Last Whisper (35 page)

“I don’t know.” Aaron felt sick. He didn’t know how he’d felt about Robert. He didn’t know anything anymore now that he was seeing his sister’s true nature—the nature of a parasite. And then it hit him. She was a parasite willing to do whatever she could to rid herself of someone she perceived to be her rival. “The phone call and the letter threatening to tell Mother about Robert,” Aaron managed. “Robert and I thought they were from Brooke, but they were from you, weren’t they, Maddy?”

“You weren’t being as careful with Robert as you had been with your other lovers. I knew Mother was going to find out. I was trying to warn you to be more cautious.”

Aaron gave her a long, flat look. “No. That is not the reason. You called and wrote because you thought Robert meant more to me than anyone in the past had and you were jealous. You wanted to scare me into giving him up. And you hoped I’d think they were Brooke’s handiwork because you wanted her out of my life, too.” Madeleine didn’t answer and an awful thought crept into Aaron’s mind. Just
how
jealous had Madeleine been of Robert? Clearly, she wasn’t the calm, stable woman Aaron had thought her to be. There was something deeply wrong with her beyond the injury to her leg. But how wrong? What was she capable of? Exactly how far had his beloved sister been willing to go to get both Robert and Brooke out of his life?

Brooke looked up from her desk to see Madeleine Townsend standing in her brother’s glass-enclosed office. Her face was flushed, her usually perfect hair tousled, and she leaned so far over his desk she looked like she was going to collapse onto it. Brooke could hear voices coming from the office although she couldn’t make out words. In her three years at Townsend Realty, she had never seen Aaron and Madeleine argue.

“Wonder what that’s all about?” Judith Lambert asked, suddenly appearing in front of Brooke. Last year when Judith had dated Aaron, everyone had been surprised because they couldn’t believe she was Aaron’s type, even though they had no idea who
would
be Aaron’s type. Ever since their much-anticipated breakup, Judith seemed to spend half her time watching Aaron’s every move. Right now her blue eyes were bright with curiosity. With her extremely thin body and short, spiky haircut, she reminded Brooke of some kind of high-strung miniature dog that always seemed to be quivering with anxiety or excitement.

“I have no idea,” Brooke said absently, turning her gaze back to her work. She didn’t like Judith with her blatant nosiness and constant gossiping. Brooke knew that more than once she’d been the target of Judith’s voracious curiosity and rumormongering, especially about “The Rose Murder.” “Brothers and sisters argue sometimes, Judith. It’s probably not a big deal.”

“
That
brother and sister don’t argue,” Judith persisted, unfazed by the dismissive tone of Brooke’s voice. “In fact, they’re so close, it’s weird. It used to drive me nuts when I was dating Aaron. Madeleine was
always
around. She’d arrive just as we were leaving for a date, and half the time Aaron would ask her to come with us. And she would!” Judith blew air hard out of her nose like a horse. Brooke half-expected her to snort and flap her lips. “Couldn’t she tell he was just being polite when he invited her along?”

“Maybe she could tell he wasn’t. Maybe he really wanted her company.”

“When he was on a date with
me
?” Judith clearly thought the idea of a man not wanting to be alone with her was absurd. “No, there’s something funny about those two.”

“Oh.”

“Honestly, I know what I’m talking about.”

“Ummm. Okay.”

“Mark my words. Strange. Peculiar.
Unnatural
.”

Judith obviously had no intention of giving up no matter how uninterested Brooke acted. “Such as what, Judith?” Brooke finally asked bluntly. “Do you think they’re not really brother and sister? That they are actually
married
and just trying to put one over on all of us?”

Judith drew back. “You don’t have to be flippant and make fun of me!”

“You said they act odd together. I gave a suggestion as to why they might act odd. How is that making fun of you?”

Judith’s laser blue eyes narrowed. “You think you’re better than everyone here, don’t you, Brooke?”

Taken aback, Brooke asked incredulously, “Why would you think that?”

“Because you’re semifamous. Or should I say infamous? You got to be one of the players in the famous ‘Rose Murder.’ You got to testify at a murderer’s trial and have your picture splashed all over the paper when you were just a kid. It’s a wonder you don’t charge for autographs.”

Brooke tossed down her pen, swept up in a shaking fury. “You’re absolutely right as usual, Judith. Having your mother murdered always gives one a sense of superiority. None of the rest of you in this office got to live through that lovely, fairy-tale experience. Just me. I’m the one people like you speculate about, gossip about, make up stories about. That certainly does make me feel a step above everyone here, especially you, Judith, with your absolutely humdrum, boringly normal upbringing. Now, will you please take your meddlesome, vicious, destructive self away from
my desk before I run this pen straight up that beak you call a nose!”

Judith backed away from her, her mouth opening slowly. Everyone else in the office was looking at them, some in shock, some on the verge of laughter. Her flat cheeks almost as red as her hair, Judith accused shrilly, “I think you’re as crazy as your stepfather!” Then she flounced away to the restroom.

As soon as she slammed the door behind her, a burst of applause broke out in the main room. In spite of her embarrassment at her outburst, Brooke couldn’t help smiling a bit as one of the other Realtors, Charlie, exclaimed, “She’s had that coming for a long time. Good job, Brooke!”

The office hoopla had drawn the attention of Aaron and Madeleine. Aaron rose quickly from his desk, brushed past Madeleine, and opened his door. “What’s going on out here?”

“Judith chose the wrong day to pick on Brooke,” Hannah said, beaming. “Don’t get mad at Brooke. She was just trying to do her work. Judith wouldn’t let her alone.”

Aaron looked at all of them without a trace of emotion. Normally he would have either chastised everyone or insisted on having a private meeting with the two warring employees. This time he looked at Brooke and asked, “Are you all right?”

“Of course. I just blew off steam that I probably should have kept to myself.”

“I doubt that,” Aaron said. He looked around the room. “When my sister leaves and Ms. Lambert finally emerges from the sanctuary of the restroom, will someone ask her to come to my office?”

He looked like he was going to say something else, changed his mind, and returned to his office, shutting the door behind him. Surreptitiously everyone watched Madeleine begin talking again, loudly, as Aaron ignored her. After no more than three minutes, she turned and left his office, stopping to give all the employees a murderous look before she
swept out the front doors as grandly as she could manage with her limp.

“Trouble in paradise,” Hannah murmured.

Charlie made a droll face. “It’s about time. I was getting sick of those two fawning over each other. Hey, Hannah, let’s do a coin toss. Heads I tell Lady Judith she’s being sent to the principal’s office, tails you do.”

“Okay,” Hannah said hesitantly, then breathed in relief when the coin came up heads. “Looks like it’s your job, Charlie.” She turned to Brooke. “I have to admit, Aaron scares me.”

“Don’t let him,” Brooke said. “He’s mostly hot air.”

Hannah smiled. “I wish I was as brave as you. I don’t think anyone frightens you.”

Brooke looked over at Mia’s still empty desk and thought of the man who had brutally killed both Mia and Brooke’s mother. I wish what Hannah said were true, Brooke thought. God, how I wish that were true.

Four o’clock, Brooke noted on her wristwatch as she climbed out of her car. She’d just shown a truly darling young expectant couple a house they wanted desperately, a house that would be perfect for them and the child who would arrive in two months, a house too far out of their price range. These situations happened every day, but this particular couple had gotten to Brooke, maybe because they looked like a young version of her own parents. She promised to talk to the owner about lowering the asking price and saw the hope flare in their innocent, smooth faces, which hurt her even more because she knew the owner had no intention of dropping the price by one dollar.

Tired and discouraged after her first day back at work
since Mia’s murder, Brooke trudged into the office, stopped at the water fountain, passed by the desk of Judith Lambert, who gave her a truly vicious look, and plopped down on her desk chair with a slight groan. She opened a desk drawer and took out a couple of Hershey’s Kisses for energy. She knew Aaron wouldn’t mind if she went home an hour early on this particular day, but she was determined to stick it out although she was exhausted and the burn on her lower back stung.

Before she got the second Hershey’s Kiss down, a tiny elderly woman crept up to Brooke’s desk, clutching fearfully at her purse as if she thought someone might make a dive for it. Brooke tried to give her a reassuring smile, feeling that she already knew the woman’s errand. She was right. The woman told Brooke her name was Amelia Gracen, she was eighty-six years old, she had been married for sixty-five of those eighty-six years, and she lived in the lovely Victorian on the corner of Shaw and Clifton Streets, a house with which Brooke was familiar.

Then Mrs. Gracen broke down and described her husband’s death four months earlier. It seems he’d decided to climb up on the roof and adjust the satellite dish himself. “Damn fool,” Mrs. Gracen said, then burst into noisy sobs she tried to hide in a dainty lace-edged handkerchief. “Our grandson gave us that dish for our wedding anniversary and I knew it was trouble the first time I looked at it. Those things aren’t natural. Television antennas are natural, not those crazy space-age doodads. I always expected it to start spinning and send us right up to the moon, but Orville, that was my husband, was just fascinated with it and must have climbed up on that roof twenty times to ‘tweak’ it, he always said. Well, he tweaked it one time too many. He slid off the roof and splattered himself all over the sidewalk. Oh my God, what a mess he made, the old coot!” She sobbed some more into her handkerchief.

“I’m so sorry,” Brooke murmured, unable to come up with anything truly comforting to say about such a gruesome accident.

“It served him right. He was the most hardheaded man I ever knew. Nobody could tell him
anything
, especially me. Well, I guess he learned his lesson that time.” She sobbed some more and nearly blew a hole into the delicate material of the handkerchief. “Anyway, I can’t afford to keep the house all by myself. I don’t even want to. I mean, inside there are a lot of wonderful memories—we lived there forty years—but as soon as I step out on the sidewalk . . .” She shuddered. “Oh, lordy. You can still see stains on the sidewalk. For a little guy, he had enough blood in him to fill up a grizzly bear. And I swear, you can see a dent in the sidewalk where that hard head of his hit.”

“Oh, how awful for you,” Brooke mumbled, sympathetic and yet on the verge of macabre laughter.

“Well, my friend Inez lives in this nice little retirement community not too far from downtown and she says they just have a ball there with Canasta Night and Charades Night and those wonderful gospel singers that come on Sunday afternoons. So, I think I’ll put up the house for sale and move there. Do you think that’s terrible of me?”

“Of course not,” Brooke reassured her. “I’m sure your husband would want you to be happy.”

“I guess, but it doesn’t seem right, me singing and playing cards and games when he’s lying in his grave, all cold and alone. But if he’d just
listened
to me for once in his hard-headed life—”

“So you’d like to list the house with us?” Brooke asked before Mrs. Gracen could get started again on her husband’s hard head.

“Yes, I certainly would, if you don’t mind.”

“It would be a pleasure.” Brooke gave her a smile, offered her a cup of water, then handed her a few Hershey’s Kisses.

“Oh, I just love these!” Mrs. Gracen said, ripping into the foil. “So did Orville. We’d eat a whole bag of them in one night.” Then she cried some more.

By the time Brooke finished with Mrs. Gracen, she felt tired enough to fall out of her chair. Fifteen more minutes,
she thought. Fifteen more minutes and I will have made it with honor through one whole day.

She had just begun to straighten up her desk when a young, jaunty-faced guy around nineteen entered Townsend Realty. He stood at the front of the room, holding a package, and called out, “Brooke Yeager? Do we have a Brooke Yeager in the house?”

“Yes, we do,” Brooke said.

“Then
this
package is for you!” he announced grandly.

Brooke was amused by the young man’s cockiness. He acted like she’d just won the lottery. Instead, all he handed her was a small box about two by four inches swathed in brown wrapping paper. She glanced down to see her name and the address of Townsend Realty printed in block letters, clearly done with a felt-tip pen. Then the return address caught her gaze:

Sunset Memorial Park
Charleston, WV

Brooke’s heart beat faster. Sunset Memorial Park—the cemetery where her parents were buried. She had decorated the graves on Memorial Day.

The delivery guy held out a clipboard to her. “Just sign on line twenty-five and it’s all yours,” he said cheerfully.

“What company do you work for?” Brooke asked.

“Archway Deliveries. Been with them for almost a year now.”

“Who sent this box?” Brooke asked faintly.

The guy tilted his head and grinned. “Well, it’s either a joke or someone who lives in a cemetery.”

Brooke gave him a long look and his grin faded. “Seriously, I mean who brought this box in and paid to have it delivered to me?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” The guy’s smile wavered slightly. “Honest, I don’t, ma’am. People come in, leave a package, and pay the manager or his wife, and they assign us to deliver
it sometime during the day. Well, occasionally people want a package delivered at a certain time. That was the case with yours. My manager said it was to be delivered ten or fifteen minutes before five.” He stared at her. “Is there something wrong, ma’am?”