F Paul Wilson - Secret History 02 (11 page)

           
The closets were racked with Kelly's
nurse's uniforms and an array of trendy outfits, some mildly sexy, but nothing
blatantly provocative.

           
She found a couple of well-used but
unlabeled videotapes under the tv. She bit her lip, wondered what was on them.
Porn? Maybe even Kelly doing… things?

           
Kara glanced at Jill. She was
watching
The Price is Right
.
"Jill?" she said. "Can I use the TV for a couple of
minutes?"

           
"Sure. This is boring. Besides,
it exploits women."

           
Kara had begun raising Jill's
consciousness at an early age. Occasionally she wondered if she'd started Jill
too young, or perhaps done too good a job. Sometimes Jill was
too
aware.

           
"
The Price is Right
?" Kara said, glancing at the screen where
an overweight matron was jumping up and down and clapping her hands. "Do
you really think so?"

           
"It makes all these ladies look
dumb. Isn't that exploiting women?"

           
"Not really. Those ladies are
making themselves look dumb. I think
The
Price Is Right
exploits materialism more than anything else."

           
"What's materialism?"

           
Kara had a sudden inspiration as to
how to get Jill away from the TV set for a few minutes.

           
"There's a dictionary over
there. Why don't you look it up? Sound it out."

           
"Okay."

           
As Jill trotted over to the book
shelves, Kara slipped the tape into the VCR and started it running. When the
opening credits for
Desk Set
came on,
she wanted to cry with relief and nostalgia. Kelly's favorite movie. The second
tape was
Father of the Bride
, another
of her favorites.

           
She swallowed the lump in her throat
and called to Jill.

           
"Here's something better than a
game show. Watch this instead."

           
Kara went back to the bedroom and
stripped the bed, then lifted the mattress to see if something was hidden
between it and the box spring.

           
That was when she found it.

           
Not under the mattress. Under the
night stand. When she lifted the mattress to look beneath, it slipped off the
box spring and struck the night stand, knocking it over along with the lamp
atop it.

           
And there was the cache.

           
Kara had checked the night stand
drawers the first time through and had found nothing but old paperback
mysteries in them. But she hadn't pulled the bottom drawer all the way out. If
she had she would have found this little trove.

           
Sleazy underwear here. More
Frederick
's of
Hollywood
type stuff—lacy open-front bras and
matching slit-crotch panties in scarlet and lavender. The same under the other
night stand.

           
Feeling slightly queasy, Kara went
to the big dresser and pulled the two bottom drawers all the way out and set
them on the floor. Laid out in the space under the drawers was an array of
slit-sided leather skirts and low-cut blouses.

           
As she stared at the tawdry outfits,
Kara felt a terrible sadness for her sister.

           
What
were you looking for, Kelly? What on God's earth did you think was missing from
your life that you had to go looking for it dressed up in this… this
shit!

           
The sadness gave rise to anger. Why
hadn't Kelly come to her if she was having a problem? Didn't she think she
could rely on her own twin? Why hadn't Kelly sought her out instead of pulling
away?

           
Or had she pulled away
because
of the problem?

           
Kara stood up and scanned the
ransacked bedroom. Maybe she'd never know. But there had to be a reason Kelly
would buy these tramp outfits and hide them—

           
Wait
a minute.

           
Hide them? Why on earth would Kelly
hide her trashy clothes under her dresser and night stand?

           
Kelly lived alone.

           
This didn't make any sense at all.
Kara had been through all the closets, all the drawers. Everything belonged to
Kelly. Nobody else was living here. Just Kelly.

           
From whom was Kelly hiding these
clothes?

           
It was around lunch time then, and
Jill was hungry. Kara cooked up a packet of
Upton
's chicken noddle soup she found in one of
the kitchen cabinets and she and Jill settled down to a couple of bowls with
some Ritz crackers. Kara wasn't in the mood for anything heavier.

           
Afterwards, she pulled Rob's card
from her purse. This was as good a time as any to give him a call.

           
On the third ring, he answered with,
"Harris."

           
"Rob? It's Kara Wade."

           
"Wh—? Kara? Hello! Good to hear
from you. Everything okay down there?"

           
Down
there
. He thought she was in
Pennsylvania
. Good. Let him go on thinking that. If he
knew she was here in the city he'd want to get together with her for dinner or
the like and Kara didn't think that was such a good idea. Not with Jill along.

           
"As well as can be
expected."

           
"The funeral…?"

           
"Bad. But it could have been
worse. Thank you for the flowers."

           
"I'd have come—"

           
"The flowers were enough."
Kara paused, almost afraid to ask the question because she already knew the
answer. "Have you caught them yet?"

           
"No." She could hear the
frustration in his sigh. "No, we haven't."

           
"I didn't think so."

           
"Don't start that again, Kara.
It's not fair."

           
"It isn't?" She felt her
own frustration ballooning within her. "If she'd been Ivana Trump you'd
sure as hell have somebody in custody by now!"

           
"I don't know about that,
Kara."

           
"You said you had a description
of the two men and a set of fingerprints! That was five days ago!"

           
"Right. But the two men
described were not regulars at the bar, and they haven't been back since. And
the fingerprints were no help at all."

           
"Why not?"

           
"They don't match anywhere.
Which is not surprising."

           
"Why isn't it?"

           
"Well, it goes along with the
pick-up theory. I mean, if Kelly picked these two guys at random from the Oak
Room Bar crowd, it's very possible that they don't have criminal records. And
if they don't have criminal records—or haven't applied for a gun permit or a
security-sensitive job—then their prints are probably not on record here or
with the Feds."

           
"And so you won't be able to
match them anywhere."

           
"Right."

           
She felt the anger rising again. She
wanted to scream but kept her voice level, for Jill's sake.

           
"So you're no closer to finding
Kelly's murderers now than you were on Thursday."

           
"I'm afraid that's right,
Kara." Rob paused, then said, "I'm afraid we can't even say for sure
it was murder."

           
"
What
?" Kara didn't want to believe what she was hearing.

           
"Just hear me out," he
said quickly. "Forensics says there's, no sign of a struggle in the room.
And they can't say for sure whether the two guys she picked up downstairs were
even
in
the room at the time she went
out the window."

           
Kara felt as if she were turning to
ice.

           
"Are they saying Kelly
jumped
?"

           
"No. Not in so many words.
They're saying there's nothing to support the idea that she was pushed. And the
M.E. backs them up. He says she wasn't beaten, and that if she was thrown out
the window, she didn't struggle—no broken fingernails, no skin under the nails,
no bruises on her palms. And witnesses there say she screamed on the way down,
so we know she was conscious."

           
"Kelly wouldn't kill
herself," said Kara, although she knew her voice didn't exactly ring with
conviction.

           
After what she'd found this morning,
she was no longer completely sure about anything concerning her twin. However,
there was most of a bottle of sleeping pills in the bedroom. If she had wanted
to kill herself, why hadn't she taken them?

           
"We've talked to a lot of her
co-workers at
St.
Vincent
's. The
ones who knew her best seem to think she was very troubled lately. Even a
little depressed."

           
Kara thought about that. In
retrospect, she could see that there had indeed been a change in Kelly over the
past year. Nothing terribly obvious. She hadn't called anywhere near as often,
and she had seemed a bit withdrawn on the few occasions they had seen each
other. But suicidal…?

           
If
there was something so terribly wrong, why didn't she come to me?

           
Kara was suddenly feeling pretty
depressed herself.