The Silent Sister (11 page)

“I found Daddy's keys for the upstairs cabinets, if you need them.” I thought of the key to his RV that I'd left with Verniece. “Do you happen to know if he let someone else use his RV?” I asked.

“Heavens, no! He loved that old thing. He called it his man cave. Even I wasn't allowed inside.”

“It's strange,” I said. “He has a bunch of CDs in there, but they're all bluegrass and country. When have you ever known my father to listen to bluegrass?”

“I haven't,” she admitted, “but he knew that wasn't my thing, so he probably just didn't play it around me. He had very varied tastes.” She looked at me. “And we've already established that you didn't know much about him, haven't we?” It wasn't a question; it was a dig, and the sympathy I'd felt for her moments earlier melted away. I did not like this woman! I didn't trust her. I just didn't. “So,” she said, taking me by the arm and leading me over to the wall of cabinets. “You get started here going through your father's papers, and I'll work upstairs.”

I felt steamrollered, but I also didn't care where I started working in the house. Suzanne had warned me to keep the last three years of my father's receipts for her to go through, but other than that, everything could be tossed. As Jeannie climbed the stairs, I sat down in front of one of the cabinets and opened the door, groaning when papers slipped from the shelves to my lap. I knew Daddy had a shredder in the upstairs office and I hoped it was heavy-duty. Taking a deep breath, I started piling the papers into a stack. I wondered if, buried somewhere in one of the ten cabinets, I might find documents related to my adoption. I hoped not.

About an hour later, I was getting bleary-eyed when I heard a sound from upstairs that made me stop my work to listen. Drawers opening and closing? Was she in his bedroom? I got up quietly and moved to the foot of the stairs. I would have thought little of the sound if she'd been slamming around up there, but there was something so sneaky in the slow, quiet sliding of the drawers … or whatever it was. Curious, I started up the stairs.

She was coming out of my father's bedroom when I reached the top of the stairs, and she jumped when she saw me. “Oh,” she said, her hand to her throat. “You startled me!”

“I wanted to see how you were making out.” I really wanted to ask her what she'd been doing snooping through his dresser drawers, but I kept my mouth shut.

“Oh, fine,” she said, then she nodded toward the bedroom, as if she knew an explanation was needed. “I was looking for a few things I'd left here,” she said.

She'd gone upstairs with a notepad, but now a white box rested on top of it. It was the size of a small shirt box or maybe the sort a manuscript would fit in. She clutched it and the notepad to her chest.

“Did you find them?” I motioned toward the box, and she looked down at it as though she was surprised to find it in her arms.

“Yes,” she said. “Just some things of mine I'd forgotten about. Old … things I'd wanted to show him.” She laughed nervously, and I almost felt sorry for her. From the color in her cheeks, I imagined the box contained a sexy negligee or worse. I remembered Suzanne telling me about her father's pornography and wished I could erase that thought.

“How'd you make out up here with the collections?” I asked.

“I think I know the appraisers we need to call,” she said, heading for the stairs. She didn't let go of the box even to hold on to the handrail.

“It's going to take me a week to clean out those cabinets,” I said from behind her on the stairs.

“I can imagine.” She'd reached the last step. “We should get those pipes appraised before turning them over to the Kyles, too. And, oh, my God”—she chuckled—“we need to get a sense of how many vinyl albums he has so I can tell Christine. Do you know if he has more squirreled away anywhere? The attic, maybe?”

“I don't think so,” I said, though I didn't know what, if anything, was in the attic.

We worked quietly for a short time, me sitting on the floor, Jeannie looking over the albums, but my mind was numb from hunting for the dates on medical bills and bank statements.

“I think I've had it for tonight,” I said, getting to my feet. “Glass of wine?”

She let out a tired breath. “Just a half,” she said. “More than that and I'll be asleep when I drive home.”

I went into the kitchen and pulled two wine glasses from the cabinet above the dishwasher. Jeannie came into the kitchen, walking past me toward the powder room by the back door. She knew her way around this house as well as I did.

She was still in the bathroom when I carried the glasses into the living room, and I spotted her notepad and the box she'd been holding on the ledge by the pipe collection. I bit my lip, curiosity getting the better of me, though I wasn't sure I wanted to see what was inside that box. What if she'd stolen something? She was hurting for money and mad at my father for not leaving her more than he had, and she'd had access to his collections for a good hour upstairs.

I listened for any sounds from the powder room, but heard none. Then I moved her notepad aside and worked the cover of the box loose. The box was half filled with yellowed newspaper articles. The headline of the one on top read
LISA MACPHERSON ASSUMED DROWNED IN APPARENT SUICIDE.

I let out my breath in a miserable “Oh.” Why had he felt the need to save articles about Lisa's suicide? I ached for him and my mother. How must they have felt, knowing they'd been unable to prevent their daughter from taking her own life?

I heard the bathroom door open, but didn't make a move to cover the box.

“Oh, Riley, no!” Jeannie rushed toward me when she walked into the room.

I lifted the box in the air and turned my back to her, and she stopped, lowering her hands to her sides. “Honey, you don't want to do that,” she said. “There's no good that can come from it.”

“Why did he keep these?” I asked, tipping the box down again so I could look inside. I lifted the top article about her apparent suicide, and my hand froze when I saw the next headline. The font was huge, the letters thick and black, and I stared at them, confused and disbelieving as I tried to absorb what I was seeing:
ACCUSED MURDERER LISA MACPHERSON ASSUMED DEAD.

 

12.

Slowly, I turned to look at Jeannie. She stood next to me, her hands now pressed to her face, her blue eyes brimming with tears.

I nodded toward the article, still in the box.
ACCUSED MURDERER LISA MACPHERSON ASSUMED DEAD.
“What is this?” My voice was a whisper.

She reached for the box and gently worked it free of my grip. “He never wanted you to know,” she said, setting it back on the ledge. “I was hoping to get that box out of here before you stumbled across it. He would have wanted me to do that, but I wasn't sure where he hid it, and I've been so worried that you'd…” She shook her head. “Just close it up and throw it away, Riley. That's what he would have wanted.”

She was talking quickly, trying to get my mind off what I'd seen. I reached into the box and pulled out the article that called my sister a murderer.

“I don't understand.” I read the headline again. “I don't understand at all.”

“I know,” she said. “I know what you were told. That she killed herself because she was depressed and overworked. Your parents never wanted you to know the truth.”

“
What
truth?” I lifted the box again, carried it to the open rolltop desk, and sat down. I picked up article after article and that word kept jumping out at me from the headlines:
Murder, Murder, Murder.

“That's why they moved here after Lisa's death.” Jeannie walked to the piano bench and sat down heavily. “They wanted to get you and Danny away from all the accusations and everything. They wanted to get you away from a place where you'd always be known as a murderer's sister.”

I looked over at her. “She did it? She actually killed someone? Who? Why?”

“It was an accident.” Jeannie pressed her hand to the top of her head in aggravation. “Oh, your father would be so upset with me.”

“Tell me!” I said.

“She was about to go on trial,” Jeannie said, “and she believed she'd end up in prison for the rest of her life. The prosecution was going for first degree murder—‘planned and premeditated'—and that
would
have meant life in prison if they could prove it. But I think the real reason she killed herself was that she couldn't live with what she'd done. Accident or not, she'd killed someone. Lisa was only seventeen—a child!—and she couldn't get past the guilt.”

“My God.” I felt my whole body sag with the weight of the news. “Who was it?” I asked again. “Who did she kill?”

“His name was Steve Davis,” she said. “He was her violin teacher.”

I gasped, remembering the tall, slender conductor in the tapes. Was that who Jeannie was talking about?

“She
was
angry with him because he'd hurt her chance to get into Juilliard, but she never would have killed him over that,” Jeannie said. “She was such a quiet, gentle girl. She never would have intentionally killed anyone over anything. It was all so unbelievable.”

It
was
unbelievable, and I had so many questions. I paged through the articles until I found one of them with a picture of Steve Davis. He was definitely the man from the tapes. I pressed my hand to my mouth as I began to read the article to myself, while Jeannie sat quietly on the bench, waiting for me to learn the truth.

Lisa Beth MacPherson, the seventeen-year-old violinist awaiting trial in the murder of her former violin teacher Steven Davis, is missing and presumed dead. Ms. MacPherson's yellow kayak was found in the frozen waters of the Potomac River near Fort Hunt Park in Alexandria Monday morning, and her white Honda Civic was parked at the side of the road south of the Belle Haven Marina. Her book bag and a wallet containing her driver's license and more than thirty dollars in cash were in the vehicle. A blue jacket thought to be hers was found tangled in the icy reeds nearby.

Her father, Frank MacPherson, contacted police around eight o'clock Monday morning after finding an apparent suicide note in her bedroom. The contents of the note have not been made public, but a police spokesperson stated that the note indicated MacPherson's intention to kill herself, and her father identified the handwriting as hers. MacPherson's mother and younger siblings were out of town Monday morning.

Lisa MacPherson was out on bail in the October murder of Davis, who was forty-two at the time of his death. She was to be tried as an adult, and the trial was to begin this Wednesday. She was expected to testify that the shooting was accidental. MacPherson had planned to apply to the Juilliard School of Music for the fall 1990 semester, and Davis allegedly sent a derogatory letter about her to a colleague at the school, a fact prosecutors were expected to introduce as a possible motive. Davis had instructed MacPherson for most of her career, although at the time of the incident, she was studying with National Symphony violinist Caterina Thoreau.

Acquaintances stated that MacPherson had been extremely depressed in the months since her arrest. Upon hearing of her student's probable suicide this morning, Caterina Thoreau made this statement to the press: “This is tragic news. Lisa is the most gifted student I've ever had the pleasure to teach and her future was bright. I've always believed that the shooting was accidental, and given Lisa's sensitive nature, I can imagine how difficult it was for her to live with what happened. She held (Davis) in high esteem.”

Davis, who lived in McLean with his wife, Sondra Lynn Davis, was teaching at George Mason University at the time of his death. The couple had no children.

The search for MacPherson's body continues.

I stared at the article, trying to comprehend it. “I always thought she killed herself because she was overwhelmed by how stressful her career had become and because she was worrying about getting into Juilliard, and…” My voice trailed off. I looked across the room at Jeannie, holding up the article I'd just read. “This is for real?”

Jeannie nodded. “I'm afraid so. I knew her quite well, Riley, and she was such a nice girl—studious and always with an eye toward her future. Your mother homeschooled her, as I'm sure you know, but she had friends even though she wasn't in a regular school. Other violin students, that sort of thing. She had a few rough patches…” She looked into the distance as if remembering some hardship of Lisa's. “But what kid doesn't?” she asked.

“Do you think she killed him because of the letter to Juilliard?” I asked.

“No, of course not! I believe that, for whatever reason, she got hold of your father's gun. Maybe to show him? I don't know. And she—”

“To show him? That doesn't make sense. Was it just lying around? It sounds like she was angry and intentionally shot him.” My exalted image of my sister was rapidly deteriorating. I felt as if I was losing her all over again.

“Frank blamed himself,” Jeannie said. “He always has. His service revolver was locked up in the den, but Lisa knew where it was. This was up in your Virginia house. Maybe Lisa just threatened Steve with the gun. Maybe she
had
lost her mind a little bit over that letter and she was asking him to make it right. That's what I've always pictured. She threatened him and maybe there was a scuffle and it went off. I don't know. No one will ever know. All I know was that it was heartbreaking. Your mother never really recovered from all she went through.”

“I'm in shock,” I said honestly. “Is this why Daddy retired early from the Marshals Service?”