Last Whisper

by Carlene Thompson

  Brooke wondered when Eunice had been killed. No one had seen her all day. But Brooke and Vincent had seen her last night. She’d looked frightened. She’d wanted Harry. And she’d been wearing that god-awful green negligee—the one she still wore as she lay in Brooke’s trunk.

  Brooke jerked with realization. Eunice had come rushing up to her and Vincent in the lobby wearing the negligee just twenty-four hours ago. Brooke had wanted to get rid of her, so she’d directed her to the basement in search of Harry. When she’d gone downstairs, her killer must have been waiting.

  Brooke stiffened as her thoughts spun in a mass of horror, astonishment, and regret. She was responsible for Eunice’s death! “It’s my fault,” she cried. “It’s my fault!”

  Stacy raced in from the kitchen. “What’s wrong?”

  “My God, Stacy, I just realized that I’m responsible for Eunice being murdered. It must have happened night before last because she had on that hideous negligee and I sent her to the basement because I wanted to be alone with Vincent and she was murdered—”

  Stacy held up her hand for silence. “Brooke, stop! You’re not making any sense.”

  “Yes, I am. It makes perfect sense. The timing, don’t you see? Zach was in the basement waiting for me and suddenly Eunice came flying down and saw him, so he had to kill her—”

  By now Stacy knelt in front of her and put her hands on Brooke’s shoulders. “You are not making any sense. Why would Zach be waiting in the basement for you? Were you supposed to go to the basement?”

  “No, but he could have been planning to come up later. Or maybe he’d already been up here, almost got caught leaving the building, and dashed down to the basement to hide. Oh God!”

  Stacy came close to shaking her. “Stop it! We don’t even know if Tavell killed her.”

  “Who else?”

  “Harry.”

  “Oh, Harry, that idiot! I don’t believe it. He’s basically a coward with a big mouth. He didn’t kill Eunice and put her in my steamer trunk, clean up after himself, then just walk out of here. Even if he’d tried something so . . . so daring, he would have bungled it. You know it, Stacy. You know Harry!”

  Stacy went quiet for a few moments. Her lids dropped over her gray eyes as she looked at the floor, clearly thinking about what Brooke had said. Finally, she answered slowly. “You could be right, Brooke. Not about being responsible for Eunice’s death—if Zach killed her, how could you possibly have known he was in the basement?—but about her not being killed by Harry. He’s just too much of a screwup to have pulled off something like this.”

  “So another person died because of me,” Brooke nearly whispered, feeling too crushed inside to speak aloud. “Mia, Robert, now Eunice. Who’s next?”

  “According to that signed note you received, you are.” Dismay flashed across Stacy’s face. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It did say I’m next. But what if someone else gets in the way? Someone like you or Jay or . . .”

  “Vincent?”

  Brooke looked at her friend and nodded. “Of course I don’t want to die. But I don’t want anyone else to die, either, especially not because of me. I can’t let it happen. I can’t.” Brooke let her arms drop away from Elise and stood up. “I’m leaving right now, Stacy.”

  “What about the police? They want to question you.”

  “They can call me. Besides, you can tell them anything I can.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “As far as a jet scheduled for takeoff within the next few hours will take me.”

  “A jet? You’re going to fly?”

  “I can get farther much faster, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Well, yes, but . . .” Stacy stood up. “Brooke, you don’t have a flight scheduled.”

  “Flights leave all the time.”

  Stacy frowned. “Brooke, you can’t leave right this minute.”

  “Why not? What am I supposed to do? Sit here for hours while the police do whatever they have to do downstairs, hold still for dozens of questions I can’t answer, wait to be killed or for another person to be killed?” She shook her head. “I’m driving to the airport right now.”

  “No!” Stacy looked shocked, then blank. “No, it’s not wise, it’s not the right time. Wait until tomorrow.”

  Brooke reached for her purse. “I’ll go to my apartment and get Elise’s travel carrier. I’m not leaving her behind. Then I’ll go down the back stairs and try to get past the surveillance guys. Maybe I don’t even have to worry about them. They might be with the other cops in the basement.”

  “Wait!” Stacy put her face in her hands for a few moments, then looked into Brooke’s determined eyes. “You can’t leave with only Elise and what you’re wearing. You don’t have enough money for a whole new wardrobe. I have a suitcase and tote bag in the bedroom. I’ll get them and you can pack a few things. Then I’ll help you down to the car.”

  Brooke came as close to a smile as she could at the moment. “Thank you, Stacy. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “You’re going to make me cry.” Stacy grinned. “Now stop being sentimental and let’s get going.”

  2

  For the sake of speed, Brooke chose only Stacy’s large suitcase and a boarding bag. They hurried to Brooke’s apartment, where she tried to match outfits, although her mind felt so jumbled, she had a feeling she’d arrive at her destination with a conglomeration of wrinkled clothes, none of them comprising one decent outfit. She tossed cosmetics into a Ziploc plastic bag before stuffing them into the carryon bag in case anything spilled. She opened a drawer and pulled out the two credit cards she usually never carried—she didn’t know how much money she’d need—and finally urged a reluctant Elise into her pet carrier. After one final look around the apartment, Brooke announced, “I’m ready to go.”

  “Are you sure?” Stacy asked. “Don’t you want to take one more tour around the place and make sure you haven’t forgotten anything crucial?”

  “Crucial things are sold at airports. All I want right now is to get away from this place.”

  “Okay. You take Elise, she’ll feel safer that way, and the carry-on bag. I’ll take the big suitcase.”

  Brooke went dry-mouthed with fear as they sneaked down the back steps—none too clean in spite of Harry’s protests about the hard work he did keeping the apartment house in order. Stacy flipped off the lights before she opened the door and they stepped into the dark alley behind the brick building. After the door shut behind them, they stopped, surveying their surroundings.

  “There’s the surveillance cruiser,” Brooke whispered.

  “I see only one guy in it and he doesn’t appear to have seen us.”

  “I would never have thought to turn off the light before we opened the door.”

  “Yes, you would have,” Stacy said absently, peering at the surveillance car. “The other cop is probably helping in the basement,” Stacy said.

  “Whether there’s one or two men in the cruiser, we can’t get past it to the parking lot.”

  Stacy went silent for a moment. Then she said, “We can’t both get past. But one of us can if he’s distracted. I’ll go up to his window and start talking. You go past on the other side. I’m afraid you’ll have to make two trips in order to get all the bags and Elise, but I think I can keep him chatting.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Have you ever known of me to run out of things to say?”

  “Well . . .”

  “There’s your answer.” Stacy smiled, then turned serious. “I want you to put your stuff in my car.”

  “Why yours?”

  “Because if they realize you’re gone, they’ll be looking for your car, not mine. Besides, that isn’t even your car. It’s a rental.” Yes, Brooke thought, hers had been in the shop since Mia’s death. “Tonight I’ll drive you to the airport and I’ll turn in your car for you tomorrow.”

  “You’ll drive me to the airport! Stacy, Jay will kill
you!”

  “Jay will yell at me. Besides, as you’re always saying, he adores me.” She gave Brooke an exaggerated wink. “Don’t underestimate my powers to soothe my husband’s temper.”

  I’d never underestimate you, Stacy, Brooke thought as Stacy strolled over to the patrol car. The window must have already been down, because Stacy immediately propped her arms on the door and leaned inward slightly. Brooke heard the rumble of a man’s voice, then heard Stacy giggle. Now was the time for the first trip.

  Brooke skittered to Stacy’s car with the large suitcase and the carry-on bag, opened the back door, piled the luggage on the backseat, then quietly closed the door. Skulking through the parking lot again, she saw Stacy still leaning in the window and heard the tinkling sound of her laughter. Brooke picked up Elise’s carrier and once again made a dash for the car, trying unobtrusively to signal Stacy as she ran. She scooted onto the passenger’s side and set Elise’s carrier on her lap. “It’s okay, sweetie. I hope in a couple of hours we’ll be headed away from this place.” The dog whined slightly, then licked Brooke’s fingers through the wire door of the carrier.

  Brooke’s heart pounded as she waited for Stacy. Was she doing the right thing, just running off like this? Would it be better if she waited until tomorrow, made a reservation . . .

  And gave Zach twenty-four more hours to get to her or kill someone else in his pursuit of her? And what if the police for some reason wanted her to wait another day? What if they demanded to know her destination and word that she was thinking of going to Vermont leaked out?

  Elise yelped and Brooke jumped as Stacy hopped into the car and burst out, “Told you I could do it!”

  “The surveillance cop had to see you get in this car.”

  “I was going to try telling him I just had to run to the drugstore—‘I’ll be right back,’ ‘please let me go,’ ‘I’ll be back before my husband knows I’m gone,’ et cetera. He was waffling, but I was sure he was going to say no. Then luck struck like a gift from Heaven.” Brooke waited. “The cops inside radioed for this guy to come in and help them with something! I couldn’t believe it. I told him I wouldn’t leave. I walked back inside the building with him and when he went sailing off for the basement, I ran out here. Didn’t you see me?”

  “I wasn’t looking,” Brooke admitted sheepishly. “I got lost in my own thoughts.”

  “I can’t believe it. One of my most daring exploits, and you missed it!”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, don’t be silly,” Stacy said, starting her car. “I’m just kidding. I think I’m giddy, actually, pulling off this whole scheme.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t be involved in this, Stacy,” Brooke said sincerely. “I can drive my car and you and Jay can pick it up sometime and return it—”

  “Pick it up out of long-term parking when they just had a car stolen? They won’t let Jay have it.”

  “He’s a police detective, Stacy. He’ll explain. Besides, he’s going to be furious with you.”

  “It might take us days to get that car out of long-term parking, days you’d have to pay for. And I told you, I can handle Jay.”

  “He’ll forgive little things, yes, but this isn’t a little thing.”

  Stacy looked at her sternly. “No, this isn’t a little thing. This is about your life, maybe about other lives, too. If I can’t make him understand that, he can’t understand anything and I don’t care how furious he is.”

  Brooke sighed. “All right. I’m too tired to argue. Actually, I’m too frightened to wait any longer to get out of this city and too nervous to trust my own driving. So, if you’re willing to take the chance . . .”

  “I am.” Stacy crept out of the parking lot with the headlights off. “Just chill out and leave this to me, Brooke. I’ll get you where you need to be.”

  A quarter mile away from the apartment building, Stacy turned on the headlights. They were free, Brooke thought. Finally, she was on her way to freedom and safety.

  “We’re about twenty minutes from the airport,” Stacy said. “Want some music?”

  Brooke nodded and Stacy slid in a CD of Celtic songs, beautiful, lyrical, dreamlike. After the tension of the day, sitting beside her grandmother for almost ten hours talking, then the shock of finding Eunice’s body, Brooke felt her eyelids growing heavy with fatigue. Slowly, she drifted off to the sounds of “The Moonlight Piper” by Carlos Núñez.

  Brooke was dreaming of lying in her bed at the house on Holt Street, looking up at the stars her mother had painted on the ceiling, when she vaguely became aware of the car stopping. In a moment, Stacy was outside and opening Brooke’s door. “Trip’s over,” she said.

  Brooke blinked twice and looked at her friend, standing tall and grim-faced in the light of the full moon. Silence surrounded her. “Stacy, this isn’t the airport,” Brooke said groggily.

  “No, it isn’t.”

  Brooke struggled to sit up straighter in her seat, to get her bearings. She clutched Elise’s carrier even closer to her chest, like a shield, on a primal level sensing danger. “Where are we?”

  Stacy stepped aside and swept her hand almost grandly at a small white house, the house Brooke had been dreaming of, the house where Zachary Tavell had murdered her mother.

  “I’ve brought you home, Brooke,” Stacy said triumphantly. “I’ve brought you where you should have died fifteen years ago.”

  twenty-one

  1

  “My home?” Brooke asked in bewilderment.

  “Yes. I told you already. This is where you were supposed to die a long time ago.”

  Oddly enough, Brooke felt as if her heart were slowing, not picking up speed in fear. This whole scenario seemed unreal, and for a moment, she thought she was still dreaming. She’d dreamed about the stars on her bedroom ceiling. Now she was dreaming about the entire house. Except that Stacy looked so real and this experience didn’t have the slightly fuzzy, dreamlike quality of the one before it. Brooke still couldn’t quite believe that Stacy had brought her to what had once been known as “The House of the Rose Murder,” but on the other hand, sharp points of realization as well as apprehension had begun to pierce her fog of confusion.

  “Stacy, what are you doing?” She was surprised by the calmness of her voice. Not a quiver, not a break. “Why have you brought me here?”

  “Because I’m taking you inside.”

  “Why?”

  Stacy suddenly looked impatient. “Why, why, why? I’ve said we’re here because we’re going in. That settles it.”

  “Not for me.”

  “Will this help?” Stacy had been holding her right hand behind her back. Suddenly she whipped her arm around and held it out stiffly in front of her. In her hand, she gripped a gun. “This is a Smith & Wesson Model 36LS. I know that in terms of firearms that means absolutely nothing to you, but you’re bright enough to know that it can kill you. You and your flea-bitten dog. Now get out of the car and march up to that house. And don’t try to run or do anything you consider smart and heroic, because I’ll be right behind you and have this gun pointed directly at your head.”

  This cannot be happening, Brooke thought as she clambered from Stacy’s car, still holding tightly to Elise’s carrier. When Brooke emerged, she didn’t set the carrier back on the seat. She had a feeling Stacy would immediately shoot the dog if she did. Elise was safer with her. Safe. That was a laugh. No one was safe with her. No one ever had been, not even her own mother.

  Brooke walked toward the house, glancing around slowly so Stacy wouldn’t think she was getting ready to bolt. She knew the neighborhood had gone downhill over the last few years, but she’d had no idea how much. It had never been one of the nicer neighborhoods in town, but it had been neat and presentable in its modest way. Now, even with just the glow of the moon and the few streetlights that had not burned out or been broken, the area looked downright shabby.

  As they neared the porch steps, Brooke noticed the cracks in the badly chipped pa
int on the little white house, the empty urns that used to hold cheerful red geraniums, the shattered globe over the porch light, a light that always used to burn in welcome to guests. Brooke wondered how long it had been since a live bulb had been screwed into that socket.

  “Place has changed, hasn’t it?” Stacy said suddenly. “It didn’t used to be a palace, but it looked a helluva lot better than this. Fifteen years ago, that is.”

  “How do you know what this house looked like fifteen years ago?” Brooke asked. “You told me you lived in Ohio. Did you see photos of it in the newspapers?”

  “I saw it in person.”

  “Oh,” Brooke returned scathingly. “You were one of the tourists drawn to the spot of ‘The Rose Murder.’ ”

  “No.” Stacy laughed softly. “I was hardly a tourist. Go in the house, Brooke.”

  Brooke hesitated, feeling as if she couldn’t possibly take a step into that house with its horrible memories. Then she felt the barrel of the gun press against the back of her head. “I said, go in. Now.”

  Brooke opened the door and took a step into almost total darkness. Almost. Enough light shone from the outside for her to make out the stairs—the stairs she had run down when she’d heard the shots, the stairs from which she’d seen Zach Tavell standing over her mother with a gun.

  The house smelled stale. Brooke knew it had accumulated years of dust and mold and wood rotting from leaks that had never been fixed. But it also smelled of something else. Death. This house smells of death, she thought with a certainty she tried to quell. Anne Yeager Tavell had been murdered in this house fifteen years ago. It could not still smell of her death.

  But it did, at least to Brooke.

  “I made a few arrangements in here earlier today when I found out your grandmother was dying and I thought things might come to this,” Stacy said casually. “We can’t stand here in the dark and talk.” Light flared beside Brooke and she realized Stacy had bent down and turned on a battery-operated lantern. “There, that’s better, don’t you think?” Brooke remained silent and Stacy’s voice turned harsh. “I asked you if you thought that was better.”