Last Whisper (15 page)

He took a deep breath and told himself to calm down. Why was he getting so worked up over this woman anyway? Was it because his parents had been so fond of her they’d thought of adopting her? Maybe
they’d
been fond of her, but he’d never even seen her except for the old photograph his mother had taken and a couple of grainy newspaper photos of the little girl involved in “The Rose Murder.” Was his
overconcern for her because she was so pretty? Hell, California was full of pretty girls. He’d certainly dated his share. Beautiful women. Sexy women. He’d come close to marrying twice. He was now glad neither of those engagements had ended in an actual ceremony, but the ex-fiancées had been glamorous, sophisticated women. Women who were savvy and worldly-wise, not ingenuous, inexperienced young ladies like Brooke Yeager, who obviously thought she was a superhero or something equally absurd.

That kind of thinking was going to get her killed, Vincent thought with conviction. And for some reason he couldn’t fathom right now, he knew if that happened, he wouldn’t be able to forgive himself for letting her go back to that apartment house.

Even if she
was
a reckless fool.

The alarm clock went off like an air-raid siren. Elise burst into a volley of startled barking and Brooke, hanging on the edge of the bed, rolled facedown on the floor.

“Good grief,” she moaned, touching her nose to make sure it wasn’t broken. Luckily, it wasn’t, but she knew she’d hit hard enough to cause some darkening around her eyes. “People will think you beat me up in the night,” she told Elise, who’d jumped down to lick her cheek. “I’m okay, baby,” she told the dog, then looked up at the clock. Six
A.M
. Why was she up so early?

Greta. The memory of her grandmother’s stroke washed over her. Grossmutter could have died between the time Brook left the hospital last night and now. She could have died, alone, while Brooke slept.

Shaken by the thought, she headed for the phone. A call to the nurses’ station on Greta’s floor assured her that her grandmother was alive, but the nurse refused to give details about the woman’s condition. “That’s up to the doctor,” she
said crisply. “He makes rounds between nine and eleven in the mornings. You’ll have to come in and wait for him.”

Brooke hung up the phone and groaned. All she knew was that her grandmother was alive, not whether she was better or worse. The hospital staff acted like the woman’s condition was a state secret, to be kept even from her own granddaughter. But Brooke knew getting frustrated over stupid rules was useless. She would simply go to the hospital and be waiting for the doctor when he drifted in between nine and eleven. If he didn’t show up until late afternoon, she would still be waiting.

Brooke passed down the long hospital corridor to her grandmother’s room. She was glad she’d thrown on a light sweater. Even though it was in the midseventies outside, the hospital thermostat seemed to be set on sixty degrees. Over the years, Greta had spent a lot of time in hospitals, so Brooke had known what to expect.

Behind her walked one of the policemen charged with her surveillance. Brooke wished he would walk
with
her, but he insisted on marching along at least two steps behind, constantly looking left and right, like a Secret Service man guarding the president. He made Brooke feel conspicuous and silly.

Greta lay still as a corpse in her sun-washed room. Oddly enough, Brooke would have been reassured by seeing tubes and monitors attached to her grandmother. Brooke knew the sight would have given her the feeling the equipment was helping sustain Greta’s life. But the woman had experienced a stroke, not a heart attack. She didn’t need the impressive paraphernalia. Brooke had learned this when her grandmother had suffered her last two strokes over a period of fifteen months.

Brooke leaned over the bed and kissed her grandmother’s cool forehead. Greta’s skin looked and felt like white clay. Brooke’s heart seemed to jump when Greta’s blue eye snapped open. The woman blinked rapidly three times before she apparently recognized Brooke. “Hello, Grossmutter,” Brooke said, forcing a smile at the frail woman on the
bed. “I’ve been up for ages, but I had to wait for visiting hours before I could come and see you.”

“Eyes,” Greta said in a dry, raw voice. “You . . . eyes.”

“Eyes?
My
eyes?” Brooke remembered her tumble out of the bed. “I fell out of bed this morning like I always did when I was a kid. No one hurt me. My eyes are just darkened by the fall. I meant to put on concealer, but I forgot. The shadows will fade by tomorrow. Thank goodness I didn’t break my nose like I did when I was thirteen!”

“B-blue eyes. Like mother.”

“Yes, my eyes are the same color as Mom’s. Daddy’s were darker.” A tear ran down Greta’s cheek. Brooke pulled a tissue from her pocket. “ ‘Thistle-colored eyes.’ That’s what color Daddy always said Mom’s eyes were,” she said as she dabbed the tear away from Greta’s dry skin. She pulled her chair closer to Greta’s bed, then removed a small bottle of lotion from her purse and began gently applying it around Greta’s cheeks and forehead. “Mom always said her eyes were Dutch iris. She thought that sounded prettier.”

“Remember,” Greta said almost clearly.

Brooke finished with the lotion, put some lip balm on her grandmother’s wrinkled lips. “Do you need another blanket?” she asked, taking Greta’s hand.

Greta shook her head and squeezed Brooke’s hand. “Z-zhack. Find him?”

“Not yet, but they will soon. He was wounded the other night. He’s likely to get treatment. Every hospital, clinic, and private practice in the area has been alerted about him. He can’t stay on the loose much longer.”

The right side of Greta’s mouth quirked. Brooke hoped it was her attempt at a smile. She continued to hold her grandmother’s hand and chattered about everyday things for half an hour. Then she couldn’t resist asking, “Grossmutter, are you
sure
you saw Zach in your room at White Willows? I don’t mean to doubt you, but the police seem to think it was impossible for him to have been there. I wondered if maybe after you’ve had more time to think about it, you realized you’d seen an orderly or a janitor or—”

Before she could finish, Greta squeezed her hand with tremendous force, given her condition. She wrenched the right side of her face into a grimace. “N-
no
! Zhack!”

Brooke squeezed her grandmother’s hand in return. “You’re
sure
.”

“Y-yes.” Greta’s right eyebrow drew toward the middle of her forehead. “M-ole.”

“Mole?”

“M-mole. His mo-mouf.”

“A mole near his mouth?” Brooke looked away from Greta at the window. Suddenly, Zach’s face flashed in front of her. Zach Tavell had a small mole beside his mouth. Through the years, Brooke had completely forgotten it.

She leaned over her grandmother. “The man who came into your room had a mole?” Greta blinked rapidly. She might remember a mole even if I didn’t, Brooke thought. But is that all she remembered? Brooke pointed her finger at the upper left side of her own mouth. “It was
here
.”

Greta grimaced again. “N-no.” Slowly, she raised her right arm and, after several jerking attempts, put her finger on the lower right side of her mouth—exactly where Zach’s mole had been.

The doctor seemed convinced Greta hadn’t seen Zach Tavell. He’d spoken of her altered thought processes, but for someone with impaired thinking processes, Brooke thought grimly, Greta certainly had an amazing memory.

An hour later, Brooke entered the beautifully maintained grounds of White Willows Nursing Home. As she drove over the curved driveway leading up to the main building, she looked around at the perfectly kept beds of pansies, petunias, marigolds, and impatiens.

In the middle of the grounds spread a large pond full of ducks, many of them the common white ducks, quite a few the vividly colored wood ducks and the male mallards with their beautiful emerald heads. And everywhere were white willows, for which the nursing home had been named. The few people Brooke had brought to the nursing home to visit
Greta, such as Stacy and Jay, had commented on the beauty of the willows in summer. They’d been surprised when Brooke told them that salicin used in aspirin was derived from the bark of the willow. Stacy had actually laughed about the wit of the founder who’d named the nursing home after the tree that supplied ingredients for one of the most common drugs used in the place.

After Brooke left the hospital, she’d decided to stop by the nursing home to speak to Mrs. Camp, the nurse who always seemed to pay the most attention to Greta and the one who might know more about the possible entrance of Zach Tavell into Greta’s room than anyone else. After all, it was Mrs. Camp who had been on duty and called Brooke when Greta had the stroke.

Brooke entered the double doors and stood for a moment in the sunny foyer. To her right spread a large room filled with furniture covered in vinyl that looked remarkably like leather sitting on thick blue carpet. A bay window allowed sun to spill over well-tended plants, a white brick-faced fireplace, and a rack filled with recent magazines from
Vogue
to
Field & Stream
. A number of elderly people sat around talking with friends and family. In the corner, two men who looked to be in their late eighties hunched close to a television, squabbling about whether to watch the news or a game show with a sexy hostess.

Two administrative offices with doors closed sat on Brooke’s left, and straight ahead stretched the long admittance desk. She approached it to see four people talking while they worked on forms and answered phones. A young brown-eyed woman looked up at her.

“Hi,” she said, beaming. “May I help you?”

“You’re new,” Brooke blurted, suddenly suspicious of any employees who were unfamiliar.

The young woman looked slightly taken aback but said smoothly, “Yes. I’m Miss Johnson. Rhonda. I just started yesterday.”

“Oh. Well, I was looking for—”

She broke off when Mrs. Camp walked up behind Rhonda,
looking concerned. “Hello, Miss Yeager. Were you looking for me?” Brooke nodded. “How is your grandmother?”

“Holding her own so far. May I speak with you privately, or are you too busy?”

Mrs. Camp smiled. “Lucky for you, I’m on my lunch break. Let’s go to the cafeteria for some of their elegant cuisine.”

Fifteen minutes later, Brooke sat in the incredibly loud cafeteria with a piece of overcooked fish, peas as hard as BB pellets, and a cup of tapioca in front of her. “They give the good food to the patients and save the dregs for the staff,” Mrs. Camp said, the wrinkles around her hazel eyes deepening as she laughed. During the four years Greta had been in the nursing home, Brooke had never seen a drop of makeup on Mrs. Camp’s middle-aged face or a sign that she’d done anything except wash her curly salt-and-pepper hair. Her hands looked dry and reddened, as if they’d been scrubbed a dozen times a day for years.

The first thing Mrs. Camp wanted to know was everything the doctor had said about Greta’s condition. Brooke repeated it all as accurately as possible. “Her left side is paralyzed,” she added. “Do you think there’s a chance the paralysis could improve?”

She couldn’t help noting how absorbed Mrs. Camp became in chasing one of her peas to the edge of the plate. “There’s always a chance,” the nurse said. “After spending over twenty years in this field, I’ve learned there are few absolutes in medicine.”

Brooke waited for the woman to meet her gaze. After ten seconds, she said, “Mrs. Camp, I’m not a great believer in miracles. I have a feeling you aren’t, either, no matter what you say to the families of the sick people. All I’m asking for is
your
opinion, not a pronouncement carved in stone.”

Mrs. Camp dallied with her tapioca, then finally looked at her. “I think Greta is reaching the end, Brooke. You should prepare yourself, not over the next year, and not over the next few months.”

“Over the next few weeks.”

“Yes.” Mrs. Camp hesitated. “Or sooner.”

“Days.”

The woman nodded, then added, “But I could be wrong. I don’t have all the answers. I can’t predict—”

“She’s going to die within days.” Brooke’s voice was dull with hopelessness. “You really didn’t have to tell me. I felt it. I
knew
it—” She placed her hand over her heart. “I knew it here.”

Mrs. Camp seemed to retreat behind her hazel eyes as if she was searching for something comforting to say.

“Don’t feel bad,” Brooke uttered. “I didn’t come here for reassurance about my grandmother’s health that you can’t possibly give. I came to question you about what caused her stroke. Or rather,
who
caused it.”

Mrs. Camp’s expression morphed from guarded to shocked. “
Who
caused it? You think someone at White Willows did something to throw your grandmother into a stroke?”

“Not someone from White Willows.” Brooke ran the tip of her tongue over her suddenly dry lips. “You know my family history. You know about my mother’s murder, my testimony at my stepfather’s trial, his life sentence—”

Mrs. Camp reached across the table and patted Brooke on the arm. It was then Brooke realized her voice had begun to tremble.

“I know all about it, dear. You don’t need to go into details.”

“Do you know that my stepfather, Zachary Tavell, has escaped from Mount Olive Correctional Center and come to Charleston?”

“I knew he broke out and came to Charleston—it’s been on the news, although I made certain Greta never saw any of the newscasts and that no one mentioned Tavell’s escape to her—but I didn’t think he’d
stay
here. There must be a massive police hunt for him. It seems he’d want to get as far away from Charleston as possible.”

“There is a police search, but they don’t think Zach has left Charleston. He was wounded when he tried to get to me at a friend’s house night before last, but he still escaped and he hasn’t shown up for medical treatment. Apparently he’s not
only elusive; he has a strong physical constitution,” Brooke said sourly. “Yesterday, he used a Charleston florist to send me a flower. A white rose. He gave my mother white roses. She died with her blood spilled all over a dozen of them. That’s why the case became known as ‘The Rose Murder.’ ”