The last person left the afternoon viewing at a little before four. I was able to grab a couple of hours sleep before the evening viewing, which ran smoothly despite the constant influx of visitors.
I manned the front door and Clint handled the side entrance. I disliked large turnouts because of the problems of moving people and providing enough parking. Big crowds cost us money. I had to hire someone to supervise the comings and goings in the parking lot. On the other hand, the more people who came to pay their respects meant a less depressing two hours for the deceased’s family. One of the most heart-wrenching sights is three or four people sitting in a Viewing Room, alone with their thoughts and regrets.
Tyler stayed around for fifteen minutes to go over the logistics of the burial the next morning. It would be fairly standard, apart from the large crowd that was expected. Those who would be attending the funeral would arrive at the Home at 9:30 for the closing of the coffin. A procession would then drive the half-mile to Saint Richard’s Catholic Church for a requiem Mass, then head out to Elm Cross cemetery for the interment. The only difference between this and most other funerals would be the length of the procession. If they’re lucky, most people have four or five cars go to the cemetery. Tyler guessed that Alphonse would have three dozen.
As it turned out, there were thirty-eight cars and the most difficult part of the morning was keeping the procession together as it wound from the Home to the church to the cemetery. As always, I remained at gravesite until the burial was complete. From there I went to Nicola’s, an Italian restaurant in Dankworth that Tyler rented to receive visitors after the burial. There were so many people it was easy to get lost in the crowd. I seldom attended these gatherings, even if I knew the deceased or the family well. I thought of myself as a reminder of death and I felt strongly that the last time the survivors should see me was at the cemetery. The healing had to start immediately.
After about ten minutes I left and went back to the Home only to find Perry sitting in his cruiser. As I parked he got out and approached me.
“Let’s have a little chat.” He was arrying the box of Brandy Parker memorabilia that Quilla had given him.
“I’ve spent the last few hours going over this crap. Nothing more than the silly ramblings of a teenage girl. I hoped her notebooks might reveal something, ya know, but the stuff Brandy Parker wrote was ordinary things like ‘Kenny didn’t call me. It’s been ten days. I wonder what’s wrong.’ Or ‘I decided to stop wearing underwear when I go out at night.’ And there were some sections where she went into explicit detail about her sexual adventures.”
“Did she mention any names?”
“Not really. A first name. Like, ‘Bob wanted to screw me in the parking lot at K-Mart.’ Corny stuff. Stupid stuff. There was a lot of pages devoted to her feelings. The notebooks cover about four years. She died at nineteen, so she started writing in them at, say, fifteen. And the early stuff is random. Unfocused. One page will have references to ten different things. Music. Clothes. TV shows. Boys. Loneliness. Insomnia. She’ll talk about a teacher who she hates on one page. Then five months later, she has a crush on the same guy. In the last few months she seemed to change.”
“How so?”
“This might be the only thing I have to go on.” He picked up one of the journals and turned to a page he had marked. “It’s almost like a different person, but it’s definitely the same handwriting. Instead of describing guys she went out with or things she wanted to do she becomes serious, talking about self-esteem and being a worthwhile person and not being a victim anymore. She uses words like “entitlement” and expressions like “making a contribution” in the world. It’s like she suddenly found religion.”
“It wasn’t religion. What she found was Kyle Thistle’s daughter. Anything else?”
“That’s it. It’s all gonna come down to Gretchen Yearwood.” Perry sat down roughly in the Queen Anne style chair in front of my desk.
“And if she can’t give you anything to go on?”
“Then I’m flying blind. But I did have a notion about your girlfriend. If she didn’t send you the note and the postcard, obviously the killer did, right?”
“Right.”
“So the killer had to know that you and the girl were involved and where you lived. Which leads me to believe that he was extremely thorough or that he knew one or both of you. And on a strictly gut feeling, he probably knew you.”
“Why me?”
“If he knew her there’s a good chance he knew she broke up with you so there wouldn’t have been a reason for her to drop you a line. But if he knew you and didn’t know that you’d been dumped…logic dictates he’d cover his tracks by sending the note.” He leaned back in the chair, looking proud of himself. “When it happened fifteen years ago were you working at Henderson’s yet?”
I nodded yes. “Part-time stuff. But by the time Alyssa left I was on my way to being an apprentice.”
“But you were there. Learning the ropes, right?”
“Yes.”
Perry reached into his shirt pocket and unfolded a sheet of paper which he held out to me. It was the list of the names of employees at Elm Grove cemetery and DiGregorio’s and Henderson’s Funeral Homes whom he considered possible cemetery buffs and suspects.
“How many of these people did you know back then?” Perry asked as he handed me the list.
I scanned it for a few seconds. “Over time I came to know them well. But I didn’t really get to know most of them until after college and I was Lew’s Assistant. Obviously, everyone at Henderson’s. At DiGregorio’s I knew Tyler, Alphonse and Wilt Ging. Vaughn was the only person I knew at the cemetery then.”
“Who knew you were dating with Alyssa Kirkland?”
I had to think for a few seconds. “Tyler, definitely.”
“Interesting. Tyler knows cemeteries. Tyler knew your girlfriend. Tyler’s the first one to show up at the Funeral Home where Brandy Parker is laid out.”
“He came to see me, not her.”
“He could’ve called. And why did he come when he did?”
“You’re way off base on this, Perry.”
“We’ll see,” he said. “Who else knew about Alyssa?”
“It’s hard to remember. Lew might’ve known I had a girlfriend, but I don’t think I ever would’ve discussed it with him. Same with Nolan. They were grown men. If we talked it was about sports or the business.”
“But you might’ve let it drop that you had a girlfriend. Or you and Alyssa were seen together. It’s not inconceivable that Nolan or Lew knew you were dating someone.”
“You can’t possibly think either one of them could be the… ”
“Hell, if your theory about the same person killing all three women holds water, Lew and Nolan are old enough to be responsible for all deaths.”
“That’s just crazy, Perry. Why would either one… ?”
“Don’t waste your time asking ‘why?’ Del. My father used to say that there is no why for some crimes. Guy robs a bank for money. Guy steals food to eat. Woman kills her husband for insurance money. Guy murders his wife because she’s cheating on him. Those are solid, definite whys. Then there are the crimes of impulse. Guy doesn’t need money, but he robs a liquor store for laughs. Kid from a good family decides to sell drugs for kicks. Guy slaps his girlfriend around one punch too many. Then there’s the crimes where a cop or a District Attorney scratches his head from here to Timbuktu looking for a reason. A motive. And there isn’t one. Give me a motive why somebody killed Brandy Parker.”
“I can’t.”
“Give me a motive why someone killed or kidnapped and killed Virginia Thistle.”
“I can’t.”
“Give me a motive why Alphonse Digregorio or Lew Henderson or Nolan Fowler or Wilt Ging or Alton Held or Tyler DiGregorio would have killed Alyssa Kirkland.”
“I can’t.”
“Neither can I. Let’s narrow the odds. Tyler could’ve, understand me, could have killed Brandy Parker and Alyssa Kirkland, but he would’ve been too young to have done in Virginia Thistle. So we’ll leave him out of this scenario. But Nolan and Lew — and to make it interesting — Kyle Thistle could’ve killed his wife and Brandy Parker. But he was locked up in the nuthouse when Alyssa disappeared. But Nolan and Lew… and just for laughs, let’s say Alphonse… who knew you indirectly because you were friends with Tyler… and just to make it really interesting, let’s put Wilt Ging into the mix because as Chief Embalmer at DiGregorio’s, he might’ve known you only because of your friendship with Tyler.”
“Where are you going with this, Perry?”
“The point being that those men were all in Dankworth when Virginia Thistle disappeared. And of the people you knew fifteen years ago when Alyssa Kirkland vanished, Lew, Nolan, Alphonse, Wilt and Alton could’ve known that she was your girlfriend. They all were certainly around nine years ago and each of them knew enough about the layout of that fucking cemetery to know where to hide a body.”
“Wrong! Not Nolan and Wilt. Embalmers don’t go to cemeteries. I can’t speak for Wilt, but I’d bet you a thousand dollars that Nolan Fowler doesn’t know anything about the layout of Elm Grove or any other cemetery. In all the years I’ve been associated with Henderson’s Funeral Home, with the exception of a handful of burials, if that, Nolan never spent enough time at Elm Cross to be any kind of expert on the layout of the grounds.”
“Fine. But Lew has. And Alphonse. And Alton works there, for God’s sake. And you don’t know if Wilt Ging is a cemetery buff. And, frankly, you don’t know what Nolan does in his spare time or what he did in his spare time fifteen years ago. He might’ve been a cemetery buff back then.”
Perry was confusing me. I wasn’t sure if he was playing mind games with me like he usually tried to do or if he was genuinely trying to communicate to me from the point of view of a cop stumped by a difficult case.
“Is being a cemetery buff a lifelong hobby for people?”
“For some.”
“I’ve been interested in some things all my life, other things I get tired of after a year. Some things six months. I have to weigh all kinds of facts and information. It sounds nice to theorize that the same person was responsible for what happened to these three women, but when you think hard about it…it’s just too remote. I’ll grant you it’s possible, but it’s not probable. That’s why I have to focus on the facts I have. And the biggest fact I have the body of Brandy Parker. If I had the remains of Alyssa Kirkland or Virginia Thistle, then I’d say your theory has one hundred percent credibility. But I have to go with what I’ve got. And as of this moment, it’s all in Gretchen Yearwood’s court. And if she can’t give me something new to go on… it’s over.”
“She’s already given you something, Perry. She’s the only person connected to both Virginia Thistle and Brandy Parker.”
Perry took in the remark. “I take it that you and the kid have already talked to her?” I nodded yes. “Save me some time. Did she say anything that I can work with?”
“Not much.”
“Then that’s it. There’s nothing except theories. I met with Greg and Wendell to pick their brains. We sat down like lawyers trying to come up with logical scenarios of who, what, where, why and how.”
He removed two sheets of paper, folded in half, from his jacket pocket and unfolded them. “This is a printout of the fifty-six names you and the kid got from the headstones by the mausoleum. We poured over them, looking for a link. Abbreviations. A big chunk of people from Europe settled here. Lots of them changed their names. We considered that the killer uses the shortened surname of his ancestors. “He handed me the page. “Of the fifty-six names, eleven could’ve been trimmed down or ‘Americanized’. I made a separate list of those. Take a look.”
I looked at the paper, my eyes going to the short list:
Norbyer
Uvorelli
Friskenacht
Suinneur
Oberfuolner
Bastaad
Ruddigger
Wachtmannfried
Viteurhoven
Kogarun
Puillifert
“None rings even the remotest bell for me,” I said. “In my head I’m trying to make anagrams out of them.”
“We tried that too. Nothing. I even ran them through the computer to find variations on the names. Made it even worse. Came up with seventy-six weird-sounding names.”
I examined the longer list of conventional names hoping to find one that I could place with the face of someone alive in Dankworth today. There were none, other than a few common English and Irish surnames.
“Listen, Del, I’m not Sherlock-fucking-Holmes. There’s no bodies. No weapons. No evidence of any kind. I’ve read enough and talked to enough cops to know that cases get solved either through plodding, detailed, painstaking work or dumb luck. Just like it was a fluke that Brandy Parker’s body was discovered, it’ll be the same kind of chance event that’ll put an end to this. When I don’t know.”
“Just like it’s taken twenty-four years for something to solve the Virginia Thistle case?” I snapped. “Or fifteen years for something to solve the Alyssa Kirkland case?”
“You want me to go forward? Give me more than hunches and heartache. Give me something real.” He walked to the door. “Give me something I can hold in my hands.” He stepped out of my office.
He left the printout of names of people buried near the mausoleum and the box containing Brandy Parker’s things behind. I picked up the printout and studied the names again. Not one looked even remotely familiar.
I spent the next five hours going through Brandy Parker’s things. I examined everything in the box, reading the notebooks, looking at the pictures, grasping for something that would offer a clue. There was nothing. I was beginning to understand Perry’s frustration. I knew he was right about finding something solid to work with, but I also knew he was right about dumb luck playing an important part. Either way would take time.
I wanted to call Quilla. It had been two days since she’d left me standing in front of the Police Station. I wanted to see if she’d calmed down, as well as to tell her about my latest visit from Perry. Plus, I had Brandy’s things. Even if Quilla had made up her mind to stay angry at me forever, I wanted to get them back to her. I decided to be the adult and give her a call.
Suzanne Worthington answered with an abrupt, “Quilla?”
“No. It’s Del Coltrane.”
“Have you seen or talked to Quilla today?” There was an edge to her voice. “Or yesterday?”
“No. Is something wrong?”
“Quilla hasn’t been home for the last two nights,” she said gravely. “Sometimes she stays away for one night… if we’ve had an argument, but she always comes back the next day only… we didn’t have an argument two days ago. Since the funeral, we’ve actually been very decent to one another. I’m extremely concerned. She’s been obsessing on finding my sister’s killer. And she mentioned a connection with her friend Gretchen’s mother and someone you knew. At first I thought it was too unbelievable to give any credibility to, but now I’m wondering if it could be true. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but… could the same man be after her?”
The question gave me the chills. “Why would you think that?”
“My sister vanished off the face of the earth,” she snapped. “I think I have a right to ask the question. Quilla wasn’t the only one to suspect that something awful happened to her. I just chose to focus on the easier solution: that she ran away. But a small part of me feared the worst. Since Brandy’s disappearance I’ve spent every day dreading that the same thing might happen to Quilla. She’s run away in the past. You can’t imagine what that did to me. And she’s stayed out all night without warning me. Going on forty-eight hours without knowing where your child is can be hell. For the last two days I’ve been asking myself if my worry is premature. Should I call her friends? They would lie to protect her. Should I call the police? What good would it do. So I’ve been waiting… wondering… and I don’t know who to turn to.”
“Where was she going the last time you saw her?”
“I don’t know. She doesn’t tell me her plans. She comes and goes. Sometimes I’m here. Sometimes I’m not. I often work long hours. My worst fear is that the person who killed my sister has indeed gotten hold of Quilla.”
That didn’t make any sense to me, but I knew enough about life not to assume anything. “That seems unlikely, Mrs. Worthington. There are so few people who know of Quilla’s passion for solving the murder… me, Perry Cobb, Gretchen Yearwood, the two other men on the Dankworth Police force.”
“Quilla told me about it. Who else did she tell? And who else did the others tell? Who else did you tell?” I tried to remember. Besides Gretchen, there was Vaughn and Nolan. I trusted each of them implicitly.
“Mrs. Worthington, if you feel in your heart, if your mother’s intuition is sending you a message, I think you need to call the police and tell them Quilla’s been gone for the last two days. I’ll be happy to put a call into Perry Cobb and, if you like, I’ll call Gretchen Yearwood… unless you’ve already contacted her.”
“I’ve been reluctant to call anyone. Quilla has run away before.”
“Call the police now. I’ll see what I can do. And if she shows up, call me.”
“Definitely.”
We both hung up. I wasn’t sure if I should be concerned or if Quilla was acting out because of a fight with her mother that Suzanne hadn’t told me about. Or was it the fight with me? I decided to call Gretchen before I called Perry. She picked up after the first ring.
“Gretchen, it’s Del.”
“I don’t believe it,” she said her tone friendly. “I was just about to call you.”
“Why?”
“To apologize for my hostility the other day. I know you meant well with the information you had and I know that you’re in as much of a quandary about the whereabouts of your girlfriend as I am about my mother, but what you said was all so unexpected and, well, I felt badly after you left and I’m calling to tell you I’m sorry.”
“That’s not necessary. There’s no easy way to give or receive horrible information. I’m hoping that I’m wrong about your mother and Alyssa.
“Ever since I heard your and Quilla’s theory I’ve been forcing myself to give it some consideration despite my misgivings. Quilla told me a few more of hers, a couple of which I find interesting. I was thinking that the three of us should put our heads together.”
“That’s a great idea, but we may have a problem. When’s the last time you saw Quilla?”
“When you two were here. But I talked to her yesterday.”
“She hasn’t been home for two nights. I just spoke to her mother. She’s petrified that somebody has Quilla.”
“Somebody who?”
“The killer.”
“My God. I still can’t acclimate myself to thinking in these concepts. Why would the ‘killer’ want Quilla?”
“Her mother thinks it might be to stop her. Maybe she stumbled onto something and mentioned it to the wrong person. Do you know how to reach any of her friends?”
“I know some of their names. I could call them.”
“Let me help. If it’s not a bad time, I could come over. We could call her friends together.”
“Fine.”
“I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
As I threw on some fresh clothes, I shook my head, frustrated at the mixed emotions I was feeling. I was concerned that something had happened to Quilla, yet I was glad that I would be spending some time with Gretchen.
As I pulled into Gretchen’s driveway the headlights on my car bounced off the front of her house revealing for a second a figure sitting on the front steps. I thought it was Kyle Thistle, but it was Gretchen.
“Hi, Del!” she said as she stood up. I felt as if I was picking her up for a date. “Let’s go inside.”
I followed her into the foyer and down a hallway whose walls were covered with a dozen or so framed photographs. She wore black jeans, a light blue denim workshirt and was barefoot. She had very small, delicate feet. Her toenails weren’t polished.
“Since we hung up I made a list of the names of her friends that I remember. She’s got quite a few.”
“A bunch showed up at the Funeral Home,” I said.
“The night we met?” said Gretchen sweetly.
“Yes. I’ve talked to one of them. Viper.”
“I already phoned him. No answer. These kids probably all have their own phones. Some are under their parent’s names. Some are unlisted. With a little luck we might make contact with a few and through, them, the others.”
We reached the kitchen. The scent of cinnamon and baked apples was in the air. She gestured to the table. “Make yourself comfortable.” A freshly baked pie was in the center of the table. As I sat down I noticed that she had the telephone directory spread out on the table. Next to it was a yellow legal pad with several names scribbled in pencil.
“Do you want to call or look up numbers?” she asked.
“Do these kids know you?” She nodded yes. “Then you call. It might not be too productive when they learn the town Funeral Director is on the line.”
Gretchen smiled. “Alright,” she said. “Let’s go.”
It took us about twenty-five minutes to find and dial the numbers that were available. Of the eleven names that Gretchen could remember, we managed to reach six and through them we got five more names, as well as the numbers we couldn’t find. But not one of the kids we reached even knew that Quilla was missing. Two girls had seen her yesterday and both claimed to have talked to her briefly, each saying that Quilla told them she was investigating her Aunt’s murder. After reaching the last of the names, we continued to dial Viper’s number, still getting his Voicemail.
“When you talked to Quilla yesterday did she have anything specific to say?” I said.
“She had another hypothesis about the killer. It was difficult for her to tell me because she knows how strongly I feel that my mother is still alive. But in the interest of helping I was willing to suspend my disbelief. She brought up the notion that — assuming someone murdered my mother — is there any guarantee that she was his first victim?”
“I never thought of that.”
“Quilla’s point is that who’s to say my mother wasn’t his third victim? Or tenth? And that your girlfriend and Brandy came later.”
That would mean he’s an old man now.”
“Not necessarily,” she said. “If he started his killing at, for discussion sake, age twenty-one. If he killed my mother he would only be forty-six. If he started even younger, say when he was in high school, he’d be in his early forties. On the other hand, if he started at thirty, with my mother, he’d be fifty-four. And as for him being an old man, let’s say an older man, if he started killing when he was thirty and the first victim was ten years before my mother, he’d only be in his mid-sixties. Everything hinges on when the killer began. If he was twenty-one and started fifty years ago, then we’re talking an elderly man. But if my mother was the first and he was anywhere from twenty-one to, let’s be generous and say forty, then it could be someone from his mid-forties to mid-sixties. The upshot of all this, Del, is that Perry Cobb needs to do some checking beyond my mother’s disappearance and since Brandy’s murder nine years ago. Despite the fact that I still believe my mother is alive, I’m willing to confront him and demand that he re-open her case solely for the purpose of bringing some peace of mind to Quilla and you.”
“If she gets it I’ll be happy.”
“After all this time, you should too. It’s only fair.”
I shrugged. She looked at me with an odd expression, almost one of disapproval. “Your ambivalence surprises me. I’ve been getting the impression that finding out what happened to Alyssa has been uppermost on your mind for years, like me with my mother. Now you shrug your shoulders?”
“You know how there are people who bury their emotions and hide their true feelings?” Gretchen nodded yes. “Well, I’m one of them. I don’t like to get too hopeful or excited about things. Like the old saying: ‘never complain, never explain.’ I keep a comfortable balance.”
“I’ve found that impossible to do since I grew up,” she said sternly. “Life keeps hitting me in the face. It took me a long time to learn that hiding doesn’t work. It only fends off the inevitable. Every time I decide to lock myself away from the world…the world comes and drags me back. Like now. The person I’m probably closest to in the world is missing and might be in trouble and, as much as I’d like to be tucked in bed reading a book, I have to do something to find her.” She ran her fingers through her hair and simultaneously took a deep breath. “Should we notify Perry Cobb about Quilla’s idea?”
I shook my head no. “He’s up to his ass in theories. He needs something tangible.”
“That’s how it was with the detectives I hired to find my mother. ‘Give me something to go on’ they’d all say. Anything. I’d get so frustrated. They were the detectives, but they wanted me to do all the preliminary work.”
“What did you do?”
“Read every word I could find on her disappearance. Tried to talk to people who knew her, but it was next to impossible. I was so young when she disappeared and I didn’t start to seriously take action until I was in my late teens. The police seemed disinterested. No one remembered. Not even my father.”
“You asked him about her disappearance?”
“Of course I did. Constantly. But when he was institutionalized they beat him. Whatever memories he had got knocked out of his brain. I hardly knew him as a little girl. I was fifteen when he got out. It was like talking to a stranger. He barely remembered me. He didn’t even live with me until I finished college and I had a little money. When his time was up they put him in a halfway house in Youngstown for six months. Then he lived in a rooming house and got a job as a night clerk at a third-rate hotel. If I wouldn’t have bought this house and brought him here to live with me he would either be dead or wandering the streets of Youngstown. As far as information about my mother or what happened to her he’s pretty useless. I used to show him pictures of her to try and trigger his memory… but nothing worked. Sometimes I find him gazing at her picture. I wonder if he’s doing it because a glint of memory has kicked in or if he’s trying to force himself to remember. What he does say sometimes is how pretty she is. He’ll be staring at her picture and just say, ‘Very pretty’ or ‘So pretty’ or variations on that. I keep pictures of her all over the house with the hope that it might spark his memory, but… it hasn’t. Would you like to see her picture?”
“Yes. I’d enjoy that.”
Gretchen stepped into the hallway we had passed through earlier and returned a few seconds later carrying a framed photograph which she handed to me. It was an 8 x 10 color print of a gorgeous brunette who bore an amazing resemblance to a young Kathleen Turner.
“This is she,” said Gretchen. “This is my mother.”
“She’s gorgeous. No. Beautiful.”
“It was taken on her thirtieth birthday.”
“Thirtieth?” I thought to myself. “She looks more like twenty.” To Gretchen, I said, “She looks much younger.”
“I know.” She smiled. “The handful of people I talked to who knew her all remarked about how young she looked. Everyone thought she was in high school. She was still getting carded at bars into her thirties.”
“This could be important,” I said. My heart began to pound. Gretchen looked at me, a confused look on her face. “This could be what Perry needs to dig deeper.”
“Why?”
“He and I were looking for similarities with Brandy, Alyssa and your mom. But the one thing that didn’t fit was your mother’s age. Brandy and Alyssa were both nineteen. Perry had your mother’s age listed at thirty-two when she disappeared. We assumed that because Brandy and Alyssa were young, the killer wouldn’t have gone after someone older.”
“Therefore no pattern.”
“Right. But since she appeared so youthful the killer must’ve assumed she was ten years younger.”
“Are you thinking he went after women who resembled each other? Because my mother and Brandy looked nothing alike.”
“Alyssa didn’t look like them either. It just seems that they all were young-looking and attractive. Red or brown hair. Shapely. Did your mom have a nice figure?”
“Yes.”
“So did Alyssa.”
“This area is filled with hundreds of young, attractive women with dark hair and nice bodies. Why would he single out these three? And there could be more victims. Before, during and after.”
“Let’s not concern ourselves with that. I want to tell Perry about your mother’s youthful appearance.”
As I reached for the phone Gretchen put her arms on the table and rested her head on them. She began to sob.
“Oh God,” she moaned. “If there’s anything to this theory… I don’t know if I can handle it.”