Last Whisper

by Carlene Thompson

  “Much better.”

  “I think so, too. Now for the others.” Stacy stepped in front of her and smiled. “And don’t think, Here’s my chance! While she’s lighting lanterns, I’ll make a break for it! It won’t work.”

  “I didn’t. . . . I wouldn’t. . . .”

  “Oh, of course you would. Anyone would. It’s just that anyone who did would end up dead. And our Brooke is too smart for that. So, you stand perfectly still while I turn on another lantern,” Stacy said as she stepped backward, gun pointed at Brooke’s face, stooped down, and turned on a lantern by the stairs, then repeated the process as she turned on a third lantern just inside the entrance to the living room. “Jay always says it’s like I have eyes in the back of my head. That was an excellent demonstration, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, I guess. . . .” Brooke ran her dry tongue over her parched lips. “Stacy, what is this all about?”

  “They say some sisters can read each other’s minds. But we can’t. Maybe that’s because we’re almost stepsisters.”

  “Stepsisters?”

  “Yes. My birth certificate says my name is Lila Stacy Cox. It should have said ‘Lila Stacy Tavell,’ but Zach wouldn’t let my mother—her name was Nadine—put his name down as my father. She tried to tell me later that he was embarrassed because they weren’t married, but I always knew the real reason. He didn’t want any ties between us—between him and Nadine and me. He always figured one day he’d just take off and leave us with not even a connection on a shred of paper. And that’s exactly what he did.”

  “Zach . . . Zachary Tavell is your father?”

  “Yes. He was with my mother when she was really young. Some would say she was stupid, but she wasn’t—just naïve.” Stacy stood beside a lantern. The light shone up at her, emphasizing her height, her prominent cheekbones, the hollows where granite gray eyes burned down at Brooke with complete hatred. Brooke felt as if she were a little girl huddling in on herself as she clutched Elise’s carrier even tighter, although it was becoming heavy and the timid dog inside was trembling with nerves. You tremble for both of us, Elise, Brooke thought, because I’m afraid to move.

  She couldn’t move, but she could still talk. If she talked long enough, then maybe something would happen. Maybe the entire police force would burst through the front door and . . .

  “I feel that I don’t have your full attention,” Stacy snapped.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so surprised. I don’t know what to say, what to ask. Why don’t you tell me everything that happened in your own way? I won’t interrupt you.”

  “Of course not. You’re too polite to interrupt, aren’t you?” Stacy’s voice became high and saccharine. “Ladylike Brooke Yeager. Such a pretty girl. Such nice manners. And the poor little thing had such a rough life, too. What a shame!” Stacy’s voice deepened. “Well, you had an absolutely grand life compared to mine.”

  “May I set down Elise in the carrier? Then you can tell me about your life.”

  “Like you care about my life.”

  “I do,” Brooke said, not sure whether she really cared, she was curious, or she was just stalling for time. It didn’t matter, really. All she wanted to do was draw out this moment before the inevitable violence.

  “All right, set down your precious dog. Honest to God, you treat it better than I was treated.”

  “How were you treated?” Brooke asked, moving slowly as she lowered the carrier to the floor.

  “Not bad at first. At least I don’t think I was. I mean, what does a baby know? But I’ve seen photographs of Zach with my mother. She was only seventeen when she had me. Just a kid herself, although she already had a baby before she had me. Someone else’s baby, not Zach’s. It died, though, right after I was born. Zach was in his twenties and had already been in some trouble. But Mom always told me he’d decided to straighten himself out with her help.” She laughed harshly. “He just didn’t want to marry her, even though she had his kid. After all, I wasn’t her first kid. He didn’t have any respect for her.

  “But he was good to me,” Stacy went on. “Mom said he ‘doted’ on me. I guess I was an amusement, something new in his life. And my mother was gorgeous. He was proud to be seen with her, proud to say that she was his girl because she was so pretty.” She paused, her face hardening. “But when I was four or five, things began to change. He got restless. He had guys over all the time and they drank and played cards. Zach would get drunk and a few times, he hit Mom. She’d cry and bleed. . . .” Stacy stopped and the look of an old horror crossed her face. Then she went on. “But he’d never hit me. Never. Mom said he hit her because she got on his nerves and deserved it, but he wouldn’t hit me because he loved me so much. But then one day, he just left. Not a word, not a note, nothing. He was just gone.

  “Mom looked everywhere for him, but it was like he’d dropped off the face of the earth. And there we were, all alone.” Stacy’s eyes lost their sharpness—they seemed dreamy, as if she were lost in the past. “Mom’s parents wouldn’t have her back. She didn’t have any friends—Zach didn’t allow it. We got by on what she could make working at a convenience store, but she kept getting sick. She’d never been strong. So, naturally, she got fired from that job. Then another and another. Finally, in despair, she hooked up with some loser who promised to take care of us. She didn’t care about him. She just wanted some financial security for me. And he just wanted her beautiful face and body. Well, he got it. He also got her hooked on heroin.”

  Brooke opened her mouth, but Stacy snapped, “If you dare say, ‘I’m sorry,’ I’ll blow your head off right now.” Brooke quickly closed her mouth.

  “So, Mom’s rescuer stayed with us for two years. Then Mom started showing the effects of her bad health and the lovely things heroin addiction does to your body. So out the door he went. Once again, no good-bye, not a thought in the world but for the woman he’d already begun seeing. I was seven by then. Mom tried to take care of me in spite of everything, but she was too beaten down. The heroin had taken control of her life, and she’d never been the same since Zach left. He was the love of her life.”

  Stacy smiled bitterly. “And you know what? Zach was the love of mine, too. Isn’t that absolutely ridiculous? But he was my daddy. I had adored him. I was sure if he’d only come back, we could be a family again. He could make Mom well. He could fix everything. But I didn’t stand a chance of finding him. Finally the state stepped in. They did locate Zach Tavell, but he claimed he’d only dated Nadine Cox a few times years ago and he said he’d never heard of Lila Cox. He asked if Lila Cox was Nadine’s sister! They didn’t do DNA tests in those days. So I was taken away from Mom, she was thrown into rehab, and I was sent to foster homes. Do you know what happens to a pretty little girl in a bad foster home? Oh, I know you were in one for what—two months? But I’ll bet the father didn’t find you, shall we say, sexually attractive. I had two of those before I was even ten. And when the wives found out, they blamed me; they hit me.”

  Brooke and Stacy both jerked when Brooke’s cell phone rang, sounding like an alarm in the dark, musty little house. Brooke cringed, terrified the shock would frighten Stacy into firing the gun, but after the first ring she regained her composure. She stood motionless as the phone rang again and again. After five rings, it stopped.

  “I’ll bet that was Vincent,” Stacy said, smirking. “Vincent Lockhart, looking for his . . . what is it he calls you . . . looking for his Cinnamon Girl. But you’re only the girl of the moment, honey. He’ll forget you as soon as he goes back to California.”

  “I know that,” Brooke said meekly.

  “Do you? I’m not so sure. You’re not used to being forgotten, are you? Oh, you’ve had your little dramas, but they’ve always ended up with you getting even more love and attention than you did before they happened. But being forgotten . . . well, I think maybe that’s worse than what happened to me over the years in some of those foster homes. Not all of the homes were bad, but I managed to get my
self thrown out of the ones that were good. I guess I’d had the bad ones first and they . . . changed me. By the time the good ones came along, I didn’t know how to act like a decent little girl anymore.

  “But all those years—those years when my mother never got well enough to take me back on her own—I kept thinking of Zach. I kept thinking of what a happy family we’d had. I’m sure I changed things in my mind, made it sweeter, more loving, warmer, than it had ever really been, but I was certain at the time. So, I decided if I could find Zach, if I could tell him all the things that had happened to me and to Mom, he’d make it all right. He’d get Mom out of that place where they kept hopeless junkies. He’d make me forget the sexual assaults and the beatings, and we’d be a happy family again. I just had to find him. So when I was sixteen, I ran away from my last foster home and started my search.” She paused. “It took me two years, but I did it. I found Zach.”

  “When you were eighteen you found Zach?” Brooke did some quick figuring. “That means you found him when he was married to my mother.”

  “Right. I’ve always shaved a couple of years off my age. Anyway, he was a respectable man then. He had his own little photography studio—he was always good at photography. He’d married a pretty widow with a cute little girl. He was living in what to me was a fine home. Meanwhile, Mom and I . . .” Stacy’s voice broke as her head bowed slightly. Then she raised it again and glared at Brooke. “Do you know what discovering all of that did to me?”

  “I can imagine,” Brooke said faintly.

  “No, you can’t. Your father didn’t voluntarily leave you, then deny you, then set up a whole new life. He died. Then along came Zach to save the day, Mom and me be damned.” She sighed. “But in spite of how mad I was, I still believed he could save the day for us, too. I thought if he saw me, if he heard what I’d been through, what Mom was going through, he’d feel guilty enough to leave you and Anne and come back to his real family, his real daughter.” She fell silent and stared past Brooke. “But you didn’t, did you, Zach?”

  2

  Slowly, Brooke turned and saw a tall, extremely thin man standing about three feet away from her. His hair was more white than black, his face bore deep creases and the lids hung halfway over the dark eyes, and the lips were thinner, but other than that, he was the same Zachary Tavell she remembered.

  Zach looked at Stacy, not at Brooke. “You knew I was here, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” Stacy answered casually. “The police searched the place after you first escaped from prison, but they gave up the last few days. I came back a few evenings ago and saw you pass by a window.” Her cold gray eyes narrowed as they traveled up and down his tall frame. “You’re sick, aren’t you?”

  For the first time, Brooke noticed in the strange lighting from kerosene lamps that Zach’s pale face was covered with perspiration and his big hands trembled. “I think I got an infection,” he said.

  “From the gunshot wound. It was so stupid of you to try to get to Brooke in the Lockhart house.”

  “You were there first, remember?” Zach said to Stacy. “I was trying to keep you from doing something to her.”

  “How touching. You wanted to protect her?”

  “I wanted to protect you, Lila,” Zach said. “If I hadn’t gotten in the way, they might’ve shot you. Might’ve killed you.”

  Stacy looked taken aback, shocked almost into tenderness. Then she hardened again. “Did you get any medical treatment?”

  “I thought I could take care of it myself.”

  “Obviously you didn’t do such a good job of it,” Stacy said acidly.

  No, but he’s lived long enough to finish me off before he goes, Brooke thought. Except that nothing about this scene seemed right, especially Zach saying he’d wanted to protect “Lila” at the Lockhart house.

  “I don’t understand,” Brooke ventured. “What’s going on here?”

  Stacy looked at Zach. “Do you want to tell her, or shall I?” Zach remained silent. “Well, I guess this is my show, then. Where did I leave off? Oh yes. I finally tracked down Zach. I must say, I’d hoped for a warmer welcome. Actually, he was horrified to see me. Even when I said I wouldn’t make any trouble for him if he’d just get Mom out of that so-called rehab place they were keeping her and leave with the two of us. But he wouldn’t do it.”

  “I was married,” Zach said, his voice sounding raspy and weak.

  “That was a technicality. Your responsibility was to Mom and me. Nadine and Lila. But he wouldn’t even talk about it, Brooke. Can you imagine just washing your hands of your flesh-and-blood daughter and her mother like that? So I started applying pressure. I told him if he didn’t do what I wanted, I’d tell your mother everything. Then he started to get nervous.”

  That’s when things had begun to change, Brooke thought. Zach had never been warm to her, but at least the home life had been calm. Then Zach had started snapping at Anne, drinking again, picking fights over nothing. He’d been a nervous wreck, she realized now, terrified that “Lila” was going to ruin everything for him.

  “I offered you money,” Zach said to Stacy. “I offered you every penny I had to just leave. But you wouldn’t. You even started sneaking into the house when Anne was out. You took things of hers.” The letter opener, Brooke thought. The wedding ring. “I was ashamed of what I’d done to you and your mother. God, you’ll never know how ashamed.”

  “But not ashamed enough to do anything to help us.”

  Zach bowed his head. “Not strong enough. I’ve never been a strong man. But I was trying to be a good man, and I’d taken a vow before God to stand by Anne and Brooke.”

  “How honorable of you after what you’d done to Mom and me,” Stacy said sarcastically. She looked at Brooke. “I decided if you two didn’t exist, my weakling of a father might do what was right. So I waited until one night when he was supposed to be in Columbus, being careful that he had an alibi, and I came in this house with a gun to get rid of both of you.”

  Brooke felt dizzy. Stacy was standing in front of her—funny, sarcastic, flirtatious, often lovable Stacy who had been her friend for over a year—telling her about how she’d planned to murder both Anne and Brooke. It didn’t seem real.

  “You killed my mother?” Brooke asked barely above a whisper.

  Stacy smiled grimly. “Yes, I did. You should have seen the look on her face when she saw me standing in the living room with a gun. Zach walked in then. He started trying to wrestle the gun away from me, but I still managed to get off three shots. You were coming down the stairs. I could have gotten you, too, but we heard noises outside. I ran.” She jerked her head toward Zach. “He tried to run, but your neighbors got him.”

  Brooke looked at Zach. “You mean you didn’t shoot Mom? She did?” He nodded. “But you let yourself get convicted of first-degree murder.”

  “I’m not an unselfish man. I tried to get out of it with that story about the guys breaking into the house and me catching them. But that story fell apart. I still had one chance—to tell the police about Lila,” Zach said. “I’ve got to admit I thought about it hard. But there must be a little bit of good in me, because I finally decided I’d already done enough harm. To Lila. To Nadine.” He almost choked. “And Anne. My life was over, not that it ever counted for much anyway, so what did it matter if I spent the rest of it in prison?”

  The cell phone in Brooke’s purse began to ring again. Stacy smiled. “The persistent lover, no doubt. Did you have a date with him tonight?”

  “No.”

  “I guess he just wants to hear the sound of your voice.” Stacy’s smile faded. “That thing is getting on my nerves.”

  “Then let me turn it off,” Brooke said in a sudden burst of inspiration. “Otherwise, it’ll be ringing every ten minutes.”

  Stacy seemed to think this over. The phone rang on and on. Finally she said, “Do it. It’s driving me crazy.”

  Quickly, before the connection was broken, Brooke reached into her pu
rse, grabbed the cell phone, and pushed the ANSWER button. Then, before Vincent could burst out with a loud greeting, she said shrilly, “Is that better, Stacy? Will you stop pointing the gun at me?”

  “For God’s sake, Brooke, I’m only a few feet away,” Stacy snapped. “You don’t have to scream at me.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m nervous. I’m terrified.”

  “Then today is your lucky day.” Thank God Stacy didn’t have a soft voice, Brooke thought. She was certain Vincent could hear her. And, bless him, he hadn’t blurted out a word, although she was certain he was listening. At least she prayed he was listening and hadn’t hung up right before she pressed the ANSWER button.

  Brooke began slowly. “Stacy, what did you do after that night after you shot Mom here?”

  Brooke didn’t know if they could trace cell phone calls, but she had gotten in the word “here.” They were at the house where Anne had been murdered. Vincent didn’t know where that house was, she thought, but the police would.

  Stacy didn’t answer for a few moments and Brooke was afraid she’d caught on to the trick with the cell phone. Brooke almost stopped breathing in fear that Stacy would simply shoot her right now. But when Stacy started talking, it was with the far-off quality of someone dredging up memories. “My better instinct was to get as far away from here as possible before Zach told the truth about me,” she said. “But when he didn’t come out with the story right away, I got this weird fascination about what he would do when things got bad for him. I wanted to see how long it would take him to break. But he didn’t. Not ever. I couldn’t believe it.

  “After he was convicted, I stayed here. I’d made some friends among the ‘working girls,’ as they euphemistically call prostitutes. That’s what I did to support myself, you know. I worked the streets. And I can tell you that I met some women who had twice the love and charity in their hearts as the so-called respectable women in the world. But then I met a guy who wanted to keep me for himself, so he put me to work in his store.”