Colder Than Death

“I’ve waited more than half my life to hunt down the guy who killed my Aunt. And if Gretchen has something useful to say, I don’t think it’s too much to ask for you to wait a few more minutes before you start burying somebody else.”

She glared at me. The passion in her eyes did me in.

“Alright,” I said with resignation.

She brought the Blackberry to her mouth and said, “We’ll be right over.”

* * *

Within ten minutes I was pulling into the driveway of Gretchen’s house, a well-kept Cape Cod with an addition on the back. Quilla was animated as she got out of the car, trotted to the front door and rang the doorbell. A moment later a hand reached out and open the screen door. I assumed Gretchen would be standing there to greet us. But it wasn’t Gretchen’s hand. It was a man’s. Then I saw his face. He smiled as if he were a grandfather welcoming his grandchild.

I knew that it was Kyle Thistle. As I stepped into the house I knew he couldn’t have killed Alyssa. He was in the institution. But I couldn’t help wondering if I was looking at the man who killed Gretchen’s mother and Brandy Parker.

Perry said that Kyle Thistle was in his mid-60s, but he looked closer to eighty. Oily gray hair turning white in spots, thinning in random splotches, a dulled look in his brown eyes and an inappropriate smile that I suspected was a permanent fixture. He had a confused, lost look about him that made him seem almost childlike. I wondered if he had always been like this or if it was the result of spending a dozen years in a state-run mental institution.

Quilla hugged him as if he were family. He patted her on top of her head. She loved it. Her need for paternal tenderness tugged at my heart.

“This is Del Coltrane,” she said as we stepped into the living room. “Del, this is Mister Thistle.”

He extended his hand and warmly said “Kyle.” I took his hand, amazed at how small and delicate it was.

Gretchen suddenly appeared, coming up to us from a hallway that separated the living room from the dining room. She was wearing the same clothes she had on at the funeral. She didn’t look especially happy to see me. If anything, the passive expression on her face led me to believe that seeing me was no big deal for her. She nodded at me and hugged Quilla, saying, “Didn’t think I’d be seeing you again today.” Then she turned to her father. “We’ll be in the kitchen.”

Kyle ambled slowly to a recliner with a paisley design in the living room.

Gretchen led us into a spacious, comfortable kitchen that looked like it could be the set for a TV cooking program.

“Sit down,” said Gretchen, gesturing towards the large, round oak table. A burnished orange bowl with three Granny Smith apples in it was in the middle of the table.

I sat. So did Quilla. Gretchen leaned against the sink.

“What’s this all about?” she said firmly, as if she were an attorney waiting to present an argument.

“I’ll try to simplify,” I said, clearing my throat.

“I prefer details,” she said.

“Alright. Since Brandy Parker’s body was found Quilla’s been hell bent on finding the killer. She’s also made it clear that she doesn’t have much faith in the abilities of the man investigating the case.”

“Perry Cobb,” Gretchen said. “I remember his father.”

“I suggested that Quilla give Perry the benefit of the doubt and that, since I’m acquainted with him, I would talk to him on her behalf, which I’ve done. Seems that his investigation couldn’t find anybody who was still around town who knew or remembered Brandy.”

“He never talked to me,” said Gretchen.

“That’s one of the reasons why we’re here,” I said. “He’ll be contacting you.”

“I’ll be happy to talk to him,” said Gretchen. “But I don’t know how much help I’ll be. My friendship with Brandy lasted only a few months.”

“How’d you meet her?”

“In the hospital,” she began. “About four months before she…disappeared. I base that on the fact that three months after I met her I left for college, which was in September.”

“The last time anyone saw Aunt Brandy was on October twelfth,” said Quilla. “And the only reason I remember that is because I was in this dumb play at school and she came to see me and she sent me an opening night telegram wishing me good luck and telling me to break a leg and stuff. I still have it.” Quilla’s eyes filled with tears.

Gretchen reached over and touched Quilla’s hand. “Brandy and I shared the same room. She’d been in a car accident.”

“A drunk plowed into her car. Broadside.”

“Why were you in the hospital?” I asked innocently.

Gretchen matter-of-factly said, “I tried to kill myself.”

* * *

I felt stupid and embarrassed for asking the question. There really wasn’t any reason for me to know. I could feel my face turn red and I shuffled awkwardly in my seat, trying to think of an appropriate response. Before I could say anything Gretchen spoke.

“I’m very up front about what I did. It makes most people uncomfortable. Please don’t be. It was nine years ago. I’d received some difficult news about my mother. I had hired probably the most prominent detective in Youngstown and he managed to track down my mother to a fishing village off the coast of Maine. He led me to believe that it was indeed she and we were actually making plans to go there and attempt to make contact. I was a sophomore in college and I worked two part-time jobs year-round to save the money to pay for the detective and after all was said and done…the woman turned out not to be my mother. It was more than I could bear. I swallowed three bottles of Advil. I really should’ve died.”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“Getting back to Brandy,” she continued. “She was incredibly lucky to be alive. The only real damage, other than a broken wrist and several deep gashes on her legs and torso, was a scar on her right cheek that went from an inch or so from her eye to the rim of her upper lip.”

“I have some pictures before and after she had plastic surgery,” said Quilla. “Aunt Brandy hated that scar. It was supposed to go away eventually. She used to cover it up with tons of make-up.”

“All she did was cry the first couple of days in the hospital. She was convinced that she would spend the rest of her life looking like a hideous female Frankenstein monster.”

“Did you hang together?” I asked.

“Not in the conventional sense,” she said. “We didn’t start going to bars or shopping together or cruising around looking for guys, if that’s what you mean. We were different people who never would’ve met if it hadn’t been for the simple fact that we were assigned to the same hospital room. Brandy lived only to have fun and I didn’t know what the word meant. I was…serious. And rigid. And very boring. But meeting each other under the circumstances that we did had a profound effect on both of us. You see, Del, because of her facial scar, Brandy had to readjust her lifestyle.”

“Which until then consisted of going out and raising hell,” said Quilla.

“But she had resigned herself to staying in until the scar healed,” said Gretchen. “I stayed in all the time, afraid of my own shadow. So we spent time together. Talking. Mainly, talking. She was everything I wasn’t. Sexy. Vibrant. Cool. Full of life. And I was everything she wasn’t. Bookish. Contemplative. Overly analytical. Brandy was fearless. I was petrified of the world. I don’t know how much you know about me, Del, but when I was a child my father was accused of murdering my mother.”

I said nothing to indicate that I knew. My only reaction was to shake my head slowly back and forth, the expression on my face one of compassion.

“The world I lived in not only accused my father of something horrible,” Gretchen continued. “But it put him into a mental institution for twelve of the most formative years of my life. The world was a dangerous place to me. Ironically, Brandy made me realize that it wasn’t. On paper, I was supposedly smarter than Brandy. I had the straight A’s and I won the full scholarship. She barely made it through high school and she was working as a