Second Chance (22 page)

"Carla Chaney?" It was the only name that
made sense.

The woman jerked as if she'd been prodded. "You
know about Carla?"

"Just her name and the fact that she was your
roommate."

Rita Scarne stared at me searchingly, then shook her
head as if she hadn't found what she'd been looking for.

"You don't know anything. You couldn't."

She said it, but she didn't sound convinced.

"What is it I don't know?" I asked. "Why
did Carla want Talmadge out of the hospital? What did it have to do
with last night?"

"Last night?" She wasn't paying attention
to me anymore. She sat in the chair and stared fearfully out the
window at the cold December dark.

"What really happened thirteen years ago?"

Rita Scarne blinked stupidly and stood up. The
whiskey bottle slid off her lap, clattering to the floor. "I've
got to get out of here," she said in a desperate voice.

"Not until we're finished."

The woman clasped her hands together as if she was
praying. "You don't understand. It's falling apart. All of it. I
should have known when you first showed up." She glanced through
the window again at the dark woods behind the house. "I'm next.
It won't stop until no one's left to tell."

"To tell what? For chrissake, make sense."

"I can't," she said. "Not now. Not
until I'm sure it's safe. Not until I've made it safe."

"How will you do that?"

But she didn't answer me. "Give me a few hours.
Please, Stoner? A few hours to make it safe. Then I'll talk to you
about Carla . . . about all of it."

"What's to keep you from running away?"

"Where to?" she said. "I've got no
place to run." She sat back down on the chair and raised her
clasped hands. "Please, Stoner. Just a few hours."

I glanced at my watch which was showing ten-thirty.
"I'll give you until two-thirty this morning. Then we talk about
you, Herb, Carla, Estelle, this whole damn thing."

She nodded, yes.

I started for the hall.

"Stoner," the woman called out. I looked
back at her.

"You were right—Ethan must have seen me with
Talmadge."

"I thought you said you had nothing to do with
Herb."

"He picked me up at work a couple of times in
Carla's car." The woman laughed dully. "Who knows? Maybe it
was planned that way."

26
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I left the house but I didn't go far. Up Ridge to a
gravel turnaround about fifty yards from the head of Rita Scarne's
driveway. I sat there among the maple trees and the roadside
hackberry bushes, listening to the tail end of a basketball game on
the car radio, and waiting.

Around eleven-thirty I saw headlights coming up the
driveway. A moment later Rita's car—the green Audi cleared the
crest of the hill and nosed out onto Ridge. Turning left the woman
blew past me, heading west toward Roselawn. I waited until the
taillights disappeared over a small rise, then put the Pinto in gear
and started after her.

The night was clear and there wasn't any traffic on
the road, so I had no trouble following even at a distance. And then
Rita Scarne wasn't making any tricky maneuvers—a left on Section, a
right at the Paddock entrance ramp to the interstate. She got on
I-75, and I did too, settling back a couple hundred yards behind her
as she sped north toward Dayton.

It began to flurry about a half hour after we got on
the interstate—big flakes that fluttered lazily in the beams of the
headlights and blew back against the windshield in sudden, undulant
gusts. Through the side window I watched the dark, featureless hills
along the expressway take shape beneath the snow—the stands of
trees grow crooked limbs, white and fantastic-looking. Straight in
front of me the twin red dots of Rita Scarne's taillights marked
the miles.

About forty minutes outside of Cincinnati we hit the
Dayton corporation limit. According to Nurse Rostow, Rita Scarne was
from Dayton, Ohio, and I had the feeling that she was headed home.

But she didn't take the first Dayton exit. In fact
she went all the way through the city before slowing down and pulling
off the interstate on the north side of town. The exit ramp emptied
into a working·class suburb of two-story brick houses and foursquare
lawns. Red and green Christmas lights were strung on most of the
porches. Here and there nativity scenes burned like lighted
billboards in the slanting snow.

Rita worked her way through a maze of side streets
before finally pulling over in front of a staid red-brick St. Louis
with no strings of Christmas lights on its porch, no nativity scene
on its narrow lawn. I pulled over across from her and watched through
the windshield as she got out of the Audi and walked up to the house.
She was carrying the black leather satchel I'd seen in the hall.

The St. Louis had front stoops on either side. Rita
walked over to the right-hand stoop and up the stairs to the door.
Someone opened the door immediately, as if she was expected.

The door led to a living room with a picture window
in front. The window was lighted and the blinds were up. After a time
Rita came into view in the window, with a second woman trailing
behind her. I couldn't make out the second woman's face because of
the falling snow, but she was wearing a nurse's imiform, just like
Rita's. The two women embraced for a moment, then walked off into
another part of the house, disappearing from sight.

At precisely one a.m., Rita Talmadge came back out
onto the stoop at the side of the house. The snowstorm had blown over
by then, leaving the night sky spangled with cold, distant stars. I
heard Rita say, "Good-bye," to someone inside the doorway,
and watched as she walked down to the street and over to the Audi.
She wasn't carrying the satchel anymore.

I waited until she drove away, then got out of the
Pinto and walked up to the brick St. Louis. The front window was
still lit. Through it I could see the second woman standing in the
living room, staring queerly off into space. She was a tall buxom
blonde like Rita. Only younger than Rita by five or so years and less
weathered-looking. I went around to the right side of the house and
climbed the stoop. There was a mailbox by the door with a name and
number. I'd expected to find "Carla Chaney" written on it,
but the placard read "Charlotte Scarne, 516 Minton." I
assumed Charlotte was Rita's sister. It was unquestionably Rita's old
address. I
knocked on the door.

Charlotte Scarne must have thought Rita had come back
a second time, for she was smiling when she opened the door. Her
smile wilted when she saw me.

"Yes?"

"My name's Stoner, Ms. Scarne. I'd like to talk
to you about Rita."

The woman didn't look surprised. She didn't invite me
in, either.

"You know who I am?" I asked.

She nodded. "I know. Rita told me."

"Did she tell you what kind of trouble she's
in?"

She nodded again.

"If you want to help her, you'll talk to me."

"You're not trying to help her," the woman
said scornfully. "You're trying to put her in jail."

"I'm trying to find out what happened to two
lost kids, Ms. Scarne. And I don't want to send anyone to
jail—especially the wrong person. But if you and Rita don't
cooperate, you're not going to leave me a choice."

"I don't know anything," the woman said.
But she was a poor, inexperienced liar, and the words caught in her
throat.

Charlotte Scarne was definitely not the hard
character that her sister was. Everything about her was softer, less
coarsened by experience—her voice, her face, her manner. I knew I'd
have no trouble working on her—whatever her sister had left behind
was visibly weighing her down.

I said, "Ms. Scarne, help me put this thing
together before someone else ends up dead."

The woman started as if I'd touched the right nerve.

"Rita's afraid of that."

"Can you tell me why?"

"
Something from the past—something she
shouldn't have done."

Charlotte Scarne stepped back from the door. It was
as much of an invitation as I was going to get and I took it,
stepping quickly into the room.

It was an old-fashioned parlor full of dusty
knickknacks and dark mahogany furniture. Framed photographs of Mom,
Pop, and the girls lined the mantel. Other pieces of ancient
memorabilia were scattered on end tables and sideboards—china
plates from a postwar exposition, a Steuben trout blowing crystal
bubbles in a crystal cube, one lone tin trophy that Dad had won at a
company picnic, a wedding, a picture of the folks fading to yellow in
its glass frame.

The room had the feel of arrested development—of
life gone sad and sour and still. The whole house was probably the
same. A woman like Rita Scarne could never live in a place like that.
I had the feeling that her sister, Charlotte, was trapped in it.

"I haven't cleaned yet," the woman said
guiltily, as if that explained the dismal room. "I was on duty
tonight, and I didn't have a chance to clean."

"
It's fine," I said to her.

She laughed dully. "No, it's not." And that
was all she said.

I sat down on a dusty tuxedo couch, and the woman
wandered over to a chair. "What can you tell me, Charlotte?
What's got your sister so frightened?"

Charlotte Scarne looked down at the floor. "All
she said was that it had to do with Carla—something she'd done for
Carla a long time ago. She wouldn't say any more than that. She told
me it was better if I didn't know."

"Carla, meaning Carla Chaney?"

The woman nodded.

"They were like sisters," she said, then
flushed a little at the irony in her words. "Carla rented the
upstairs rooms for a few months in the winter of '74 and spring of
'75, while she was working as a nurse. Rita was a nurse, too. So they
just naturally got along."

From the sound of her voice I had the feeling that
she hadn't shared her sister's feeling for Nurse Chaney. "You
didn't like Carla?"

"I liked her okay," Charlotte said without
conviction. "It was just that she was always so . . . ambitious.
Carla wanted things, and she didn't seem to care what it took to get
them. She kind of infected Rita with her thinking. At least, I felt
she did. It was a fact that Rita stopped coming to see us once the
two of them moved to Cincinnati. She didn't visit us for almost two
years after they left town."

Charlotte Scarne frowned bitterly, as if those two
years alone with the folks had cost her something she'd never been
paid for. "Rita finally came back in '77 when Dad died. By then
she had everything she wanted—car, clothes, money. She paid for
Dad's funeral out of her own pocket—several thousand dollars. She
paid the last of the mortgage off, too. It was a humbling experience.
Especially for Mom. I mean she thought Rita was going straight to
hell when she left with Carla. I guess Rita showed her—and me,
too."

"How did Rita make so much money in two years,
Charlotte?"

"She had a good job. She said she'd saved it.
Now I'm not sure."

The woman got up and went over to a mahogany
breakfront. Opening a drawer, she lifted out the black leather
satchel. "This is what Rita came for. She wanted me to have it,
in case . . ."

She stared blankly at the satchel, as if it wasn't
the legacy she'd expected from her sister.

"What's inside?"

"Money. Ten thousand dollars." She handed
the bag to me. "There are some bankbooks, too."

"Did Rita say where she got the money?"

"Some of it was left over from a long time ago.
Blood money, she called it. Some of it she said she'd saved on her
own. She told me I was to use it to buy myself a new chance at life—I
mean if something happened to her." Charlotte Scarne shuddered
violently. "I don't want it. I don't want any part of it.
Someone died because of it."

"Did Rita say who?" .

Charlotte took a deep breath. "Carla, I think."

I stared at the woman for a long moment. "What
makes you say that?"

"Because we never saw Carla again after she and
Rita left town. Rita never even spoke about her. I mean the two of
them were inseparable friends. And then it was as if Carla never
existed."

"Maybe she moved away from Cincinnati?"

"I don't think so," Charlotte said.
"Whenever I'd ask Rita about Carla, she'd act like it was
something she couldn't talk about. Something bad, you know? Carla
could be pretty bad. I used to think that something must have
happened to her when she was a kid—something really dreadful—to
make her that way."

"What way is that?" I asked.

"Just . . . brutal," she said, Bushing
again. "Except for Rita she didn't really seem to care about
anything or anyone—like what was inside her, the caring part, had
curled up and died. I sneaked up to her room once while she was
living here and found this stuff—leather-and-metal stuff. I didn't
know what it meant then, just that it was bad. Later I realized that
Carla liked to be hurt and to hurt other people."