Whisper Her Name

by Kate Wilhelm

  “After the tragic accident that killed his fiancée, Howard recovered from his injuries,” Constance said, “and he was coping with his bereavement. But in the spring of the following year, he changed and he withdrew from his family, as you all know. Also, in that spring he returned to Stillwater to give Andrea Briacchi a bicycle. She was the child who saved his life and he was grateful. We talked to Andrea’s mother, who was present when Howard gave Andrea the bicycle, and she described him as generous, kind, and gentle with the little girl. He taught her how to ride, and he bought her ice cream. The child was talking to him as they walked back to Andrea’s mother, and by the time they reached her, Howard had undergone a noticeable change. He had been laughing, enjoying being with the child, and he had become distant and sober. He thanked Andrea again as if she had done him a great service, the way one might thank an adult, and he shook her hand.”

  Constance paused. All the Bainbridges were listening intently. Rasmussen and Dorothy Dumond were bored, and it was possible that Earl Marshall was actually sleeping. She had seen Chief Engleman looking at his watch.

  Unhurriedly she continued. “Howard knew what was going on in his family even if he talked only with his sister, never his brothers. He knew when William married, when Ted had a live-in girlfriend, when Lawrence and Vicki were living together. He was a single man who traveled to car shows, to car-parts suppliers’ meetings and conventions, to various events. No one paid any attention to his travels. He was meticulous about keeping records, and he didn’t conceal his trips to Orlando, to New York City, to upstate New York. His travels are all meticulously detailed in his papers in the safe. His travels coincided with the hit-and-run death of Stuart’s mother, with the disappearance of Ted’s friend, and the drive-by shooting of Lawrence’s lover. He was on the scene each and every time, and we are convinced that he was responsible for those deaths and that one disappearance.”

  Tricia cried out, “No! I don’t believe it! Why? He wouldn’t have done such a hideous thing!”

  “You don’t know why, but his brothers know,” Constance said. “There was another little girl who saw that rowboat capsize. Alice Knudsen saw it happen. She was at the house across the lake earlier that day when she saw the brothers upend the rowboat and, in her mind at least, try to fix it. Alice told Andrea, who told Howard the day he bought her ice cream.”

  Lawrence was sitting hunched over with his face in his hands, and Ted had drawn back in his chair staring at the floor.

  Stuart looked at them, then at Constance. “You can’t know that,” he said. “What she told him, if anything. And there’s Pamela. Why not her, if he did the others?”

  “Remember, she said she had a drink with him in Orlando. He was a shrewd business man, capable of sizing up people, no doubt, and he saw a woman who was self-destructing, a marriage already over. There was no need to kill her. Your father had already suffered whatever anguish losing her might have caused. She came here after she left Orlando, and Howard slammed the door in her face. He knew she was finished.”

  “You don’t know what Andrea might have told him,” Stuart persisted. “That’s just a guess and it all hangs on that guess.”

  “We know, and we’ll get to the how presently. But meanwhile, first, look at this house, then consider what Howard did when he knew he was a dying man. When he came here to buy property he wanted the old fishing campsite, but the resort is there now and he couldn’t get it. Then he tried for a lakefront property, and none was available. He settled for this, a beautiful house that he cared nothing about. Then, at the end, he forced his family back to Stillwater, made them revisit the past, as he must have done over and over through the years. He cared nothing about money or the luxuries it could have bought. No fancy watch, no jewelry, no art, nothing to show for the wealth he had accumulated. And he didn’t divide the checks into individual envelopes for his siblings to find. He wanted one person to find all five million dollars worth of checks. Think of the misery, the dissension that would have caused, to have one of you with five million dollars in hand, the rest with nothing. Or the even greater misery if the checks had not been found and the house had become the property of Stillwater College with the checks still in it. It’s obvious that he didn’t care if that happened. He made certain to provide for Tricia in his will. She had never done him any harm.”

  Abruptly Ted rose and walked from the room, and Lawrence raised his head. “You nailed it,” he said in a low despairing voice. “It was supposed to be a joke. They’d be in their fancy city clothes, and they’d just get a little wet. That’s how it was supposed to turn out. They’d get a little wet.”

  “If you had confessed, expressed horror, remorse, told the truth, it might have changed everything,” Constance said flatly.

  Lawrence jerked up from his chair and walked out. Constance watched him sadly without speaking. He had been the youngest of them, had just turned nineteen, had sought religion and it had failed him. His lover had been killed. He and his brothers had paid a very high price for a joke that misfired.

  “Time for a break,” Charlie said then.

  “He killed Andrea!” Dorothy Dumond cried in a high-pitched voice. “He came back and killed her, too! Just like all the others!”

  “No, Mrs. Dumond, he did not kill Andrea,” Charlie said, getting to his feet. “After a little break we’re going to get to Andrea Briacchi Marshall.” He walked past her and out to the kitchen, where he went to the door and gazed for a moment at the two brothers standing at the table under the umbrella. Lawrence had his arm around Ted’s shoulders.

  Engleman came to Charlie’s side and said roughly, “I’ve had about enough, Meiklejohn. There’s no way on God’s little green earth to pin those deaths on a dead man, and you know it.”

  Charlie looked at him in surprise. “I didn’t think you’d even consider it,” he said. “But they had to know, and the curse had to be put to rest. Patience, Chief. Third and final act coming up.”

  Engleman snarled something that sounded very much like, “Bullshit!” and moved away as others trailed into the kitchen.

  Tricia went straight to the door and out to her brothers. The rain had stopped and steam was rising from the terrace stones. The three stood close together.

  Jenna and Stuart had entered the kitchen and Charlie left the door as Stuart approached it. He watched as Jenna put her hand on Stuart’s arm and said something in a voice too low for him to hear the words. Stuart looked at his aunt and uncles, then to Jenna, and after a moment he turned from the door and they walked together to the dining room, where the coffee urn and other drinks were on the table.

  Charlie caught Constance’s eye and saw her slight nod of approval. Stuart was not part of that particular Bainbridge history. He looked at his watch, then at Constance, who held up three fingers. Give them three more minutes, then get on with it. He nodded. Message received.

  When he returned to the living room, he saw that Earl Marshall had a glass of bourbon and water, and Dorothy Dumond had helped herself to wine. Debra Rasmussen was in a conversation with Chief Engleman, who looked as if he was being given an order he had no intention of carrying out.

  “She wants to know how much longer we’re going to be here,” the chief said, and he moved away from Rasmussen, having passed the implied order over to Charlie.

  “Not much longer,” Charlie said. “Stuart, you want to let your family know we’re ready to start?”

  Earl Marshall watched Stuart leave with poorly veiled hostility, then turned a more speculative gaze toward Jenna and took a long drink.

  Finally they were all seated again and Charlie began. “No matter where we started asking questions and getting some answers,” he said, “we kept coming up with Andrea Briacchi’s name, first as the child, then as the recipient of a valuable scholarship, as Earl Marshall’s wife, as the victim of a fatal accident, and finally, as Eve focused
her research on Earl, which ultimately led to Eve’s death.

  “It all ties together,” he said, “and we were compelled to follow up with all the hints and suggestions that we kept stumbling across. First, as the child. She saved Howard’s life, and she learned that the brothers had done something to the rowboat that certainly did not fix anything, since until then nothing had been broken. She gave up her scholarship when she learned that Howard had been her benefactor. Mrs. Dumond had told her about the deaths of the young women, and no doubt Andrea had verified what she had been told. She was a good student. She would have known how to do enough research to learn about the deaths of women connected to Bainbridge men. She came to realize that the innocent remark of a child, herself, had quite likely put Howard on the path to vengeance. Tragic, unintended consequences followed her remark, and she accepted responsibility for causing them.”

  “You’re spinning fairy tales,” Dorothy Dumond said. “You’re assuming too much with no evidence whatsoever to back up anything you say.”

  “During Andrea’s final year,” Charlie said as if he had not heard Dorothy, “she no longer had her living expenses paid and hardship was the result. Earl had little or no money of his own, and Dorothy Dumond controlled whatever money there was available. Andrea gave an ultimatum during that year. Earl was to graduate and get a job and then they were going to move into their own place, out of the old Marshall house.”

  Earl cursed and jerked up from his chair.

  “I don’t intend to sit and listen to this a minute longer!” Dorothy Dumond said, jumping to her feet. “Come on, Earl, let’s get out of here.”

  “Oh, sit down,” Charlie said. “Let’s talk about the night Andrea died.”

  Earl had turned and started toward the door, but Deke Hanson was blocking it, standing with his arms crossed over his massive chest. His three-hundred-plus-pound body looked as immovable as a mountain.

  “You might as well sit down and hear me out,” Charlie said. “I’m going to say what I have to say whether you’re here or not, and Chief Engleman will hear it all.”

  Dorothy Dumond’s face was rigid with anger, and for a moment Earl looked ready to try to force his way past Deke, who smiled slightly. Abruptly Earl wheeled about and returned to his chair. He picked up his glass and drained it. Dorothy Dumond perched on the edge of her chair.

  “There were a number of things about that night that didn’t make sense,” Charlie said. “Why the time lag if they were ready to leave at the same time for her to drive to town and for him to take the dog out? Five or six minutes, maybe longer before Wasserman saw the taillights. Why was the car pointed straight down? Why didn’t she put on the hand brake? Why take the station wagon?

  “Let’s take them one at a time,” he said. “They did leave the house together. It’s easier to move an unconscious person across a bench seat than to maneuver that same person out of the car and into the driver’s seat. So the station wagon was used. Wasserman saw the taillights when the car began to roll down the slope, not on the road. Until it started to roll down, the lights would have been obscured by undergrowth in the woods, but once it tilted more, they were visible, and from where he was standing the assumption would have been that the car was on the road. A car on a slope will start to roll and it will roll faster and faster as the slope gets steeper, exactly the condition of that spot. I suppose if Wasserman hadn’t been outside, the dog would have been released and might have gone after a bone or something tossed into the woods. And the dog walker would have whistled and called out, made his presence known. But luck would have it that a witness was at hand.”

  “You’re full of shit!” Earl yelled. “You don’t know what you’re talking about! I loved her! We were going to move out and be by ourselves! I wouldn’t have hurt her!”

  “Earl, stop talking!” Dorothy cried. “Don’t say another word. I’ll get you the best lawyer in the state, and we’ll sue this bastard for all he’s worth. This is criminal defamation! He can’t prove a thing.”

  “And the motive,” Charlie said, again ignoring Dorothy’s outburst. “Earl was going to steal Andrea’s novel and claim it as his own. That’s what Eve Parish learned after she found Andrea’s notebook and put two and two together. That’s what her expression of revulsion made you realize when you confronted her at the supermarket. So she had to die. And Pamela saw you and was going to shake you down for all you’re worth, and she was next on the list.”

  Dorothy jumped up and ran to Earl, clutched his arm and shook it. “Earl, let’s get out of here! Now! That man is a maniac. They can’t prove a thing. I want to call a lawyer. I won’t let you suffer from this madman’s raving.”

  “But you know we can prove it, don’t you?” Charlie asked softly. “You know you’re cooked. We have Andrea’s notebook containing her handwritten novel. Handwriting experts will verify that the handwritten notes were made by Andrea, and experts will prove that she was writing and rewriting her material in the notebook before making the changes in the manuscript. You know we can prove every bit of it.”

  “Get up, Earl! For God’s sake, get up and let’s get out of here! You need a lawyer!”

  Suddenly he threw his empty glass against the wall and shook her hand off his arm and yelled at her, “Just shut the fuck up! You think I’m going to let them charge me with murder? You really think I’ll take the fall for you, you bitch! She did it!” he yelled at Charlie. “She killed Andrea. She told me to say I wrote the novel, no one would ever know. Now that Andrea was gone, what difference could it make? I wanted to sell the house, have enough money to get a place for Andrea and me, and she wouldn’t do it. She wanted me right there under her thumb, the way it always had been. She killed her!”

  Dorothy pulled back from him, ashen faced. She shook her head hard, then harder, and clapped her hands over her ears. “No! Earl! No! It was for you! She was bad for you! I promised Momma I would take care of you. I’ll get you the best lawyer there is. I promised Momma! She was going to take you away and I had to take care of you!”

  Constance stood and went to Dorothy’s side, took her arm, and guided her back to her chair, where Dorothy sat shaking with her hands covering her face.

  “Chief, what I have in that bag that Deke’s been guarding is a length of rebar wrapped in a towel. I got it under the seat of Mrs. Dumond’s car with three witnesses watching. I have their signed statement about what they saw me do. I did it myself because you would have needed a search warrant and probable cause and I didn’t. The first time she used the rebar, she didn’t have a towel to wrap it in, and forensics should find traces of blood, DNA, hair on the floor of the car. I suggested to DeLaura that pathology might find those same traces in Pamela Bainbridge’s head wound. I wore gloves when I handled the rebar, and it’s been in that trash bag ever since.”

  Chief Engleman looked as shaken as everyone else, but he stood and walked across the room to stand before the shaking woman. “Dorothy, please come with me to another room where we can wait for the sheriff.” He glanced at Earl Marshall and added, “You, too, Earl. We’ll wait for the sheriff to talk about all this.” He paused, turned, and said, “You’ll all have to stay until the sheriff gets here. He’ll want statements from you.”

  Charlie told Deke to show Engleman where the library was and tilted his head toward Earl Marshall. Chief Engleman held Dorothy Dumond’s arm and led her out, and Deke, carrying the trash bag, kept close to Earl Marshall and went after them.

  There was a prolonged silence in the living room following their departure. Then Lawrence said, “You knew it was her. You made a good case for him, but it was her.”

  “We knew,” Charlie said. “No one was ever going to prove she killed Andrea, but Marshall went into real shock when he was told she had died. You can fake a lot of things, but a doctor attended him, and he was in shock that night. I kept coming back to the time lag. What happened du
ring those minutes after Earl left and Wasserman saw the car lights? Why the station wagon? Dorothy Dumond needed time to knock Andrea out and get her into the wagon. Dorothy kept him on a leash after their mother died, but maybe he would have left with Andrea, maybe not. Anyway, we thought or, I should say, Constance was certain that it would break him to start with that tragedy and make him see that Dorothy was quite willing to let him take the heat, accused of murdering Andrea, Eve Parish, and Pamela.”

  “But how did you figure out that she killed Eve and Pamela?”

  “Remember I talked to Pamela before the police did, before she had a chance to change her story about what she saw that night. She saw Eve cross the street and go into the park, and she saw Dr. Rasmussen and Dorothy Dumond, and that’s all. But that was enough. Dr. Rasmussen said she went into the house and out to the back porch to hear the concert, and that Dorothy got into her car. She didn’t see her leave in the car, only get into it. But Pamela had a seat that would have let her see taillights come on, and then go off. And very likely she saw Dumond again heading into the park at the far end. I don’t know that, but I can assume it. When she learned that Dumond claimed to have seen a hand waving Eve over, she knew it was a lie, or she would have seen a guy waving. Dr. Rasmussen didn’t see it, and Pamela didn’t, only Dorothy Dumond made the claim, and she was the only one who benefitted to say that. She was an opportunist who took advantage of the conditions. Eve was alone in a dark area of the park and the rebar was under the seat. She wouldn’t have had anything to wrap the rebar in that night, so traces must be in the car. Possibly she tried to clean it and believed that she had done so, but you can’t clean rebar of blood easily.

  “The night Pamela got killed, she made a call. I could see a partial imprint on a telephone pad in the motel room, and later I confirmed that four of the numbers matched Dumond’s cell phone number. Pamela called her, no doubt to make a deal, to back her up that a man had waved Eve over, and possibly to identify that man as Stuart. Earlier that day Pamela said to hell with the checks. She had a different deal in mind after talking to the sheriff. Throw Stuart to the cops, deal with Dumond, that was enough.”