Colder Than Death

professionally. When I found her and told her who I was she hugged me. Being around her is like being with my Aunt, even though they’re different personalities. Sometimes when I get sentimental I say to myself that the only good thing to come from Aunt Brandy disappearing was that I got to meet Gretchen.” She looked at me. “What happened to her mother and father was really awful. How could anyone think that Mister Thistle would do something like that?”

“Do you know him well?”

“Not really. He’s not all there. All he does is sit in his chair smoking cigarettes and listening to right wing talk radio.”

“Does he ever talk about what happened?”

“To me? No way. From what Gretchen says it’s something that never gets brought up because he doesn’t remember. He’s very mellow. Most of the time it’s like he’s stoned. And because she was so young when it happened, she doesn’t remember much. She was raised by her Aunt and all she knows is what her Aunt told her and what she read in the paper when she was older. It was pretty cut and dry. One day her mother didn’t come home. Her father calls the police around midnight saying that his wife’s not there and that being out late isn’t like her and all that kind of stuff. Next thing you know is that a week’s gone by and the cops are interviewing neighbors, and whoever, and it turns out that Gretchen’s mom and dad used to quarrel a lot and people heard him threaten her and junk and, well, suddenly he’s under arrest and in jail and saying he’s innocent and the biggest mystery of all is that there wasn’t any body.”

“No body?” The remark stunned me. Perry didn’t mention anything about there not being a body.

“It was never found.” Everybody said that Gretch’s father did something gruesome like chopping it up and stuff. That’s why it was so hard on Gretchen later on. Here she was, this little kid, and suddenly her mother is gone. Never heard from again. And the next thing she knows is that her father’s gone, stuck in some state institution, and she’s all alone except for her aunt and it was her mom’s sister and she hated Mister Thistle so she bad-mouthed him all during the time he was in the mental ward. That’s part of the reason why Gretchen was moved to write the book based on my Aunt.”

“How so?”

“It was like it was happening again for her.”

“What was happening again?”

“Somebody she cared about vanished. That’s one of the reasons Gretchen and I got close. We realized we had this bond of not knowing what happened to the person we each loved most in the whole world. You can’t imagine what the feeling of not knowing is like.”

Yes I can, I said to myself, thinking of Alyssa.

“What am I saying? Of course you can imagine what not knowing is like. You still don’t know where Alyssa is. That’s what Gretchen and I were talking about at the Funeral Home. She said to me that now, at long last, I knew what happened. She doesn’t.”

“Doesn’t what?”

“She doesn’t know what happened to her mother.”

“I thought her mother was murdered.”

Gently, Quilla said, “Gretchen doesn’t believe her mother is dead.”

Again, I was shocked. “What does she think?”

“That her Mom ran off with someone.”

“A lover?”

Quilla nodded yes. “Gretchen was like me. Once she was old enough to put two and two together she did all kinds of research. Almost like she was an investigative reporter. That’s what she wanted to be when she was a kid. She took these Journalism classes, and read books on it and junk, and she knew how to find information and ask questions. She’s convinced that her father didn’t do it. That’s why she lets him live with her. Her theory is that her parents had a shaky marriage. See, they had to get married. Her dad liked to get drunk and he’d hit her mom and stuff. Gretchen decided that her mom ran off with a lover.”

“If that’s the case, how does she justify her mother leaving her behind with an abusive drunk?”

“She thinks her mom had a plan. That she was going to come back for her, but when all the hubbub started with her father being accused of murder and with there not being a body, Gretchen thinks her mom concluded that if people thought she was dead she could disappear easier.”

“Under that scenario her mother just abandons Gretchen, leaving her with a father in an institution and no mother. Not a very loving gesture.”

“Gretchen explains that away by saying all the evidence indicates that her mom wasn’t a very good mother. Actually, that’s not the right way to put it. Gretchen thinks her mom wasn’t ready for motherhood. But the aunt who raised her was. So Gretchen thinks that since she was still a baby her mother figured she wouldn’t be too attached to her and that she’d grow up loving her Aunt as if she were her mother. But what Gretchen’s real mother didn’t count on was having a daughter like Gretchen.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning that she wouldn’t sit still without wanting to know what happened to her. She hired private investigators. That’s where I got the idea to hire one.”

“Obviously her private investigators didn’t find her mother.”

“Right,” Quilla said softly. “If I tell you something, will you promise absolutely never to tell Gretchen?”

“Absolutely.”

She pauses a moment, then said, “I think Gretchen’s theory is all wrong. I think that somebody kidnapped her and killed her. Just like my aunt.”

“Since when did you think your aunt was kidnapped?”

“Always. When Gretchen first told me her theory about her mother’s disappearance, I didn’t believe it. I just pretended to. I was only thirteen. Gimme a break! What did I know? She was older. Everything she said sort of made sense, so I went along with it. But since they found aunt Brandy’s body I’ve been racking my brain to come up with possible theories and I know some of them are dumb, but the newest one I came up with has to do with Gretchen’s belief that her mother’s still alive. Del, this might be crazy, but the more I think about it I keep wondering if whoever killed my Aunt killed Gretchen’s mother.”

Her statement bothered me. I wondered what she would say if she knew that the night before Perry had suggested the same thing, naming Kyle Thistle as the killer.

“Am I stupid to be thinking that, Del?”

“No. Two women disappear. It’s a fair assumption.”

“Since they found my aunt’s body I’ve been thinking a horrible thought.”

“What?”

“That…” She looked out the passenger side window. “That maybe Gretchen’s mother’s body is lying in some other mausoleum in Elm Grove cemetery.” She looked at me. “Am I demented to think that? I mean, it’s not like they disappeared three weeks apart. I figured it out. My Aunt disappeared nine years ago. Gretchen’s mother vanished twenty-four years ago. Fifteen years apart. That’s not really a pattern. If the killer’s the same guy, why would he wait fifteen years to kill again? What destroys my theory is that there weren’t other killings. If somebody’s been kidnapping and murdering women over the last twenty-four years, he certainly wouldn’t let fifteen years slip between each victim, right?”

Suddenly, I felt sick to my stomach. “There isn’t a fifteen-year gap. Alyssa disappeared fifteen years ago. There is a pattern,” I said weakly. “There is”

She looked confused for a moment, then a sense of awareness overcame her face. “But you got the note from here and the postcard and… ”

“Whoever killed her could’ve sent them.”

“Del…” She looked terrified.

“First, Gretchen’s mother. Twenty-four years ago. Then nine years later, Alyssa. Then seven years later, your aunt. If this is an accurate time line, whoever did it may have done it again in the last couple of years. Or maybe there are more missing women that we don’t know are missing.”

“Did you ever wonder before if Alyssa was dead before today… before now?”

“Not with any conviction. I wondered if something had happened to her, if she’d been hit by a car in some