“Laurel, Ellen’s father is a judge on the Virginia State Supreme Court. To say he has clout is an understatement, and he never admitted Ellen was an alcoholic. If he’d worked with me instead of against me, things might have turned out differently for Ellen and me. What else did Kurt have to say?”
“The car wreck that killed her and Robbie. Kurt said there was a police investigation because the steering had been tampered with.”
“Look, Laurel, Ellen ran the car over a curb and hit a telephone pole. She was arrested for driving under the influence. Two weeks later, after the car had been repaired, she was behind the wheel again even though she’d lost her license for the DUI charge. That’s when the fatal wreck happened. The police determined there was a faulty steering mechanism—something about a loose nut on a tie bar—I don’t really know much about cars. It was Ellen’s father who claimed I’d tampered with the steering. The police thought the nut hadn’t been put on properly at the garage when the car was fixed a few days before. Nevertheless, she was drunk when she had the wreck. Besides, Robbie was in the car.”
“Kurt said he was supposed to be spending the weekend with a friend.”
“That was Kathy’s son. Ellen changed her mind about letting Robbie stay. Kathy called me because Ellen was drunk when she called. There was nothing I could do, but I did know Robbie was with his mother that weekend. Good God, Laurel, do I seem like the kind of man who’d beat his wife and tamper with her car, especially when there was a chance my son might be riding with her?”
Laurel stared into her cup for a moment. “No. You seem like a man tormented by grief.”
“Well, it’s true I wanted out of the marriage because Ellen refused to get help. The environment she created was terrible for Robbie. I had some crazy notion I could get full custody of him, although I’m sure my father-in-law would have effectively blocked any attempt I made.” His voice tightened. “Anyway, all I can do is swear to you that I never hit my wife and I didn’t tamper with her car so she’d wreck and be killed.”
Laurel bit her lower lip. “I know. Deep down I knew it all along.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. It’s just that everything has been so strange lately, so awful. I suppose you start doubting everyone.”
“Especially someone you don’t know very well.”
“In some ways I feel as if I do know you well. Maybe it’s because I’ve read your books.”
He grinned. “Great. I write horror.”
“You write about normal, decent people getting caught up in horrible circumstances.”
“Not too different from what’s going on around here except that our killer is real, not some creation of my imagination.”
“Yes.” She took a sip of her cappuccino. “I’m not going to Denise’s visitation tonight. I’m looking after Audra as a favor to Wayne. He doesn’t want her exposed to any of the funeral trappings, especially after she’s been so sick.”
Neil nodded. “Wayne’s a good man. He’s doing the right thing.”
“I’ve never taken care of a child before except for my niece and nephew, and I’m not convinced they’re completely human.”
Neil burst out laughing. “Shades of Rosemary’s Baby and The Omen?”
“Exactly.” She rubbed at her tired eyes. “I’m sure something terrible will happen to me for saying that, but I can’t help it. All they need is some old-fashioned discipline. Let me amend that. A lot of old-fashioned discipline.”
“Rearing children isn’t easy. Sometimes disciplining them hurts you more than it does them.”
“I suppose.” She sighed. “I keep thinking about Joyce Overton’s children. At least Audra comes from a stable home. Joyce was divorced. From what I’ve heard the kids were crazy about Chuck. Now they’ll lose both of them.”
“What do you think really happened at Crystal’s?”
“I think the killer mistook Joyce for Crystal. The tarot card was there. The six and the heart had been carved into her abdomen.”
“Carved!” Neil said in a low, horrified voice. “That’s more brutal than the others. Why carved?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because the coat Joyce was wearing—Crystal’s coat—was so garish the symbols wouldn’t have shown up if they’d been written in blood on the back, like with Denise. It’s just a guess. By the way, Genevra Howard is missing. At least as of yesterday. We can’t mle out that she’s the killer and dealing with an escalating psychosis.”
Neil shook his head. “Oh, God. Do you think Mary knows where she is?”
Laurel huffed. “Just mention Genevra to her if you want to get an earful about sin and how killers of the ‘innocent’ should be destroyed. She sounds increasingly like her father.”
Neil tapped his fingers on the table. “You don’t think it’s as simple as Chuck killing Joyce by mistake?”
“Oh, I haven’t ruled that out. Crystal could have told him about the tarot card and the symbols. He might have planned to kill Crystal and make it look like another Six of Hearts murder. When he realized his mistake, he simply went through the ritual as planned to divert suspicion from himself.”
“Unless he’s been the killer all along.”
“I just can’t imagine that, Neil. What is his motive?”
“You and Faith were always close to him and Kurt. Maybe it’s got something to do with delayed grief over Faith.”
Laurel shook her head. “Grief over Faith when he’d just latched on to his idea of heaven with Joyce? I don’t think so. Besides, Faith and I were close to Chuck and Kurt when we were children.” She lowered her gaze. “Actually, that’s not the complete truth. Maybe I shouldn’t be telling you this because I know you loved Faith, but I found a book of Shakespearean sonnets in Kurt’s apartment. They were from Faith and signed with love.” She looked up at him reluctantly. “I believe Kurt was the father of Faith’s baby.”
3
Kurt couldn’t stop thinking about Genevra Howard. Faith had been in touch with the woman all her life, but she’d never said anything to him, and not to Laurel. Instead, she’d let everyone think Genevra had simply abandoned the family. Well, maybe he understood. It was better than having people know her mother was in a mental institution for killing her baby.
Now the woman was missing. He’d talked with the Lewis sisters this morning, which sent the two elderly ladies into stuttering, fluttering terror. He’d tried to soothe them, but a visit from the police about their recently institutionalized niece had been too much for their genteel existence. He’d left them white and trembling, clutching at each other.
So far the alibis for Crystal and Chuck had checked out, however tenuously. The Grants said they’d called Crystal at six-thirty. She’d rushed over to baby-sit while they took their three-year-old to the emergency room. At seven-thirty they’d called Crystal to report that the child was being admitted to the hospital and they would be home soon. Crystal had answered promptly, and Laurel said Crystal arrived home shortly after eight.
The Overton children had been at a neighbor’s. The eldest, fifteen-year-old Alan, claimed he’d come back to his house at seven to get a CD computer game and Chuck was home. All three children returned home shortly around eight, Molly’s bedtime. They said Chuck seemed agitated because Joyce had left two hours earlier without saying where she was going and had never returned home. Saying he had a feeling where she might be, he left the little girl in the care of the boys and apparently went directly to Crystal’s.
The police didn’t know yet exactly when the murder had been committed. The cold weather made time of death harder to determine, and in real life pathologists were never able to be as precise as they were on television or in the movies. They did know the call to Laurel had been made from the cellular phone in Joyce’s car. The killer had left blood on the receiver, but Kurt was certain the blood was Joyce’s and would tell them nothing about the killer.
Snow had been falling heavily since yesterday. The temperature hovered around th
irty-five degrees. Kurt couldn’t imagine anyone lingering around the Pritchard farm in this weather, but he also couldn’t forget Laurel’s report about the hangman’s noose in the barn. He’d promised he’d check it out, but he’d done nothing. He didn’t for a minute believe that the noose had been put up by pranksters, not now that he knew the truth about how Faith died. He had a feeling the murderer was making the Pritchard farm a sort of second home.
It would be the perfect place to hide, he reasoned as he neared the place, his wipers sweeping steadily across the windshield to keep it clear. The farm was secluded and considered by many, mostly kids, to be haunted. He remembered when he and Chuck were ten and had decided to spend a night in the old barn to catch sight of the ghost of Esmé Dubois. They’d sneaked out of Chuck’s house and caught a ride with one of Chuck’s dad’s friends who was slightly drunk and seeming to be getting a big kick out of their planned adventure. They ignored his snickering and stupid jokes, rolling their eyes at each other over his ignorance. They carried sleeping bags, crosses (Chuck said they worked just as well on ghosts as on vampires), a vial of holy water Kurt had snatched from the Catholic church, and a camera so they could catch Esmé on film before they recited the Lord’s Prayer, banishing her to the netherworld and freeing Wheeling forever from the haunting by the witch. They knew their pictures would be in the newspaper, they might have to appear on talk shows, and they could even be called to other cities to rid them of their ghosts, but they were up to the task.
They’d come on a crisp autumn night, set up their “equipment,” and ate potato chips and drank Cokes until after midnight, when they dozed off. Chuck awakened Kurt with an ear-shattering shriek. Kurt looked up and saw a huge hulk looming over Chuck. Both boys fled the barn screaming at the tops of their voices, waking up the family who at that time lived at the farm.
Furious, the farmer had stalked out of the house with his shotgun and found the quaking boys. They jabbered out their story of the monster that had almost devoured them. Using his own strong flashlight, the farmer heedlessly entered the barn while the boys huddled together, terrified. In a moment the farmer led the hulking shape toward them and shined the flashlight on its face. “Here’s your monster, boys,” he said as the Holstein looked at them with big, melting brown eyes. “It’s called a cow and her name is Bessie. Now I’m drivin’ you two home, and if I catch you out here again, I’m gonna skin you alive!”
Frightened and humiliated, they slumped in the truck seat until the farmer dropped them off at Chuck’s home. They crept inside only to find Chuck’s mother waiting up for them. The final indignity of the night was when she spanked both of them with a wooden paddle as if they were little kids. Kurt threw back his head and laughed at the memory. “And thus ended the illustrious career of Rider and Landis, Ghosthunters,” he said aloud.
But Faith hadn’t been scared away from the place. Not Faith or Laurel or any of the other Six of Hearts. A bunch of teenage girls had made the rotting, spooky old barn their clubhouse. Clubhouse. That sounded too innocuous for the use they were making of it. Practicing Satanic rituals. He didn’t have any trouble picturing Monica dabbling in the occult, but Laurel and Crystal? It was remarkable that you could think you knew a person so well when you didn’t really know them at all.
Well, his failure to understand those girls wasn’t really his concern right now. He’d always known he wasn’t the most perceptive person around. He was a step above Chuck. He was several steps below Neil Kamrath and that made him mad. No matter how smart the guy was, Kurt was convinced he was a creep. His romance with Laurel was over—she wasn’t the sweet, open, innocent woman he’d thought would make a good wife and mother—but that didn’t mean he wanted her mixed up with a nut like Kamrath.
Kurt jounced down the rutted road. The farm looked abandoned, desolate, even forbidding. It was no wonder rumors of it being cursed had finally overcome the place.
He drove as near to the old barn as he could, then walked through what had once been a cornfield. The remaining stubble was frozen and jabbed at his feet, even through the thick soles of his shoes. Only half of the old barn remained. He stepped inside. The front part, which was roofless, bore a thick layer of snow. The old dump should have been torn down years ago, he thought.
He walked farther into the place and immediately saw the bale of straw in the middle of the floor, just as Laurel had described. His gaze traveled upward. There it dangled, the hangman’s noose. A breeze blew up, sending it swinging. Had a noose swung that way the night Faith’s neck was in it? He closed his eyes. He’d seen some terrible sights, especially lately, but Faith hanging there on fire was one he couldn’t face.
Kurt wandered around the barn. No footprints in the fresh snow, no signs that anyone had been in here within the last twenty-four hours. There was nothing but some aged, rusting farming equipment and a few birds huddled pathetically on the beams.
He walked a few hundred feet to the “new” barn, built over a hundred years ago. Inside he saw no structural damage, but it was obvious the barn hadn’t been used for a long time. All the animal smells were gone. This had once been the home of Bessie, the heifer that had nearly scared the life out of him and Chuck. He imagined poor old Bessie had gone to cow heaven years ago.
Near the back he found a few rakes, hoes, shovels, and an antique tractor he was surprised hadn’t been hauled off long ago. He also found a few old blankets and signs of a fire in the middle of the room. Maybe vagrants had taken refuge here, maybe kids like him and Chuck, sitting around a campfire telling stories. But in spite of the crumbling equipment, there was nothing ominous about the barn. It had a completely different feel from the other one, or maybe it was just his imagination.
Kurt left the barn and plodded toward the house. In the distance he could barely see the outline of the farm pond where Mrs. Pritchard drowned back in the eighteenth century. He saw a couple of Canadian geese floating on the cold water, but most wildlife had abandoned it. Untended, the pond had become covered with water lilies and algae. It would take dredging and a lot of work to restore it to its former beauty.
The farmhouse had once been white. Now at least a third of the paint had peeled off. Several windows were broken out and the porch swing hung by one chain, the wind sending the lower end scraping back and forth over the battered porch floor. On either side of the steps sat large pots in which he pictured red geraniums. Now they held beer cans and cigarette wrappers. Yes, this was the place where vagrants sought refuge on cold nights, a place that once had been a real home.
He hesitated at the door. Undoubtedly some of the people who came here had been unfortunate enough to lose their own homes and merely wanted to find a place to escape the elements. Others probably had less savory histories and motives. Besides, he’d come here thinking he might find the person who’d brutally murdered three women.
He withdrew his gun before he opened the door and stepped into the house. It was not much warmer inside than out. Slowly he walked into the living room. The wallpaper had once sported red roses, but moisture had made the color run, making the walls look like they were streaked with old blood. More blankets were piled in front of the fireplace, which showed recent signs of a fire. The dust on the floor was scuffed although there were no clear footprints.
Kurt walked through the downstairs, his gun drawn. Everywhere were signs of human habitation, but he couldn’t tell if someone had been here days ago or weeks ago. More beer and soda cans sat on the kitchen counter, and even a pizza box and wrappers from fast food restaurants, all gnawed on by mice. The sink was rust-stained and filthy.
He checked all the downstairs bedrooms and found similar signs of filth and decay. Here and there lay a dead bird that had flown in through a broken window and gotten trapped. He also saw a few rotting rat carcasses and wondered if they’d been poisoned.
Something creaked overhead and he jerked to attention. Quickly he backtracked down the hall until he reached the stairs. He clicked off the safety of
his gun and started up the steps slowly. The dust was badly scuffed on them. Someone had gone up and down them frequently and not long ago. Pieces of paper littered the stairs, mostly crumpled newspaper pages. Near the top of the stairs he stopped. Here a newspaper lay spread out. The stairs were so close to the front door Kurt knew he would have noticed the newspaper if it had been in this position when he came in the house.
He bent down and read the headline: Local Girl Found Hanged. He read the first couple of lines describing the discovery of the partially burned body of Faith Howard, seventeen, hanging in the Pritchard barn.
The paper was thirteen years old and in perfect condition, Kurt thought, his breath quickening. This newspaper had been treasured, saved to remind someone in particular of what had happened to Faith.
A whisper of movement from above sent a prickling along his neck, a sudden chill, a certainty that he was not alone. He stood up in time to glimpse a figure in a white robe with flowing red hair holding a tire iron. In a rush of motion, before Kurt could even raise his gun, the tire iron crashed against his skull.
Kurt tumbled noisily to the foot of the stairs and lay motionless. The figure wafted down the steps, leaning down to stare at his quiet face with the streak of blood oozing down his temple. A finger dabbed at the blood and drew on the floor, forming a bloody heart and a six. Then, slowly, the figure raised the tire iron again.
Twenty-three
At four-thirty they had completed and delivered all their orders, Norma and Mary were still not speaking, and Laurel was exhausted so she declared the store officially closed for Christmas half an hour early. On her way home she stopped for groceries because Audra would be spending the night. She couldn’t expect the child to eat the way she had this past week.
Snow fell steadily as she loaded her grocery bags in the car and started for home. The roads were slightly slick and Laurel drove slowly, wishing darkness didn’t fall so early in winter. The long lane to her house, which she usually thought beautiful with all the tree limbs coated with snow, now looked lonely, even scary. After the murders, she wondered if she would ever find winter nights beautiful again.
In the Event of My Death Page 28
