The Good Sister Page 24

  They exchange a glance, and the troubled expression her mother was wearing at the door settles over her features once again.

  “We didn’t mean to barge in,” her father says.

  “We thought you’d want to know, though.”

  “Know what?” So this isn’t about Frankie being in town after all, or about the feast preparation.

  “We were on our way to church earlier when we saw a commotion over on Dogwood Street. Police cars, flashing lights. Then after Mass, we went to Tim Horton’s for coffee—we do that every morning,” her mother breaks off to explain for Marie’s benefit. “A big group of us. Now that we’re all retired, we can do that.”

  Marie nods politely.

  “So what happened?” Jen prods, trying to recall whether she knows anyone who still lives on Dogwood in the old neighborhood, not far from Sacred Sisters. “Was it a fire?”

  “No, not a fire. Joe Dinella—do you remember Mr. Dinella, Genevieve? He was in the Knights of Columbus with Dad years ago.”

  “Something happened to Mr. Dinella?” she asks, feeling a twinge of guilt over her immediate sense of relief. Based on her mother’s expression, she’d been expecting to hear news of a tragedy.

  Nothing against Joe Dinella, but he must be in his late eighties, early nineties, even. Maybe he had a fall and had to be taken to the hospital, or maybe he even died in his sleep. That would be sad, but hardly tragic.

  “No, no, Joe is fine. But he lives on Dogwood, next door to the house where we saw all that commotion, and he told us what happened.”

  “What happened?” Jen asks yet again, jaw clenching.

  “The woman who lives there—her name is Susan Morino.”

  Morino.

  Okay.

  There are a lot of Morinos in Buffalo . . .

  “I know her,” Marie speaks up. “She’s Michael Morino’s ex-wife.”

  His ex-wife? Jen had assumed, based on the wedding ring he’d been wearing, that he was married.

  See? Maybe you were being too hard on him after all.

  No—because Debbie is married. Is it any less sinful to fool around with another man’s wife than it is to cheat on your own?

  “Genevieve went with Mike for years when they were in school,” her mother is telling Marie. “That’s why I thought she’d want to know . . .”

  “Know what? Did something happen to his wife, Mom?”

  Ex-wife. Ex.

  Theresa shakes her head. “No, not to her. They have a daughter . . .”

  Yes. Taylor.

  A chill creeps over Jen as she remembers her conversation with Mike that day at the funeral home, remembers the photo he pulled from his wallet, remembers the smell of Stargazer lilies filling her lungs every time she took a breath, filling her head with memories she’s tried to bury for almost three decades . . .

  “Taylor. Her name is Taylor.” Marie touches, clutches, Mom’s arm. “Did something happen to her?”

  “I’m so sorry. You knew her?”

  Past tense. Oh, God.

  “What happened?” Marie’s question is taut with dread.

  “She . . . died.”

  Her mother’s shocking words slam into Jen, taking her breath away.

  Died—“died” is the wrong word.

  Seventeen-year-old girls don’t just die.

  Not like little old men who might close their eyes one night and never wake up.

  High school girls don’t die without warning, without being sick . . .

  How do you know she wasn’t sick?

  Because Mike didn’t mention it?

  Why would he share something like that with you?

  Maybe that’s why he’s been there for Debbie. Maybe he knew he would soon be facing a terrible loss himself.

  Awash in self-loathing, Jen remembers all the terrible things she’s been thinking, and yes, now even saying, about Mike.

  You don’t judge a grieving parent.

  You don’t—

  “Her mother came home from working the night shift and found her,” Theresa Bonafacio reports gravely. “It’s a terrible coincidence. She killed herself, just like Nicki Olivera.”

  Stunned, Jen presses her hands against her mouth.

  Humming a made-up tune, Angel cracks a second egg into the cast-iron skillet on the stove and tilts the pan to spread the white a little. A pair of fried eggs, sunny side up, will hit the spot after all the strenuous activity of the early morning hours.

  It was unearthing the buried freezer that took up most of the energy—not what happened afterward, with Taylor. She didn’t even put up much of a fight. One look at the gun pointed at her, and that was it. She’d have done anything. Anything at all.

  She didn’t have to do much, though.

  Just walk calmly and quietly to her bedroom with the gun poking into the small of her back. It was gratifying to see the bouquet of vibrant pink lilies displayed on her bedside table.

  “I see you got my flowers.”

  She made a small whimpering sound.

  “What’s that? You didn’t know they were from me? Who’d you think they were from? Your dear old dad? Well, I guess I don’t blame you. It wouldn’t be the first time he sent someone a bouquet of Stargazers. Oh, that’s right—you don’t know about that.”

  Taylor sat on a chair as directed, her back to Angel. It was easy, from there, to slip the noose around her neck and tighten it in one swift motion.

  It took a long time for Taylor Morino to die, though.

  She strangled slowly, her polished fingernails clutching at the noose and her heeled boots kicking until they toppled a lamp, shattering the light bulb on the hardwoods.

  “Now look what you’ve done,” Angel chided, still holding on tightly to the noose. “I’m going to have to clean that up when this is over. I should make you do it. Oh, wait—you can’t, because you’ll be dead.”

  Angel found that hilarious for some reason, and almost lost hold of the rope thanks to a slaphappy burst of laughter. Almost, but not quite, thanks to a thick pair of work gloves meant to prevent rope burns—and fingerprints.

  At last, Taylor’s body went still. Only when a full minute, maybe two, passed without writhing or kicking or even twitching, did Angel finally let go of the noose.

  Then it was time to remove Taylor’s clothing from the closet. It had sturdy double bars, the top one too high to reach without standing on something. That would serve the purpose nicely. Angel heaped piles of dresses, shirts, and jackets, all on their hangers and some wrapped in plastic, on the bed and floor. Some items were familiar, from pictures Taylor had posted on her Peeps page: the slinky black dress she’d worn at her homecoming dance, the red velvet sheath she’d had on when she posed in front of a Christmas tree, and a sequined gown with price tags still on it, presumably purchased for the Spring Fling dance.

  Then there were the school uniforms she’d worn every weekday, unaware that her friend “Rachel” was right there, watching her, waiting . . .

  Now the waiting had finally come to an end. It was over.

  Angel dragged Taylor’s lifeless body over to the closet, threw the rope over the top bar, and strung her up until her corpse swayed gently, black heeled boots dangling a foot above the floor. Then came the chair, set into position beneath the girl, then toppled with a hard kick.

  Trading the work gloves for thin latex gloves, Angel turned to Taylor’s laptop, still open on the desk. She was still logged into her Peopleportal page, which made it a breeze to delete every trace of Rachel Riley, including the private messages exchanged less than an hour ago.

  Then, in Taylor’s status box, Angel swiftly typed a quote memorized solely for this occasion: Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it.

  The words had been spoken by the character Albus Dumbled
ore in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

  The entire hardcover series was neatly lined up in the bookcase beside Taylor’s bed, right where Angel had seen it on an early visit to the house when no one was home.

  With gloved fingers, Angel plucked the fourth dog-eared volume from the shelf, found the page with the quote, and folded the corner down. The book went back into the row with the others, but pulled slightly forward, as though someone—Taylor—had recently been rereading it.

  Then it was time for the other book—the one Angel had bought, kept on the closet shelf, and brought to the house.

  It took a few moments to figure out the best place to leave it: somewhere unobtrusive, where it would appear as though Taylor herself had been reading it and set it down.

  The bedside table was too obvious, under the pillow too stagey, the desk too similar to where it had been left in Nicki’s room.

  Angel finally looked at the bookshelf again, finding it too full to fit another hardcover vertically among the others. But the volume fit sideways, right on top of the row of Harry Potter books.

  The final step was to insert the memory stick and upload the letter that had been painstakingly written and rewritten, just like the one Angel planted in Nicki’s laptop.

  Nicki’s suicide note had blamed her mother for what she was about to do.

  Taylor’s note blames her father.

  But both make reference to the sinful affair between Mike Morino and Debbie Quattrone Olivera. Both were created with one explicit purpose: to fill the surviving parents with shame and guilt for the rest of their days.

  After ejecting and pocketing the memory stick, Angel left the laptop open to the document and looked in the utility closet for a broom, an empty plastic shopping bag, and a new light bulb. The lamp was righted with the bulb screwed into place; the broken shards were swept into the bag. On the way home, Angel tossed the bag into a Dumpster in the parking lot behind the dry cleaner on Redbud Street, the same place where the other household garbage has been deposited—not that there’s ever been much.

  And that was it.

  So simple.

  All told, it had been a satisfying night.

  Rather, morning.

  And now it’s time for a good hot breakfast, eaten in civilized fashion, not squatting on the kitchen linoleum, but rather, perched on the built-in seat beneath drawn shades that cover the dining room’s bay windows.

  In a house cleared of furniture, one learns to improvise.

  Still humming, Angel opens a drawer to find a couple of paper packets of salt and a plastic fork among the seasonings and utensils collected and hoarded over many months of consuming fast food. It would be nice to cook in a well-equipped kitchen for a change, rather than making do with odds and ends here or dining yet again on McDonald’s, Chinese, or prepackaged crap from 7-Eleven.

  After plucking a couple of salt packets from the litter of takeout ketchup and soy sauce, Angel rummages through the spoons and knives looking for a fork. There’s one wedged in the back of the drawer, but it snaps in half when Angel tries to pull it out, and—

  A memory barges in.

  On that last day, when they did the walk-through, Sandra Lutz didn’t hand over just the marble notebook wrapped in rosary beads. There was a plastic bag, too, filled with odds and ends. One was a tarnished, bent fork that had been left behind in a kitchen drawer.

  Another was a key, forgotten on a high nail by the cellar door.

  Forgotten . . . or hidden?

  Angel takes the stairs two at a time and hurries down the wide second-floor hallway to the back bedroom where the bag is stashed, along with the journal.

  Yes. There it is.

  Key in hand, Angel bolts back down the stairs, races through the first floor, opens the basement door, and flips the wall switch without thinking.

  Halfway down the creaky flight, the realization hits: You turned on the light!

  A serious violation of Angel’s foremost rule, and yet, it’s broad daylight outside, and this is merely a basement light.

  There are only a few windows there anyway, narrow, low to the ground, recessed in little alcoves built into the foundation. In the front of the house, they’re completely shrouded by dense shrubbery. In the back, they’re more visible, but the backyard is private, and you’d have to be standing right there, on ground level, to even see the basement windows in the first place.

  Still, Angel doesn’t like to take chances. The smart thing to do would be to turn off the light, go back upstairs, and find a flashlight, and yet . . .

  I’ve been patient long enough.

  The gaping hole awaits, and the key to the lock—the key to the past—might be in hand at long last. Besides, this won’t take long at all. Either the key won’t fit the lock, or it will.

  If it does, Angel decides, I’ll go back for a flashlight before I do anything else. But I just need to know. Now.

  Fingering the key, Angel crosses the dirt floor and kneels, reaching down, down, down to the padlock holding the old freezer chest closed.

  It might not fit.

  It probably won’t fit.

  But . . .

  It does.

  The bolt springs free and the lock falls away, dropping into the depths of the hole. Angel’s intention to go back for a flashlight vanishes in an instant.

  I have to see inside the freezer. Now.

  Are you sure you want to know what’s there?

  I already know. I just have to see for myself. For . . . for her sake.

  Angel leans forward and takes hold of the edge of the freezer lid, tugging it upward . . .

  All at once, a deafening, high-pitched sound blasts from the first floor.

  What the—?

  It’s the smoke alarm.

  The eggs—the eggs are on the stove burner, undoubtedly scorched by now.

  Sandra Lutz’s voice rises above the screeching alarm, filling Angel’s head

  . . . airtight and watertight, perfect for keeping out insects and dampness . . .

  Angel glances toward the stairway. Someone is going to hear that piercing sound, even with all the windows closed.

  Hurry! Get upstairs and turn it off!

  I will, but first—

  This can wait a few more minutes! It’s been buried down here for almost thirty years.

  Buried down here in the murky basement. . . . buried in the darkest corner of Angel’s brain. Buried long enough.

  Angel gives the lid a mighty, final tug, and this time, it opens.

  Putrid air spills forth.

  The light from the overhead bulb fails to permeate the freezer’s depths, making it impossible for Angel to see her. But she’s there.

  Been there all these years, all along.

  “Oh, Ruthie . . . Ruthie . . .”

  Leash in hand, Al Witkowski frowns, looking down at his puppy.

  One moment they were walking briskly along Redbud Street, and the next, Roscoe stopped in his tracks and started whimpering.

  “What’s the matter, boy? Did you step on something? Here, let me take a look.”

  Al crouches beside the dog and begins lifting his paws, looking for embedded broken glass or sharp bits of metal, finding nothing.

  But something is clearly bothering Roscoe. He only whines like this when he’s in pain.

  Stumped, Al tugs on the leash. “Come on, boy. Even I’m not hurting yet, and I’m in worse shape than you are. It’s only been two blocks and we’re almost home.”

  Roscoe digs in his paws, head tilted, looking toward the dry cleaner a few doors down.

  “We’re almost there, Roscoe. Let’s get home. I have a job to get to.”

  Still the dog refuses to budge. Frustrated, Al bends over and picks him up. “Fine. If you can’t walk, I’ll carry you.�
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  He strides on down the block with the dog squirming in his arms. He might have to take his morning walks without the puppy from now on, if this is how it’s going to—

  Al stops short a few steps away from the building.

  There’s a faint, high-pitched tone coming from somewhere.

  “Is that what it is, boy? Is that sound hurting you?”

  It must be. Dogs’ ears are much more sensitive than humans’. Poor guy.

  What the hell is that sound? A shrill electronic hum, it seems to be coming from out back somewhere.

  He quickly puts the dog back inside, then heads out to investigate, walking up the rutted drive alongside the building. The rutted parking lot looks the same as always: empty, except for a couple of Dumpsters.

  The high-pitched buzz seems to be coming from the field behind the parking lot . . . or maybe, Al realizes, from the block beyond. He begins picking his way through the weeds, then remembers the figure he thought he glimpsed in this very spot a few nights ago.

  A ghost? he wondered at the time. Sandra’s ghost?

  In broad daylight, the idea is almost laughable. Almost.

  The sound does seem to be coming from the gloomy, abandoned Victorian he can see through the trees. And now that he’s closer to it, he recognizes it as the distinctive peal of a smoke alarm.

  His thoughts immediately go to Sandra, who might have lived if only the smoke detectors in her house had been in working order.

  If only . . .

  Al pushes thoughts of Sandra aside.

  Is the old place on fire?

  It seems pretty damned unlikely that an empty house would spontaneously combust, which means that either the resident ghosts set a fire or someone is—

  The sound is abruptly curtailed, as if the button was pushed to turn off the alarm.

  Knitting his bushy gray-blond eyebrows, Al moves closer to the house, sidestepping a rusted tire rim and gingerly skirting a clump of pricker bushes. An overgrown evergreen border separates the lot from the backyard of the Addams House, thinner in some spots than in others.

  Al works his way toward what looks almost like an opening and realizes that he’s reached a path of sorts, following a trail where the weeds have been bent and broken, as though someone has walked here. Sure enough, in a muddy patch close to the opening in the border, he spots a couple of indentations that look like footprints.