“Where’s Caroline?” Julie asked.
“Another long story. I’ll tell you later. Why don’t we move the car?”
Julie nodded, checking out passing pedestrians. “I agree. We can wait down the street for the ambulance to arrive. Or drive around the block. Or something. But we shouldn’t stand in the open like sitting ducks.”
The temporary security of Julie’s car gave Gretchen a moment to reflect on her own impulsive personality, and how much trouble she had caused. First Jerome, then Andy. She was leaving a trail of carnage behind her.
Matt had been right all along. She shouldn’t have involved herself in police business. But to be fair, Gretchen didn’t invite threats. They appeared out of nowhere. She’d been perfectly content working on the play, minding her own business.
Well, that wasn’t exactly true. The drama of past and present mysterious murders had lured her away. She’d wanted to be enticed into something else. Anything other than directing that play.
So she’d seen a killer in every man she encountered. She’d disarmed one and tied him up. She’d pistol-whipped another.
Was she the crazy one?
Julie was on the phone talking to the police, explaining that their lives were at risk, that a man might be stalking them and that they needed protection. She sounded more worried and frightened as she spoke.
“Yes, yes, we will. No, that’s not possible.” She glanced at Gretchen and covered the phone with her hand. “I’m not going to the police station, which is what they are suggesting.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Gretchen asked, recalling that Julie had refused to go to the museum the night before because of the police. “We’ll be safest there.”
“No. I have an issue with that. I’ll drop you off, though.”
“Let’s stay together.”
“Should we wait here?” Julie asked. “The officer thinks it will be fifteen or twenty minutes.”
“How about at the museum?” Even if Mr. B. was Richard, the club had changed the locks to the museum and only Gretchen and her mother had keys. “He can’t get into the museum.”
“Great idea.” Julie gave the address to the police officer and hung up. “A police car is on the way. They said to stay inside.”
It would be over before she knew it. In fifteen minutes the police would arrive, if they weren’t still there. Hadn’t Andy said he’d seen a cop at the museum? All her potential suspects were being rounded up. She may have been mistaken in some cases and injured the wrong people, but one of them was guilty. Andy Thomasia, Jerome, or Mr. B. One of them was a killer.
It was really over this time.
50
“She has multiple personalities,” Richard Berringer says while the technician sits at a computer. The detective remains standing, appears detached. People probably lie to him all the time. Best to focus on the truth and keep an honest face.
“Her head is in a good place when she remembers to take her medication,” he says, studying the black Velcro wrapped around his fingers. “But that’s hit-or-miss. When we were kids, before the meds, Rachel would do cruel things and then blame me. Everybody believed her, including my parents. She’d do horrible things to animals and kids too young to talk, then she’d blame me. She nearly suffocated herself and accused me of attempting to kill her. That was the end for me.”
Richard hasn’t moved since he sat down in the chair, not a muscle, but the detective-what’s his name… Albright?-paces. The cop’s voice and facial features don’t display any emotion, no inflections whatsoever. He sounds like the computer program that they are running to record his blood pressure and pulse, to verify the truth.
How can his blood pressure not be through the roof? But they told him he passed the pretest with flying colors. And they have control questions. It’s all been explained to him. He’s more than willing to go along, whatever it takes to make them believe him.
He’s careful to conceal his anger, to not let it control him. That’s how she won before, driving him to the point of explosive rage.
“Anything to make me look bad,” he continues, trying not to reflect too much on his sister and the memories that are surfacing like monsters from the depths of a lagoon. “When I was a teenager, my parents had me committed to an insane asylum. As bad as it was, it was better than living in the same house with her. Two years later, I was out, but I didn’t go home. I kept in touch with my parents, though. By then they knew the truth about Rachel, but they didn’t send her away. She got shock treatments instead. At least I escaped that.”
Richard’s voice is becoming emotional. He has pent-up anger, but he can’t let them see the rage. The detective leans against the back of a chair, hunches his shoulders forward to stretch his neck muscles. “Go on,” he says.
“When our mother disappeared, I knew Rachel must have killed her. I came back to Phoenix and told the police my suspicions, but I was the one who had been institutionalized, not Rachel. Nothing came of it.
“Some unexplainable force wouldn’t let me leave this city. I hated the house and all its memories, but I couldn’t run away from my past. I bought the building I own now, paid it off as quick as I could. Rachel owned the family home, although she didn’t live in it. We kept our distance from each other.”
“She didn’t bother you?”
“Not really. She had become good at hiding the crazy side. She said she had a therapist and the right medications. I didn’t see her much. Then recently I heard that she had died.”
The detective glances at the technician then back to Richard. “Could you get to the point, please? I understand that your sister did you a huge injustice, but if she’s dead-”
Richard shakes his head. They have to believe me! Otherwise she will have won again. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” he says. “She had different personalities. She could be anybody she wanted to be. She killed that woman in the cemetery and faked her own death. She’s still in Phoenix, but she isn’t Rachel Berringer anymore.”
Another glance between the two men. Richard wants to rip off the polygraph equipment and run away. They aren’t believing his story. He never should have come here.
“Explain,” Albright says.
“Rachel isn’t really dead. I’m telling you the truth. She’s simply taken on a different personality.”
“And what would that personality be?”
Richard leans in closer.
“She’s become someone else, one of our relatives,” he says. “And she will kill again, if we don’t stop her.”
“Give me a name to go on.”
“Julie Wicker,” Richard says.
51
Gretchen unlocked the museum door, disappointed that the police weren’t there to greet them. “I’m going to wait outside,” she said, watching Julie pull a large tote out of the backseat and walk up the sidewalk toward her. The woman carried a ton of stuff. Not that Gretchen should talk. She usually had Nimrod and all his supplies with her.
She felt a pang of loneliness, missing her lovable creatures. Wobbles and Nimrod. What a pair.
“The police told us to wait inside,” Julie said.
“I need fresh air. Don’t worry about me. I’ll stay close by the door.”
“Call me when the police arrive,” Julie said. “I’ve been so busy with the play, I haven’t had time to go through the museum.”
“Sure. Take your time, but watch out for the ghost.” Gretchen tried to make light.
“Ghost?” Julie stopped. “I forgot that the house is supposed to be haunted.”
Gretchen grinned. “That’s what Nina thinks. Remember? She insists that Flora’s spirit is trapped between two worlds, that she has unfinished business on earth and that her spirit needs to be reconnected somehow.”