Heart-Shaped Box (Claire Montrose Series) (27 page)

She was shaking so hard she thought she might fall down. Too afraid to turn around, she took one step back, then another, until the doorknob poked her in the back. She put one hand on it, and reached with the other for the light switch. For one second only, she looked.

Then she turned and opened the door, her free hand clawing at it, and ran into the hall. Vanessa began to scream and scream and scream, and at the sight of the first face that poked out of another door, she fell like a rag doll onto the carpet.

###

After Claire’s narrow escape from the bathroom (Wade and Brian had been too interested in what was laid out in neat lines before them to notice any discrepancies in her costume), Claire had returned to the reunion. She spent the rest of the evening trying to eavesdrop, but all she overhead were boozy expressions of good fellowship or boring recitals of what people did all day at their jobs. Finally she motioned to Dante, he nodded, and they had met back at their hotel room.

Claire was down to the Lycra pants and shirt of the costume when a woman began screaming in the hall. Dante opened the door, and they ran out together.

At first, it all seemed terribly familiar. A goggle-eyed Belinda, frightened past coherency, collapsed on the carpet. In a split second, Claire realized she was making the same error she had that morning, mixing up Belinda with her daughter.

“
My mom...” was all the young woman could stammer out, as she pointed at the door that still stood open. Claire and Dante went in together.

Belinda made a terrible messy contrast to the neatly made bed on which she lay. The bright light of the room offered no shadows, no vagueness, the way the darkness had softly enfolded Cindy. Belinda was a nearly clinical study in death. It was almost, Claire thought, as if she were on display.

The signs of Belinda’s terrible struggle were everywhere. Her open white terrycloth bathrobe was speckled with dark spots of dried blood. Bloody furrows gouged her neck. Tracks, Claire guessed, made by Belinda’s own desperate fingers. Her swollen, bloody tongue protruded between her teeth. The whites of her open eyes were red, and her eyelids and the bridge of her nose were purple. On her naked chest was a round wine-red circle - probably the bruise, Claire realized, left there by the killer’s knee as he held her down.

And in curled fingers of her right hand was a familiar wooden shape - a box carved into a rough heart. Without touching it, Claire leaned down to look. The box was open, and inside was a picture of Belinda. Claire recognized the picture she had looked at with Charlie as they paged through the annual together. Belinda, her face upturned in a sycophant’s smile in the direction of what would have been Cindy, if she hadn’t been mostly scissored away - reduced now to a sweater-clad shoulder and breast. The picture curled at one edge, where the glue had loosened, and Claire could see a bit of the photograph on the other side.

Tyler couldn’t blame this on the poor dishwasher, Claire thought as a fine tremble sluiced over her. When Dante put his arm around her, she jumped. Was he thinking the same thing? Was he wondering which woman who had received a box would be next to die?

Chapter Thirty-one

Outside the room Vanessa had been sharing with her mother, a small crowd began to gather. Jim was there, and Tomisue and the New K103 FM. So was Wade, with Rebecca. Claire noticed that the back of Rebecca’s dress was only half-zipped. Belinda’s daughter was still on her hands and knees, rocking back and forth and moaning. Claire lifted the girl to her feet and held her close for a few minutes, keeping quiet while the girl muttered furiously, mindlessly, into her ear. Then Wade’s son arrived and held out his arms. Belinda’s daughter turned away from Claire and fell into them. More and more people were beginning to gather, so Claire rejoined Dante in the room. With his toe of his shoe, Dante nudged the door nearly closed, to try to keep the sight of her mother’s violated body from further burning itself into the girl’s memory.

“
Look,” Claire whispered to Dante as they waited for Tyler to arrive. They were the only two people in the room, but it seemed right to whisper in front of Belinda’s body. It was as if they were granting Belinda the respect the killer had stripped from her. “Look at her throat. Didn’t Cindy’s look different?” It was easier, Claire found, to look at Belinda’s body one part at a time, and, at all costs, to avoid looking at her eyes.

Dante cocked his head. “When I checked Cindy’s pulse, I remember I could see the marks of fingers on her throat.” Around Belinda’s neck was a thick, unbroken purple line that grew even wider just under her chin. “He must have put something around her neck and pulled on it.”

Claire noticed something else that didn’t look right, but before she could say something, Tyler shouldered open the door to the room, followed by Marc, the cop who had taken their names and addresses - was it the only the night before? Claire watched as Marc visibly paled. Even Tyler, presumably hardened by years of police work, couldn’t stifle a groan at the sight of their old classmate’s violated body.

Claire realized another hard truth. Belinda’s death meant that a man had been beaten insensible for nothing. A fury born of mingled fear and frustration rose up in her. “So tell me, Tyler, do you still think Juan de Jesus is guilty?”

Tyler seemed faded with exhaustion, all color leached from him except for his bruised-looking eyes. He shook his head, but he didn’t meet her eyes. “No. Because he died this evening.” Seeming to move in slow motion, he turned his wrist and looked at his watch. “I guess I should say yesterday evening.”

“
Oh, no,” Claire breathed. She remembered kneeling in his warm blood, tentatively touching his face with her hands.

“
The doctors say a clot must have broken off and traveled up to his brain. He had a massive stroke. They tried to save him, but ...” Tyler shook his head again. “Go on, get out here. I’ve got a murder investigation to conduct. And don’t touch anything on your way out.”

###

The hotel was well soundproofed, so as the night wore on Claire heard very little of the comings and goings that must have marked the investigation. Even so, she could not sleep. She started when Dante brushed her hair back from her face.

“
What are you thinking?” His voice was a whisper.

“
I’m wondering if Kevin Sanchez decided to rid himself of all the troublesome women in his life.”

“
Pretty drastic way to go about doing it, don’t you think? Aren’t lawyers supposed to be calm and rational types?”

“
I’ve already seen what he’s like when he’s angry. We know he’s capable of violence.”

“
If Kevin did it, then he’d have to be crazy,” Dante said. “Tyler may not be a genius, but if Kevin was really sleeping with Belinda, I’m sure he’ll find out about it. And if you decide to kill both your wife and your lover, you have to realize that the first person the cops are going to come looking for is you.”

“
Maybe he wasn’t thinking when he did it,” Claire said. But something bothered her. “Except I’m beginning to wonder about Belinda. About the way she looked.”

“
Yes?” Dante propped himself up on one elbow.

“
Did you notice how her right side looked different?”

“
You mean, how it was a different color?” It had been a purplish-red, while the other side had portions that were blanched white.

“
If she had been lying on her back the whole time, shouldn’t both sides be the same color? What if her body was in one position when she died, but later someone put her in a different position? That could account for the two halves of her body looking different. And there was something about the way she was laid out. It was like she was - posed.”

“
Maybe there are two killers,” Dante said. “Maybe the second killer wanted everyone to think that the same person who killed Cindy was the one who killed Belinda. So he arranged Belinda’s body to make her look like Cindy.”

“
Two killers?” Claire shuddered. “Do you really think there is more than one person from my high school class who’s a murderer? And strangling someone - that seems so, well, personal, for want of a better word. I mean, with a gun, you might shoot someone in the heat of the moment. You could do it before you even have a chance to think it through. You could even be a block away. But strangling someone - you have to touch them with your own hands, and you have to mean it, and go on meaning it, even if it takes five minutes for the person to die.” The room was warm, but Claire pulled the covers more tightly over her shoulders.

Dante draped his leg over hers. He was so furry, it was like adding another layer of blanket. “Well, strangling is quiet and less messy than shooting someone. And you don’t have to worry about buying anything special to do it. You’ve got all the tools at hand, so to speak.”

The pun broke some of the tension that was filling Claire. She groaned and pretended to push him way.

“
And once you started strangling someone,” Dante continued, “you would be afraid to stop. Afraid of being arrested as soon as the person drew breath to scream. And didn’t Tyler tell you that Cindy was having problems with her asthma? Maybe whoever killed Cindy didn’t mean to. Maybe they got into a fight and it got out of hand.”

“
Why kill Belinda then? And what about the boxes? What do they mean?”

“
Maybe the boxes,” Dante said, “are just a cover-up. Maybe whoever gave them wanted to throw people off the trail by giving them to a bunch of different women, but only planned to kill two. Maybe the killer was someone who was tormented and teased by both Cindy and Belinda.”
“Only someone who didn’t go to Minor High would come up with that theory,” Claire said. “Belinda could actually be pretty nice, especially if you got her on her own, without Cindy.”

“
Okay, say someone did give each of you a heart-shaped box and now plans to kill you. But why? You guys don’t really have anything in common now. Except each of you is single - or at least unmarried - right? Except for Cindy.”

“
But that wasn’t true earlier in the year,” Claire said slowly, remembering her conversation with the pet psychics. “I heard she and Kevin filed for divorce, but then got back together.”

“
That’s not going to look good for Kevin,” Dante said. “Does Tyler know that? And how do you know it?”

“
Someone who lives here saw it in the paper. It’s so small they even print all the court proceedings.”

“
Back in high school, was there was one relationship you all had in common - one friend, one” - Dante hesitated - “one lover? Did Jim sleep with Belinda as well as with you and Cindy?”

“
No. I’m sure he didn’t.” Claire shook her head. “You make Minor High sound like Peyton Place. I think relationships overlapped more than I knew. But I can’t think of one person who was an enemy - or a lover or even a friend - to all of us.”

“
Could all of you know a secret that this guy wants to cover up?”

Claire shook her head. “If that’s true, I don’t know what it is. And if there is a secret, so far, he’s been pretty darned successful at keeping it hidden.”

But as Claire lay staring into the darkness, she found her thoughts returning to Jim. Cindy’s body had been found near his car. And despite what she had told Dante, even at seventeen, Jim had had something of a reputation as a stud. Was it possible that he had slept with Belinda, too? And of all the people she had talked to, he was the only one who had said he talked to Belinda after Cindy’s murder. Had he been trying to provide himself with an alibi in case any of his fingerprints were found in the room?

TIH5 HO

Chapter Thirty-two

In the middle of the night, Claire hadn’t thought she would ever be able to sleep, but here it was, morning, shafts of sunlight pushing past the thick curtains patterned like flour sacks. Looking at her watch, she was surprised to find it was nearly nine o’clock.

When she and Dante pushed open the door to the Feed Trough, they found it packed with reunion goers, all surrounding a young cop she didn’t recognize and an unshaven, exhausted-looking Tyler. The people crowded around him didn’t look much better.

“
It’s a serial killer,” declared Rebecca. “Any one of us who got those boxes could be next!”

“
I don’t know about the rest of you, but Sunny and I are leaving,” Maria said. She put her arm around Sunny, who only came to her shoulder, and left it there. “It’s not safe here anymore.” Like the shift of a kaleidoscope, Claire finally figured out that the two women were something more than old friends.

“
But how do we know the killer won’t follow us wherever we go?” Nina’s hair bristled on one side, looking as if she had just gotten out of bed - or no longer had the energy to devote to her hair. “Most of us live here, or in Portland. In less than an hour, he could be at our door - especially since that damn reunion booklet we all got has our home addresses in it.”

“
What about the boxes, Tyler? Did they give you any clues?” Martha asked. Of all the women who had asked questions, she seemed the calmest - but then again, she hadn’t gotten a box. “Did you get fingerprints off them? Have you gone back and figured out who took woodshop?”

Tyler shook his head. “No fingerprints. And the boxes themselves are a dead-end. They were imported by the truckload last Valentines Day. Every Pier 101 and CostPlus and knick-knack store in the country sold them. They were hand-carved, sure, but by people in Malaysia.”