Her Last Letter Read online

  My plan this morning, before my life had been turned upside down, was to complete a graphic design project I’d promised as a favor to my old boss. Now it would have to wait-at least until this afternoon. I took a fast shower and headed out the door.

  I’d been over to the old house just two days before to tag the bedroom furniture that needed to be moved. My usual habit was to stop by the house every few weeks, then drive by every few days to make sure the lights went on at night and trash had not blown into the yard. Though the neighbors kept an eye on things to some extent, it wasn’t their first priority. Linda kept after me to sell our old homestead, or at least to rent it, but I wasn’t ready to let go. It was the last place Kelly had lived, the house where we all grew up, a repository of memories both good and bad. But that wasn’t why I was going there today.

  The two-story frame house was a mile out of Glenwood Springs and had been there for over fifty years. It sat on a small lot, a tiny square, with one towering pine dominating the front yard. For the last two years since Kelly’s death the house had remained undisturbed, the furniture the way Kelly had arranged it, the kitchen utensils still in the drawers. The only thing that had changed since we were children was Kelly’s room upstairs, a room that had once belonged to all three of us girls. In those days, two sets of bunk beds took up most of the room and fights had been frequent-the lack of privacy a constant source of irritation.

  I parked my red Jeep Wrangler in the drive and walked up the stone path. Traces of snow still clung to the edges of the porch, but would probably melt by this afternoon, the temperature predicted to rise to forty, a mild and sunny end of October day. I unlocked the front door and stepped inside, assailed again by the stuffy lack of ventilation. Carefully, I surveyed the living room. Everything appeared to be in its place, still, something bothered me. Then I trained my eyes on the ashtray next to Dad’s chair. Had it moved? Hadn’t it been facing in the other direction the last time I was here? Well, maybe Linda had stopped by. She didn’t often, but maybe she had.

  I wasn’t sure exactly where to start. The boxes with Kelly’s journals had joined many other boxes when Linda and I had gone through Kelly’s things. We had quietly sorted, sadly organized for over a month. And we’d fought. Linda wanted to throw out or give away almost everything, but I insisted we keep the majority. In the end, very little moved out of the house.

  I began my search in the little room, the one my father had used for his business when he wasn’t at the store. I opened the closet and stared in. Boxes sat upon boxes stacked three high. I pulled one off the top and began.

  By two o’clock I’d found the box I’d been looking for, down in the cellar, but it had been opened and for the most part emptied. Only the very old journals sat at the bottom of the box. The rest were missing. I was too tired to look any further, so I gathered the box in my arms and took it out to the car. There was one other place they might be.

  I dialed Linda on the cell phone from the Jeep. Unfortunately, Wolfgang picked up.

  “Hi, Wolfgang, is Linda there?”

  “Well hello, Gwyn, nice to hear your voice. How have you been?”

  “Fine.” I waited.

  “Well,” he said after a pause, “you must be in a rush, no time to talk I guess. Linda’s outside in the hot tub right now, soaking in the bubbles, where I was heading. Would you like to join us?”

  “Not today.”

  “I’m sure Linda has some extra suits, though I don’t think I’ll use one. That wouldn’t bother you would it?”

  “Wolfgang, I have to go.”

  “We could just hang out.”

  “Right. Very funny. Please tell Linda to call me later.”

  “Sure. I’ll certainly do that.”

  He loved to tease me like this, hoping to amuse me I supposed, though he never did. I’d tried for Linda’s sake to like him. Unfortunately, he always managed to turn me off. He was a good-looking man, classic Nordic blond, fair skinned, well built, clearly Linda’s type, but he was way too into himself. I could see it bothered him enormously that I’d never warmed up to him. I don’t know why. Maybe he needed women to like him for some reason. Still, it was hard to believe he could murder anyone. A flirt, yes, but a murderer? Of course, I’d met a lot of odd characters in my lifetime. How many had I ever thought capable of murder?

  Kelly had known only three men that Linda and I would consider serious boyfriends: Wolfgang, Trevor, and before that, Josh, my friend since childhood. But there was no way I could believe Josh could commit such a horrible crime. He was just too good. And what possible reason would he have to harm Kelly?

  Craig Foster, my sister’s boyfriend, was the only one police were looking for in connection with her murder. He was the one who ran right after her death. He’d been the only real suspect. But now that I’d found Kelly’s letter, it occurred to me that Craig may have had some other reason for running. And the one that was taking shape in my mind was that he’d been framed.…

  I worked in my studio for the rest of the afternoon. Along with the project for my old boss, I had a private art exhibition coming up soon in Denver and hoped to complete several new paintings. It was something I wanted to do, something I enjoyed doing. Though my training was in graphic design, I loved to paint, and I wasn’t half bad.

  Of course, I didn’t need to work anymore to earn a living. That changed the day our father passed away and left the three of us girls accumulated assets worth over eighteen million dollars. Then Kelly died, and her share was divided between Linda and me. As if I wanted it. I’d have burned every dollar if it meant I could have my sister back.

  I remember the shock I felt, and the looks on Linda’s and Kelly’s faces as we sat in the lawyer’s office listening to our father’s will. Certainly we’d suspected there would be something. Dad was always working, never home, at the sporting goods store or off somewhere. But eighteen million.

  Our father had come from money, though he’d rarely spoke of his family or of their wealth, except on the few occasions when he’d been drinking. Huddled together on the floor behind the couch, my sisters and I would quietly listen in as he rambled on about the past. We learned that Dad had run away at nineteen to become a mountain man. He didn’t want to work like his two brothers for his father, a successful Midwest beer distributor. Our father didn’t like the changes he’d seen take place in his brothers, their bickering, their greed. He’d spent several years on the road, then met our mother in Cheyenne, Wyoming, my mother’s birthplace. They’d moved on to Denver, Colorado, where my father opened his first sporting goods store. He was a natural, a good businessman. Making money ran in his veins whether he liked it or not. Wily and tightfisted, Samuel Everett let no man get the better of him. You did not ask him for money. You earned your money, you saved it, or you went without it. And that, of course, applied to his children. But harsh as it felt at the time, he’d praised us for our accomplishments, and encouraged us, loving us in his way. And each one of us had loved him back.

  I lifted my paintbrush, stopping to eye the piece in front of me, a scene depicting climbers ascending an icefall, bright sunlight glinting off their crampons and pickaxes. Restless, I stood and walked to the easel in the far corner of the room and turned it toward me. It was Kelly’s portrait, half-finished. She’d posed for this one even though I’d insisted I could use the camera. But Kelly had liked the idea of sitting for me, and she’d done a good job, hands folded quietly in her lap, meditating almost. Unfortunately, I hadn’t been able to finish the painting, not for two years.

  When Linda didn’t return my call by five, I called her again. She answered this time, obviously intoxicated.

  “Gwyn,” she said too loudly. “Hi, how are you?”

  “I’m okay. You still in the hot tub? You sound like you’ve been drinking.”

  “Not that much. I feel pretty good though.”

  “I need to ask you something. Is Wolfgang there?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Why, is it
a secret?”

  I heard water splash and worried she’d dropped the phone into the tub. “Linda, you there?”

  “Ye-e-e-s.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing. I told Wolfgang to cover his ears because we wanted to have a private conversation.”

  “Linda.“

  “What?”

  “Forget it. We’ll talk later. I’ve got to go.”

  “No, come over. I haven’t seen you in ages. I miss you.”

  “Yes, and I miss you too, but I can’t right now. I have a couple things I have to do.”

  “But you’ll stop by soon?”

  “Yes, as soon as I can.”

  I hung up the phone and reached into the box I’d brought from the old house. I opened one of the journals and began to read. I could tell by the large cursive writing that Kelly hadn’t been very old when she’d penned this one.

  Nicole sat next to Jennifer today. I think she likes Jennifer better than she likes me, but she said she didn’t. She told me I was her best friend at recess yesterday. I gave her a dirty look when she tried to talk to me when the bell rang. I wonder if they were talking about me? I hate the clothes Mom made me wear today and those old crummy shoes. Maybe if I lose them Mom will get me a new pair, but probably she’ll make me wear those icky loafers instead. I’m not going to talk to Nicole the rest of the day. I don’t like Jennifer. I don’t know why Nicole likes her. Oh well.

  I finished the notebook and opened another, picturing my sister at that age, her hair short and boyish, always in need of combing. Her chestnut hair had been silky though, and as Kelly grew older, her hair was one of her most attractive features. When she wore it long or piled it up on her head, there was no doubt she was the best looking of us three girls.

  I flipped through the pages, reading a paragraph here, another there. Nothing in these journals was going to help me very much. All appeared to have been written when Kelly was still in elementary school.

  But there had been several boxes of notebooks tucked away in Kelly’s closet. The pages Linda and I briefly scanned during the cleanup after Kelly’s death appeared semi-recent, bits and pieces of half-finished stories and ideas for more. Neither of us had read very much of it though, not even a tenth of what was there. It was too depressing, and felt too personal.

  When I stopped by Linda’s house the next day, her three-car garage was open. Fortunately, Wolfgang’s commercial van with the company logo on the side was nowhere to be seen. Linda’s Audi was there though, and their Subaru. I stared for a moment at the giant gingerbread house before exiting my Jeep. The idea to build this garishly overdone home could only have been Wolfgang’s. My best guess was that he’d been trying to recreate Victorian architecture, but it was an insult to the form, a crazy blend of styles I could only guess at. Though the house embraced the lacy ornamented detail of Victorian architecture, plus the towers and turrets often seen, two large Greek columns flanked the front door of the partly white, partly beige stucco exterior. Traces of Colonial, Gothic, even Modern were present. Wolfgang was a builder, not a designer. That was certain.

  I walked through the garage and knocked loudly, then yelled out, “Linda, it’s me.” After a while, I heard footsteps approaching.

  “Gwyn?” Linda asked before opening the door.

  “Yes, it’s me.”

  “Wow,” she said, pulling the door wide. “I almost didn’t answer. Look at me.”

  I stared, amused, at my sister’s purple head, the hair dye a slippery mess above her ears. “Guess my timing isn’t the greatest.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’m still glad you’re here.” She tightened the towel she wore around her neck. “It’s almost time to rinse it out. I gave myself an emergency fix. You can tell me if I look awful or not.”

  Linda parked me in the kitchen with a fresh cup of coffee and some strudel she’d warmed in the microwave. “I’ll only be a minute,” she called back as she trotted down the hall and out of sight.

  I nodded and busied myself with the strudel.

  She was back a few minutes later, the towel now wrapped around her head. “It’s so good to see you,” she said, her voice rising high like a child’s as she seated herself across the table from me. “We’re terrible. We’re all we’ve got and we don’t get together enough. So what was it you wanted to talk about yesterday? I wish you would have come over. We would’ve had fun. Wolfgang certainly wasn’t much company.”

  “I had stuff to do. But I’m here now.”

  “We could have talked. What difference did it make that Wolfgang was there?”

  “I just wasn’t comfortable with him listening in.”

  Linda laughed. “He’s not interested in our conversations, believe me. He was in and out of the hot tub the whole time anyway. I don’t know why you let him bother you.”

  “Can we drop it, please?”

  She frowned, stopping her coffee cup in midair. “Sure, we can drop it. What’s with you?”

  “Nothing.”

  She gazed at me, then resumed drinking her coffee.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I have a headache.”

  She nodded, but wouldn’t look at me.

  I bit into the strudel. “This really tastes good. Where’d you get it?”

  “In town. Wolfgang picked it up on his way home yesterday.” She chewed her lower lip, still avoiding eye contact.

  “So how’s the redecorating project coming along?” I asked.

  “It’s coming.”

  “No, really, Linda. Tell me. I’m sorry, okay. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

  She sighed loudly. “Like I said, it’s coming. But the whole thing’s a real pain in the ass. Just try to do anything your way when your husband’s a builder.”

  “Why? What happened?”

  “Nothing huge. He just doesn’t care about any of it. I show him color swatches and everything, but I know he’s not paying attention. Then the paint comes out wrong and he just laughs and tells me his guys will redo it. I don’t want them to redo it. I want it done right the first time. It’s totally frustrating.”

  I nodded.

  “I wanted the new bathroom painted a light airy blue-green,” she said, “like you’re in a meadow or something. Instead I get this murky swamp color. I almost cried. And don’t say it. I know I could have hired a decorator for this, but I only wanted a few simple changes. Unfortunately, it’s never that easy.”

  “Is it fixed now? Do you want to show me?”

  “No, everything’s a mess up there, tarps and paint cans everywhere. I’d rather show you when it’s done. But enough about my stuff. How are things with you? How’s Trevor?”

  “Good. I’m doing a new exhibition in a few weeks, and Trevor’s hot on some condo thing, a big project.”

  “A new exhibition? Did you tell me about this one?”

  “No, I don’t think so. It will be my biggest show to date. I’ll be the only artist there. I guess they plan to feature one new artist each month. I’ll be the first. I’m mentioned in their advertising too. Hopefully, this means I’ll sell something.”

  “Of course you’ll sell something. Artists don’t get written up in the paper for no reason at all.”

  “It was a local paper.”

  “So what? You’re incredibly talented. I wish I had even a little of your gift. So where’s the exhibit going to be?”

  “Denver, a new mall, Vista Meadows, real upscale so I’ve heard. I’ll go down there a day early and check it out. Do you want to go with me?”

  “How long will you be there?”

  “A couple days. It’s over the weekend.”

  Linda pursed her lips. “No, I’d better not. I need to be here to supervise things.” She rolled her wrist between her fingers, then winced in pain.

  “What?”

  “Oh, I was trying to lift a chair by myself and hurt my wrist. I’m an idiot.”

  “Did you sprain it?”

  “No, I don’t think
so, maybe a little. It’s nothing.” She rose from her chair and walked to the coffeepot. “I’m just glad it wasn’t my tennis arm. Then I would be pissed.”

  “How’s that going?”

  “The league? Pretty good, we’re moving up in the rankings. My backhand’s improving. Wolfgang thinks so anyway. It’s just hard to get over to the club and practice with all these workmen running in and out needing my approval, but I do. I have to work out just to preserve my sanity.” She gave me a look, refilling my cup. “Is … everything else okay?”

  The everything else she was referring to was my depression and subsequent need for therapy.

  “I stopped seeing Janet two months ago. Her idea. I’m doing lots better. I still have my moments, but they aren’t as bad.”

  She stared at me for an instant, then smiled. “Good, I’m really glad to hear that.” She took another sip of coffee, then reached her free hand up and touched the towel on her head. “Are you in a hurry? Can you wait a couple minutes for me to blow dry my hair and see how this all came out? I won’t be long.”

  “Sure, as long as I can have this last piece of strudel.”

  “Please-enjoy. At least it won’t end up on your hips like it would on mine. God help me if I ever stop working out. Wolfgang would leave me.” She disappeared back down the hall.

  I brought the strudel to my mouth and took a bite. If anything, Linda was getting too thin. She’d never been overweight really, but she did have a softer, more feminine look before Wolfgang came along. Now, her collarbones protruded and her face was much thinner. Despite the changes, she was still a beautiful woman, but she definitely didn’t need to lose any more weight. It wouldn’t do any good to mention this though. Linda would turn herself inside out if she thought it would please Wolfgang. Her love for him bordered on obsession. I would have to approach the subject of Kelly’s letter very carefully or Linda would throw open the gates of hell and let the demon’s fly.

  “Ta-Da,” she said with a flourish of her arms, a smile lighting up her face. “Do you like?”

  I couldn’t see a big difference, same blonde chin-length curls, but I hadn’t seen her for over a month. “Oh, it’s very pretty, very nice. I like the color.”