Chain Letter Omnibus Page 28

  Joan turned to Alison. “Are you out of your mind to bring in a stranger? Don’t we have enough problems as it is?”

  Brenda had been a decent shade of white before Eric’s arrival. Now she could have tried out for the lead role in a play about Casper the Ghost. “Ali,” she begged. “What’s got into you?”

  “Eric discovered that it wasn’t Neil who burned to death in the fire in June,” Alison said quickly. “He came to me, I didn’t go to him. But I’m glad he’s here. He’s an amateur sleuth, and he’s better than most professionals. He’s discovered who the man in the desert was.”

  “Who?” Tony asked tonelessly.

  “James Whiting,” Eric said. He looked at Tony. “May I sit down?”

  Tony eyed him with barely concealed hatred. “Sure.”

  Eric sat down near Alison. “I’m here to help you guys,” he said. “What Alison said is true. She didn’t approach me, I approached her. My uncle works for the LAPD. I was going through the police files and stumbled on the fact that Neil had been identified by an emerald ring after burning to death in a raging fire. I knew an emerald would melt in such a fire and figured there had to be something wrong. That started me on my investigation. So far I have kept the confidence of your group. I’ve told no one about the chain letters.”

  Tony was amused. “You’re connected to the police. Great.”

  “Only in an unofficial capacity,” Eric said smoothly. “But let’s not argue about whether I should be here or not. I’m here, and I want to help you out of this predicament.”

  “What can you do?” Joan asked sarcastically.

  Eric turned the left side of his head toward her. “What?”

  “Can’t you hear?” Joan asked.

  “I can hear,” Eric said. “Please repeat your question?”

  Joan was mean. “You can’t help us. You can’t even understand what we say.”

  “I can give you advice,” Eric said. “I can point out certain facts that maybe you overlooked. I’ll point out one right now. But first I have to ask a question. Who in this group knew where Kipp had gone?”

  “None of us,” Brenda said. ‘That was the point of his leaving.”

  “Then how did the Caretaker know where to find him?” Eric asked. No one answered. Eric scanned the group. “Someone must have known. How about you, Tony? You were closest to him.”

  Tony surprised them all. “I knew he was at his aunt’s.”

  “How?” Alison exclaimed.

  Tony ignored the question.

  “How did you know?” Brenda had to ask.

  “I called him and he answered,” Tony said simply.

  “But how did you know he was there?” Joan asked.

  Tony shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “You’re going to have to do better than that,” Eric said.

  Tony chuckled and spit again. “I don’t have to do anything.”

  “All right,” Eric said diplomatically. “Could you tell us if you told anybody else where Kipp went?”

  Tony flashed a fake smile. “I don’t remember.”

  “Tony!” Brenda protested. “For God’s sake, tell him if you did.”

  Tony hardened. “Why? This guy’s an asshole. He’s here to help us? He’s here to give us advice? What kind of advice do you have for us, Mr. Amateur Sleuth?”

  “I suppose the simplest thing for you to do now would be to go to the police,” Eric said philosophically.

  “If we do, we’ll go to jail,” Joan said with no strength in her protest. Indeed, it seemed as if Joan was considering the possibility as they spoke.

  “Better to be in jail for a little while than to die,” Eric said.

  Brenda spoke in a faltering voice. “But this Caretaker could get us even there. Tony wouldn’t have told anyone where Kipp was, even if he did know. In jail we could be more helpless.”

  “That’s not true,” Alison said. “With the police we’ll be safe.”

  “Safe?” Brenda asked, and her voice cracked altogether. Her opinion of the Caretaker had changed a hundred and eighty degrees since their last meeting, which didn’t surprise Alison. “Who can protect us from this monster? I tell you no one can. He pulled Kipp’s whereabouts out of thin air. He went there in the middle of the night, lured my boyfriend into the garage, soaked him with gasoline, and then lit him on fire. He did all this without leaving a trace. Tell me what kind of man could do that? Not one that’s human, that’s who!”

  Her words sent a shock through the group, and they fell silent. They had thought such a thing—that their assailant might be of supernatural origin—when Neil’s letters had been coming. Of course, they realized how silly they’d been—later. But not much later, because right now, to Alison, there was a ring of truth to what Brenda was suggesting. Eric did not agree.

  “Kipp was killed by someone in a human body,” Eric said. “There is a rational explanation for everything. It often takes time and hard work to find it, but the truth usually comes out in the end.” Eric reached over and patted Alison on the leg. “Now, I went to the paper and the record store this morning. I found out that—”

  “I’m getting out of here!” Tony exclaimed, jumping to his feet and hustling toward the parking lot. Alison got up and ran after him. She went alone. She didn’t catch up to him until they were halfway to the cars, at the top of a grassy bluff. He threw off her arm with a cruel swing of his.

  “Tony?” she cried. “You have to stop this. You have to talk to me!”

  “I don’t talk to whores,” he muttered, plowing forward.

  Alison’s breath caught in her throat. “How can you call me that?”

  He whirled on her, and his voice and face were savage. He was like a man possessed. “I was there Saturday night when you were kissing your new boyfriend. I saw it all. But that’s OK because you see, I wasn’t alone. I had a new girl with me.” He stabbed a finger in the direction of his car at the bottom of the hill. “I have her with me today.”

  A young woman with long maroon hair sat in the passenger seat. She nodded and climbed slowly out of Tony’s car. She did not approach them, but stood there leaning with one hand braced on the side of the car, dressed entirely in black. She was extraordinarily attractive, but a cruel light seemed to emanate from her straight into Alison’s heart. It was almost as if the strange girl were challenging Alison to a duel with invisible steel knives. In fact, Alison felt as if one of the girl’s knives had already struck home. The pain in her heart was overwhelming.

  “I did not cheat on you,” she whispered to Tony.

  “Fine,” Tony said coldly. “I didn’t cheat on you, either, when I slept with Sasha. All’s fair in love.” This time he spat on her. “Bitch.”

  She watched him walk away. The girl—Sasha—didn’t climb back into the car until Tony arrived. Then the girl gave Alison one last stab with her weird green eyes and got in beside Tony. Alison watched them kiss. Sasha squashed so hard against Tony’s face it looked as if she were trying to eat him alive. Then Alison watched them both laugh and drive off.

  Eric walked up to Alison. He offered her a handkerchief, which she took to wipe off Tony’s spit from the side of her face. His saliva had a funny smell to it. It reminded her of biology class.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “So am I,” she whispered.

  “The girls are waiting back at the rocket ship to hear what I’ve discovered,” Eric said. “But I don’t know if I want to tell now. This group is extremely unstable. I don’t know if we can trust any of them.”

  “That girl is bad.”

  “Pardon?”

  Alison looked at him. “That girl is bad.”

  Eric blinked. “I can see why you don’t like her.”

  Alison shook her head and sighed. She felt as if she were already trapped in the Caretaker’s box. She couldn’t help wondering if everything that had just happened hadn’t been planned in advance.

  “What did you find out?” she asked.

>   “Nothing from the paper. They protect the identity of anybody who places an ad, no matter how weird. But the police might be able to go back there later and learn something.”

  “What about at the record store?” she asked.

  “I spoke to James’s brother. He was elusive. He knew stuff, but he wasn’t talking. He did give me the home address of his sister-in-law.”

  “James Whiting’s wife?”

  “Yes. Want to go have a talk with her?”

  Alison stared in the direction Tony had disappeared. He had slept with another girl. Her Tony. It was hard to imagine. It was horrible to think about. He must have been put under a spell.

  “I want to talk to her right now,” Alison replied.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Mrs. Carol Whiting was not at home when they tried the front door of the tiny redbrick house in Santa Monica. Or maybe she was and her brother-in-law had warned her that he had given out her address. Alison asked Eric what story he had fed the brother-in-law, but Eric was evasive. He just said he had his “ways.”

  There was nothing to do but hang out near there until the woman came home. Eric took her to a restaurant, but she couldn’t even eat her salad. They tried the house again, found no one there, and then Eric took her to a sci-fi film about a future society of humans who wanted to be robots. Alison fell asleep in the movie. She hadn’t slept the previous night after hearing about Kipp’s death. She did sleep now through two showings of the movie. When Eric woke her it was ten o’clock at night. He asked if she’d been having nightmares. Apparently she had often kicked and clawed at the air while unconscious. But she’d had no dreams that she could recall. All she knew was that her long nap had done little to refresh her.

  They went to the woman’s house once more.

  She was at home and opened the door for them.

  “Yes?” she said. “Can I help you?”

  She was a short, plump woman with smooth dark features and a nervous twitch in her right eye. She couldn’t have been thirty, but she had a streak of gray that split her short hair in two. She looked tired.

  “Hi,” Eric began. “My name’s Tom and this is Amy and we’re here to—”

  “Talk to you about your missing husband,” Alison interrupted.

  Eric stared at her in shock. He had told her ahead of time to leave everything to him. But she was tired of deception. The woman had backed up a step.

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “We know what happened to your husband,” Alison said. “We’d like to tell you the whole story. May we come in?”

  “You knew Jim?” the woman asked, uncertain.

  “No,” Alison said. “But I was one of the people who helped bury him.”

  The woman shuddered. “Who are you?” she asked.

  Alison reached out and touched the woman’s hand. At first the woman flinched, but as she looked into Alison’s eyes, she seemed to relax. Maybe she could see that Alison, too, had been to hell and had yet to come back.

  “Please,” Alison said. “We mean you no harm.”

  She studied them for a moment longer before opening the door wider. “Come in,” she said.

  The woman insisted that they call her Carol. Her brother-in-law had not warned her that they were coming over. Just the same, her children were not at home. They were at a sister’s house, which was probably a good thing. Alison figured they wouldn’t have got inside with the kids around. Carol was making herself coffee and asked if they would like a cup. They said sure. Carol fussed over them. She was obviously dying to hear what they had to say, but at the same time she was doing everything to postpone it.

  There was a picture of the man on the piano. Jim.

  When the three of them were seated comfortably in the living room, with Eric positioned with his good ear toward Carol, Alison described what had happened the summer before in the desert after the concert. She kept her story focused on that night alone. She didn’t go into the chain letters or Neil’s madness. Sitting across from her, Eric began to relax. As she approached the part where they buried the man, she began to cry softly. It was no act. She couldn’t get over the fact that she was talking to the man’s wife. Carol cried with her as she tried to explain why they hadn’t gone to the police.

  “We thought of you,” Alison said. “I mean, we didn’t know if you even existed. But we knew the man must have family somewhere. We thought we could send an anonymous letter to the police explaining what had happened. But we were afraid it would be traced back to us.” Alison wiped at her face. She had shed a lot of tears lately. One of these days they were going to dry up. But today was not that day. Another flood burst out as she thought of covering the man with dirt. “We didn’t mean to kill him. It was an accident. We were driving with our lights out and then we hit him and that was that. I’m so sorry, Carol. I can’t tell you how sorry I am. All this time you must have wondered what happened to him.”

  Carol surprised her by reaching out and hugging her, comforting her. This crazy teenager who had destroyed her husband’s life. It made no sense to Alison until Carol spoke.

  “I have always wondered what happened to Jim’s body,” Carol said gently. “I would lie awake at night wondering where he lay. But I knew he was dead. I have always known who killed him. Don’t be so hard on yourself, Alison. Jim was dead when you and your friends ran over his body.”

  Alison stared at her in disbelief. “Are you sure?”

  Carol sat back in her seat. “Maybe I should tell you my story. It’ll put your mind at ease.” She put her hand to her forehead. “But those are days I don’t care to remember.”

  “Tell us what you feel comfortable with,” Alison said.

  Carol shrugged. “I guess I’ll have to start at the beginning. Jim and I were married eight years before he met Charlene. We had a happy life. He had the record store and business was good. We both had the children to play with and love. I was finishing my master’s in education at UCLA. I remember the first night Jim mentioned Charlene to me. We were sitting in bed at night reading. He just tossed out her name. He said she was a pretty girl who regularly came into the store and was always asking him to order CDs of bands he’d never heard of. Groups like Dried Blood and Black Sex—real sicko groups. I remember Jim saying that Charlene seemed like such a nice girl to be into crap like that. I just grunted. Jim had lots of odd customers. And that was the last I heard of Charlene for a long time.

  “Several months went by and Jim began to change in small ways. He became more impatient with the children and snapped at me frequently. I’m not saying Jim was a saint before this change occurred, but he had always been a nice guy. He really was, and I’m not just saying that because I was his wife. He didn’t wish anybody any harm. But his mood had turned sour, and I didn’t know how to shake him out of it. He began to suffer from insomnia and took to spending longer hours at the store. It got so that he almost never came home, even when the store was closed. You must think I was pretty stupid, huh? I couldn’t see that he was having an affair. But at the time I was worried that he was sick. He’d always been a bit chubby, but now he was definitely on the slim side. I’d put a home-cooked meal in front of him and he’d just pick.

  “Then I caught him snorting cocaine in our bathroom one day. I had come home early from school. I was shocked. The music business is full of drugs, but Jim wasn’t that kind of guy. He never put anything harmful in his body. Finally, I thought I understood the changes that were happening in him. He told me that he was barely into the stuff, that it was just a weekend habit. But he was obviously an addict. I checked our bank account. I always let Jim handle the business side of our lives. I was sick when I learned that we were broke. Jim had blown all our savings on drugs. When I confronted him with what I’d found, he promised that he’d get help. I went with him to several clinics, and he seemed to be ready to enter one when I made another shocking discovery.

  “I was digging in my garden when I smelled something peculiar.
I dug a little deeper and found a green trash bag filled with the remains of desecrated animals. There were dogs and cats and even a skunk. And all of them had been beheaded and their fur shaved with strange symbols. Not for a second did I think they had anything to do with Jim, but when I told him about what I had found, it was all there on his face. He had done those things to those animals! I couldn’t believe it. Was this the man I had married? He was behaving like a psycho. I took the children and left for my sister’s.

  “But Jim called me every night and begged me to come back. He told me be had gotten involved with bad people but that he was getting away from them. He mentioned Charlene’s name as one of them. I didn’t know who she was until he reminded me. But the way he said her name made me suspicious. I asked him if he was having an affair with her, and when he didn’t answer right away, I knew where I stood. That was one thing I wouldn’t put up with—unfaithfulness. I swore I’d never see him again and hung up on him. But two minutes later I was missing him worse than I ever had in my life. I drove over to our house and got there just as Charlene was arriving.

  “She was pretty. I could see that from where I was sitting in my car up the block. They didn’t see me. I watched as she dragged Jim out of the house and into her car. She was laughing all the time like a teenager. They drove away and I followed. They got off the freeway in a section of town where the gangs are very active. I knew I was risking my life just to go there. They parked outside a shabby warehouse, and the girl dragged Jim inside. I keep using the word dragged. It was obvious Jim didn’t want to go. I’m not saying that to protect him, either. I assumed Charlene was into drugs and that she was taking my husband to meet her connection.

  “I sat outside that old warehouse for hours, well into the night. But they never reappeared, and the characters walking by on the street really scared me. Finally I had to go back to my sister’s. But I noted exactly where the warehouse was, and the next day I returned there with the police.”

  “The police let you go inside the warehouse with them?” Eric broke in, surprised.