If She Should Die (11 page)

He and Lisa had been divorced for almost two years, yet seeing her smiling at him in the night still shook him, still made him feel empty. She’d written to him about getting the commercial, but he’d forgotten. Or rather, he’d purposely blocked the idea that he might see her on television. She looked so young. Too young to have been the mother of a two-year-old girl who’d drowned. The woman on television looked like she’d never known a moment of unhappiness, much less the shattering trauma that had torn them apart.

The commercial had vanished to be replaced with a doctor yelling to people only inches away, “Three hundred joules! Clear!
Clear!
” Michael didn’t see him. He still saw Lisa skipping through the meadow and remembered how she’d looked when they met five years ago in
Los Angeles. She’d rear-ended him at a stoplight. He’d thrown his car into park and flung out of it, ready to blast the ignorant jackass who shouldn’t even have a license to drive. And there she’d stood with her long hair and big eyes, looking contrite, afraid, and absolutely beautiful. He’d smiled and said, “Looks like we’ve had a little accident,” then thought about how foolish he sounded. But she’d smiled tremulously and his heart had melted. Three months later they were married. A year after that they were parents of a perfect baby girl they’d named Stacy.

The ache of loss washed over Michael as if Stacy had died two days ago instead of two years. Well-meaning people had told him that time heals all wounds. They’d been wrong, he thought as he drained the can of beer and went back to the refrigerator for another.

“Two is the limit, Winter,” he said aloud as he walked back into the living room with his fresh beer. It had been a long, hard day and he had another one starting again in a few hours. He needed to be sharp.

He turned off the television, although Lisa’s image was long gone. He didn’t want to chance seeing the commercial again. He needed to focus on something immediate, not replay that torturous tape of the past. And what was most immediate? The finding of the body in the river.

Michael had seen his share of dead bodies when he was a detective in Los Angeles. He’d gazed at the remains of people who had been shot, strangled, and stabbed. He’d looked with cool professionalism at the dreadful wounds one human being had inflicted on another. He’d sat in on autopsies where pathologists had plunged hands into corpses to withdraw organs, each measured and weighed. But nothing had ever sickened him as much as the putrid atrocity he’d seen lying in a shroud of filthy plastic this afternoon. Of course, it shouldn’t have been unwrapped, but eager volunteers did not know police procedures and
had loosened the smothering cover only to jump back in horror and revulsion. By the time Michael got there only minutes later, two of the men had already thrown up and a third barely stood—shaking, sweating, and white-faced.

Now came the job of finding out who had sent this hideous offering into the Ohio River.

In spite of the gorge that had risen in his throat when he first saw the body, part of Michael had been able to stand off and observe. That part had judged the body to measure between sixty and sixty-five inches long. The tangled mess at one end was the remains of longish black hair. As he’d watched, flesh had begun falling away from the bones. One of the men who still hung near the site had said hoarsely, “I’ll bet that’s Ames Prince’s girl, sure as I’m living. I knew she hadn’t never run away.”

Before he left police headquarters that day, Michael had retrieved the file of Dara Prince. He now picked it up from an end table, took another sip of beer, then sat down in a chair and opened the file.

The first thing he saw was her picture. Her head was slightly tilted, her lips shiny with gloss, her incredible violet eyes seeming to gaze challengingly into his. She looked insouciant, defiant, and just a bit vulnerable around the mouth. She had been a sophomore at Winston University, where she made average to low grades. According to her father, life at the Prince home was one of sweetness and harmony with Dara enjoying a lovely relationship with all members of the family. The comments of outsiders gave a different picture. People said Dara hated her stepmother, Patricia, and resented Christine and Jeremy Ireland, her father’s wards. Dara had few girlfriends and was, according to some, “a shameless flirt.” Michael smiled faintly. That prissy assessment certainly hadn’t come from anyone under sixty.

Dara had dated jewelry designer and employee of
Prince Jewelry Reynaldo Cimino for a year. According to several sources, although Cimino was clearly serious about her, she didn’t seem quite so devoted to him. Most people couldn’t point to one particular man, though, who’d captured her attention, with the exception of Sloane Caldwell, who was engaged to Christine Ireland. Michael took another sip of beer. Now that was an interesting, although scanty, piece of information. Exactly what kind of attention had Dara given the man?

Michael read on. Dara had been nineteen years old when she disappeared on a stormy March night. Her father and stepmother had gone to a movie. Jeremy Ireland was next door with the neighbors. Christine Ireland had been in the university library.

In the early hours of the morning, Ames Prince had reported his daughter missing. A search of her bedroom revealed missing clothing, a missing suitcase, missing cosmetics. There had also been a brief farewell note. Her stepmother said Dara often talked of leaving Winston. However, Christine Ireland, twenty-one years old at the time, insisted things remained in the bedroom and bathroom that Dara would have taken with her if she’d run away.

At this point Michael would have liked to see some details about what “things” of Dara’s remained, but nothing had been noted. He took another sip of beer, thinking. Christine Ireland no doubt remembered exactly what remained that Dara wouldn’t have left behind if she’d run away. He remembered Christine’s clear, open look in the store. She’d appeared shaken to hear of the body but also well in control of herself. She seemed sensible and smart.

She was also the sister of Jeremy Ireland, who Michael knew from a brief talk with Buck Teague this afternoon the sheriff believed had killed Dara Prince. “You know how those retards are!” he’d boomed at Michael, his big
face even redder than usual. “Hotheaded. Out of control. He probably tried to kiss her or rape her and she screamed and he lost what little mind he had. You mark my words, Winter. If that body turns out to be Dara Prince’s, our killer’s been right in Ames Prince’s own house for years and that sister of his has known what he did all along.”

Michael decided to talk to Christine again within the next twelve hours. Teague’s scenario didn’t make sense to him. If Christine knew her brother had murdered Dara, but there was no body, she’d be relieved so many people assumed Dara had run off. She’d encourage that line of thinking, not insist possessions of Dara’s remained that she would have taken with her if she’d run away.

He’d already received word that at the medical examiner’s, Ames Prince had identified the body as Dara’s. Of course, this identification was not considered official because it was based on the presence of a ring like one Dara Prince owned, not on identifying features of the body itself, like a pin in a once-broken bone. Or dental records, Michael thought, since the killer had knocked out the teeth. Still, Michael felt in his gut that Dara had finally been found, and he wanted to know who had brutally killed and tossed in the river the beautiful girl with the challenging eyes and the vulnerable mouth.

“What?”
Streak blurted out.

Christine’s heart pounded, but her voice was calm as she read again, “ ‘I feel like someone wants me dead.’ ” She looked at Streak. “That’s the end of the entry.”

“Who’s she talking about?”

“Streak, lower your voice or you’ll wake Jeremy. I have no idea who she meant, but isn’t this the kind of thing we were looking for?”

“Yes,” Streak said slowly, “but it came as a shock to hear it right off the bat. Damn. She was afraid for her life and she said nothing? I don’t believe it. She must have been exaggerating.”

“People usually exaggerate to impress another person. Dara didn’t expect anyone else to read this diary.”

“Maybe she just felt that someone disliked her so much they wouldn’t care if she died. Patricia, for instance. Or you.”

“I didn’t—” Christine broke off. She’d already stated her feelings about Dara to Streak. She wasn’t going over
it again. But she couldn’t help saying, “Dara had to know I didn’t wish her dead.”

“Read some more,” Streak said without expression.

Christine turned her attention to the diary, skipping to New Year’s Eve, when Dara had attended a party with Reynaldo Cimino: “ ‘He’s so possessive. We went through the whole song and dance about him thinking I’m seeing someone else. I got him quieted down because he wants to believe everything I say. I get tired of him, but he’s such an Adonis. That’s what I call him. He loves it. Oh well, what the hell. He’s a big boy. He can take care of himself. And I can take care of myself.’ ”

Christine looked up at Streak. “She doesn’t sound afraid of Rey. She doesn’t sound afraid of anything now.”

“Seems like bravado to me,” Streak said, getting up to pour more coffee for both of them.

“When she sounded afraid, you thought she might be exaggerating. When she doesn’t sound afraid, you think it’s bravado.”

“All right, at this point I don’t know what to think.” Streak set down the coffee mugs. “Do you?”

“No. Dara was moody. I’d almost forgotten that about her, but I think her entries reflect her mood swings.”

The next four entries were petulant rants about Patricia, whom Dara called Wicked Stepmother or most often W.S. Dara complained that W.S. was a gold digger. She was running through “Daddy’s” money, spending it on clothes and jewelry and a suspicious number of trips to see her mother in Florida. Dara said she’d thought about hiring a private investigator to have Patricia followed, “but that would be
so
expensive!”

Christine frowned. “Patricia did go to see her mother a lot before Dara disappeared. She said her mother wasn’t well. Something about her heart. But Patricia rarely leaves home now, although her mother is still alive.”

“So you think something was going on back then? Patricia wasn’t really going to Florida?”

Christine shook her head. “I don’t believe she would have risked telling Ames she was going to visit her mother if she wasn’t. He called her in Florida sometimes. I just wonder why she stays so close to home now and not then.” Christine flipped a page in the diary and read: “ ‘Things getting sticky with the Brain. I wonder if this affair was a good idea, although the sex is great.’ ”

Streak looked taken aback. “Who’s the Brain?”

“I have no idea. She called Reynaldo Adonis. I don’t know why he’d suddenly become the Brain.” She glanced at Streak, who stared out the sliding glass doors at the misty darkness beyond. “Didn’t she ever mention any guy she was interested in when you had those talks at the creek?” Christine asked.

“No. What makes you think she’d talk to me about her love life?”

Streak’s voice was sharp. Christine wondered if he thought she was accusing him of withholding secrets. “Dara didn’t talk to me about guys, either,” she added casually. “And although I lived in the same house with her, I didn’t pay much attention to her comings and goings. I was a senior in college when she was writing in this diary. I was going for a four-point average and pretty consumed with studying and planning my wedding that never happened.”

“You were too young,” Streak said. “I was glad you didn’t go through with it.”

“Yes, I think things worked out for the best.” Christine was deliberately vague, not wanting to think again tonight about the ending of her engagement to Sloane and how she’d blamed Dara. She flipped through pages of the diary. “The next few passages look fairly benign. She hates school. She hates Patricia. Can’t stand the Amazon. The Amazon would be me.”

“Reading that would make you think she was a real sourpuss.”

“She was no day at the beach, Streak,” Christine said dryly.

“At least she wasn’t one of those bleak kids who feel nothing. She had passion.”

“Maybe too much. Listen to the entry for February fifth: ‘Dangerous, heavenly day with S.C. Am I crazy? Crazy in love!!!’ ”

“Sex is good with the Brain, but she’s in love with S.C.,” Streak muttered almost angrily. “Who the hell is S.C.?”

Christine sat unblinking. Finally she said softly, “Sloane Caldwell.”

“Surely not Caldwell. He was engaged to you.”

“Can you think of any other people with the initials
S.C
. in her world?”

“I didn’t know her world, Chris. I don’t think you really did, either.”

Christine’s mind spun back to those winter days three years ago. She was twenty-one and felt as if she’d been walking on eggs ever since she and Jeremy moved into the Prince home. She’d barely known Ames Prince, in fact had seen him only a few times until her parents’ funeral. In the space of one week she and Jeremy had been orphaned, then lifted from their cozy, peaceful home in North Carolina and dropped into the turbulent Prince home, where neither Patricia nor Dara wanted them. Christine had tried to see to Jeremy’s every need so he wouldn’t get on anyone’s nerves while she also strove to prove her worth by distinguishing herself at school, even deciding to go for a master’s degree.

Still, she’d been afraid that Ames would ask her to leave and take Jeremy, thereby relieving some of the tension in the house. Her father had left plenty of money in
trust for her and Jeremy, but he’d set the arbitrary age of twenty-two, when he was certain she’d be married and have a “sensible” man to look after her. She’d loved him, but he was maddening when it came to the subject of women’s independence. The result was that she hadn’t known how she could both get her master’s and manage Jeremy’s needs along with his special schooling. There would be no time to handle it all, which any social worker would see, and she’d worried that Jeremy might be taken away from her. Those who did not know how Jeremy had backslid after his parents’ death might not understand what another disruption like a separation from his beloved sister might now do to all the mental strides he’d made in recent years.