Gone

Brad was involved.”

“Why?”

“I honestly don’t know, that’s just what was said. That’s important, isn’t it? Cruelty to animals is related to being a serial killer, right?”

“It’s a risk factor,” I said. “When was the last time Brad was sent away?”

“After Amelia gave up on the band. Not right after, maybe a month, five weeks.”

“What convinced her to quit?”

“Who knows? One day she just called up Mother and announced that there was no future for popular music. As if she’d made the choice. What a loon.”

“And soon after that, Brad was gone.”

“Guess she no longer needed him…now that we’re talking about it, I realize how bad it must’ve been for him. Used and discarded. If he was bothered, he didn’t show it. Just the opposite, he was always calm, nothing got to him. That’s not normal, either, is it? Would you be my psychological consultant?”

“Get a contract and we’ll talk. What about Captain Dowd?”

“What about him?”

“Was he involved in the band?”

“He wasn’t involved in anything I ever saw. Which wasn’t that different from most fathers in the neighborhood. But they were gone because of work. Captain Dowd lived off inheritance, never held down a job.”

“How’d he spend his time?”

“Golf, tennis, collecting cars and wine and whatever. Lots of vacations abroad. Or, as my mother called them, ‘grand tours.’ ”

“Where?”

“Europe, I guess.”

“Did he travel with his wife?”

“Sometimes,” she said, “but mostly it was by himself. That was the official story.”

“Unofficially?”

She played with her glass. “Let’s put it this way: once I overheard Father joking to a golf buddy about how the captain had joined the navy to be close to boys in tight blue uniforms.”

“He traveled with young men?”

“More like traveled to find young men.”

“The rumor mill,” I said.

“Keeps the grass green,” she said.

“Captain Dowd being gay was public knowledge?”

“If my father knew, everyone did. He seemed like a nice enough man- the captain. But not much of a presence. Maybe that’s why Amelia flirted with everyone.”

“Including Brad,” I said.

“I guess they were all crazy,” she said. “Does that explain what happened?”

“It’s a start.”

“That’s not much of an answer.”

“I’m still figuring out the questions.”

Amber eyes hardened and I thought she’d come back with a sharp retort. Instead, she stood and smoothed the front of her trousers. “Gotta run.”

I thanked her again for her time.

She said, “I know you were snowing me about keeping an open mind, but I’d like to call you if a hot property comes up. Something really worth your while, it’s a terrific time in the market for someone in your position. How about a phone number?”

I gave her a card, paid for the drinks, and walked her to her silver Mercedes roadster.

She got in, started up the car, lowered the top. “I’ll probably never do a book, hate writing. Maybe a cable movie.”

“Good luck.”

“It’s strange,” she said, “after you called, I tried to make sense of it- looking back for something that could’ve predicted it.”

“Come up with anything?”

“This is probably irrelevant- I’m sure I’m reading all kinds of crazy things into insignificant stuff. But if what they’re saying about what happened to those people is true…the gory details, I mean…”

“They’re true.”

She drew a compact from her purse, checked her face in the mirror, tamped her hair, put on a pair of sunglasses. “Mrs. D had this routine she’d go through. When we goofed off during rehearsal, which was often, and she lost her patience but was trying not to show it because she wanted to be one of the gang. Like Mama Cowsill or Shirley Jones.”

“Cool mom,” I said.

“As if that’s ever possible…anyway, what she’d do is start clapping her hands to quiet us down, then she’d make like she was the Red Queen- from Alice in Wonderland. The first few times she announced it. ‘I am the Red Queen and I will be obeyed!’ Eventually we caught on. Whenever she clapped it was going to be a Red Queen routine. Which consisted of her spouting lines like ‘I’m five times richer and cleverer than you,’ or ‘What use is a child with no meaning?’ I took it for just another of her eccentricities, but maybe…”

She went silent.

“Maybe what?”

“This will probably sound literal to you. After spouting all this Lewis Carroll stuff, she’d scrunch up her eyebrows and cackle and raise a finger in the air and start waving it around. Like she was testing the wind. If we still weren’t paying attention- which we usually weren’t- she’d let out this honking noise, could’ve been a man’s it was so deep. Then she’d make goofy eyes and shake her chest like a stripper gone berserk. She was big up there, it was ridiculous.”

Running her hands over her own narrow torso.

“Finally, if we still weren’t toeing the line, then she’d lower her hand like this, and run it across her throat and place both hands on her hips and scream, ‘Off with your heads!’ It was silly but creepy, I hated when she did it. Nora and Billy didn’t seem to care.”

“And Brad?”

“That’s the thing,” she said. “Brad used to smile. One of those private smiles. Like it was a private joke between him and Amelia. You know about his hobby, right? He was really into it back then. Had all kinds of knives, used to carry knives around. I never saw him hurt anyone and he was never threatening. At least not to me. So it probably means nothing- Amelia with her hand over her throat.”

I said nothing.

Elise Van Syoc said, “Right?”

CHAPTER 48

I drove over the hill thinking about what family had meant to the Dowd kids.

Boundaries were to be blurred, people were to be used, performance was all.

Brad had been abandoned, taken in reluctantly, exploited, expelled. Brought back to be pressed into service by a woman who resented him and lusted for him.

Years later, after her death, he’d wormed his way back into the family and attained the power role. Knowing he’d never belonged, never would.

By that time, he’d murdered Juliet Dutchey. Maybe other women yet to be discovered.

Reserving his boyhood hobby for three victims.

Back when Milo and I had been theorizing, he’d wondered out loud about Cathy and Andy Gaidelas being parental symbols.