Death of a Domestic Diva (30 page)

Mrs. Oglevee sighed. “I'm not giving you the answers. You have to find out the rest of it for yourself.”

“And just how am I supposed to do that?”

Mrs. Oglevee smiled. “You find out answers by asking questions of the people you haven't asked yet—of course.”

And with that, she turned and sashayed off, disappearing into the fog.

Vivian, I thought. I needed to talk to Vivian . . .

Suddenly, a sharp odor spiked in my nose. I started coughing, and sputtering.

Owen kept sticking the bottle of smelling salts to my nose even after my eyes had fluttered open.

I pushed his hand away. I tried to sit up, but it made my head dizzy, so I flopped back down, which wasn't the best choice, since in passing out at the news of my family ties to Tyra, I'd slid off the kitchen chair and onto the kitchen floor.

I moaned.

“Josie—Josie are you okay?” That was Owen, sounding very anxious.

“Yes—my head just hurts.” I pushed up on my elbows. I felt a little dizzy, so I paused. Then I sat the rest of the way up. I rubbed my head—was surprised by the feel of smooth skin. The happenings of the whole day came rushing back at me—the reporters, Winnie on the side of the road, the bookmobile car chase, Billy turning himself in as Tyra's killer, getting my head shaved, finding out about Tyra's past (and her relation to me), passing out and seeing Mrs. Oglevee again. And the most normal of all these events seemed the talk with Mrs. Oglevee. That made me moan again.

I grabbed the smelling salts from Owen and took a big whiff. I needed to be alert for what was coming next. I started to stand, and Owen helped me on up.

“Josie, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to—”

I held up my hand, stopping Winnie. “It's okay,” I said. “Finding out about Tyra's true past—or at least some of it—gives me an idea about what I need to do next to find out the rest of the truth.”

“About Tyra's reason for coming here?” Winnie asked.

“That. And about who killed her. And Lewis.” I went over to the phone, mounted on the wall by the fridge. I dialed the number for Stillwater. After a few rings, Susan, the secretary, answered, giving the usual greeting.

“Susan,” I jumped in, “this is Josie Toadfern, I need to talk to Don Richmond as soon as possible. It's urgent.”

I needed to find out how to contact Vivian. I'd been seeing her out at Stillwater for years—but I'd never swapped phone numbers with her, or had lunch with her, as I did with some of the other residents' family members. In fact, I had never really spent any time talking with Vivian until after Lewis died. And I couldn't remember ever seeing anyone else talk with Vivian much—which was strange. The rest of us had formed a casual sort of support group—except Vivian. She was a loner, definitely.

“Susan?” I said again, since she hadn't responded. “I need to—”

“How—how did you hear? My God, Josie, I'm so sorry . . . We tried calling you and calling you, but there's been no answer, at your home or at the laundromat—”

“Uh, Susan? What are you talking about?”

There was another long silence.

“Susan?”

“Josie—you'd better get over here. Don wants to talk to you. You see—somehow—Guy and Verbenia have been missing since breakfast. We think they may have taken off together in the middle of the night, and—”

I hung up, whirled around. “Owen.” My voice was tight, thin. “I need to get to Stillwater—now.”

17

Owen loaned me his car. He offered to drive me to Stillwater, but I wanted to be alone, to have a little time to think. I told him to go with Winnie instead in her bookmobile, make sure she didn't suffer any aftereffects from the ether. He didn't look happy at the idea, but he said he would go with her.

So Owen and Winnie saw me off, waving at me from the end of Owen's massive driveway, while I backed out Owen's car, an old red Volvo.

Looking back, I'm not sure going by myself was the best decision. It ended up putting me and other people in danger. But if Owen had gone with me, maybe I'd never have found out the whole story behind Tyra's and Lewis's murders—and a killer might have gone free.

As I drove, I tried to pep myself up, telling myself that by the time I got to Stillwater, of course Guy and Verbenia would have turned up. They'd probably just wandered off to look at Guy's beloved pumpkin plants, instead of keeping to their regular schedule.

But I didn't do a good job of making myself believe it. Guy had never, in all his years at Stillwater, gone missing. He loved his routine, his schedule. Verbenia, I was guessing, was the same way. Most of the residents were. So for them to go missing like that had to mean that they were upset—very, very upset—about something.

And what was worse, I couldn't shake the feeling that their disappearance had to have something to do with the Tyra-Lewis-Vivian-Verbenia connection I'd just put together. Something to do with why Tyra had come to Paradise. Something to do with why Lewis—and Tyra—had been killed. Which meant if my hunch was correct about who had really killed Lewis and Tyra, then Guy and Verbenia were in trouble, too. None of us are very well equipped to deal with the dangers of the world. Guy and Verbenia, I feared, would be even less so.

I got to Stillwater and found the front gate open, with no one nearby. I guessed that since Tyra wouldn't be giving her press conference here today, the reporters' attention was turned elsewhere—probably to bugging law enforcement agents about what they'd figured out about Tyra's murder.

I parked in visitor parking, near the main building, and rushed on in. Susan was waiting for me.

“Don is anxious to see you,” she said. Susan gave a long, hard stare at my head, which was covered in a cap, but it didn't take more than a glance around the edges to figure out that it wasn't covering anything other than skin. She gave her head a little shake, as if to remind herself that she had more important things to deal with than my radical change in looks. “Vivian Denlinger is already in with him. I don't know how this happened—I'm so sorry—”

We started walking toward Don's office.

“Have you called the police?” I asked “Started a search?”

“We've contacted the sheriff,” Susan said. “And we've been assured they'll start a search soon. But with Tyra Grimes's murder—” her voice trailed off.

I nodded. “They're too busy, helping to work on that, aren't they?”

Her “yes” was tiny and miserable. We were now outside Don's door. Susan knocked, opened the door, looked in. “Josie's here,” she said.

I went into Don's office. Vivian sat in one of the two visitor chairs across from Don. She was speaking quietly, but tears were streaming down her face. And she was shredding a tissue. “I don't understand. One of the reasons I chose this facility for Verbenia was it seems so secure—”

“Secure, yes,” Don said, nervously straightening an already straightened stack of papers on an overly neat desk. I slipped into the other visitor chair. “But not a prison, of course. The sense of living freely is one of Stillwater's features. We've never had anything like this happen before—”

Vivian thumped her fists on the desk, making the papers jump. “I don't need to hear your sales pitch! I already know the supposed features of this place!” Her voice was still low, but sharp, too tight, like it was about to break—like she was about to break. “And I don't care whether this has ever happened before or not! My sister is missing, and—”

“So is Josie's cousin,” Don said, giving me a nod, hesitating as he stared at my ball cap. Vivian didn't even look my way. “I called you both here not just to assure you we're doing everything possible—”

“Oh, really?” Vivian asked. “Then where are the police?”

“They are occupied with another urgent matter, but assure us—”

“The murder of Tyra Grimes,” Vivian said, her face drawing into a frightening sneer. “It's been all over TV this morning.”

“Yes,” said Don. “But I can assure you—”

“Stop assuring me!” Vivian hollered, her voice finally going up a notch. I could see her point on this one. I didn't want to be assured either. I wanted to find Guy.

Don sighed. “Look, I have as many of my people as I can spare canvasing the grounds, looking for Guy and Verbenia. It's what we can do until the police get back to us—later this afternoon, I've been told. What I need to know from each of you is if you can think of anything—anything at all that would have motivated Guy and Verbenia to take off like this.” He looked at me. “Josie?”

I thought. The last time I'd visited Guy, he'd been fine. “I can't think of anything.”

“He wasn't upset about anything, as far as you know?”

“No,” I said. “I'm sure the storm upset him, though.” I felt guilty, remembering with a pang that Guy is terrified of storms—and I hadn't even thought of him during last night's tornado.

“We're guessing they left sometime after the storm,” Don said. “Their beds haven't been slept in. We had everyone in our tornado shelter area until the storm passed. Then everyone had a snack, and went on back to their rooms.”

“How did they seem then?” I asked.

“Everyone was jittery because of the storm. Guy was especially upset, but calmed down after we got him some pistachio ice cream.” Tears pricked my eyes. Pistachio is Guy's favorite ice cream flavor. “He kept asking if the storm would come back out during the night, and we told him no. Verbenia didn't seem bothered by the storm at all. Eventually, everyone went on back to their rooms.”

“Susan said they've been missing since breakfast,” I said. “Were they at breakfast, or—”

“No, they weren't, so we went to check on them—”

“He took her!” Vivian stared at me with horror. “Somewhere in the middle of the night, he took her—”

“No, Vivian, Guy wouldn't do that,” I said. “If they left together it was because they chose to do so together.”

“Can you think of any reason Verbenia would have wanted to leave?” Don asked.

“No,” Vivian snapped. “You yourself said she was calm, even after yesterday's storm.”

“Last night she was calm,” Don said. “But right after your visit yesterday afternoon, she was agitated. I'm wondering if—”

“What are you trying to imply? It's not my fault my sister is missing!”

“No, of course not, Vivian, but you've come to see her twice this week on days you normally don't visit,” Don said. “You spent a lot of time with her yesterday. Was there anything during your visit with her that might help us figure out why she'd leave with Guy? Did she seem upset? Say anything?”

“She barely talks at all, you know that,” Vivian said, suddenly crossing her arms, and pressing back into her chair. “And she wasn't upset when she was with me. She was glad to see me—very glad, as always.”

“Verbenia was upset after you left,” Don said quietly. “She started scratching her arms at dinner, pulling at her hair, shrieking repeatedly. We couldn't get her to calm down, or figure out what was upsetting her. We finally had to restrain her for a time.”

Vivian burst out sobbing. “I don't—I don't know what was upsetting her—I just want her back! And you can go over theories all you want, but while you're just sitting here, and the police are worried about some dead media star, I'm going to look for my sister!”

She stood up, shoved past me, fled from the room.

Don sighed again, then looked at me. “Josie—are you sure you can't think of why Guy would leave with Verbenia?”

“I think that Guy might want to leave if Verbenia were leaving. They're—” I didn't want to say friends, exactly. People with autism don't connect with other people in the way that people without it do. But Guy and Verbenia were always together when they could be. They rarely talked. They'd just rather be together than not. And people with autism like order. Maybe Verbenia leaving seemed like too much of a change at Stillwater for Guy, and so he followed her. Or went with her. I shook my head. “I don't know. It's next to impossible to guess why either of them would do this.”

“Can you think of anywhere Guy would go? Any favorite places you take him on your outings away from here? I wanted to ask Vivian that question too, but—”

Just like Vivian, I jumped up. There was only one place Guy would go. I wasn't sure if he'd know how to get there on his own. And I didn't know if he was following Verbenia, or if she'd followed him, or if they'd actually left together. But one of Guy's favorite places was the old orphanage.

“There's something I want to check out,” I said. “I'll be back in touch as soon as possible, okay?”

I, too, left Don's office.

I left the building and started in a trot toward the visitor's lot. And then I stopped.

For one thing, it struck me that if Guy and Verbenia really were at the orphanage, they were probably okay there. And that if they weren't there now, me rushing over there wasn't going to help find them.

For another thing, I saw Vivian, heading across the front grounds toward the residential wing. And I had lots of questions for her. Plus, with my idea about where Guy and Verbenia might be, I had a little carrot to dangle before her to get her to talk to me.

Not real nice, I know, thinking of using emotional blackmail to get Vivian to talk. But I had to find out about her connection to Lewis and Tyra.

I followed her. She went into the residents' building, and I went in too, right behind her. It was totally quiet. I glanced at my watch. Nearly noon. Everyone was at lunch.

She turned left down a hall, opened a door that was locked at night but not in the day. I followed and opened the door a wee crack, peeking down the hall at her. This was the women's wing, smaller than the men's, since there were always more men that lived here than women. Autism happens more often in men.