The Way You Look Tonight (15 page)

One

The next morning Deborah was awakened by the sound of Scarlett frantically barking in the back yard. She opened eyes that felt grainy from lack of sleep and peered at the bedside clock: 6.10. Usually Scarlett didn't go out until the children awakened around seven. Something was wrong.

Deborah shot out of bed, grabbing a robe on her way out of the bedroom. Joe was not on the couch when she reached the living room. She ran into the kitchen where the back door stood open. Dim light was just beginning to dissipate the black of night. She stepped out on the porch and spotted Scarlett in Mrs Dillman's yard running back and forth beside what in the semidarkness looked like a pile of rags. Then she saw Joe hurdling the fence and landing beside the rags. He bent and touched them gently, then looked up at Deborah. ‘It's Mrs Dillman,' he shouted. ‘Call the paramedics.'

‘Is she dead?' Deborah gasped.

‘No, but she's not far from it. Hurry.'

The next few minutes passed in a blur for Deborah. She made the call, surprised at how calm she sounded, grabbed a blanket off the couch where Joe had slept, then went out into the back yard, where Joe was still kneeling beside the woman. ‘What on earth happened?'

‘You're barefooted,' Joe said, spreading the blanket over Mrs Dillman.

‘I always walk around out here barefooted these days,' Deborah responded absently. ‘I asked what happened.'

‘I don't know. Scarlett came downstairs and woke me up. She kept running toward the kitchen, then coming back. I thought she needed to go out in a hurry, so I opened the door. I came back into the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee, thinking she'd bark when she wanted in. Well, she barked all right. I looked out and she was digging like mad, trying to get into this yard. By the time I got out here, she'd made it. She was licking Mrs Dillman's face and still barking. I didn't want to fool with that clip you have on your gate, so I jumped the fence. That's when you came out.'

‘What's wrong with her?'

‘A nice-sized lump and cut on the top of her head. And I don't know how long she's been lying out here in the cold.'

‘My God. I knew one day she was going to have a bad fall.'

Joe looked up at her. ‘Deborah, she didn't get this lump by falling on the ground. I'm not a pathologist, but I'd say it was made by something like a club – maybe a baseball bat. The woman was attacked.'

‘Attacked?' Deborah repeated dumbly.

‘I think so.'

Later Deborah barely remembered running back inside for Joe's jacket. She was shivering with cold and couldn't stop thinking of the thin, limp body of Mrs Dillman lying on the freezing ground wearing only a flannel robe and the same cracked leather house slippers Deborah had seen when the woman had come to the door the night before claiming Steve was watching her.

What had happened? Deborah wondered as she hurried back into the house and ran upstairs, where she pulled on jeans, a sweater and a pair of loafers. Mrs Dillman had been terribly upset and convinced she was being watched. Had she gone outside to investigate and…and what? Joe couldn't be certain she'd been struck. Maybe she
had
merely fallen. But what if Joe was right? What if there really was a watcher and he'd struck her on the head?

Struck her on the head
. The words jangled through Deborah's mind. Struck on the head like Emily? Struck on the head like all the Strangler's victims? But all of them had also been strangled and raped. She hadn't seen Mrs Dillman's neck. Had she been strangled but lived? Had she been raped? Many people believed rape was an act of lust, but Deborah knew it was actually a violent act of dominance. Mrs Dillman's advanced age could not protect her from such savagery.

As she started down the hall, Barbara's door opened. She looked at Deborah with bleary eyes. ‘What's going on?'

‘Mrs Dillman has been hurt. She's lying in her back yard. Joe is with her and the paramedics are on the way.'

‘My God! What happened?'

‘We don't know. Joe thinks she was hit on the head.'

Barbara's eyes widened. ‘Who would do such a thing? Oh, Deborah, you don't think she was right about someone watching her, do you?'

‘Something was out there. Both Kim and Mrs Dillman saw it.'

‘
It?
You think it was an
it
?'

‘I don't know what I think any more,' Deborah said in exasperation. ‘I have to get back outside.'

‘I'll get dressed,' Barbara said. ‘How can I help?'

‘Make sure the children don't come outside if they wake up,' Deborah replied as she ran downstairs, now grateful for the carpet that muffled her footsteps. She fervently hoped the children would sleep through this emergency. They'd already been through too much.

Five minutes later the paramedics arrived. Along with his jacket, Deborah had handed Joe Scarlett's leash and he brought her back to her own yard. Deborah shut her, whining and straining against the leash, inside the house. Back outside, she watched as the paramedics took Mrs Dillman's vital signs, then checked her for broken bones or other injuries aside from the one on her head. Deborah barely breathed until she learned there were none. The woman hadn't been strangled. ‘But she's in shock,' the female paramedic said. ‘We need to get her to the ambulance to elevate her feet and try to raise this blood pressure.' She looked at Joe and Deborah. ‘Can one of you come to the hospital?'

‘I will,' Deborah said. ‘Her son left a key to her house with me a few months ago. I'll get her insurance information and be right along.'

‘I'll take you,' Joe said.

‘You can't. Barbara has to go to work and someone needs to stay with the kids.'

Joe frowned. ‘I don't like you going off by yourself.'

‘It's daytime, Joe. And I'm heading straight for the hospital.'

‘I'm going into her house with you. It's a slim chance, but someone could be in there. And I don't think you'll need that key. I don't think she came out here in her nightgown and locked the door behind her.'

Joe was right. The back door stood open. ‘Well, we know she didn't lock herself out,' Deborah said. ‘She must have heard or seen something and come outside.'

They entered the kitchen where the overhead light still burned and went into the living room. Although the room was neat, the furniture was old and worn and gave off a faint musty odor. ‘Circa 1955?' Joe asked, pointing to a bulky armchair with lace antimacassars pinned to the arms.

‘Probably older than that.'

‘The place looks awfully run-down. It's in bad need of paint. Is she short of money?'

‘I'm sure she's not well off, but she's not struggling, either. She's just not up to arranging for home repairs. Steve used to help her some, but during this last year she's told him that it was her husband Alfred's job to take care of these things and sent him home. Steve talked to one of her sons who lives in Huntington about the necessity of either hiring someone to stay with her or placing her in a nursing home, but the son did nothing except leave a key to the house with us. That was three months ago. No one has been back to check on her since then.'

‘That's a damned shame,' Joe said. ‘Do you have the son's phone number so you can let him know what's happened?'

‘No, but I'm sure it's listed in Mrs Dillman's address book on the table by the phone. His name is Fred Dillman. Would you look it up while I search for her purse? Her insurance card is probably in her wallet. At least, I hope it is.'

Deborah had been in the Dillman house only a few times, but she was always amazed that in spite of the woman's increasing loss of memory and fantasies concerning people, she was extremely organized about her paperwork. She paid bills promptly and sent out a myriad of birthday cards, which according to Fred Dillman always arrived on the correct date.

‘I have the card,' she called, relieved she'd found it so quickly.

‘And I have the phone number.'

‘Great. Would you mind calling Fred from my house so you can keep an eye on the kids while Barbara gets ready for work? I want to leave for the hospital immediately.'

‘Okay. That will save Mrs Dillman the cost of a long-distance call.'

Twenty minutes later Deborah was filling out hospital forms to the best of her ability, forced to leave many blank spaces because she didn't know Mrs Dillman well. A family member would have to complete the forms later. While she waited for some word on the woman's condition, she called Joe. He told her he'd reached Fred Dillman, who said he would be there by afternoon. ‘Afternoon?' Deborah repeated. ‘He only lives an hour away.'

‘Sorry. That's the best I could do. He sounded flustered and I heard a woman griping in the background.'

‘I hope Steve and I get better treatment when we're old.'

Joe was silent, and Deborah experienced a strange sinking sensation. He doesn't believe old age is something Steve will have to worry about, she thought sadly.

She was downing her third cup of bitter coffee from the coffee machine when a doctor appeared. ‘Mrs Dillman is suffering from shock and hypothermia,' he told her. ‘And that was quite a blow on the head. She has a concussion and is still unconscious.'

‘Will she be all right?'

‘Frankly, I'm not sure at this point. The CT scan didn't show any intracranial bleeding, which is encouraging. She also seems to be in unusually good physical health for a woman her age. But she's been through a lot for a ninety-two-year-old woman. Do you know what happened?'

‘No. We found her lying in her back yard.' She hesitated. ‘Someone suggested that she'd been struck with a club of some kind rather than just hitting her head in a fall.'

‘The blow
is
on the top of her head. Injuries to the head caused during a fall are usually found on the sides, front, or back of the head. We also found wood splinters in the cut.'

‘She wasn't near anything wooden,' Deborah said slowly. ‘Could she have stood up, banged her head on something, then gone into her yard?'

The doctor shook his head. ‘I don't think so. The head injury is severe and probably resulted in immediate unconsciousness.'

So Joe had been right, Deborah thought with a chill. Someone had assaulted the frail, elderly lady and left her to freeze to death.

Two

Deborah returned home to find the children and Joe laboring over a jigsaw puzzle with large pieces. Kim was still coughing, although not as often as she had the night before. Brian looked at her. ‘Is Mrs Dillman dead?' he asked.

‘They saw the ambulance leaving,' Joe said.

‘No, honey, she isn't dead. She just got a bump on the head, and then she got chilled from lying outside.'

Kim looked excited. ‘Joe said Scarlett found her.'

‘That's right.'

‘Mrs Dillman likes Scarlett,' Brian informed Joe. ‘She doesn't like Pierre Vincent.'

‘Who's Pierre Vincent?' he asked.

‘That's the Vincents' poodle,' Deborah told him.

Brian looked at Joe. ‘She says he's a little varmint. Mommy says that's like a rat.'

‘He dug up her flowers three years ago and she's never forgiven him,' Deborah said.

‘Scarlett made a hole under the fence,' Kim noted worriedly. ‘Maybe she won't like her any more.'

Deborah touched Kim's hair. ‘I think she will, sweetheart. She'll know Scarlett was only trying to help.'

Seeming satisfied with the answer, the children went back to the puzzle, which they soon finished. Afterward they wanted go outside, but Deborah insisted Kim stay in because of her cough. They decided instead to go to the basement where Kim's play kitchen and Brian's ‘woodshop' were set up in the big room with the washer and dryer.

Joe questioned her more closely about Mrs Dillman. ‘The doctor agrees with you that she was struck on the head,' Deborah told him. ‘There were splinters in the cut. But we didn't find a club or anything like it in the yard.'

‘Whoever hit her wasn't stupid enough to leave his weapon.'

‘Every time I think of someone deliberately bashing that woman in the head…' Deborah closed her eyes. ‘Why? Why would someone attack her?'

‘Maybe she had a prowler like you did the night of your party. Maybe she looked out and saw someone in her back yard.'

‘So she went out to confront them? That's absurd. She's ninety-two.'

‘Deborah, she isn't always rational. She thought Steve was lurking around spying on her, but that didn't stop her from storming over here in her nightgown.'

‘You're right. But I'm sure she saw something. So did Kim, although they both claim it was hovering above the ground.'

‘I know. Barbara had a bee in her bonnet about that detail this morning. She said she had an idea about what Mrs Dillman meant and she was going to check it out.'

‘She didn't tell you what her idea was?'

‘No. I guess we'll find out this evening.'

Three

Barbara pulled into the parking lot of Capitol Realty. Inside, a young receptionist threw her a radiant smile. ‘House-hunting today?'

‘In a way.' The girl's smile faltered slightly at Barbara's vague reply. ‘Is Roberta Mitchell free?'

‘I'll check. May I have your name?'

‘Barbara Levine.'

‘Fine.' She buzzed Roberta's office, and after a few moments of hushed conversation announced that Roberta was on another phone line but would be able to see Barbara in ten minutes. ‘Why don't you have a seat while you're waiting, Ms Levine?' she invited with the same brilliant smile.

Barbara walked into a small waiting area decorated in shades of taupe and light blue. On one wall hung a large bulletin board bearing photographs of houses that were current listings. Barbara studied it and didn't find what she was looking for. She sat down and began wiggling her foot nervously. She had a lot of work to do today. Hopefully this wouldn't take much time.