Carlene Thompson

by Black for Remembrance (epub)

  "Where is your jacket? It's cold out here."

  "Yes, it is. I heard you shouting and just dashed out to see if I could help."

  "Well, go back inside now."

  "It's time for you to take a break. You've been at this all morning. How about some tea?"

  Millicent pushed her sun hat back on her head, knowing it was useless to argue with Garrison. He would stand and nag her until she did what he thought best. "I suppose I have earned a breather," she said in resignation. "Tea sounds good."

  Garrison took Millicent's arm as they walked back to the house and through the double front doors. "I'll get the tea, dear," Garrison said. "The kettle is already on. You just relax in the drawing room." She laid her hat and wire cutters on a Regency console table and gazed at her face in the mirror above. Ravaged, she thought. Dry hair, dry skin, sagging eyelids, a pinched nose. Why couldn't I have aged with a little style? Why couldn't I have remained dignified at the very least instead of looking like I clean toilets for a living?

  She shrugged out of her cape, letting it fall to the floor, and wandered into the faded splendor of the drawing room. Her mother had decorated it, her mother who hanged herself when Millicent was fifteen and Garrison twelve. Her name had not been spoken in the house again, Father's orders. But Millicent thought of her often, with her heavy dark hair in its sleek chignon, her sad blue eyes, her beautiful voice that had always hummed "Für Elise" so softly you could barely hear it.

  "Here's the tea," Garrison said, carrying in a tea service they had bought in England many years before. He poured with the grace of a woman, the same grace he brought to all his gestures. He was the fine-boned, elegant one. She had always looked like a field hand.

  "Gar, do you ever think about Mother?" she asked, taking a cup.

  He looked up in surprise. "Certainly. Sometimes. More since I've come home. Why do you ask?"

  "She's been on my mind this morning." She gazed into her teacup, her heart pounding with the mention of the forbidden subject, almost as if her father might walk in and punish her. But this morning she felt compelled to go on. "Why do you suppose she did it?"

  "A lover."

  "Gar! You spent too many years with the sophisticated Europeans. Of course Mother didn't have a lover."

  "Oh, yes. She was pregnant. Father told me."

  Millicent was astounded. "He told you! He never told me."

  Garrison smiled dryly. "You were a lady. Such matters are not for a lady's ears, or so he thought."

  "So mother was caught between him and a lover."

  "No, she was caught by him with a lover, and the paternity of the child was in question. He said he was going to divorce her. Of course he wouldn't have."

  "No," Millicent said thoughtfully. "That would have meant family disgrace." She set down her cup and looked at her brother. "Isn't it silly that after all these years we never talk about Mother's suicide? Here you've had the answer all along, and I never knew it."

  "It's a subject best forgotten." He held out a plate of cookies to her. "Lido, your favorite."

  Millicent absently reached for a cookie, still rocked by what Garrison had just revealed. "Speaking of sex and infidelities," she said, "that so-called artist had a very interesting visitor a few minutes ago."

  "Christopher?"

  She nodded. "Caroline was there."

  "Caroline?" Garrison's broad forehead creased. "A new girlfriend?"

  "Do you think I'd make note of a new one considering the string of women he parades in and out of there? No, Caroline was his wife."

  "Oh, yes." Garrison dropped a sugar cube in his tea and stirred with a highly-polished sterling silver spoon. He had thin white hands covered with liver spots. "I never met the woman."

  "She was the mother of the little girl, you know.

  "Ummm."

  "The little girl who was kidnapped and murdered."

  "I know who you mean, Millie. Let's talk about something else."

  Millicent shifted in her seat, looking troubled. "I will never forget when that child vanished."

  "Dear, if you don't mind my saying so, you're being a tad morbid this morning. Let's not go over all this again. Just drink your tea."

  Millicent jiggled her foot. "His little girl wandered up here a few times. But I didn't encourage it."

  "I know that."

  "I don't even like children."

  "I know that, too. Another cookie?"

  "But they blamed me. I was hauled in and given a lie detector test." Her voice rose. "Me, Millicent Longworth, in a police station being given a lie detector test for something I didn't do."

  Garrison was starting to look alarmed. He leaned toward his sister. "It was very unfair. Very embarrassing. But you were completely cleared."

  "Not without doubts. I didn't do well on the lie detector test. A shadow has followed my name ever since."

  "My dear, you sound like a bad novel. You're also exaggerating. In a situation like that, everyone who knows the child or has come in contact with it is questioned unmercifully. I've read that. I've also read that lie detector tests are notoriously unreliable."

  "But I'll never forget it, Gar. I'll never forget the humiliation." Millicent banged down her cup on the table, her hand trembling. "What on earth would Father have said?"

  "Father was long gone."

  "But the family name was so important to him, and my public humiliation tarnished it."

  "Father was a fanatic whose ideas are best forgotten. Don't trouble yourself about what he would have thought. He did drive our mother to suicide, you know."

  "He simply threatened divorce. You said he wouldn't have gone through with it. Any man would have done the same."

  "I wouldn't have, not with someone as fragile as Mother. If he hadn't treated her so abominably all those years, she would never have taken a lover to begin with."

  "She was very unhappy, wasn't she?"

  "Yes. We all were."

  "That little girl had eyes just like Mother's. Beautiful blue eyes."

  Garrison drew a deep breath. "Millicent, I want you to take one of your pills. They'll calm you. Then let's not talk anymore about Father. Or Mother. Or that child. Especially that child."

  "Why especially the child?"

  "Because old memories are too painful for you. The past is dead thank God. And you're just getting upset again for nothing." He smiled. "Now drink up. Then you can go back and finish with your roses."

  Chapter 7

  PAMELA FITZGERALD BURKE'S funeral was held on Sunday afternoon. Caroline had not even considered attending, but Lucy felt she should be present and Tom wasn't free to go with her. "I know I'm asking a lot," she told Caroline that morning on the phone. "It'll be depressing as hell, of course. And I'll feel like a hypocrite because I thought Pamela was a louse, but I do like Larry, poor dumb sweetie that he is, and I did make a lot of money from them decorating that house. I guess it's only right that I go."

  "I agree," Caroline said, dreading the funeral but feeling she shouldn't let Lucy down. "Of course I'll go with you."

  So she put on her navy wool suit, warm enough without a coat for the still mild early November weather, and drove to the plush condominium where Lucy had lived for nearly ten years. "People see me and they think of candles stuck in Chianti bottles," Lucy once joked. "But I like luxury. I always have. That's why I stopped painting except for fun. I'm no Chris Corday, and I knew I would never make anything as an artist, not really, and I want to live well."

  She was living well now, Caroline thought. Just as the parents of any murdered child, she really had no idea what she could say to people she had never met about a woman she didn't like. "I'll look at the flowers first. All the seats seem to be taken."

  Although Pamela rested in the largest room of the largest funeral home in the city, every wall was lined with baskets huge, expensive baskets filled with colorful offerings for the young woman with no friends. Yellow roses, pink glads, red carnations, white lilies. They were bea
utiful and endless, soaring to the ceiling on racks, filling the room with their heady scents. Feeling a little dizzy from the perfumed air, Caroline walked toward the back of the room where a window was raised about three inches to let in the sharp autumn breeze. A young man was just setting down a chair and Caroline sank onto it, taking a deep breath.

  She closed her eyes, listening to the women sitting in front of her. "Well, you know, Edith, her marriage was in trouble," the older one was saying with great authority. "Everyone was aware of her carrying on with the tennis pro at the club."

  "I heard it was Larry who was involved with someone else."

  A muffled scoff. "Larry? Certainly not. He worshipped that little snippet. Too stupid to know better."

  "So you think Larry murdered Pamela when he found out?"

  "Possibly. Or maybe the pro killed Pamela when she wouldn't leave Larry. I haven't quite worked out all the details. But in either case, it's a crime passionelle. Crime of passion. In France they can get away with that kind of thing."

  "Really?" Edith sounded impressed.

  "Oh, yes. Even here the killer won't get more than ten years for it. Of course, someone with the Burke name probably wouldn't even get five."

  Oh, for Pete's sake, Caroline thought. Can't they wait until after the funeral to sentence the widower? Annoyed, she stood up, intending to go in search of Lucy. Then she saw them nestled at the bottom of the flower rack.

  A rich cluster of black silk orchids.

  Slowly Caroline knelt, bending close to read the small white card inscribed with round, childish printing:

  TO MOMMY

  "My God," Caroline gasped. "Oh, my God."

  "Mrs. Webb, are you all right?"

  Caroline's gaze jerked away from the flowers to find Tina Morgan standing over her, her lovely face concerned. "No, I'm not all right. I feel…"

  I feel like I might scream.

  Although she didn't say the words, she felt as if Tina heard them just the same. Tina extended her hand. "Would you like to go outside for some air? It's really stuffy in here."

  Wordlessly Caroline took her hand. Tina pulled up Caroline sharply, and when she blinked at her in surprise, Tina smiled. "It makes me nervous to have anyone kneeling at my feet unless they're proposing." Caroline managed to smile before she let Tina lead her from the crowded room.

  The sky that had been clear only an hour ago was now drifted with dirty-looking clouds, and light had faded from the day.

  "Would you like to find somewhere to sit down?" Tina asked.

  "I'm afraid there isn't any place." She glanced at Tina, who wore no coat over her slim charcoal-gray suit with a bright scarlet scarf tied like a cravat at the throat. She looked sleek and jaunty and breathtakingly lovely. "I'm all right now, Tina. You don't have to stay with me. Go back inside where it's warm."

  Tina shook her head. "I don't want to go back in there. I only came because I felt an obligation to Larry. But maybe I'm speaking out of turn. Maybe you liked Pamela."

  "Actually, I didn't. Not even when she was a little girl."

  Tina turned to her with interest. "You knew her then?"

  "She was a friend of my daughter's. Well, not really a friend. Just someone she went to kindergarten with."

  Tina frowned. "You have a grown daughter?"

  Caroline swallowed hard. "No. She died two months before her sixth birthday."

  "Oh." Tina glanced at the darkening sky, her black bangs ruffling across her unlined forehead. "My car is in the parking lot I got here early. Why don't we get some coffee to go and take a drive?"

  "I'd like that very much," Caroline said gratefully, not wanting to be alone even though she felt a little embarrassed at showing her distress around this self-possessed young woman.

  They climbed into Tina's old Volkswagen, which she drove with astonishing carelessness. Caroline cringed when they pulled into McDonald's drive-thru and came within an inch of hitting the building, and Tina grinned apologetically. "I've always been a godawful driver. If I make you nervous, I'll take you home."

  "I trust you enough to go for a drive," Caroline said, wondering if she might not regret her good manners later when Tina piled into a telephone pole.

  They pulled away from the window, and Caroline fought desperately to keep her coffee from spilling as they slammed and jerked back to the highway. She had just taken a huge scalding sip, trying to lower the coffee level in the cup, when Tina asked suddenly, "Have you heard about my affair with Lowell Warren?"

  Coffee went the wrong way down Caroline's throat. She coughed and looked at Tina's placid profile through her resulting tears. "Affair? Well…I…"

  "You have. I hope you don't think I'm awful."

  Caroline's voice emerged stiffly. "I believe everyone's life is his own business."

  Tina smiled slightly. "But that doesn't keep you from making judgments."

  Recovering from her initial surprise, Caroline spoke more normally. "No, I guess it doesn't." She sipped coffee. "Theoretically I find the idea of adultery wrong. But there are circumstances…"

  She trailed off, picturing the hard, self-satisfied face of Claire Warren as she'd appeared on local talk shows and news spots, always holding some hapless animal and talking brightly about how animal rights mean so very much to her. "I don't think you're awful at all."

  "Lowell is a wonderful man. That sounds so trite, but he is. Of course he promises marriage, but they all do."

  "Then you'd marry him if he were free?"

  "Oh, yes. But he's been married to Claire for a long time. If he hasn't left her by now, I doubt he will at all." There was a trace of melancholy in Tina's voice, and Caroline realized how desperately she wanted to marry Lowell. As if knowing she had betrayed herself, Tina began fishing around in her big purse and withdrew a package of Salems. She shook the pack, caught a cigarette between rose-tinted lips, dug in her purse again until she came up with a silver lighter, and touched flame to the cigarette tip. "Do you still miss your little girl a lot? The one that died, I mean?"

  Incredulity and anger rose in Caroline at the heartlessness of the question until she looked into Tina's innocent ebony eyes and realized she was simply blunt, not cruel.

  "Yes, Tina. I miss her every day. I always will."

  Tina blew out cigarette smoke in a thin stream. "You must wonder why I asked such a stupid question. It's because I lost a child in March."

  "Oh, Tina, I didn't know that!"

  "No one does, except Lucy. I'd rather Lowell didn't know at this point."

  "I've only met Lowell a couple of times at parties, and I certainly won't tell anyone else, not even my husband."

  "I wasn't married. I had a hell of a time taking care of Valerie, trying to work and be a full-time parent. But we were doing okay. Then she got leukemia." Tina's face was bleak and hard as a stone. "Can you believe it? Four years old and she gets leukemia."

  Caroline wished she'd brought a coat. She suddenly felt chilled to the bone. "Why haven't you talked to Lowell about your child?"

  "I've lost everything I ever loved in my life. Lowell can be a little old-fashioned, in spite of our affair. This is his first, you know. He might think my being an unwed mother is just too much, and I don't want to lose him, too." Her hand shook as she brought the cigarette to her lips and drew deeply. "Besides, Lowell could sympathize, but he wouldn't understand. He's never lost anyone. He couldn't tell me if you ever get over the pain."

  "I wish I could be more encouraging, but you never do get over it. Having someone you can talk with about it helps, though."

  Tina rolled down her window and flipped out the cigarette. "I told Lucy, but I don't want to talk about it with her. She's my employer. It just doesn't seem appropriate. After you told me about your daughter, though, I wanted you to know. We share a bond."

  "An unhappy one. But I'm glad you told me, although you could talk to Lucy, even if she is your employer. I know how much she cares about you."

  "She's a very kind person
. She took me on faith, you know. After Valerie died I simply walked away from my job in New York City. They refused to give me a reference. That's why I had to tell Lucy about Valerie to explain the lack of references."

  "How did you end up here?"

  "I'm from the Midwest. Indianapolis. I had no desire to go back—all I have left there is a stepfather—but at the same time, I didn't want to stay in New York, either, so I picked someplace not too different from home." She reached up and pulled off her right earring of jet and gold, massaged the lobe, and asked abruptly, "What scared you so much at the funeral home?"

  Black silk flowers. A note in a childish hand.

  "Tina, did you see a bouquet of black silk orchids mixed in with the other flowers?"

  "I didn't look at the flowers at all. I just looked at Pamela. She was beautiful. She looked like a much nicer person than she really was. But anyway, you say there was a black bouquet?"

  "Yes. It seemed so strange. Black flowers. A note reading, "To Pamela, Black for Remembrance."

  Tina's brows drew together. "That's an odd phrase. It's also pretty sick. But then Pamela wouldn't have won any popularity contests. Lucy couldn't stand her, and you know how forgiving she is."

  "I know. I don't remember Lucy ever taking such a dislike to a customer. But that bouquet, Tina. I wonder if it came from her murderer."

  "If he sent it, he's got a hell of a lot of nerve. That kind of thing can be traced."

  Caroline bit her lip. "Maybe. But what really frightened me is that I saw a similar bouquet on my little girl's grave on Monday. Same kind of flowers, same message written in the same printing."

  Tina drew in her breath. "Good lord. Then you think the person who put the flowers on your child's grave had something to do with Pamela's death?"

  "And Hayley's. She was murdered, too."

  "God, Caroline!" Tina slowed the car and looked at her. "Your daughter was murdered?"

  "Yes. She was kidnapped. Her body was found a month later, decapitated, burned."

  Tina's hand touched her stomach as if she felt ill. "That's horrible. I'm so sorry. I can't believe Lucy never mentioned it." She looked back at the road. "Who did it?"