Last Whisper

by Carlene Thompson

  “Chantal’s?”

  “No, another one. I lost that first job after I met Jay. I actually fell in love with Jay, and my ‘sponsor’ didn’t like it. Thank God Jay didn’t do a background check on me. He can be so innocent and trusting sometimes. That’s one of the things I love about him. In less than a year, we were married.” Her voice turned acrid. “I had just the kind of life my mother always wanted, always deserved, but she didn’t know it. I went to see her all the time, but the drugs and the depression had taken their toll. She knew my name and sometimes we could have something close to a conversation. Those times gave me so much hope. I thought somehow I could bring her back. I’d loved her so much.” Her voice that had turned soft suddenly lashed through the room. “I loved her as much as you loved your mother, Brooke, although everyone thought Anne was worth that kind of love. They thought Nadine Cox was dirt. She didn’t matter to anyone except me. She certainly didn’t matter to you!”

  Stacy jerked the gun in Zach’s direction. He flinched but didn’t take a step. He was gray, sweating profusely, and trembling. He’s really sick, Brooke thought. And he didn’t get this way overnight. For days he’d been hiding in this house, dying—this house that didn’t have a phone.

  “Stacy, the flowers, the notes, the packages. They were from you, weren’t they?” Brooke asked.

  Stacy smirked. “Sure. Except for that card you got in the mail.” She glanced at Zach. “ ‘You’re next,’ it said. You put that in the mailbox at the end of this street, didn’t you?” He nodded. “That was your only real communication from Zach. A warning.” Stacy made a sound of disgust, then looked deep into Brooke’s eyes and said at last, “You see, Zach isn’t the one who’s been planning to kill you, Brooke. I have.”

  “How long have you been planning this?” Brooke managed to ask Stacy evenly, although she felt tremors running through her body.

  “My mother didn’t die when I was eighteen like I told you. Christmas before last some lazy orderly let Mom get hold of something sharp and she slit her wrists. After that, I decided I had to kill you. I’d meant to do it fifteen years ago when I thought I could get my family back and make things right. You and Anne were responsible for that not happening. I made Anne pay, but you escaped me. After Mom committed suicide, I decided you weren’t going to get away with it like you did the first time. It’s a good thing I’ve been keeping track of you all these years. I even talked Jay into renting that apartment next to yours.” She smirked. “I’m very thorough, Brooke. And very clever.”

  “All these years, she’s been writing to me in prison,” Zach piped up in his raspy voice. “After Nadine died, her letters changed. They were so full of hatred for me, but more for you, Brooke. I knew she was dangerous. That’s when I started planning to break out of prison. I had to save her.”

  “Save me?” Stacy exclaimed. “Don’t you mean save Brooke?”

  “Her, too. But most important, to save you from yourself. You are my child.”

  Stacy burst into laughter. “Oh, your child! And you love me more than anything, right? God, Zach, they told me you’d gotten weird in prison, but you’ve gone right around the bend, haven’t you?”

  “Lila, I do love you. I guess I always did, only I was too stupid to realize it when I was young.” He broke into a violent coughing fit. Brooke noticed that it sounded crisp, with rattling sounds that accompanied it, and wondered if he had pneumonia. When he regained control of the coughing, he brushed sweat out of his eyes. “Over the years I had time to think about what I did to Nadine, what I did to you, my baby girl.”

  “Shut up.” Stacy looked at him with hatred. “I cannot stand to listen to you anymore.”

  Brooke—who’d been terrified of Zach for days—now feared that Stacy was going to shoot him. She didn’t take time to analyze her feelings; she just acted. “Zach, did you go to see Grossmutter in the nursing home?”

  He nodded. “Lila had said in one of her letters where Greta was. I didn’t feel so bad then. I pulled it off, but Greta was too scared to listen to me.”

  Stacy scoffed. “That wasn’t one of his smarter moves, but the cops told you he’d gotten even crazier.”

  “I wanted Greta to warn Brooke,” Zach said almost pathetically.

  “Not without watching your own back, as usual,” Brooke snapped. “Why didn’t you warn anyone else about Stacy?”

  Zach’s tired face fell into deeper creases. “I told you I was trying to protect her. I thought if you left town, Lila couldn’t come after you because of Jay and her job. You’d both be safe. But, if I told the police about Lila, they’d check into her background and it would be all over for her.”

  “I see.” Brooke looked back at Stacy. “And what about the roses?”

  “They were from me, using the numbers off credit cards from women who came into Chantal’s,” Stacy said.

  “And the girl in the church with the vase of roses?”

  Stacy smiled. “A young working girl. I saw her standing on a corner one night in a skirt that barely covered her panties and a ton of makeup, but I could still see the resemblance to you. She was glad for the extra money. And she thought the trick, pardon the pun, was fun.”

  “What about at the planetarium?”

  “Same girl. I told her the stuff in the bottle would just ruin your dress and give you a little sting.” Stacy had been smiling. She stopped. “But when she saw you carrying on so much about the pain on the Clay Center steps and the ambulance arrived, she got scared. She wouldn’t do anything else for me, but that little brain of hers went to work. She decided she needed some money to keep her mouth shut. She came to the apartment building. Jay wasn’t home, thank God, and we had quite a scene. If I could have gotten her in the apartment, I would have killed her, but she was too smart for that. She just stayed in the hall, yelling about what she’d done on my orders, demanding more money.

  “Right after she left, I saw Eunice leaving your apartment. She’d been snooping, just like I told you she did, and I knew she’d heard every word that little tramp had said. That’s why she was so scared. So, I had to get rid of her.” She smiled again. “Thank you for sending her to the basement for me, Brooke. I heard you tell her Harry might be there just as I was on the last two steps of the stairway coming into the lobby. She was already headed down just as you and Vincent were running for the elevator. You didn’t even see me go toward the basement.”

  “And Harry?”

  “I didn’t do anything to him. I have no idea where he is. Sorry, Brooke, but I cannot be held accountable for Harry.”

  “Just Robert, Mia, and Eunice.”

  “Yes. Mia was an accident, I’m embarrassed to say. And Robert, ridiculous as this sounds, was a loose cannon. I came out to the car that night and I saw him trying to climb the fire escape. He was going to break into your apartment. I thought someone that desperate might have killed you, and I couldn’t have that pleasure taken away from me. I’m so glad I had your mother’s letter opener with me. I’d intended on using it as another scare tactic, but I think I ended up putting it to much better use.”

  “So what now, Stacy?” Brooke asked. “You shoot me and then vanish, leave your old life behind, leave Jay?”

  For the first time, Stacy looked surprised. “I have no intention of leaving Jay. Or my old life. I’ll just go back to the apartment building, tell Jay I saw you out in the parking lot talking to a man and then getting in his car. I tried to follow you. Coming in and telling the police would have taken too much time. He’ll give me hell for doing something so reckless, but I’ll cry and apologize and tell him how terrified I was for you, and he’ll forgive me. And in a day or two, the police will decide to search this house again and they’ll find your body.” Elise let out a tiny whine as if she’d understood, and Stacy actually laughed. “And they’ll find your loyal dog lying dead right beside you. I never did like that dog, you know.”

  “I do now,” Brooke said dryly. “And what about Zach? Don’t you think he
’ll tell the police what really happened?”

  “Who would believe him?” Stacy asked. “Besides, they’ll never find him.”

  “Never find me?” Zach repeated, his voice even weaker. “Where do you think I’m going?”

  “I haven’t quite decided yet, but don’t expect any mercy from me. You lost your right to that a long time ago.” Stacy tilted her head and looked at Brooke with eyes the color of a frozen pond. “Well, I’m beginning to worry about how long I’ve been away from the apartment building. I think it’s time for this little drama to end.”

  Stacy took four steps closer to Brooke, putting her about three feet away. Then Stacy pointed the gun at Brooke’s forehead. Their gazes met and held for what seemed to Brooke interminable seconds. Stacy didn’t blink. Brooke tried desperately to hide her violent shuddering. She knew it was the end for her, but for some stupid reason, she didn’t want to show Stacy she was afraid.

  As if far in the distance, Brooke thought she heard a car door, and hope flared in her. Then she remembered. This was a neighborhood. A car had simply pulled in at another house and someone was getting out.

  But Stacy heard the noise, too, and she stiffened. She held the gun absolutely still, completely deliberate, completely unflappable, and cocked it in her strong right hand. Brooke kept her eyes open but somehow managed to shut out the vision of Stacy and replace it with another—the memory of dancing by candlelight with Vincent in her apartment.

  The gun went off with shattering intensity. Brooke heard Elise let out a howl of desperate fear in her carrier. Brooke waited for the pain. She waited for cessation of consciousness. She waited to hit the floor in almost the same place her mother had fifteen years ago.

  Then she heard a groan. And she felt nothing. Abruptly she forced the memory of dancing with Vincent from her mind and returned to the scene in front of her—the scene in which Zach stood in front of Stacy, then fell toward her, his body stiff and straight as a board. Stacy raised her arms as his head hit her chest. She took a step backward and Zach crashed to the floor. Stacy gazed at him, then at her blood-drenched T-shirt, then back at Zach as if stunned. “He saved your life,” she said in wonder. Then she looked at Brooke with more venom than Brooke thought a human’s eyes could show. “He deserted me, but he gave up his life to save you. You, you sniveling, spoiled, weak little bitch.”

  Stacy raised the gun again. Lucky once, Brooke thought. Impossible to be lucky twice. This was it. She stood tall, refusing to close her eyes, this time thinking of her mother—her mother young and beautiful and laughing like when Daddy was alive.

  The cocking of the gun again. Brooke went rigid. Then the front door slammed open and a man yelled, “Drop it!”

  Later, Brooke was certain that at that moment, instinct had taken control of her. Without a thought, she sunk to the floor. Brooke put her hands over the back of her head, a gun went off, and she felt bits of sharp glass rain down. The bullet had hit the window behind her, she thought. She heard the male voice again: “Drop it now!”

  One gunshot. Another gunshot. A high, keening sound from a woman, then a thump like someone banging against a wall.

  “She’s down!” The sound of heavy footsteps entering the house. Not one person. Not even two. A man ordering, “Stay back, sir.” Someone running toward her. She cringed. Then strong arms closed around her body and kisses covered the hands on her head. “Brooke, it’s Vincent. Everything’s all right now.”

  Slowly, Brooke let her arms drop and looked up. Stacy slumped against a wall, her right shoulder and the wall drenched in a starburst of blood, the gun still held limply in her right hand. Then it dropped with a clatter. Hal Myers reached for the gun. Jay Corrigan reached for his wife.

  Brooke immediately turned her gaze away from Stacy and looked into Vincent’s beautiful green eyes. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “I . . . yes. I guess I am,” Brooke mumbled.

  “Thank God,” Vincent said, pulling her close to his warm, strong body.

  Brooke lost all track of time. First an ambulance arrived. Then another. Zachary Tavell was pronounced dead at the scene. Massive damage had been done to Stacy’s shoulder by the shot of a .44-caliber pistol and she’d lost a lot of blood, but her vital signs were good. “She’s going to live,” the paramedic said to Hal.

  “Good,” he replied, trying to smile and looking at Jay. “Did you hear that, Corrigan? She’s going to be fine.”

  But Jay made no response. In fact, he revealed no emotion whatsoever. He looked like a man in a daze. But Brooke understood his lack of expression. He was in shock. She had glanced up just at the moment he had been the one to shoot Stacy.

  A paramedic came to Brooke and put a blood pressure cuff on her arm. “Where did you come from?” she asked Vincent.

  “You have to be quiet, ma’am,” the paramedic said as he placed the end of the stethoscope against the inside of her elbow.

  Vincent spoke to her softly. “Dad was missing. I’d been searching for him for hours when I finally found him about two miles from the house. He’d fallen into a ditch and his leg was broken. He was in a lot of pain and totally confused, but he’s going to be all right. After I got him to the hospital, I went to your apartment house to tell you what happened and I ran into all these cops and found out about Eunice. Harry wandered in from God knows where and fainted when he saw her. Broke his nose when he hit the concrete. I was in the lobby watching the cops question him and the paramedics trying to get his nosebleed under control when I called you. You answered, but I couldn’t believe it when I heard what you were saying to Stacy. I held out the phone for the cops to hear, too. And here we are.”

  “Just in the nick of time,” Brooke said weakly as the paramedic removed the cuff, then began tenderly touching her in the neck area and asking if she had pain, which she didn’t.

  She looked at Vincent again. “Stacy. She was Zach’s daughter. She’s been planning this for over a year. I can’t believe . . .”

  Vincent put his finger over her lips. “Don’t think about it now.”

  She saw Stacy lifted onto a gurney. Conscious, Stacy looked over at her with those still-frozen gray eyes. “You ruined my life,” she said icily. “You ruined my life, and Mia’s life, and Robert’s life, and Eunice’s life, and—”

  “Shut up,” Jay said finally in a dead voice. “For once in your life, just shut up.”

  As they wheeled Stacy out, she never took that unnerving gaze off Brooke. At last Brooke dropped her head, unable to look at the woman she’d thought was her friend. “She’s right,” she muttered. “If it hadn’t been for me—”

  Vincent put his hand under her chin and raised it so that she was looking directly at him. “You didn’t hurt anyone, Brooke. Stacy did. You are gentle, and kind, and strong.”

  She looked at him for a moment; then tears welled in her eyes. “How about funny?”

  “You’re a laugh riot.”

  “Pretty?”

  “Not pretty, gorgeous.”

  “Smart?”

  “You’re an Einstein.”

  Brooke sniffed. “Well, I guess that about does it.”

  “Not quite.” She looked at Vincent questioningly. He smiled, his teeth white against his tanned skin, his face only an inch from hers, so close she could feel his warm, sweet breath. “You’re the most fantastic woman I’ve ever met and I love you.”

  From her carrier, Elise barked sharply. “And I love you, too,” Vincent called before he pulled the carrier over, opened the door, and set an ecstatic Elise on Brooke’s lap. “The two most beautiful blondes in the world. How could a guy help himself?”

  epilogue

  Brooke opened her door at the same moment Jay stepped into the hall carrying a box. During the past week, she’d seen him only a couple of times in the lobby, but their eyes had never met. Now she was staring directly into his, and they were tired and bloodshot. He looked like he hadn’t slept for a couple of nights in a row.

  “Hi, Brooke,
” he said in a toneless voice, his old, quick smile missing.

  “Hi.” She swallowed, momentarily panicked about what to say. “I heard you were moving out.”

  “Yeah. This place is too big for one person.” He shrugged and gave a short, sharp laugh. “That’s not true. I’m trying to escape my memories.”

  Brooke nodded. “I understand.”

  Jay stared down the hall, then turned and faced her. “I’ve been avoiding you because I haven’t known how to apologize for all the awful things my wife did to you. I just—”

  “Don’t apologize,” Brooke interrupted. “It’s not necessary, Stacy had an unspeakable life. She was sick. She didn’t know what she was doing.”

  “That’s what I keep telling myself, but it seems like an excuse. I just can’t believe that I lived with her for years and had no idea. Until the last week, that is. I thought she was acting strange, but I was so caught up in what was happening to you that I didn’t really analyze her actions as I should have. Still, I believed she loved me. Instead—”

  “Jay, she did love you,” Brooke said quickly and forcefully. “She wasn’t incapable of love. She loved her mother, and she loved you deeply. I’m not just being kind. Hell, I certainly don’t feel like being kind about Stacy. You have to believe me, though. She fooled me about a lot of things, but she couldn’t fool me about her feelings for you.”

  Jay glanced down at the box in his arms for a moment, then back at her, his eyes looking slightly brighter, maybe from a sheen of tears. “I’ll try to take your word for that.”

  “Good.” Brooke hesitated. “How is she doing?”

  “Her shoulder is healing as well as can be expected considering it was shattered. There’s no infection. They say she’ll be out of the hospital in a couple of days. Then it’s off to jail. I don’t know when the trial will be, but she doesn’t stand a chance. As a cop I say she doesn’t deserve a chance, but as a husband . . .”