If You Ever Tell (2 page)

Teresa’s mother had prized the room’s highly varnished mahogany floors decorated here and there with lovely, soft-toned Aubusson rugs. Wendy had complained that the floor was cold against her bare feet, and Hugh promptly had the room carpeted in the hot pink Wendy chose along with cerise draperies trimmed with fringe and tassels. Even Teri’s older brother, Kent, who didn’t know a thing about interior design, couldn’t look at the room without cringing.

Tonight Teresa couldn’t have cared less about the violated bedroom décor, though. She thought about not hearing Wendy’s sleep-blurred muttering or the occasional peeps and whistles that sometimes crept past the device Hugh had bought recently to stifle his stentorian snoring. It’s a big bedroom and I’m just too far away from the bed to hear anything, Teresa had told herself.

She hadn’t turned on the overhead light for fear of waking them, but she took several steps closer to the king-sized bed she knew lay right in front of her. Then she’d stopped and listened again.

Not one sound had come from the bed. Not the sound of someone shifting in their sleep, not the sound of Wendy mumbling or Hugh spluttering and snorting, not even the deep and easy sound of breathing from two people sleeping peacefully. Teresa had heard absolutely nothing.

But she had smelled something—something fresh, strong, and coppery. Coppery. She’d smelled blood before and now she smelled it around the bed. It’s not blood, she had told herself sternly. You’re just scaring yourself.

Using all of her willpower, she’d walked to the end of the bed, then veered right toward Wendy’s side. Teresa had decided she’d rather wake up Wendy than Hugh, who would start yelling at her again, so she’d put out her left hand, gently touching Wendy’s leg beneath the blanket. Wendy didn’t move.

Downstairs, the big grandfather clock tolled three times. The clock also belonged to Teresa’s mother, and Teresa had always loved its exquisite workmanship and the unusually deep timbre of its chimes, but that night they’d sounded strangely ominous. She’d taken a deep breath and forced herself to step forward, her foot squishing into a wet spot in the carpet just as her hand brushed over Wendy’s slick abdomen, almost sliding into a deep slit.

At last, Teresa had screamed. She’d jerked her hand away from Wendy’s stomach, slapped it over her mouth, realized it dripped blood, let it drop, and screamed again. Then, without thought, she had run toward the wall and groped for the overhead light switch. Wendy had chosen one of the largest chandeliers she could find for her boudoir, and Teresa might as well have turned on a floodlight. The room had flashed into dazzling view, temporarily blinding Teresa. She’d closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them to see the bed and the people in it garishly splashed with rich, shimmering red.

Teresa was unaware of her own voice tearing open the silence of night. She’d felt oddly removed from the whole gory scene as she’d run to her father’s side of the bed to find him splayed like an insect ready for mounting, his throat slashed, his abdomen oozing blood. His left arm seemed to reach for Wendy, whose once-pretty face had been reduced to an unrecognizable mass of rips and gouges. Her blond hair snaked across the white satin pillowcase in wet, red strands.

Teresa had backed away, heaving as she tried not to throw up, and slowly realized she was shrieking. She could hear the next-door neighbors’ Great Dane begin to bark and howl frantically. Teresa glanced up, and through one of the bedroom windows, she saw bright lights flashing on in the house next door, lights in what she knew was the master bedroom directly across from Hugh and Wendy’s bedroom. Her screaming and the dog’s barking had awakened the neighbors, she thought in relief. She had forced herself to stop screaming long enough to take a deep breath and fill her air-starved lungs. Then the image of eight-year-old Celeste had burst in her mind like a firework.

Without thought, Teresa had turned off the overhead light as if it might disturb someone and dashed from her father’s bedroom, running down the hall and banging into a small antique table in the darkness. She’d cried out and stumbled sideways against the sturdy, erect body of an adult.

“No. Please,” Teresa had managed before pain coursed down her left arm, the razor-sharp pain of a knife blade slashing flesh. Oh, God, now it’s my turn to die, she’d thought wildly.

As Teresa clutched at the gash in her arm, the person pressed closer to her and she’d caught a familiar scent. Sandalwood. Her mother always wore a perfume containing sandalwood, Teresa had thought distantly as she squinted at the shadowy form beside her—the form of someone taller than she, of someone wearing a coat slick like plastic or vinyl, of someone whose head was covered with what seemed to be a large hood and the face turned downward.

Gripped by terror, Teresa had gone motionless like an animal waiting for the inevitable, fatal attack. She’d even stopped breathing, but her gaze slid sideways. She saw a latex-gloved hand move to the area beneath the hood and two fingers rise to hidden lips from which emerged a gentle, prolonged “Shhhh.” The soothing sound echoing eerily in Teri’s mind, she watched as the figure drifted away like an image in a dream—away, down the stairs, and out of the house.

Teresa had stood still for a moment, too surprised to move, too shocked to be anything but vaguely aware of the pain in her arm. Then several drops of warm blood had fallen onto her bare foot, startling her back to life. The figure had been coming from the front of the house—Celeste’s room.

“Celeste,” Teresa had murmured, her voice thin as it squeezed through her tightened throat. She’d swallowed, flying down the hallway now, and finally managed to scream, “Celeste!”

When Teresa reached the child’s bedroom, she had stopped abruptly. She’d begun to hyperventilate and her heart had seemed to be crashing hard enough to crack her ribs. The pain in her slashed arm had dulled to nothingness. I can’t do this, she’d thought for a frozen moment. I cannot go into this room.

Her body had not listened to her mind, though, and she’d tiptoed in, although she couldn’t make herself turn on the overhead light. Moonlight had shown her the rumpled bed. Slowly, filled with dread, Teresa had followed the subdued radiance of Celeste’s bedroom night-light—the light shaped like a white horse Teresa had given her at Christmas, a light the child had loved and had named Snowflake.

Teresa moved to the bed. She murmured, “Celeste.” Silence. But the night-light revealed no spots of blood. Teresa put her hands on the tumble of sheet and blanket. Nothing. The bed was empty.

She’d looked up and beside the glow of the night-light Teresa spotted Celeste’s nearly empty toy chest. Finally beginning to tremble almost uncontrollably, Teresa had forced herself to walk straight to the box, lift the lid, then look to see Celeste curled into a motionless ball in the bottom of the toy chest. Teresa also had caught sight of the blood splotches she’d expected to see on the bed. The child had tried to hide—tried and apparently failed.

“No,” Teresa had moaned, desolation washing through her like a cold wave as she lifted the little girl’s rigid body from the coffinlike box. “Celeste,” she’d muttered raggedly. “Don’t be dead. Oh, God, sweetie,
please
don’t be dead!”

“I’m not,” the child had rasped in a flat, gritty voice. “I’m… not… dead.”

Teresa, shaking violently, had burst into a torrent of relieved tears, unaware that Celeste would not speak again for the next eight years.

“D
ID YOU LEAVE ROOM
for dessert?”

The pretty waitress at Bennigan’s smiled into the face of Celeste Warner. Celeste looked back placidly, her aqua eyes wide, her perfect lips almost smiling, her long blond hair held back from her smooth forehead by a narrow pink velvet ribbon.

“I think we’re full, aren’t we?” Jason Warner asked brightly, looking at his sixteen-year-old daughter as if he expected an answer. He didn’t. She hadn’t spoken since her mother had been murdered and Celeste had been stabbed in the abdomen eight years ago when she lived in the Farr home. Jason glanced back at the waitress, who gave no sign she noticed Celeste’s silence or immobility. She’d waited on Jason and his daughter before. “I guess we’ll just take the check,” he said. “The food was great, by the way.”

“Thanks!” The waitress sounded as pleased as if she’d prepared the meal herself. “I’ll leave the check here and pick it up in a couple of minutes. You two take your time.”

Jason couldn’t help noticing the hard stare the manager threw the waitress. It was 12:55 at Bennigan’s on Saturday and the place was jammed. Jason knew the manager didn’t want the help urging customers to take their time. He quickly opened the discreet black vinyl envelope, glanced at the check, slipped in a twenty and a ten, then looked back at his daughter. “I left enough for the food
and
a tip so our waitress won’t have to waste time bringing back change,” he explained.

Celeste merely blinked. What I’d give to see her smile, Jason thought. Hell, I wouldn’t even care if she threw a temper tantrum. He’d once overheard someone describe Celeste’s expression as “bovine” and he’d been furious, both because of the insult and because the person had spoken the truth. Although beautiful, Celeste showed no more emotion than a contented cow.

Jason glanced around, trying to look lively to hide his dark thoughts. “Boy, this place is even more crowded than usual, isn’t it, honey?” Nothing. A group of people passed them, all laughing and chattering, their animation striking Jason as almost cruel compared to his daughter’s eerie self-containment. Determined not to give in to depression, though, Jason patted his slim abdomen and smiled. “I ate too much, Celeste. How about you?” Nothing. “Well, ready to go to the park?”

Jason waited until several people passed their booth, then stood up. Instead of getting up, and walking slightly behind him with her head down as she usually did, Celeste sat perfectly still. Jason was so used to her immediately rising from the table, he’d already begun striding toward the door before he noticed Celeste was still in the booth. He rushed back to her. She sat uncannily motionless, her forehead furrowed. Then she tilted back her head and her nose twitched slightly, as if she was sniffing something. Surprised by the slightest sign of reaction from her, Jason abruptly scooted into the booth and looked closely at Celeste.

“Is something wrong, honey?”

Celeste frowned harder as she drew in a deep breath and held it. He hadn’t seen her frown for eight years. Jason sat mesmerized. Then annoyance flowed over him. Bennigan’s was always busy on Saturdays, but today it felt as if half of Point Pleasant had come for lunch. The place was noisy and people jostled beside their booth. I should have taken Celeste somewhere quieter, less crowded, he thought. “You push her too hard,” his mother sometimes told him, making his teeth grind.

At such times, though, Jason reminded himself that what his mother, Fay, lacked in tact, she made up for in love and ever-vigilant care. Without hesitation, she’d taken in Celeste after Wendy’s murder. “You can’t care for her—you have to work,” she’d told Jason reasonably when Celeste had been released from the hospital and rehabilitation after her stabbing.

Celeste had made a full physical recovery, but her emotional wounds had not seemed to heal. Two psychiatrists and two psychologists agreed that her silence and emotional withdrawal were the result of shock. Two years later, they said they were almost certain her muteness had become voluntary and she was now feigning a lack of emotion. “Celeste suffered no brain damage. She is choosing to be silent and to act detached,” one of them had told Jason. “I’m not certain why—maybe she simply doesn’t want to discuss the murders and the attack on her. She won’t continue this behavior forever, though. Be patient, Mr. Warner. Celeste will talk when she’s ready.” So Jason had taken Celeste home to Fay, who’d abruptly begun quashing his arguments that caring for Celeste by herself would be too much of a strain and that they needed professional help.

“Don’t be silly,” she’d stated. “Those so-called professionals haven’t helped Celeste one bit. Besides, you’d be doing me a favor to let me look after her.
And
you. I’m home alone all day now that your daddy’s dead and I’m going stir-crazy. I’m strong as a horse and I want to be useful. You both need me and I need you. Mark my words—the situation will work out fine.”

And it had, except that right now, Fay Warner would be unhappy with him, Jason thought morosely. She would point out that he should have known the restaurant was packed because of the full parking lot. She would tell him he shouldn’t have gone there just because
he
liked the cheerful atmosphere. She would—

Suddenly Celeste leaned toward Jason, fixed him with a penetrating stare, and said in a voice rusty from disuse, “The moon was bright that night but I turned on my nightlight anyway—my horse nightlight Snowflake that Teri gave me. I loved that light, partly ’cause it was a horse and partly ’cause it was a gift from
Teri
.”

Jason stared at his daughter, his gray eyes wide, his mouth slightly open. At first, he was stunned only by the fact that after eight long years she’d finally spoken. Then, he felt a brief wave of joy that the doctors had been right—the moment had come when she had finally decided to speak. Finally, with an unpleasant jolt, Jason realized Celeste was describing the night her mother had been murdered.

Celeste’s frown deepened, her eyes narrowed, and she went on unemotionally in a flinty voice, “I was comin’ out of the bathroom when someone opened Mommy’s bedroom door, all soft and sneaky.”

Jason’s tongue touched his dry lips, and after a moment he managed to ask, “Who was coming out of Mommy’s bedroom?”

Celeste looked puzzled. “All I could see was somethin’ in a hood.”

“A hood?” Celeste nodded. “You couldn’t tell
anything
about the person?”

“It wore somethin’ long and black—it seemed like a cape but maybe it was just a big coat. And its eyes… they were big with dark shadows all around ’em.” Celeste shivered. “I couldn’t move. I just held on to Yogi.” Yogi, Jason remembered, was her big stuffed bear. “It made a loud, surprised noise. It didn’t know I was there. Then it jabbed at me with a knife so fast I didn’t know what was goin’ on. The knife went through Yogi. I know I got stabbed, too, but I didn’t feel it. Lots of my blood ran into Yogi. A nurse told me that’s why he had to get thrown away.” Celeste’s eyes filled with tears. “I
loved
Yogi and he just got thrown away!”