Heartstopper (16 page)

The woman glanced over her shoulder, then back at Delilah. She said nothing.

“Mrs. Hamilton, are you all right?”

“You broke the glass.”

“I did. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, God. Oh, God.”

“It’s all right. I’ll replace it.”

“Those are Cal’s favorites.”

“What?”

“The glasses. He’ll be so upset.”

“They’re just ordinary glasses, Mrs. Hamilton. They’re not expensive. We have the same ones at home. You can buy them at Publix.”

“Oh, God. Oh, God.”

“I tell you what: I’ll call my mom, get her to pick up a new one right away,” Delilah offered, pulling her fingers away from the tap water and retrieving her bag from the kitchen table, then ferreting around inside it for her cell phone. She quickly pressed in the numbers and lifted the small phone to her ear.

“Oh, God. Your purse.” Fiona pointed to the small red fingerprint in the middle of Delilah’s canvas bag.

“It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s an old bag. No big deal…. Hello, Grandma Rose?” For the first time that Delilah could remember, she was actually glad to hear her grandmother’s voice. “Is my mom there? Could you get her, please?”

“Kerri!” her grandmother shrieked directly into the receiver.

Delilah pushed the phone away from her ear, regarding the young woman trembling in the doorway. Her whole body was shaking, Delilah realized. Was she more afraid of the blood, the broken glass, or how her husband might react? It was just a cheap glass, for God’s sake. Did Fiona overreact this way to everything?

“She’s not answering,” Delilah’s grandmother announced after several seconds. “I don’t know where she is.”

“Could you try again?”

“Why? Is there a problem?”

“I’m at the Hamiltons’. I broke a glass.”

Fiona started whimpering.

“You what?”

“It was an accident.”

“Honestly, Delilah. You’re like a bull in a china shop.”

Thank you for that, Delilah thought, trying to decide which woman she’d rather deal with—the witch on the telephone or the nutcase in the doorway. “Look, they’re the same glasses we have in the kitchen. I need Mom to go to Publix as soon as possible and bring me a replacement.”

“Why can’t you go?”

For a minute Delilah wondered the same thing. Surely she could just run to the store for a few minutes. Fiona Hamilton was an adult, not a little girl. Except that this adult was standing there trembling, clearly unhinged by the sight of a broken glass and a cut finger, so how could she leave her alone? “I can’t, Grandma Rose. Please, could you just ask my mother to do this for me?”

Silence.

It took Delilah several seconds to realize her grandmother had hung up. “Thank you. I appreciate that,” she said to the silence that followed. She returned the cell phone to her bag, forced a smile onto her lips. “My mom’ll be here soon.”

Fiona nodded gratefully, ran her hands up and down her bare arms.

“Are you cold? Would you like some coffee? I could make some. That’ll warm you up.”

Fiona shook her head. “Cal doesn’t like me to drink coffee.”

Delilah wondered whether the caffeine in coffee heightened her various fears.

“He doesn’t like the smell of coffee on my breath,” Fiona explained without prompting.

Delilah nodded as if she understood, even though she didn’t. She’d heard people talk about “coffee breath,” but personally, she’d never found it offensive. And anyway, Cal wasn’t home. He wouldn’t be back for a couple of hours. Surely the smell would be gone from her breath by then. “How about some tea then?”

Again Fiona shook her head.

“What about a DoveBar?”

Even in the dim light, Delilah could see Fiona’s eyes brighten. “A DoveBar?”

Delilah opened the freezer with a pronounced flourish and extricated an ice cream bar from the top package.

“Oh, no. Those are Cal’s,” Fiona warned, the light in her blue-green eyes fading, as if on a dimmer.

“I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.”

“No, I couldn’t.”

“Of course you can. In fact, we’ll both have one.” Delilah pulled a second bar out of the package, handed the first one to Fiona. “Go on. I’ll tell him they were so good, I had two.”

“He won’t believe you.”

Delilah almost laughed. “Are you kidding?” Was the woman blind as well as phobic? “Come on. It’s good for you.” Delilah tore the wrapping off the bar of ice cream, bit off a chunk of succulent, dark milk chocolate. “Mmm. Delicious. Go on. Have a bite.”

Fiona stared at the ice cream bar in her hands without moving.

“Tell you what. Let’s shed some light on the proceedings.” Delilah was moving to the window before Fiona could object. “It’s a beautiful day out there. It’s sunny. It’s warm.” She pulled open the blinds over the sink. “There. Much better.” She spun around, the smile on her face freezing as the sun shone spotlights on the deep bruises covering Fiona’s arms and neck. “My God. What happened to you?”

The DoveBar dropped from Fiona’s hands. It bounced off her bare toes and rolled under the table. “Oh, God. I shouldn’t be here.”

“What are you talking about? You live here.”

“I should be in bed.”

“Why should you be in bed, Mrs. Hamilton? Are you sick?”

“I shouldn’t be talking to you.”

“Why not?”

“He doesn’t like me talking to strangers.”

“I’m hardly a stranger, Mrs. Hamilton. I’m …” What was she exactly? A neighbor? The babysitter? What exactly was the woman so afraid of? “I’m a friend.”

“He’ll be very angry when he finds out I was down here.”

“How will he find out? I won’t tell him.”

“He’ll know.”

“How will he know?” Delilah’s eyes searched the room for hidden cameras.

“I’ll tell him.”

“What?”

“During inspection. He’ll ask, and I’ll have to tell him.”

“No, you won’t. You don’t have to tell him anything. What do you mean, ‘during inspection’?” What was Fiona talking about?

Fiona Hamilton stared at Delilah as if she were speaking a foreign language.

“Mrs. Hamilton,” Delilah broached gently, nodding toward the woman’s bruises. “Did your husband do this to you?”

“What? No. Of course not.”

“Because if he did, you don’t have to stay with him. We can call the sheriff. You can have him arrested.”

“No. I could never do that.”

“But—”

The doorbell rang, followed immediately by a loud knocking at the front door.

“Oh, God. He’s back.”

Was it possible? Delilah wondered. Had Cal Hamilton snuck back, parked his car on the street? Why?

“He’ll be so angry,” Fiona was wailing. “I’ll never pass inspection.”

“What are you talking about? What inspection?”

The knocking grew more insistent.

“Oh, God. Oh, God.”

“Delilah!” a distant voice called from the front of the house.

“It’s my mother,” Delilah said, releasing a deep breath of air, and reaching over to pat Fiona’s shoulder as she brushed past her, feeling the other woman shrink from her touch. She cut quickly through the living room to the front door, opening it to find her mother on the other side, arm extended, glass in hand.

“I took it from our kitchen,” Kerri said instead of hello. She was wearing the shortest pair of white shorts Delilah had ever seen, and her considerable cleavage was spilling out of her black-and-white-striped, V-neck T-shirt. “What the hell is going on?”

“I don’t know,” Delilah whispered, taking the glass from her mother’s hand. “But whatever it is, it’s weird.” She heard footsteps behind her, turned to see Fiona Hamilton disappearing down the hall to her bedroom, heard the door shut behind her.

“Yeah? Well, I don’t think you should come here anymore,” her mother said. “Not with all this crazy shit going down.”

“What crazy shit?” Had something else happened? Her mother hadn’t seemed unduly concerned before.

“There’s been another incident.”

“What kind of incident?”

Her mother took a deep breath. “Another girl is missing.”

W
ell, that was an exciting weekend.

From the minute the first reports hit the grapevine about another missing girl, all hell broke loose. The whole town of Torrance erupted, like a volcano, everybody spilling their crazy theories in all directions and trying to outrun rampant speculation. Was there any connection between this girl and Liana Martin? Was it true there was yet another girl, a runaway from Hendry County, who’d disappeared before Liana? Was it only a matter of time before the rotting corpses of young women started sprouting up like errant crops all over Alligator Alley? Was a maniac on the loose in South Florida? And if so, was said madman a stranger or someone everybody knew?

Soon every man whose whereabouts couldn’t be confirmed by at least three reliable witnesses—which most assuredly did
not
include any members of his immediate family—was considered suspect. Seemingly every male between the ages of seven and seventy was hauled in by the sheriff and his deputies for questioning.

Nothing.

The sheriff looked exhausted. I saw him briefly yesterday afternoon, although he didn’t see me. He was coming out of the gun store—apparently, there’s been a marked
increase in the number of guns sold—and I can report he looked drawn and haggard. Surprising for a man of his girth. He looked as if he’d had the shit kicked out of him, which might not be such a bad thing—he could stand to lose a few pounds—except that his complexion had gone all pale and pasty. Not a good look for him, I thought, and might have waved had he been looking in my direction. But he wasn’t. No, he was staring at the rear passenger tire of his police cruiser, which was looking a little flat, courtesy of a nail someone had maliciously poked into its side.

You could almost hear him thinking: a dead body, another missing girl, and now this, the final indignity—a flat! I watched him reach inside the front seat and pull out his walkie-talkie. And he grumbled something into the speaker and shook his head, then leaned against the side of the car and waited for someone to come to his aid. Which I suppose they did eventually. I didn’t wait around to find out.

I had things to do.

It’s interesting what happens to a small town when tragedy strikes. When Liana Martin first went missing, the denizens of Torrance were naturally concerned and sympathetic. You heard only the nicest things about Liana and her family.
Liana was the lovely oldest daughter of two of Torrance’s beautiful elite. The Martins were upstanding citizens and involved, caring parents.
When their child’s body was pulled from the ground, everybody mourned.

And then the whispers started:
Is it true she was wearing a
MOVE, BITCH
T-shirt when they found her? That’s kind of asking for it, wouldn’t you say? She was always a handful, that one. Her mother could never control her. I heard she was seeing some older guy from Miami. I heard she had a taste for kinky sex.

It’s called blaming the victim, and from everything I’ve read, it’s a common response to calamity. It seems that blaming the victim is a defense mechanism, a way people
have of distancing themselves from disaster. If the victim can somehow be held accountable for her fate, well, then—whew!—the rest of us don’t have to worry. We don’t smoke, so we’ll never get cancer. We wouldn’t walk alone after midnight, so we’ll never get raped. We’d never wear a MOVE, BITCH T-shirt, so what happened to Liana could never happen to us. I don’t think people intend to be mean. I think they just want to feel safe.

Which, of course, they aren’t.

Not from the true crazies of this world.

Do you really think there’s a maniac on the loose in South Florida? Do you think it’s a stranger or somebody we know?

Well, let’s see. Who do we know? Who do we suspect?

Right away, the name on top of everybody’s list—Cal Hamilton.

Well, why not? Cal’s a relative stranger to these parts, and he’s big and strong and has that sly smile. What’s that? A killer smile, you say? And he has an eye for the ladies, not to mention that poor—abused?—wife of his that hardly anybody ever sees. And he was away on Saturday afternoon when that girl disappeared. And didn’t somebody spot his car in the area where she was last seen? And wasn’t he the one who found Liana’s body? And, I don’t know—he just looks like somebody who’d shoot a girl in the head, don’t you think?

Or how about Joey Balfour? He was with Cal Hamilton when they found Liana. Supposedly he was the one who stumbled on that suspicious mound of earth. Or was that Greg Watt? Doesn’t really matter. They’re more or less interchangeable, aren’t they? Two big, stupid lugs who’ve been involved in more than their fair share of mischief over the years. Yes, it’s true they come from good, hardworking families, but remember when they vandalized all those expensive foreign cars at the dealership? And wasn’t Joey involved in some sort of rape thing a few years back? Yeah, we know it was only statutory rape and the charges were dropped after the girl left town, but still…

How about Avery Peterson? What? The science teacher? You heard he has a taste for young flesh? Well, only him and half the country, for Pete’s sake. Can’t hang a man for that. If you ask me, Gordon Lipsman’s a lot more
suspect. He’s creepy, and he lived with his mother and all those cats. Aren’t cats the devil’s disciples? And don’t forget Leonard Fromm, currently the esteemed principal of Torrance High, but who in his youth was a world-renowned surfer dude? He’s been a little strange ever since his wife ran off with her personal yoga instructor. For that matter, there was something very strange about that yoga instructor.

Talk about strange—what about Brian Hensen? He hasn’t been quite right ever since he found his father hanging from the shower rod. Or Victor Drummond? Maybe his vampiric fantasies were no longer enough to satisfy him. You know that Liana’s body had been drained of blood.

And what about that boyfriend, Peter Arlington? I hear they’d been fighting. Does anybody really believe he was sick that day? Did he see a doctor?

And speaking of doctors, what about Dr. Crosbie? Obviously going through a midlife crisis of some kind. I mean, any man crazy enough to leave that sweet little wife of his for a windup doll like Kerri Franklin has got to have a few screws loose. Loose screws being part of the good doctor’s problem, wouldn’t you agree? Anyway, he’s pretty new to these parts—he’s from New York, for God’s sake. Need I say more?—and he’s got no alibi for Saturday afternoon. Says he was in his office, catching up on some paperwork. Do you buy that?