Last Whisper

by Carlene Thompson

  “Did you talk to Mia’s parents?” Brooke asked. “Did they know if she was a friend of Mia’s?”

  “The parents couldn’t help, either. You know that Mia still lived at home, yet after we gave them a description, they claimed they’d never seen the girl and they didn’t notice her at the funeral.”

  “So she was sent there specifically to give those flowers to me,” Brooke said vaguely, then added, “I have to speak to Mia’s parents after that awful scene I made. It was so disrespectful.”

  “They were already seated in the main part of the church and you were in the entrance,” Jay told her. “They said they heard some kind of noise, but with the organ playing and the murmur of people behind them, they didn’t really think much about it. They did wonder why you weren’t there. Apparently Mia had talked a lot about you.”

  “I was supposed to have dinner at their house this weekend. It would have been the first time I met them. They must think I’m awful.”

  Jay smiled. “I’m sure they don’t. They got your funeral wreath, and they know what you’ve been going through.”

  “Which means they know their daughter was killed in my place. Yes, I’m sure they think I’m wonderful,” Brooke said bitterly.

  “All right, enough about the flowers,” Vincent said abruptly. “You said you weren’t going to let what Jay told you get to you, and here you are looking like you’re going to cry. Finish your cheesecake.”

  “I don’t think I can,” Brooke said waveringly.

  Vincent reached for her margarita glass and handed it to her. “Then finish this.” He turned to Jay and Stacy, both looking at Brooke with a mixture of concern and helplessness. “Did she tell you about downing those three beers in record time at our house?” Vincent asked. “I’ll tell you, drinking beer fast makes this woman burp. I mean, really burp. You should have heard her!”

  “Brooke burps?” Stacy asked, playing along by looking amazed. “I thought she was too ladylike.”

  “Good heavens, Stacy, I’m human,” Brooke managed.

  “I know, but burping? And you were a guest? I can’t believe it!”

  “Oh, you’d better believe it all right,” Vincent said. “Scared Elise half to death. Rattled the windows. I think one actually cracked.”

  The banter went on for another couple of minutes until Brooke’s imminent tears had vanished, although her feelings about Mia’s parents hadn’t. Did they want to hear from her under the circumstances? Would they be offended if she kept her distance, or would they be insulted, even hostile, if she approached them face-to-face with her sympathy? She’d decide later, she thought. At one time she would have asked her grandmother, who always gave the right advice, but now Brooke was on her own.

  The phone rang and Brooke jumped, sloshing part of her drink into her lap. She grabbed for a napkin and began wiping at her jeans while the phone rang a second time.

  “I’ll get it,” Stacy said, setting aside her own drink and reaching for the phone on the end table beside her. Without glancing at the caller ID, she picked up the main base before Brooke’s message played on the fourth ring. “Yeager residence,” Stacy said briskly.

  Brooke had dried most of the margarita from her jeans before she noticed Vincent and Jay looking at Stacy, whose face had grown stiff as her hand tightened on the receiver. Her lips narrowed and she slammed the handset back on the base. Then she drew a breath, looked around at all the staring faces, quickly adopted a weak attempt at a smile, and announced loudly, “Wrong number!”

  “Stacy, that wasn’t a wrong number,” Brooke said.

  “Sure it was.” Stacy’s voice had taken on an unnatural firmness. “I’ve been getting them all the time. Some pitiful-sounding guy wanting ‘Lila.’ I keep finding these rambling messages from him on the answering machine. There’s another guy, too. And some old lady who thinks she has her grandson’s number and just gives him hell.”

  An equally false smile appeared on Jay’s face as Brooke saw Stacy, sitting beside her husband on the couch, give him a light jab in the ribs. “Yeah, we get a lot of wrong numbers,” he agreed.

  “I don’t,” Brooke said.

  “You have an unlisted number.”

  Brooke asked tautly, “Stacy, I can tell when something is wrong. Who was that?”

  Stacy sighed. “I really don’t know. Just some guy.”

  “Just some guy who said what?” Stacy took a sip of her drink. “Stacy.”

  “Oh, all right!” Stacy snapped. She breathed deeply, looking at Brooke unwillingly. “He said, ‘You shouldn’t have ruined such a beautiful vase of roses, Brooke.’ ”

  fifteen

  1

  “What was the number on that call?” Jay asked abruptly as Brooke sat frozen, her mouth slightly open.

  “I don’t know,” Stacy said. “I didn’t look.”

  Jay reached across her to the phone. “I’ll scroll back through the calls she’s received,” he said. “The last call was five-five-five four-four-three-three. Now all I need is the phone directory.”

  “Jay, the Charleston phone book doesn’t have a reverse directory,” Stacy reminded him.

  “Damn,” Jay muttered, then picked up the receiver. “I’ll have to call headquarters. Don’t worry, Brooke. We’ll know in a few minutes where that call came from.”

  “Great,” she said stiffly.

  “It is great!” Stacy exclaimed. “Now we’ve got him!”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” Brooke said glumly. “Zach is too smart to call from someplace you could hone in on in minutes and go after him.”

  Vincent touched her hand. “You don’t know that for sure, Brooke.”

  They sat in near silence for ten minutes until the phone rang again. This time Jay glanced at the caller ID before he picked up the phone. Brooke watched the hopeful look on his face fade. Then he hung up and glanced around the room. “The call came from a phone booth half a mile away.”

  “I told you.” Brooke’s voice had gone completely flat. “Zach wasn’t about to call from some cozy motel room where you could locate him and pick him up in twenty minutes.”

  After a moment, Stacy burst out, “Jay, why can’t you people find this nut? He was shot, for God’s sake. He had to get medical care. Haven’t you even questioned staff at hospital emergency rooms and private-practice doctors?”

  “Certainly we have,” Jay returned, sounding slightly ruffled. “Do you think we’re idiots? But maybe Zach frightened someone into silence. There are doctors who don’t have the greatest scruples in the world. They’d be willing to take a big fee to patch up old Zach and keep their mouths shut.”

  “Where would he get that kind of money?” Stacy demanded.

  “Robert Eads’s wallet was missing,” Vincent interrupted. “People have said he always carried quite a bit of cash. Zach could be using that money.” He looked at Jay. “Sorry. Hal told Dad this stuff and sometimes I can’t keep my own big mouth shut.”

  “It’s all right,” Jay said mildly. “The police weren’t trying to keep any of that quiet.”

  Vincent frowned. “But I just jumped in like a know-it-all—”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Stacy said impatiently. “Will you two stop being so polite and trying not to step on each other’s toes? No one cares who said what. We only care what the police know, which seems to be nothing except that Tavell is really good at getting people’s credit card numbers. I’d like to know how he does that.”

  “People drop copies of credit card receipts in the trash all the time,” Jay said. “They should always tear them up or, better yet, take them home and destroy them, but they get careless. Then the thief sidles up, picks out the receipt, and voilà—he has the number. And remember, these flower orders have been phoned in. No one has placed an order in person.”

  “We’re always being warned about how easy credit card number theft has become,” Brooke said. “I’m not careful with my receipts, either.”

  “All right, enough with the
credit card receipts.” Stacy looked almost annoyed. “Haven’t you found anything else, Jay?”

  “No, we haven’t.” He ignored her impatient tone. “We don’t even know how he’s getting around town. Obviously he has a car, but no cars have been reported stolen. We’re assuming he knows someone who lets him use their car—maybe an old friend, the person who kept Brooke’s mother’s letter opener for him all these years.”

  Brooke shook her head. “Zach didn’t have any friends.”

  “None that you know about. You were only eleven when he was arrested,” Jay pointed out. “Or he could have stolen a car that no one has reported.”

  “Why wouldn’t someone report a stolen car?” Stacy asked.

  “Maybe they don’t know it was stolen,” Jay said. “He could have taken an old car tucked away someplace like a shed or garage that’s rarely entered. The only trouble with that theory is guessing how Tavell would know where to look. He may have just stumbled across something. . . .”

  “That may be the case, but I doubt it. Too coincidental.” Vincent suddenly looked excited. “I was thinking of a case I wrote about nearly five years ago. A guy took a car out of long-term parking at the airport. We were just there today. That’s what made me think of it. In the case I studied, the owner had one of those magnetic hide-a-key things stuck under the wheel well, and the airport lot ticket was inside on the dash. All the thief had to do was pay the parking fee and drive away. The owner didn’t return for a couple of weeks and didn’t even know his car was missing. Tavell might have pulled the same trick.”

  Jay stared off, thinking. “The parking lots at the airport keep an inventory of license plate numbers. We can check cars present in the parking lot against the inventory. If one is missing, even if it hasn’t been reported . . .”

  “Then bingo!” Stacy exclaimed. She looked at her husband. “At this point, I have only one question, Jay. Are the police always so slow in catching someone like Zach Tavell?”

  Brooke saw Jay flush. He took Stacy’s remark as a slight on the expertise of the police, and Brooke was fairly sure that was how Stacy meant it, although she was rarely critical of Jay. Stacy seemed unaware of how her remark might be interpreted, though. She gazed at Jay steadily, without an ounce of apology in her expression.

  “Tavell was the first person to break out of Mount Olive, a maximum security prison,” Jay said evenly. “He’s an extremely bright man, Stace.”

  “And a dangerous man,” Stacy persisted.

  “I’m well aware of that,” Jay answered. “So is the rest of the Charleston police force as well as the state police. We’re doing the best we can, but we’re not miracle workers.”

  “It just seems—” Stacy started to continue, but Vincent cut her off.

  “It seems everything is being done that can be done, Stacy. I’ve known Hal Myers all my life. He’s as good, or almost as good, a cop as my father. In the past ten years I’ve interviewed some of the best, and believe me, Hal can hold his own with any of them. As for Jay, he wouldn’t have reached the level he has or be working with Hal if he weren’t on his way to reaching the same heights.” Jay didn’t look at Vincent, but Brooke noticed the tiny gleam of appreciation in his blue eyes.

  Brooke also heard the slight hint of dislike in Vincent’s voice when he talked to Stacy. He’d been put off by her when they met, Brooke thought. He was trying to like Stacy, but he still had reservations, just like she did about him. They were wary of each other, and an evening of sharing chicken and margaritas wasn’t going to fix anything. “I know you care about Brooke, Stacy. We all do,” Vincent went on. “But it seems to me everything is being done for her that can be done. Of course, if she wouldn’t be so damned stubborn and would leave Charleston—”

  “Out of the question,” Brooke said brusquely. “I’m staying, but I’ll be careful.”

  “She won’t be careful alone.” An inflexible look crept into Stacy’s gray eyes. “I’m spending the night here. That phone call gave me the creeps. I can imagine what it did to Brooke.”

  Brooke raised her eyebrows. “What about Elise? I’m not sending her over to your apartment so she can howl all night and keep Jay awake.”

  “I’ll just take some antihistamine,” Stacy said. “Besides, I have so much tequila in me, I think I’ve become immune to allergies.”

  Jay smiled. “I don’t think that’s possible, honey.”

  “We’ll see. And if it is, I’ll write an article, get it published in The New England Journal of Medicine, and then we can take that trip to France with my royalties.”

  Jay looked hopelessly at Brooke. “She’s definitely had too much tequila.”

  “I think we all have.” Vincent gave them a forced smile, then glanced at his watch. “Ten o’clock. I’d better get home and check on Dad. I just hate leaving you here, Brooke.”

  “I have two surveillance policemen parked in back and two in front of the building. I have a detective next door. I will be sleeping with my best friend, who is in very good physical shape, I might add.”

  “When she’s not drunk,” Jay muttered.

  “I am not drunk,” Stacy fired back. “Just mellow.”

  Brooke looked at Elise sound asleep in her doggie bed. “And I have a vicious guard dog.”

  Vincent rolled his eyes. “Sure. Whatever you say.”

  Brooke got up. “I’ll walk you to the door.”

  Jay and Stacy began to talk quietly as Brooke opened her front door.

  “Be sure to lock these doors behind me.”

  “Vincent, you tell me that every time you leave. Besides, I always lock the doors at night.”

  “And be sure the window near the fire escape is locked.”

  “Yes, sir. Any further orders?”

  “Yes.” He gently touched her cheek, bent his dark head slightly as if he were going to kiss her, then looked over at Jay and Stacy. Instead, he tapped Brooke gently on the lips with his fingers. “Have a good night, Cinnamon Girl. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  Half an hour later, Stacy had gathered her nightclothes from her own apartment and slipped into bed beside Brooke. The situation felt awkward, and for a while Brooke lay perfectly still on her back, instead of curling into her usual fetal position. She listened to street noises. She listened to Stacy breathing. And then she realized that Stacy hadn’t moved, either. They lay on the double bed like two mannequins on display.

  “Are you asleep?” Brooke finally whispered.

  “No. I’m not the least bit sleepy.”

  “I’m not, either, but I don’t want to get up and watch TV or anything.”

  “I don’t, either.” Stacy rolled over, propping her face on her hand and looking down into Brooke’s. “Let’s pretend we’re teenagers having a sleepover.”

  “Okay,” Brooke said. She felt silly, yet there was something comforting about the game, as if their sleeping together were just part of a fun young-girl ritual, not the product of fear of one woman being terrorized. “Did you have many sleepovers when you were growing up?”

  “No. How about you?”

  “A few. Grossmutter always seemed sort of irritated by having young girls squealing and giggling all night. Before she took me in after my mother died, sleepovers were out of the question with Zach.” Brooke didn’t like to think of the regimented life they led after Zach’s arrival and the way she’d tried to make herself as unobtrusive as possible because she knew Zach really didn’t want her around. “You never talk much about your family life,” Brooke said. “What was growing up at your house like?”

  Stacy went quiet for a moment, then shrugged, although Brooke had the feeling she’d just adopted a nonchalant pose to hide something that really hurt. “My dad left when I was pretty young. I think there was another woman. I never knew for certain.”

  “He never came to see you?”

  “No. Out of sight, out of mind, I guess. Anyway, Mom was crushed. She dated some, but it was always casual. At least I never had to worry
about the same experience you had, but she was as lost to me as Dad. She grew more and more distant.” Stacy paused. “And then she died,” she said abruptly. “No big illness—she just died.”

  “When you were a child?”

  “No. I was eighteen.”

  “I’m sorry,” Brooke murmured. Having heard the phrase a hundred times herself, she knew how empty it sounded, but she couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  “I think she was glad to die and just get it over with. At least she didn’t have to think about Dad anymore.”

  “And that’s why you grew up the tough girl.”

  Stacy looked at her for a moment, then smiled. “You think I’m a tough girl?”

  “That’s how you seem.”

  “Yeah, well, I guess that’s how I am. You had your grandmother, who adored you. I wasn’t quite so lucky.”

  “Until you met Jay.”

  Stacy laughed softly. “Yes, until I met Jay. I guess I was lucky, wasn’t I?”

  “You both were.”

  “Spoken like a loyal friend.”

  “Spoken like a highly observant woman who can see how much he loves you.”

  “Warts and all.”

  Brooke drew back in mock horror. “You have warts and you’re in my bed?”

  Stacy laughed appreciatively, then said, “Don’t worry. You only get them by handling toads. In my younger years . . .”

  “Oh, I don’t want to hear it,” Brooke groaned. She shifted her position slightly, noticing that she didn’t feel quite as tense as she had a few minutes ago, and asked abruptly, “Do you ever get the feeling someone has been in your apartment?”

  “Definitely.”

  “It’s weird, isn’t it?”

  “No, because someone has been in our apartments.”

  “Toads,” Brooke returned, thinking Stacy was still teasing her.

  “Almost as bad. Eunice.”

  “Eunice! Eunice Dormer?”

  “None other.”

  “Why?” Brooke asked.

  “To snoop.”

  “Oh, Stacy, I don’t think so,” Brooke said. She’d always rather liked Eunice, or at least felt sorry for her. “What makes you think she snoops?”