A Secret Rage Page 12

  I had realized that the man who’d assaulted me was someone I knew, but I’d realized it in an abstract way. I hadn’t really felt it in my gut. The fact that Alicia – who had told us only two weeks previously how tightly locked she kept her house, who had told us how frightened she was – had opened her door to her killer was the strongest possible confirmation that Barbara and I knew our incubus in another guise. Now that I had a name, Charles Seward, to fit into the nightmare, I did feel it in my gut. I pictured Charles’s face above me in the darkness, Charles’s hand holding the knife. A man, not a demon. Not ‘it’ but ‘him.’

  ‘Should you tell the police?’ Even I could hear the doubt in my voice.

  ‘What?’ Mimi asked angrily. ‘That I had a tussle with my date in a car? When I was upset and nervous anyway? Can’t you hear them soothing me down? “Now, now, Miss Houghton”!’

  Of course I could. ‘And it might not be him, anyway,’ I muttered. Charles felt wrong, somehow, no matter how uneasy I’d been around him lately.

  ‘Of course it might not,’ she agreed, still with that edge of hysterical anger.

  We fell back to gazing into our coffee, lost in separate trains of thought. There was a knock on the kitchen door. I jumped, and Mimi almost dropped her mug. Mao sped toward the living room with a startled yowl.

  The knock sounded again as we looked at each other, shamefaced. Shaking her head, Mimi rose to answer. There were no clear panes in the kitchen door. We were going to have to quit opening it blindly, I decided, even as Mimi twisted the knob.

  The man at the door was Charles Seward. Mimi’s back stiffened; I heard her breath whistle in. Her fear, rational or not leaped across the room and infected me. There was a sharp snap. I looked down. My fingers had broken the handle of my coffee cup. Suddenly the tableau seemed surrealistic: Mimi frightened at the door, her face searching for the right expression; I at the table in my bathrobe with coffee trickling down it; and a young lawyer at the door, not menacing but surely – sheepish.

  ‘Mimi, please let me talk to you, please just listen to me for a minute.’ Charles spotted me sitting in the breakfast nook. His hands made a quick gesture of helplessness. ‘Nickie, please – I need to talk to Mimi alone.’

  Ordinarily I would’ve vanished instantly. This wasn’t ordinary. Old Mrs Harbison next door couldn’t help us if she wanted to, I thought quickly. The Carters on the other side were gone; I’d seen them pull out in their car. There wasn’t any telling when Cully would return.

  I gauged the distance to the knife rack above the counter, all the way across the kitchen, and wondered if Mimi could slow him down long enough for me to reach it. At the same time, it was almost impossible for me to believe I was contemplating a situation in which I would have to stab Mimi’s boyfriend.

  But when Charles took a step forward, my muscles tensed to move. At that moment, as if on cue, the front doorbell rang. My breath came out in an explosion of relief. ‘I’ll get it, Mimi,’ I said in an odd bright tone, as if Mimi were an unstable child.

  I almost ran, but restrained my pace to a brisk walk. I perceived that we were trying to make the scene normal; both Mimi and I were eerily trying to pretend that we supposed nothing lay behind Charles’s appearance except a man wanting to make up with his woman. Why were we doing that instead of screaming bloody hell and attacking Charles? Was this some form of passive defense, pretending Charles meant us no evil so he would take our cue and do us none?

  I peered through the panes in the door . . . Theo Cochran. I hadn’t exchanged more than a few words with Theo since the party. I was so anxious about the situation I’d left in the kitchen that it didn’t surprise me at all that Theo was calling at Mimi’s rather early on a Saturday morning. I swept the door open and ushered him in with an enthusiasm that must have bewildered him.

  ‘Come right on back,’ I babbled. ‘Mimi’s out in the kitchen and we’re having coffee. Come have a cup with us.’

  ‘Well, thank you,’ Theo said with evident surprise, pulling off his jacket and gloves. I shut the door and sped past the registrar to lead the way to the kitchen, moving so swiftly he had to hurry to keep up.

  Mimi was still blocking Charles’s entrance. When she heard our steps behind her, her shoulders sagged. Charles’s expression of gaping astonishment changed to one of frank resentment as I came to stand by Mimi. I abandoned poor Theo in the middle of the floor. When Mimi felt my shoulder touch hers, she said quickly, ‘Thanks for dropping by, Charles. I’ll – be in touch later.’ She took a step forward, forcing him to retreat onto the porch. Then, with a horribly social smile, she shut the door in his face. We stood there shoulder to shoulder until we heard Charles’s feet cross the porch and descend the steps.

  Behind us Theo Cochran shuffled, reminding us that he was there and waiting. Mimi recovered first and turned to him with a dazzling welcome. ‘How nice to see you,’ she said shrilly. ‘Have a seat, if you don’t mind sitting out here in this messy old kitchen. I’ll get you a cup of coffee; or tea?’

  ‘Thank you, tea,’ he murmured, and slid into the place I had occupied on the bench.

  Mimi grasped my hand for a moment, squeezed it, then went to fetch Theo Cochran his tea.

  * * * *

  Theo explained his multiple mission. As registrar, he was automatically a member of the Recruitment Drive committee, which was supposed to have met the day before when Mimi had gone to pick up Alicia. There had been a quorum present without them, so the committee, of course not knowing anything of Alicia’s death, had proceeded to vote on a number of projects. Now Theo’s thoroughly bureaucratic soul was in turmoil. He realized, I heard him tell Mimi, that this was an awful time to come to see her, but he’d really come to talk to her as a college official and a member of the committee; some of the measures passed had been most important. Now a new member would have to be appointed . . .

  I overheard most of this from my room, where I’d scrambled into my clothes and then thrown the door back open while I was changing my sheets. I didn’t really trust anyone right now, even proud, portly Theo (he was on the list), and I was worried, after I caught the drift of the conversation, that Mimi would be angry and grieved all over again at Alicia’s demise being discussed in terms of committees and resolutions. I needn’t have worried. When it came to the college and mention of the word committee, Mimi became all business. Theo’s visit was even therapeutic for her. People might perish, but Houghton College kept rolling on.

  I didn’t listen to the ensuing discussion or what they decided. Changing the sheets had put me in mind of more interesting things. I wondered when Cully would be home. I was half-afraid to see him again. He’d been gone this morning before I was really awake.

  Their voices jogged me back to earth. They had risen and moved closer to my door.

  ‘. . . to tea,’ Theo was saying. ‘Sarah Chase has been trying to get you this morning, but our phone’s out of order, so when she found I was coming over . . .’

  ‘Thursday? I’ll call her, Theo, I know we’d love to come; but of course I have to find out about the funeral.’ Mimi’s voice was thinning again now that she was thinking of Alicia. Theo should leave.

  ‘I’m sorry, again, for intruding,’ he said. ‘I tell you, I’m mighty worried about Sarah Chase. I wouldn’t let her go out at night to her bridge club, but another woman picks her up and brings her home. It’s terrible how this seems to be happening to Miss Beacham’s graduates. Had that occurred to you?’

  ‘What?’ Mimi was startled. They were almost outside my door now. I looked up sharply.

  ‘Well, Nickie, you know, and now Mrs Merritt. It’s made me kind of extra anxious about Sarah Chase, as I’m sure you can understand.’

  Barbara hadn’t gone to Miss Beacham’s.

  Theo’s back was to me. He happened to look in the open door of the former dining room, now Cully’s room. I saw his shoulders stiffen at the sight of men’s clothes dumped on the bed.

  ‘I think Theo must be somet
hing of a prude,’ I remarked after Mimi had shown him out.

  ‘Oh, you noticed. He didn’t say one word, but he kind of snorted,’ Mimi said with a grin. ‘Someone’ll tell him it’s just Cully. Wouldn’t Theo have made a perfect English butler?’

  I pictured the registrar in a swallow-tailed coat, and laughed. Mimi settled herself on the foot of my bed and relayed Sarah Chase’s invitation. ‘Isn’t that sweet?’ she said. ‘Tea! Thursday afternoon, okay?’

  I thought about my class schedule. ‘Fine with me,’ I said. ‘But . . .’ I turned back to my vanity and fussed with my comb and brush. ‘When’s the funeral, I wonder?’

  ‘Tuesday. There’s a delay because of the autopsy,’ said Cully from the doorway. My heart gave a ridiculous lurch. ‘But Mimi, I’m afraid, has to attend the inquest this afternoon. The coroner called before you two were awake.’

  ‘Inquest,’ Mimi said. The remainder of the spark that had animated her during Theo’s visit, as she’d gotten to talk about normal life instead of violent death, was extinguished. She was face to face with Alicia again. ‘I expected Ray to call me himself. Maybe this morning. But I guess . . .’

  I guess we have to go to the funeral home, I told myself reluctantly. It seemed to me we’d been through enough; but after all we were alive. We had to pay for that, I supposed.

  ‘I think the body will be at the funeral home by Monday morning or evening,’ Cully said. ‘I saw Alicia’s aunt at the filling station. But the inquest this afternoon will be real short. Don’t worry about it, Mimi.’

  She seemed to wilt under my eyes. I sat beside her on the bed. We huddled together holding hands like children. Cully folded down on my left.

  ‘But why Alicia?’ Mimi whispered.

  I decided to take that literally. ‘Exactly.’ Mimi needed something to think about, and I needed another viewpoint. ‘Why me? Why Alicia? Barbara? Heidi Edmonds?’

  Mimi straightened. ‘Right.’ She understood me instantly. ‘Why you all, out of all the women in Knolls? You’re beautiful, Nickie. Alicia was attractive in her own way, but no one would say she was beautiful. That girl this summer, she was just an average-looking girl. Barbara’s plain, really, unless you know her.’

  ‘Alicia’s lived here all her life,’ Cully muttered. ‘Nickie just came back here, hasn’t ever before really lived here.’ His eyes narrowed with concentration.

  ‘As Theo said, Alicia and I, at least, are connected through Miss Beacham’s,’ I observed. ‘We went there.’

  ‘That’s so,’ Mimi said. ‘He did mention that. I went to Miss Beacham’s too.’ She shivered.

  ‘Along with Theo’s wife, as he was saying,’ I thought out loud. ‘But I don’t think Heidi Edmonds went there, did she? You would’ve known and told me so, Mimi. And Barbara didn’t of course.’

  ‘Strike that pattern.’

  ‘Cully, isn’t there bound to be a pattern?’ I touched his sleeve.

  ‘I think so, but I can’t be sure,’ he said. ‘I’ve never had a patient with a record of rape offenses. I’ve never studied it before. I am now doing extensive reading on the subject,’ he added grimly. ‘There are all kinds of classifications of rapists, with all kinds of motivations, of course. Rapists most often do follow some kind of pattern, but it might be something as vague as simple availability, or women who look under twenty-one, or women who have gray hair.’

  ‘Well, we weren’t all equally available,’ I pointed out. ‘Heidi Edmonds was in the open, and Barbara was in her apartment and he had to break open the back-door lock.’

  ‘Which was as flimsy as anything can be and still be called a lock,’ Cully interjected. ‘No expertise required.’

  ‘He broke in here via the window. The open window. Just a screen to remove. Even I could do that,’ I observed. ‘Alicia, well, obviously he used some trick. What on earth would make Alicia open the door at night – I presume she was killed at night? – to someone when Ray wasn’t at home?’

  ‘It was at night. Her aunt told me Alicia had called her mother at ten-thirty Thursday evening,’ Cully said. ‘Alicia said then that she had a breakfast meeting scheduled for eight the next morning. She never got there.’

  We all thought about Alicia unlocking her front door at night.

  ‘Ray!’ Mimi said suddenly.

  We turned horrified faces to her. For the first time, I thought about Ray being on the list. But oh, not now; now that Alicia had been killed, surely we could strike him?

  She said hastily, ‘No, no! I didn’t mean he could have done it! I mean that she’d open the door if someone told her something had happened to Ray.’

  ‘Or to her mother,’ Cully suggested.

  ‘Not even for that. She’d have been suspicious right off the bat. Her mother lives with Alicia’s older brother, and the brother would’ve called if anything was wrong with Miss Celia. It had to be something about Ray. She’s always been scared to death he’d have a wreck on one of his sales trips.’

  ‘Even then,’ I said slowly, ‘I think it would have to be someone she knew. Or a policeman. Even if the man at the door said he was from the police, when she went to the door she wouldn’t have seen a uniform through the peephole. So she wouldn’t have opened the door, right?’

  ‘Not if he said he was a detective,’ Cully said.

  I thought instantly of John Tendall.

  ‘I think she would’ve been suspicious of any stranger, no matter what he told her he was,’ Mimi said firmly. ‘She had a good head on her shoulders, even though she didn’t sound like she did half the time. She was very much on the alert, remember? She was really scared. She’d have been on the lookout for a ruse like that, I’m sure. Maybe not; maybe at the words “Ray is hurt, he had an accident, let’s go to the hospital,” she would’ve thrown open the door to anyone. But I don’t think so. I think the only thing that would have made Alicia open that door was recognizing someone she knew.’

  Chilled and frightened, we hunched on the bed. The picture in my mind was in their minds, too: ‘Alicia, honey, I just hate to tell you this, but Ray’s been in a wreck just out of town. I happened to go by and the police asked me if I’d get you to the hospital.’ Yes. The combination of a familiar face and an urgent summons would have added up to enough to make Alicia open the door.

  ‘Okay. Recap,’ Cully said briskly to break the mood. ‘The access to each of you varied in difficulty.’

  Yes, Professor. We nodded.

  ‘You don’t have physical traits in common. Not all blonde, not all blue-eyed, for example. One married; the rest single. But you’re all connected with the college. Two students, one teacher, and one committee woman.’

  ‘Yes, I guess you could call Alicia “connected with the college,” ’ Mimi said slowly.

  But so, to some extent, was everyone on the list. ‘All white. All kind of upper middle class,’ I offered.

  ‘That’s the loosest tie imaginable,’ Cully said.

  ‘But it’s something. It looks like the Miss Beacham connection goes down the drain with Barbara,’ Mimi said, ‘but I’ll ask Theo to check Heidi’s record sometime next week to make sure she didn’t go there.’ She scrambled to her feet. The talk had done her good, as I had hoped. Positive action, mental or physical, healed Mimi like aloe on a burn.

  Cully slipped his arm around me. I leaned against him. Mimi looked from one of us to the other. ‘It finally happened, huh?’

  I caught myself actually ducking my head, and Cully (I peered at him sideways) looked embarrassed.

  ‘It’s about time,’ she said brusquely. ‘Well, I better go get dressed. What time’s the inquest Cully?’

  ‘In a couple of hours.’

  She patted me on the arm and whisked out of the room. We looked at each other a little shyly.

  ‘Well,’ he said finally, in a tone almost as brusque as Mimi’s, ‘I’m scared to death of you, you know that? Rachel bruised me pretty thoroughly. It won’t be easy for me, for a while. But I can’t be less brave than
you.’

  Not exactly a romantic declaration. But I was satisfied our night together hadn’t been a fluke triggered by emotional overload.

  From the thunder of the pipes I could tell Mimi was running a bath upstairs. Cully’s hand touched the nape of my neck, brushed it with long fingers. He rose and shut the door.

  10

  THE NEXT DAY Barbara and I had another grim little meeting. This time I went to her apartment. Like her office, it was crammed, but even more pleasantly – full of plants and books and clear, mild colors.

  ‘Do you like it here?’ I asked as she made some hot chocolate in her tiny kitchen. The building was a four-unit cube tucked in between private homes on a dead-end street. Someone with an empty lot had decided to make a little extra money – pre-zoning, of course!

  ‘It’s okay,’ she said as she got mugs from a cabinet. ‘I like having other people in the same building, now. I never liked that before.’

  We settled in the little living room with our steaming mugs. We talked of this and that, awkwardly. Apparently Barbara was as reluctant as I to buckle down to our task.

  ‘I’m getting almost too frightened to go on with this, Nickie,’ she said abruptly. ‘I don’t know if fear douses the rage or just replaces it. I can only hold so much.’

  ‘I’ve about reached my capacity, too,’ I admitted. ‘Everything’s changed since Alicia was murdered.’

  ‘We’d better do it before we lose our courage. Let’s try to take one more step.’

  We seemed to gather ourselves in unison before we hauled out our creased bits of paper.

  ‘The list,’ Barbara said as clearly as if she were reciting poetry. ‘Jeff Simmons. Charles Seward. Don Houghton. Randy Marquette. Theo Cochran. Ray Merritt. Dan Kirby. John Tendall. J. R. Smith.’

  ‘What happened to Jeffrey Tabor?’

  ‘I remembered Jeffrey was definitely out of town the night of Mimi’s party. That’s why he couldn’t come to it. I didn’t just take his word for it,’ Barbara said with a faint smile. ‘I asked his friend who shares his apartment.’