Tickled to Death (13 page)

I left the computer to do whatever it was doing and went across the hall. Dick’s bedspread had been smoothed. There was no glaring indication that anyone had been in the adjoining bathroom and dressing room. I continued down the hall, opening doors, calling Jillian’s name, and growing increasingly nervous. Hide-and-seek is a game best left to children; had I known I’d be forced to participate, I would have told Luanne to call the police. Or called them myself.

Holding my breath, I opened the door to Dick’s office. No one leaped out of a corner to confront me. Luanne had mentioned smelling cigarette smoke. Now there was a trace of acridity in the room. I approached the desk, then stopped as the hairs on my neck rose. I looked over my shoulder at the portrait of Becca.

It had been savaged. A blade had crosshatched her face to such a degree that there remained only thin slivers of canvas. Red spray paint obliterated the golden hair and blue gown. The word “Murderer!” had been written in sloppy block letters on the wall beside the painting. The paint can lay on its side by the baseboard.

I stumbled backward, catching the edge of the desk to steady myself. The vandalism was obscene, laden with hate. I forced myself to lean forward far enough to touch a dribble of paint, then gulped as I stared at my fingertip. It looked as if a lab technician had pierced it with a lancet. The stinging sensation was a product of my imagination, but nevertheless vivid. An image of Captain Gannet’s smirky face crossed my mind—he would love this.

Abruptly, I wanted to talk to Peter, to let him take charge of the entire mess. It was no longer a scintillating puzzle. It was nasty. Someone was out of control. There was a telephone on the desk—and new additions, I realized. Amid the papers and journals was an amber plastic pill vial, the lid beside it. A glass of water had formed a white circle on the wood veneer.

And on the floor behind the desk was sprawled Jillian Cissel. I dropped to my knees and touched her flaccid hand. She was unconscious, her skin clammy, her breathing shallow and labored. I abandoned any concern for preservation of evidence and called 911. The dispatcher answered
immediately, and once I described the scene, told me to cover her with a blanket and wait for the medics.

I found a blanket in the hall closet and did as instructed. Nothing about her demeanor had changed, although mine had taken a turn for the worse. I remembered that the front door was locked, and hurried down to unlock it and leave it ajar. As the seconds crawled by, I felt as though I should be doing something for Jillian. I went into her room to get a pillow, then went over to the computer and frowned at it. The white oblong blipped blithely. The series of characters in the lower right corner of the screen read:
Doc 1 Pg 2 Ln 1" Pos 1".

“Document number one, page number two,” I said under my breath. “Where’s page number one?”

I examined the keyboard, then tentatively pushed the key marked with the numeral one. It appeared in the upper left corner, and I noted a change in the bottom line. We had advanced to
Pos
2". The space bar advanced us to
Pos
3", and a key marked
Delete
returned us to
Pos
1" as the numeral vanished. Nothing happened when I tried it again. I looked elsewhere for a key that might take me to the first page of the document, carefully erasing my errors.

A key with an arrow pointing upward sent the cursor racing. I jerked my finger off the key
as lines of characters came into view, leaned forward, and read them with a growing dread.

The document read: “On the night of August 29, 1991, my father murdered my mother. He pretended to get drunk at the party, but witnesses said he did not drink excessively. He invited my mother to swim, then held her beneath the water until she was dead. His fingerprints were not on the brandy decanter because he was careful to wipe them off before he handed it to her for the last time. He does not know I saw this from a window in the living room. He did it because he wanted to marry Becca, but then he became obsessed with jealousy and murdered her, too. The morning of her death she told me that he had threatened to kill her and she was afraid. He does not deserve to look at her portrait. I cannot go on. Jillian.”

I heard voices below.

An hour later, Luanne and Dick arrived at the emergency room. She sat down beside me while he strode to the nurse’s station, conferred briefly, and then went into a curtained cubicle. He emerged seconds later with various medical personnel. A Farberville police officer joined them.

I told Luanne what had happened, adding that the paramedics had begun emergency treatment for barbiturate poisoning in the office. “The sleeping pills,” I added, “came from a year-old
prescription with Becca’s name on it. There’s no way to determine how many Jillian took.”

“How could she do such a terrible thing?” Luanne said, dazed and pale, her eyes on the group in the corridor, her fingernails biting into her palms. “I should have gone by the house this morning when I got back to town. I knew she was upset, but I had no idea she was this deeply disturbed. To make those wild accusations and destroy the portrait like that and then…”

I shivered as I remembered the aura of hatefulness that had pervaded the office as I stared at the portrait. “Something must have caused her to erupt, and a totally different personality took over. We all misjudged her, Luanne. You can’t blame yourself for what happened.”

She began to cry. I found a tissue in my purse, patted her hand ineffectually, and wished I could overhear what was being said in the corridor. Dick’s forehead was lowered and his expression stony. The doctor and nurses returned to the cubicle, and the police officer led Dick around a corner. We sat amid a swirl of nurses and technicians, speeding gurneys, garbled announcements on a PA system, insistent telephones, and members of the walking wounded. A woman with a screaming baby was hurried into a cubicle. A sullen teenage boy with a gash on his cheek was instructed to sit in the waiting room. A frail elderly couple came in and were led through another set of doors. A pasty young woman plied a
vending machine, cursing steadily as she fed it change.

Luanne blew her nose and stuffed the tissue in her pocket. “Was there red paint on Jillian’s hand?”

“On her right index finger and thumb. There was also a faint dusting on her blouse where the spray had drifted on it.” I surreptitiously rubbed my finger against the armrest of the chair. As if in response, the uniformed officer stepped into view, gave me a hard look, and then disappeared. A bad sign, I thought.

This was confirmed shortly thereafter when Lieutenant Peter Rosen came into the emergency room and headed down the corridor. He did not acknowledge my presence, but he would. It was as inevitable as the yearly greeting from Publishers Clearing House.

I mentally recreated one of my lists. Jillian had stayed at the house in town on Saturday night, or had claimed as much. She returned to Turnstone Lake on Sunday afternoon shortly after Dick was arrested. She’d been unnaturally emotional that day—but she’d insisted her father had not murdered Becca. She locked herself in her room the following day. After the bail hearing on Tuesday, she drove away, and she’d not been seen until I’d discovered her a full day later. What had provoked her to change her mind about Becca’s death, and why suddenly had she offered the damning testimony about her mother’s death?

Her motive for destroying the portrait seemed weak. Jillian might have been oblivious to some of Becca’s less enchanting traits, but she certainly had never spoken of her with appreciable warmth or affection. Or with any great animosity, for that matter.

Luanne stood up as Dick came across the waiting room. “How is she?” she demanded.

“Unconscious. Her stomach’s been pumped. They’ve got her on a respirator and an IV. They’re worried about kidney failure.” He sat down and rubbed his face with both hands. “Why did she leave that message on her computer? I didn’t pretend to be drunk that night; I was staggering by the time we got to the house. Is it possible I was so drunk that I don’t remember going down to the water with Jan…and holding her down? If so, I’m a monster. Jillian must have been driven crazy by the thought she’d inherited some genetic flaw.”

“Of course you’re not,” Luanne said, “and you didn’t kill anyone. It was dark and Jillian had taken powerful medicine that made her groggy. She must have seen someone else.”

He gave her an agonized look. “If you have any sense, you’ll walk out of here and never speak to me again. The women in my life don’t fare too well. Except for my mother. She’s still alive and healthy, but maybe that’s because she lives three states away. God, I’d better call her, and Sid and
Agatha Anne.” He went to a pay phone and began to punch buttons.

Peter glanced sharply at him as he stopped in the doorway and issued instructions to the uniformed officer. He crossed the room and said to Luanne, “You can remain here with Cissel, who will be taken into custody if he attempts to leave the hospital. An officer has been assigned to stay with him. When he finishes his call, tell him that his daughter has been moved to IC.” To me, he said, “Let’s go.” It was not an invitation.

“I’d like to stay with Luanne and Dick.”

“I’m sure you would, but we’re going to the  PD. Someone’s driven all the way across the county, and he’s very eager to talk to you. So am I.”

“How lovely to feel needed,” I said as I squeezed Luanne’s shoulder and followed Peter out the door. The hairs on his neck were bristling in a way I found alluring, but I failed to say so. It would remain to be seen what else I would fail to say to him—or to Captain Gannet. Among my virtues is a good deal of contrariness.

I called the hospital before I left the police station after what evolved into a three-hour marathon of questions and demands that I repeat my story forward, backward, and any other conceivable direction. Luanne told me that Jillian remained in critical condition, and hemodialysis had been required. Pneumonia was possible. Dick refused to budge from a chair beside her bed and had not spoken except to refuse coffee or food. She did not want me to come, so I went home.

Lulled by the static from a test pattern on the television screen, Caron slept on the sofa. I smiled at the incongruity of the one-earred teddy bear under her arm and the copy of
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
on the floor. I turned off the set and shook her shoulder. “You didn’t need to wait up for me. Go on to bed.”

“I didn’t wait up for you,” she said as she sat up and squinted at the dark screen. “I was watching a dirty movie on cable.”

“And fell asleep in the middle of it?”

“It wasn’t nearly as dirty as Rhonda said it was. No one stuck any dandelions in any pubic hair, and all the full frontal nudity was of the girl. I thought this was the age of sexual equality.” She shot me a look meant to imply I was in some way responsible, then said, “I had to use my own money to order a pizza. The delivery boy was a real hunk, but I didn’t have enough for a decent tip and he positively sneered at me. I wanted to Lie Down And Die. Where have you been?”

I gave her a synopsis of the previous six hours. “I’ll go by the hospital in the morning and see if there’s anything I can do.”

“Like donate a kidney?”

“Like offer to sit with Jillian while they get some breakfast,” I said, reminding myself that my daughter was pink and healthy, if also smart-mouthed and developing an alarming interest in all things pornographic. Dick Cissel’s daughter was on a respirator, with needles in her arms, monitors attached to her body, and an ambiguous prognosis.

Caron staggered to the hall, then stopped. “Why did she go buffleheaded and slash the painting and try to kill herself?”

“Nobody knows.”

“Then maybe she didn’t.” Yawning, she retreated to her bedroom.

I was still thinking about Caron’s comment as I brushed my teeth and changed into a cotton
nightshirt. Gannet and Peter had been regaled with every last particle of information that I possessed (if not every theory I’d toyed with), and they’d seemed as unable as I to discern the provocation for Jillian’s explosive behavior. Gannet was delighted with the new accusation on Jillian’s computer screen. He had arranged for Anders and Georgiana to be picked up and held in custody until he could interview them, but gloatingly had pointed out they’d been in the house the day before the hearing. It was highly implausible that they would have returned after I’d confronted them; they were more apt to be worried about what I’d told Dick. The truth was that I hadn’t told him anything, but Luanne might have. In any case, Jillian had been in residence. They would have had more titillation trying to stay one bed ahead of the Dunlings.

Outside, the wind rose and thunder rumbled in the distance. I watched the shadows on the ceiling for a long while before I fell asleep. For some reason I couldn’t define, I kept thinking about how my science fiction hippie had come into the store without my knowledge. How long would he have been a part of the background before I realized he was there?

Rain fell fitfully as I drove to the hospital at eight in the morning. Agatha Anne and Sid were in the IC waiting room when I stepped off the elevator. She wore a suitably somber skirt and blouse, and only the essential jewelry. Sid wore
what I supposed was the official pedodontal ensemble: white trousers, a pink shirt, and a pink-and-white-striped bow tie. Perhaps the overall effect was meant to dazzle his patients into submission. I decided he resembled a well-known diarrhea remedy.

“How’s Jillian?” I asked.

“She’s still critical,” Agatha Anne replied, assuming the appropriate “we have a crisis” voice as well as the attire. “There have been no negative developments, so that’s encouraging. Luanne went down to the cafeteria to get some coffee. Dick is sitting by Jillian’s bed, staring at her.”

“Like a zombie,” added Sid. He didn’t look all that animated himself, but they’d probably been at the hospital most of the night. “Now that Claire’s here to keep you company, I’m going down to the lobby to call the office and have them start canceling appointments. I need to be here in case”—he swallowed unhappily—“there’s something I can do for Dick.”

Agatha Anne patted my arm as I sat down on the plastic couch. “It’s so lucky that you went to the house yesterday evening. If the poor girl had been left undiscovered, she wouldn’t have had a chance.” She dabbed away a tear with a monogrammed handkerchief. “We’ve known Jillian from the day she was born. She’s always been so serious and aloof, and I never suspected she was capable of—of what she did last night. She adored Becca, as did all of us. Luanne said the portrait
was desecrated to the point it can’t possibly be restored.”

“I wouldn’t think so,” I said. Luanne apparently had briefed them; I waited to see if she would mention the damning message left on the computer screen. She chose a new topic.

“Georgiana came by last night and told me about your visit to Anders’s trailer. She said you were absolutely astounded when she walked out of the bedroom. Were you expecting someone else?”

“No,” I said firmly, although we both knew precisely whom I’d expected (had I expected anyone, which in all honesty I hadn’t). “They promised to explain this weekend why they were in Dick’s house Monday afternoon. Captain Gannet’s moved up the schedule. They may be in his office at this very moment.”

“You told him they were there?” she asked in a low and less friendly tone. “Was that necessary?”

“Captain Gannet arrived at the Farberville PD last night before I did, and I told him quite a lot of things. Anders admitted he had an affair with one of the victims, and he and Georgiana were in the suspect’s house earlier this week. It seemed relevant to share this, even though it’s out of his jurisdiction.”

“He’ll be disappointed. Georgiana had this incredibly dumb idea that she could erase Becca’s memories from Anders’s mind by sort of blurring them with her physical presence. She’s
not been entirely rational since Barry left, and I couldn’t talk her out of it. They were in the master bedroom when they heard a car come up the driveway. Once they saw it was you rather than the postman, they grabbed their clothes and went flying out the back door.”

“I hope they don’t tell that to Gannet.”

She waited until a nurse passed by, then frowned at me as though I were more irrational than Georgiana. “Why not?”

“Because if they saw anybody, it would have been Luanne. She heard the back door close, left immediately, and raced to the bookstore to persuade me to return with her. She’s the one who saw Anders’s truck as it was driven by the end of the driveway.”

“But you told Anders you saw him.”

“I lied. I didn’t lie to Gannet, though. If he catches me in another one, he’ll have me beheaded. A certain lieutenant on the Farberville force might offer to bring the ax and the basket.”

“Oh…” Agatha Anne searched her mind for what I suspected was the harshest permissible word. “…dear.”

“Liars seem to be as thick as ticks in a thicket at Turnstone Lake,” I continued, hoping she appreciated the alliteration. “For instance, someone lied to Becca about the wounded eagle. Do you remember the wording she used when she left the message on your machine? Did she say anything to imply the gender of the person who
made the report, or what he or she was doing at the time?”

“The message was very brief. She said that she’d had a call that an eagle had been shot on Little Pine Island, and she wanted to go there before it got too dark. She reminded me that we were invited for dessert and bridge later.”

“I don’t suppose you kept the tape?” I asked without optimism. Her recitation had been perfunctory; not even the final invitation evoked emotion. I needed nuances.

“I erased the message as soon as I’d finished listening to it. It’s a habit of mine.”

The elevator doors opened and Luanne emerged, carrying a raincoat and umbrella. Despite her neatly pressed dress, she looked frumpish and very tired, and the smile she gave me was as perfunctory as Agatha Anne’s recounting of the message. She set down a sack from a fastfood restaurant, then went to the IC doors and looked through the glass panel.

“There’s been no change,” Agatha Anne said. “I thought you were going to the cafeteria.”

“I decided to go to my apartment and freshen up,” she said. “Dick needs to take a break. I brought coffee and sandwiches, but I don’t suppose he’ll want anything.”

Agatha Anne stood up. “Maybe Sid can convince him when he gets back. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to find a ladies’ room and do some freshening up myself.” She narrowly averted a
collision with an aluminum cart as she went around a corner.

“Do you have the key to the house at the lake?” I asked Luanne.

“Why?”

“There must be some reason why Jillian was so incensed that she did what she did. Maybe she kept a journal. Her bedroom in town is marginally less impersonal than a hotel room, but there were some books and papers in her bedroom at the lake. I want to search it before Gannet thinks to do it himself.”

“What if he catches you?”

I shrugged. “I’ll tell him Dick sent me to get her bathrobe and personal items. I can be back in less than three hours, and there’s no big hurry to open the store. No one ever buys books in the rain. It’s a tradition, if not some obscure blue law left over from the previous century. Please lend me the key, Luanne.”

She didn’t look completely convinced as she took a key from her purse and handed it to me. Our eyes met, and then I left.

The rain worsened as I drove the now familiar route. Lightning periodically shot downward, and the ensuing thunderclaps seemed to buffet my car. The dirt roads were reduced to long, narrow puddles; muddy water cascaded down the hillside and streamed across the road. Not a creature was stirring, and I wondered how the eagles and eaglets were faring. It would be a disaster for
the Dunling Foundation if they relocated before the weekend. I could easily picture Livia perched on a branch, holding an umbrella to shelter the aerie.

I encountered no other vehicles. Most of the residents were either at the hospital or at the sheriff’s office, and the weather was not conducive to any water sports—with the exception of jumping over puddles. As I paused at the top of the driveway to Dick’s house, I glanced at the parking lot in front of Dunling Lodge. The jeep was next to the porch. An unfamiliar car was parked near the beginning of one of the bird trails. Whoever was slogging through the swamp was apt to have quite an adventure.

Rain pelted my face and slithered beneath my collar as I dashed to the front door. Once inside, I paused to catch my breath, then went into the kitchen and used several paper towels to dry myself as best I could. I returned to the living room and looked out the window, The lake was dotted with whitecaps, and there were no overly zealous fishermen in sight. The sky was low, the clouds dark. The hills across the lake were lost in the fierce rain.

Abruptly there was a loud crack. A huge branch crashed onto the deck, its smaller branches obscuring the wicker furniture. Other trees swayed like demonic dancers as the wind beset them. I scanned the sky for a funnel. With the exception of lapsing into hysteria, I wasn’t sure what I’d do
if I actually saw a tornado bouncing across the lake. I fervently vowed to read up on weather-related emergency tactics as soon as I had a chance. Surely somewhere in the store was a book titled
Tornado Tips
or
How to Host a Hurricane.

Lightning stabbed the hillside, and I’d counted to one-thousand-and-three when thunder rattled the house. Smaller branches skidded across the deck. A smattering of leaves plastered themselves against the window as if seeking asylum. A thud above me indicated something had fallen on the roof.

I decided to conduct my search and leave before the storm grew any more enthusiastic. I went into Jillian’s bedroom and flipped the switch. Nothing happened. I tried the lights in the hall and guest room, then acknowledged gloomily that the power was out.

I had no desire to linger until it was restored. Jillian’s room was dim, but not to the degree that I couldn’t see. I began with her dresser drawers. When they yielded nothing more interesting than underwear and dark sweaters, I scrupulously put a gown and a pair of socks on the bed before moving on to the bedside table. On the lower shelf were ornithology textbooks; for lighter reading, she’d chosen Daphne du Maurier and Emily Brontë. The drawer contained nasal spray, pencils, and a pair of reading glasses. All the papers concerned Dunling Foundation schedules. I
tried the closet, and was finally rewarded with a packet of letters held together with a rubber band.

Sitting on the bed, I slipped off the rubber band and was about to take a letter from an envelope when an unfamiliar female voice drawled, “Reading other people’s mail is a sign of poor breeding.”

I froze. To my credit, I did not scream, although the idea did cross my mind. It did so at approximately the speed of light.

“You do adhere to the three Bs, don’t you?” she went on, her amusement evident. “I’ve already mentioned breeding. The other two, of course, are brains and beauty.”

I turned to look at the woman in the doorway. Her expression was less mesmerizing and her gaze a good deal cooler than in the portrait, but her delicate features and golden hair were unmistakable. She wore shorts, a wrinkled dress shirt that was likely to have come from Dick’s closet, and a full-length silvery fur coat. It was not a common combination. “B is also for Becca, I suppose,” I managed to say despite the erratic pounding of my heart and constricted throat.

She tilted her head and gave me a sweetly puzzled smile. “You seem to know who I am, but I don’t believe we’ve ever been introduced. May I ask who you are and why you’re searching Jillian’s room? I suppose B could be for burglar, as
improbable as it sounds. You don’t look like one, but in this day and age, one cannot be too careful.”