See How She Dies

  The voice, like the scent of a sachet locked for years in a forgotten drawer, drifted into the room and caused Adria’s heart to skip a beat. The floor seemed to fall away from her feet as a woman stepped into the room. She was small, birdlike, with graying dark hair and plain features, but when her gaze landed on Adria, she stopped stock-still. “No,” she mouthed, but emitted no sound. What little bit of color had been in her face drained quickly away. “Oh, dear God,” she whispered faintly. Recovering slightly, she asked, “Who—who are you?” She forced a detached smile, but her lower lip trembled slightly.

  “Take a guess,” Zach suggested.

  “I don’t know—”

  “Sure you do, Ginny. This is London.”

  Virginia’s eyes darted from one to the other. “London?”

  “London Danvers, the girl you took to Montana to live with Victor and Sharon Nash, the girl you pawned off as your daughter though your own child had been dead for years.”

  “No!” she said, but she licked her lips nervously. “Mrs. Bassett, I don’t know what kind of lies these people have been telling you, but—”

  “The police have been called, Virginia,” Velma said calmly. “If they’re lying—”

  “Oh, Mother Mary!” Her hand flew to her chest, covering heart. “You didn’t—”

  “Why don’t you explain everything,” Zach said, motioning to a chair. “There’s a chance we can work something out.”

  “Oh, my Lord—” she protested, but dropped onto the sofa and gazed out the window to the clouds rolling over the green waters of the bay. Tears collected in the corners of her eyes and ran slowly down her cheeks as her gritty determination gave way to acceptance of what had to be. “I’m so sorry. So, so sorry.”

  “Tell us, Ginny,” Zach said, relentless while Adria’s heart went out to the woman who seemed to have aged twenty years since stepping into the room.

  Velma Bassett stood near the doorway, bracing herself on the painted woodwork as she stared at the nanny she had trusted with her child for over eighteen months.

  “I—I didn’t want to do it,” Ginny said, reaching into her pocket and finding a handkerchief to dab at her face. “But it was so much money.”

  “What was?”

  “I was promised fifty thousand dollars if I would take London away.”

  Adria’s heart twisted painfully.

  “I knew it was wrong, but I couldn’t resist. All I had to do was disappear with the girl.”

  “But why? And who?” Zach demanded.

  “I don’t know.”

  Adria could hold her tongue no longer. “But someone paid you, met with you—”

  “It was all arranged over the telephone. At first I thought it was a joke. Then I got a package. Ten thousand dollars. More money than I’d ever seen in my life, and I was called again, offered another forty thousand dollars. All I had to do was leave town. Five thousand dollars more was sent to a private post offfice, and the rest when I got to Denver. From there I was to head anywhere, to put as much distance between myself and Portland as I could. It was supposed to happen earlier, but London wouldn’t go to bed and we almost didn’t make it. I was so scared, but so desperate. Oh, God, what am I going to do now?”

  “Well, you’re sure as hell not going to take care of my daughter any longer,” Mrs. Bassett said. “I’ll pay you severance pay, whatever it takes, but, believe you me, you’ll not be spending another night in this house!” So enraged she was shaking, she hurried out of the room and the soles of her prim red pumps clacked loudly on the steps as she hurried upstairs. “Chloe? Where are you?”

  Ginny shoved a strand of hair from her face and her fingers quivered. “How did you find me?”

  “It took some time,” Zach admitted.

  Adria leaned closer. “But surely you know who paid you?”

  She shook her head and turned guilt-riddled eyes on Adria. “I don’t have any idea.”

  “Man? Woman?”

  “Really. I don’t know. I never met with anyone and the money was all in cash—small bills.”

  She looked so miserable—her cheeks hollow, her eyes vacant as she dabbed at them—that Adria believed her.

  “Someone paid you off.”

  “Yes.”

  “Someone with a lot of money.”

  She nodded, but Adria got the impression she wasn’t listening, that she was remembering the past and how she’d escaped with someone else’s daughter.

  “You’ll have to talk to the police,” Zach said.

  “I know.”

  “It may not be easy.”

  She turned haunted eyes up at Zach. “It never has been,” she admitted. “For twenty years I’ve looked over my shoulder, expecting this day to come. I knew you were back in Portland, you know,” she added, staring at Adria. “I heard it on the news. Saw your face, listened to your story, knew that you’d be reunited with your family.”

  “You could have run,” Adria said.

  Ginny gave a self-deprecating little snort. “Where to? I really didn’t think you’d find me.” She pushed herself upright. “You look just like her, you know. It’s…well, it’s scary.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “Why didn’t you come forward for the reward?” Zach asked.

  She just stared for a minute. “Because Witt Danvers would have killed me for taking his little girl.” She cleared her throat. “Would you give me a few minutes to get my things?” she asked with a weak smile. “Then I’ll go with you to talk to the police.”

  “Fine,” Adria said.

  “I don’t think we should let her out of our sight,” Zach cut in.

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Danvers,” Ginny said, studying Zachary as if for the first time, trying to picture him as the man who’d grown up from the rebellious son of the richest man in Portland—the hellion who had given his father fits. “It’s time for this to end.”

  She left and walked to a door at the foot of the stairs.

  So, it had come to this, Ginny thought, slowly descending the stairs. Somehow, deep in her heart, she had always known there would be a reckoning, a time when she’d have to admit her complicity in little London’s disappearance. And the money she’d imagined would set her up for life had slowly disappeared.

  She walked into her tiny room and felt weary. She’d hoped to be free of rich people and catering to their whims, looking after children they should have cared for themselves, but as her finances had dwindled, she’d had to return to the only way she knew how to make a living. Even the money she’d received from the Nashes hadn’t saved her. Now, she’d spent most of her adult life being little more than an indentured servant. She surveyed her tiny room with its cheery curtains hung over impossibly small windows and nearly laughed at her own naivety. Fifty thousand. She should have asked for double that or triple. Even then, it might not have been enough. Money had always run through her fingers like water.

  On the floor was a braided rug, a cast-off from her employers. The quilt she’d made herself but it had faded. Like she had.

  She closed her eyes and sank onto the mattress wondering if she should just end it all. To face the police. The press. The Danvers family.

  Unthinkable.

  And yet she knew she didn’t have the heart to take her own life. Not like Katherine Danvers…which seemed impossible. Witt’s second wife was the last woman Ginny would have thought would have committed suicide. She was so full of life, so vibrant.

  But she’d lost her child. Because of you, and you know how that feels, how morose one can get, how depressed.

  Tears burned the back of her eyelids.

  She heard the creak of a footstep and thought it was coming from upstairs. They were waiting. Probably impatient. She should really get her things together, even though she knew she’d end up in jail and her meager belongings would be confiscated.

  She sniffed, a tear sliding from the corner of her eye.

  Again she heard a footstep and it sounded closer…i
n the hallway?

  She decided to pull herself together before Zachary found her down here blubbering like a baby.

  Angry at herself, she ran a hand over her eyes as she opened them. She pulled her suitcase from the top shelf of the closet and opened the bureau drawers. Her stomach felt as tight as a clenched fist as she haphazardly tossed in some of her clothes.

  Prison.

  She shuddered, couldn’t imagine herself there. She blinked again, crying softly, holding back her sobs as she walked into her small bathroom for a tissue. As she dabbed at her eyes, she thought she saw a movement in the reflection of the mirror over the medicine cabinet, as if the shower curtain were fluttering.

  All of the sudden she felt cold and realized the window was open.

  Had she left it that way?

  No…

  Oh, God.

  Through the haze of tears she glimpsed a dark figure just before the curtain was thrown back and her attacker leapt over the edge of the tub.

  She gasped.

  Before she could scream a gloved hand covered her mouth.

  Oh God!

  Her vision cleared.

  She was staring into eyes she recognized.

  Her heart froze.

  Surely this was the person who had paid her off, had warned her never to tell the truth.

  She struggled wildly, adrenaline pumping through her bloodstream. She kicked and scratched and fought but it was too late. She was too weak. She was forced back against the wall, a towel bar gouging her shoulders.

  And then she saw the knife.

  Small.

  Deadly.

  Wicked.

  It gleamed in the dimly lit room.

  No! She fought harder, but she was no match for her attacker, who had a small pillow and shoved it over her face. She tried to drag in air, to scream, to save herself, but it was too late. Her attacker was too strong. Too determined. Her vain efforts at kicking and hitting pitifully feeble.

  Her lungs were on fire.

  Pain blinded her and she struggled frantically.

  But it was no use.

  With a sickening realization, Ginny Slade knew she was about to die.

  “So what do I call you now?” Zach asked as he paced to the window. “Adria? Or London?”

  “Adria,” she said, her throat thick, her eyes misting. This was the first of their good-byes. “I hope to you, I’ll always be Adria.”

  The minutes, recorded by the grandfather clock in the hall, ticked by; outside, the ever-present traffic moved sluggishly up the hill.

  Adria wondered how much longer she had with Zach, how few minutes. Her heart felt as if it were breaking into a thousand pieces as she stared at him. His broad shoulders were rigid, tense with strain; one thumb was hooked through a belt loop and his fingers hung near the faded denim of his fly. His jaw was dark with a beard shadow and his eyes, beneath heavy black brows, were narrowed suspiciously. He shifted from one foot to the other, pretending interest in the view from the bay window before glancing back to the stairwell.

  “Shit, what could be taking so long?”

  “She’s packing her things…” Adria said, but even she was conscious of the time.

  Mrs. Bassett, with a golden-haired child of about seven in tow, clomped down the stairs and hurried back into the room. “I don’t know how I can ever thank you enough,” Mrs. Bassett said, her eyes shifting quickly to the stairwell and back again. “To think that I trusted her with my precious Chloe. Oh, God, it just makes me shudder. I called Harry and he wants to press charges against her for false representation or whatever you call it. He’s phoning our lawyer right now. Oh, dear.” Kissing her child’s crown, she said, “Why don’t you go practice your piano, baby.”

  “Don’t want to,” the girl said churlishly, though her mother was shepherding her toward the upright near the fireplace. Chloe crossed her chubby arms stubbornly in front of her chest.

  “Well…” Wringing her hands, Mrs. Bassett spied the basket of cakes near the tea service. “Here, then, how about a sweet?” She placed the platter in front of the girl. “Oh, my, I’ve completely forgotten my manners. Could I please offer you a cup of tea? The least I could do, you know.”

  “Thanks,” Adria said, but Zachary only shook his head and glowered at the stairwell as if he were afraid Ginny might disappear again.

  Mrs. Bassett frowned suddenly. “I thought you called the police.”

  “We did. They should be here any minute—” Adria said.

  “Is there another way out of the basement?” Zach asked suddenly.

  “Oh, no…well, there’s a coal chute, but it’s been closed for years, and some old cellar stairs, but they’re boarded over. If there were a fire, the windows are large enough—”

  “Christ!” Moving with the speed of a cheetah, he raced out of the parlor, across the foyer, and down the stairs with lightning speed.

  How could he have been so stupid? Vaulting over the rail of the stairs, he landed loudly on the cement floor and felt the cool rush of fresh air before he saw the curtains fluttering noiselessly in the breeze.

  The basement was dark and he walked unerringly to a small, cozy room in a back corner where the bedroom light glowed warmly. “Ginny?” he called, feeling an eerie breeze, the premonition of doom scurrying up the back of his neck.

  Muscles rigid, Zach stepped into the room. A suitcase, lying open, had been thrown on the bed. Clothes dangled from hangers in the open closet. One drawer in a tiny bureau was askew, underwear and nightgowns falling onto the floor. “Ginny?” he called again, but there was still no answer.

  The hairs on the back of his neck raised as he crossed the room and threw open the door to a tiny bathroom. Red splashes were everywhere. Blood stained the walls and splattered the sink and toilet. Ginny Slade was lying on the cracked linoleum. Her tongue hung limply from her mouth, her eyes stared blankly at the ceiling, and her wrists were slashed, blood still oozing from the open wounds. A sharp knife was clenched in her right fist.

  Zach stepped back, recoiling from the room splattered in blood and the sightless eyes that stared up at him. “Call 911!” he yelled up the stairs. “Adria, call the police! We need an ambulance.”

  He heard the thunder of footsteps and turned to find Adria on the landing. “Don’t come down here and for God’s sake keep the kid upstairs!” he ordered.

  “What—” She stared past him to the blood creeping from the bathroom and onto the bedroom carpet. “Oh, God.”

  “It’s Ginny—call 911!”

  “Mrs. Bassett already has.”

  But Zach wasn’t listening. He forced himself to return to search for a pulse, to find some sign of life, but he knew that it was useless. Ginny Slade, the only witness to what had happened to London Danvers all those years ago, was dead.

  24

  “You’re saying she didn’t kill herself?” Adria asked after giving her statement to the police. She was seated in an interrogation room, her chair on one side of an old Formica-topped table, Zach leaning on wainscoting near the door. The room was bare save for the ever-present smell of smoke, an overflowing ashtray, and a trash can half filled with empty plastic coffee cups.

  The man in charge was John Fullmer, an investigator who wore thick glasses and whose one vanity seemed to be to disguise his baldness by combing long, sandy-colored strands of hair from the back of his head forward.

  Fullmer was full of nervous energy. He smoked and chewed gum at the same time, alternately popping his stick of Wrigley’s spearmint and taking a drag from his Camel.

  It had been hours since Zach had discovered Ginny’s body and Adria had believed that Ginny, knowing that she would be exposed as a kidnapper, had decided to end her own life. Fullmer had other ideas.

  Warming her hands around a strong cup of coffee, Adria asked, “But how would someone have known where to find her?”

  “We’re not sure yet, and we don’t like to give out the kind of information that only the killer would know, b
ut there are clues. The window had been forced, so it looks like someone was in the house, waiting for her.” He took off his glasses and polished them with the hem of his shirt. His gum snapped loudly.

  Zach stared at Adria. “It’s because she’s left-handed,” he said flatly. “The knife was in her right hand and she was left-handed. The slashes were angled wrong.”

  The detective’s head snapped up and he stared at Zach, long and hard. “You know that?”

  “I remember.” Zach’s gaze traveled to the center of the room but Adria guessed he was miles away, lost in a time when he was only a boy.

  “How?” Adria asked.

  “Because once…a long time ago when London was still living with us, Ginny had a pair of scissors—used them for mending, I think. She left them out once and I picked them up. I had to open some package and couldn’t find my knife. I tried to use her damned scissors, but they didn’t work. I couldn’t figure it out for a minute, then I discovered they were left-handed. Unique at the time. Ginny caught me and had a fit, told me to leave her things alone.” He shrugged. “We didn’t get along all that well.” His gaze focused on Adria again. “But that’s no surprise.”

  The detective drew on his cigarette, then crushed it in the full tray. “I don’t have an official report on cause of death. We’ll have to wait for the M.E. for that, but there were signs of a struggle—footprints in the blood and the splatter pattern—that suggests she was killed. It looks like someone subdued her, took the knife, wrapped the fingers of her right hand around it and opened her veins. End of story.”

  Adria shuddered and rubbed her arms.

  The detective dumped the ashtray into the trash, before lighting up again.

  They talked for a while more, then were allowed to leave. “Look, we know you two didn’t do old Ginny in,” the detective said, handing them each a card, “but we might have a few more questions…”

  Zach’s eyes met Adria’s. “You can find us through Danvers International, or the Hotel Danvers in Portland,” he said, scribbling the numbers on the back of a business card for his construction company in Bend.