Carlene Thompson

  "Her murderer was never found."

  This time Tina looked at her in disbelief. "You never had a clue as to who it was?"

  "Not really. The police suspected a weird old woman who lived near us, but she had an alibi."

  "Then the person who murdered your daughter could still be around," Tina said slowly.

  "Yes. This week someone broke into our house and left the clown doll Hayley had with her when she was kidnapped."

  "Caroline, I hope you've gone to the police."

  "I just found the second bouquet today, and no one believes the clown doll was Hayley's Twinkle, especially since I don't have it anymore. They think it was a similar doll I made twenty years ago."

  "You have to go to the police, though. Right away. After all, you have another little girl."

  Caroline stiffened. "Yes, I have another little girl," she murmured. She gazed miserably out the window, only slowly becoming aware that Tina had turned off the highway onto a narrow asphalt road leading through a wooded area. "Tina, where are we?"

  "The wildlife preserve. Haven't you ever been here before?"

  "Sure," she said, glad to turn her attention away from the significance of the bouquets, if only temporarily. "Hard to think that in World War II the whole area was devoted to munitions manufacture."

  "I know. At the end of the war they just walked off and left all the buildings to crumble."

  Caroline looked at the brooding old boiler house with its leathery ivy crawling up the chimney and broken windows opening to musky darkness. "I wonder if Claire has ever been out here, considering her great love of animals," Caroline couldn't help saying.

  Tina giggled. "Funny you should mention that. Lowell was telling me she won't set foot here, even though the local PBS station wanted to do a segment on the place. It's not the most appealing setting in the world and doesn't lend itself to those designer jumpsuits she wears when she's 'communing' with the animals. She insisted on the zoo instead."

  "Well, I can't say I blame her. This area has always given me the creeps."

  Tina looked abashed. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have driven clear out here. I'll get you back now. The service is probably over and Lucille will be wondering what happened to you."

  Twenty minutes later, when they reached the funeral home, Caroline spotted Lucy sitting in her car. Tina jolted up, and after thanking her for the ride, Caroline rushed over to Lucy's Corvette.

  Lucy looked both annoyed and alarmed. "Caroline, where have you been? I was just about to go to a pay phone to call David."

  "I'm sorry. I know I shouldn't have deserted you, but something happened."

  "What?"

  "Remember my telling you about the bouquet of black silk orchids on Hayley's grave? Well, there was a bouquet just like it at Pamela's funeral. And the message said, "To Pamela, Black for Remembrance."

  Lucy stared at her. "Caroline, are you sure?"

  "Yes, I'm sure. I want to see Tom. Can you take me to the police station?"

  Lucy lifted a quieting hand. "Caro, don't get all haughty with me because I asked a perfectly natural question. Of course you don't have to go to the police station to see Tom. He'll be home in about an hour. You can talk to him there."

  Lucy and Tom had been living together for nearly two years. Although seven years her junior, Tom was anxious to get married. It was Lucy who dragged her feet. "I'm forty-eight, Caro," she always said. "I can't give him children."

  "Lucy, he has children. And a very nasty ex-wife. Is that what's bothering you?"

  "Marian? Heavens no. The woman lives in Chicago and he never even sees her—why should I worry about her?"

  "Well, something's holding you back. And one of these days, I'm going to get you to tell me what it is."

  One of these days had never come, but Tom and Lucy lived on quite happily, although he fussed about her elaborate apartment. "I'm a detective on the police force, for God's sake," he would laugh, "and I live in a place that looks like a sex goddess's dream."

  But Lucy ignored him, knowing he admired her taste and got a kick out of the apartment with its movieland glamor. Long black couches and ebony tables were reflected over and over in soaring mirrors, and even if the snow-white carpet was a pain to keep clean, it was unbelievably sumptuous, exquisite under bare feet. A black-and-gold-lacquer Chinese screen hid a bar, at which Lucy now stood pouring three brandies while Tom talked quietly with Caroline.

  "I read the report on your breaking and entering. I was attending the fire at Lowell's house that day. It started with kerosene and the coroner says that Pamela's throat was cut with a four- to five-inch serrated blade. Probably a kitchen knife, which makes it practically impossible to find. The throat was cut from left to right, meaning the murderer was right-handed. Both the carotid artery and the jugular vein were cut as well as the vocal cords. It shouldn't have taken her long to bleed to death—maybe a couple of minutes tops. We found blood all over the clothes in her closet and several hairs—all Pamela's so I'd say she was grabbed by the hair from behind in there."

  "Good heavens," Caroline breathed. "Someone waiting in the closet for her. It's like a horror movie."

  "Very theatrical, especially considering that the killer sprinkled kerosene all over the bedroom, then started the fire with kerosene in the living room, which is at least a hundred feet away from where her body lay."

  "Maybe the killer wanted you to discover that Pamela's throat had been cut," Lucy volunteered, sitting cross-legged on the floor, her high heels discarded beside her.

  "Then why start the fire at all? Especially when the automatic sprinkler system must have gone off as soon as the smoke started?"

  Lucy smiled. "My point exactly. The killer didn't want Pamela's body destroyed. The fire was a symbolic act."

  Tom looked at her admiringly. "Lucy, you're great. Would you like to work with me?"

  "Yes, but I know you're just buttering me up. You can't tell me you hadn't already figured that out." She looked at Caroline. "He does this to me all the time. He wants to make sure I seem as smart as I should be."

  Tom grinned. "You are, don't worry."

  Caroline smiled absently at their teasing, but she couldn't throw off her own anxiety. "Tom, do you think the flowers prove there's a connection between what's been going on with me and Pamela's murder?"

  "You have to keep in mind that Pamela was almost universally disliked, and apparently she was involved with someone else. Neither Larry nor Rick Loomis the guy she was involved with, who by the way has an assault record are out of the picture as suspects. Still, I wish we had both bouquets so we could compare the handwriting."

  "I went back to Hayley's grave the next day, but the flowers were gone."

  "All of them," Lucy asked, "or just the orchids?"

  "Just the orchids."

  "That's pretty suspicious in itself," Tom said. "Tell you what I'll go out to Pamela's grave tomorrow and see if I can find the second bouquet. At least that way we'll have a sample of the handwriting. Then all we have to do is find the florist the flowers came from and we'll be able to find out who sent them."

  "If they were artificial flowers, they might not have come from a florist," Lucy pointed out.

  Caroline nodded. "She's right, Tom. There was nothing professional about the flower arrangement. It was just a bunch of silk orchids tied with a black velvet ribbon. A child could have done it."

  "Well, you can bet a child didn't do it," Tom said grimly. "Just think about the message: Black for Remembrance. That's not a child's phrase."

  "No, definitely not," Lucy said, then she looked at Caroline. "What is it? What's wrong?"

  "I just thought of something." Caroline's face felt stiff with shock. "The phrase. It's wrong. The color is wrong."

  Tom leaned forward. "Tell us what you mean."

  "For Hayley's fifth birthday we got her a kitten. Shadow. It died. She was broken-hearted and Chris gave it a real funeral. He even put a bunch of violets on the grave. "Violet represents
nostalgia and memories," he told Hayley. "It's the color for remembrance. So every year we'll put violets on Shadow's grave to let him know we remember him."

  "So that's why Chris puts violets on Hayley's grave," Lucy said slowly.

  "Oh, my lord," Caroline murmured.

  Tom looked at Caroline intently. "I know where you're going with this, but forget it. Hayley was five years old when Chris told her that. Five-year-olds don't understand concepts like nostalgia."

  "But they understand remembering."

  "Okay, maybe. But so do a lot of people. They also know elementary color symbolism like black for death, and black is the color mentioned in the phrase, not violet."

  Later, as night shut out the gray dreariness of the day, Lucy curled her naked body closer to Tom's in the king-sized bed. "I didn't have your full attention a few minutes ago."

  Tom stroked her disheveled hair. "Sorry."

  "Something on your mind."

  "Caroline."

  "Wonderful."

  Tom laughed the deep, joyous laugh that first attracted her to him. "I didn't think I could make you jealous anymore. But there's nothing to worry about. My thoughts were strictly those of a policeman."

  "Do you think something serious is going on?"

  "Don't you?"

  "I'm not sure. There was a time after Hayley's murder when she wouldn't believe Hayley was really dead."

  "Well, I can understand that reaction. If you had children, you might know " Lucy stiffened and Tom said quickly, "Sorry, honey."

  "It's all right." Lucy's voice sounded small and far away.

  "I'm an insensitive jerk."

  "I know," Lucy said with a hint of laughter. "It's not your fault. You can't watch every word you say. I wouldn't be so touchy if I hadn't almost had a child of my own."

  "Don't think about it."

  "One foolish decision. One hour in a quack's office and I'm maimed for life."

  "You were in an impossible situation. You did the noble thing."

  "Noble? How can you call an abortion noble?"

  "Sometimes I think it is. In your case it was. How could you have known how it would turn out?"

  Tears dragged mascara down Lucy's face, and she wiped them impatiently away. "Oh, well, water over the dam or under the bridge or wherever bad water goes." She laughed shakily. "So what about Caroline?"

  Tom was silent for a moment. "I'm not convinced all she's telling us is accurate. No one else has seen any black bouquets, and only she insists the clown doll was Twinkle. Still, we can't forget what happened to her first daughter. Since the killer was never found, he might have been waiting for a second opportunity."

  "A second opportunity?"

  "I didn't want to say this to Caroline, but it's highly unlikely that some person not connected with Hayley's kidnapping found the doll and is now using it to frighten her. If it really was Twinkle Caroline found on the bed, it's probably been in the hands of the murderer all along."

  "So why would he surface now?"

  "Who knows how his mind might work? Maybe it has something to do with Melinda being only two years older than Hayley when she was killed."

  Lucy raised up on one elbow. "Tom, you don't really think someone is after Melinda, do you?"

  "I don't know. But it's better to be safe than sorry. I'm going to assume that Caroline isn't imagining anything and look into it."

  "Why you?"

  "I can't take it to someone else because we don't have one shred of concrete evidence to link what's been happening to Caroline with Pamela's murder. Hell, we don't even have any concrete evidence of what's been happening to Caroline except for a broken window."

  "So where will you start?"

  Tom went silent again and Lucy could almost feel his brain racing the way it always did when grappling with the intricacies of a case. "I'm going to start at the beginning with Hayley Corday's kidnapping."

  "I wish we had both bouquets so we could compare the handwriting."

  Tom's words played over and over in Caroline's mind as she tossed in bed, struggling for sleep. She couldn't stop thinking about the flowers. So far she had no proof of anything that had been happening no Twinkle, no flowers. She needed the black bouquet, and although Tom said he would stop by the cemetery tomorrow and look for it, she wondered if it would still be there. After all, the flowers on Hayley's grave had disappeared by the next day.

  She could get them herself. She glanced at the clock: 12:20. So late to go to a cemetery. Still, if this bouquet vanished, she might lose credibility in Tom's eyes.

  David was sleeping deeply. Quietly she slipped from bed and put on jeans, a heavy cable-knit sweater, and Reeboks. As she went down the hall she looked in on Greg and Melinda, both of whom were sleeping soundly: Greg sprawled over three-fourths of his double bed, Melinda rolled into a tight ball by George's side. The dog raised his head as Caroline opened the door, and when she motioned to him, he got up and jumped from the bed light as a cat. Once in the hall, Caroline turned to him. "You know you aren't supposed to sleep on the bed," she whispered. "But we'll talk about that later. Right now I need for you to come with me."

  Down in the kitchen she found the flashlight, zipped up her parka, attached George's leash, and locked the door behind her. She didn't leave a note for David. The cemetery was not far away, and with any luck, she would be back before he'd noticed she was gone.

  George happily took his place on the bucket seat beside her, clearly thrilled at the prospect of a trip. His tongue lolled and he peered curiously out the window, his nose leaving smears, as they drove along deserted streets. When they reached the cemetery, Caroline saw the big wrought-iron gates standing open and realized she hadn't even considered the prospect of being locked out, although Rosemont was the most expensive and well-protected cemetery in the city—a far cry from the shabby place where Hayley rested. She drove slowly through the gates, unhappily spotting the small brick guard booth to her right. A light glowed inside, but no uniformed man stepped out to ask what business she had in the cemetery at this hour. Well, maybe he was making rounds or something, if cemetery guards actually did that kind of thing. Or maybe he had a television inside that had captured his attention. Whatever the case, she was glad she could slip past and quickly lose herself in the cemetery's rambling, hilly acres.

  Because she and Lucy had not come to the gravesite earlier in the day, she wasn't sure where Pamela was located, although she had a feeling it would be in the "new" section since both the Fitzgeralds and the Burkes had come to the city within the last forty years. She drove around the maze of asphalt streets, looking for the masses of flowers that always indicated a fresh grave. When she finally spotted one, she got out, George by her side, and by the glow of the flashlight wended her way through the carefully tended grass only to find the new grave belonged to a member of the Mathis family. "Wrong place," she muttered to George. "Back to the car, boy."

  Worrying about running into the cemetery guard, still she drove around for ten more minutes before she located another possibility on a slope near the back of the cemetery. She could not park near it and momentarily lost sight of it when she turned off the lights and got out of the car. The flashlight had not really been necessary earlier, but black gauze clouds had edged across the moon, and she was in almost total darkness. Even the flashlight beam seemed feeble, and she wondered if the batteries were about to go dead. They couldn't have chosen a more suitable place, she thought as she started up the hill, trying not to step on graves. George trotted beside her, her guardian against the night, and she couldn't help talking to him just to shake off the sudden uneasiness she felt.

  "This isn't the way I'd planned to spend my evening," she informed 'him. "I feel like a grave robber." His ears went up and down as she talked, and he raised his head to lick her hand. "Just a couple of ghouls, that's us, George. Well, let's see. I think the grave was up here to the right."

  She flashed the beam around and found a mountain of fresh flowers. "Now if t
his isn't it, I'm going to give up. I don't like it here. I feel like someone's watching us. But that's silly. There's no one else around. Cemeteries usually don't draw midnight crowds."

  Her voice sounded thin and frightened, and she was disgusted with herself. There was nothing scary about the darkness. There was nothing scary about the cemetery. It was a beautiful place, calm and quiet.

  And full of dead people.

  "Caroline, you are an idiot," she told herself sternly as she picked out the name on the towering headstone rearing over the grave. Fitzgerald. So Pamela had been buried with her family, not Larry's. Well, she wasn't surprised. From everything she'd heard, Pamela had not truly been committed to Larry or anything connected with the Burke family except its money.

  "Okay, George, we've found the spot. Now all we have to do is find the black orchids."

  Hundreds of flowers. Thousands of flowers. Had anyone except a national figure commanded such a tribute of flowers? Caroline wondered. She knelt, shining the flashlight over the baskets heaped on the grave. Flowers on top of flowers shriveling in the sharp night air. Leaning forward onto her knees, she sorted through them, starting at the head of the grave and working toward the foot, trying to be methodical. Glads and lilies and roses. Carnations and tons of baby's breath. Even white and purple orchids. But no black silk ones.

  "Damn," Caroline muttered, sitting back on her heels, her hands reeking of floral scent. Could the bouquet have been left behind at the funeral home, discarded as inappropriate? But if that were the case, why had they been displayed at the funeral home? She crawled forward, determined to rummage through the pile one more time.

  And then George began to growl.

  The sound started deep in this throat as his ears perked to attention. "What is it, boy?" Caroline asked shakily, following his gaze to the top of the slope where a huge oak reared against the black sky. "Is someone up there?" Maybe the guard, she thought nervously. George's eyes narrowed and the hair on his back raised. Caroline grabbed his leash and stood. "Come on, George, back to the car," she ordered.