All Fall Down (4 page)

The girl had gone into a deep study of the riverboat engravings hanging on the wall opposite the table. Blaine had thought Logan would take her out of the room to question her, but he remained seated. “What do you think about all of this, Robin?”

Robin continued to stare at the engravings for a few moments, then she turned, her eyes blazing. “What I think is that Rosie didn’t kill herself any more than my father did.”

Cait dropped the cup of coffee she’d been pouring for herself. She let out a soft cry, then grabbed for a wad of paper towels and began energetically wiping up the spilled coffee.

“Then what
do
you think happened to Rosalind?” Logan asked calmly, ignoring Cait’s obvious shock.

“How many alternatives are left, Sheriff? It certainly wasn’t an accident.”

“So you think she was murdered.”

Robin nodded. Then, abruptly, she stood and walked to the window. Sensing trouble, Ashley ambled over and nudged Robin’s hand. Robin whirled, knelt, and hugged the dog so fiercely Ashley yelped in surprise. “Why does everybody die? My mother, my father. Now Rosie!”

Still clutching her sodden paper towels, Cait made a movement toward her, but Blaine stopped her with a glance. She knew too well that in times of angry distress, Robin didn’t want anyone playing mother.

Robin rose and looked out the window toward the dark shadow of the woods again. “She was the prettiest girl in school, you know. And the smartest. Other kids went to her for tutoring.”

Blaine sipped her coffee. She could feel the hot drink bringing warmth back to her veins, although her hands were still icy. So far Logan had not touched his own coffee as he watched Robin closely. Blaine was worried about her extreme pallor, and she was glad Rick was here, but Logan hadn’t looked pleased when he walked in.

“Robin,” Logan asked, “do you have any idea who might have wanted to kill Rosalind?”

Robin shook her head. “No.”

“Then why did you say she didn’t kill herself?”

“Because she just wouldn’t do that. She wasn’t the type.”

Blaine saw Logan’s eyes flicker. Clearly he didn’t believe generalizations about the “type” of person who commits suicide, but he didn’t challenge Robin. Instead he asked casually, “Did you notice any changes in Rosalind lately?”

Robin paused, and for a moment Blaine thought she wasn’t going to answer. “Yeah, I noticed changes,” she said finally. “Late in the summer she started acting funny.”

“Funny how?” Logan asked.

Robin turned around, her wide eyes far away in thought. “Jumpy, closed off. I couldn’t count on her for anything. She was always making excuses not to do things, or just not showing up. I thought maybe it had something to do with—” She broke off, color staining her cheeks.

“You thought it had something to do with the nature of your father’s death,” Blaine said.

Robin nodded, and Blaine felt the familiar misery rising within her. As if Martin’s death hadn’t been bad enough, the girl had also endured the intensive police investigation, the newspaper headlines, the avid curiosity of a bored, small town eager for a scandal.

“But there were other things,” Robin added. “About a week after school started in the fall, I walked into the typing room there and saw her writing a letter. I could tell it was a letter because it had the address and return address written in block style. She practically tore it out of the typewriter when she saw me looking at it and stuffed it in a folder. I didn’t see who it was addressed to.” Robin looked away. “It was after that that she started avoiding me almost completely.”

“Maybe it was a letter to a boyfriend,” Logan suggested.

Robin shook her head. “Rosie loved beautiful stationery. If she was going to write a letter to a guy, she would have written by hand on her pretty paper.”

“Maybe it was a note to Tony Jarvis.”

“She saw him every day—she didn’t need to write to him. Besides, this was a
letter
, not a note. I said that.”

“So you did,” Logan said easily. “How serious were she and Jarvis?”

“Not serious at all. They were friends. She met him when he did work at the Peyton house and helped with old Mr. Peyton.”

“Maybe there was more to the relationship than you knew.”

“She never told me if there was.”

“Did she tell you everything?”

“Does anyone tell another person
everything?
” Robin asked defiantly.

Logan seemed oblivious of her hostile tone. “She was wearing three pieces of jewelry. One silver hoop earring. Familiar with it?”

“Sure. She wore those earrings a lot. Where was the other one?”

“We haven’t found it yet. Then there was a diamond-and-opal ring.”

“That was to be a birthday gift to her mother, but she died before Mr. and Mrs. Peyton could give it to her, so they saved it for Rosie. She’s been wearing it for a couple of years.” Robin looked down. “I always told her opals were supposed to be bad luck, but she just laughed. She wasn’t superstitious.”

“Are you?”

“A little, I guess.”

Logan smiled at her, not in derision, but as if they had something in common. For the first time Robin seemed to relax slightly. She even smiled back.

“Okay, so much for the ring,” Logan went on. “What about the engraved bracelet?”

Robin frowned. “Engraved bracelet? You mean like an identification bracelet?”

“Yes. It was also silver and engraved with the name
Rosalind
in professional script. It looked expensive. You sound like you’ve never seen it before.”

“I haven’t,” Robin said slowly.

“Do you think it’s the kind of thing Tony Jarvis would buy for her?”

“Well, not really. I don’t know anyone who wears those bracelets. They’re kind of old-fashioned, you know?”

Logan nodded. “Could it be something a family member gave her?”

Robin shrugged her shoulders. “I can’t say. I only know I’ve never seen it.”

“All right. Was there anything else, Robin? Anything that could have been worrying Rosalind or made her start avoiding you?”

“I can’t think of anything.”

“How about her general circumstances? Her life at home, for instance.”

“She was sad when her grandfather died last year, but he’d really suffered for a long time, and she was kind of resigned to it. She said she was glad he was at peace. Her grandmother is almost totally out of it now—you know, senile, but before she got so bad, Rosie got along fine with her. And she was close to her aunt Joan, although Joan’s—Miss Peyton’s—rules and curfews were starting to get on her nerves. She said her aunt treated her like she was fourteen instead of seventeen.”

“But there was no serious trouble between them?”

“Not that I know of.”

“How about school?”

“Rosie was looking forward to our senior year. She was in dozens of activities. She was even going to try out for the school play. And she had applied to Radcliffe. That’s where her aunt went to college. I know she would have gotten in.”

“What about you, Dr. Bennett?” Logan asked suddenly. “Did you notice anything different about Rosalind?”

Rick looked startled. “
Me?
”

“You’re treating her grandmother at home, aren’t you? Isn’t that what you said when you came in?”

“Yes, so I did. Mrs. Peyton is in and out of the hospital. Joan has an R.N. there—Bernice Litchfield, the same woman who looked after Martin—but when Mrs. Peyton is home I go by to check on her. But I didn’t meet Rosalind there—I met her here, when I was treating Martin and Rosalind was visiting Robin. That must have been when, Robin? March? April?”

“March, I think.”

“Anyway, the girl was usually out during my visits to her home. All I can say is that she seemed pleasant. Friendly. Always on the go. Other than that, I didn’t get much of an impression of her.”

“Except that she was so pretty,” Robin said. “Everyone noticed that.”

Rick smiled. “Well, sure. She was beautiful. Looked a lot like her aunt.”

“Is there anything else you can tell me?” Logan asked Robin.

Robin shrugged. “Nothing.”

“Well, you’ve got the night to think about it. I’ll want to talk to you again tomorrow. Maybe you can come up with something Rosalind said that’s important.”

Robin’s voice hardened. “What’s the difference? She’s dead now. Nothing she said is going to bring her back.”

“But if she
was
murdered,” Logan said slowly, “you might know something and not even realize it.”

Robin looked at him shrewdly. “You don’t think she killed herself, either, do you?”

“I try not to speculate,” Logan said in a carefully professional tone.

Much later, as Blaine dozed in bed after Logan, Cait, and Rick had left and Robin had finally fallen into a restless sleep, she was startled when the phone rang. The digital clock by her bed glowed 12:00 in brilliant red numbers. Fumbling on her night table, she found the receiver and lifted it on the fourth ring, automatically alarmed by a call at 12
A.M.

“Hello.” Nothing. “Hel
lo
.” The silence spun out. “Is someone there?” Someone
was
there—she heard a quick intake of breath. Her heart began to thud, not in fear but in anger. How many cruel, taunting calls like this had come after Martin’s death? So many that she’d begun to cringe every time the phone rang. Since then the number had been changed. It was even unlisted. But here was another call in the night, loudly jerking her out of the safe oblivion of sleep that had temporarily blotted Rosie’s mutilated face from her vision.

She was pulling the receiver away from her ear when the noise started. A soft, sexless laugh. Then music. She paused, suspending the receiver over the phone cradle. Hang up, she told herself sternly. This is some kind of sick prank. Hang
up
. But morbid fascination forced her to press the receiver to her ear again. The song had ended. A long, empty moment followed. Then she heard a faint hissing before simple piano music played in the background as the song began again and children’s voices crooned in a coldly haunting monotone:

“I wasn’t sure we were going to see you today.”

“I wasn’t too sure, either,” Blaine said, turning away from her mailbox in the main office to face John Sanders.

John paused, as if searching for the right words. Obviously they wouldn’t come. “I couldn’t believe what I heard about Rosie,” he said simply.

“It was horrible.”

“She was found on your property?”

Blaine nodded. “In the creek.” She glanced around, noticing a couple of other teachers creeping nearer, listening avidly. She had known questions about Rosalind were inevitable, but she didn’t feel like discussing the circumstances of Rosie’s death with people she didn’t know well. John was different—they’d been instant friends since she started teaching at Sinclair High almost four years ago. He was warm, funny, and one of the few people who seemed to understand that she’d held onto her job partly from love of teaching and partly to squelch rumors that she’d married Martin Avery for his money. “How about walking with me to my room?” she asked.

“Sure.” John took her arm almost protectively and led her away from the rapidly growing gaggle of teachers who suddenly couldn’t stop staring into their mailboxes while their ears seemed to vibrate toward Blaine.

Perhaps the handsomest man Blaine had ever seen off a movie or television screen, John was in his late twenties, tall and slender yet well muscled, like a dancer. Always carefully dressed, today he wore a beautiful golden-brown tweed sport jacket, and his brown hair curled over his pale yellow shirt collar in back. His features were classic, from the Grecian nose to the wide, mobile mouth, but it was his smoky blue eyes that grabbed people’s attention and held it. The female population of Sinclair High was constantly developing crushes on him, the most blatant member right now being Kathy Foss, the school’s scornful, platinumblond head cheerleader. For a girl with average intelligence, she showed an amazing facility with sexual double entendres while in John’s classes. John had once told Blaine he didn’t know whether to be embarrassed, insulted, or fascinated by the girl’s inventiveness.

“The police were back searching the woods this morning even before I left,” Blaine said.

“Searching for what?”

“Sheriff Quint said Joan helped Rosie load a suitcase Friday afternoon before she left. Also, Rosie had her purse with her and she was wearing a jacket. None of those things were found. The purse and the jacket could have been lost in the water, but probably not the suitcase. There wouldn’t be any reason for her to lug them out to the creek before she…died. Anyway, I’m sure the police will be talking with you about Rosie,” Blaine said.

John looked at her in surprise. “Why me?”

“Because you and Rosie were close. You were always talking together.”

John nodded. “She was a smart kid and we had a lot of the same interests. She wrote poetry, you know. I was encouraging her to send some of it in for publication.”

Blaine smiled. “If you don’t mind my saying so, that sounds a little stilted, like you’re trying to hide something. Everyone knows you and Rosie didn’t just discuss her work. You were friendly.”

John raised an eyebrow. “Just
how
friendly does everyone think we were?”

“Well, not
that
friendly, I don’t think, but more than just student and teacher.”

John sighed. “You’re right. She was a great girl. Outstanding, and I don’t mean just her looks. She was perceptive and extremely intelligent.”

Blaine looked at him askance. He sounded so artificial, and for the first time she noticed he wasn’t quite as well groomed as usual. He’d nicked himself shaving a couple of times, and a drop of blood now showed on his shirt collar. Apparently he hadn’t noticed it.

“Rosie
was
perceptive and intelligent,” she said, catching his inquiring look when she didn’t answer him immediately. “She was a lot like Robin in that respect, except she didn’t have Robin’s inferiority complex, which has only gotten worse since Martin’s death. She is
so
closed off, John.”

“I know, but I can’t help you there. Robin doesn’t have much to say to me. Rosie, on the other hand, was an extrovert. I enjoyed talking with her about a lot of things.”

“In any case, the police will be questioning everyone who knew Rosie.”

“Even though it was suicide?” Blaine hesitated. A line appeared between John’s eyebrows. “It
was
suicide, wasn’t it? That’s what I heard.”

“Just between you and me, I’m not sure. She didn’t seem suicidal to me.”

“She didn’t?”

“No. Did she to you?”

“No-o-o.” Blaine looked at him searchingly. “What I mean is, she didn’t seem depressed, but she was pretty high-strung lately.”

“Did she have problems?”

“She never mentioned any, but she seemed a little…unpredictable. She didn’t always have her homework done, which was a real switch for her, and she talked a lot in class. Nervous chatter, really, but it wasn’t like her.”

John let go of her left arm and shifted his books to his right, looking distant and troubled as they made their way up the crowded staircase to the second floor, where they both taught.

“What do you think was wrong with her?”

John drew his lower lip between his teeth for a moment, as if he were hesitating. “Frankly, I wondered if she was on drugs.”

“Drugs! Rosie?”

“I know it sounds ridiculous, but she
did
change, Blaine. Fast.”

“Maybe there’s another explanation. Maybe she was in love.”

“With Tony Jarvis?” Blaine grew quiet, wishing she hadn’t brought up the subject of love, which would naturally lead to a discussion of Tony Jarvis. “I know she saw him last year, but I never thought her feelings for him ran that deep.” His frown deepened. “But one of the poems she quoted…well, never mind. I’m probably overanalyzing. That’s a bad habit with English teachers.”

“Yes, it is. It probably doesn’t mean anything.”

“But the poem she quoted was something from
Sonnets from the Portuguese
,” John persisted. “I think it was the third one: ‘Unlike are we, unlike, oh princely Heart!’”

“So?”

“So there’s something else in the sonnet about a ‘chief musician’ and a ‘wandering singer.’ Jarvis
is
a musician and a singer. I guess I’d better mention that to the police, especially since you don’t think she committed suicide.”

Blaine felt her mood sinking even lower. During high school she had been friends with Tony’s eldest sister, Sandra, and she remembered Tony well as a darling young child. Something in her still felt protective toward him, even though she knew he’d been in minor trouble several times over the past few years. And now because of her, John was going to tell them about a poem that could hint at a deep involvement between Tony and Rosie. Nice work, Blaine, she thought angrily.

“I said I didn’t know if Rosie committed suicide,” she repeated.

“I
know
what you said. I also know you.” John gave her a halfhearted grin. “I can read your eyes, Ms. Avery.”

“That’s scary.”

“Should be. There are depths and depths behind those beautiful gray eyes.”

Never in all the years she had known John had he flirted with her, but once in a while he gave her a compliment. “Maybe there’s nothing behind those eyes,” she said with a bitter edge. “Maybe I’m just trying to look mysterious—you know, live up to my reputation as the Black Widow of Sinclair, West Virginia.”

Lockers were banging furiously as students gathered their books. “I never told you how much I admired you for coming back to school this fall after Martin’s death,” John said, diplomatically not mentioning the murder investigation and ignoring her sarcasm about the cruel nickname some local townspeople had given her. “And here you are again, the day after you must have gotten the second biggest shock of your life.”

“I guess I’ll just keep coming back until they tell me to go home. I don’t have much else, John, besides a lot of money I don’t deserve and a stepdaughter who doesn’t like me.”

“You have a sister and a niece who love you, not to mention one of the world’s greatest dogs that adores you. One day I’m going to kidnap Ashley from you.” He smiled, then grew serious. “
And
you have a good friend, Blaine. Don’t forget, you can always count on me. And I’m not just saying that, like so many people do in a time of crisis. I
mean
it.”

“Thanks, John.” Blaine felt tears starting in her eyes. Luckily, the bell rang. “Great. My first day back and
I’m
late,” she said shakily.

“They’ll forgive you. In fact, I’ve heard they have a little surprise planned for you. But don’t let on you’ve been warned.” With that he winked at Blaine and strode down the hall to his own classroom.

The surprise was a dozen long-stemmed yellow roses. For the second time in five minutes, Blaine was so touched she thought she was going to cry when Susie Wolfe presented them. “From us to you,” she said with her usual lack of eloquence for which a Farrah Fawcett smile always compensated. “We were going to get red, but Robin said you like yellow. Dean said you must be from Texas, whatever yellow roses have to do with Texas.”

“It’s a song, airhead,” Dean Newman said from the back of the room.

“Drop dead,” Susie replied absently, which broke up the class. Susie and Dean had been dating and arguing since ninth grade.

“They’re beautiful,” Blaine said. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

“Give us all As,” Dean volunteered.

Blaine threw him a droll look. “In homeroom?”

“That’s all he could ever get an A in,” Susie said. Hoots from the class. “Do you really like them?”

“I love them. They were almost worth getting pneumonia for.”

“Well, don’t do it again,” Dean said. “Do you know how expensive roses are? I offered to pull some stuff out of my mom’s flower bed, but nobody’d go along with me.”

Susie made a face. “Oh, he did not. It was his idea.”

“Well, I appreciate your thoughtfulness
and
your extravagance. Right after my first class I’ll find a vase.”

“Got one.” Susie went back to her desk and returned with a plastic vase already filled with water. “You can put them in something pretty when you get home, but this will get them through the day.” After she handed Blaine the vase, her expression grew solemn. “Mrs. Avery, do you mind if we take up a collection for flowers for Rosie?”

The earlier bantering spirit in the room died. Blaine looked from one face to another, seeing emotions ranging from curiosity to horror to desolation. Last year a male student had sent his car off the road while trying to avoid a deer and crashed into a tree. His death had been a shock, but he had not been well known to most of the students, and he had died instantly. The most popular, beautiful girl in school supposedly committing suicide, her body lying in a dirty creek for two days before being discovered, was so much more dramatic and shattering that Blaine understood why the students now felt emotions far deeper than the regretful sadness they’d felt for the boy.

“Of course, Susie,” Blaine said, grateful for her simple but tender heart. She had always liked the girl, and wished more of the students possessed her genuine sweetness. “We’ll put you in charge of handling money and ordering flowers for this classroom.”

After the collection, Blaine barely had time to take roll call before the bell for first period rang. She spent the next three class periods trying to orient herself, determining what the substitute teachers had covered so far. Except for the first week after her accident, she had sent weekly lesson plans to the school as a guide for the substitutes, but they invariably changed things around to their liking, emphasizing what they preferred, ignoring what they didn’t like. That was only natural, Blaine thought. But it meant she had a lot of backtracking to do to satisfy her own standards.

At noon she opted for a sandwich in her classroom instead of going to one of the three strategically placed fastfood restaurants with some of the other teachers, who would undoubtedly want to discuss Rosie’s death. As she ate the dry cheese sandwich on which she’d forgotten to add mayonnaise that morning, she thought of the call she’d received last night. She had discovered Rosie’s body over six hours earlier, and in a town the size of Sinclair, it didn’t take long for word to spread. Obviously someone had decided to scare her, maybe a teenager. Still, “Ring Around a Rosy” had been a particularly frightening choice. The repetition of the word
Rosy
obviously held the greatest significance, but Blaine couldn’t forget the meaning of the song, one that had become popular during the bubonic-plague years in seventeenth-century England. The
rosy
referred to the
bubo
, or the plague sore. The
posy
was the packet of herbs people wore, hoping to ward off the illness. The
ashes
were the burned mattresses and bedclothes of those who had died of the plague.
We all fall down
was a reminder of death’s inevitability. No matter what precautions were taken, the illness was relentless. More than 150,000 people had died during the plague’s reign.

Suddenly she was very glad that this morning she’d told Logan about the call, even if it was only politeness that had prodded him to ask her several questions rather than simply dismiss it as the work of a crank. It hadn’t felt like another crank call, though. In fact, the echo of those lyrics on the old record still made her feel cold: “Ashes ashes/We all fall
down
.” Blaine shivered in the overheated classroom.

During her fifth-period American Lit class, she couldn’t keep her eyes off Tony Jarvis. Although she was used to his lounging inattention and constant smart-aleck remarks that drove most of the teachers wild, she couldn’t help noticing that today his handsome, olive-skinned face was tight and expressionless, his dark eyes distant in thought. For once he made no occasional sardonic cracks about how you wouldn’t want to meet Edgar Allan Poe in a dark alley, or that Rip Van Winkle had probably fallen asleep for fifty years because some English teacher forced him to read Washington Irving stories. He was silent and sullen until Blaine read Poe’s “Annabel Lee” aloud in class. In the middle of the poem, Tony grabbed up his book bag and stormed from the room, leaving everyone staring after him. A few minutes later, even with the classroom windows closed, she and the students could hear his Harley revving up noisily in the parking lot before he tore away from the grounds.