Last Whisper (41 page)

“The beginnings of a lovely friendship down the drain,” Stacy said. “Are you feeling better?”

“I think I can get my breath, if that’s what you mean.” Brooke raised her head. “The police.”

“You sit here. I’ll run out and get the surveillance cops. That’ll be faster than calling nine-one-one. Don’t you dare move.”

“I won’t,” Brooke muttered. “I
can’t
.”

As Stacy dashed out the front door, Brooke sat rigid, her hands clutching the chair arms. She closed her eyes. Immediately the image of Eunice, buried in folds of garish green except for her stark white face and mouse brown hair matted with blood, flashed behind Brooke’s eyelids. She jerked and nearly jumped out of her chair. She felt as if she were in a nightmare in which she kept experiencing looking into the trunk at a woman’s dead, bloodstained face. First her mother, then Mia, next Robert, now Eunice. How many more people would die before Zach Tavell could be stopped?

Stacy ran back inside, two policemen right behind her. “They’ve already called headquarters,” she said to Brooke. Stacy motioned to the basement door. “She’s down there,” she said to the cops. “The cage door is open. You don’t want me to go with you, do you?”

“No, ma’am,” the other one said. “The more people present, the more chance there is of contaminating evidence. Could you keep other tenants from coming down, though?”

“I wanted to get Brooke back to my apartment as soon as possible. . . .”

“The detectives will be here in five minutes,” the other cop said. “Then you can go. Okay?”

“Okay,” Stacy said reluctantly. She turned to Brooke. “Can you hold up another five minutes or so?”

Once the initial shock passed, Brooke simply felt tired. Tired to her bones. “I’m okay, Stacy. I’m not a little kid, you know,” she said, sounding exactly like a querulous little kid. She sighed, rubbing her forehead. “I’m sorry. You just seem
so strong and in control and I’m piled in this chair like a sack of potatoes. I’m ashamed of myself.”

“I’m not as calm as I act. Besides, I haven’t suffered as many shocks as you have lately,” Stacy said kindly. “And you make a very pretty sack of potatoes. If Harry could see you—”

Their eyes met. “Harry!” they nearly shouted together.

“Where’s Harry?” Brooke asked Stacy, although she knew Stacy had no idea.

“I haven’t seen him all day. Mrs. Kelso said earlier she hasn’t, either.” Stacy paused. “Those cages downstairs, Brooke. Harry has a key to each of them just like he does to all the apartments. Your key wasn’t missing. The lock on the cage wasn’t broken—”

“But the lock on the trunk was,” Brooke said slowly. “You don’t think
Harry
—”

“Harry what? Murdered Eunice? You think Harry, not Zach, murdered Eunice?”

“I guess not. It was just a silly thought.”

“Maybe not so silly. Harry wanted to be rid of Eunice. If she was murdered in the basement of
this
building, the building where you live, where Zach has been hanging around, what conclusion would the police draw? That Eunice went to the basement in search of Harry—”

“She did. Last night. She seemed upset.”

“All right. She went down in search of Harry and instead ran into Zack. That’s what they’d think.” Stacy nearly wrung her hands. “Oh, I wish Jay would get here. I need to tell him this.”

“Tell me what?”

Stacy whirled around to find Jay standing behind her. She threw her arms around him. “Thank God you’re here. In the basement. Brooke and I went down and we found Eunice. She’s in some old trunk in Brooke’s storage cage. The storage cage was locked, but there was an old trunk with a broken lock and Eunice was in there and there was so much blood. . . .”

Jay hugged her tightly, then gently pulled her away from
him. “We’ll need to question you, but right now you both need to calm down. You’re talking like at a machine-gun rate and Brooke looks like she’s going to faint. We need some time to get this area secured, so Stacy, take Brooke upstairs. Do not drink to calm down. I’ll need some very clear and precise answers in a little while. Hal should be here soon.”

Brooke remembered garish red lights flashing against the night sky as men and women in uniforms poured through the lobby doors, all seeming to be talking at once. My, wouldn’t Harry dearly love all this commotion, she thought distantly, then wondered where Harry could be. Had he done this to Eunice, hoping Zach would be blamed? Was Harry making preparations with that mistress Eunice always feared for flight to better places? Or had Zach gotten to him, too, just the way he’d gotten her mother and Mia and Robert and maybe Eunice? Brooke’s stomach turned and she prayed she wouldn’t be sick. She could not let herself be a nervous, nauseated little weakling, she thought. She had to be strong. It’s what Greta would have wanted. That’s what she had to keep in mind: what dear Grossmutter would have wanted.

When they went back to Stacy’s apartment, Brooke decided to call Vincent to tell him about Greta, and now the horror of finding Eunice. Her cell phone showed that she had one unanswered call. It was from Vincent, and on the voice mail he sounded tense and hurried:

“Hey, Brooke. Sorry I haven’t been able to get in touch with you. Dad usually takes a nap in the afternoon and I write. Today he sneaked out on me. He didn’t take the car, thank God. Keys are on the seat, though. He
tried
to drive somewhere. I’ve been out looking for him all afternoon. Take care of yourself. I’ve got a bad feeling today. Sorry I couldn’t be with you at the hospital. Uh . . . I lo—” He broke off. “See you soon, Cinnamon Girl.”

Stacy, who had been hovering close enough to hear Vincent’s message, looked at Brooke and raised an eyebrow. “Was he about to say, ‘I love you’ at the end?”

“I don’t think so,” Brooke said briskly, passionately hoping he
was
, also afraid he
was
, and finally depressed because
she was certain he
wasn’t
. “You could tell he’s nervous about his father. Probably even he doesn’t know what he was about to say.”

“Uh-huh,” Stacy drawled. “The only reason I can think of that an articulate man like Vincent didn’t know what he was going to say is because he was unsure of how well his declaration would be received.”

“I never knew you were such a sloppy romantic,” Brooke returned, putting her cell phone back in her purse.

“I have my moments.” Stacy grinned at her. “Well, we’ve had orders not to get rip-roaring drunk so we can be halfway coherent when we talk to the police, although rip-roaring drunk sounds like a wonderful condition to be in after what we’ve just been through.”

“I agree,” Brooke said with a shudder.

“So, since I don’t want to humiliate my husband in front of his colleagues, especially Hal Myers, I’m going to put on a pot of coffee. Do you want decaf, or something with some kick?”

“Caffeine will make me more wired than I already am, but at the same time, my bones feel like they’re made of rubber. Maybe some caffeine will put some life back into me.”

Stacy disappeared in the kitchen and Brooke scooted out of her chair and sat cross-legged on the floor, pulling Elise onto her lap. She buried her face in the thick hair around Elise’s neck, hair that still smelled fresh from her bath less than a week ago, and fought off the urge to cry. She couldn’t say she’d really liked Eunice. Brooke had never even had a real conversation with the woman. Eunice was a perpetually agitated, suspicious, prying hypochondriac, but Brooke had felt sorry for her. She’d been plain, bordering on ugly, and not the type who could make people look past her physical deficiencies to see a beautiful soul, if indeed she had one, but Brooke sensed that Eunice’s life had been a hard one, driving out any potential charm or attractiveness. And now her death had been hard, too. Not just hard. Horrifying. Brooke didn’t want to think about it.

But she couldn’t think of anything else. How had Eunice been murdered? All they’d seen was the body and an incredible amount of drying blood. They would find out soon enough, as soon as they talked with Jay, but no matter what the method, Eunice had looked shocked even in death. The attack must have been swift. They hadn’t seen blood on the floor. Someone had been careful to wipe that up, although luminol and ultraviolet lights would certainly show the point of attack and the trail leading to Brooke’s storage cage.

Brooke wondered when Eunice had been killed. No one had seen her all day. But Brooke and Vincent had seen her last night. She’d looked frightened. She’d wanted Harry. And she’d been wearing that god-awful green negligee—the one she still wore as she lay in Brooke’s trunk.

Brooke jerked with realization. Eunice had come rushing up to her and Vincent in the lobby wearing the negligee just twenty-four hours ago. Brooke had wanted to get rid of her, so she’d directed her to the basement in search of Harry. When she’d gone downstairs, her killer must have been waiting.

Brooke stiffened as her thoughts spun in a mass of horror, astonishment, and regret.
She
was responsible for Eunice’s death! “It’s my fault,” she cried. “It’s
my
fault!”

Stacy raced in from the kitchen. “What’s wrong?”

“My God, Stacy, I just realized that
I’m
responsible for Eunice being murdered. It must have happened night before last because she had on that hideous negligee and I sent her to the basement because I wanted to be alone with Vincent and she was murdered—”

Stacy held up her hand for silence. “Brooke, stop! You’re not making any sense.”

“Yes, I am. It makes perfect sense. The timing, don’t you see? Zach was in the basement waiting for me and suddenly Eunice came flying down and saw him, so he had to kill her—”

By now Stacy knelt in front of her and put her hands on Brooke’s shoulders. “You are not making any sense. Why
would Zach be waiting in the basement for you? Were you supposed to go to the basement?”

“No, but he could have been planning to come up later. Or maybe he’d already been up here, almost got caught leaving the building, and dashed down to the basement to hide. Oh God!”

Stacy came close to shaking her. “Stop it! We don’t even know if Tavell killed her.”

“Who else?”

“Harry.”

“Oh, Harry, that idiot! I don’t believe it. He’s basically a coward with a big mouth. He didn’t kill Eunice and put her in
my
steamer trunk, clean up after himself, then just walk out of here. Even if he’d tried something so . . . so daring, he would have bungled it. You know it, Stacy. You
know
Harry!”

Stacy went quiet for a few moments. Her lids dropped over her gray eyes as she looked at the floor, clearly thinking about what Brooke had said. Finally, she answered slowly. “You could be right, Brooke. Not about being responsible for Eunice’s death—if Zach killed her, how could you possibly have known he was in the basement?—but about her not being killed by Harry. He’s just too much of a screwup to have pulled off something like this.”

“So another person died because of
me
,” Brooke nearly whispered, feeling too crushed inside to speak aloud. “Mia, Robert, now Eunice. Who’s next?”

“According to that signed note you received,
you
are.” Dismay flashed across Stacy’s face. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It did say I’m next. But what if someone else gets in the way? Someone like you or Jay or . . .”

“Vincent?”

Brooke looked at her friend and nodded. “Of course I don’t want to die. But I don’t want anyone else to die, either, especially not because of me. I can’t let it happen. I
can’t
.” Brooke let her arms drop away from Elise and stood up. “I’m leaving right now, Stacy.”

“What about the police? They want to question you.”

“They can call me. Besides, you can tell them anything I can.”

“Where will you go?”

“As far as a jet scheduled for takeoff within the next few hours will take me.”

“A jet? You’re going to fly?”

“I can get farther much faster, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Well, yes, but . . .” Stacy stood up. “Brooke, you don’t have a flight scheduled.”

“Flights leave all the time.”

Stacy frowned. “Brooke, you
can’t
leave right this minute.”

“Why not? What am I supposed to do? Sit here for hours while the police do whatever they have to do downstairs, hold still for dozens of questions I can’t answer,
wait
to be killed or for another person to be killed?” She shook her head. “I’m driving to the airport right now.”

“No!” Stacy looked shocked, then blank. “No, it’s not wise, it’s not the right time. Wait until tomorrow.”

Brooke reached for her purse. “I’ll go to my apartment and get Elise’s travel carrier. I’m not leaving her behind. Then I’ll go down the back stairs and try to get past the surveillance guys. Maybe I don’t even have to worry about them. They might be with the other cops in the basement.”

“Wait!” Stacy put her face in her hands for a few moments, then looked into Brooke’s determined eyes. “You can’t leave with only Elise and what you’re wearing. You don’t have enough money for a whole new wardrobe. I have a suitcase and tote bag in the bedroom. I’ll get them and you can pack a few things. Then I’ll help you down to the car.”

Brooke came as close to a smile as she could at the moment. “Thank you, Stacy. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“You’re going to make me cry.” Stacy grinned. “Now stop being sentimental and let’s get going.”

For the sake of speed, Brooke chose only Stacy’s large suitcase and a boarding bag. They hurried to Brooke’s apartment, where she tried to match outfits, although her mind felt so jumbled, she had a feeling she’d arrive at her destination with a conglomeration of wrinkled clothes, none of them comprising one decent outfit. She tossed cosmetics into a Ziploc plastic bag before stuffing them into the carryon bag in case anything spilled. She opened a drawer and pulled out the two credit cards she usually never carried—she didn’t know how much money she’d need—and finally urged a reluctant Elise into her pet carrier. After one final look around the apartment, Brooke announced, “I’m ready to go.”