If She Should Die

by Carlene Thompson

  At this point Michael would have liked to see some details about what “things” of Dara’s remained, but nothing had been noted. He took another sip of beer, thinking. Christine Ireland no doubt remembered exactly what remained that Dara wouldn’t have left behind if she’d run away. He remembered Christine’s clear, open look in the store. She’d appeared shaken to hear of the body but also well in control of herself. She seemed sensible and smart.

  She was also the sister of Jeremy Ireland, who Michael knew from a brief talk with Buck Teague this afternoon the sheriff believed had killed Dara Prince. “You know how those retards are!” he’d boomed at Michael, his big face even redder than usual. “Hotheaded. Out of control. He probably tried to kiss her or rape her and she screamed and he lost what little mind he had. You mark my words, Winter. If that body turns out to be Dara Prince’s, our killer’s been right in Ames Prince’s own house for years and that sister of his has known what he did all along.”

  Michael decided to talk to Christine again within the next twelve hours. Teague’s scenario didn’t make sense to him. If Christine knew her brother had murdered Dara, but there was no body, she’d be relieved so many people assumed Dara had run off. She’d encourage that line of thinking, not insist possessions of Dara’s remained that she would have taken with her if she’d run away.

  He’d already received word that at the medical examiner’s, Ames Prince had identified the body as Dara’s. Of course, this identification was not considered official because it was based on the presence of a ring like one Dara Prince owned, not on identifying features of the body itself, like a pin in a once-broken bone. Or dental records, Michael thought, since the killer had knocked out the teeth. Still, Michael felt in his gut that Dara had finally been found, and he wanted to know who had brutally killed and tossed in the river the beautiful girl with the challenging eyes and the vulnerable mouth.

  CHAPTER 6

  1

  “What?” Streak blurted out.

  Christine’s heart pounded, but her voice was calm as she read again, “ ‘I feel like someone wants me dead.’ ” She looked at Streak. “That’s the end of the entry.”

  “Who’s she talking about?”

  “Streak, lower your voice or you’ll wake Jeremy. I have no idea who she meant, but isn’t this the kind of thing we were looking for?”

  “Yes,” Streak said slowly, “but it came as a shock to hear it right off the bat. Damn. She was afraid for her life and she said nothing? I don’t believe it. She must have been exaggerating.”

  “People usually exaggerate to impress another person. Dara didn’t expect anyone else to read this diary.”

  “Maybe she just felt that someone disliked her so much they wouldn’t care if she died. Patricia, for instance. Or you.”

  “I didn’t—” Christine broke off. She’d already stated her feelings about Dara to Streak. She wasn’t going over it again. But she couldn’t help saying, “Dara had to know I didn’t wish her dead.”

  “Read some more,” Streak said without expression.

  Christine turned her attention to the diary, skipping to New Year’s Eve, when Dara had attended a party with Reynaldo Cimino: “ ‘He’s so possessive. We went through the whole song and dance about him thinking I’m seeing someone else. I got him quieted down because he wants to believe everything I say. I get tired of him, but he’s such an Adonis. That’s what I call him. He loves it. Oh well, what the hell. He’s a big boy. He can take care of himself. And I can take care of myself.’ ”

  Christine looked up at Streak. “She doesn’t sound afraid of Rey. She doesn’t sound afraid of anything now.”

  “Seems like bravado to me,” Streak said, getting up to pour more coffee for both of them.

  “When she sounded afraid, you thought she might be exaggerating. When she doesn’t sound afraid, you think it’s bravado.”

  “All right, at this point I don’t know what to think.” Streak set down the coffee mugs. “Do you?”

  “No. Dara was moody. I’d almost forgotten that about her, but I think her entries reflect her mood swings.”

  The next four entries were petulant rants about Patricia, whom Dara called Wicked Stepmother or most often W.S. Dara complained that W.S. was a gold digger. She was running through “Daddy’s” money, spending it on clothes and jewelry and a suspicious number of trips to see her mother in Florida. Dara said she’d thought about hiring a private investigator to have Patricia followed, “but that would be so expensive!”

  Christine frowned. “Patricia did go to see her mother a lot before Dara disappeared. She said her mother wasn’t well. Something about her heart. But Patricia rarely leaves home now, although her mother is still alive.”

  “So you think something was going on back then? Patricia wasn’t really going to Florida?”

  Christine shook her head. “I don’t believe she would have risked telling Ames she was going to visit her mother if she wasn’t. He called her in Florida sometimes. I just wonder why she stays so close to home now and not then.” Christine flipped a page in the diary and read: “ ‘Things getting sticky with the Brain. I wonder if this affair was a good idea, although the sex is great.’ ”

  Streak looked taken aback. “Who’s the Brain?”

  “I have no idea. She called Reynaldo Adonis. I don’t know why he’d suddenly become the Brain.” She glanced at Streak, who stared out the sliding glass doors at the misty darkness beyond. “Didn’t she ever mention any guy she was interested in when you had those talks at the creek?” Christine asked.

  “No. What makes you think she’d talk to me about her love life?”

  Streak’s voice was sharp. Christine wondered if he thought she was accusing him of withholding secrets. “Dara didn’t talk to me about guys, either,” she added casually. “And although I lived in the same house with her, I didn’t pay much attention to her comings and goings. I was a senior in college when she was writing in this diary. I was going for a four-point average and pretty consumed with studying and planning my wedding that never happened.”

  “You were too young,” Streak said. “I was glad you didn’t go through with it.”

  “Yes, I think things worked out for the best.” Christine was deliberately vague, not wanting to think again tonight about the ending of her engagement to Sloane and how she’d blamed Dara. She flipped through pages of the diary. “The next few passages look fairly benign. She hates school. She hates Patricia. Can’t stand the Amazon. The Amazon would be me.”

  “Reading that would make you think she was a real sourpuss.”

  “She was no day at the beach, Streak,” Christine said dryly.

  “At least she wasn’t one of those bleak kids who feel nothing. She had passion.”

  “Maybe too much. Listen to the entry for February fifth: ‘Dangerous, heavenly day with S.C. Am I crazy? Crazy in love!!!’ ”

  “Sex is good with the Brain, but she’s in love with S.C.,” Streak muttered almost angrily. “Who the hell is S.C.?”

  Christine sat unblinking. Finally she said softly, “Sloane Caldwell.”

  “Surely not Caldwell. He was engaged to you.”

  “Can you think of any other people with the initials S.C. in her world?”

  “I didn’t know her world, Chris. I don’t think you really did, either.”

  Christine’s mind spun back to those winter days three years ago. She was twenty-one and felt as if she’d been walking on eggs ever since she and Jeremy moved into the Prince home. She’d barely known Ames Prince, in fact had seen him only a few times until her parents’ funeral. In the space of one week she and Jeremy had been orphaned, then lifted from their cozy, peaceful home in North Carolina and dropped into the turbulent Prince home, where neither Patricia nor Dara wanted them. Christine had tried to see to Jeremy’s every need so he wouldn’t get on anyone’s nerves while she also strove to prove her worth by distinguishing herself at school, even deciding to go for a master’s degree.

&n
bsp; Still, she’d been afraid that Ames would ask her to leave and take Jeremy, thereby relieving some of the tension in the house. Her father had left plenty of money in trust for her and Jeremy, but he’d set the arbitrary age of twenty-two, when he was certain she’d be married and have a “sensible” man to look after her. She’d loved him, but he was maddening when it came to the subject of women’s independence. The result was that she hadn’t known how she could both get her master’s and manage Jeremy’s needs along with his special schooling. There would be no time to handle it all, which any social worker would see, and she’d worried that Jeremy might be taken away from her. Those who did not know how Jeremy had backslid after his parents’ death might not understand what another disruption like a separation from his beloved sister might now do to all the mental strides he’d made in recent years.

  And in the midst of Christine’s turmoil had come Sloane with his patience, kindness, stability, and complete acceptance of Jeremy, and she’d seen a healthy and happy way out for her and her brother. Christine told herself that Sloane was exactly the kind of man her father would have wanted for her and for Jeremy. She’d told herself that affection was a good enough basis for marriage, that in the years to come she would learn to love him deeply, and she’d accepted his proposal in September.

  By February she was almost certain she couldn’t go through with the wedding. She didn’t love Sloane. She’d also realized that although her delicate mother had always told her a woman needed a strong man to lean on, she could not pledge herself for life to someone she didn’t love. She had to believe she was strong and capable enough to look after herself and Jeremy without anyone’s help. Still, she couldn’t see a painless way out of the spring wedding. Sloane seemed to want her so much, and he’d been so wonderful to her and Jeremy. For Christine, every day had been an agony of conflict, frantic need to break free warring with her equally strong desire not to hurt Sloane. No, she had not been thinking too much about Dara back then. She’d been consumed with her own problems.

  “Chris, are you still with me?”

  She closed her eyes for a moment, then looked at Streak. “Yes. I was just trying to remember as much as I could of that time. You’re right—I didn’t know most of Dara’s friends. But the initials S.C. coupled with the way she acted around Sloane make me wonder.”

  “I think Dara probably came on to all men.”

  He’d made a statement sound like a question. Christine realized he was curious about Dara’s behavior around men. “She was forward, but how she acted with Sloane was different. She seemed even more blatant. And Sloane never discouraged her.”

  “Did he encourage her?”

  “No,” Christine said slowly. “But Sloane isn’t a passive man. It’s not his style to let something he doesn’t like slide past him. And he didn’t seem heartbroken when I ended our engagement.”

  “I’ve only been around him a couple of times, but he seemed to be a proud guy. I don’t think he’d beg no matter how much he wanted to marry you. And he’s never married anyone else.”

  “I hope someday he finds the woman who’s right for him,” Christine said. She didn’t want to think about Sloane anymore. “Back to the diary.”

  “I’ll take over.” Streak reached for the diary. He skimmed a couple of pages, then said, “Here’s something interesting for February fourteenth: ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, presenting Dara Prince, Juggler Extraordinaire! How does she do it? How does one small, beautiful girl handle three lovers on Valentine’s Day? Very carefully! And I’m pretty sure I pulled it off. I’d better have pulled it off.’ ”

  “Three lovers?” Christine echoed. “Rey was one. I guess the other two were the Brain and S.C.”

  Streak looked shocked. “Ames would have had a stroke if he’d known what his little girl was doing.”

  “I get the feeling each lover would have had a stroke if he’d known there was someone else. She said she had to juggle them. But she also sounds worried that she didn’t do a good job of it.”

  Streak shook his head. “You know, I feel like a fool. I used to think I knew Dara. But she was too clever for that. She was pacifying me and I never caught on.”

  “Pacifying you? Why would she have had to pacify you about having three boyfriends?”

  “I guess I said that wrong. I mean she never told me anything she thought I’d feel compelled to tell Ames.” He quickly looked back at the diary and read: “ ‘Hell of a nightmare last night. In it someone was following me, watching me, hating me more and more each day. I knew I should get help and I’d try to run, but I couldn’t find anywhere bright and safe. The person was always in the shadows. And he or she wanted to kill me and I knew it and I couldn’t do anything about it. I woke up in a sweat and couldn’t get back to sleep. All day I’ve had the creeps and been looking over my shoulder. Am I crazy? Or psychic? I’d rather be crazy, because then I’d know I was just imagining it all, not foreseeing the future.’ ”

  “So Dara was having anxiety dreams,” Christine said. “She must have been really worried, and she wasn’t the type to worry over nothing. Just the opposite. She usually didn’t take things seriously enough.”

  “I’d say she was more than worried. She was scared.”

  The next few pages were filled with innocuous passages until the March 5 entry:

  I was in the library today and someone followed me into the stacks. There I was up on the sixth floor with all those musty bound periodicals and no one in sight and I felt eyes on me. I could feel hatred in the look. I was so creeped out I headed for the elevator. I heard rustling behind me and someone drawing a deep breath and sort of mumbling a lot of gibberish. I looked around and caught a flash of blue. Like a periwinkle blue. I thought I would faint. That awful mumbling came closer. I almost fell into the elevator. Back on the main floor I ran into a friend who wouldn’t stop talking. Then I saw Christine get off an elevator and head for the front doors. She had on a periwinkle blue sweater!!

  Christine gaped at Streak. “Dara thought I was stalking her?”

  “Sounds like she did on this day. Do you remember being in the library wearing a blue sweater?”

  “Blue is my favorite color. One Christmas when I was in college I got three blue sweaters as presents. And I went to the library a lot. I could concentrate better there than at home.”

  “Did you go to the sixth floor?”

  “At least a dozen times.” Christine felt herself bristling. “Streak, you’re interrogating me!”

  “I didn’t mean to. I was trying to figure out if Dara could have seen you and put a false spin on the situation, or if she was just imagining things.”

  “If she did see me on the sixth floor, I certainly wasn’t lurking behind her mumbling gibberish. That’s absurd.”

  “So you think she made up the whole incident?”

  Christine paused, thinking. “No. Not completely. Her fear sounds too real. Maybe someone was following her in the library. Or more likely, she’d just gotten herself so spooked by this time that she thought someone was after her.”

  “Mumbling gibberish.”

  “Like a lunatic. Now that does sound like imagination.”

  “Well, we can’t know exactly what really happened and how much is exaggeration.” Streak glanced through a couple more pages. “March tenth is the date on this entry: ‘I feel like things are getting out of control. Maybe I bit off more then I can chew. Maybe I’ve pushed everybody too hard. I’m having a really hard time sleeping.’ ”

  “I do remember her looking tired and being jumpy around that time,” Christine said. “Patricia called attention to it at dinner one night. Dara got mad. But then, they were always sniping at each other. I mentioned Dara’s condition to Ames after she disappeared, but he said he hadn’t noticed anything wrong.”

  “And if he had, he would have ignored it.” Streak sounded impatient. “He’s a master at hiding his head in the sand. Listen to this: ‘Today Rey proposed. I couldn’t believe it and I bur
st out laughing. The look he gave me! I don’t know how to describe it except it scared the daylights out of me. I told him I was too young. That we should wait. He knew I was just putting him off. I’ve felt weird about him all day.’ ”

  Streak said, “In this March eighth entry even her handwriting looks shaky: ‘I think I’m losing it. I keep getting the feeling someone’s watching me. I smuggled some vodka up to my room. After a couple of shots, I don’t feel so frightened.’ ”

  “Dara wouldn’t keep up an exaggerated scenario for days,” Christine said. “I don’t think she was being melodramatic. I think she really believed someone was watching her.”

  “I do, too. But who? One of the lovers?”

  “That’s my guess. Except she seemed to think I was tracking her in the library.” Christine rubbed her eyes, which were stinging from lack of sleep. “Anything important in the next entry?”

  “Something about shopping for a dress for a party.”

  “That would have been Tess’s birthday party.”

  “Tess?”

  “Reynaldo’s wife. She was in love with him back then, but he belonged strictly to Dara.”

  “Too bad Dara didn’t belong strictly to him. Maybe she’d be here today if she hadn’t been so greedy.”

  Christine smiled. “Dara was greedy about everything, especially people’s emotions. I’m not sure she was capable of real love, but she certainly couldn’t get enough of it to fill herself up. I’ve always thought that’s why she was so tolerant of Jeremy. He adored her, and she reveled in it.”

  “I’ll never know what made her so insecure.” Streak lit another cigarette. “Eve and Ames loved her beyond reason.”

  “But Ames is so undemonstrative. Was Eve?”

  “No. You always knew exactly how Eve felt. But before she got sick, she was a real overachiever. She belonged to a dozen clubs. She was always working on some project, always learning something—gardening, dance classes, art classes, music lessons, toward the end, witchcraft. Whatever she tried, she went at with a vengeance. I think she might not have paid enough attention to Dara during those times.” His gaze went back to the diary and he read the next entry: “ ‘God, what a close call this evening! I was making love with S.C. when the Brain came to the door! Knocking and knocking! I thought my heart would stop. S.C. not too upset, but I had to get out of there as soon as I could. I have a feeling the Brain knows. That would be a disaster.’ ”