HER SISTER'S KILLER an absolutely gripping killer thriller full of twists
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HER
SISTER’S
KILLER
An absolutely gripping killer thriller full of twists
MICHELLE S. SMITH
Joffe Books, London
www.joffebooks.com
First published in Great Britain in 2021
© Michelle S. Smith 2021
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The spelling used is American English except where fidelity to the author’s rendering of accent or dialect supersedes this. The right of Michelle S. Smith to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Cover art by Nick Castle
ISBN: 978-1-78931-891-3
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
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Chapter 1
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On the point of leaving her Morgan Park apartment, Victoria Wharton took a breath and glanced back at her reflection in the bedroom mirror one last time. The stiff work jacket that she always wore had been tossed onto the floor in a crumpled heap, along with her familiar tailored trousers. Just for tonight, she promised herself, she would forget that she was Detective Wharton. Tonight, she was just Vicky.
She had selected, from the back of her closet, a claret-red cocktail dress, spaghetti-strapped and falling just below her knees. It had been years since she had worn it, she realized. Victoria spun around, causing the gentle folds of the fabric to flare out. Her earrings, silver hoops, caught the light as she twirled. For a moment, she considered tying her hair back, but it had felt so liberating tugging loose the bun she wore for work. Instead, she simply brushed her hair away from her face so that the dark curls didn’t obscure her earrings. She leaned closer to the mirror to check her make-up, hardly recognizing herself with darkened lashes and blood-red lips. Impulsively, she pulled open her bedside drawer and slipped on a silver bracelet, a gift from her twin sister.
She smiled back at herself as she turned to leave, and the young woman reflected in the glass smiled in return, looking coquettishly over her shoulder. Enticed by the thrill of the Chicago night air, which beckoned her with its promise of bright lights and the intoxicating excitement of chattering and laughter, she felt drawn to the unknown world beyond the safety of her four walls. I am ready, Victoria said to herself. Ready to go out. Ready to be admired. Ready, finally, to risk meeting someone. Maybe even tonight, she thought, her pulse quickening.
Picking up the photo frame from her bedside, the only one in her home, she repeated the words to the young auburn woman in the picture. “I am ready,” she told her twin. Rebecca, slightly shorter and more fragile in appearance than her sister, was smiling, as she usually was. Her violet eyes, unlike Victoria’s, held no skepticism. They gazed out uncritically at the world. Of its darker undercurrents — the jealousies, manipulations, violence, betrayal and greed that Victoria witnessed every day — she seemed oblivious.
Victoria’s attention was distracted by her phone vibrating in her bag. She glanced at the caller ID, and sank onto her bed, staring at the screen. The phone buzzed impatiently. She hovered her finger over the ‘cancel’ icon. Not now. But she couldn’t do it. She took a breath and accepted the call.
“Mother.”
How long had it been since she had left her mother and her past behind in New Hampshire?
“You should never have left Hancock.” She had heard it all before, but something in the uneven breathing was new, and it unsettled her. Her mother’s voice held a dryness as brittle as fallen leaves. “Something terrible has—” The silence that followed these words was worse than the fragmented breathing.
“What’s wrong?”
“Your sister didn’t arrive at the hospital for work and they—”
“Becky’s missing?”
Victoria’s question hung between them. The silence seemed to last forever.
“Her body was found this morning by a jogger. They’ve just let me know.”
“Her body?” Victoria repeated blankly. “Was — was it an accident? A seizure?”
The voice on the other end faded till it was little more than a whisper.
“Murder.”
Chapter 2
Victoria sat dully on the wooden floorboards of her apartment, her packed cases stacked around her as she waited for first light to leave for Hancock. She had managed to snatch an hour’s sleep in between throwing whatever she thought she might need into bags, but her dreams had been nightmares, filled with the monsters she thought she had finally conquered, and she’d woken up with her pillow wet, though whether from tears or sweat she wasn’t sure.
She hugged the photograph of her sister close to her chest and rocked slowly back and forth, too exhausted to think properly. Becky had always been the one with the bigger dreams — and the softer heart. It was probably her gentleness that had, in the end, destroyed any chance of her achieving her own goals. Victoria shut her eyes, trying to push away the memories that were hurtling toward her through the darkness, but they kept coming. Piercing through them, her mother’s reedy voice, monotonous and complaining, threw accusations at her. Unwillingly, Victoria’s mind zoomed in on the day she had walked away from it all.
* * *
“And now you are going to leave me too,” her mother, Vera, said flatly. She turned her wheelchair away from Victoria, leaving only a side view of her back, twisted by scoliosis. She stared out into the garden through the peeling window frame, once immaculate white. When the girls were little, roses had filled the beds and a neat hedge running the length of the garden border had been regularly clipped and shaped. Now, the hedge was overgrown, and only a motley collection of roses remained. “You are just like your father was.”
She shifted her wheelchair slightly as she said this, and her eyes slid shrewdly up to Victoria’s face. At the mention of him, Victoria’s hand had risen subconsciously to her throat. She massaged the constricting muscles until they relaxed.
Rebecca, so different in looks to her sister but so close in understanding, quickly intervened, dropp
ing to kneel beside her mother’s wheelchair, her willowy figure graceful. She had always moved with the fluidity of a dancer.
“Vicky is nothing like Dad was,” she said calmly. “She is just pursuing the career she loves.”
Vera stroked Rebecca’s hand, her eyes filling with easy tears.
“You are such a sweet girl,” Vera murmured. “I know you would never leave me, would you? I would die if you did.”
Victoria glanced at Rebecca, waiting for her to tell their mother she was going away too.
“I’ve always relied on you, Becky,” Vera continued. “Such a source of support.” Her fingers closed over Rebecca’s hand, gripping it with frightening strength. “My source of support,” she repeated, watching her daughter’s face closely. “It is knowing you are nearby that keeps me going—”
“Tell her about Stanford, Becky,” Victoria interrupted.
“I haven’t decided yet,” Rebecca said, dismayed to see the tears tumbling onto her mother’s hands.
“Yes, you have,” Victoria insisted. “No one who has been accepted to study medicine at Stanford turns it down. You have dreamed of being an oncologist for years. Don’t let her do this to you.”
Vera drew in her breath.
“Are you suggesting I would try to sabotage my daughter’s happiness?” she said slowly, lifting her head to stare at Victoria. “Is this all the thanks I get for everything I have given up for you? All my money, gone with the divorce, my health, destroyed by the stress—” Her voice cracked. “Your father. He would never have left if it weren’t for you and your — insinuations. Would he?”
The words seemed trapped in Victoria’s head, echoing inside her mind until she felt dizzy and nauseous. Her mother’s image danced in a hazy mirage before her eyes. She wanted to shout, but her mouth and her brain wouldn’t work together.
“I’m leaving,” she heard herself say.
“Go then,” her mother snapped. “Get out and leave us in peace. You have done enough to hurt us all.”
“Come with me, Becky.” Victoria stretched out her hand.
Rebecca took a step toward her at the same time that her mother, whether by accident or deliberately, tilted forwards in her chair and pitched out. Rebecca caught her just in time, and her mother clung to her, breathing heavily. Rebecca glanced up at her sister, and Victoria understood she had made her decision. What she didn’t realize was that it would be the last time she ever saw her.
Chapter 3
Hancock seemed as calm as always, even if that was only ever a surface-deep appearance. Victoria had arrived after a journey that had taken an entire week, thanks to her blue sedan being so temperamental. The car was holding out now, she thought, but she still crossed her fingers superstitiously before opening the window to breathe in the fresh air.
“It seems so peaceful. Too peaceful,” she said to herself. Accustomed to the pace of Chicago, she had forgotten how green and tranquil her hometown could be. She drove through the streets, trying to regain her bearings, slowly remembering the landmarks of her childhood. She purposefully avoided her mother’s house, and the tightness around her throat relaxed as she bypassed the turnoff and headed instead past Sarah’s Hat Boxes. Rebecca had loved wandering through the shop when she was little, admiring the colorful array of recycled hat boxes. She had come home very proudly on her seventh birthday having bought an Alice in Wonderland box, custom-made with a Cheshire cat on the front, Victoria remembered, feeling a tug in her chest.
Unlike Chicago, where all humanity pulsed in time to the same busyness, continually on the go, day and night, here in Hancock, the population had, by this point in the day, settled into a mellow pace. Several residents were ambling out and about with their dogs, reveling in the summer sunshine, while almost as many were relaxing in their gardens, throwing balls to children or grandchildren, or chattering to neighbors. The maples were plumping out their green plumage in the summer wind, bearing no hint of the glorious fall golds and reds to come.
It was incredible that such an apparently tranquil place could have been the scene of her sister’s murder. Victoria turned off at Hancock Congregational Church. The church, which also served as Hancock’s Meeting House, was a Federal-style building with a lyre-shaped weathervane. It was even harder to believe that her sister’s memorial had been held there just two days before, as the apologetic pastor explained when she went inside to find out when it would be.
“My mother hasn’t been answering her phone, so I thought I would come directly to the church to find out,” a white-lipped Victoria said to the pastor.
“I begged her to postpone till you arrived,” the pastor said. “I’m so sorry.”
Sorry. Victoria wondered whether she would ever hear that word from her mother. She tried phoning her again when she returned to her car, but Vera’s cell phone was off. Again.
“Coward,” Victoria shouted at her phone. She flung it down onto the seat next to her. You could have phoned me. Messaged me. Even asked the pastor to call. Why, Mom? Why?
She drove the streets, until she had calmed down enough to check in at the Hancock Inn.
“You look exhausted,” the girl behind the inn desk exclaimed, as she took Victoria’s bags.
Victoria was, but not even the four-poster bed or handmade quilt could entice sleep. Whenever she closed her eyes, her sister’s image rose up before her. So instead, she walked across to the Main Street Cheese farm and shop to the left of the inn.
Victoria entered the garden. “Hey! Vicky!” a voice shouted.
“Janet! What are you doing here?” Victoria recognized her old school friend.
“Buying goat’s cheese. What else?” Janet replied. Several goats wandered up to them, jostling one another playfully in their attempt to greet the new visitors. In spite of her exhaustion, Victoria felt her spirits lifting, and she put out a hesitant hand to the smallest goat, which butted her excitedly.
Janet Mitchley was as square and solid and blunt as ever, her straight blonde hair still falling into her eyes no matter how often it was pinned or tucked back. “Man, I was devastated to hear about Rebecca.” She put her arms around Victoria. “Sorry, I forgot. You’re not the hugging type.” She stood back and brushed off Victoria’s shoulders self-consciously as though trying to undo the embrace.
Victoria couldn’t help smiling. “From you, hugs are always okay.” She glanced down at Janet’s brightly colored skirts, which trailed the ground as she walked. “That’s new,” she commented, pointing to the tattoo on Janet’s ankle that peeped out as she moved.
Janet lifted the hem of her skirt slightly for Victoria to admire the artwork, which consisted of the word “Harvey” in swirling black cursive, followed by a heart. “My son,” said Janet proudly. She pointed to the other ankle. “And my daughter, Carrie. I married Blake — you know, his mom used to help out at the library. Do you have a husband and kids?”
Victoria shook her head, sitting down on the grass and kicking off her shoes to avoid discussing the subject further.
“Still time,” her friend said, undeterred.
“I hope not,” Victoria retorted.
“You don’t want to settle down?”
“I have settled down,” Victoria replied. “I own an apartment in Chicago. It’s not going anywhere. To me, that’s far more settled than a man who can up and leave any time he feels like it.”
“Cynical. I like it,” said Janet. She flopped down next to Victoria. “The cheese can wait. I want to hear how you are doing. I’ve been thinking of you ever since we heard about Rebecca and wondered if you’d head this way. When you missed the memorial service, I wasn’t so sure.”
Victoria tried not to cry. “I would have given anything to be here. It took me several days longer than planned to drive up here. Car trouble,” she said. “When I arrived, I discovered my mother had already decided to go ahead without me. She didn’t even consult me. Just assumed I wasn’t going to make it. It felt like she didn’t even want me here.”
She plucked randomly at a few pieces of grass and watched them scatter in the wind.
“It seems so unreal,” she said.
Janet nodded. “To everyone here too.” She drew up her legs under her chin so she could rest her head on her knees. “Why would anyone want to kill someone as gentle and beautiful as Rebecca? It just doesn’t make sense.”
Victoria gazed blankly across the garden, seeing in her mind’s eye a younger Rebecca racing across the garden to feed the goats, her auburn hair loose down to her waist, bucket banging against her leg as she ran.
“You don’t know — she didn’t ever mention anyone who, I don’t know, had a grudge against her or didn’t get on with her? Maybe a fellow nurse at work or something?” asked Victoria.
“Come on, this is Rebecca we’re talking about,” protested Janet. “I mean, she even got on with your mother, who is a self-obsessed nutjob. No offense,” she added belatedly. Then she stopped. “Although you know,” she added slowly, “now you come to mention it, she told me a few weeks back she had had a very difficult time at work. Something to do with an old woman who was ill and her family, I think? Anyway, the old lady died, and the family is trying to sue the hospital for negligence.”
Victoria frowned. “That would have stressed her out. Do you know whether Rebecca had a serious boyfriend? She hadn’t mentioned anything to me.”
Janet thought for a moment.
“She always had someone chasing after her, but you know Rebecca — she never talked much about the men who were interested, mainly because she never gave the attention a thought, especially with your mom being such a pain in the— so demanding.”
“Yes, Rebecca could be very forgiving.”
“She was naive, Vicky. There is a difference. Beautiful, innocent, academic — and naive. I don’t think she was aware of the feelings she awoke in just about every guy who met her. Or realized how dangerous those feelings could be.”