Last Whisper (11 page)

After noon, when Sam and Vincent had both picked at their lunches, Sam had retreated to his room for a nap. Vincent had told Brooke she looked tired and suggested the same for her. She’d promised she would, although after Vincent had checked all the door locks and made certain she pushed the dead bolt shut on the front door before he went for a run, “just to shake the cobwebs,” she had sat down on one of the wing chairs in the living room and picked up an old photo album she’d seen Sam looking through earlier.
She felt a tad guilty, expecting to see a collection of family photographs that she hadn’t been invited to view.

Instead, she stiffened as page after page of newspaper clippings about the murder of Anne Yeager Tavell seemed to jump out at her like an old, malevolent ghost that refused to leave her at peace.

Meanwhile, Vincent Lockhart jogged down Fitzgerald Lane. He’d invited Elise to go with him, but she’d merely cowered near Brooke. “She’ll never go with you unless you take her on a date and show her you’re a proper gentleman,” Brooke had told him with mock seriousness.

Vincent had given her a tight smile and started on his run, trying to clear his head but obsessing over Brooke. He was no longer suspicious of her having anything to do with the shooting last night, but she was another complication he didn’t need, not with his father in such bad shape. Still, Vincent felt grudgingly sorry for her and even a little responsible for her. After all, she’d almost been his sister.

Except she wasn’t his sister. Not even close. He could never think of her that way, even last night, since he’d really looked into those depthless violet-blue eyes so full of intelligence and vulnerability and toughness mixed together, all he had done
was
think about her, which was ridiculous. It wasn’t as if he were a novice with women. Just the opposite. His friends often teased him about his many affairs. “You’re going to use up the supply,” one of them had joked. “Just because you’re the celebrity doesn’t mean you can’t leave some for the rest of us.”

Another, more serious friend had told Vincent he was trying to prove something. “You think your father is disdainful of what you do for a living, so you believe you’ll impress him with the number of women who are so dazzled by what you’ve made of yourself, you can seduce them without even trying.” Vincent had told the guy to keep his pop psychology bullshit to himself but actually had given the words some somber thought. It
was
true that most of the women he dated didn’t really mean much to him. And he didn’t think he really
meant much to them, either. They liked the fact that he was a best-selling author and an okay-looking guy. A “gorgeous” guy, they said, a compliment that Vincent took with a grain of salt.

But most of those women had at least been flashy. Guys looked twice at them in bars and restaurants. The women looked great and had looked great on his arm when the paparazzi took photos at premieres of movies based on Vincent’s novels. Brooke wouldn’t draw that kind of attention, although on close inspection she was naturally prettier than most of the highly groomed, salon-addicted women he dated in California. In fact, he’d hardly been able to take his eyes off her this morning when she wore that filmy blue robe. Her long hair had hung loose and wavy and her face had looked nearly flawless, almost luminous, even without makeup.

But Brooke seemed a little shy. Vincent didn’t like shy. He didn’t like serious. He liked fun. He wanted to be with a fun woman, a woman who was carefree and lighthearted, with a great sense of humor without being bawdy or loud, certainly a woman who didn’t come with a lot of baggage, like a murdered mother and a killer stepfather. No, Brooke Yeager was definitely not for him.

Not for him? Vincent almost stumbled. His thought seemed to indicate he was even considering her as a romantic interest. She was a seemingly nice girl who needed help. That’s
all
.

And yet . . .

Brooke stared at the first page of the album. Each page had been covered with a page protector, keeping the newspaper clippings underneath in excellent condition even though they were fifteen years old.

I should close the album cover right now, she thought
when she realized she was looking at a collection of newspaper material about her mother’s murder. I should just put the album back where I found it, turn on the television or listen to music or . . .

Right hand shaking slightly, she turned a page, unable to stop herself from facing a recap of the horrible events of fifteen years ago. The first thing her gaze fell upon was a newspaper headline:

Accompanying the story beneath the headline was a studio picture of a beautiful, smiling Anne taken only two months before her death by, of all people, Zachary Tavell. In the photo, Anne looked delicate and classic, a Grace Kelly look-alike. Only Brooke would have noticed that her mother’s eyes didn’t sparkle with true happiness the way they did in photos taken of her with Brooke’s father, Karl.

Brooke turned the page. The next article nearly screamed that Anne Yeager Tavell had been shot three times two hours after neighbors had heard her arguing violently with her husband, Zachary Tavell. Tavell, the article claimed, had been found standing over his wife’s body holding a chrome-plated .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver registered in his name.

Another article revealed that patrolmen had been the first to arrive on the scene, but within thirty minutes veteran homicide detective Samuel Lockhart had been called in and assigned the case. By this time, reporters and photographers had begun showing up. One photographer had managed to sneak past the police barricades, and the powerful lens of his camera had picked up an image of Anne’s mutilated body.

Brooke cringed when she saw the old photo of her mother lying twisted on the floor, half of her face nothing but a pulpy mass lying on a cluster of blood-covered roses. The reporter who’d written the accompanying article had labeled this “The Rose Murder,” and the name had stuck to the case. In the photo, near Anne had huddled a stunned eleven-year-old
girl everyone had forgotten in the surrounding uproar—Brooke, rigid, with a stark white face and hands clutched to her ears. She looked small in her flannel pajamas—much smaller than an average eleven-year-old girl—and stunned, almost glaze-eyed. Brooke looked closely at the photo and tried to remember what she’d been thinking at the time, but nothing came to her. Maybe shock had simply closed down her mind just the way it had yesterday when Mia had been shot and lay across Brooke’s body, pouring blood onto her hair and into her eyes.

Brooke shut her own eyes for a moment, forcing herself to relax a bit, and turned the page.

This article stated that Zachary Tavell, who was supposed to be in Columbus the night of the murder, claimed he had come home because he was upset over the earlier argument with his wife. According to Tavell, when he walked into the house two men had already entered. One held Anne at gunpoint while another was apparently ready to burglarize the home. Tavell said he’d grappled with the man holding the revolver, which had gone off three times during the struggle before Tavell had been able to grab it away from the shooter. The two men had run out the back door just as eleven-year-old Brooke had come down the stairs to see Tavell standing over her mother. At that point, Tavell said, a neighbor had rushed in and, mistakenly believing Tavell had shot Anne, lunged at him. Tavell swore that in a combination of panic and desire to catch the man who had shot his wife, he’d run for the back door. By this time, another neighbor had arrived, and the two men caught up with Tavell, jumped on him, and brought him to the ground in the backyard.

Subsequent articles revealed that over the next two days, six officers visited the crime scene, looking for further evidence. They discovered the lock on the front door had not been jimmied. Either the door had been unlocked or someone had entered with a key. Also, rain the day earlier had left the ground soft and police found no footprints in the backyard that did not match those of Tavell and the two men who had wrestled him to the ground. Finally, only Tavell’s prints
were found on the Smith & Wesson revolver and Tavell’s right hand bore gunshot residue.

The last article Brooke forced herself to peruse stated that when Tavell was twenty-one he had been arrested for assault on a girlfriend. The girl had suffered a broken arm and slight ligature marks on her throat, but she had dropped the charges against Tavell, saying she might have mixed him up with another one of her boyfriends.

“Sure you did,” Brooke said bitterly, closing the album. “You dropped the charges because you were afraid of Zach. He went free, so he could assault God knows how many other women who were afraid to press charges. And finally, because no one stopped him, he ended up murdering my mother.”

Her hands shaking, her stomach in a knot, Brooke laid the album down beside the chair, wishing she hadn’t looked at it yet somehow perversely glad she had refreshed her mind on all the details of that awful time. Her grandmother Greta had shielded her from most of the details of what had happened that night when Brooke’s mind had gone blank after she saw her mother’s mutilated face, the night she’d referred to herself only as “Cinnamon Girl” and really remembered only one person—Sam Lockhart, who had seemed capable and so protective. He had symbolized safety to her that night, and the symbolism had been so profound, her subconscious had driven her right back to him after Mia’s murder.

Brooke took a deep breath, forcing the tightness from her chest, then stood up and reached for the ceiling. Every muscle in her body felt rigid. She closed her eyes, counted to ten, then decided to fix a cup of chamomile tea. She’d never had much faith in the claims made by herbal teas, such as weight loss for green and calming for chamomile, but she at least liked the taste.

As Brooke headed for the kitchen, the doorbell rang. She stopped, her gaze shooting to the closed, windowless door as if an army stood behind it. Sam was asleep. Vincent was out jogging, and although he’d locked all the doors before he left, he’d certainly taken a key with him. Of course, the Lockharts probably had neighbors, some of them friends.

The doorbell rang again. Brooke crept to the front window, parted the sheer draperies, and peeped out. A police surveillance car sat directly in front of the house. Behind was parked a van bearing the name Flowers for You. Someone had sent flowers?

Finally, a young deliveryman, certainly no more than a teenager, headed back to the van. Brooke opened the curtains a bit wider and caught the eye of one of the policemen. He nodded and smiled at her. He must have checked the delivery and seen nothing dangerous about it.

The van was pulling away from the curb when Brooke finally flipped the dead bolt, unlocked the door, and opened it. On the porch sat a glass bud vase holding a perfect white rosebud.

Her stomach clenching again, Brooke slowly bent and picked up the vase. Attached to the side with a delicate pink ribbon was a card bearing a message:

Say hello to your mother for me
.

“You’re here to protect her!” Vincent blustered at the patrolman. “How the hell could you let that flower be delivered to her?”

The young policeman, who didn’t look over twenty-one, climbed out of the patrol car, his dark eyes contrite. “I’m sorry, sir. So sorry. I stopped the delivery guy, saw that all he had was a rose, and I read the message. ‘Say hello to your mother for me.’ That didn’t sound threatening to me.”

“Even though you know the murderer of Miss Yeager’s mother is now trying to kill
her
?”

“All I knew was that my partner and I are trying to keep some nut from breaking into the house. I didn’t know anything about roses and messages with hidden meanings.” The young man’s indignant expression almost immediately dissolved into one of devastation. “Look, man, I messed up. I admit it. But there’s nothing I can do except apologize. That and ask if Miss Yeager is all right.”

The young cop looked so remorseful that Vincent couldn’t force himself to make the guy feel worse. “Yes, she’s all right. Remarkably calm, actually, considering the circumstances.”

And she was. Brooke had looked at the card, set down the vase without touching the message because the card was handwritten and there might be fingerprints, walked straight into the kitchen, and taken a can of beer out of the refrigerator. She was sitting on a chair taking long gulps when Vincent unlocked the door into the kitchen and walked in, dripping with perspiration from his run. He’d taken one look at her chalky face and asked in alarm, “What happened?”

“He sent me a rose,” Brooke said calmly. Then she burped from the beer. “Zach sent me a rose and told me to say hello to my mother.”

“Good God!” Vincent exploded. “Where’s the rose?”

“In the living room on an end table. It’s in a glass vase that was delivered by a floral company named Flowers for You. Don’t touch the card. Fingerprints, you know.” She burped again.

Vincent dashed into the living room, stared balefully at the vase, rushed into the kitchen, and flung open drawers until he found a box of plastic bags, then returned to the living room. In a moment, he stood in front of Brooke holding up a Ziploc bag with the card, bow and all, inside. “I only touched the top edge of the vase with a tissue,” he announced. “We’ll give this to the police.”

“We’ll give what to the police?”

Vincent and Brooke looked up to see Sam standing in the doorway, his thick gray hair askew, his eyes heavy-lidded after his nap.

“Tavell sent Brooke a rose,” Vincent told him. “It arrived with a note reading, ‘Say hello to your mother for me.’ The note is in here.” Vincent held up the plastic bag. “I didn’t touch it. Did you, Brooke?”

“I picked up the vase from the porch where the delivery boy left it and I touched the card,” she said, taking another
gulp of beer. “Yes, indeed I did. So sorry, sir. I prob’ly screwed up all kinds of evidence.”

Vincent frowned. “How many cans of beer have you had?”