“Since we hung up I made a list of the names of her friends that I remember. She’s got quite a few.”
“A bunch showed up at the Funeral Home,” I said.
“The night we met?” said Gretchen sweetly.
“Yes. I’ve talked to one of them. Viper.”
“I already phoned him. No answer. These kids probably all have their own phones. Some are under their parent’s names. Some are unlisted. With a little luck we might make contact with a few and through, them, the others.”
We reached the kitchen. The scent of cinnamon and baked apples was in the air. She gestured to the table. “Make yourself comfortable.” A freshly baked pie was in the center of the table. As I sat down I noticed that she had the telephone directory spread out on the table. Next to it was a yellow legal pad with several names scribbled in pencil.
“Do you want to call or look up numbers?” she asked.
“Do these kids know you?” She nodded yes. “Then you call. It might not be too productive when they learn the town Funeral Director is on the line.”
Gretchen smiled. “Alright,” she said. “Let’s go.”
It took us about twenty-five minutes to find and dial the numbers that were available. Of the eleven names that Gretchen could remember, we managed to reach six and through them we got five more names, as well as the numbers we couldn’t find. But not one of the kids we reached even knew that Quilla was missing. Two girls had seen her yesterday and both claimed to have talked to her briefly, each saying that Quilla told them she was investigating her Aunt’s murder. After reaching the last of the names, we continued to dial Viper’s number, still getting his Voicemail.
“When you talked to Quilla yesterday did she have anything specific to say?” I said.
“She had another hypothesis about the killer. It was difficult for her to tell me because she knows how strongly I feel that my mother is still alive. But in the interest of helping I was willing to suspend my disbelief. She brought up the notion that — assuming someone murdered my mother — is there any guarantee that she was his first victim?”
“I never thought of that.”
“Quilla’s point is that who’s to say my mother wasn’t his third victim? Or tenth? And that your girlfriend and Brandy came later.”
That would mean he’s an old man now.”
“Not necessarily,” she said. “If he started his killing at, for discussion sake, age twenty-one. If he killed my mother he would only be forty-six. If he started even younger, say when he was in high school, he’d be in his early forties. On the other hand, if he started at thirty, with my mother, he’d be fifty-four. And as for him being an old man, let’s say an older man, if he started killing when he was thirty and the first victim was ten years before my mother, he’d only be in his mid-sixties. Everything hinges on when the killer began. If he was twenty-one and started fifty years ago, then we’re talking an elderly man. But if my mother was the first and he was anywhere from twenty-one to, let’s be generous and say forty, then it could be someone from his mid-forties to mid-sixties. The upshot of all this, Del, is that Perry Cobb needs to do some checking beyond my mother’s disappearance and since Brandy’s murder nine years ago. Despite the fact that I still believe my mother is alive, I’m willing to confront him and demand that he re-open her case solely for the purpose of bringing some peace of mind to Quilla and you.”
“If she gets it I’ll be happy.”
“After all this time, you should too. It’s only fair.”
I shrugged. She looked at me with an odd expression, almost one of disapproval. “Your ambivalence surprises me. I’ve been getting the impression that finding out what happened to Alyssa has been uppermost on your mind for years, like me with my mother. Now you shrug your shoulders?”
“You know how there are people who bury their emotions and hide their true feelings?” Gretchen nodded yes. “Well, I’m one of them. I don’t like to get too hopeful or excited about things. Like the old saying: ‘never complain, never explain.’ I keep a comfortable balance.”
“I’ve found that impossible to do since I grew up,” she said sternly. “Life keeps hitting me in the face. It took me a long time to learn that hiding doesn’t work. It only fends off the inevitable. Every time I decide to lock myself away from the world…the world comes and drags me back. Like now. The person I’m probably closest to in the world is missing and might be in trouble and, as much as I’d like to be tucked in bed reading a book, I have to do something to find her.” She ran her fingers through her hair and simultaneously took a deep breath. “Should we notify Perry Cobb about Quilla’s idea?”
I shook my head no. “He’s up to his ass in theories. He needs something tangible.”
“That’s how it was with the detectives I hired to find my mother. ‘Give me something to go on’ they’d all say. Anything. I’d get so frustrated. They were the detectives, but they wanted me to do all the preliminary work.”
“What did you do?”
“Read every word I could find on her disappearance. Tried to talk to people who knew her, but it was next to impossible. I was so young when she disappeared and I didn’t start to seriously take action until I was in my late teens. The police seemed disinterested. No one remembered. Not even my father.”
“You asked him about her disappearance?”
“Of course I did. Constantly. But when he was institutionalized they beat him. Whatever memories he had got knocked out of his brain. I hardly knew him as a little girl. I was fifteen when he got out. It was like talking to a stranger. He barely remembered me. He didn’t even live with me until I finished college and I had a little money. When his time was up they put him in a halfway house in Youngstown for six months. Then he lived in a rooming house and got a job as a night clerk at a third-rate hotel. If I wouldn’t have bought this house and brought him here to live with me he would either be dead or wandering the streets of Youngstown. As far as information about my mother or what happened to her he’s pretty useless. I used to show him pictures of her to try and trigger his memory… but nothing worked. Sometimes I find him gazing at her picture. I wonder if he’s doing it because a glint of memory has kicked in or if he’s trying to force himself to remember. What he does say sometimes is how pretty she is. He’ll be staring at her picture and just say, ‘Very pretty’ or ‘So pretty’ or variations on that. I keep pictures of her all over the house with the hope that it might spark his memory, but… it hasn’t. Would you like to see her picture?”
“Yes. I’d enjoy that.”
Gretchen stepped into the hallway we had passed through earlier and returned a few seconds later carrying a framed photograph which she handed to me. It was an 8 x 10 color print of a gorgeous brunette who bore an amazing resemblance to a young Kathleen Turner.
“This is she,” said Gretchen. “This is my mother.”
“She’s gorgeous. No. Beautiful.”
“It was taken on her thirtieth birthday.”
“Thirtieth?” I thought to myself. “She looks more like twenty.” To Gretchen, I said, “She looks much younger.”
“I know.” She smiled. “The handful of people I talked to who knew her all remarked about how young she looked. Everyone thought she was in high school. She was still getting carded at bars into her thirties.”
“This could be important,” I said. My heart began to pound. Gretchen looked at me, a confused look on her face. “This could be what Perry needs to dig deeper.”
“Why?”
“He and I were looking for similarities with Brandy, Alyssa and your mom. But the one thing that didn’t fit was your mother’s age. Brandy and Alyssa were both nineteen. Perry had your mother’s age listed at thirty-two when she disappeared. We assumed that because Brandy and Alyssa were young, the killer wouldn’t have gone after someone older.”