Last Whisper

by Carlene Thompson

  Brooke smiled. “Well, my grandmother was religious and I had to be in Sunday school and church every week, and I also sang in the choir. I remember the day I sang solo. Grossmutter was so proud, I was afraid she was going to stand up and throw flowers after my performance.”

  “You must sing well, then.”

  “No, I just sang better than anyone else in the choir, which isn’t saying much.” She picked up her purse. “Ready to go?”

  “Aren’t Jay and Stacy coming with us?”

  “No. Did you expect them to?”

  “I thought because they live right next door, you might feel obliged to invite them,” Vincent said.

  “I don’t. Besides, Stacy left here at the crack of dawn claiming she couldn’t sleep because of her allergy to Elise, and when I saw Jay in the hall briefly this morning, he looked worn out.”

  “Do you think there’s been a break in the case?” Vincent asked.

  “If so, Jay wasn’t inclined to tell me. I don’t suppose Hal Myers called your father with any news.”

  “Not that I know of.” Vincent shrugged. “Maybe we just wore out poor old Jay and Stace last night. They aren’t party animals like us. And Elise.” She wagged her tail at him. “Sorry to leave you, girl, but—”

  “She understands about unfair segregation practices when it comes to dogs in public places,” Brooke said. “She’ll be fine with her toys and her chew bone. She already had a nice run this morning. She’ll probably take a nap.”

  The Avampato Discovery Museum, housed in the beautiful new Clay Center, wasn’t too crowded when they arrived at a little after one. They wandered around the museum, their shoes clicking against the lovely dark blue, burgundy, forest green, and gold tiles of the flooring. First, they climbed to the Juliet Museum of Art on the second level. Although the entire museum contained nine thousand contiguous square feet of space, a separate gallery space was dedicated to nineteenth-and twentieth-century art. Brooke was particularly fascinated by the huge photos of Andy Warhol, Edie Sedgwick, Natalie Wood, and Leonard Bernstein.

  “Thinking of sneaking one of these out of here?” Vincent whispered close to her ear. “You look like you’re plotting something, and that museum guide is watching you very closely.”

  “He’s probably just staring at you disapprovingly because you’re not wearing a suit,” she returned. “But I would like to take Natalie’s photo with me.”

  “A Natalie Wood fan?”

  “After the movie Splendor in the Grass? Are you kidding? She loved Warren Beatty so much and then later when she went to visit him and he was married and she had on that gorgeous white dress and white portrait hat and gloves and—”

  “Okay, I think you’re going to cry,” Vincent said, moving her along gently. “If you tell me you had a crush on Andy Warhol, I’m dumping you right here.”

  “He was . . . different.”

  “That’s an understatement.”

  “I didn’t have a crush on him.”

  “And that’s a relief, because I don’t look a thing like him and women have a tendency to be attracted to a certain type.”

  “Is that so?” Brooke answered, ignoring his innuendo about wanting her to have a crush on someone who looked like him. “And men don’t?”

  “Oh no. We just take women as we find them. No preconceived notions of what we want. It’s usually just a woman with a forgiving heart who’s a great cook and housekeeper. We don’t care a fig whether or not they’re attractive.”

  “That’s a good one, Vincent. Did you just come up with it or is it a tried-and-true line?”

  Vincent answered, but Brooke didn’t hear him. From the corner of her eye, she’d just spotted impossibly red hair worn short and spiky. “Oh God, there’s Judith,” she said, stepping closer to Vincent and looking intently at her museum pamphlet.

  “Who’s Judith?”

  “Judith Lambert. She used to date my boss, Aaron Townsend. Stop looking around—she’ll see you!”

  “I don’t even know what she looks like.”

  “Horrible flaming red hair done in spikes,” Brooke whispered. “She used to be so attractive. She and Aaron dated for about nine months. Then he dropped her. She says it was the other way around, but no one believes her, partly because Aaron went on just as before, while Judith lost a lot of weight and did something drastic to her hair. I think the bit with the hair was sort of like flipping the whole world the bird.”

  “Ah, you’re a psychiatrist, too.”

  “Well, I do think so. Anyway, she finally came to the conclusion that Aaron had broken up with her for me. I learned that through office gossip and I was flabbergasted.” She lowered the pamphlet slightly and peeped at Judith and her companion. “You know what you were saying about people always being drawn to the same type? Well, maybe you’re right, because the man she’s with looks sort of like Aaron, only much tackier. Bad haircut, shirt about ten years out-of-date.”

  Judith’s eyes flashed at them as if she’d heard the last remark, and Brooke quickly retreated behind her pamphlet again. “What if she comes over here to talk to us?” she hissed.

  “Then we’ll talk to her,” Vincent returned calmly. “But I don’t think you have anything to worry about.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s almost time for the planetarium show. The guy at the desk told us not to be late for it because people start lining up fairly early.”

  Brooke had expected there to be more children in line than adults for the ElectricSky. She was mistaken. There were twice as many adults, but all acted as excited as children, some murmuring, a few giggling, one older woman fretting to her husband, “Things move around on the walls in there and you feel like you’re right in the midst of some big, swirling mass. Mildred told me. I hope I don’t get dizzy.”

  “Mildred thinks she’s seasick at the swimming pool,” the woman’s husband snapped. “She’s a kook. You won’t get dizzy if you just concentrate on not getting dizzy.”

  She gave him a murderous look. “Oh, you and your mind-over-matter crap! It’s nonsense!”

  “Young love,” Vincent muttered in Brooke’s ear, making her hide her smile from the woman, who was looking right at her.

  The planetarium’s double doors opened and everyone went totally silent and solemn, as if they were boarding an actual spacecraft destined for Mars. They walked down a long, dark hall lined with tiny floor lights, then up a curving staircase, and entered a large amphitheater. Brooke’s eyes seemed slow to adjust to the darkness. She stumbled along, transported by the haunting music coming from all around them and gazing at the coral pink lights appearing to shimmer from everywhere. Vincent guided her into a row and nearly pushed her down into a theater seat. “I love this!” she murmured.

  “So I gathered,” Vincent whispered with a trace of humor. “You’re acting like a three-year-old. Close your mouth before something flies into it.”

  The narrator started. Brooke learned that the dome was sixty-one feet from side to side and contained Dolby Surround Sound projectors. He also informed them that the projector in the middle of the area was jokingly called the Death Star. He warned the audience that the dome made all sounds travel, and requested that people not talk or even murmur, because all noises would be exaggerated.

  “Remember the scene in Rebel Without a Cause where James Dean and Natalie Wood are at the planetarium?” Brooke whispered softly to Vincent.

  “Shhhhhhh!” a woman behind them hissed, sounding like a large, infuriated poisonous viper about to strike. “He said to be quiet!” Brooke turned to glare at her, considering that she had made more noise than Brooke.

  That was when Brooke saw the girl sitting right across from them. Shoulder-length straight blond hair tossed behind her ears, narrow shoulders, and a long, graceful neck. She looked like the girl at Mia’s funeral who gave Brooke the vase of white roses. Brooke closed her eyes for a moment, then looked at the girl again.

  Almost as if feeling her gaze, the girl turned and stared back at Br
ooke. What could have made me think that was the same girl? Brooke wondered. Her blue eyes were heavily lined in black, and the lids shimmered with some kind of glittery powder. Berry red lipstick emphasized her full lips, and four hoop earrings of varying sizes dangled from her left lobe. She wore ragged jeans and a wildly patterned extremely low-cut T-shirt, and chewed gum as if her life depended on it. She looked at least eighteen, not sixteen like the girl at the funeral home. And yet . . .

  She turned her gaze away from Brooke with boredom, slid down in her seat, and propped her sandaled feet on the back of the seat in front of her. The hems of her jeans were frayed and even from a distance looked dirty. Her companion, an ill-kempt boy with greasy black hair and a tattoo on his neck, also looking around eighteen, laughed out loud at something the girl muttered, drawing a dagger stare from the woman behind Brooke and Vincent. Brooke had a feeling the woman knew better than to “shush” those two, though. They had a rough look, as if they’d like nothing better than to curse her out or maybe even worse.

  Brooke turned her attention away from the girl for a moment and spotted Judith and her companion. Judith was trying to show how wildly involved they were. Unfortunately, the image was ruined as he sat almost rigid in his chair while her long, skinny arms seemed to multiply and flow all over him. Brooke had the sudden image of the poor man being captured by an octopus.

  “What’s wrong?” Vincent whispered.

  “Nothing. I’m just people-watching.”

  “I’m going to tell both of you one more time to be quiet,” the woman behind them nearly snarled.

  Vincent and Brooke both turned. The husband’s face looked swollen with the blood of anger and embarrassment, but he said nothing. He probably never got a chance to say much of anything, Brooke thought.

  Vincent gave Brooke’s hand a squeeze, and after they both turned around again, she relaxed, immediately enthralled as the story of the galaxy began to unfold. All around her spun the images of stars, planets, meteors, and fire. The sound did surround her, and she could easily see how someone might get dizzy in this lifelike chamber full of color and drama. She caught herself gripping Vincent’s arm, just as she used to grip Daddy’s arm when he took her to the planetarium a lifetime ago when she was a child. Vincent covered her hand and squeezed, smiling although he didn’t look at her. He seemed to know she was having a good time, and the expression on his face told her that her pleasure was giving him just as much.

  “Everything’s spinning around,” the woman behind them announced loudly. “I think I’m going to vomit.”

  “Then leave,” her husband said absently, mesmerized by the show.

  “Alone? Without you?”

  From across the room came another loud, “Shhhhhh.” “Well, I never!” the woman exclaimed as if she hadn’t done it herself fifteen minutes earlier.

  Seeing that her husband had no intention of trailing after her from the dome, the woman controlled her desire to throw up and went silent, although she did make a great show of burying her head in her hands. That husband is going to catch hell when they leave here, Brooke thought. The wife didn’t act as if she were used to rebellion on her husband’s part.

  Although Brooke was riveted by the show, by the spectacular representation of meteors blasting against planets and the moon with spectacular bursts of light, she couldn’t rid herself of the feeling that someone watched her. At first she was certain it was the nauseated woman behind her, glowering at the back of her head in pure resentment because Brooke obviously wasn’t sick, but when she glanced back, the woman still had her eyes covered, letting out an occasional pitiful moan while her husband completely ignored her. Finally, Brooke glanced around the dome. All eyes seemed fixed on some point of the drama unfolding in front, above, beside them. She even looked at the blond girl, whose head was bent toward her grungy boyfriend’s as they giggled, paying no attention whatsoever to the show. Or to Brooke. I spooked myself, Brooke thought. I got nervous because I imagined that slut looked like the angelic girl at Mia’s funeral—the girl who gave me a vase of roses from Zach.

  It seemed to Brooke that the show ended in about five minutes. She would gladly have sat through it again, but Vincent was nudging her to get up. They stepped sideways out into another one of the dark halls lined with tiny white lights, this time climbing up toward the exit, not down the way they had come. Suddenly, people Brooke had not been aware of seemed to come to life. People babbled, men held their wives’ arms and told them to watch their steps, and children dashed past them, laughing and chattering. They’d certainly followed the narrator’s instructions and kept quiet throughout the show, Brooke thought approvingly. Except for the woman behind her, she hadn’t heard so much as a whisper.

  Suddenly, Brooke felt something like a spray of moisture followed by a pinprick on her lower back just above her hips. Had she been perspiring? Had her zipper pinched her damp skin? She reached around just as she felt another sharp, stinging jab. “Ouch!” she burst out as pain spread over her lower back. “Darn it! What—”

  The pain grew more intense. She felt as if someone were holding a kitchen match to her lower back. Either that, or they’d managed to drop acid on the tender skin below her thin dress. “Vincent—”

  He grabbed her arm. “What is it?”

  “My back.” The pain flared, raw and burning. “It hurts!”

  Brooke knew someone hadn’t brushed up against her with something that accidentally caused the smarting feeling seeming to eat through her skin. She’d been attacked, stealthily, minutely, maliciously. But how seriously?

  Brooke instinctively looked around her in the narrow hall for the blond girl. At first Brooke saw no one except strangers curiously looking at her as she sank to her knees and her eyes filled with tears as the pain intensified, Then she spotted Judith Lambert, who for a second seemed to be watching Brooke before she swept on, keeping her escort firmly in tow.

  sixteen

  1

  People parted around them and hugged the walls, staying as far away from Brooke as possible. Typical, Brooke thought. People never want to get involved.

  Vincent wrapped his arms around her shoulders and held her tightly. “What is it, Brooke? What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know.” Tears ran down her face as the burning on her back became worse. “I was just walking along and I felt something wet on the back of my dress and then something like a pinprick. It stung. Then there was an actual jab right in the middle of the wet spot, and the stinging got much worse.”

  Vincent ran his right hand down her back and drew it back sharply just below her waist. “Damn! That smarts!”

  Brooke squirmed. “Vincent, what is it?”

  One of the surveillance police ran up to them, kneeling beside Brooke. “What happened?”

  “We were walking out and Brooke felt something sharp and wet on her back. Down low. It stung. Then she felt it again. I ran my hand over it and my skin is burning.”

  The policeman immediately pulled out his cell phone and dialed 911, giving them the address of the Clay Center and Brooke’s symptoms. The two men bent her over, staring at the large wet spot on the back of her thin sundress. One policeman looked at Vincent’s reddening hand. “It’s some kind of corrosive,” Vincent told him.

  “My partner and I got separated from you on the way out. Who was near you?” the cop asked.

  “I don’t know.” Vincent looked down at Brooke. “Did you see anyone?”

  “Whoever did this was behind me, obviously. The only person I saw in there I knew was Judith Lambert. Oh God, how long will it take for the ambulance to get here?”

  “We’ll help you to the front doors,” one of the cops said. “The ambulance will be here in about five minutes.”

  Five minutes turned into ten minutes. While they waited, Vincent sat down on the front steps of the Clay Center, placed Brooke beside him, turned her back toward him, and pulled down the zipper of her dress. People glanced at the blonde with her dress hangin
g below her waist and only a lacy strapless bra covering her chest, but she hurt so much, she didn’t care. Vincent looked at her lower back. “There’s a spot about the size of a fifty-cent piece, red as fire and beginning to blister. She’s also bleeding.”

  “Oh great, more blood?” Brooke moaned.

  “It’s not a lot of blood.”

  “That’s so comforting. Can’t you do something?”

  Vincent fumbled in his pants pockets. “I have one of those moist towelettes—Dad never lets me leave home without one, like I’m six or that detective on TV—but I’m afraid the chemicals in it might do more harm than good.”

  A small, round man rushed out of the building carrying a wet cloth. “I heard what happened and I doused my handkerchief in the water fountain. Maybe this will help.”

  Vincent immediately applied the handkerchief, and the pain eased slightly. “Oh, thank you,” Brooke said to the man, tears still running down her face. “I hate to be such a baby, but the pain—”

  “You’re not being a baby, ma’am.” The man smiled. “I’m glad it helps a little. Is there anything else I can do?”

  At that moment the ambulance pulled up. “I think we’re in good hands, now,” Vincent said. “Thank you, sir.”

  An hour later Brooke sat up on a bed in an examination room. A doctor had thoroughly cleaned her wound, given her a mild painkiller, greased her with what seemed like half a tube of antibiotic ointment, and placed a thick bandage over the injury for protection against pressure. “The lab will identify the chemical on your dress,” he said in his beautiful Pakistani accent. He’d already told her he’d come to the United States from Kashmir seventeen years earlier. “Hopefully, we’ll soon see what we’re dealing with. What a nasty thing to do to such a pretty girl.”

  “Thank you for the compliment, but it was a nasty thing to do to anyone,” Brooke said. “You’ve been very kind.”

  Vincent came into the room, briefly conferred with the doctor, then walked slowly to the bed. “This wasn’t quite the afternoon I had planned for you, Cinnamon Girl,” he said apologetically.