F Paul Wilson - Secret History 02 Page 6

  As she looked over the collection of lotions and creams and powders and scents lined up in the cabinet, arrayed around the sink, and clustered atop the tank lid of the toilet, Kara shook her head in wonder and dismay.

  Look at this!

  From Giorgio there was Red Extraordinary Perfumed Body Moisturizer; from Lancome there was Progres, Savon Fraichette, Savon Creme Exfoliante, and Effacil; Sebastian contributed Hi Contrast Gel, Sheen, and Cello-Shampoo; but Chanel had hit the jackpot: Lotion No. 1, Creme No. 1, Fluide No. 1, Creme Exfoliante, Lift Serum Correction Complex, Lotion Vivifiante, Demaquillant Fluide, Huile Pour Le Bain, Poudre Apres Bain De Luxe, Creme Pour Le Corps No. 5, and of course, the indispensable Mask Lumiere. Something called Summer's Eve Feminine Wash—"the intimate cleanser"—sat on the edge of the tub. The drawers were filled with different shades of eyeliner, eye shadow, lipstick, and make-up.

  Kara never ceased to be amazed at the gullibility of her sex. It seemed to know no bounds. Even the monstrously cynical and endlessly voracious cosmetics industry, despite decades of unrelenting effort, had yet to find its limits. This collection was proof.

  She had long lived with a smoldering anger toward the cosmetics industry for its alluring hype and empty promises of eternal youth and beauty. She had even sold a few articles on the subject—all to feminist magazines, of course. Magazines with no cosmetics advertisers to lose. She had wondered as she was writing them why she bothered. She was, after all, preaching to the converted. But the articles weren't totally useless: they kept her name in print, kept a little cash flowing through her checking account, and gave her credibility as a writer when she'd approached the book publishers. And her articles had been somewhat unique in that her venom hadn't been directed solely at the cosmetics industry. She'd also taken the modern woman to task for allowing herself to be so continually duped.

  She was chagrined to see the extent to which her twin had bought into the Big Lie. And bought was the word! This junk must have cost a small fortune!

  Kara guessed it was a barometer of how well skilled nurses were being paid these days.

  So. There was evidence that Kelly had been moisturizing herself into Nirvana, but nowhere could Kara find a trace of illegal drugs or their paraphernalia—no joints, no unlabeled capsules, no powder-smeared mirrors, no coke spoons, no rolled-up bills, not even a razor blade.

  She had ransacked the bedroom, pulled the living room furniture apart, gone through all the cereal boxes and flour canisters in the kitchen.

  Nothing.

  The closets were racked with Kelly's nurse's uniforms and an array of trendy outfits, some mildly sexy, but nothing blatantly provocative.

  She found a couple of well-used but unlabeled videotapes under the tv. She bit her lip, wondered what was on them. Porn? Maybe even Kelly doing… things?

  Kara glanced at Jill. She was watching The Price is Right. "Jill?" she said. "Can I use the TV for a couple of minutes?"

  "Sure. This is boring. Besides, it exploits women."

  Kara had begun raising Jill's consciousness at an early age. Occasionally she wondered if she'd started Jill too young, or perhaps done too good a job. Sometimes Jill was too aware.

  "The Price is Right?" Kara said, glancing at the screen where an overweight matron was jumping up and down and clapping her hands. "Do you really think so?"

  "It makes all these ladies look dumb. Isn't that exploiting women?"

  "Not really. Those ladies are making themselves look dumb. I think The Price Is Right exploits materialism more than anything else."

  "What's materialism?"

  Kara had a sudden inspiration as to how to get Jill away from the TV set for a few minutes.

  "There's a dictionary over there. Why don't you look it up? Sound it out."

  "Okay."

  As Jill trotted over to the book shelves, Kara slipped the tape into the VCR and started it running. When the opening credits for Desk Set came on, she wanted to cry with relief and nostalgia. Kelly's favorite movie. The second tape was Father of the Bride, another of her favorites.

  She swallowed the lump in her throat and called to Jill.

  "Here's something better than a game show. Watch this instead."

  Kara went back to the bedroom and stripped the bed, then lifted the mattress to see if something was hidden between it and the box spring.

  That was when she found it.

  Not under the mattress. Under the night stand. When she lifted the mattress to look beneath, it slipped off the box spring and struck the night stand, knocking it over along with the lamp atop it.

  And there was the cache.

  Kara had checked the night stand drawers the first time through and had found nothing but old paperback mysteries in them. But she hadn't pulled the bottom drawer all the way out. If she had she would have found this little trove.

  Sleazy underwear here. More Frederick's of Hollywood type stuff—lacy open-front bras and matching slit-crotch panties in scarlet and lavender. The same under the other night stand.

  Feeling slightly queasy, Kara went to the big dresser and pulled the two bottom drawers all the way out and set them on the floor. Laid out in the space under the drawers was an array of slit-sided leather skirts and low-cut blouses.

  As she stared at the tawdry outfits, Kara felt a terrible sadness for her sister.

  What were you looking for, Kelly? What on God's earth did you think was missing from your life that you had to go looking for it dressed up in this… this shit!

  The sadness gave rise to anger. Why hadn't Kelly come to her if she was having a problem? Didn't she think she could rely on her own twin? Why hadn't Kelly sought her out instead of pulling away?

  Or had she pulled away because of the problem?

  Kara stood up and scanned the ransacked bedroom. Maybe she'd never know. But there had to be a reason Kelly would buy these tramp outfits and hide them—

  Wait a minute.

  Hide them? Why on earth would Kelly hide her trashy clothes under her dresser and night stand?

  Kelly lived alone.

  This didn't make any sense at all. Kara had been through all the closets, all the drawers. Everything belonged to Kelly. Nobody else was living here. Just Kelly.

  From whom was Kelly hiding these clothes?

  ▼

  It was around lunch time then, and Jill was hungry. Kara cooked up a packet of Upton's chicken noddle soup she found in one of the kitchen cabinets and she and Jill settled down to a couple of bowls with some Ritz crackers. Kara wasn't in the mood for anything heavier.

  Afterwards, she pulled Rob's card from her purse. This was as good a time as any to give him a call.

  On the third ring, he answered with, "Harris."

  "Rob? It's Kara Wade."

  "Wh—? Kara? Hello! Good to hear from you. Everything okay down there?"

  Down there. He thought she was in Pennsylvania. Good. Let him go on thinking that. If he knew she was here in the city he'd want to get together with her for dinner or the like and Kara didn't think that was such a good idea. Not with Jill along.

  "As well as can be expected."

  "The funeral…?"

  "Bad. But it could have been worse. Thank you for the flowers."

  "I'd have come—"

  "The flowers were enough." Kara paused, almost afraid to ask the question because she already knew the answer. "Have you caught them yet?"

  "No." She could hear the frustration in his sigh. "No, we haven't."

  "I didn't think so."

  "Don't start that again, Kara. It's not fair."

  "It isn't?" She felt her own frustration ballooning within her. "If she'd been Ivana Trump you'd sure as hell have somebody in custody by now!"

  "I don't know about that, Kara."

  "You said you had a description of the two men and a set of fingerprints! That was five days ago!"

  "Right. But the two men described were not regulars at the bar, and they haven't been back since. And the fingerprints w
ere no help at all."

  "Why not?"

  "They don't match anywhere. Which is not surprising."

  "Why isn't it?"

  "Well, it goes along with the pick-up theory. I mean, if Kelly picked these two guys at random from the Oak Room Bar crowd, it's very possible that they don't have criminal records. And if they don't have criminal records—or haven't applied for a gun permit or a security-sensitive job—then their prints are probably not on record here or with the Feds."

  "And so you won't be able to match them anywhere."

  "Right."

  She felt the anger rising again. She wanted to scream but kept her voice level, for Jill's sake.

  "So you're no closer to finding Kelly's murderers now than you were on Thursday."

  "I'm afraid that's right, Kara." Rob paused, then said, "I'm afraid we can't even say for sure it was murder."

  "What?" Kara didn't want to believe what she was hearing.

  "Just hear me out," he said quickly. "Forensics says there's, no sign of a struggle in the room. And they can't say for sure whether the two guys she picked up downstairs were even in the room at the time she went out the window."

  Kara felt as if she were turning to ice.

  "Are they saying Kelly jumped?"

  "No. Not in so many words. They're saying there's nothing to support the idea that she was pushed. And the M.E. backs them up. He says she wasn't beaten, and that if she was thrown out the window, she didn't struggle—no broken fingernails, no skin under the nails, no bruises on her palms. And witnesses there say she screamed on the way down, so we know she was conscious."

  "Kelly wouldn't kill herself," said Kara, although she knew her voice didn't exactly ring with conviction.

  After what she'd found this morning, she was no longer completely sure about anything concerning her twin. However, there was most of a bottle of sleeping pills in the bedroom. If she had wanted to kill herself, why hadn't she taken them?

  "We've talked to a lot of her co-workers at St. Vincent's. The ones who knew her best seem to think she was very troubled lately. Even a little depressed."

  Kara thought about that. In retrospect, she could see that there had indeed been a change in Kelly over the past year. Nothing terribly obvious. She hadn't called anywhere near as often, and she had seemed a bit withdrawn on the few occasions they had seen each other. But suicidal…?

  If there was something so terribly wrong, why didn't she come to me?

  Kara was suddenly feeling pretty depressed herself.

  "Does this mean Kelly's going to be written off as a crazy bimbo who threw herself through a hotel window?"

  "No," he said slowly. "Not by a long shot. That doesn't sit well with me."

  Her spirits rose a tiny bit.

  "Why not?"

  "Kelly had to hit that window with tremendous force to go through it the way she did. Jumpers just don't do it that way. They open the window, step out on the ledge, and go. They don't do what Kelly did. Besides, I used her purse keys and did a quick search of her apartment the day after her death. I didn't find a suicide note or anything like it."

  Kara looked around. Maybe that explained some of the uncharacteristic disarray she'd noticed during her own search.

  "So we're back to murder," she said.

  "I don't know where we are, Kara," Rob said. His voice was tired. "But I promise you: I'll keep this case open as long as they let me."

  "Thank you, Rob." She believed him. "Can I call you again on this?"

  "Call me any time. You know that."

  "Thanks."

  Kara hung up and stared across the room at the pile of papers she had pulled from one of the closets. She was going to go through everything there until she found an answer.

  Kelly a suicide? No way.

  "Was that Aunt Ellen of the phone?" Jill said.

  Kara suddenly had an insane urge to tell her the truth. No, bug. That was your father.

  "Just a policeman."

  She looked at Jill. She so resembled Rob. The idea of Jill and Rob being in the same city was almost unnerving. If they ran into each other, there was no way he could miss the resemblance. And then he would know that he had a daughter.

  Rob was a good man. Seeing him again had released an almost overwhelming attack of guilt. She never should have kept her pregnancy a secret from him. She saw that now, but at the time it seemed the only thing to do. Nothing was going to deter her from having the baby, and nothing was going to convince her to raise the child in the city. And there was no way Rob was going to leave the city willingly. She could have used the pregnancy to coerce him into quitting the NYPD and moving to the suburbs, but what kind of marriage, what kind of life would that have been? He would have felt like a prisoner, or a hostage. He would have come to resent Kara, maybe even resent his child. The result would have been intolerable for the three of them.

  So Kara had done the hardest thing she had ever done in her life. She left the man she loved and returned home to have her child and raise her by herself. The idea had shocked, offended, and embarrassed her mother, and even Kelly had thought she was crazy, but they'd all stood by her just the same. For awhile the farm had been a war zone… until Jill was born. Jill brought them all together again.

  It hadn't been easy raising a child on her own, but Kara had managed. She'd done it away from the city where they were safe, where she could instill in Jill the values she thought important. She was proud of the result. Jill was her own little person and Kara loved her more fiercely than she had ever believed she could love anything.

  But did she need a father? That had plagued Kara for the past ten years. Soon the vague questions Jill had asked about the father she had never seen were going to become more pointed. Vague answers would no longer suffice. What was Kara going to do then?

  And Rob. Kara realized she still cared very deeply for him. He had a right to know he had a daughter, just as Jill had a right to know her father.

  What had seemed so simple, so clear, so cut and dried, so black and white ten years ago was now a mass of confusion. A mess. One she would have to straighten out someday.

  Someday, Kara thought. Someday she'd get them together, and pray that they'd both forgive her.

  ▼

  5:45 P.M.

  "Aren't we going to Aunt Ellen's now?" Jill said. She was getting whiny, which meant she was hungry.

  "After dinner."

  "Where are we going to eat?"

  "Anyplace close where we don't have to wait," Kara said as she stood inside Kelly's door and helped Jill into her coat. On the way in they'd passed someplace called Pancho Villa a couple of blocks down on First Avenue. "How's Mexican food sound?"

  "What's that?"

  "Tacos and stuff. We had tacos once, remember?"

  "I think so. Are you mad, Mom?"

  The question caught Kara by surprise.

  "No, Jill." She smiled for her. "At least I don't think I am. Why?"

  "You've got a mad face."

  "Do I?" Yes, she thought, I probably do. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to. Actually, I'm not mad. Just frustrated. And it's got nothing to do with you."

  "What's frustrated?"

  "Let me see. Imagine you're paddling a canoe in a river and you want to get to a certain spot on shore but the current keeps pulling you away. And no matter how hard you paddle, you can't get to shore. As a matter of fact, the current keeps pulling you further and further away. How would you feel?"

  "I'd feel scared."

  Kara laughed and hugged her daughter. "I guess you would!"

  And maybe I'm scared, too.

  Scared because she couldn't get a handle on what had been happening in her twin's life. Kelly had become an enigma. Kara had more questions about her now than before. Except for the hidden clothing, everything Kara had found was so damned ordinary. She had spent much of the afternoon going through Kelly's papers. Her sister, it seemed, was a scrupulous record keeper. Kara had found a copy of her apartment lease, the wa
rranties and instruction manuals on all her appliances, and a shoebox crammed with receipts for what looked like every single purchase she had made last year. Kelly, it appeared, was preparing to do her taxes. But nowhere was there a single receipt for the sexy clothes Kara had found.