  Mom’s coffee finished brewing and she added creamer and sugar before sitting down opposite Chloe.

  “How is the case going?” Chloe asked, around a bite of toast.

  Her mom shook her head. “Okay, I think. It’s a little too early to tell.”

  Chloe smiled for a brief moment. “You look tired.”

  Mom rubbed her eyes and smiled back. “Just a very long day yesterday, and probably another one today. How was your day?”

  Chloe shrugged. “Okay.”

  “Well, what classes did you have yesterday?” Mom sipped her coffee, apparently ravenous for details about her incredibly uninteresting day.

  “Uh . . . algebra and history,” said Chloe. She couldn’t really remember. School seemed to pass by in one of two phases: either blinding panic when she needed to avoid Jessica Hunter and her minions, or an exhausting haze during which she had no idea what was happening.

  “What did you learn about in history?”

  History had been Chloe’s favorite subject once, a lifetime ago. She thought about the class in which she’d sat in a state of fugue, not listening, not caring.

  “I think . . . Pearl Harbor?”

  Her mom looked up with a frown. “You think?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, it was.” Why events unfolded as they did at Pearl Harbor, Chloe wasn’t sure. She remembered the teacher looking at her quizzically, wondering why her previously enthusiastic student sat limply in the corner, like a puppet with no master.

  Her mother sensed there was something wrong, and she seemed to think about saying something before concentrating on her coffee.

  Chloe was too tired to get into an argument about whether she was interested in school at the moment. It wasn’t the end of the world if she didn’t listen in class from time to time. High school was such a pain, anyway: all that pressure over getting good grades and getting into college. Who could be bothered to care so much?