Last Whisper

by Carlene Thompson

  Judith drew back. “You don’t have to be flippant and make fun of me!”

  “You said they act odd together. I gave a suggestion as to why they might act odd. How is that making fun of you?”

  Judith’s laser blue eyes narrowed. “You think you’re better than everyone here, don’t you, Brooke?”

  Taken aback, Brooke asked incredulously, “Why would you think that?”

  “Because you’re semifamous. Or should I say infamous? You got to be one of the players in the famous ‘Rose Murder.’ You got to testify at a murderer’s trial and have your picture splashed all over the paper when you were just a kid. It’s a wonder you don’t charge for autographs.”

  Brooke tossed down her pen, swept up in a shaking fury. “You’re absolutely right as usual, Judith. Having your mother murdered always gives one a sense of superiority. None of the rest of you in this office got to live through that lovely, fairy-tale experience. Just me. I’m the one people like you speculate about, gossip about, make up stories about. That certainly does make me feel a step above everyone here, especially you, Judith, with your absolutely humdrum, boringly normal upbringing. Now, will you please take your meddlesome, vicious, destructive self away from my desk before I run this pen straight up that beak you call a nose!”

  Judith backed away from her, her mouth opening slowly. Everyone else in the office was looking at them, some in shock, some on the verge of laughter. Her flat cheeks almost as red as her hair, Judith accused shrilly, “I think you’re as crazy as your stepfather!” Then she flounced away to the restroom.

  As soon as she slammed the door behind her, a burst of applause broke out in the main room. In spite of her embarrassment at her outburst, Brooke couldn’t help smiling a bit as one of the other Realtors, Charlie, exclaimed, “She’s had that coming for a long time. Good job, Brooke!”

  The office hoopla had drawn the attention of Aaron and Madeleine. Aaron rose quickly from his desk, brushed past Madeleine, and opened his door. “What’s going on out here?”

  “Judith chose the wrong day to pick on Brooke,” Hannah said, beaming. “Don’t get mad at Brooke. She was just trying to do her work. Judith wouldn’t let her alone.”

  Aaron looked at all of them without a trace of emotion. Normally he would have either chastised everyone or insisted on having a private meeting with the two warring employees. This time he looked at Brooke and asked, “Are you all right?”

  “Of course. I just blew off steam that I probably should have kept to myself.”

  “I doubt that,” Aaron said. He looked around the room. “When my sister leaves and Ms. Lambert finally emerges from the sanctuary of the restroom, will someone ask her to come to my office?”

  He looked like he was going to say something else, changed his mind, and returned to his office, shutting the door behind him. Surreptitiously everyone watched Madeleine begin talking again, loudly, as Aaron ignored her. After no more than three minutes, she turned and left his office, stopping to give all the employees a murderous look before she swept out the front doors as grandly as she could manage with her limp.

  “Trouble in paradise,” Hannah murmured.

  Charlie made a droll face. “It’s about time. I was getting sick of those two fawning over each other. Hey, Hannah, let’s do a coin toss. Heads I tell Lady Judith she’s being sent to the principal’s office, tails you do.”

  “Okay,” Hannah said hesitantly, then breathed in relief when the coin came up heads. “Looks like it’s your job, Charlie.” She turned to Brooke. “I have to admit, Aaron scares me.”

  “Don’t let him,” Brooke said. “He’s mostly hot air.”

  Hannah smiled. “I wish I was as brave as you. I don’t think anyone frightens you.”

  Brooke looked over at Mia’s still empty desk and thought of the man who had brutally killed both Mia and Brooke’s mother. I wish what Hannah said were true, Brooke thought. God, how I wish that were true.

  4

  Four o’clock, Brooke noted on her wristwatch as she climbed out of her car. She’d just shown a truly darling young expectant couple a house they wanted desperately, a house that would be perfect for them and the child who would arrive in two months, a house too far out of their price range. These situations happened every day, but this particular couple had gotten to Brooke, maybe because they looked like a young version of her own parents. She promised to talk to the owner about lowering the asking price and saw the hope flare in their innocent, smooth faces, which hurt her even more because she knew the owner had no intention of dropping the price by one dollar.

  Tired and discouraged after her first day back at work since Mia’s murder, Brooke trudged into the office, stopped at the water fountain, passed by the desk of Judith Lambert, who gave her a truly vicious look, and plopped down on her desk chair with a slight groan. She opened a desk drawer and took out a couple of Hershey’s Kisses for energy. She knew Aaron wouldn’t mind if she went home an hour early on this particular day, but she was determined to stick it out although she was exhausted and the burn on her lower back stung.

  Before she got the second Hershey’s Kiss down, a tiny elderly woman crept up to Brooke’s desk, clutching fearfully at her purse as if she thought someone might make a dive for it. Brooke tried to give her a reassuring smile, feeling that she already knew the woman’s errand. She was right. The woman told Brooke her name was Amelia Gracen, she was eighty-six years old, she had been married for sixty-five of those eighty-six years, and she lived in the lovely Victorian on the corner of Shaw and Clifton Streets, a house with which Brooke was familiar.

  Then Mrs. Gracen broke down and described her husband’s death four months earlier. It seems he’d decided to climb up on the roof and adjust the satellite dish himself. “Damn fool,” Mrs. Gracen said, then burst into noisy sobs she tried to hide in a dainty lace-edged handkerchief. “Our grandson gave us that dish for our wedding anniversary and I knew it was trouble the first time I looked at it. Those things aren’t natural. Television antennas are natural, not those crazy space-age doodads. I always expected it to start spinning and send us right up to the moon, but Orville, that was my husband, was just fascinated with it and must have climbed up on that roof twenty times to ‘tweak’ it, he always said. Well, he tweaked it one time too many. He slid off the roof and splattered himself all over the sidewalk. Oh my God, what a mess he made, the old coot!” She sobbed some more into her handkerchief.

  “I’m so sorry,” Brooke murmured, unable to come up with anything truly comforting to say about such a gruesome accident.

  “It served him right. He was the most hardheaded man I ever knew. Nobody could tell him anything, especially me. Well, I guess he learned his lesson that time.” She sobbed some more and nearly blew a hole into the delicate material of the handkerchief. “Anyway, I can’t afford to keep the house all by myself. I don’t even want to. I mean, inside there are a lot of wonderful memories—we lived there forty years—but as soon as I step out on the sidewalk . . .” She shuddered. “Oh, lordy. You can still see stains on the sidewalk. For a little guy, he had enough blood in him to fill up a grizzly bear. And I swear, you can see a dent in the sidewalk where that hard head of his hit.”

  “Oh, how awful for you,” Brooke mumbled, sympathetic and yet on the verge of macabre laughter.

  “Well, my friend Inez lives in this nice little retirement community not too far from downtown and she says they just have a ball there with Canasta Night and Charades Night and those wonderful gospel singers that come on Sunday afternoons. So, I think I’ll put up the house for sale and move there. Do you think that’s terrible of me?”

  “Of course not,” Brooke reassured her. “I’m sure your husband would want you to be happy.”

  “I guess, but it doesn’t seem right, me singing and playing cards and games when he’s lying in his grave, all cold and alone. But if he’d just listened to me for once in his hard-headed life—”

  “So you’d like to list the house wit
h us?” Brooke asked before Mrs. Gracen could get started again on her husband’s hard head.

  “Yes, I certainly would, if you don’t mind.”

  “It would be a pleasure.” Brooke gave her a smile, offered her a cup of water, then handed her a few Hershey’s Kisses.

  “Oh, I just love these!” Mrs. Gracen said, ripping into the foil. “So did Orville. We’d eat a whole bag of them in one night.” Then she cried some more.

  By the time Brooke finished with Mrs. Gracen, she felt tired enough to fall out of her chair. Fifteen more minutes, she thought. Fifteen more minutes and I will have made it with honor through one whole day.

  She had just begun to straighten up her desk when a young, jaunty-faced guy around nineteen entered Townsend Realty. He stood at the front of the room, holding a package, and called out, “Brooke Yeager? Do we have a Brooke Yeager in the house?”

  “Yes, we do,” Brooke said.

  “Then this package is for you!” he announced grandly.

  Brooke was amused by the young man’s cockiness. He acted like she’d just won the lottery. Instead, all he handed her was a small box about two by four inches swathed in brown wrapping paper. She glanced down to see her name and the address of Townsend Realty printed in block letters, clearly done with a felt-tip pen. Then the return address caught her gaze:

  Sunset Memorial Park

  Charleston, WV

  Brooke’s heart beat faster. Sunset Memorial Park—the cemetery where her parents were buried. She had decorated the graves on Memorial Day.

  The delivery guy held out a clipboard to her. “Just sign on line twenty-five and it’s all yours,” he said cheerfully.

  “What company do you work for?” Brooke asked.

  “Archway Deliveries. Been with them for almost a year now.”

  “Who sent this box?” Brooke asked faintly.

  The guy tilted his head and grinned. “Well, it’s either a joke or someone who lives in a cemetery.”

  Brooke gave him a long look and his grin faded. “Seriously, I mean who brought this box in and paid to have it delivered to me?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” The guy’s smile wavered slightly. “Honest, I don’t, ma’am. People come in, leave a package, and pay the manager or his wife, and they assign us to deliver it sometime during the day. Well, occasionally people want a package delivered at a certain time. That was the case with yours. My manager said it was to be delivered ten or fifteen minutes before five.” He stared at her. “Is there something wrong, ma’am?”

  “I just don’t know who could have sent it.”

  “Guess you’ll have to open it, then.” The guy shifted impatiently from one foot to the other, looking slightly alarmed. “If you’d just sign the sheet here, Ms. Yeager. I hate to rush you, but I got another delivery to make before five or I’ll get in big trouble.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t want that.” Brooke signed her name as if in a dream. The guy waited a minute longer, clearly hoping for a tip, then gave it up as a lost cause with the weird-acting woman on the other side of the desk. She was in her own world, not even thinking about how much he might count on his tips. He said sourly, “Hope you enjoy whatever’s inside—not.”

  Brooke stared at the box sitting on her desk for what seemed an endless time. Finally, Hannah looked over from her own desk and asked, “What’s wrong? Afraid there’s a snake in it?”

  “I’m afraid it’s something worse,” Brooke said, her mouth dry.

  “Like what?”

  This time Brooke didn’t answer. She couldn’t just keep staring at the thing. She had to know what was inside, even though every fiber of her being told her the contents were not going to make her happy. Not with that return address.

  With trembling fingers, she loosened the tape and removed the brown wrapping paper as carefully as she would beautiful gift wrap. The paper fell away, exposing a small, white box. There was no label on the box, but Brooke instinctively knew it had come from a jewelry shop. It wasn’t a new box, though. The corners looked slightly frayed, and one end had the yellowish tinge of exposure to sunlight.

  Her breath coming slowly yet deeply, she gently took the lid off the box. There, on a bed of white cotton, lay a small gold wedding ring adorned with a tiny diamond. Even though she didn’t have to look to know what was engraved inside, Brooke picked up the ring and slanted it so that she could see the names written in tiny script:

  Anne & Karl

  eighteen

  1

  Brooke hadn’t been able to rise from her chair. She asked Charlie to go out and get the surveillance cops while she sat at her desk, staring at the wide gold ring with its one-third-carat diamond. When she tilted the box slightly, she could see the engraving, but she didn’t touch the ring.

  It was time for Townsend Realty to close, but naturally the arrival of the ring disturbed the schedule. Charlie insisted on staying with Aaron and Brooke until Hal Myers and Jay Corrigan arrived. Hannah, out of concern, had offered to stay as well. Judith, out of malicious curiosity, wanted to stay, too. Aaron had sent both women home.

  “I have some brandy in my office, Brooke.” Aaron’s solicitous tone shocked her. She didn’t know he had it in him. “Would a little help?”

  Brooke shook her head. “I think it would take the whole bottle to help, and then I wouldn’t make a good impression on the cops. Thanks anyway, Mr. Townsend.”

  “Call me Aaron, please,” he said, sounding as if he’d like to add “just this once.”

  “I’ll take some brandy,” Charlie volunteered, trying to lighten the mood.

  Aaron answered stiffly, “If Brooke doesn’t need any, neither do you. This isn’t a party.”

  “Well, excuse me for living,” Charlie answered, patting Brooke on the shoulder. He’d been patting it for ten minutes and she thought if he didn’t stop, she’d scream.

  To her relief, Hal and Jay walked in and Charlie immediately backed off, as if he might be reprimanded for touching her. Hal smiled at her easily. Jay looked tense and angry. “Don’t anybody touch that ring!” he barked.

  Brooke, Aaron, and Charlie all froze guiltily before Brooke said, “Sorry. I already did.”

  “Calm down, Jay,” Hal said mildly, then to Brooke, “I’m sure there weren’t any fingerprints on it anyway. Tavell’s too smart to have left any.”

  “So I assumed as soon as I saw the return address on the box.” Even Brooke noticed how tired and dull her voice sounded. “My parents are buried in that cemetery.” Hal nodded. “It was delivered by a boy from Archway Deliveries. And I did a little police work on my own. He said someone dropped this off to either the manager or his wife and said it was to be delivered before five o’clock. The boy didn’t see who left the package, but maybe the manager remembers.”

  “What did the boy look like?” Jay asked.

  “He was around nineteen. Straight brown hair. Some acne. I think his eyes were blue.”

  “Nothing suspicious about him?”

  “No. He was just impatient. And mad.” Brooke managed a small smile. “I forgot to give him a tip.”

  Hal frowned. “Oh, the poor thing. Well, at least we’ll know which one he is at the delivery store—the one griping about you.”

  Brooke smiled slightly. “By the way, the stinging on my lower back is reminding me to ask if the lab found out what had been sprayed on me at the planetarium.”

  Hal looked into her eyes. “Good old-fashioned drain cleaner. Strong drain cleaner, as if it had come from the bottom of a bottle that hadn’t been shaken. That stuff can be fairly corrosive, especially on delicate skin.” Hal paused. “Are you sure the girl with the blond hair sprayed it on you?”

  “I’m ninety-five percent certain,” Brooke said grimly. “What I don’t know is her identity or why she would be working with Zach Tavell. I know you’re going to tell me it’s probably for money, but I have a hard time believing a teenage girl, no matter how hardened by the world, would be stupid enough to trust a half-crazy-lo
oking man like Zach who she has to know is a murderer.”

  Hal gave her a doleful look. “Brooke, you’d be surprised what some people will do for a couple of dollars. Unfortunately, she’s probably one of them.”

  2

  Brooke wasn’t sure when Vincent arrived. She sat slumped at her desk, answering Hal’s and Jay’s questions while Aaron and Charlie hovered around, acting as if they were being an immense help, when she looked up and saw Vincent standing about a foot away. He gave her a long, slow smile, bent down to lightly kiss her cheek, and said, “Hi, Cinnamon Girl.”

  “Hi, yourself,” she answered. “Do you have an alarm that goes off at your house every time I’m in trouble?”

  “It’s a whirling red light with one of those air horns like you hear at football games.” He looked at the detectives. “Hi, Hal, Jay.”

  They both nodded as Aaron approached importantly. “I’m Aaron Townsend, owner of this firm. And you are?”

  “Vincent Lockhart.”

  “A friend of Ms. Yeager’s?”

  “Obviously.”

  Aaron colored slightly at his stupid question. “Well, I just wanted to be sure. You can’t be too careful, you know.” Charlie looked at Brooke and rolled his eyes. “Are you involved in the case, Mr. Lockhart?”

  “Not directly.”

  “His father was the lead detective when Ms. Yeager’s mother was murdered,” Hal supplied. “He’s a friend of Brooke’s. And he’s quite a famous writer.”

  “Famous writer?” Aaron frowned; then his face lit with an almost sickening veneration considering his earlier near hostility. “Oh yes, I’ve heard of you. You’ve been on the New York Times Best Seller List a number of times.”

  “A few,” Vincent said modestly.

  “Well, this is most exciting.” Aaron became aware of the detectives looking at his beaming face and quickly rearranged his expression into one of concern. “Of course, our main worry is Brooke. This madman who seems to be after her . . . well . . . it’s just unfathomable.” And then he couldn’t help himself. “Are you going to write about it, Mr. Lockhart?”