by P J Parrish
Claudia’s death certificate. That would tell him.
He hadn’t seen one in the file, but he searched again, careful to look at every piece of paper. But as he neared the bottom of the stack, he grew sure it wasn’t in this file.
Why wasn’t it? Becker’s death certificate had been in his medical file, so why wasn’t Claudia’s?
He picked up the phone and called the Ardmore station. Chief Dalum wasn’t in the office, but Louis left a message asking him to run down a copy of Claudia’s death certificate. When the officer asked him for a date of death, Louis gave him 1972, but before he hung up, he added December 1971 as well.
Louis leaned back against the headboard, his gaze moving to the mirror and the twinkle of Christmas lights outside.
It pissed him off that he hadn’t gotten her death certificate right off. If he had, this question—and maybe some other ones—might have been answered by now. There was so much in his head right now. Some things he knew—the fact that Claudia had been burned and possibly raped. But there was so much he didn’t know—like had Claudia been murdered by the rapist?
If she had been murdered, why did Dr. Seraphin lie? And where the hell was Claudia’s body?
Louis put the file back together, feeling a small wave of weariness. He slid off the bed and stuck Claudia’s folder back in the dresser. She was a tough one to be around, like a black-sheep relative filled with so much need that it drained all the emotion of everyone around them. And every time he put her away, she left him with a faint sadness that took days to shake.
He checked his watch, wondering where Phillip was. It was almost nine now. Too late to expect Frances would be fixing anything for dinner. He headed downstairs to rummage up something. He had his head in the fridge when it hit him.
Maybe there wasn’t a body.
He straightened.
If Claudia had been murdered, why not just put her mutilated body in a casket and drop it in the ground?
Louis closed the fridge.
But someone buried rocks. And he had the feeling that it wasn’t as Dr. Seraphin had theorized: that Claudia had been cremated in error and some grave digger had buried a rock-filled coffin just to cover up his mistake.
There was no body to bury. But it was because Claudia had been murdered just like Sharon Stottlemyer. And just like Sharon, she had been left in a shallow grave somewhere out there—the cemetery, the woods, the apple orchards—never meant to be found.
It was a cover-up. Hidden Lake buried rocks not just to cover up Claudia’s murder but to cover up the fact that they couldn’t find her body. He could almost understand it, given the hospital’s need to protect its reputation and the prominence of Claudia’s family. Hidden Lake had faked Claudia’s death certificate and then buried the rocks just in case anyone in the family ever came to visit.
And someone did. Rodney.
But that still didn’t explain the visitors’ log. No matter how Claudia died, why should there be any question about when?
Somebody was wrong. Or somebody was lying.
If Dr. Seraphin had been involved in the cover-up, there was no way she was going to tell him anything. There was no one at the hospital who could help now. Rodney DeFoe’s name was on that visitors’ log. And only Rodney could explain why he was visiting his sister who had supposedly died four months earlier.
The sound of a key in the front door made him look up, and Louis headed up the short staircase to greet Phillip and Frances. But Phillip was the only one on the landing and he turned to Louis slowly. He looked lost, and very alone. Louis didn’t speak, waiting for Phillip to say something.
“She left me,” Phillip said softly. “Fran went to her sister’s in Brighton.”
Louis put out a hand to Phillip’s shoulder. “I’m sorr y.”
Phillip eased away from him and moved down the stairs to the living room. Louis followed him. It was dark, but Phillip didn’t turn any lights on. He sank into a chair, his jacket still on, head bowed.
“Fran told me to take the time I needed and maybe when I’m finished, maybe then . . .”
Louis let his words hang, then glanced to the kitchen. “Can I fix you something to eat?”
“No,” Phillip said. “Maybe a beer.”
“Sure,” Louis said.
“Grab yourself one, too. I want you to bring me up to date. You haven’t told me anything in days.”
Louis didn’t reply. When he came back, he handed a beer to Phillip, then sat across from him on the sofa. The only light came from the kitchen and the room was full of shadows and the shimmering of tiny white Christmas lights winking behind the frosted windows.
Louis took a sip of his beer. He knew it was time to tell Phillip everything he had found out. But he searched now for the right place to start.
“I met a woman named Millie Reuben,” Louis said finally. “She was in the same ward as Claudia in 1952.”
Phillip was quiet, almost invisible in the deep chair.
“She told me Claudia spoke of you,” Louis said.
Phillip took a drink and Louis heard him sigh with a sadness that reminded him of how he had felt when he closed Claudia’s file a few minutes ago.
“Tell me more,” Phillip said.
Louis did, taking him from Millie Reuben, the isolation periods, the insulin and shock therapies, the cremation cans, and eventually to the rapes, the burns, Sharon Stottlemyer’s bones, and Rebecca Gruber’s torture and murder.
And the longer Louis talked, the more he sensed Phillip was sinking deeper into himself. Louis finished up with what he was planning to do next—go through the E Building records to narrow down the hundreds of possible suspects.
“So you think . . .” Phillip whispered. “You think Claudia was murdered by this man?”
“I don’t have any proof. Nothing I can use to make any accusations. But that’s the way I’m leaning.”
Phillip gave out a small sob, and his hand came over his face. Louis stared at the carpet, fingers tight on the bottle, his throat so dry he couldn’t swallow. He had comforted many people before, men and women alike. But this was Phillip, his father in so many ways, and it seemed so strange to be the stronger one.
Louis rose and moved to him, kneeling down in front of the chair. “Phil,” he said. “None of what happened to her was your fault.”
Phil leaned forward, into him. Louis held him.
CHAPTER 27
By 11:30 the next morning, Louis was standing at the front door of the DeFoe house. He had rung the bell seven times and gotten no response. There was a black Jag XJ6 in the circular drive and he could see one light on inside the house, so he was sure someone was home. Where the hell were the servants? A monster place like this had to have a whole army of them.
He gave up on the bell and started in on the massive lion’s-head door knocker. The sharp pounding sound it made on the heavy wood door echoed loudly in the portico.
No answer. But he was determined that the long drive to Grosse Pointe wasn’t going to be for nothing. He pounded again.
Finally, the heavy door swung open.
“All right! All right! Who the hell—” Rodney drew up short at the sight of Louis. “You. What do you want?”
“I need to talk to you.”
Rodney had a white apron tied around his waist, one of those big things that professional chefs wore. His top lip was swollen with a crusted scar from where Phillip had decked him.
“I tried talking once already,” Rodney said. “All it got me were two stitches inside my mouth. So, you here to take a swing at me, too?”
Louis shook his head. “I just need some answers.”
“About what?”
“Your sister.”
Rodney’s eyes were wary. “I already told you this is none of your business.”
“And I already told you I am not going to give up looking for her remains. Even if you do scare Phillip off with legal threats, you’re still going to have to deal with me.”
&nb
sp; For a moment, Louis was sure Rodney was going to slam the door in his face. But then, Rodney just moved aside and nodded for him to come in. The heavy door closed behind them. The foyer was dark and drafty, not that much warmer than outside.
“Leave your coat there. No sense in you dripping all over the Oushak,” Rodney said, flipping a hand toward a worn Oriental.
Louis glanced around and finally left his wet coat on a spindly chair. Rodney had gone down the hall toward a lighted room in the back of the house and Louis followed. Down another short hall and he emerged into a brightly lit kitchen. It was warm and fragrant with cooking smells.
Rodney’s black velvet slippers made flapping sounds on the old black-and-white tile as he moved to the stove. He picked up a wooden spoon and began to stir something in a large copper pot. The kitchen was huge and, to Louis’s eye, oddly old-fashioned looking, with an old porcelain sink, glass-windowed pantries, and a mammoth butcher-block island in the middle. The island was strewn with vegetables and bowls of fish, oysters, clams, and shrimp. There was a bottle of red wine and a delicate bubble-shaped wineglass.
Rodney set the spoon down and came over to the island. He picked up the glass and took a drink. As the glass came down, his eyes met Louis’s.
“Do you like wine?” he asked.
Louis shrugged.
Rodney picked up the bottle. “This is a Pomerol . . . sixty-six Vieux-Chateau-Certan. Would you like some?”
Louis noticed the bottle was almost empty. “You go ahead.”
Rodney smiled slightly. “Wise decision. It’s really too tannic and I brought it up out of the cellar much too early, I’m afraid.” He poured the rest of the wine into his glass, spilling some on the wood block. Louis noticed there was another empty wine bottle over by the sink.
Rodney took a healthy drink. “Excuse me, it’s time to add the tomatoes.” He picked up a cutting board of sliced tomatoes and slid them into the copper pot.
“I’m making cioppino,” he said, turning back to Louis. “It’s an Italian fisherman’s stew. Quite tasty. I got the recipe when I was living in Vernazza.”
“You don’t have someone to do that for you?” Louis asked.
“What, cook?” Rodney gave an odd grimace. “Mother fired the cook this week. She fired the maid, too. This has been . . . an ongoing problem. She has always hated having strangers in the house.” Rodney went back to stirring. “Besides, I like to cook. It may be the only thing I really do well.”
Louis slid onto a stool at the island. Rodney was, he realized now, if not drunk, then already well on his way. But maybe that wasn’t all bad. When Rodney had shown up at Phillip’s house, he had been sober and that had given him an edgy, threatening aura. But this man . . .
Louis had the feeling this was a man who became someone else when he drank, a man who could be manipulated to say things he didn’t want to say.
“It smells good,” Louis said.
Rodney pointed the wooden spoon at him, winked, and turned back to his stirring.
“Look, DeFoe,” Louis said, “I want to ask you a question.”
“And I will try my best to answer it. And please, if you are going to sit in my kitchen, I think you can call me Rodney.”
“You loved your sister a lot, didn’t you?” Louis said.
The spoon stopped for a moment; then Rodney resumed stirring. He didn’t answer.
“I didn’t think you did,” Louis went on. “But then I found this visitors’ log from Hidden Lake. Looks like you went to see your sister pretty regularly.”
“Really?”
“Oh yeah. Couple times a year but every spring for sure. April, in particular, regular as clockwork. Just like the groundhog.”
“February, dear boy. The rodent appears in February.”
“In fact it was so regular you even showed up after she was dead.”
Rodney turned to stare at him. “Excuse me?”
Louis pulled a paper from his coat pocket. “This is the visitors’ log. You went to see Claudia in April 1972.”
Rodney just stood there, the spoon dripping on the tiles. Louis leaned over and spread the paper open on the butcher-block surface. Rodney peered down at it. Louis poked at the line with Rodney’s name.
Rodney looked up at Louis. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like a glass of wine?”
Louis tapped the paper again.
Rodney let out a huge sigh. “I was in Europe when I heard. I was not . . .” He paused, shaking his head. “My lifestyle had put me in the position of not having to face my problems. I had an infinite variety of pharmaceuticals at my disposal. And I tried them all.”
He set the spoon down and picked up his wineglass. “By the time I emerged from my stupor and came home, it was spring. It was time to go see her. And I did.”
“You went to the cemetery?” Louis asked.
Rodney nodded. “I looked at that little stone thing in the grass and I had the feeling that my sister had somehow slipped away while my back was turned.” He took another drink of wine. “I went in to the hospital. I don’t know, maybe I thought I could find out what happened to her. But it was too late.”
Louis picked up the visitors’ log, folded it, and put it in his pocket.
“Why didn’t you pick up her remains when Hidden Lake called about relocating her?” Louis asked.
Rodney turned back to his stew. “Are you a religious man?” he asked.
“What?”
“Are you religious?”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Once, when I was in my thirties,” Rodney said, “I ended up in Goa, India, this beautiful place with beaches, palm trees, great hotels, discos. Everything a dissipated trust fund baby could want.”
He paused to shake in some pepper. “I met this woman there, an Indian woman. She tried to teach me about Hinduism, tried to get me to change my evil ways, I suppose. It worked, to a point. I stopped putting shit up my nose.”
Louis was trying to decide how far to let this wander when Rodney spoke again. “Now what does this have to do with my poor dead sister Claudia, you are asking yourself ?”
“Yeah, in fact, I was.”
“Well, while I was busy burning out my sinuses, something happened in my brain. Some of the religious stuff just sort of . . . stuck there.” Rodney gave him an odd smile. “When I finally dragged my sorry ass home, I began to study it. Now, all these years later, I guess you could call me a born-again Hindu.”
“I thought you were Catholic,” Louis said.
“Mother is Catholic. I gave it up for Lent.”
“You haven’t answered my question,” Louis said.
“I’m getting to it,” Rodney said, not turning around. “Well, the thing is, Hindus have a rather different take on death. They believe that the body is unimportant, that the soul lives on to inhabit a new body.”
“Reincarnation,” Louis said.
Rodney nodded. “They also believe that when a loved one dies, if you grieve too much or too long, the negative energy keeps the soul from making its transition.”
When Rodney turned back around, his watery eyes took a second or two to focus on Louis. “My sister’s soul is gone. Neither she nor I have any use for her body,” he said.
Louis stared hard at him for a long time. “You know something, Rodney?” he said, standing up. “That’s the biggest crock of shit I’ve heard in years.”
The barest smile came to Rodney’s lips. “Well, then, perhaps you’ll believe a simpler truth. Mother would not allow it. It’s that Catholic thing, you know.”
Rodney moved to pick up his wineglass but knocked it over. It fell to the tile floor, shattering. He shrugged and brushed the shards away with his velvet slipper. He swayed as he went to the cabinet and pulled down a new glass.
“Time for us to take a little trip to the cellar,” Rodney said, turning to Louis. “Come with me, why don’t you?”
Louis didn’t want to go, but he didn’t want Rodney falling
down the steps. He followed him through a pantry and down a narrow stairway.
At the bottom, Louis paused. It was a large basement, with stone walls and a smooth concrete floor. It was dimly lit, very clean, and Louis could see the gargantuan bulk of an old furnace in the corner. There was one door in another corner, and Rodney led him to it.
Rodney held up a hand. “This is where I keep her,” he whispered.
“What?”
Rodney pulled open the door.
Louis felt a rush of cool air, and his eyes picked up the glint of something, but it was too dark to make anything out.
A light came on. Wine . . . racks of bottles, floor to ceiling. Louis looked back. Rodney was standing at the doorway, his hand on a switch, a huge grin on his face.
“You should see your face,” Rodney said. “You were so hoping she was in there, like that detective in Psycho, you really thought you were going to find that I was hiding away some decaying corpse.”
Rodney was laughing as he moved past Louis into the wine cellar.
“Eeny, meeny, miney, mo, catch a Medoc by the toe,” Rodney said, his finger traveling across the nearest row and stopping. He slipped a dusty bottle off the shelves and produced a corkscrew from his pocket. Holding the bottle between his knees, Rodney uncorked it, brought the bottle up to his mouth, and took a long drink.
Louis turned away, his eyes wandering out over the basement. Even down here, he could feel it. There was a disquieting aura about every part of this ugly old house, like nothing was in balance.
“I hate this house.”
Louis turned. Rodney had come up behind him. He was leaning against the door of the wine cellar, gripping the bottle.
“It is a hateful house,” Rodney said thickly.
Louis moved aside and Rodney came out into the basement. He stood there, swaying slightly, his eyes coming back to Louis but not really focusing on him.
“This is where it happened,” he said, pointing at the concrete floor. “Right here. This is where my father shot himself.”
Slowly, Rodney raised the bottle and began to pour out the wine. It fell in a thin stream, splashing on the concrete and over Rodney’s slippers.