Love You to Death

by Bebe Faas Rice

A crowd had gathered. The shrieking of the brakes and the drama being played out roadside had attracted a lot of attention. Kids milled around staring, eavesdropping.

  “Did you hear what he said?” someone asked. “He wanted to kill that girl.”

  Julie ignored them.

  “It wasn’t Tara’s fault, Quinn,” she said, her lips close to his ear. “It was an accident. Grady was in the middle of the street. Tara didn’t see him.”

  It was like talking to a deaf man.

  Finally, gently, she raised Quinn from the ground, her hand on his elbow.

  He still clutched Grady to him, his shirt stained with patches of blood.

  Julie led him to his car and put him in the backseat with Grady.

  The keys were still in the ignition. “You’ll have to tell me how to get to your place, Quinn,” she said.

  Absently, he directed her. She had to ask him at every comer, “Do I keep going, or is this where I turn?”

  They finally reached his house. It was a large old Victorian, with gingerbread trim. Quinn indicated, with a nod of his head, his entrance at the side.

  Julie opened the door with a key she located on the ring with the car keys. She stepped back, letting Quinn enter first.

  He snapped on a wall switch with his elbow. Then he walked across the room and laid Grady on the sofa.

  The apartment, Julie noted, was small and dark, but she was surprised to see how comfortably and tastefully Quinn had arranged it. And it was tidy. Books—there were a lot of them—were lined up according to size in the floor-to-ceiling bookcase, the sofa pillows were plumped up in each comer of the sofa, and the table was waxed and shining.

  Julie drifted around the room, not knowing what to do. Quinn was sitting on the sofa beside Grady, lost in a world of his own.

  Julie’s eyes fell on a color photo propped on the coffee table. At first she thought it was a picture of herself—the resemblance was that strong. But on closer inspection she realized it was someone else.

  It was a school picture of a young girl, a girl of about fourteen, and she was smiling into the camera.

  Her coloring was the same as Julie’s. She had the same long golden-brown hair, and the delicately featured oval of her face closely resembled Julie’s.

  But what was most amazing were her eyes. They were large and slightly tilted and amber-brown, just like Julie’s.

  Julie felt as if she were looking at a picture of herself taken two years ago.

  She turned to Quinn for an explanation of this mysterious look-alike. But the minute she saw his face, the question died on her lips.

  Quinn had picked up Grady in his arms again and had moved to an armchair, one that rocked and swiveled, and was rocking Grady, crooning over him, the way a mother does over a sick baby. There was a wild light in his eyes.

  “Quinn,” Julie said softly. “We have to bury Grady. You can’t keep him . . . like this.”

  There were spots of blood on the sofa. It was amazing, Julie thought, how such a little bit of blood coming from Grady’s mouth had dripped so much on Quinn’s shirt and the sofa.

  “We could bury him in your backyard, maybe,” Julie went on. “Under a bush. That would be nice, wouldn’t it, Quinn?”

  There was no reply. Quinn sat, rocking, his face distant and brooding.

  Julie stayed with Quinn for another hour. Or maybe it was two hours. She had no way of judging time in this shadow world of grief. Quinn didn’t look at her once.

  Finally, realizing there was nothing she could do, no way of making contact with Quinn, she decided to leave.

  Maybe he’ll feel better if I leave him alone, she thought.

  She called a taxi. When it arrived, she went over to Quinn and said, “I’m leaving now, but I’ll come back first thing tomorrow. Call me if you need me.”

  Quinn gave no sign that he’d heard her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Her hands were trembling when she paid the taxi driver.

  “Have a nice evening,” he said.

  As she climbed the front steps, Julie realized that her legs were trembling, too.

  She was frightened. Terrified. Something was wrong, terribly wrong with Quinn, and there was nothing she could do about it.

  Julie couldn’t stop thinking about that look on Quinn’s face when he’d turned to Tara and said, “I ought to kill you for what you just did.” She felt the hairs on her arms stand on end just remembering it. She wondered if she should call somebody—a doctor, maybe. But what would she say? That her friend was acting extremely grief-stricken because his cat had just been run over? No doctor would be willing to pay a house call for something like that. She let herself into the house and walked slowly up the stairs.

  “Julie? Are you okay?”

  Mollie stood on the landing, looking curiously at her sister.

  “How come you’re home so early?” she asked. “I thought you had a date with Quinn.”

  “Oh, Mollie,” Julie began, then burst into tears. “It was awful. Just awful!”

  The story came spilling out: the date that was supposed to be their chance to work out their problems. Then Tara running the cat down. And how Quinn had acted.

  “And now,” Julie concluded, blowing her nose, “he’s just sitting there like a zombie, holding Grady.”

  They were in the kitchen now, sharing a pot of instant cocoa that Mollie had hastily prepared. Ever since they were little, this had been their standard cure for injury and heartbreak.

  “He didn’t want to talk to you?” Mollie asked.

  “No. He acted like I wasn’t even there.”

  “Then I don’t know what more you can do, Julie. Maybe he just needs some time alone.”

  “What really worries me though, Mollie, is the way he looked at Tara. He was so mad at her. I was afraid he was going to hit her or something.”

  Mollie was silent. Finally she said, “I heard about what Quinn did to Nick in the cafeteria Monday—the whole school did. I was afraid to ask you about it.”

  Julie raised her head and looked at Mollie. “Ask me what about it?”

  Mollie shifted uneasily in her chair. “Well, I guess I wanted to know if he’s that hot-tempered all the time.”

  “Oh, no. No,” Julie said hastily. “He and Nick just have this feud going, that’s all.”

  “Is that what you two were fighting about last weekend?”

  Julie was stunned. “What do you know about that?”

  “A lot more than you think, Julie. I know Quinn was in your room Friday night, for starters. And I know you were arguing about something. I could tell you didn’t want anyone to know he was here, so I didn’t say anything about it.”

  Julie took a deep breath and then let it out slowly. “You don’t miss a thing, Mollie.”

  “No, and I’ve been worrying about you and Quinn,” Mollie said. “I mean, you don’t know very much about him, do you?”

  “Yes, of course I do,” Julie said. “Maybe not everything . . .”

  “I mean, about his family, and where he was before he came to Braxton Falls. Has he told you anything about that?”

  “Well, he did tell me about his father’s death, and that his father abused him when he was a child,” Julie said. “His mother left him and his father when Quinn was just a baby. It was all so awful, Mollie. I hated to make him think about it. And where he lived before didn’t seem that important to me. I figured he’d tell me about it someday.”

  “Do you know when his father died?” Mollie asked abruptly.

  “Yeah. It was only a few days after Quinn came to Jefferson High. Why?”

  “So that would make it when? The middle of September?”

  “Yes. I think it was around the thirteenth. Why?”

  “Well,” Mollie said, “there would have to be an obituary for the father, wouldn’t there?”

  “I suppose so, but—”

  “Obituaries usually tell something about the person. You know, his past, his family. That sor
t of thing,” Mollie said.

  “Do you really think you can find out about Quinn and his family from his father’s obituary?” Julie asked. “I don’t know, Mollie. I don’t want to invade Quinn’s privacy.”

  Mollie leaned across the table, waving her cup.

  “Look, Julie, if this guy’s going to be my brother-in-law someday—and from the way you carry on about him, he just might—then I have a right to snoop a little into his family’s past. What if he has a cousin with two heads or something?”

  “That wouldn’t make a bit of difference to me,” Julie said.

  “If Quinn had two heads, it probably wouldn’t make any difference to you.”

  “Are you going to use that new computer program of yours?” Julie asked. “The one that gives you access to old newspaper files?”

  “Sure. Tommy and I use it all the time.”

  “Quinn’s father lived in Middledale, though, Mollie. It’s a really small town—I don’t think it even has a paper.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Mollie explained. “The Richmond papers usually pick up obits and news items and things like that from the smaller towns.”

  Julie took her cup to the sink and rinsed it out, then set it carefully in the drying rack. “I’m still not sure about this—it seems like spying.”

  “Since when is reading a man’s obituary spying?”

  “Well, okay. But count me out—I don’t think I want to help you with this.”

  “Suit yourself,” Mollie said. “You’d probably only push the wrong key, anyway.”

  “Julie! Julie, wake up!”

  Mollie was leaning over her, shaking her.

  Julie didn’t know what time it was. She’d lain down on her bed with a book but kept reading the same page over and over again until she’d fallen asleep.

  “What’s wrong? And what time is it?”

  “It’s only nine. You haven’t been asleep long. I have to show you something.” There was a note of urgency in Mollie’s voice that immediately brought Julie out of her daze. She slipped off the bed and followed Mollie to her room.

  “I was right about the Richmond papers carrying news items from the smaller towns,” Mollie told her, seating herself in front of her computer.

  “News? I thought you were looking up an obituary.”

  “I was,” Mollie said grimly. “But it led to more.”

  She shoved a computer printout into Julie’s hand. “Here’s an article about Mr. McNeal’s death.”

  Julie obediently took the paper and began to read aloud.

  “R. J. McNeal of Middledale, Virginia, was found dead yesterday, presumably of a fall down a flight of stairs in his home—”

  Julie paused and looked up. “This is nothing new, Mollie. Quinn told me this.”

  “Keep reading,” Mollie commanded.

  “In order to rule out the possibility of foul play, McNeal’s eighteen-year-old son was called in for questioning by the local police—”

  She stopped reading again. “Quinn told me this, too. He said something about his father hitting his head so hard at the bottom of the stairs that the police thought maybe he’d been pushed. They ruled the death an accident, though.”

  “But there’s more,” Mollie said. “Things I don’t think he’s ever told you.”

  Julie picked up the paper again.

  “Neighbors revealed that they were aware of several instances of loud quarreling between the two men, and that the son was known to have a violent temper. One neighbor confided that the son had recently been released from a juvenile correctional facility, where he had spent four years’ confinement in connection with the manslaughter death of a young girl named Alison Barry. . . .”

  Julie slumped down onto Mollie’s bed. Her head was spinning and she was afraid she was going to faint.

  Mollie dashed into the bathroom and reappeared with a wet washcloth. Julie laid it against her forehead.

  “Thanks, Mollie. I’m okay now. It was just the shock.”

  “I couldn’t believe it, either, Julie. Quinn, guilty of manslaughter!”

  “There has to be a mistake,” Julie said. “Quinn couldn’t possibly do something like that!”

  But even as she said this, Julie again had an unwelcome image. “I ought to kill you for what you just did,” Quinn had told Tara. And the expression on his face when he said it!

  “I can’t understand it,” Mollie said. “He must have been only fourteen years old when he killed . . . when it happened. Her name was Alison. . . .” Mollie’s voice trailed away.

  Alison. The girl’s name was Alison. What did Quinn call me that day in the parking lot when he gunned the car and roared away? Alison? Was that it? “Good-bye, Alison.” Yes, that’s what he shouted at me. But I didn’t think either of us knew a girl named Alison.

  “Is there any way we can find the newspaper article about the death?” Julie asked.

  “I already did,” Mollie said. “I’m not sure you should see it, though.”

  Julie silently held out her hand for the printout.

  “Quinn’s name wasn’t used, of course,” Mollie said. “He was legally a minor, and they never release the name of any minor who commits a crime.”

  “I know,” Julie said. She smoothed the paper nervously on her knee, working up the courage to look at it.

  Alison had been killed by a flying shard of glass, the article said.

  “A male classmate,” Julie read, “who had been stalking her and pressing unwanted attentions on her, in a fit of rage and jealousy, drove a pickup truck through the large picture window of the girl’s home, killing her and seriously wounding her three companions. . . .” Julie’s voice trailed off, and she looked at Mollie in horror.

  Quinn, a killer? The thought made her feel sick.

  Julie tried to imagine him at fourteen, angry and embittered enough to drive a car through the window of someone’s house. But he hadn’t meant to kill Alison. That was something Julie was sure of. He’d been angry, out of control, but not a cold-blooded killer. And he’d been so young.

  He must have loved Alison very much. But to get that angry—mad enough to kill—wasn’t normal. She couldn’t believe that of Quinn. Julie looked up at her sister, her face deathly pale. Mollie eyed her anxiously.

  “What time does the library close tonight?” Julie asked.

  “It stays open until eleven. Why?”

  “They must have all the back issues of the local papers,” Julie answered, getting to her feet. “I want—I have to read all the local coverage of the killing. I have to see the pictures. Everything.”

  “Then I’m going with you,” Mollie told her.

  It didn’t take the librarian long to find the issues of the small local papers that Julie had requested. The details were the same in all the issues.

  And the pictures of Alison, the dead girl, were all the same—a school photograph of a smiling young girl.

  Julie recognized it immediately. It was the one Quinn had on the table in his apartment.

  Again she had that sensation of spinning, of faintness.

  Mollie was peering over her shoulder.

  “My god, Julie, she looks just like you!”

  The faintness passed, and suddenly Julie could see everything very clearly. Why Quinn had stared at her so intently that first day. And why he’d fallen in love with her so quickly. Why he’d followed her at school, stalked her, always there, always watching her.

  Those long, brooding looks. The way he touched her. All because she reminded him of Alison, the girl he’d killed.

  He’s not in love with me, Julie realized with a feeling of aching betrayal.

  Quinn is in love with the ghost of Alison Barry.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  He knew now what he had to do.

  Gently, he laid Grady on the bed and left his apartment, closing the door softly behind him.

  She was evil. Tara was evil.

  Why hadn’t he seen it before?

&nb
sp; She’d been masterminding a conspiracy to hurt Julie and him, the way Alison’s girlfriends had four years ago.

  Yes, Tara had been plotting secretly with the others, telling those rich guys with their sneaky eyes to come on to Julie, so that they could make a fool of him and set him up for some kind of cruel trick, like those jocks did in the park that time.

  And then get him to kill Julie, just as he’d killed Alison!

  Julie had tried to warn him about Tara, but he hadn’t listened. He’d been too jealous, too stirred up to see that these so-called friends of Julie’s were playing the same sort of murderous games as Alison’s had.

  But Tara overplayed her hand when she deliberately ran down Grady. She’d thought she could scare Quinn McNeal, push him around. But she hadn’t succeeded. He didn’t scare anymore, and all these hours sitting here, holding Grady in his arms, had given him time to think, and he’d figured everything out.

  If only he didn’t have this headache. This pounding and pounding in his head, as if somebody were in there, beating on his skull. Maybe that was one of Tara’s tricks, too. She was evil. Yes, that must be it. Well, it would stop, then, the minute he did what needed to be done.

  He laughed softly as he climbed into his car and started the engine. It would be easy, so easy. He knew where they were, Tara and her bunch, the ones who’d killed Grady and were plotting to destroy Julie and him. He’d heard them at school, planning their intimate little party at Tara’s house. He’d even heard Tara say with a suggestive giggle that her parents wouldn’t be home.

  He drove up Tara’s long, winding driveway and parked boldly in front of the house. Why hide? He was doing the right thing, after all, protecting Julie from danger.

  The front door was open, so he didn’t have to jimmy the lock the way one of the guys at The Place had shown him.

  He walked through the vast, palatial rooms, listening for their voices. Maybe downstairs. Yeah, down where she had her party that night.

  He hated them for what they had done and for what they were planning to do. He could feel his rage building, building, as he went down the stairs.

  When he reached the bottom, his hands were trembling with fury.

  They will pay for this, he vowed silently. Pay dearly.