Last Whisper

by Carlene Thompson

  Brooke couldn’t help relaxing a bit. “A partial endorsement that doesn’t ring true.”

  “Well, that’s better than nothing.”

  “It’s a helluva lot, seeing as you just showed up here uninvited in your designer suit spouting theories about how I think I’m a disaster magnet.”

  Vincent grinned. “Yeah, I guess it is. I’ll accept it as a compliment.” He looked at her seriously for a moment. “Do you want me to leave so you can go to the funeral by yourself?”

  She pretended to think it over. “No, I guess not. I mean, you’re already dressed up and everything.”

  “And so are you, although at the risk of offending you again, I’d suggest you do something about your face. The smeared mascara is giving you a Goth look that isn’t really your style.”

  “Oh God!” Brooke exclaimed, covering her face and rushing to the mirror. Vincent was right. Her eye makeup had not only smudged into big circles around her eyes, but her mascara had left long, bizarre streaks down her face. She went to the bathroom and began wiping off all her makeup. “This shouldn’t take long,” she called. “I’ll just do a little touching up. . . .”

  “I’ll read this copy of Vogue while you’re working. I should have just enough time to finish it.”

  Ten minutes later Brooke emerged from the bathroom looking fresh-faced, her subtle makeup as expertly applied as it had been when Vincent arrived. “Better?” she asked.

  “Beautiful,” he said, laying down his magazine and scooting Elise off his lap. “But I could use a lint brush.”

  The blond dog had left her mark on his navy blue suit. Brooke quickly found the brush, and while he worked at removing the hair, Brooke inserted her pearl earrings. The same earrings I wore the night Mia was killed, she thought, considering changing them for another pair, then remembering how much Mia had liked their slight dangle. “I’ve dropped hints to my family like crazy, but if no one gets me a pair like that for Christmas, I’m getting them for myself. If it’s all right with you, that is,” Mia had said. “I’d be flattered,” Brooke had returned sincerely.

  Her eyes started to fill with tears again and she quickly blinked them away. She and Vincent certainly didn’t have time for her to complete another makeup job if they were going to make the funeral on time.

  Mia’s parents had picked their tiny Methodist church for the ceremony rather than a mortuary. As Vincent looked for a parking place, Brooke noticed that most of the group trailing into the church looked grief-stricken. Mia had obviously been loved. The people were also dressed simply, so plainly that Brooke guessed they were wearing their Sunday best, which was subdued. Mia had not come from a prosperous or stylish family. Brooke remembered when she’d first started at the agency and her clothes had looked cheap, almost frumpy. After two weeks, she’d worn an outfit that looked amazingly like Brooke’s. After that, her emulation of Brooke’s style had begun, growing over her two-month employment. Growing until it got her killed, Brooke thought with a pang.

  “Are you all right?” Vincent asked.

  “Sure.” She looked around and noticed that they’d parked. “You won’t mind if I cry a little during the service, will you?”

  Vincent reached over, took her hand, and brought it to his lips. “Cry all you want.”

  “Even if my makeup smears?”

  “This isn’t a fashion show, Brooke. And who gives a damn what I think, anyway?”

  I do, she thought, startled. I care a lot.

  “Let’s go,” he said, nearly jumping out of the car to rush around and open her door. “The service is supposed to start in five minutes.”

  They hurried down the street and up the steps into the cool dimness of the church. Someone was playing “Amazing Grace” on the organ. Brooke caught a glimpse of the oak coffin with a blanket of pink carnations beneath the pulpit. Mia hated pink, she thought. Didn’t her own family know that?

  A man Brooke barely saw stepped up, handed her and Vincent each a program, and said, “Welcome. The family appreciates your attendance.” He pointed to a gilt-edged book on a wooden stand. “Would you sign the guest register, please?”

  As Brooke stepped forward to sign the guest book, she noticed a girl of around sixteen hovering near the stand. She was extremely slender and had long blond hair and corn-flower blue eyes. She looked enough like Mia to be her sister. The girl smiled at Brooke, then looked down and watched her sign her name. Abruptly the girl vanished down the hall and into one of the back rooms.

  “Someone you know?” Vincent asked softly.

  “No, but someone who wanted to know who I was. The way she watched me sign my name . . .”

  Vincent raised his eyebrows. “Yes?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. It just seemed odd. She looked so much like Mia. Or me at that age.” Brooke shook her head. “Never mind. I’m just edgy.”

  Vincent scribbled his name, took Brooke’s elbow in his hand, and began to lead her into the main room. That’s when the girl appeared again, carrying a large vase of white roses. She stopped in front of Brooke. “You are Brooke Yeager, aren’t you?” she asked in a young, innocent voice.

  Brooke nodded and the girl handed her the vase of roses. “This was delivered about an hour ago. The deliveryman said you wanted to carry them in yourself and place them at the head of the coffin and that he wanted me to give them to you.” She smiled. “They’re very pretty, Miss Yeager.”

  “Yes, they are,” Brooke said vaguely, an uncomfortable tickle of fear touching her neck. “But I didn’t—”

  “There was a card with them,” the girl interrupted. “I took it loose from the flowers so you could look at it first. I didn’t read it, though, honest.” She shyly held out a small envelope, which Vincent took. Then he looked at Brooke.

  “Read it,” she said flatly.

  Vincent removed the card from the envelope and glanced over it, his expression hardening. “I think we should leave now.”

  “Just read it, dammit.” The young girl’s eyes widened and Brooke felt a grim dread flowing through her like a poisonous creeping vine.

  Vincent paused, then read softly: “ ‘Dear Mia, Thanks to you, I have kept myself from the paths of the destroyer. Love, Brooke.’ ”

  Everyone turned to look when Brooke dropped the vase of beautiful white roses with a loud crash and ran from the church.

  fourteen

  1

  “It’s biblical,” Brooke said.

  Jay Corrigan and Hal Myers stood in front of her as she sat rigidly in a chair, clutching the arms. She hadn’t stopped shaking since she’d fled from the church, Vincent chasing her, the police surveillance team following them back to Brooke’s apartment, then calling Myers and Corrigan.

  “What’s biblical, Brooke?” Jay asked.

  “The message on the card. ‘Thanks to you, I have kept myself from the paths of the destroyer.’ It’s biblical.”

  “ ‘Thanks to you’?” Jay asked. “That doesn’t sound like the Bible to me.”

  Brooke rose on trembling legs, walked to the bookshelf, and pulled out the Yeager family Bible. “Grossmutter is very religious. She used to read the Bible to me. Frankly, I was bored to tears, but I remember parts. Unfortunately, not accurately. If you’ll just let me look, I’m sure I can find it.”

  “Look all you want,” Vincent said, guiding her back to the chair. “But sit down before you fall down. You’re as pale as a ghost. Do you want something to drink?”

  “Something cold. Anything. Look in the refrigerator,” Brooke mumbled distractedly as she flipped through the large, old Bible that had been in the family for generations. “Certainly it’s not in Genesis. Or Revelation.”

  “How about the New Testament?” Jay asked, wishing he’d paid more attention in Sunday school instead of concentrating on trying to be the class clown to impress an ugly, haughty little girl named Patty Lou. “Could it be in there?”

  Brooke shook her head. “No. Not the New Testament. I don’t know how I remember th
at, but . . .” She trailed off, still furiously flipping through the book as Vincent brought her a glass of iced tea. She sipped it absently, grimaced, and asked him if he’d added sugar to already-sugared tea, to which he admitted. He was on his way back to the kitchen for a fresh glass when Brooke cried, “Here it is!”

  Everyone stiffened, as if she’d just happened on something potentially dangerous. “It’s Psalms 17:4: ‘I have kept myself from the paths of the destroyer.’ Grossmutter had it marked, maybe because of Zach.”

  The three men stared at her.

  “Is that it?” Jay asked, looking deflated. “Just that one line?”

  “Yes. Why do you look so disappointed?”

  “I just thought the quote might give us more of a clue.”

  “A clue about what?” Brooke asked.

  “About Zach’s intentions.”

  “You mean a guide about what he intends to do to me next?”

  “No, I . . .” Jay blushed and Hal stepped in.

  “Miss Yeager, was Zach Tavell a religious man?”

  “Religious? He murdered my mother,” Brooke said incredulously.

  “Many religious people—not truly religious, of course, fanatics—feel they’re committing crimes in the name of God. Following God’s will. Was Tavell that type?”

  “Absolutely not. In fact, he didn’t even like for my mother to take me to church after their first few weeks of marriage. Sometimes he let my grandmother take me, but only about once a month.”

  “That was fifteen years ago,” Myers said mildly. “It’s not uncommon for prisoners to ‘find the Lord,’ as they put it. They repent for what they’ve done to get themselves thrown in prison and become extremely religious. It could be that Tavell was that type. He might have been reading the Bible all these years.”

  “He could have,” Brooke said bitterly. “But what does that have to do with anything? This quote certainly wasn’t written to give me comfort. It was written to make me feel guilty.”

  Vincent nodded. “I have to agree, Detective Myers.”

  “Of course it was,” Myers said. “But if Tavell wasn’t religious, he had to do a lot of reading to find the perfect quote for the occasion.”

  “Which proves exactly what?” Brooke demanded.

  “Maybe that he’s had some kind of breakdown. Or he means to torture you and he’s been planning it for quite a while.”

  “I’d say it was the latter,” Brooke said dourly. “If he had a breakdown, it seems it would have been years ago when he murdered my mother. Or before that. Even though I was a child, I knew there was something wrong with him. I could tell my grandmother did, too. She was extremely uneasy around him. Only Mom seemed to think he was great. At least at the time she married him. After the first year, even I could tell she was having second thoughts.”

  “Well, they tried the insanity plea at his trial, but it didn’t work,” Myers said. “No ethical psychiatrist was willing to testify that Tavell didn’t know right from wrong.”

  “Oh, he knew right from wrong all right,” Brooke snapped. “He knew killing Mom was wrong. He never even claimed that it wasn’t.”

  “I guess you have to give him some credit for that,” Jay said before Brooke shot him a withering look.

  Myers stepped in. “I think we’ve learned all we can from Miss Yeager, Corrigan. We need to get back to the church and find out more about who left those flowers.”

  Brooke nodded. “Flowers left specifically for me with a teenage girl.”

  “You said she also looked like Mia,” Jay said.

  “And that is possibly dangerous for her.” Fear replaced disgust in Brooke’s expression. “Find her quickly and protect her.”

  “Count on it, Brooke,” Jay said. “Stacy will be home in a couple of hours. She’ll come over. You don’t need to be alone this afternoon.”

  “She won’t be alone,” Vincent said. “I’ll see to it.”

  After the detectives left, Vincent closed the Bible, lifted it from Brooke’s lap, and returned it to the bookshelf. “Can I get you something besides that tea?”

  “How about a bottle of Valium?”

  “Sorry. I don’t have one with me today.”

  “No beer, either?”

  Vincent looked at her, then at Elise, and smiled. “You don’t need tranquilizers or alcohol. You need fresh air and some fun.”

  “Fun? Today?”

  “Yes, Brooke, it is possible to have fun today. I’m going home, check on Dad, and change clothes. In the meantime, you leave a note for Stacy telling her you’re with me and safe, get out of that nice dress and into jeans, preferably tight ones, and find a leash for young Elise over there. The three of us are going to have an adventure.” He opened the door to her apartment. “Lock this as soon as I leave. I’ll be back in forty-five minutes.”

  “Okay, but I’d still like to know”—the door shut—“where we’re going.”

  Brooke locked the door and pushed the dead bolt into place. Then she turned to Elise. “I don’t want to go anywhere, but he seems to be determined, so I guess we’d better suit up for whatever he has planned. I can’t remember where I put your leash this morning—”

  In a flash, the dog scrambled into a corner, pawed through her wicker basket of toys, and triumphantly pulled out the leash. “Well, aren’t you the sneaky one? Is that where you hide the thing when it’s raining and you don’t want to go outside?” Elise looked up at her like the most innocent dog in the world. “Well, the jig’s up. Now you’ll have to find a new hiding place.”

  Almost an hour later, someone tapped on Brooke’s door. “It’s me,” Vincent said.

  Brooke opened the door, holding up her arm and taking a long look at her watch. “You are eight minutes late.”

  “Traffic.”

  “That’s what they all say.”

  “All of whom?”

  “All men who are always late. Elise and I were ready to go without you.”

  “You don’t even know where we’re going,” Vincent said.

  “We have our own favorite spots. However, since you finally showed up, I guess we’ll give you another chance.”

  Vincent stepped into the apartment, eyeing her low-rise jeans and scoop-necked turquoise top. She’d even added a pair of chandelier earrings, supposedly very hip these days with informal wear.

  “You look great.”

  “Thanks. You don’t look so bad yourself. Please tell me you didn’t pick out a particularly snug black T-shirt to show off your muscles.”

  “Oh, do they show?” Vincent asked innocently.

  Brooke quirked an eyebrow at him. “As if you didn’t know you look all tan and ripply.”

  “Ripply,” Vincent repeated. “I like that, although it isn’t really a word.”

  “Excuse me. You’re rippling with muscles that would set any girl’s heart aflutter.”

  “It was really Elise’s heart I was after.” Vincent grinned.

  “Well, judging by the way she’s panting, I’d say you’ve won it.” Brooke picked up her purse and Elise’s leash. “All right, Mr. Lockhart. You promised to show us some fun. Let’s see how well you do.”

  When they walked out of the building and Brooke saw Vincent’s silver Mercedes convertible, she suddenly thought of the dog. “There’s no place for Elise to sit.”

  “How about on your lap?”

  Brooke frowned. “You know how timid she is and she’s never been in a convertible before. Vincent, riding in this car might just totally freak her out.”

  Five minutes later, as they spun east along Kanawha Boulevard, Elise sat straight and tall on Brooke’s lap, her ears flapping, her tongue lolling, a look Brooke interpreted as pure rapture on her slim face. “Yeah, she’s freaked out all right,” Vincent drawled. “You’ll probably never get her in a car again.”

  “You mean I’ll never get her in my car again. She’s going to insist I buy one like yours, and I’m afraid it’s out of my price range.”

  “M
aybe we could arrange a couple more excursions for her,” Vincent said. “That is, if you don’t think they’ll make her too nervous.”

  Holding tightly to the dog, Brooke closed her eyes, leaned back her head, and let her long blond hair blow wildly in the wind. Vincent’s CD player blasted “Livin’ on a Prayer” by Bon Jovi—“a favorite from my misspent youth,” he’d told her—and before long she found herself singing along with Jon and wishing she could play the guitar like Richie Sambora.

  Vincent looked over at her. “May I ask what’s responsible for your remarkable change in mood in the last hour?”

  “Will power. I decided I could sit in the apartment, cry over Mia, and let fear for my own well-being freeze me into a living death, or I could just let go. After all, it was my decision to stay in Charleston. I couldn’t expect Zach to give up on me after two thwarted attempts. He’s going to keep after me.” She looked back at Vincent. “But he’s not going to get me, physically or emotionally.”

  Vincent gave her a small, tight smile. “I’d like to say, ‘Good for you, Brooke,’ and mean it, but I still think you’re taking an unnecessary risk. I’m afraid you’re one of those people who think they’re invincible.”

  “I know quite well I’m not invincible, but I’m not a coward, either.” Brooke paused. “And I am not leaving Grossmutter, Vincent, because I know in my bones she won’t be alive this time next week. She has spent most of her life taking care of me. I’m not going to abandon her to die alone. Now, we’re going to change the subject.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Vincent said, although the troubled look didn’t leave his eyes. “Did you have a particular subject in mind?”

  “The capitol building,” Brooke returned as the sun bounced off the dazzling gold-leaf dome. “I’ll give you a dollar if you can tell me exactly how high it is.”

  Vincent frowned, ran his gaze up and down the dome, tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, sucked his lower lip between his teeth, and just when Brooke was about to burst into a triumphant laugh, shouted, “It’s two hundred and ninety-three feet tall, five feet higher than the United States Capitol dome!”