One Summer (45 page)

“I know.”

“But the police station’s just a few blocks from the hospital! You’ll have to turn around.”

“I can’t do that,” Kay said in an odd apologetic tone that made Rachel look at her, really look at her, for the
first time since she had encountered her in the hospital lobby. Kay was casually but attractively dressed in a pair of khaki pants and a matching sweater over a white blouse. Her hair was pinned up into a chic chignon, and her only makeup was a touch of lipstick and mascara. But the overall effect was to make her look different. Uncannily different, almost like another person.

Faint tremors of unease stirred inside Rachel.

“Are you all right?” There was concern in Rachel’s voice.

“It depends on what you mean by all right.” Kay sounded almost sad as she glanced over at Rachel. “Do you believe in reincarnation?”

“What?” Kay’s question was so unexpected that it threw Rachel for a minute.

“Do you believe in reincarnation?”

“No, I don’t. Why?”

“I do. I got interested in the subject years ago, you know. While I was still in high school.”

“You’re entitled to believe anything you want, just like everyone else. That’s why they call America the land of the free.” Rachel was impatient at the pointless turn the conversation had taken. “Kay, could you turn the car around and drive me back to the police station? If not, pull over and I’ll walk back.”

Kay smiled regretfully. “You still don’t get it, do you, Rachel?”

“Get what?”

“Johnny wasn’t really arrested, silly.”

“Then why did you say he was?” This was growing curiouser and curiouser, as Alice had said when she found herself in Wonderland. Rachel took another careful look at Kay. Had she been drinking? Was she on drugs? Whatever was wrong with her was starting to cause Rachel real concern.

“To get you to come with me.”

“Why do you want me to come with you?”

“Did you know that my grandfather served on the city council in the thirties? When they found that woman’s body in the crypt? The diary was in there, too—her killer’s diary. My grandfather kept it—that’s how it disappeared—and I read it the first time when I was about ten. It fascinated me, and I kept reading it, over and over again. Then I started dreaming about what I had read—vivid dreams, so vivid, as if I were
her
, living
her
life. I was really scared—until I started reading about reincarnation. Then I realized that we are all reborn again and again and again. My dreams were so real because I had once been that woman. I had experienced everything that
she
had experienced.”

“Kay, forgive me, but what on earth does any of this have to do with Johnny?” In her impatience, it was all Rachel could do not to shriek the words at her friend.

“Oh, Rachel. I’m really sorry,” Kay said in a faint, die-away voice. Her hands tightened on the steering wheel, she stiffened, and Rachel had a sudden horrifying impression that the woman she was now looking at was not the woman who had been there the instant before.

“Do you know who you are?” Kay asked then, glancing at Rachel. Her voice was lower than normal and deeper. Her pupils had dilated so that they had taken over almost all of her irises, leaving only a soft blue rim around the black.

“Kay—”

“No,” Kay said, and smiled. “I’m not Kay. My name is Sylvia. Sylvia Baumgardner.”

There was such evil, such menace, in that smile and in those eyes as they glanced again at Rachel that a chill ran down Rachel’s spine. Had Kay gone mad?

“Pull over, please. I want out.”

It was a long reach to attain the note of crisp authority with which she had ruled countless classrooms, but Rachel made it. Whatever ailed Kay, she was suddenly downright scary. Rachel wasn’t going to sit there and play spectator
while her friend lost her grip on reality with a vengeance. She was getting out of that car.

Kay laughed. “You don’t have a clue, do you, you poor, stupid creature? You’re Ann Smythe, the organist. Sweet little Ann. Butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth, would it, dear? Always so pretty, so demure. Nobody would have guessed you were a whore, would they? Nobody but me. I knew, you see. I knew him so well. I knew the minute you started throwing out lures to him, the minute he responded. I knew the minute he broke his marriage vows with you. He was mine. He
is
mine.”

Rachel’s eyes widened as she listened to this guttural speech. Kay was almost spooky. She looked different, and she sounded different. Could she be a split personality? Rachel felt a tingle of fear at the possibility. She released her seat belt while holding it in place with her arm, and her fingers fumbled unobtrusively for the door handle. She would jump if she had to. Anything to get out of this car.

“Ah-ah. It’s locked,” Kay said, wagging a finger at Rachel as Rachel pulled on the handle, to no avail. Kay’s eyes were wide open, but Rachel got the impression that they did not really see. She felt that something—not Kay, but
something
—was looking at her through those eyes like a creature peering out of a hole.

“Kay. You’re not making any sense.” Rachel kept her voice quiet and even. Common sense told her that Kay could not keep her a prisoner in the car forever. Rachel had only to stay calm, and she would be fine. What she was witnessing was horrifying, true, but it was surely some sort of nervous breakdown. Perhaps Kay had been under a great deal of stress lately. Rachel was ashamed to admit that she had been so caught up in her own concerns that she didn’t know.

“You want sense?” Kay smiled nastily. “You want to understand what’s happening, Rachel? You could ask Ann—but you don’t even know Ann, do you? At least, not consciously. So I’ll tell you. You—as Ann—stole my husband.
Enticed him into adultery. Fornicated with him. You and he both thought I didn’t know. But I did. I did, and I put a stop to it. Then. But he is weak, you know, weak in that way. He lusts after women. I put the fear of God back into him when he found out what I had done to you, and he was never again tempted to stray. Not in that lifetime. But when I found him again, he was up to his old tricks. Bedding cheap little tarts while ignoring the good woman whose love was his destiny. Because I was plain, you know. And you were pretty. All his women were pretty.”

“You’re very attractive, Kay,” Rachel said uneasily.

Kay glanced at her with such hatred that Rachel shrank back. “I thought they were you, you know. But they weren’t. You’ve been hiding, haven’t you? While you schemed how to get him for yourself. But I’ve found you at last.”

Rachel looked into the nearly black eyes and saw a real and terrible threat. Kay, for whatever reason, believed what she was saying with all her heart. Rachel fought down a sudden surge of panic. At all costs she had to stay calm.

“Kay, you’re not well. Why don’t you turn around, and we’ll go back to the hospital and get you some help? Please, Kay.” For all her good intentions, Rachel’s voice trembled. Her every instinct screamed that she was in danger, but her mind still refused to accept that this woman who had been her lifelong friend could pose a threat. The thought that kept running through her head was, “This cannot be happening. Not to me.”

“I am not Kay. I am Sylvia Baumgardner, wife of Reverend Thomas Baumgardner, minister of this church. You know Thomas as your precious Johnny.” On the last three words, Kay’s voice took on a terrible mockery. The car slowed as it turned off the main road, and Kay gestured out the window as she spoke. Rachel, scarcely daring to look at anything other than Kay now, saw that they were not far from Walnut Grove, pulling down the narrow dirt
road that led to the First Baptist Church. As Rachel stared at the small frame building, Kay’s meaning suddenly became all too clear.

Like everyone else in Tylerville, Kay had grown up with the tale of the minister who had cheated on his wife with the organist, and the wife’s terrible revenge. Somehow Kay imagined herself as the wronged wife and had cast Rachel as the organist.

Rachel went cold as she considered the implications.

53

I
t was after five o’clock, and dusk was darkening the small patch of outdoors that Johnny could see from where he sat in Wheatley’s office. He watched the sky and grew increasingly restive. He did not like the idea of Rachel being out of his sight once night fell.

“I need to make a phone call,” he told the chief finally.

Wheatley, who’d already put a call into the Louisville postmaster to find out who owned that drop box, grunted. He had been probing Johnny unmercifully for every scrap of memory he could summon concerning the previous missives—all five hundred or so of them—from “eternally yours.” So far he had not gotten the answers he sought.

“You sure you threw away every single one?” Wheatley sounded disgusted as he peered at Johnny from beneath lowered brows.

Johnny nodded. “I’m sure. There didn’t seem to be any point in keeping them. Did you hear what I said? I need to make a phone call.”

The chief pursed his lips, and his eyes narrowed. “Who to?”

“Rachel. It’s getting dark. I want to tell her to stay put till I get there. Do I need you to sign a permission slip or something before I can use the phone?”

The chief smiled sourly at this and shoved his phone across the desk. “Go ahead.”

“Thanks.” Johnny picked up the receiver and dialed the hospital. On the third ring Elisabeth answered.

“Hello, Mrs. Grant. This is Johnny. Could I speak to Rachel a minute, please?”

He listened for an instant and went cold. His eyes rose to lock with the chief’s, and he placed a suddenly sweaty palm over the mouthpiece.

“She’s not there,” he said in a hoarse voice. “I dropped her off at the hospital more than an hour ago, and she’s not there. She’s never even been up to the room.”

54

“A
re you saying that you think Johnny is the reincarnation of Reverend Baumgardner?” The idea would have been ludicrous if the situation had not been so deadly serious.

“I don’t
think
so. I know so. His soul is there in his eyes. Just as yours is. I don’t know why I didn’t recognize you sooner.” The car bumped to a stop behind the church. They had driven the last few dozen yards over thick grass and were now parked next to the black iron fence that encircled the church’s small graveyard. Nearly all the tombstones dated from the mid-nineteenth century, and the three side-by-side crypts at the very back were older than that. The cemetery was scrupulously maintained by the Preservation Society.

Rachel stifled a near-hysterical giggle as she remembered that Kay had lavished loving work on the restoration of the flower beds that the long-ago minister’s supposedly murderous wife had planted. Had she been imagining herself as the minister’s long-dead wife even then?

“The other two were a mistake.” Kay was glaring at Rachel now that she was free to turn her attention from the road. Rachel was suddenly conscious of how much larger Kay was than herself. Kay was at least five feet seven or eight, built on queenly lines. If the matter were
to degenerate to hand-to-hand fighting, Rachel realized she wouldn’t have a prayer. Then Kay’s words, and the meaning that had to lie beneath them, penetrated her distracted brain. All at once, with a sensation like a blow to the gut, she realized precisely with whom she was dealing.

“You—
you
killed Marybeth Edwards and Glenda Watkins, didn’t you?” Rachel shrank as close to the door as she could get as she waited for the locks to be released. Once that happened, she would be out that door and across the grass like a hare with the hounds at its heels. Walnut Grove, the nearest residence, was only about three miles away. She just had to make it across the field and through the woods, and she would be safe.

“Like I said, they were a mistake.” Kay shrugged. “Sometimes it is hard to see clearly. But now I’ve found you, and I
know
. The other two were no more than fool’s gold. You’re the one. When you are gone, he will be mine.”

Rachel felt almost faint with horror. “But, Kay, you and Johnny—you’ve never seemed interested in him, or he in you. What makes you think that killing me will make him turn to you?” She didn’t really hope to make Kay see reason. It was clear that Kay was beyond that. But she was willing to try anything, anything at all that might increase her chances of staying alive. Because she had just figured out that Kay had brought her out to this deserted cemetery to kill her.