“Of course not, because that still left you. The one who never came. The one who never saved me.”
“But I didn’t even know you were alive!”
“Yes, you did.”
“No, I didn’t. How could I have?”
“Because she would’ve told you.”
Abigail turned and thrust her finger at Aunt Nancy, who was now fully awake and staring at both of us.
“I’m sorry,” my aunt burst out. “Charlie, I’m so sorry!”
Just as Frances suddenly lunged out of the wingback and, with an unexpected roar, hurtled herself at Abigail.
The gun went off.
I fell to the floor.
Screaming. Frances, Aunt Nancy, Abigail.
“SisSis,” Abigail’s voice. My little sister, calling for me.
“SisSis!”
I grabbed the can of frosting, which was rolling across the floor, and started to crawl.
Chapter 42
D.D. WAS LOSING HER MIND.
5:02 P.M., Saturday, January 21.
No sign of either Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant or Detective O.
Several uniformed patrol officers had cruised by Charlie’s Cambridge rental the hour before. No lights were on, no landlady answered the door. Grovesnor, of course, was scoping out all local contacts connected to her job. Charlene, however, was not due to work again, nor had she contacted any of her fellow officers.
That left the aunt with a house in northern New Hampshire and a hotel somewhere in Cambridge. D.D. had outreached to the New Hampshire State Police, who’d checked in with the B&B. Nancy Grant wasn’t there, and the young lady who served as her assistant claimed she hadn’t heard from her today and wasn’t expecting her home until at least tomorrow.
D.D. followed up with a credit check, discovering a recent charge at a low-budget motel in Cambridge.
She was driving there now, not because she thought she’d find Charlene magically hiding beneath the bed in her aunt’s hotel room, but because D.D. needed something to do.
Night had fallen. The sky was pitch-black, thermostat plummeting. It was January 21 and D.D. would be damned before she had another murder on her watch, in her city. Not gonna happen. She was forewarned and forearmed.
She found the motel easily enough. One of those late-seventies nondescript places, built in a double-decker horseshoe pattern around a central parking lot. Bit more snooping, and she’d identified Nancy Grant’s vehicle, then a room up on the second story.
Three minutes later, D.D. stood in the open doorway of the room, frowning. The office clerk, who’d let her in, appeared equally unsettled.
“Maybe she left,” the little bald Asian man said.
“Maybe.”
D.D. walked around the room, not touching anything. Sure enough, no luggage, no toiletries, not even a wrinkle on the bed. If Aunt Nancy had slept at all, then she’d cleaned up her own motel room after herself.
Which, in the next instant, gave D.D. a long, snaking chill up her spine.
Abigail. Had to be. The world’s most obsessive-compulsive killer. Strangled her victims, then fluffed their sofa pillows.
Except no body lay in the middle of the room. Meaning that instead of killing Nancy Grant, she’d taken her instead. Why? It wasn’t like a murderer with such a highly ritualized approach to deviate from pattern this late in the game.
Abigail had needed something else.
Someone else.
Like D.D., she was trying to find Charlene Grant.
Except she’d found Nancy Grant first, to use as bait.
D.D. got on her phone and arranged for a crime scene team to process the hotel.
Then she was back in her car, pulling out of the parking lot, the gears of her mind churning as fast as the wheels of her Crown Vic.
Abigail wanted her sister. Abigail wanted revenge. Where to next?
Only one place that made sense to D.D. The Cambridge rental. Had to be. Except, of course, the patrol officers had checked it out. Driven by. Knocked on the door. Not seen any signs of life.
Maybe because there were only signs of death.