Daphne/Jennifer looked around, past Grace. She scanned the parking lot.
Looking for a TV crew maybe?
“Why are you doing this to me?”
If there was a moment in which Grace knew that her obsession didn’t trump the rights of others to just be left alone, that was it. She knew that while she meant Daphne Middleton no harm whatsoever, there was no way that her appearance on her doorstep could be anything but harmful. She was there to get something. She wasn’t there to give Daphne anything-not new information, not closure, not comfort. She was a leech, a parasite.
And yet she persisted.
“I’m not,” Grace said. “I’m doing this to help my sister.” Even those words rang a little hollow. It was true that she’d been counseled her entire life that she was doing this for her sister’s memory, that the truth that had eluded her family was something that was owed to Sissy. It was no longer about that. Not really. It was really about what she had to prove.
Daphne moved the door open a bit more, letting the light fall on her face. “Come in,” she said, her tone more resigned than welcoming. “But please, don’t make me have to move again. Don’t tell anyone you’ve found me. You have no idea what it’s like living in the shadow of that man.”
Grace didn’t say what was going through her mind just then: Yes, I do.
The condo was spotless and modern. A pair of black Barcelona chairs flanked a gas fireplace. A glass coffee table with a Nambe bowl as its centerpiece was placed in front of a bright red leather sofa, also Italian, like the Barcelona chairs. Daphne Middleton had excellent taste and a flair for the dramatic.
“Coffee’s brewing,” she said. “Follow me.”
Daphne led Grace to the kitchen, where an automatic coffeemaker beeped, indicating that it had just finished brewing. She poured a cup for herself and one for the detective. They sat at the kitchen table and talked. First Grace told her about Tricia and her mother, and how their lives had been wrapped up in the drama of a serial killer. It was part therapy, part fact finding.
“I think your mother wrote to me back in the late 1980s,” Daphne said.
Grace nodded. “I’m sure she did. My mother wrote to anyone with a connection to him, from his grade school teachers on up to a cellmate he had in Florida.”
“I see. I’m in excellent company, then,” Daphne said without a bit of irony.
Grace liked Daphne. Despite all of it, she could still find something in the darkness that made one smile.
Daphne looked up. “Sugar? Milk?”
Grace shook her head. In the middle of the conversation they were having there was room for the mundane. It was odd and comforting at the same time.
“Black’s fine,” she said.
She examined the woman in early sixties across from her. She wore a pair of gold hoops and a necklace fashioned of stars linked together. Her brows were dark and they moved as she spoke. She was beautiful and expressive and she’d been through a lot.
Daphne was the only Ted victim who had chosen to be with him, then rejected him.
“I know what you’re thinking. I know what everyone thinks. If I didn’t kick him to the curb, those girls would still be alive. Your sister would still be alive. All of them. Live with that for a little while and come back here and tell me how that feels.”
“No one blames you,” Grace said.
Daphne laughed, but it was forced and as fake as the fur trim on the coat that hung on the hook in the kitchen.
“They do,” she said. “You’re a cop. You know better, but deep down you probably do, too. It’s always been about when the killings happened. The date always comes back to me. Authors and TV people have speculated over the years that a broken heart might have been the trigger for his madness, or whatever it was.”
“When you broke up with him,” Grace said.
“That’s been completely overstated, Detective.”
“Grace, please.”
Daphne nodded and swallowed her coffee. “Right, Grace. Just so you know-and no one seems to listen to me on this-the breakup with Ted was less dramatic. He was immature. He needed growing up, you know, to find his own way. When we parted he didn’t seem upset. He just vanished. Later, when I tried to reconnect-after he’d started law school and become a bigwig in the Republican Party, he acted like we’d never met. Some traumatic breakup.”
Grace looked around the kitchen. Daphne had planted an herb garden in the window. The smell of mint and oregano perfumed the tidy space.
“All right, fair enough. But tell me, what was Ted really like?”
“Exactly why are you here? I mean, really. Missing girl in Tacoma? I read the papers.”
Grace thought for a moment. The answer was more complicated than any one case. It was her sister’s, the others, the life that her parents fashioned for her when she was growing up. She had a need to know people who knew Ted.
“Yes, the Tacoma case. But also,” she said, “my sister’s case. Tell me about him, please.”
Daphne rummaged in a cupboard for a package of Lorna Doones.
“The only connection that exists from my time with Ted is our fondness for shortbread. His favorite. I stopped eating them for ten years, maybe longer. I started buying it again a few years ago. Funny how innocent things can sometimes feel evil for a time.”
She put them on a plate and inched them over to Grace. She took one for herself and watched as Grace, her stomach still rumbling from the mini-mart snack, declined.
“Tell me about him,” she asked. “I need to understand him from someone who knew him.”
Daphne set down a cookie. “All right. There were two Teds. Maybe more. There was the Ted who could charm the socks off of anyone. He just could. He was quick. Funny. He had the kind of charisma that made people feel they were close to him even if they weren’t.”
“Like you?” Grace asked.
Daphne hesitated. “Yes, like me.”
The look on her face spoke volumes. It was clear that even though none of it was her fault, even though she knew in her heart of hearts that Ted had been a monster before she ever met him, she felt that twinge that comes with responsibility-no matter how off-base.
“You say there were two Teds. What was the other? How did that other personality differ?”
Daphne indicated the coffeepot and Grace shook her head.
“The other was the Ted that killed your sister,” she said. “The monster, the man without a conscience. The one who told me that he’d break my neck because I confronted him one time about stealing a TV. I knew he didn’t buy it. I wasn’t stupid. He was a thief. He stole other things, too; skis come to mind. I was pretty sure of it. After I saw that look in his eyes when I asked him where he got the goods, I knew I was never, ever going to push him again.”
Grace was in full detective mode just then. “Was he violent?”
“That’s the thing. Not violent in the way abusers are. Ted’s rage was always under the surface, his anger poking through just enough so that you would take two steps backwards just to save yourself from the possibility.”
“Please, go on. What else did you observe?”
Daphne picked at the necklace of stars that shifted and shimmered when she moved and thought for a second before answering. “You mean in the way he acted?”
“Either. Both.”
“All right,” Daphne said. “Weird stuff. Stuff that he shouldn’t have or didn’t have a real reason to have.”
“Like what?
“You’ll know the second I say it, but back then I didn’t know what it meant. If it meant anything at all. I saw medical stuff around the house. Plaster of Paris, crutches. It was strange, but I didn’t really say anything. Later, you know, after everything came out, I knew that those things were items he used to set his trap for those girls.”
Weak Ted. Weak Ted was really strong, clever Ted.
“What else?”
