If She Should Die

by Carlene Thompson

  “Thank you for coming to the hospital with Christine and for calling me immediately,” he said in his somewhat formal tones.

  Christine’s mind suddenly flew to her brother. “Ames, Jeremy went into the store early. He’ll wonder why I don’t show up and I don’t want him to know I’m hurt.”

  “Don’t worry about him,” Ames said. “Tess told me he was at the store. I’m closing it for the day and I’ve sent Patricia to pick up Jeremy. She’s to tell him I sent you to Charleston on some important errand for me.”

  “I hope Patricia doesn’t slip and say something she shouldn’t to Jeremy about what’s happened to me.”

  “Patricia is quite good at keeping secrets when she wants to,” Ames said with a trace of acerbity. A mixture of curiosity and alarm nibbled at Christine’s mind. Was the marriage in trouble? Jeremy said Patricia was gone a lot.

  “Rey could have taken Jeremy home,” Tess said. “He was already at the store.”

  Ames shook his head. “I’m afraid not. Just before you phoned me from the hospital, I got a call from him saying that he couldn’t reach Christine and he wanted her to know he wasn’t well and wouldn’t be in to work today.”

  “Rey left the house at the same time I did,” Tess protested sharply. “He should have been at the store by seven-thirty.”

  Ames gave her a placating smile. “He thought we weren’t opening until ten o’clock. Perhaps he ran an errand and found that he didn’t feel well enough to work today.”

  “What errand could he run at seven-thirty?” Tess demanded. “Nothing’s open.”

  “Convenience stores are,” Christine offered.

  “What would he go to a convenience store for?” Tess continued. “He doesn’t buy anything at convenience stores.”

  “Gasoline. He probably filled up the car, then went back home.”

  “He’s not home,” Tess insisted. “When I couldn’t reach him at the store, I called home twenty minutes ago to tell him what happened to you. Where could he have been?”

  Ames looked slightly baffled by the barrage of anxious commentary and questions. Christine was accustomed to Tess jealously keeping tabs on Rey’s whereabouts. She knew Tess was envisioning Rey involved in some early-morning tryst. However, she was also slightly alarmed by the alert look that had sprung into Deputy Winter’s eyes. She guessed he might be speculating about where Rey Cimino was during the attack on her at the gym.

  “Tess, I’m sure there’s a good explanation for why Rey wasn’t home when you called,” she said. “Rey probably went to the drugstore for Pepto-Bismol or Alka-Seltzer or cough syrup if he wasn’t feeling well.”

  “We have all that stuff at home,” Tess snapped.

  Christine felt abrupt deep frustration with Tess for making a scene. Deputy Winter was staring hard at the unduly agitated woman. Ames shuffled, cleared his throat, then said hastily, “Christine, Deputy Winter is waiting to talk to you and you’re looking tired. We should all clear out so he can question you and then you can get some rest.” He turned to Tess and gently but firmly took her arm. “May I walk you out, Mrs. Cimino? It seems like such a long time since I’ve seen you. I don’t get to your bookstore nearly often enough. Tell me, have you gotten in that new biography of Churchill by Renson? I plan to give it to Patricia for her birthday.”

  Oh, she’ll do cartwheels over that gift, Christine thought dryly. Still, Ames had deftly removed an increasingly annoying Tess from the room. Christine’s headache could not have withstood much more of her loud insecurity.

  “Is she always like that?” Winter asked after Ames had closed the door.

  “Yes. She’s madly in love with her husband and jealous beyond belief.”

  “Does she have reason to be jealous?”

  “Not at all,” Christine said adamantly. Too adamantly, she realized when Winter’s gaze flickered again, but she couldn’t think of anything to mitigate the false-sounding intensity of her denial.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve caught the guy who did this to me,” she said quickly, hoping to divert his attention.

  “I’m afraid not. Unfortunately, it’s a bad morning. Another storm was blowing up and there weren’t any pedestrians in the area. Drivers were concentrating on the road. You were the only guest at the gym.”

  “Just my luck.” She paused. “But I guess I was lucky. That blow to the head could have killed me.”

  “Yes. We’re all very glad it didn’t.” He gave her a slightly weary smile, then flipped open a notebook and poised a pen above a page. “I know you’re in pain and this is the last thing you want to do, but please tell me everything about the attack you can remember.”

  Christine recounted the experience slowly, trying not to leave out any details, even the embarrassing ones about the assailant grinding his hips painfully and suggestively against her thighs. “He didn’t say a word,” she added. “He didn’t even grunt or mutter under his breath. I can’t tell you anything about his voice.”

  “Most people don’t think about voices,” Michael Winter said approvingly. “Voices can often tell us a lot, if you’ll forgive the pun. It’s a shame this particular jerk didn’t make a sound.” His eyebrows drew together, causing two creases above his nose. Worry lines, her mother used to call them. “What about smell?”

  Christine knew smell was the strongest of the five senses, the one most likely to evoke memories, but she hadn’t thought about her attacker’s smell. Until now. She closed her eyes, forcing her mind back to the scene, the feel of the person grinding into her thighs, the smell of . . . “Dirt,” she said. “Musty dirt. And . . . yeast.”

  She opened her eyes. Winter had leaned slightly closer to the bed and she realized she’d spoken softly as she tried to conjure the memory. “What do you mean by musty dirt?”

  “Dirt that hasn’t been in the sun. Sort of the way the dirt smells in the stand of evergreen trees behind my house. Dirt with moss mixed in. And a slight pine scent.”

  Winter nodded. “Great. How about the yeast?”

  “Well, it wasn’t a fresh yeast scent like you’d get if someone was baking. It was stale.” She paused. “Maybe like . . . beer. Yes, like he’d had beer, but not immediately before. It was more like the beer was partially digested and being sweated out of the pores.”

  “You’re very good at this.”

  “Maybe if Ames ever decides to close the jewelry store I can get a job as a police dog.”

  Winter actually grinned as he wrote quickly in his notebook.

  A thought struck Christine. “Marti at the gym said the buzzer didn’t go off the way it does when someone comes in the front door, and the back doors were locked. Have you figured out how he got in?”

  “A back window had been cut open, then unlocked.”

  “Cut open?”

  “A sharp instrument is used to slice a circular hole in the window and a suction cup is attached to pull out the glass. That way there’s no sound of glass crashing. The person reaches through the hole and unlocks the window.”

  “But doesn’t the gym have an alarm system?”

  “Mr. Torrance said he turned it off at six A.M. when the gym opened.”

  “Oh, of course he’d turn off the alarm during the day.”

  Michael Winter looked at her intently. “Can you think of anyone who would want to hurt you?”

  “No, not really.”

  “Not really?”

  She hesitated, then guiltily gave him a highly altered version of the finding of Dara’s diary. She told him that she and Jeremy had gone to the creek just to look at the high water and had run into Robert “Streak” Archer, who often jogged that way at night. She went on about the cat running up the tree, Jeremy pursuing, and then finding Dara’s diary in the hollow of the tree.

  “That was quite a coincidence. All three of you being out there at night, that is,” Winter said expressionlessly.

  “I didn’t know it, but Streak runs by there almost every night,” Christine said, hoping she
didn’t appear guilty, careful to look directly into Winter’s eyes. But didn’t too steady a stare always betray that one was lying? She was overthinking and tried to smile guilelessly. “It turned into a bizarre little group, especially with Rhiannon the cat along.”

  “And her running up the tree. And Jeremy finding the diary.”

  Skepticism was written all over his face, and Christine decided hedging wasn’t wise with this man. He saw, or sensed, too much.

  “Yes. The diary. I first considered taking it to Ames, but then I thought there might be something in it the police should see. I suggested to Streak that we read it.”

  “Why did you want Streak to read it?”

  “Because he’s known Ames most of his life. They’re like brothers. And I didn’t want the entire responsibility of deciding whether the diary should go to the police.”

  “Because there might be things in it that would be embarrassing to the family?”

  “Yes. Embarrassing but not important to the murder investigation. In that case, I wouldn’t have given it to the police. But if there was possibly crucial information in the diary, I would never have withheld it. Still, I wanted Streak’s opinion on the contents. I know a lot of people in town think he’s odd, but he’s really a very levelheaded person. I trust his judgment.”

  “Okay, so you found the diary and then what?”

  “We went back to my house and read it. There are things in it that . . .” She hesitated. “Well, we thought the police should see it. But not Ames. He would want to protect Dara’s reputation, and the diary wouldn’t do much for that cause. He’d never turn it over to the authorities. So, we decided I’d bring the diary to you today. Streak left. And then . . .”

  Michael Winter lifted an eyebrow and Christine felt her face getting warm. She didn’t want to sound foolish to this man. “After Streak left, I had the sensation that someone was watching me through the sliding glass doors facing the dining room table where we’d been sitting. I hadn’t closed the blinds, you see. Anyway, it was an eerie feeling, but I put it down to exhaustion and imagination. Then the cat came in, jumped up on the table, looked out, and started hissing. She only hisses when she senses danger. Or when Pom-Pom chases her. Pom-Pom is Patricia Prince’s dog. He and Rhiannon hate each other.” She was rambling and stopped herself. “Anyway, I’m sure someone was out there watching. They probably saw Streak and me reading the diary.”

  For the first time, Winter’s face lost its impassive expression. “Miss Ireland, you said you thought the diary should be given to the police. Is that because you felt it pointed to someone who might have murdered Dara?”

  She drew a deep breath, gathering the courage to dismiss Ames from her mind and take what she knew was the wisest course of action. “Yes. There were definitely damning passages about more than one person. Dara was involved with at least three men, none of whom knew about the others. She seemed to think it was fun at first. Then she got scared. She thought she was being followed. She said she’d gotten in over her head.” Christine paused. “Her Christmas entry says she feels like she’d be dead in a year.”

  Winter’s dark eyes flickered. “Do you think she could have been exaggerating?”

  “Well, yes. Dara could be melodramatic. But in light of what happened . . .”

  A quick glint in his gaze told Christine he accepted the importance of Dara’s declaration. “Who were the three men with whom she was involved?”

  “I don’t know. Dara was really into using nicknames and initials. She was openly dating Reynaldo Cimino. He’s a jewelry designer at Prince’s. Very talented. Very handsome. She called him Adonis. I’d heard her use that nickname. He was crazy about her and devastated when she disappeared. Now he’s married to Tess Brown, who owns Calliope, the bookstore next to Prince’s. The woman who was in here earlier.”

  “How soon after Dara’s disappearance did he marry Miss Brown?”

  “About six or seven months. People said he was on the rebound. I hate to think that was true. She’s one of my closest friends.”

  “All right,” Winter said slowly. “Who were the other lovers?”

  “As I said, she didn’t name them. She called one the Brain and the other she always referred to by the initials S.C.”

  Winter looked up from his notebook. “Any idea who the Brain is?”

  “None. I never heard her use that nickname.”

  “Know anyone with the initials S.C.?

  “Well, I’m sure a lot of people have those initials. They aren’t uncommon. You know, like Z or U or Q or—”

  “Miss Ireland, you might as well tell me who you have in mind.”

  So much for dodging the truth with this man, she thought. “Sloane Caldwell.”

  “The attorney.”

  “You know him?”

  “I’ve met him.”

  “Oh. Well, he used to be engaged to me.” Michael Winter merely stared at her, clearly waiting for her to continue, and she couldn’t have stopped herself if she’d tried. “I was twenty-one. He was twenty-six. We were engaged for seven months. I broke off the engagement. I broke it off a week before Dara disappeared.”

  She could have bitten her tongue for that last revelation. Her guilty conscience about the drama she’d created over Dara and Sloane at the party had nagged her into a confession that hadn’t been lost on Winter.

  “Did your ending the engagement have anything to do with Dara?”

  “Not directly. I’d decided I was too young and making a mistake. And Dara was flinging herself at Sloane.” Flinging? She decided she must really be flustered. She sounded like a character in a Victorian novel. She plowed on self-consciously. “Sloane never rebuffed her and to some people it could have seemed as if we broke up over her.” Winter again raised an eyebrow in question. “Okay, as a matter of fact, we had our final blow-up about her.”

  And now he’s going to ask about the details of our final argument, Christine thought with dread, but he surprised her. “Has Mr. Caldwell been seriously involved with a woman since Dara’s disappearance?”

  “Seriously? Not that I know of. But he’s dated other women. Quite a few, actually.”

  “So you’ve kept track of his romantic life.”

  Christine’s face flamed. “Certainly not!” she said hotly. “But we’ve remained friends and it’s a small town, where you hear gossip, not to mention that he works in my former guardian’s law firm.”

  “Ames Prince never struck me as a gossip.”

  “He’s not!” Christine’s voice was rising while Winter remained totally offhand. “But I know one of the legal secretaries. And another lawyer in the firm. They mention things sometimes. Not because I’m quizzing them, mind you. Just casually. I do not pry into Sloane Caldwell’s life. I have no interest in it except that he be well and happy—”

  “You don’t need to get so wound up, Miss Ireland,” Winter said easily as his lips curled in a maddening, barely perceptible smile.

  “I’m not wound up! You just made it sound like I’m a lot more interested in Sloane Caldwell than I am. That’s all.”

  “All right. I didn’t mean to offend you.” He looked calmly back at his notebook as Christine glared at him. He’d managed to fluster her with a few innocuous words. And piercing looks, she fumed. The man seemed like he could look right through you. She hated it.

  “You’re asking me a dozen questions about old issues,” she snapped, deciding to go on the offensive. “How about what happened to me this morning? Aren’t you interested?”

  “I’m very interested,” Winter returned evenly. “That’s why I was asking so many questions about the diary. Did you have it with you at the gym?”

  “No. It’s at home. Why?”

  “Because your gym bag had been torn apart as if someone was looking for something. I didn’t know what. Now I think it could have been the diary. There’s also your car.”

  “What about my car?”

  “I suppose you locked it, because someone us
ed the same razor and suction cup method to cut a hole in the driver’s side window to get in. The contents of your glove compartment are scattered everywhere and some of the carpet has been torn loose. The trunk lid has been popped open and some of the carpet is torn loose there, too.”

  “Oh no,” Christine groaned. “That means I have to contact the insurance company and then get a rental for a week while mine’s being repaired.”

  “I think Mr. Prince has already notified your insurance company and had the car towed in with a promise that you’ll have it back in a couple of days.”

  She smiled. “Thank heavens for Ames. He’s always so capable in an emergency. Except for yesterday.”

  “You’d have to be superhuman to keep your head in a situation like yesterday’s,” Winter said kindly. “Now, back to the diary. Where is it?”

  “At my home.”

  “You say you’d decided to give it to the police. Since your doctor tells me you won’t be released until tomorrow, may I have permission to enter your house and get it?”

  “Certainly.”

  “May I borrow a key?”

  “Sure. They put my purse in the bottom drawer of that little chest beside the bed.” Michael Winter withdrew the purse and handed it to her. She found her key ring and removed the house key, handing it over to the deputy.

  “I’ll bring it back to you this afternoon.”

  “That’s not necessary. Just leave it on the kitchen counter. My friend Tess will probably be picking me up in the morning, and she has a key.”

  She smiled and refastened her purse, feeling she was being not only virtuous in turning over important information to the police but also highly professional about the whole matter.

  Deputy Winter looked at her expectantly. She smiled back. Finally he asked, “Where is the diary, Miss Ireland?”

  Her image of professionalism shattered. “Oh. Well, it might be hard to find.” Winter looked at her questioningly. “When I got the feeling I was being watched last night, I hid the diary. There are no windows in my laundry room. There is a big box of powdered laundry detergent. The diary is buried about two inches under the powder.”