Carlene Thompson

by Black for Remembrance (epub)

  Then she spotted it—the attic door standing open at the end of the hall and she was filled with unreasoning dread.

  Slowly she walked up the steps to the attic, her beautiful skirt rustling, her heart pounding. When she reached the top, she stood perfectly still, watching how brilliant sunlight streaming through the leaded attic window played over her mother's body suspended by a rope from the rafter, one of her dainty white shoes dangling from a limp foot.

  Millicent's heart slammed against her ribs and her eyes snapped open. At first she was blind, the images of her dream dancing in front of her like flickering flames. Then her heart began to slow as the shadowy rectangle of her bedroom came into focus. Yes, it was all right. Only the dream again. She should be used to it after all this time. She ought to be able to say, "It's only a dream about someone long dead" and wake herself up, but she never could. The nightmare was just as vivid and spellbinding as it bad been fifty years ago.

  Millicent drew a long, shuddering breath, her mouth bitter the way it was when she had taken one of her sleeping pills. But she hadn't taken one tonight. At least, she didn't think she had, although she had been overcome with drowsiness after her evening sherry and had gone to bed at 9:30. Was it possible she had taken one, or even two, and didn't remember?

  She tried to sit up and couldn't. Her right arm seemed to be held fast up and behind her, and twisting around on the bed, she saw with horror that her wrist was handcuffed to the brass headboard.

  Someone moved in one shadowy corner. "Are you scared?" a little girl asked.

  Millicent whimpered and jerked, but the handcuffs held relentlessly.

  "You are scared, aren't you? Real scared," the sweet young voice went on. "Scared is an awful feeling, isn't it?"

  "Who are you?" Millicent gasped.

  "Don't you remember?"

  "Remember what?"

  "It's bad to lie. You remember it. A long time ago a little girl cried. She asked you to turn her loose and take her to her mommy." Pause. "But you didn't."

  Millicent peered frantically into the darkness. "What do you want?"

  "I want you to feel like she did so long ago. Scared. Lonely. Don't you want to cry?"

  Millicent's long white nightgown twisted around her bony legs as she flopped on the bed, wondering hopefully if she wasn't having another nightmare, but knowing she wasn't "I don't understand."

  "Yes, you do. Just think real hard, Miss Longworth. Real hard." A soft metallic sound came from the corner, as if a cap was being unscrewed. "She came up here to be friends, but she wasn't supposed to tell her mommy and daddy. It was a secret. It was all a secret."

  Sick recognition filled Millicent although she knew what she was thinking was impossible. "You can't be that little girl. That Hayley."

  "Why not?"

  Millicent heard a splashing sound. "Hayley is dead."

  "Oh." The childish voice seemed preoccupied, and slowly a pungent smell filled the room.

  "What are you doing?" Millicent croaked.

  "Sprinkling stuff around."

  "Kerosene! It smells like kerosene!"

  "Yes."

  "My brother is here. My brother will…"

  "Your brother is in the hospital."

  Millicent began thrashing. "Let me up! Unfasten these things!"

  "I can't. Then you'd run away."

  Millicent quaked with racking dry sobs. "What are you going to do?"

  "Burn you up."

  "Burn me…that child was burned. Hayley."

  "I know."

  Millicent suddenly stopped thrashing. "I've tried to forget."

  "I didn't forget."

  "I tried to make amends. I'm sorry. I never thought it would come to that."

  "What did you think, Miss Longworth? That you could hide her forever?"

  "I didn't think about it. But I didn't want anyone dead. I asked God to make everything all right."

  "God doesn't listen to bad people."

  "But I didn't have any choice! I had to protect the family name. Father would have been so angry. So angry!" Millicent fell into muttering. "But I always thought she was pretty. Beautiful blue eyes. Eyes like Mother's. Mother is dead. Hayley is dead…"

  "Oops, the can's empty."

  Millicent's voice rose hysterically. "I know why you're here! Harry Vinton sent you!"

  "Who?"

  "The policeman. He gave me a lie detector test. I was lying. He knew it. He checked on everything. He figured it all out. Ugly, hateful man! But he said he'd help. He said for some money he'd cover everything up, make everything look all right. They left me alone after that. Everybody left me alone until last night."

  "I didn't know about him. But he didn't send me."

  Millicent lay still for a moment. Then she screamed, "Father sent you! He sent you to punish me. He didn't understand."

  A match was struck and in its glow Millicent caught a glimpse of bright, frizzy hair. "Your daddy didn't send me. Maybe God sent me. Or maybe the devil."

  Millicent's body whipped back and forth on the bed as the match was held against a piece of cloth. The cloth flamed. "Goodbye, Miss Longworth."

  The cloth, flung forward, exploded as it touched the kerosene.

  Within seconds a wall of flame reached at the foot of Millicent's bed. She shrieked and in one violent convulsion dislocated her right shoulder. But there was no escape from the handcuffs, and while smoke billowed forward, she choked out a final curse at the God who had deserted her the day her mother hanged herself.

  Chapter 11

  TOM WAS EXHAUSTED. He'd been called out at 5:00 A.M. on the arson-homicide at the Longworth mansion and watched them carry away the remains of Millicent Longworth, who had been found handcuffed to a brass headboard. This was the second fire in two weeks. The work of a firebug? Tom didn't think so. Now it was one o'clock and he was back at his desk wondering if the tartar sauce on the fish sandwich he'd downed in the car had been spoiled. Something was not sitting right in his stomach. He reached for his coffee cup, stared at it for a moment, then put it down and rifled through the drawer for Tums.

  The phone rang. He bit the Tums disk in two when he heard his ex-wife Marian's voice. "I want to talk to you about the kids," she said without preamble. "They have some crazy notion of coming to visit you over the holidays."

  "Sounds great to me. I haven't gotten to spend much time with them since I moved down here."

  "And whose fault is that?"

  "Yours. You always manage to schedule some hysterical illness whenever they want to see me."

  "My illnesses are not hysterical," Marian said coldly. "And besides, I don't want them around that woman you live with."

  "Don't call her that woman. Her name is Lucille."

  "I don't give a damn what her name is. I don't want my children around her."

  Tom sighed, wondering where the gentle-voiced girl he'd married twenty years ago had gone. Everyone said they were too young to get married. Before long he knew everyone had been right. They were kids who within five years found themselves with two children of their own and nothing in common. Tom began spending more and more time on the job, and Marian started seeing other men, which she seemed to have forgotten in the four years since their divorce. Now she saw herself as the wronged woman, abandoned to care for two daughters while her ex-husband lived off a rich older woman. In spite of his anger, he couldn't help smiling. Marian's melodramatic imagination had been working overtime ever since he got involved with Lucy, and her antipathy had grown even stronger since last summer when he and Lucy went to visit the girls in Chicago. They had not only accepted Lucy but were enchanted with her ebullience and young ways, so different from their mother's hypochondriac moodiness.

  Tom forced himself to keep his voice controlled. "Look, Marian, in spite of the fact that I've always had joint custody of the girls, I've been letting you call the shots ever since we got divorced. Guilt, I suppose, although why I ever felt guilty I don't know. But the children are in their la
te teens now, and I think it's time they started making some decisions for themselves."

  "They aren't eighteen yet, and I will not have them subjected to your living situation."

  "I'm afraid you don't have any choice. I remind you—joint custody. I have as much say in what they do as you, and if I have to exert my authority to help them do what they want—like visiting their own father—I'm damn well going to do it."

  Marian slammed down the phone. Tom groaned and took out the roll of Tums again, wondering if you could overdose on the things.

  He stared at the small bronze replica of the Sphinx on his desk, a present from Lucy because she said it embodied enigma, and enigmas were his stock-in-trade. Like the enigma of Hayley Corday's murder. Forcing Marian from his thoughts, he decided to call Margaret Evans, the woman who had reported seeing Hayley a week after her kidnapping. Her daughter said she'd be home by Friday morning, and it was already afternoon.

  A woman answered on the third ring and identified herself as Margaret Evans. After introducing himself, Tom said, "I know it's been years since you first reported seeing a child you thought was Hayley Corday at the rest stop, but I would really appreciate it if you would tell me everything you can remember about the incident."

  Mrs. Evans, a tart-tongued seventy years old, had waited a long time to vent her anger over Harry Vinton's dismissal of her report, and she wasn't coming forth with any details until she made Tom aware of just how affronted she had been all these years. "Fine time to get interested in what I saw," she grumbled. "It's too late now to do anything for that little girl."

  "You're certain it was Hayley Corday you saw in that car?"

  "I was inches away from her. Inches. I recognized her from the pictures on the news and in the papers. I told that smart-alec policeman in charge of the case it was Hayley, but he didn't believe me."

  "Can you tell me exactly what you saw?"

  "Why? Are you reopening the case?"

  "Not officially, but I've been reading the reports from the Corday investigation, and I have a few questions." Tom decided flattery was definitely called for. "Please, Mrs. Evans. I'm not Harry Vinton, and I'm not going to brush aside what you tell me. You could really be a big help if you would just try to recall that night."

  A deep sigh on the other end of the line as feathers smoothed. "All right. All I ever wanted to do is help. And it's not as if I don't remember what I saw. I'll never forget it…"

  "That's great, Mrs. Evans."

  "It was the Fourth of July, and my husband and I were coming back from visiting my married daughter. That was her you spoke to on the phone the other day. Her husband died five years ago when he was up on the roof fixing the antenna. Rolled off onto the front lawn. Snapped his back like a matchstick."

  "How awful," Tom murmured, thinking that aside from surveillance the only thing he didn't like about police work was garrulous witnesses.

  "Yes, it was awful, and since she never had any kids, I insisted she move right in here with me. Anyway, Roy—that was my husband—Roy had to go to the bathroom. Kidney problems. I told him to wait until we got to a nice restaurant those roadside park facilities aren't much better than outhouses but he wouldn't listen. You know how men are. We pulled into the rest stop and there was only one other car in the parking lot. I told Roy I'd wait in the car. After a minute or two, though, I decided to get out and stretch my legs. I walked near that Cadillac that was the other car, a brown Cadillac and call it second sight, or the Lord's will, or whatever you want, but I knew I was supposed to look in that car, Mr. Jerome."

  "Amazing." Tom gripped the phone. "What did you see?"

  "A little girl wrapped in a blanket. At first I thought there wasn't anything unusual about a child asleep in the backseat of a car. Then I saw that her mouth was taped. I peered in closer and could see her eyes all sunken in, her skin pale. I thought she'd been drugged. Then it hit me. Hayley Corday. I was looking at Hayley Corday, the little girl who's been missing for a week."

  "What did you do then, Mrs. Evans?"

  "I ran around and looked at the license plate. Then I headed for the restrooms. I yelled for Roy. He said, 'Hold your horses' or something like that and I screamed, 'It's a matter of life and death!' He came running then. But just as he appeared, the car started and tore out of the parking lot like a bat out of hell. I wanted to follow it, but Roy wouldn't."

  "Mrs. Evans, what was that license number?"

  "Well, I can't remember that after nineteen years. But I told Harry Vinton. Isn't it in his report?"

  "No, it isn't"

  "Well, there you go. I told you how he acted. Practically told me I was imagining things. He probably wouldn't have written any of it down if I hadn't talked to another policeman there. Can't remember his name."

  "You told your story to another policeman?"

  "Oh, no, not the whole thing. I just mentioned that I'd seen Hayley Corday and that Harry Vinton had taken all the details." Therefore the report, Tom thought. If Mrs. Evans had talked to someone else, Vinton couldn't ignore the sighting he had to file a report of some kind. But he didn't have to make it complete. And he didn't have to follow up on it. "I was calling again because I'd just remembered something else I thought he should know," Mrs. Evans was saying. "It was about the blanket the little girl was wrapped in."

  "What about it?"

  "Well, it wasn't your usual bed blanket. It was rough, like it was handwoven, and it had an odd pattern on it. I don't know how to describe it without saying it looked African. Is that important? On TV mysteries things like that are always important."

  "It could be very important, Mrs. Evans."

  "Yes," she said with satisfaction. "I thought it would be."

  "Mrs. Evans, you didn't see the person who drove away in the car?"

  "Oh, no. And that puzzled me. He must have stopped there to use the restroom, but I didn't run into him when I went to get Roy."

  "Were the men's and women's restrooms in separate buildings?"

  Mrs. Evans was silent for a moment "Yes, as a matter of fact they were quite a little distance apart. But you don't think a woman could have taken that child and…and done those things to her!"

  "Anything is possible."

  "Oh, sweet Jesus," Mrs. Evans breathed. "A woman."

  "Maybe. Mrs. Evans, can you remember anything else?"

  "That's it."

  "I want you to know how much I appreciate your giving me this information," Tom said in his warmest tone. "I know it wasn't a pleasant memory for you to dredge up."

  "No, it certainly wasn't," she said crisply, then with a slight tremulousness, "Detective?"

  "Yes?"

  "Did I handle things wrong all those years ago? I knew Harry Vinton wasn't doing right by my information, and I wanted to come to police headquarters and find someone who would, but Roy, rest his soul, talked me out of it. He said, why make trouble for ourselves? And I went along with him. But I've always…I've always thought that maybe I could have saved that little girl's life."

  And you could have if Harry Vinton hadn't been in charge of the investigation, Tom thought furiously. The man had suppressed this woman's invaluable evidence, but that was not her fault. "Mrs. Evans, you did just fine," he told her kindly. "I wish everyone was as observant and cooperative as you."

  "Oh, well…" He could sense her relaxing. "That's good to know. I've worried for a good many years."

  "Stop worrying. And thank you very much for the information."

  Tom hung up, leaned back in his chair, and drew in a deep breath. Hayley Corday wrapped in an African print blanket? Of course, Mrs. Evans hadn't seen the blanket for almost twenty years, and her description amounted to a vague impression about the design, but no one could ignore the implications, not when old reports showed that Millicent Longworth had been touring Africa when her father died and she came home to take over the business. Still, he wanted to be sure. He picked up the phone and dialed again. "Caroline," he said in a moment, trying to soun
d casual. "How are you?"

  "Okay. No more phone calls." Her voice was tight and worried, nevertheless. "Is this a friendly call or is there something I can do for you?"

  "Both. Actually, I wonder what you can tell me about Millicent Longworth."

  "Millicent? Why?"

  "You'll hear about it on the evening news, so I might as well tell you. She was burned to death in her home last night."

  Caroline gasped. "Not another fire!"

  "And another murder. She'd been handcuffed to the bed."

  "Oh, my God."

  "Yeah, it was pretty bad. Her brother didn't know how lucky he was to have a heart attack and get away from there. Otherwise he might have been killed, too."

  "Heaven only knows how the shock of his sister's death will affect him after what he's just been through."

  "Did you know him?"

  "No. I never even met him. He was living in Italy with his wife when Chris and I were married. Chris said his wife died and he came home just a few years ago because of heart trouble."

  "But you did know Millicent."

  "I wouldn't say I knew her. We'd met. I talked to her for a few minutes maybe four or five times when I lived in the cabin."

  "Didn't she travel around the world, too?"

  "Yes. She and her brother were sort of a team until he got married. Then she went on traveling by herself. She came home the year Chris and I were married, the same year her father died. Now there was a tyrant."

  "The father?"

  "Yes. Of course, he didn't deign to even speak to Chris and me, and he was trying to get rid of the cabin, even though it wasn't on his land. He'd tried to buy Chris out several times and finally was resorting to calling in local political favors to get rid of us. He used to be in Congress, you know. He fought us right up until the week he died."

  "So then Millicent came home."

  "Yes. I wasn't surprised she and her brother were always on the go, never staying around their father, but I was surprised that Garrison didn't come back when the old man was gone. I guess there was no love lost between them, though, and Garrison was very happy in Italy. It's just strange that after all that extensive travel, Millicent became a recluse when she came home." Caroline paused. "You know she was a suspect in Hayley's murder."