All Around the Town (21 page)

There was a reception afterwards at the Larkin home. Karen had always admired this house. It was over one hundred years old and had been beautifully restored. It reminded her of the houses in Cooperstown where so many of her high school friends lived. She had grown up in a trailer park and could still remember when one of the kids in school asked derisively if her folks were going to have a sketch of their mobile home on their Christmas card.

The Larkins had invited not only faculty members and administrative staff but a dozen or so students. Some of them offered fervent condolences, some paused to tell a favorite story about Allan. Karen's eyes moistened as she told people that she missed Allan more and more each day.

Across the room, forty-year-old Vera West, newest member of the faculty, nursed a glass of white wine. Her round, pleasant face was framed by short, naturally wavy brown hair. Tinted glasses concealed her hazel eyes. She did not need the glasses for vision. She was afraid that the expression in her eyes was too revealing. She sipped her wine, trying not to remember that at a faculty party a few months ago Allan, not his wife, had been across the room. Vera had hoped that the sick leave would give her the time she needed to get a grip on her emotions---emotions no one must suspect her of having. As she pushed back the single strand of hair that always managed to fall on her forehead, she thought of the verse written by a nineteenth-century poet: "Sorrow which is never spoken is the heaviest load to bear."

Louise Larkin joined her. "It's so good to have you back, Vera. We've missed you. How are you feeling?" Larkin's eyes were inquisitive.

"Much better, thank you."

"Mononucleosis is so debilitating."

"Yes, it is." After Allan's funeral, Vera had fled to her cottage in Cape Cod. Mono was the excuse she'd used when she phoned the dean.

"Karen really looks quite marvelous for someone who's had such a devastating loss, don't you think, Vera?"

Vera raised the glass to her lips, sipped, then said calmly, "Karen's a beautiful woman."

"I mean, you've lost so much weight, and your face is so drawn. I swear, if I were a stranger and had to make a guess between the two of you, I'd pick you as the mourner." Louise Larkin squeezed Vera's hand and smiled sympathetically.

Chapter
71

LAURIE AWAKENED to the faint murmur of voices in the corridor. It was a comforting sound, one she'd been hearing for three months now. February. March. April. It was the beginning of May. Outside, before coming here, whether on the street, on the campus, or even at home, she had begun to feel as though she was free-falling, unable to stop her descent. Here in the clinic, she felt suspended in time. Her plunge had been slowed. She was grateful for the reprieve even though she knew that in the end no one could save her.

She sat up slowly and hugged her legs. This was one of the best moments of the day, when she'd awaken to know the knife dream hadn't wrenched her awake during the night, that whatever stalked her was being held at bay.

It was the sort of thing that they wanted her to write in the journal. She reached over to the night table for the spiral notebook and pen. She had time to jot down a few thoughts before dressing and going to breakfast. She propped up the pillows, pulled herself up and opened the book.

There were pages of writing in it that hadn't been there last night. Over and over a childish hand had written, "I want my mommy. I want to go home."

LATER THAT morning as she and Sarah sat across the desk from Justin Donnelly, Laurie carefully studied the doctor as he read the journal. He was such a big man, she thought, with those broad shoulders, those strong features, that mass of dark hair. She liked his eyes. They were intensely dark blue. She normally didn't like mustaches, but his seemed so right, especially above those even white teeth. She liked his hands too. Wide but with long fingers. Tanned but no hint of fuzz on them. Funny, she could think a mustache looked great on Dr. Donnelly, but she hated fuzz on a man's hands or arms. She heard herself saying that.

Donnelly looked up. "Laurie?"

She shrugged. "I don't know why I said that."

"Would you repeat it?"

"I said I hate fuzz on a man's hands or arms."

"Why do you think that just occurred to you?"

"She's not going to answer that."

Sarah had come to recognize Kate's voice immediately.

Justin wasn't fazed. "Come on, Kate," he said good-humoredly. "You can't keep getting away with bullying Laurie. She wants to talk to me. Or Debbie does. I think it was Debbie writing in the book last night. It looks like her handwriting."

"Well it certainly isn't mine." Over the past three months the tone had become less strident. A certain wary understanding had been struck between Justin and the alter personality, Kate.

"May I speak to Debbie now?"

"Oh, all right. But don't get her crying again. I'm sick of that kid's sniffling."

"Kate, you're a bluff," Justin said. "You protect Debbie and Laurie and we both know it. But you've got to let me help you. It's too big a job for you."

The hair falling forward was the usual signal. It wrenched Sarah's heart to hear the frightened child who called herself Debbie. Was this the way it was for Laurie those two years she was away, weeping, terrified, longing for the people she loved?

"Hi, Debbie," Justin said. "How's the big girl today?"

"Better, thank you."

"Debbie, I'm so glad you started writing in the journal again. Do you know why you wrote this last night?"

"I knew the book was empty. I shook it first."

"You shook the book? What did you expect to find?"

"I don't know."

"What were you afraid to find, Debbie?"

"More pictures," she whispered. "I have to go now. They're looking for me."

"Who? Who is looking for you?"

But she was gone.

A lazy laugh. Laurie had crossed her legs, slumped a little in the chair. In a deliberately provocative gesture, she ran her hand through her hair.

"There she goes, trying to hide, hoping they won't find her."

Sarah stiffened. This was Leona, the alter personality who wrote the letters to Allan Grant. This was the scorned woman who had killed him. She'd only come out twice before in these months.

"Hi, Leona." Justin leaned across the desk, his manner that of offering flattering attention to an attractive woman. "I've been hoping you'd pay us a visit."

"Well, a girl's got to live. You can't keep moping around forever. Got a cigarette?"

"Sure." He reached in the drawer, held out the pack, lit the cigarette for her. "Have you been moping around, Leona?"

She shrugged. "Oh, you know how it is. I was pretty crazy about Professor Kiss-and-Tell."

"Allan Grant?"

"Yes, but listen, it's over, right? I'm sorry for him, but these things happen."

"What things?"

"I mean him giving me away to the shrink and the dean at school."

"You were angry at him for that, weren't you."

"You bet I was. So was Laurie, but for different reasons. She really put on a class-A performance when she buttonholed him in the hall."

I'll have to plea bargain, Sarah thought. If this personality got on the stand, displaying not a shred of remorse about Allan Grant's death..."

"You know that Allan's dead..."

"Oh, I'm used to that now. What a shock though."

"Do you know how he died?"

"Sure I do. Our kitchen knife." The bravado crumbled. "I sure wish to God I'd left it in my room when I dropped in on him that night. I really was crazy about him, you know."

Chapter
72

IIN THE THREE months between the beginning of February and the end of April, Brendon Moody had made frequent visits to Clinton College. He had become a familiar figure, chatting with students in the Rathskeller or the student center, talking to the faculty, falling in step with residents of Laurie's dormitory.

At the end of that time he had learned little that would be useful in Laurie's defense, although there were a few things he'd come up with that might possibly lighten her sentence. For the first three years of college she'd been an exemplary student, popular with both faculty and fellow students. "Well liked, but, if you know what I mean, not close," a student from the third floor of her apartment building volunteered. "It's just natural after a while for friends to talk pretty openly about their dates or their families or what's on their minds. Laurie never did that. She was with the crowd and agreeable, but if anyone teased her about Gregg Bennett, who obviously was crazy about her, she'd laugh it off. There was always something very private about her."

Brendon Moody had looked thoroughly into Gregg Bennett's background. Family money. Bright. Had quit college to become an entrepreneur, gotten his ears pinned back and returned for his degree. Carried a double major with honors in both. Graduating in May. Would be starting Stanford next September in the master's program. The kind of guy you'd want your daughter to bring home to meet the family, Brendon thought, and then reminded himself they'd said the same thing about serial killer Ted Bundy.

All the students were in agreement that the change in Laurie after her parents' death was dramatic. Moody. Withdrawn. Complained of headaches. Skipped classes. Assignments late. "Sometimes she'd pass me right by and not even say hello, or she'd look at me as though she'd never seen me before," one junior explained.

Brendon did not tell anyone about Laurie's multiple personality disorder. Sarah was saving that for the trial and did not want a plethora of publicity on the subject.

A significant number of students had noticed Laurie regularly going out alone at night and returning late. They'd commented on it among themselves, trying to guess whom she was meeting. A few had started to put two and two together because of the way Laurie frequently arrived at Allan Grant's classes early and lingered to talk with him afterwards.

The dean's wife, Louise Larkin, enjoyed talking with Moody. It was from her that he got the hint that Allan Grant had become interested in one of the new teachers in the English department. Following Mrs. Larkin's lead, he spoke to Vera West, but she stonewalled him.

"Allan Grant was a good friend to everybody," West said when Brendon talked with her. She ignored any implication in his questions.

Start sifting again, Brendon thought grimly. The problem was that the school year would be over soon, and a lot of the seniors who knew Laurie Kenyon well would be graduating. People like Gregg Bennett.

With that thought in mind, Brendon called Bennett and asked if they could get together again for a cup of coffee. Gregg was on his way out for the weekend, however, so they agreed to meet on Monday. As always, Bennett asked how Laurie was doing.

"From what her sister tells me, she's coming along pretty well," Brendon told him.

"Remind Sarah to call me if there's anything I can do."

Another unproductive week, Brendon thought as he drove home. To his disgust, he learned that his wife was having a Tupperware party at their home that evening. "I'll grab something at Solari's," he said, planting an irritated kiss on the top of her forehead. "How you let yourself get roped into that nonsense, I can't fathom."

"Have fun, dear. It will do you good to catch up with the regulars."

That night Brendon got his long-awaited break. He was sitting at the bar, talking with some of the old crowd from the prosecutor's office. The talk ted to Sarah and Laurie Kenyon. The general feeling was that Sarah would be better off to plea bargain. "If they drop the charge to aggravated manslaughter, Laurie might get between fifteen and thirty, probably serve one third... be out by the time she's twenty-six or seven."

"Judge Armon has been assigned, and he doesn't cut deals," one of the other assistant prosecutors said. "Anyhow, the fatal attraction killers aren't popular with any judge at sentencing time."

"I'd hate to see a good-looking kid like Laurie Kenyon locked up with some of those tough babes," another commented.

Bill Owens, a private investigator for an insurance company, was standing next to Brendon Moody. He waited till the subject was changed. Then he said, "Brendon, it can't get around that I tipped you off."

Moody's head did not turn, but his eyes darted to the side. "What's up?"

"You know Danny O'Toole?"

"Danny the Spouse Hunter? Sure. Who's he been spying on lately?"

"That's the point. He was a little drunk here the other night, and as usual, something came up about the Kenyon case. Listen to this. After the parents were killed, Danny was hired to investigate the sisters. Something about an insurance claim. When the younger one was arrested, the job ended."

"Sounds fishy," Moody said. "I'll get right on it. And thanks."

Chapter
73

"THE PEOPLE who bought our house are getting on Sarah's nerves," Laurie volunteered to Dr. Donnelly.

Justin was surprised. "I hadn't realized that."

"Yes, Sarah said they're around too much. They'll be taking over the house in August and asked permission to do some planting."