Last Whisper (30 page)

“I don’t think Ebola is really going around here,” Brooke said faintly.

“I want Harry!” Eunice looked like she was going to cry. “This is Harry’s job. He knows how to do it fast and so it doesn’t hurt. Where
is
he?”

Brooke paused, thinking. She had a good idea that Harry, miraculously,
had
found a mistress and was simply spending the morning with her, losing track of time. But, of course, Brooke couldn’t say this to Eunice. “I don’t know what to tell you,” she said truthfully. “Is your car in the parking lot? If not, he could have run out on an errand and had a flat tire.”

“You’re right! I’ll bet anything that’s what’s happened,” Eunice pounced, although Brooke saw the doubt in her eyes. She was thinking the same thing Brooke was about another woman. Nevertheless, Eunice was darting toward the rear parking lot, thankfully before Brooke had to offer another possible excuse for Harry’s absence.

“She’s absolutely desperate not to lose him,” Brooke muttered to an oblivious Elise. “Even though he’s a creep, having her so dependent must be a drag for him. I almost feel sorry for the guy. Almost.”

Upstairs, Brooke tried to decide on an appropriate outfit for the planetarium. Casual slacks, or a sundress? She decided on a pale blue sundress paired with high-heeled white sandals and a necklace with a shell pendant cut into the shape of a flower. She pulled her hair up over her ears so matching earrings could show and twirled in front of Elise. “Too formal? Skirt the right length? Any price or size tags showing?”

She took Elise’s silence as an approval of the outfit, and as Brooke was gathering some toys for the dog to play while
she was gone, as if Elise couldn’t choose her own toys, someone knocked on the door. “It’s me,” Vincent called. “Ready for a space odyssey?” Brooke unlocked the door and flung it open. Vincent’s eyes widened. “Wow! If any aliens saw you, they’d keep you! You look fabulous.”

“Thank you, but I didn’t know aliens were interested in fashion.”

“Oh yes,” Vincent said seriously as he stepped into the apartment. “That’s why they return so many of their abductees. The humans were dressed
so
badly the aliens didn’t want to keep them on board.”

“Vincent, you should be writing science fiction,” Brooke said.

“I’ve given it serious thought. I think my ideas are highly sophisticated.”

“Or maybe you should stick with true crime.”

“Was that an insult?”

“Only to your sophisticated science-fiction theories. You won’t be spouting any aloud at the planetarium, will you?”

“I’m afraid only someone like Stephen Hawking could understand me.”

“Yes, well, you go right on dreaming if it makes you happy, Mr. Lockhart.” She glanced at his khaki pants and casual green shirt with long sleeves rolled up to his elbows. “You’re looking pretty spiffy yourself, today.”

Vincent rolled his eyes. “My father thought I should wear a suit.”

“To the planetarium?”

“It’s Sunday.”

“Oh. I didn’t know he was that religious.”

“He didn’t, either, until about a month ago. He seems to recall that earlier in his life—like ten years ago—he was a deacon in his church. I don’t remember his ever belonging to a church.”

Brooke smiled. “Well, my grandmother
was
religious and I had to be in Sunday school and church every week, and I also sang in the choir. I remember the day I sang solo. Grossmutter
was so proud, I was afraid she was going to stand up and throw flowers after my performance.”

“You must sing well, then.”

“No, I just sang better than anyone else in the choir, which isn’t saying much.” She picked up her purse. “Ready to go?”

“Aren’t Jay and Stacy coming with us?”

“No. Did you expect them to?”

“I thought because they live right next door, you might feel obliged to invite them,” Vincent said.

“I don’t. Besides, Stacy left here at the crack of dawn claiming she couldn’t sleep because of her allergy to Elise, and when I saw Jay in the hall briefly this morning, he looked worn out.”

“Do you think there’s been a break in the case?” Vincent asked.

“If so, Jay wasn’t inclined to tell me. I don’t suppose Hal Myers called your father with any news.”

“Not that I know of.” Vincent shrugged. “Maybe we just wore out poor old Jay and Stace last night. They aren’t party animals like us. And Elise.” She wagged her tail at him. “Sorry to leave you, girl, but—”

“She understands about unfair segregation practices when it comes to dogs in public places,” Brooke said. “She’ll be fine with her toys and her chew bone. She already had a nice run this morning. She’ll probably take a nap.”

The Avampato Discovery Museum, housed in the beautiful new Clay Center, wasn’t too crowded when they arrived at a little after one. They wandered around the museum, their shoes clicking against the lovely dark blue, burgundy, forest green, and gold tiles of the flooring. First, they climbed to the Juliet Museum of Art on the second level. Although the entire museum contained nine thousand contiguous square feet of space, a separate gallery space was dedicated to nineteenth-and twentieth-century art. Brooke was particularly fascinated by the huge photos of Andy Warhol, Edie Sedgwick, Natalie Wood, and Leonard Bernstein.

“Thinking of sneaking one of these out of here?” Vincent whispered close to her ear. “You look like you’re plotting something, and that museum guide is watching you very closely.”

“He’s probably just staring at you disapprovingly because you’re not wearing a suit,” she returned. “But I would like to take Natalie’s photo with me.”

“A Natalie Wood fan?”

“After the movie
Splendor in the Grass
? Are you kidding? She loved Warren Beatty
so
much and then later when she went to visit him and he was married and she had on that gorgeous white dress and white portrait hat and gloves and—”

“Okay, I think you’re going to cry,” Vincent said, moving her along gently. “If you tell me you had a crush on Andy Warhol, I’m dumping you right here.”

“He was . . . different.”

“That’s an understatement.”

“I didn’t have a crush on him.”

“And that’s a relief, because I don’t look a thing like him and women have a tendency to be attracted to a certain
type
.”

“Is that so?” Brooke answered, ignoring his innuendo about wanting her to have a crush on someone who looked like him. “And men don’t?”

“Oh no. We just take women as we find them. No preconceived notions of what we want. It’s usually just a woman with a forgiving heart who’s a great cook and housekeeper. We don’t care a fig whether or not they’re attractive.”

“That’s a good one, Vincent. Did you just come up with it or is it a tried-and-true line?”

Vincent answered, but Brooke didn’t hear him. From the corner of her eye, she’d just spotted impossibly red hair worn short and spiky. “Oh God, there’s Judith,” she said, stepping closer to Vincent and looking intently at her museum pamphlet.

“Who’s Judith?”

“Judith Lambert. She used to date my boss, Aaron Townsend. Stop looking around—she’ll see you!”

“I don’t even know what she looks like.”

“Horrible flaming red hair done in spikes,” Brooke whispered. “She used to be so attractive. She and Aaron dated for about nine months. Then he dropped her. She says it was the other way around, but no one believes her, partly because Aaron went on just as before, while Judith lost a lot of weight and did something drastic to her hair. I think the bit with the hair was sort of like flipping the whole world the bird.”

“Ah, you’re a psychiatrist, too.”

“Well, I do think so. Anyway, she finally came to the conclusion that Aaron had broken up with her for me. I learned that through office gossip and I was flabbergasted.” She lowered the pamphlet slightly and peeped at Judith and her companion. “You know what you were saying about people always being drawn to the same
type
? Well, maybe you’re right, because the man she’s with looks sort of like Aaron, only much tackier. Bad haircut, shirt about ten years out-of-date.”

Judith’s eyes flashed at them as if she’d heard the last remark, and Brooke quickly retreated behind her pamphlet again. “What if she comes over here to talk to us?” she hissed.

“Then we’ll talk to her,” Vincent returned calmly. “But I don’t think you have anything to worry about.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s almost time for the planetarium show. The guy at the desk told us not to be late for it because people start lining up fairly early.”

Brooke had expected there to be more children in line than adults for the ElectricSky. She was mistaken. There were twice as many adults, but all acted as excited as children, some murmuring, a few giggling, one older woman fretting to her husband, “Things move around on the walls in there and you feel like you’re right in the midst of some big, swirling mass. Mildred told me. I hope I don’t get dizzy.”

“Mildred thinks she’s seasick at the swimming pool,” the woman’s husband snapped. “She’s a kook. You won’t get dizzy if you just concentrate on
not
getting dizzy.”

She gave him a murderous look. “Oh, you and your mind-over-matter crap! It’s
nonsense
!”

“Young love,” Vincent muttered in Brooke’s ear, making her hide her smile from the woman, who was looking right at her.

The planetarium’s double doors opened and everyone went totally silent and solemn, as if they were boarding an actual spacecraft destined for Mars. They walked down a long, dark hall lined with tiny floor lights, then up a curving staircase, and entered a large amphitheater. Brooke’s eyes seemed slow to adjust to the darkness. She stumbled along, transported by the haunting music coming from all around them and gazing at the coral pink lights appearing to shimmer from everywhere. Vincent guided her into a row and nearly pushed her down into a theater seat. “I
love
this!” she murmured.

“So I gathered,” Vincent whispered with a trace of humor. “You’re acting like a three-year-old. Close your mouth before something flies into it.”

The narrator started. Brooke learned that the dome was sixty-one feet from side to side and contained Dolby Surround Sound projectors. He also informed them that the projector in the middle of the area was jokingly called the Death Star. He warned the audience that the dome made all sounds travel, and requested that people not talk or even murmur, because all noises would be exaggerated.

“Remember the scene in
Rebel Without a Cause
where James Dean and Natalie Wood are at the planetarium?” Brooke whispered softly to Vincent.

“Shhhhhhh!”
a woman behind them hissed, sounding like a large, infuriated poisonous viper about to strike. “He said to be quiet!” Brooke turned to glare at her, considering that
she
had made more noise than Brooke.

That was when Brooke saw the girl sitting right across from them. Shoulder-length straight blond hair tossed behind her ears, narrow shoulders, and a long, graceful neck. She looked like the girl at Mia’s funeral who gave Brooke the vase of white roses. Brooke closed her eyes for a moment, then looked at the girl again.

Almost as if feeling her gaze, the girl turned and stared
back at Brooke. What could have made me think that was the same girl? Brooke wondered. Her blue eyes were heavily lined in black, and the lids shimmered with some kind of glittery powder. Berry red lipstick emphasized her full lips, and four hoop earrings of varying sizes dangled from her left lobe. She wore ragged jeans and a wildly patterned extremely low-cut T-shirt, and chewed gum as if her life depended on it. She looked at least eighteen, not sixteen like the girl at the funeral home. And yet . . .

She turned her gaze away from Brooke with boredom, slid down in her seat, and propped her sandaled feet on the back of the seat in front of her. The hems of her jeans were frayed and even from a distance looked dirty. Her companion, an ill-kempt boy with greasy black hair and a tattoo on his neck, also looking around eighteen, laughed out loud at something the girl muttered, drawing a dagger stare from the woman behind Brooke and Vincent. Brooke had a feeling the woman knew better than to “shush” those two, though. They had a rough look, as if they’d like nothing better than to curse her out or maybe even worse.

Brooke turned her attention away from the girl for a moment and spotted Judith and her companion. Judith was trying to show how wildly involved they were. Unfortunately, the image was ruined as he sat almost rigid in his chair while her long, skinny arms seemed to multiply and flow all over him. Brooke had the sudden image of the poor man being captured by an octopus.

“What’s wrong?” Vincent whispered.

“Nothing. I’m just people-watching.”

“I’m going to tell both of you one more time to be quiet,” the woman behind them nearly snarled.

Vincent and Brooke both turned. The husband’s face looked swollen with the blood of anger and embarrassment, but he said nothing. He probably never got a chance to say much of anything, Brooke thought.

Vincent gave Brooke’s hand a squeeze, and after they both turned around again, she relaxed, immediately enthralled as
the story of the galaxy began to unfold. All around her spun the images of stars, planets, meteors, and fire. The sound
did
surround her, and she could easily see how someone might get dizzy in this lifelike chamber full of color and drama. She caught herself gripping Vincent’s arm, just as she used to grip Daddy’s arm when he took her to the planetarium a lifetime ago when she was a child. Vincent covered her hand and squeezed, smiling although he didn’t look at her. He seemed to know she was having a good time, and the expression on his face told her that her pleasure was giving him just as much.

“Everything’s spinning around,” the woman behind them announced loudly. “I think I’m going to vomit.”

“Then leave,” her husband said absently, mesmerized by the show.

“Alone? Without
you
?”

From across the room came another loud,
“Shhhhhh.”
“Well, I never!” the woman exclaimed as if she hadn’t done it herself fifteen minutes earlier.