Maybe he was genuinely sorry. Who knew? But Fred's remorse or lack thereof was not Tom's problem. His problem was trying to find a serial killer, a man who it appeared was murdering women at random. The headline in the local paper did little to ease the fears of St. Simeon women. Their killer was still out there.
It was coming onto dusk when Tom plugged in the lights he'd hung on the porch railing. His contribution to Christmas. They twinkled merrily, throwing their blue and green and red lights on the snowy stretch of land in front of the house and made him smile. "Don't look too bad, eh, fella," he said to his friend who stood on the porch watching him, tail thumping the deck floor, grinning right along with him.
It had begun to snow, and was cold, which for some odd reason made him think of Caroline Hill and her fuzzy, yellow robe. Odder still, she called him a few minutes later. He went inside to answer. It gave him a weird feeling hearing her voice on the phone, but he wasn't really surprised. Not that he was a big believer in ESP, but he didn't discount it either. Someone had hung a gift bag with a gold brooch inside on her door on Christmas Eve, she told him. The bag came from Natalie's Boutique. "I work all day tomorrow, but if you'll come to my room anytime after six, I'll give it to you."
He thanked her for calling. Said he'd be there. Then stood with the phone in his hand, frowning.
Forty-Eight
The following evening at twenty past six, Detective O'Neal was standing in Caroline Hill's room, looking at the brooch someone had left for her. Not that he expected it to reveal any clues, but a mystery fingerprint was always possible, maybe on the box or the bag. He would ask the victim's daughter to check out the day's receipts. With luck, Mrs. Breen kept a list of customers' names on file. He'd know quickly enough who had purchased it.
"I didn't buy it," Caroline Hill said, "if that's what you're thinking. "I'm not crazy." She was sitting on the sofa, picking at a fingernail. She hadn't answered her door in her yellow robe this time, however, but in a white sweater and navy slacks. Tiny pearl earrings. There was a new self-confidence about her, despite the nervousness.
"No one's suggesting you are, Miss Hill. But someone bought it. You must have an idea. I don't expect you still believe in Santa." The question was rhetorical and she didn't answer it.
"No, I have no idea who hung it on my doorknob. I asked who it was. He said YOU. Then he fled down the stairs and out of the building.
"Did you see him?"
"Just a glimpse. It was dark."
"But you didn't recognize him."
"No, she whispered." She'd had a few suspicions, but that's all they were.
"Or his voice."
"No."
"Are you seeing anyone who lives in the building?" He already knew she was, thanks to her landlady.
"I went out on Christmas Eve with Mr. Denton upstairs," she said without hesitation. "He teaches piano. I've already asked him and he assured me it did not come from him. There's no one else I can think of. Well, there's just one… but I don't think…"
"You let me do the detective work, okay? Who?" He took out his pen and notebook.
She told him all about Mike Handratty, including his getting beaten up on the night he accosted her on the way home, not by a gang of three, as he'd told police, but by a man who came to her rescue.
The detective listened attentively, then he said, "Seems unlikely Mike Handratty would be leaving you Christmas presents after taking a pretty serious knocking about on your behalf." He remembered the incident; her version of what happened had a ring of truth. "Why didn't you call the police and report what happened?"
"I know I should have called that night when I got home, but I was afraid. I didn't know what to do. Seeing as how I spent the last…anyway, I thought I might be blamed somehow. Called a troublemaker. Crazy. I might even lose my job."
"I can understand that. Well, I'm glad you're being forthcoming now. We'll check him out of course. Anything else?"
"There's Harold. Mrs. Bannister's nephew. I—uh, think he likes me. But he already gave me a Christmas present, a box of cakes and cookies, in Christmas wrapping. He wouldn't be buying a brooch too. Anyway, he doesn't make much money. He works at a The Big Bakery, across from the restaurant where I work. Frank's."
"I know it. Get a meal there from time to time. I'll have to take this brooch with me, Miss Hill."
"Yes, please. I don't want to look at it again. Mrs. Breen was a nice lady. I hope you catch her killer. He's the same one who killed those other women, isn't he?"
"We don't know that for sure, but it's possible."
And then she told him about feeling that someone had been stalking her for weeks now. When she was in the park, on her way home from work before she started taking the bus. "I never told anyone. I thought people would just think I was being paranoid. In fact, I wondered that myself."
O'Neal wondered too. At first, as she'd suspected, he considered she might have purchased the brooch herself and called the police, looking for attention. It happened more than occasionally. And as she herself had pointed out, she was in a mental institution for a good part of her life. But in spite of that, or maybe because of it, he was starting to feel an admiration for Caroline Hill, though not altogether ready to give up on his earlier theory. As she talked, he merely listened and nodded, kept his cop's poker face, then slipped the Natalie's lavender bag into an evidence bag.
She didn't look so much scared as concerned, he thought. She also looked relieved to have gotten some stuff off her chest.
"You keep your doors locked, and be careful," he told her. "You might even want to keep a chair wedged under the knob. Even with the bolt. I don't want to frighten you needlessly, but anyone who ever lived here could have a key to the front door. They could have had an extra key made. Or failed to turn theirs in. I just don't want you to have a false sense of security here."
"Oh, I don't, not at all."
"Good. At the same time go about your life as usual, as much as you can. You have my card. If you feel threatened for whatever reason, don't hesitate to call. In the meantime, we'll send a cruiser around to keep an eye on things. I'll be in touch."
Since he was already in the building, he went upstairs and knocked on Jeffrey Denton's door. He wasn't at home. Or if he was, he wasn't he wasn't answering the door. The landlady, on the other hand, answered his knock at once and Tom suspected she'd been standing on the other side of the door waiting for him for come back downstairs. He asked to speak with Harold.
After the detective left Caroline's room and went downstairs, it seemed eerily silent. As if it were alive, and holding its breath…
She bolted the door then wedged a chair under the doorknob.
Forty-Nine
At work the next day at work Caroline sought out Ethel in the kitchen and told her the truth about what had happened that night with Mike Handratty. She didn't like having lied to her. And she didn't want to hold any more secrets; secrets were heavy. Ethel showed little surprise at the revelation.
"I thought it was something like that," she said. "It was written all over your face that something had happened when you came in that morning. You're not the best cover-upper, Caroline. Well, now we know how Mike ended up in the hospital. You were lucky that fella came along. Who knows what Mike might have done. Do you think it's Mike who's been following you?"
"I don't know, Ethel. I'm sure he blames me for what happened to him."
"I think that's fair to assume," Ethel agreed. "Not only did he lose his job, but got beat up in the bargain." A devilish grin passed over her lips. "It wouldn't occur to him that all of it happened because of his own actions. But that's Mike."
"I know. And yet somehow I don't really think it's him. Anyway, how would he get into the building? He'd need a key."
"Oh, that wouldn't stop him," Ethel said. "If he was determined enough, I'm sure he'd find a way."
Almost Caroline's own words to Mrs. Bannister.
"Don't sell Mike short, Caroline," Ethel said, w
iping down the grill. "He's very sly. And quite the charmer when it suits him, as you well know. He could just slip in with one of the tenants, and then hide in a broom closet or something. Then again, it wouldn't surprise me if he never wanted to look on your face again. I don't see him as a particularly brave soul."
But then it still left the question of who left the brooch?
Fifty
Buddy stood across the street from Frank's, watching the restaurant. He hiked up his coat collar. He was tired of lurking in shadows, cold and alone. But all that would end soon. He'd tracked down Earl in Toronto, singing in a small bar on Yonge Street. Buddy had practically jumped inside his skin when the guy on the phone told him. He had started to ask him what he wanted him for, but Buddy hung up, cutting him off.
It would be better even than that other Christmas Earl had been with him, a long time ago. And yet to Buddy, only yesterday.
Earl had probably been looking for him, too, he thought almost tearfully, blocking out the small voice in his head that reminded him that Earl knew very well where he lived all those years he was growing up. He hadn't even sent him a postcard. But Buddy wasn't listening. He believed Earl did write to him and that his mother destroyed the letters.
"Son-of-a-bitch is gone," his mother had told him when he got home from school that day, lighting up yet another cigarette, gray smoke curling up past her face. She was still in her faded blue robe, her frowsy dark hair messy, letting him know she just crawled out of bed. She smelled of booze, but she wasn't drunk. "Packed his crap and took off, just like that." She sucked in smoke and blew it at the ceiling. "Stole some cash out of my purse, too, the bastard."
Buddy had been so stunned at this news he momentarily forgot his fear of his mother. "When's he coming back?" he demanded.
"Don't you listen, you little shit? I said he packed his stuff and left. He ain't comin' back, and good riddance."
The scalding tears had poured down his face. He could feel them now, taste their salt, could almost hear the shattering of his heart. He screamed at her that it wasn't true. It couldn't be. "He didn't go for good, momma. Earl's coming back. He loves me, he wouldn't just go. You sent Earl away. You sent my daddy away. You sent my dadd…"
The force of her backhand across his mouth rattled his teeth and sent him flying across the room. Then her face was thrust into his own. "Earl ain't your daddy," she hissed at him, breathing that stale booze in his face. "You ain't got no daddy, you little bastard. Okay? You got that? Now get the hell out of here. Go find the son-of-a-bitch and see if he'll take you with him." She laughed, a dog's bark. "Wouldn't be no loss to me if he did. Probably took off for Toronto, his old stomping ground."
That nugget of information stuck in Danny's head. She'd been right about that and now he had found him after all these years. He'd tried before to find him before but never had any luck. This time he'd just called a bunch of bars listed in the phone book and someone finally told him he was at a place called Curly's. Buddy had come to the end of a long road. He would take Caroline with him to Toronto and they would be a family again. Like before. Only better. He wiped his tears of joy with his sleeve.
Caroline would be happy too. She would understand that this was her destiny. He would come for her New Year's Eve, at midnight.
She was different from the others, he told himself for the millionth time, as if he'd needed to convince himself that this was so. Not some common slut like his mother, like those other women he'd mistaken for special. He knew she'd felt the connection with him too; he'd sensed it deep within himself. He heard it in his head like a small click. Like finding the right series of numbers on a wall safe, hearing it open.
She would wear the brooch he'd given her, on their trip, pinned to the collar of her navy coat. She looked so pretty in that coat, with the little tam and scarf. So pure and sweet.
He smiled to himself and walked on up the street. Not long now.
Fifty-One
When Lynne arrived home from Caroline's, her mother was sitting on the sofa in her camel-haired coat, clutching her purse in her lap, waiting to be taking back to her house.
"I'm so glad you're back, dear. I've enjoyed my visit, but I must go home now. Walter will be wondering where I am."
Before she could get up, Lynne sighed, set the bags on a chair and went to sit beside her. She looked into her eyes and saw the anxiousness there, the smile that wavered. When she tried to stand, Lynne put a hand on her arm. "Wait, mom. I've missed you. Let's talk a few minutes, okay?"
"Oh. All right, dear." At least she still knows me, Lynne thought and was grateful. For how long, as she'd told Caroline, no one knew. Not her doctor. No one. Only God.
It was a near disaster that finally prompted Lynne to bring her mother here and put the house on the market. Her mother had set about cooking a turkey dinner for her young family, the members of which had grown up years before and had children of their own. She had turned the oven up full-blast and the grease splattered on the walls of the oven, setting off a small fire. Luckily, a canvasser for some charity was ringing doorbells in the neighborhood at the time, had heard her mother's cries, smelled smoke and called the fire department.
It wasn't just that she'd set fire to the oven; that could happen to anyone. As a young bride, Lynne herself had once set a pot of grease on fire while trying to make doughnuts. Joe'd been summoned to more than one flare-up of similar origins. But with her mother's condition, it was just a matter of time before something more terrible occurred. She didn't want to think about what could have happened if that canvasser hadn't happened along. Lynne would never forgive herself if anything had happened to her mother while she was trying to make up her mind about what to do. In the midst of Lynne's thoughts, her mother said, "Walter's dead, isn't he, dear?"
Lynne held back her tears and took her mother's hand. The bones felt fragile. Fragile as her mind had become. The hand that had brushed Lynne's hair, bandaged a scraped knee.
"Yes, mom. Daddy's gone."
"I forget sometimes."
"I know, mom. He's here in spirit though; he's still with us."
She helped her mother off with her hat and coat, unable to remember when she'd been so tired. She was hanging the coats in the closet, when she turned to see Joe standing in the archway, trying to look cheerful, as if everything was just the same as it had always been. Tall, solid Joe, hair thinning, mostly gray now, but always her loving husband right there beside her, wanting to make the bad things go away. Well he couldn't, but he sure as hell made things easier to bear. She didn't know what she'd do without him.
"Got tea on." He smiled at the two of them, his eyes questioning. "Everything good?"
"Good as gold," Lynne said, as she put an arm around her mother's shoulders and the three of them went out to the kitchen. Over tea and sandwiches, she told him about her visit with Caroline, including the matter of the mysterious gold brooch. "I told her she needed to take it to the police."
"Good advice. Do you think she will?"
"I think she would have already if she wasn't afraid they might not believe her. If she hadn't been at Bayshore. Yes, I do think she will, Joe. I'll phone her in a couple of days though. Just to make sure. I'll wish her a happy New Year. I think it will be too. I have a good feeling. More tea, mom?"
Fifty-Two
The pressure was on to find the killer, this latest murder having fuelled new fears in the community. Natalie Breen had been well known around town and well-liked. Her murder made every woman in town feel threatened. Not only did she not fit the physical description of the first two victims, but she also wasn't sexually assaulted or robbed, which was strange in itself. The brutal nature of the killing told Detective O'Neal there was something personal about it, yet Gloria, (which she had asked him to call her,) insisted her mother wasn't seeing anyone, and hadn't been.
"She never stopped feeling that she was still married to dad," she told him. "Even though he was gone from this earth. I like to think they're together now
."
He was standing in her living room waiting for her to finish going through the receipts from December 31st. She remembered the brooch being in the window, had seen it earlier that day when she and David dropped into the store for lunch, picking up a Pizza on the way. Pineapple topping, her mom's favorite.
The room was large and comfortable, fancier than he was used to, with plush ash rose sofa and chair, white wall to wall carpeting, blond furniture. The woman had enjoyed the pleasant surroundings her hard work had afforded her.
"There's no receipt for it," she said from the small roll top desk where she sat going through the receipts. "And yet it was gift-wrapped, you said."
"Beautifully, according to Caroline Hill."
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