by Kate Wilhelm
COPYRIGHT
ISBN-13: 978-1-62205-020-8
WHISPER HER NAME
Kate Wilhelm
Copyright ©2012 InfinityBox Press
First Edition
All rights reserved. Except for the use of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews, no part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means in any manner without the written permission of the publisher.
All characters, groups, places, and events portrayed in this novel are fictitious.
Cover: Richard Wilhelm
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WHISPER HER NAME
Kate Wilhelm
1
CONSTANCE GLANCED UP FROM cutting lemon wedges when Charlie walked through the kitchen carrying a floor fan. He grunted something unintelligible as he continued on to the back porch. Moments later he returned and stood glaring at her.
“This time you’re not going to talk me out of it,” he said.
“All right.” She rinsed and dried her hands and added the plate of lemon wedges to the tray she had prepared. Lemonade, iced tea, glasses, spoons, napkins, sugar. She nodded and took the tray to the porch, where she put it on a glass-topped table.
Following her out, Charlie said, “I’ll call Hank on Monday.”
Her only response was an “Umm,” sound.
It wasn’t fair, he thought bitterly. It was hot as hell, he was hot as hell, and she, cool as ever, was arranging a tea party. She was wearing a sleeveless pale-blue top over ivory-colored pants and sandals, and looked like a damn model, not a wife of twenty-five-plus years, and certainly not like a psychologist. Even her hair, almost platinum, just the way it had always been, belied her years, since a few new white hairs now matched her natural hair so closely. Regarding her, his scowl smoothed out as another thought surged. She was the most beautiful and the sexiest woman he had ever seen, always had been, still was.
“It’s really quite nice out here, isn’t it?” she said, turning her gaze toward him. Her eyes were the same pale blue as the top she wore.
He had to admit that the porch was okay, maybe even nice, with a ceiling fan and the floor fan both humming, clematis shading the western side, and jasmine perfuming the air. The flower bed was riotous with color, dead-looking cats sprawled in shade patches, and butterflies were plying their trade among the flowers.
“I’m still going to call Hank,” he muttered. Hank owned a heating and air-conditioning business. Every summer Charlie resolved to get him out to the house and install AC but, somehow, it never happened. This year it would, he told himself. Then, thinking of air-conditioning and the window unit in their bedroom, he said, “Let’s give these guys the bum’s rush, pronto-like.”
“Whatever you say,” she said with a faint smile. She glanced toward the door and added, “I think they’ve arrived.”
Constance knew that it wasn’t the heat bothering Charlie as much as boredom. No grass to cut or snow to blow, nothing to repair around the house at the present time, nothing stirring in the nearby village or the firehouse where he often hung out with the volunteer or two who wandered in, no interesting case to occupy his mind. He was simply bored and tired of August. After years as an arson investigator, more years as a New York City homicide detective, and the ever-constant pressure of living in the city, inactivity and a quiet life were proving to be more difficult for him to adapt to than either of them had ever considered.
She went with him to meet the woman who had called earlier that morning.
“Tricia Corning,” the woman said inside the foyer. She extended her hand to Constance, then to Charlie. “Thanks for seeing us on such short notice. My nephew Stuart Bainbridge, and Dr. Rasmussen.” She indicated the man and woman who had entered with her.
Tricia Corning was slightly built, with hair turning gray at the temples, a flawless complexion, and lovely brown, heavily lashed eyes. She appeared to be in her forties, but when she smiled she looked years younger. Hers was a slightly crooked smile. Stuart Bainbridge had that same lopsided smile and pretty eyes. Six feet tall, muscular, he was deeply suntanned with brown hair, sun-bleached almost blond. Probably not yet thirty, Charlie thought, shaking hands with him. The third member of the party, Dr. Rasmussen, was a tall woman, sturdily built, not overweight, but strong-looking, with an air of authority that made Charlie think of librarians. Constance was reminded of her high school gym teacher who had always covered her nose with zinc oxide when she led her class out to the field, pretending unawareness of the girls’ amusement. Dr. Rasmussen’s hair was nearly black, short and straight, and neatly framed her face like a helmet. With prominent black eyebrows, little makeup, dark-blue eyes with an unwavering frank assessment of both Constance and Charlie, she was upper management, Charlie decided. She would take charge if given half a chance.
He was closing the front door when another car pulled into the driveway, and a third woman emerged and headed toward the door. Too-high heels, too much leg, too much cleavage, Charlie thought, watching her.
“I’m Pamela Bainbridge,” she said, drawing near. “I’m with them.” She jerked her thumb toward Tricia Corning and Stuart.
Tricia took a step back and two spots of color flared on her cheeks. “For heaven’s sake! You followed us?”
“You bet I did,” Pamela snapped. “No secret deals while my back is turned.”
Stuart Bainbridge’s hands clenched for a moment, then relaxed. “She’s married to my father,” he said, “and she has no business being here. I have his power of attorney. I’m acting on his behalf.”
Pamela Bainbridge raked him with contemptuous gaze, then said to Charlie, “I have as much right as anyone else. He’s trying to cut me out, and I won’t be cut out.”
She was what Charlie thought of as conventionally pretty. Thirty, thirty-five, features in the right place, makeup skillfully applied, bottle blonde, good figure draped in a sundress cut too low, with a tiny jacket over her shoulders, and instantly forgettable. Another blue-eyed blonde too young to be the wife of a man old enough to be Stuart’s father.
“Well, it’s turning into a regular convention,” he said. “Come on out to the back porch, where it’s marginally cooler than the house.”
A few minutes later, seated, with beer for Charlie, Stuart, and Pamela, iced tea for the others, Charlie said, “What brings you all out here?”
Tricia leaned forward, put her glass on the table. “What I’d like to do is give you an outline of our problem with a few details, until you decide if you’ll help us.” She waited for his nod, then continued. “About six months ago my brother Howard was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. He was given six months to a year. While in New York at that time, he went to his lawyers and had a will written. Last month he died of a self-administered overdose of a prescription drug. His lawyer contacted us about the will, which was to be read in Howard’s house with his siblings and Dr. Rasmussen present. That took place three weeks ago.”
She paused, picked up her glass, sipped tea, then said, “Each sibling can remove one object from the house and afterward will not be admitted inside again. After six weeks, or after we each choose our one item, whichever comes first, the property will be donated to Stillwater College. Dr. Rasmussen is the president of the college, the reason she was at the reading of the will.”
Charlie did
not look at his watch but did move his arm in such a way that a glance at it would not be too obvious. There were cases that he absolutely had no interest in hearing about much less agreeing to work on. Lost dogs, divorces, missing spouses, in-store pilfering. And family squabbles over wills and money, he added to himself. Definitely family squabbles over wills.
“The problem,” Tricia was saying in a voice that had become much tighter, “is that when Howard was in New York seeing specialists and writing his will, he also went to his broker and ordered all his holdings to be liquidated and converted to cash to be transferred to his bank. After that was done, he went to his bank and withdrew five million dollars in cashier’s checks, each one for one hundred thousand dollars, and no one knows where that money is.”
Charlie expelled a soft whistle. “How many siblings are you talking about?”
“I have three brothers.”
“And each one of you can take one thing from the house. I suspect there’s a bit of tension in the air along about now.”
Pamela made a rude snorting sound and Tricia looked pinched. She nodded.
“Doing all that in New York would have taken a couple of weeks, maybe longer. Any idea if he made other trips after that one?” Charlie asked.
“He went home the day after he withdrew the money and there’s no record of any other trip, no charges on his credit cards, receipts, nothing like that. His housekeeper said he didn’t leave again.”
“None of your brothers has a clue about what he was up to?”
She shook her head again. Hesitantly she said, “I was the only one he kept in touch with—or, I should say, I kept in touch with him, with all my brothers. I don’t think any of them kept in touch with one another. I know he didn’t.”
Looking at her hands tightly clasped in her lap, Tricia said, “One more thing about the will. He specifically stated that there was not to be a service, that he was to be cremated and his ashes thrown into Stillwater Lake. No family members were to be present.”
Charlie glanced at Constance, who, he was certain, had signaled him with invisible fingers on his spine. Her nod was imperceptible to anyone but him, he was also certain. He waited.
“Ms. Corning, why was there such animosity toward his siblings?” Constance asked.
Tricia looked startled by the question and hesitated before responding. “You’re right,” she said. “Years ago, when we were all young, there was an accident. Howard’s fiancée died in a boating accident and he was injured, in a coma for several days. When he recovered, he was changed. I think he suffered post-traumatic brain disorder or something. We had always been very close, at least the boys had been before that, but never after the accident. He withdrew from all of us and never had anything to do with the family after that. As I said, I kept in touch with all of them, but he never called me or got in touch with me himself.”
“He came to see us,” Pamela said with a touch of malice in her voice. “After William and I got married, he dropped in out of the blue.”
“I didn’t know that,” Tricia said, clearly surprised. She looked at Stuart. “You met him?”
“No. I was still in school. Dad told me he came by, stayed a couple of hours and left. He didn’t say where he was going or where he had been, why the visit, nothing. Dad said it was the first time he’d seen him since they were both young. I’d never heard about the accident before today,” he added.
“Nearly thirty years ago is a long time,” Tricia murmured. “Little reason to bring it up, I guess.”
Charlie turned to Dr. Rasmussen, who had not said a word or moved either, as far as he was aware. “How well did you know Howard Bainbridge? Did he confide in you?”
“I never met him,” she said. Her voice was even, the words not actually clipped, but decisively crisp. “This donation was a total surprise. On returning to school after the reading of the will I looked him up in the records, in order to see if he had been a donor over the years. He had not. His only connection to the college came years ago when he sponsored a complete scholarship with living expenses for a girl named Andrea Briacchi.”
At the mention of the name Andrea Briacchi, Tricia gasped and straightened in her chair. Charlie turned to her. “What?”
“Good heavens,” she said. “She saved his life. That boating accident I mentioned. It was on Stillwater Lake. A little girl saw it happen, a rowboat sinking, people falling into the water. She told her mother, who called nine-one-one, then called a neighbor with a motorboat to come to the rescue. The girl was eight or nine years old. She was Andrea Briacci.”
“Is she still in the area?” Charlie asked Dr. Rasmussen.
She shook her head. “I looked her up, too. She was nineteen when she attended Stillwater College, then dropped out after three years when she was a senior. She died before my time, ten or twelve years ago. She drowned in Stillwater Lake, some kind of accident. I don’t know the details.”
Pamela cried, “Oh, my God! The curse! It was the Bainbridge curse!”
Things got interesting for a minute or two, Charlie thought, leaning back in his chair, watching. Stuart leaped to his feet, his fists clenched again. He looked ready to jump over the table and throttle Pamela. Tricia caught his arm and told him to sit down, and Constance stood up. Charlie almost wished that Stuart had tried to get to Pamela, and imagined his surprise when Constance floored him. She had enough black belts to piece together a quilt, and she taught a variety of martial arts. It was not to be, however. Tricia’s grasp of Stuart’s arm and her words were enough to make him subside, sink into his chair. Rasmussen meanwhile had tried to merge herself with the back of her chair. When Stuart sat down again, as tense as a cornered cat, Constance picked up the tray and walked to the door.
“I’ll bring some more tea. Beer anyone?”
“Might as well bring three beers,” Charlie said. Inwardly he was cursing. She had been as ready as he had been to heave them all out, take their money fight somewhere else, but she had signaled that it was not going to happen. More tea, more beer, more questions and answers. There was a curse to run to ground and, by God, she would run it to ground. He regarded Pamela sourly and wanted to throttle her himself. Either she was a hell of an actress, he thought then, or she really believed in some kind of a goddamn curse. Her outcry had been spontaneous, reflexive.
He remembered a past conversation he’d had with Constance about curses. He had been scoffing at the idea and Constance had said in a thoughtful way, “What I know is that if the one being cursed believes in it, it can be quite effective.”
She returned with the tray, and after they were all served again, she turned to Pamela. “Tell us about the curse.”
“Howie told me. When he came down to Orlando three years ago, he told me. First his, Howie’s, girlfriend drowned in that crazy accident. He tried to save her, but her hair was caught in a board under the boat or something, and he couldn’t do it. Then Ted’s live-in girlfriend, up at his farm. She went to town for something and vanished. Just never came back, didn’t take nothing with her, just disappeared and was never heard from again. Lawrence. His girlfriend got killed by a drive-by shooter. William’s first wife, hit-and-run, when he”—she nodded toward Stuart—“was a baby. Howie said I was either brave or crazy to hook up with a Bainbridge man. Howie scared me. Really scared me. I felt like I was having a nervous breakdown or something, and I had to leave William.”
“That’s a lie!” Stuart yelled. “You left when the money spigot got turned off!” He looked at Charlie and said in a rasping voice, “She was in a jam and Dad bailed her out, then he married her. It took nearly a year before he came to his senses and realized that she would clean the bank and he changed all his credit cards, gave her an allowance, and said that was it. She packed up and left and took everything she could carry with her.”
“You’re the one lying!” Pamela cried. “
You don’t know anything about it. I love him, but I was afraid!”
“You don’t know what love means. Where were you when he was hurt? When he had surgery? Never a peep out of you, no card, no flowers, no visit. Just nothing.”
With a sniff, Pamela turned to Charlie. “That girl, Andrea, she must have been sleeping with him, with Howie. He must have cared about her, and he lost her. Just like all the others. That’s what I was afraid of.”
“I don’t think that works,” Dr. Rasmussen said drily. “Andrea was nineteen when she enrolled at Stillwater College. She and her mother had moved to Newton and it took time to find them. A year and a half after returning to Stillwater, she married Earl Marshall, the writer. A year or two after that she died, as I said, ten or twelve years ago, before my time. There was hardly time for an affair with Howard Bainbridge. He didn’t even move to Stillwater until four years ago. And he had stipulated that the scholarship was to be anonymous, his name never revealed to the girl.”
Charlie held up his hand. “Let’s leave history and return to the present,” he said. “Ms. Corning, the will was read three weeks ago. What’s happened since then?”
She nodded. “Mr. Jesperson, the attorney, said the firm had an inventory of the contents of the house, and they had appraisals made of the property and the contents. At the end of six weeks the reports will be turned over to the college, the deed transferred. Our six weeks began after the appraisals, and so on, were completed, two weeks ago. An associate in the law firm, Mr. Paley, will live in the house until the transfer is made or the money is found, and there are three watchmen to keep an eye on everything. That’s how it’s set up now. Mr. Paley is there to record any object that we remove, for tax purposes, to satisfy the law about what is being inherited. The watchmen search packages, handbags, backpacks, whatever is taken out. We are given access from eight in the morning until eight at night, and there is a housekeeper who worked for Howard who comes in every day to tidy up and prepare a late lunch or early dinner, and she is gone by seven.”
