The Last Victim (25 page)

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Authors: Kevin O'Brien

BOOK: The Last Victim
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Zach put his glasses back on, then gave her a lopsided smile. “Well, doesn’t that sort of thing come with the territory when you’re in the spotlight?”
Bridget shrugged. “I guess I’m not used to
the spotlight
,” she said, her frown fading. “That’s my brother’s specialty. It’s his campaign. His public relations wiz, Jay Corby, is running it. I’m just doing what I can to help.”
“Huh, I have news for you. Take it from one who works with a lot of Foley insiders. You have them scared. Your brother’s numbers have gone way up since you came aboard. The voters feel a real connection to you, Bridget. You’re the one in the spotlight now. Hell, why do you think Foley waited around here until you showed up yesterday? He wanted to be photographed consoling
you
, not your brother.”
He sat back. “Anyway, about the feature story, you can relax. I dropped the idea. I kind of lost interest when a couple of my major potential interviewees died before I got to talk with them. Brad was pretty tight with Fuller Sterns and Olivia Rankin, wasn’t he?”
“Brad had lots of friends in high school,” she said guardedly.
“I still think the police should have looked deeper into Fuller’s death,” Zach remarked—almost to himself.
Bridget glanced at her wristwatch, then crumpled up her napkin and tossed it on her tray. “Well, Zach, it’s been fun, but I should be going.” She reached for her purse.
“I should get cracking myself. I need to be in McLaren by two o’clock.”
Bridget started to stand, but sat back down. Her eyes narrowed at him. “McLaren? I thought you were dropping the story.”
“Oh, I did. I’m working on another one. See, calling up some of those people in our old class, it got me thinking about Mallory Meehan.”
Bridget stared at him. She hugged her purse against her chest. “Huh, really?”
Zach nodded. “I’m going to conduct my own investigation into her disappearance. I’m seeing Mallory’s mother this afternoon. She still lives in McLaren. And they’re giving me access to records at the sheriff’s office. I don’t know what I’ll find, but it should be interesting.”
Bridget felt sick to her stomach. A pale smile was frozen on her face. “Huh” was the only sound that came out of her.
“Revisiting a twenty-year-old mystery,” Zach said. “It should make a fascinating feature story, don’t you think?”
“But you have a fund-raiser, an autumn garden tea this afternoon,” Shelley said on the other end of the line.
Leaning against the wall by the pay phone in the hospital corridor, Bridget sighed into the receiver. “Which one is this?”
“Pamela St. George, formerly the host of
Portland at Seven
magazine, and currently a bitch-on-wheels. She’s been a royal pain in my ass ever since she started planning this wingding. She expects fifty of her dearest friends to attend. There’s a silent auction. The tea is at her place—in her backyard. She hired a cellist for it.”
“Well, I’m sorry, but you’ll have to give her my regrets. Tell her I had a family emergency.”
“She’ll go ballistic,” Shelley retorted. “You
so
owe me for this. Is it really a family emergency? I mean, your dad got out of the hospital today, didn’t he?”
“Yes, he’s all right. This is something else. I’ll explain later.”
“You’re hosting that raffle for the Northwest Children’s Center tonight at seven,” Shelley reminded her. “Is that still on?”
“Yes,” Bridget said. She figured she’d be back from McLaren long before seven. David and Eric had after-school activities until five. She was picking them up, then driving them to Gerry and Leslie’s house.
“Um, listen, Shell,” she said. “Could you do me another favor? You have Gerry’s new home phone number on file. Could you call my, huh, my soon-to-be-ex-husband and his, um—”
“Whore?”
“Yes,” she said, with a weak laugh. “Could you call and remind them that I’m dropping the boys off at their place around six-fifteen tonight?”
“Happy to,” Shelley said. “Good luck with whatever you’re doing this afternoon.”
“Thanks, Shelley,” she replied.
Bridget hung up the phone, then took a deep breath.
She’d convinced Zach to let her come to McLaren with him. She’d feigned curiosity about his story idea, and all the while, wondered how she could discourage him from pursuing it. He was waiting for her in front of the hospital. He’d said the trip would be “part investigation, part sentimental journey.” Bridget needed to be there in case he discovered anything about Mallory’s disappearance. She needed to distract him, put up a smoke screen, do whatever she could to steer him away from the truth.
And she felt absolutely horrible about it.
Mallory Meehan had grown up with her divorcée mother in a little gray ranch house in the “poor” area of McLaren, not far from the town center.
Zach pulled down the street in his VW Bug. It was still a slightly shoddy neighborhood, with unkempt lawns, a few garbage cans along the edges of parkways, and cars on blocks in a couple of the driveways.
Zach had made good time on the interstate. The conversation in the car had been surprisingly effortless. Bridget liked him. Some time after crossing the bridge between Oregon and Washington, she casually mentioned that reopening an unsolved missing person case from twenty years before might be a wild-goose chase.
Later, as they turned off the interstate around Longview, she made the point again: “You know, I wonder if readers of the
Portland Examiner
will be interested in a story about a girl who disappeared in another city twenty years ago. I mean, it’s old news, and doesn’t even have a local angle.”
“Well, I thought I’d work
you
into the story too,” Zach admitted, taking his eyes off the road to look at her for a moment. “The fact that you knew Mallory—and were her friend for a while—gives the story current, local interest. You’ll let me interview you about Mallory, won’t you?”
Bridget turned away to gaze out the car window. “Sure, I guess,” she muttered. “If you find you still really want to do this thing.”
In McLaren, they passed the water tower Brad and Fuller had defaced. Bridget noticed a couple of new minimalls. Franchises like Starbucks, Hollywood Video, Kinko’s, and Quiznos had invaded her old hometown.
She wasn’t very familiar with Mallory’s old street. Bridget had never set foot inside the little gray ranch house, which Mallory claimed had been impeccably furnished by her interior decorator aunt.
Walking up to the front door with Zach, she noticed Mrs. Meehan’s lawn was freshly cut, and the potted mum plant on the front stoop still had watering instructions and a price tag attached to one of the stems.
The door swung open before they even rang the bell. Mrs. Meehan must have been watching from the living window. “Are you the reporters?” she asked eagerly.
Zach smiled and shook her hand. “Well, I’m the reporter, Mrs. Meehan,” he said. “Zach Matthias. As I mentioned on the phone this morning, I was also a classmate of Mallory’s. This is Bridget Corrigan. She—”
“Oh my goodness, yes,” Mrs. Meehan said, grabbing Bridget’s hand and squeezing it. She was a slightly chubby woman with grayish blond hair that she wore swept up on her head. “I should have recognized you. You’re on the news all the time. Please, please, do come in.”
She stepped aside and showed them into the living room. Mallory’s interior decorator aunt must have loved Mediterranean-style furniture. The old sofa, chairs, and tables were too dark and bulky for the modest, little living room. But there were fresh floral arrangements on both end tables—and the coffee table.
“Bridget, I have to tell you,” Mrs. Meehan said, her eyes watering up. “I remember how excited Mallory was that you two were becoming such good friends her senior year. She—well, Mallory always had a hard time fitting in. Your companionship meant a lot to her.”
Bridget managed to smile. “Well, thank you,” she said. It was her first conversation with Mrs. Meehan—ever. And she felt horrible.
Mallory’s mother remained by the open door. She glanced out at the street. “Where’s the TV truck?” she asked. “Isn’t there a camera crew?”
“Um, Mrs. Meehan, I thought you understood,” Zach said. “I’m a reporter with the
Portland Examiner.
This story is for the newspaper.”
“There won’t be any cameras?” she asked, crestfallen. She looked out the front door again. “No one will be taking any pictures?”
Bridget realized why Mrs. Meehan had gotten the lawn mowed and put a new plant on the front stoop. Now Bridget saw the reason for the fresh flower arrangements in the living room. No wonder Mrs. Meehan was wearing a dressy black skirt set that looked more appropriate for a night out at the theater than an afternoon at home.
She seemed so sad as she closed the door. She nervously fingered the pearl necklace that went so well with her black outfit.
At that moment, Bridget had another realization.
Mallory Meehan was dead.
After Gorman’s Creek, she hadn’t taken her car and driven some place far away from McLaren. Bridget had often clung to that scenario. But no, Mallory had died that night in Gorman’s Creek. If she’d run away, certainly Mallory would have come back for that pearl necklace Mrs. Meehan now wore.
It was the necklace Bridget had inherited from her mother.
Bridget endured another ninety minutes in Mrs. Meehan’s house while Zach worked toward reaching the same conclusion she’d made two minutes after stepping through the front door.
Mrs. Meehan showed them Mallory’s old bedroom, which she’d turned into a sewing room. Framed photos of Mallory were all over the place. She’d actually been a very cute little girl. Bridget just wanted to get out of there, but Zach kept asking questions: Was anything missing from Mallory’s room—or from the house at the time of Mallory’s disappearance?
No, not a thing, Mrs. Meehan told them.
Did she have a bank account? Was there money still in it?
Seven hundred and twenty-four dollars, and Mrs. Meehan didn’t touch the money for almost three years after Mallory had disappeared. The day she finally transferred Mallory’s savings to her own account, Mrs. Meehan cried and cried. “I had to acknowledge that my baby was never coming back.”
Mrs. Meehan showed them Mallory’s journals, which she’d dug out of the basement. She said there were over twenty of them. Bridget and Zach took a look at a couple of the bound notebooks—all filled with pages and pages of gibberish, Mallory’s own secret code.
Mallory also had a collection of news clippings—most of them about the disappearance and murders of Andy Shields and the Gaines Twins. Bridget also recognized the old
Cowlitz County Register
article Mallory had shown her twenty years ago in the library, the one about Mrs. Fessler’s suicide. The clipping was yellowed, and Bridget realized that Mallory must have gone back to the library and torn it out of the volume of bound
Registers
.
“She was going to write a book about McLaren,” Bridget murmured.
When they left the Meehan house, Zach told Mallory’s mother that he might be back—with a photographer. Mrs. Meehan shook Bridget’s hand and told her again how much her friendship meant to Mallory. “I do hope you’ll both be back,” she said. “I know it sounds crazy to still hope—after all these years. But if people read Mallory’s story, maybe somebody out there will remember something that could help us find her. God bless.”
Zach opened the car door for Bridget. After climbing behind the wheel, he just sat and stared out the windshield for a moment. “I always thought Mallory might have run away,” he said, finally. “But she wouldn’t have left McLaren under her own steam, not without taking money out of her bank account or collecting those private journals of hers.”
“She also would have taken the pearl necklace she stole from me,” Bridget said. “That necklace Mrs. Meehan was wearing belonged to my mother. It was worth about five hundred dollars.”
“Jesus, why didn’t you say something to Mrs. Meehan? If that was your mother’s necklace—”
Bridget sighed and shook her head. “She can have it. I owe her at least that much.”

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