Carlene Thompson

by Black for Remembrance (epub)

  When Millicent's coffin, covered with a heavy maroon cloth, was wheeled in, the smattering of mourners turned to look at it with interest. Not grief—there was not a tear to be seen in the whole chapel—but interest. But that's only natural, Caroline thought. Millicent had spent her twenties and thirties traveling and after her return had become a recluse. Even Garrison, felled by his heart attack, had not been able to attend. David had found out for her that the old man was going directly from the hospital into a nursing home. No, those attending the funeral all seemed to be very old—probably friends of Millicent's father, or else merely the curious who hoped for an afternoon's entertainment. Caroline knew about the latter—professional funeral attenders who got some kind of thrill out of seeing other people grieve. Nearly two hundred had attended Hayley's funeral.

  Which brought her back to her reason for being here. There didn't seem to be many flowers only a few bunches arranged rather clumsily around the altar. She peered through the dimness, wishing she had sat closer to the front, but of course the minister was speaking now and she couldn't move. Impatiently she listened to him drone on, his sermon uninspired, the mourners fidgeting. At last the final hymn came. Caroline stood, pretending to sing, and glanced at her watch when Millicent's coffin was wheeled out. The whole thing had lasted twenty minutes, but it had seemed like two hours.

  Caroline had purposely left her purse open and dumped everything on the floor when she stood to leave. While the other mourners filed from the church, she was on her hands and knees, scrambling for her keys, lipstick, comb, billfold, and the dozen other things she always carried. When she came up with a Milkbone, she almost laughed. By this time the church had emptied and the minister had disappeared behind one of the mahogany doors to the right of the altar.

  Like a thief she stole forward. Poor Millicent had commanded only about twenty floral offerings and none of those elaborate. Caroline walked down the line of pink, white, and yellow until she came to a small bouquet of black. Why hadn't she noticed it from the back? It stood out like a boil on a porcelain cheek.

  With one last look around to make sure she was alone, she bent forward to pick up the bouquet. As she rose, the card dropped to the floor, but even from that distance Caroline could read the large, childish printing:

  8'ock for Thirteen.

  "I'LL GET IT," Caroline called to Fidelia when the doorbell rang. Fidelia nodded, never breaking her back-and-forth strokes with the vacuum cleaner.

  When Caroline opened the door, she was surprised to see Tom standing on the porch, his gray coat pulled tight against the November chill.

  "Hello, Caroline," he said cheerfully, although she detected uneasiness in his eyes. He glanced at her wool skirt and low-heeled pumps. "Looks like you're going out."

  "Yes. Unfortunately I attended a PTA meeting when they were choosing people to help with costumes for the Thanksgiving play. Everyone knows I do a lot of needlework, so when they asked for volunteers and all eyes were on me, I felt my hand shooting up in the air." She smiled. "No guts."

  "Just think of it as your good deed for the year."

  "I guess. I just don't feel like going to the school today to have a meeting with the director of the play."

  "Well, before you go, I wonder if you'd take a few minutes to talk with me about the flowers you found at Millicent's funeral."

  "Of course, Tom. I'm a terrible hostess these days I didn't even ask you in."

  "No need to explain." Tom stepped in and glanced at Fidelia, who was finishing up the living room. "Is there somewhere we can talk privately?"

  "The kitchen. I'll get you some coffee."

  Tom sat down at the big maple table and Caroline got coffee mugs. "Cream? Sugar?"

  "Black."

  She tried to ignore the tremor in her hands as she poured the coffee, wondering what on earth Tom had found out about the flowers he had come by to pick up the afternoon of Millicent's funeral. That was only yesterday. Had he located the source already?

  She placed the coffee in front of him and sat down, looking at him expectantly. "Okay. What is it?"

  "First of all I want to ask you again if you recognized anyone at Millicent's funeral. Think really hard."

  "I have, Tom. I didn't know anyone."

  "Wild hope, I guess. I thought maybe something had come to you."

  "No. I keep thinking that if I'd been less intent on finding the flowers, I might have noticed someone suspicious-looking."

  Tom smiled. "Suspicious-looking characters usually only show up in fiction. Serial killers tend to look perfectly normal. Take Ted Bundy or Albert De Salvo, the Boston Strangler, for instance. If they hadn't looked so normal, they wouldn't have been able to get close enough to kill all those women."

  "I hadn't thought of that." Caroline took a sip of coffee. "So you do think we're dealing with a serial killer?"

  "No doubt about it. Anyway, first of all, I haven't been able to turn up anything on the bouquet. As we said, the orchids could have been bought in any store selling silk flowers, not necessarily a florist's shop."

  "Except that I doubt if too many stores sell black orchids, Tom."

  "I know, and we're already following that up. As for the handwriting, there's not much to say. We have a handwriting expert we consult frequently. He seems to be pretty good. The trouble is, this is a child's printing. He says it's too crude to reveal anything useful."

  "A child's printing," Caroline repeated. "Not an adult's printing made to look like a child's?"

  Tom nodded reluctantly. "No."

  "Oh, God."

  "Don't forget that an adult could have had a child write it. But I didn't really come here to tell you about the handwriting. Do you remember Harry Vinton?"

  Caroline frowned. "Of course. He was the detective in charge of the investigation of Hayley's kidnapping."

  "Right. Well, this morning his sister found his body in his house. It's too early for an autopsy report, but it looks like he's been dead for at least thirty-six hours." His voice lowered. "Caroline, his throat had been slashed just like Pamela's and the house set on fire."

  For a moment everything went black for Caroline. She held tightly to the table edges until her vision cleared. "If there was a fire, why wasn't he discovered sooner?"

  "The fire didn't really catch. No kerosene this time. It amounted mostly to scorching around the body."

  "And when his funeral is held, there will be a black bouquet reading, "To Harry, Black for Remembrance."

  "I'd bet my last dollar on it."

  Caroline stood up and paced over to the kitchen counter, her eyes falling on Melinda's pitiful pot of dirt called Aurora. "Pamela, Chris, Millicent, Vinton. All the victims have something in common Hayley."

  Tom made a steeple of his fingers, not looking at Caroline. "I see a stronger connection between Millicent and Vinton than the others. I've done a lot of digging on your daughter's case. Evidence was suppressed by Vinton—evidence incriminating Millicent Longworth. In addition, I'm almost positive Vinton was at the Longworth house the night before Millicent died, the evening after I'd confronted him with what I knew. I think Millicent paid him off a long time ago to save her skin. I also think he got scared that she was falling apart—maybe even responsible for the calls to you—and he went up there to have it out with her. Garrison had a heart attack that night"

  "It was the shock," Caroline interrupted. "That's what Millicent said. Garrison's heart attack was caused by the shock. I thought she meant the shock of Chris's shooting. But maybe she meant the shock of finding out what she'd done to Hayley."

  "That sounds logical."

  "But, Tom, if Millicent killed Hayley, and for some reason killed Pamela, then who killed her and Vinton?"

  "That's where my theory falls apart, although I know in my bones Vinton had something to do with Hayley's kidnapping."

  "Then who? Who could have killed the three of them and shot Chris?"

  "Of course, there's always the possibility that a jealou
s husband shot Chris."

  "But the doll. He says there was a doll on the bed, and I believe him. Whoever shot him had Twinkle."

  "Caroline, you have to consider that the doll you and Chris saw wasn't Twinkle." He held up his hand when she started to object. "I know you don't want to believe that, but you made other dolls almost exactly like Twinkle. We have to consider that your break-in and Chris's shooting are related—you were the parents of Hayley—but that those two incidents aren't related to the deaths of Millicent, Pamela, and Vinton. After all, what could be the connection between Pamela and Hayley, except that they went to kindergarten together?"

  "I don't know, but there's something." She looked at him closely. "And you know there's something, don't you?"

  "I don't know it. But I feel it" He stared out the window. "Still, I have to be objective, Caroline, and look at these incidents from all angles. That's what I get paid for."

  Fidelia came to the kitchen entrance. "Sorry to interrupt, but I wonder if you want me to stay around until you get home dis afternoon."

  Caroline shook her head. "I probably won't be back until around four, and you should be done by two, so there's no sense in your wasting all that time."

  "I could come and pick up Melinda at tree."

  "No thanks. I'll just make her wait and come home with me."

  "She won't like dat," Fidelia laughed. "She'll miss her soap opera."

  Caroline managed a smile. "It won't kill her just this once."

  "Okay, I just wanted to make sure," Fidelia said, vanishing back into the dining room.

  "I'm surprised she's still working for you," Tom said softly.

  Caroline shrugged. "I have my reasons."

  "Still doing your own investigative work, huh?"

  "Please don't start sounding like David."

  "All right. I can't tell you who to allow in your house. And I won't keep you since you've got an appointment." Tom stood, then shuffled uncomfortably, looking just past her eyes. "Caroline, I know Chris told you about him and Lucy."

  "You know about them?"

  Tom nodded. "Lucy told me the whole story when we started getting serious." His eyes finally met and held Caroline's. "You know what happened was an accident. She was stoned, depressed. Still, she had the abortion because she didn't want you to find out."

  "And now she's sterile," Caroline said bitterly, "so I'm supposed to feel sorry for her and forget that she made love to my husband."

  "She doesn't want your pity. She doesn't expect you to forget. She just wants you to forgive her."

  "That's a pretty tall order, Tom. I trusted her implicitly."

  "Is it too much to ask for someone who's been your best friend for over twenty years?" Tom smiled crookedly, making little commas on either side of his mouth. "I see both sides of this, honestly. It's just that I love Lucille and it tears me apart to see her suffering so."

  "I'm suffering too." Caroline sighed. "Tom, you're a good man to plead Lucy's case, especially in light of the circumstances. But right now I don't know how I feel. I don't hate her, if that's what she's worried about. I, of all people, know what power Chris can wield over a woman. But whether things can ever be the same between us…" she shook her head "…I just don't know."

  "At least you haven't said definitely they can't be the same." He took his keys out of his pocket, jingling them nervously. "I admire you a lot, Caroline. And I don't blame you for not wanting to deal with this situation right now. First we have to make sure your family is safe. Then you can sort out your personal relationships."

  I wonder if Lucy realizes how lucky she is to have Tom? Caroline thought as she watched him walk back to his car. Just about as lucky as I am to have David.

  The afternoon had been endless. With the news that Harry Vinton had suppressed evidence in the search for Hayley and almost twenty years later been murdered just like Pamela, she could hardly concentrate on what Miss Cummings, Melinda's teacher and director of the play, was saying about costumes and sets and what unlucky child was going to play the pumpkin, and a few times she caught the woman's eyes on her with a mixture of puzzlement and impatience. To make matters worse, when Melinda heard she'd have to stay at school until four, she lapsed into one of her rare sulking fits, grumbling and whining until at last Caroline had threatened to spank her. Now, furious and petulant, she hunkered in the bucket seat of the Thunderbird scowling for all she was worth.

  "Melinda, I hate it when you act like this," Caroline said.

  "You embarrassed me in front of Miss Cummings."

  "You embarrassed yourself, acting like a bad-tempered three-year-old. What's the matter with you today?"

  "I'm not three, I'm eight, and I'm old enough to go home by myself. You shouldn't have made me wait on you."

  "I don't want you going to and from school by yourself."

  "Other kids do."

  "You're not other kids. Besides, you're only mad because you missed your stupid show."

  "Guiding Light is not stupid! And you could have turned on the VCR."

  "I forgot, all right?" Caroline took a deep breath. "Let's both just try to cool down."

  "Fine with me." Melinda turned to stare out the passenger's window. "But I'm not three years old."

  Caroline clenched her teeth and turned down their street. She'd tried counting to ten and was now working her way to one hundred, to no avail.

  After they pulled into the garage, Melinda scrambled out of the car and stood by the door with ponderous patience while Caroline fished in her purse for the key. When they got in, Melinda went straight to the back porch to release George, chained as always by Fidelia when she left. He bounded into the house barking and nearly knocked down Caroline. "Stop it!" she snapped. "You calm down this minute!"

  The dog looked at her in hurt surprise, and Melinda bent to stroke his head, muttering, "She's a big meanie today. Don't even listen to her."

  "Why don't you two go in the family room and watch TV?" Caroline suggested, trying to keep the shrillness out of her voice.

  "Guiding Light is over and I can't stand The Brady Bunch. I'm going to my room."

  "Good. Stay there until your mood improves."

  Melinda flounced off with George in her wake. Suddenly the door flew back with familiar force and Greg hurtled into the room. "Hiya, Mom! Guess what happened today?"

  "Greg, do you have to throw yourself into every room? Can't you just walk in like a normal person?"

  "Well, yeah, I guess I could," he said, totally unoffended. "But don't you want to hear what happened?"

  At that moment Melinda shrieked from upstairs. Caroline jumped and Greg's jaw sagged. Then he was running out of the kitchen, through the living room, and up the stairs with Caroline behind him. When they reached Melinda's room, they found her in the doorway, her small face white, tears pouring down her cheeks. "M-my room," she sobbed. "Something's been in my room."

  Beyond her lay total havoc. The dotted-Swiss curtains had been torn from the rods and shredded, the white flounced bedspread ripped and tattered, the little white rocker smashed against the wall. Her once-beautiful dolls gazed at them blankly from eyeless, noseless faces, and her stuffed animals' arms and legs lay ripped from their bodies, dripping stuffing.

  George whined and trotted past them into the room, moving toward the dresser, which lay in shambles. Greg followed the dog, looking around him in wonder. Then, when he reached Melinda's mirror, his face paled.

  "Mom, you'd better come look at this," he said softly.

  Like one in a dream Caroline picked her way through the ruins to stand by Greg's side. And there she saw what had made him turn pale. Written on the mirror in what looked like blood was a message:

  HELP ME MOMMY

  Chapter 14

  DAVID STARED AT the ruin of his daughter's bedroom, his face rigid. "Fidelia," he muttered.

  Caroline looked at him blankly. "Fidelia?"

  "Fidelia did this while you were at school."

  "David, that's abs
urd."

  Melinda, who had not let go of her brother's hand since they found the message on the mirror, shook her head vehemently. "Fidelia wouldn't do this, Daddy. She loves me."

  "So she says."

  "She does," Melinda insisted. "A kid knows who loves them."

  "She's right," Greg put in. "Fidelia's okay. Besides, where would she have gotten the blood to write the message?"

  But David's mind was made up. "We don't know that it's blood. Besides, George would have attacked any stranger who broke in."

  "George was outside," Melinda told him. "I unchained him when we got home."

  David nodded. "Don't you see the pattern? Every time something strange happens in Melinda's room, Fidelia's been here and George is chained on the back porch."

  "Fidelia wouldn't need to chain George," Caroline said. "She's not a stranger. He wouldn't attack her."

  "But maybe you've got part of the pattern right, Dad," Greg added. "Maybe the person only comes in when George is chained outside."

  "Or maybe it wasn't a person at all," Melinda quavered. "Maybe it was a ghost." All three of them looked at her in shock. "Well, a ghost wouldn't need a key."

  "Who put this ghost business in your head?" David demanded. "Fidelia?"

  "No, Daddy, she's never said anything about ghosts. I was just thinking that…well…since the writing on the mirror says 'Help me Mommy' maybe it's the ghost of Mommy's little girl that got murdered."

  David and Caroline exchanged a glance. She'd told him about Jenny's mother describing Hayley's murder to her daughter, and Jenny passing the information on to Melinda. David had been furious. "Maybe we should have told her ourselves," Caroline had said. "We could have softened it somehow, not gone into all the horrible details." But it was too late now. David bent down and hugged Melinda fiercely. "Honey, Hayley was your sister and she was a very sweet little girl. You can take my word for that—I knew her. So even if she had come back as a ghost, which we both know is silly, she would never do anything to hurt you. She would have loved you."