One Last Scream

“Well, enjoy. And I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay, sweetie. Take care of yourself.”

Then she heard him talking to Roseann: “That was my daughter, Karen. How do you hang up this thing? Oh…I see…” There was a click on the line.

“Bye, Poppy,” she said to no one.

“Why do you want to talk to Erin?” asked the woman on the telephone.

There were five Gottliebs in the Salem phone book, and this was the third one George had called. It was Erin’s mother, M. Gottlieb.

“I’m trying to track down some information on Annabelle Schlessinger,” George said. He was sitting inside his car, still parked down the street from the Salem Library. “I understand Erin and Annabelle were friends.”

There was a silence on the other end of the line. “Mrs. Gottlieb?”

“Um, how did you know Annabelle?” she asked finally.

“I didn’t,” he admitted. “That’s why I wanted to talk to Erin. You see, I’m doing some research on my family tree-a master’s thesis on genealogy, actually. There’s a chance I could be related to Annabelle. I was hoping Erin might be able to give me some information about the Schlessingers.”

“I don’t think she could tell you much. Erin and Annabelle really weren’t friends for very long.”

“Anything would be helpful, Mrs. Gottlieb.”

“Well, I suppose you could phone her at work. You can reach her at the Pampered Pup.”

It was a doggie daycare and grooming place located in a strip mall near Willamette University. George had decided he’d get more information out of Erin if they talked face-to-face.

Apparently Erin had been expecting him, one way or another. When he told the Pampered Pup receptionist he was looking for Erin, the heavyset, terminally bored-looking young woman came around the lobby desk, then escorted him to the back. She opened a door that must have been soundproof, because the sudden din of yelps and barking startled him. She led him to an alcove, where about two dozen small-and medium-sized dogs were in cages, stacked one on top of the other.

“Hey, Erin,” the receptionist yelled over the racket. “You’ve got a visitor.” Then she wandered back toward the front office.

Erin was thin with straight, dark-blond hair, glasses, and a pierced nostril. She stood at a long steel sink, washing a slightly hyper Jack Russell terrier. She wore a dark-blue work apron over her black sweater and jeans. She nodded instead of shaking his hand. She had on yellow rubber gloves, and worked a portable shower nozzle over the soapy dog.

“Hi, I’m George,” he said. “Sorry to bother you here at work.”

“It’s okay. My mom called to tell me you might be calling or coming by.” Erin gave him a wry grin. She had to talk loudly over the continuous barking. “All these alarms probably went off when you told her you were related to Annabelle Schlessinger. Mom always thought Annabelle was a terrible influence on me. So, what did you want to know?”

“Well, I read that story in the Statesman Journal about the fire, and what you said about Annabelle.” George leaned against the dry end of the long sink. “It was an interesting quote, very poetic…”

“Oh, that force of nature speech,” she said, chuckling. “I got so much shit from my other friends about that. But I honestly couldn’t think of anything nice to say. Annabelle and I were officially avoiding each other weeks before the fire. But I guess I knew her better than anyone else, so I had to come up with something for that stupid reporter.”

“Your mom indicated that you and Annabelle weren’t friends for very long,” George said.

Washing under the dog’s tail, she nodded. “Yeah, she was just a little too clingy and possessive. Can I be totally honest with you? I mean, you didn’t know her, right? You don’t want me blowing smoke up your ass, right?”

“No, I’d appreciate your honesty. Really, it won’t offend me at all.”

“Well, it’s funny. All the guys were hot for Annabelle, because she was pretty and had big boobs. But she just used them. It didn’t take long for me to realize she was a manipulative bitch, and you can throw crazy into that soup, too.”

“Crazy, how?”

“Well, I guess this goes with the clingy, possessive part of her character. But she wanted us to work out our own secret language, so we could write and talk to each other, and no one else would understand. She even wanted us to dress alike at school. I mean, how queer is that? Oh, and she claimed she could read my thoughts. That was another thing. Annabelle said she was telepathic. I remember laughing at her and saying she was tele- pathetic, and she got really pissed off at me. I think that was the beginning of the end for us.”

She picked up the terrier and moved it farther down the steel sink. “Better back up,” she said.

But George didn’t hear her past all the barking and yelping. He was thinking about the matching clothes, a secret language, and some telepathic connection. Was Annabelle hoping Erin would take the place of the twin she’d lost?

“Hey,” Erin said loudly. “Unless you want to get doused, better stand back. He’s gonna shake it off.”

George backed up toward the cages, and watched the dog shake off the excess water. Erin started working a towel over him.

“Did Annabelle ever mention to you that she had a twin sister?” he asked.

“Oh, yeah, Andrea.” Erin said, nodding. “She told me Andrea was abducted by some pervert neighbor when the kid was four, and he raped and killed her. I mean, talk about creepy and tragic, right? And then I talked to another girl in my class, Deborah Wothers. Annabelle tried to be Deborah’s friend for a while, because Deborah’s so nice and everybody loves her. But Deborah was smart enough to keep her distance. Anyway, she told Deborah that her twin sister, Alicia, slipped and fell in the tub and drowned or some bullshit like that. So, you’re telling me she really did have a twin?”

George just nodded. He knew both stories were fabrications, of course. But he wondered if there was a sliver of truth to the abduction incident.

Erin had stopped drying the dog. She stared at George. “So, this twin, how did she really die?”

“She didn’t. She’s alive, and her name’s Amelia,” he explained. “The Schlessingers put her up for adoption when she was four. I’m trying to find out why. Amelia doesn’t know anything about her birth family. I was hoping you could fill in a lot of blanks for me, Erin. Did Annabelle ever talk about her mother?”

With a dumbfounded look, Erin shook her head.

“Nothing?” he pressed.

“Well, I heard she offed herself when Annabelle was just a kid. She hanged herself in the basement or something. Annabelle was supposed to have found her. I never had the guts to ask her for details.”

“What about the father?”

She shrugged. “I used to see him at church, that’s it.”

“Didn’t you ever see him at Annabelle’s house?”

“I never went there. I don’t think anyone in the class did, either.” Erin wrapped the dog in the towel, then carried him to a cage, and set him inside. With a sigh, she pulled off her gloves. “Anyway, I never set foot in the place,” she said. “Annabelle always came over to my house. She pretty much hated living out there at that ranch in the middle of nowhere.”

“Did Annabelle ever talk about her Uncle Duane?” George asked.

Erin pried a stick of Juicy Fruit out of her pants pocket, then unwrapped it and put it in her mouth. “Nope, sorry.”

She put her work gloves back on, opened another cage, and pulled out a miniature schnauzer. “C’mon, bath time, you mangy son of a bitch,” she muttered. She set the dog in the steel tub, then stopped and turned to George. “You know who you should talk to? Mrs. Cadwell, our homeroom teacher sophomore year. Caroline Cadwell, she was practically a friend of the family. I think she even knew Mrs. Schlessinger. She could tell you a lot.”

“Caroline Cadwell,” George repeated. Along with Erin, she’d been quoted in the newspaper account about the