Gone for Good

33

Sheila and Julie had been members of Chi Gamma sorority. I still had the rent-a-car from my late-night sojourn to Livingston, so Katy and I decided to take the two-hour drive up to Haverton College in Connecticut and see what we could learn.

Earlier in the day, I called the Haverton registrar's office to do a little fact-checking. I'd learned that the sorority's housemother back then had been one Rose Baker. Ms. Baker had retired three years ago and moved into a campus house directly across the street. She was to be the main target of our pseudo-investigation.

We pulled in front of the Chi Gamma house. I remembered it from my too-infrequent visits during my Amherst College days. You could tell right off that it was a sorority house. It had that antebellum, faux Greco-Roman-columns-thing going on, all in white, and with soft ruffled edges that gave the whole edifice a feminine feel. Something about it reminded me of a wedding cake.

Rose Baker's residence was, to speak kindly, more modest. The house had started life as a small Cape Cod, but somewhere along the way the lines had been ironed flat. The one-time red color was now a dull clay. The window lace looked cat-shredded. Shingles had flaked off as if the house had an acute case of seborrhea.

Under normal circumstances, I would have made an appointment of some kind. On TV, they never do that. The detective shows up and the person is always home. I always found that both unrealistic and unwieldy, yet perhaps now I understood a little better. First off, the chatty lady in the registrar's office informed me that Rose Baker rarely left home, and when she did, she rarely strayed far. Second and I think, more important if I called Rose Baker and she asked me why I wanted to see her, what would I say? Hi, let's talk murder? No, better just to show up with Katy and see where that got us. If she was not in, we could always explore the archives in the library or visit the sorority house. I had no idea what good any of this would do, but hey, we were just flying blind here.

As we approached Rose Baker's door, I could not help but feel a pang of envy for the knapsack-laden students I saw walking to and fro. I'd loved college. I loved everything about it. I loved hanging out with sloppy slacker friends. I loved living on my own, doing laundry too rarely, eating pepperoni pizza at midnight. I loved chatting with the accessible, hippie like professors. I loved debating lofty issues and harsh realities that never, ever, penetrated the green of our campus.

When we reached the overly cheerful welcome mat, I heard a familiar song wafting through the wooden portal. I made a face and listened closer. The sound was muffled, but it sounded like Elton John more specifically, his song "Candle in the Wind" from the classic Goodbye Yellow Brick Road double album. I knocked on the door.

A woman's voice chimed, "Just a minute."

A few seconds later, the door opened. Rose Baker was probably in her seventies and dressed, I was surprised to see, for a funeral. Her wardrobe, from the big-brimmed hat with matching veil to the sensible shoes, was black. Her rouge looked as if it'd been liberally applied via an aerosol can. Her mouth formed a nearly perfect "O" and her eyes were big red saucers, as if her face had frozen immediately after being startled.

"Mrs. Baker? "I said.

She lifted the veil. "Yes?"

"My name is Will Klein. This is Katy Miller."

The saucer eyes swiveled toward Katy and locked into position.

"Is this a bad time?" I asked.

She seemed surprised by the question. "Not at all."

I said, "We'd like to speak with you, if that's okay."

"Katy Miller," she repeated, her eyes still on her.

"Yes, ma'am," I said.

"Julie's sister."

It was not a question, but Katy nodded anyway. Rose Baker pushed open the screen door. "Please come in."

We followed her into the living room. Katy and I stopped short, taken aback by what we saw.

It was Princess Di.

She was everywhere. The entire room was sheathed, blanketed, overrun with Princess Di paraphernalia. There were photographs, of course, but also tea sets, commemorative plates, embroidered pillows, lamps, figurines, books, thimbles, shot glasses (how respectful), a toothbrush (eeuw!), a night-light, sunglasses, salt-'n-pepper shakers, you name it. I realized that the song I was hearing was not the original Elton John-Bernie Taupin classic, but the more recent Princess Di tribute version, the lyrics now offering a good-bye to our "English rose." I had read somewhere that the Di-tribute version was the biggest-selling single in world history. That said something, though I was not sure I wanted to know what.

Rose Baker said, "Do you remember when Princess Diana died?"

I looked at Katy. She looked at me. We both nodded yes.

"Do you remember the way the world mourned?"

She looked at us some more. And we nodded again.

"For most people, the grief, the mourning, it was just a fad. They did it for a few days, maybe a week or two. And then" she snapped her fingers, magician style, her saucer eyes bigger than ever "it was over for them. Like she never existed at all."

She looked at us and waited for clucks of agreement. I tried not to make a face.

"But for some of us, Diana, Princess of Wales, well, she really was an angel. Too good for this world maybe. We won't ever forget her. We keep the light burning."

She dabbed her eye. A sarcastic rejoinder came to my lips, but I bit it back.

"Please," she said. "Have a seat. Would you care for. some tea?"

Katy and I both politely declined.

"A biscuit, then?"

She produced a plate with cookies in the shape of, yup, Princess Diana's profile. Sprinkles formed the crown. We begged off, neither of us much in the mood to nibble on dead Di. I decided to start right in.

"Mrs. Baker," I said, "you remember Katy's sister, Julie?"

"Yes, of course." She put down the plate of cookies. "I remember all of the girls. My husband, Frank he taught English here died in 1969. We had no children. My family had all passed away. That sorority house, those girls, for twenty-six years they were my life."

"I see," I said.

"And Julie, well, late at night, when I lay in bed in the dark, her face comes to me more than most. Not just because she was a special child oh, and she was but of course, because of what happened to her."

"You mean her murder?" It was a dumb thing to say, but I was new at this. I just wanted to keep her talking.

"Yes." Rose Baker reached out and took Katy's hand. "Such a tragedy. I'm so sorry for your loss."

Katy said, "Thank you."

Uncharitable as this might sound, my mind could not help but think: Tragedy, yes, but where was Julie's image or the image of Rose Baker's husband or family, for that matter in this swirling potpourri of royal grief?

"Mrs. Baker, do you remember another sorority sister named Sheila Rogers?" I asked.

Her face pinched up and her voice was short. "Yes." She shifted primly. "Yes, I do."

From her reaction, it was pretty obvious that she had not heard about the murder. I decided not to tell her yet. She clearly had a problem with Sheila, and I wanted to know what it was. We needed honesty here. If I were to tell her that Sheila was dead now, she might sugarcoat her answers. Before I could follow up, Mrs. Baker held up her hand. "May I ask you a question?"

"Of course."

"Why are you asking me all this now?" She looked at Katy. "It all happened so long ago."

Katy took that one. "I'm trying to find the truth."

"The truth about what?"

"My sister changed while she was here."

Rose Baker closed her eyes. "You don't need to hear this, child."

"Yes," Katy said, and the desperation in her voice was palpable enough to knock out a window. "Please. We need to know."

Rose Baker kept her eyes closed for another moment or two. Then she nodded to herself and opened them. She folded her hands and put them in her lap. "How old are you?"

"Eighteen."

"About the age Julie was when she first came here." Rose Baker smiled. "You look like her."

"So I've been told."

"It's a compliment. Julie lit up a room. In many ways she reminds me of Diana herself. Both of them were beautiful. Both of them were special almost divine." She smiled and wagged a finger. "Ah, and both had a wild streak. Both were inordinately stubborn. Julie was a good person. Kind, smart as a whip. She was an excellent student."

" Yet," I said, " she dropped out."

"Yes."

"Why?"

She turned her eyes on me. "Princess Di tried to be firm. But no one can control the winds of fate. They blow as they may."

Katy said, "I'm not following you."

A Princess Di clock chimed the hour, the sound a hollow imitation of Big Ben. Rose Baker waited for it to grow silent again. Then she said, "College changes people. Your first time away, your first time on your own…" She drifted off, and for a moment I thought I'd have to nudge her into continuing. "I'm not saying this right. Julie was fine at first, but then she, well, she started to withdraw. From all of us. She cut classes. She broke up with her hometown boyfriend. Not that that was unusual. Almost all the girls do first year. But in her case, it came so late. Junior year, I think. I thought she really loved him."

I swallowed, kept still.

"Earlier," Rose Baker said, "you asked me about Sheila Rogers."

Katy said, "Yes."

"She was a bad influence."

"How so?"

"When Sheila joined us that same year" Rose put a finger to her chin and tilted her head as if a new idea had just forced its way in "well, maybe she was the winds of fate. Like the paparazzi that made Diana's limousine speed up. Or that awful driver, Henri Paul. Did you know that his blood alcohol level was three times the legal limit?"

"Sheila and Julie became friends?" I tried.

"Yes."

"Roommates, right?"

"For a time, yes." Her eyes were moist now. "I don't want to sound melodramatic, but Sheila Rogers brought something bad to Chi Gamma. I should have thrown her out. I know that now. But I had no proof of wrongdoing."

"What did she do?"

She shook her head again.

I thought about it for a moment. Junior year, Julie had visited me at Amherst. I, on the other hand, had been discouraged from coming down to Haverton, which was a little strange. I flashed back to the last time Julie and I had been together. She had set up a quiet getaway at a bed and breakfast in Mystic instead of having us stay on campus. At the time, I'd thought it romantic. Now, of course, I knew better.

Three weeks later, Julie called and broke it off with me. But looking back on it now, I remembered that she had been acting both lethargic and strange during that visit. We were in Mystic only one night and even as we made love, I could feel her fading away from me. She blamed it on her studies, said that she'd been cramming big-time. I bought it because, in hindsight, I wanted to.

When I now added it all together, the solution was fairly obvious. Sheila had come here straight from the abuse of Louis Castman and drugs and the streets. That life is not so easy to leave behind. My guess was, she dragged some of that decay with her. It does not take much to poison the well. Sheila arrives at the start of Julie's junior year, Julie begins to act erratically.

It made sense.

I tried another tack. "Did Sheila Rogers graduate?"

"No, she dropped out too."

"The same time as Julie?"

"I'm not even sure either of them officially dropped out. Julie just stopped going to class toward the end of the year. She stayed in her room a lot. She slept past noon. When I confronted her" her voice caught "she moved out."

"Where did she move to?"

"An apartment off campus. Sheila stayed there too."

"So when exactly did Sheila Rogers drop out?"

Rose Baker pretended to think about it. I say pretend, because I could see that she knew the answer right away and that this act was somehow for our benefit. "I think Sheila left after Julie died."

"How long after?" I asked.

She kept her eyes down. "I don't remember ever seeing her after the murder."

I looked at Katy. Her eyes, too, were on the floor. Rose Baker put a trembling hand to her mouth.

"Do you know where Sheila went?" I asked.

"No. She was gone. That was all that mattered."

She would not look at us anymore. I found that troubling.

"Mrs. Baker?"

She still would not face me.

"Mrs. Baker, what else happened?"

"Why are you here?" she asked.

"We told you. We wanted to know "

"Yes, but why now?"

Katy and I looked at each other. She nodded. I turned to Rose Baker and said, "Yesterday, Sheila Rogers was found dead. She was murdered."

I thought that maybe she had not heard me. Rose Baker kept her gaze locked on a black-velvet Diana, a grotesque and frightening reproduction. Diana's teeth were blue, and her skin looked like a bad bottle-tan. Rose stared at the image and I started thinking again about the fact that there were no pictures of her husband or her family or her sorority girls only this dead stranger from overseas. And I wondered about how I was dealing with all this death, how I kept chasing shadows to divert the pain, and I wondered if maybe there was something like that going on here too.

"Mrs. Baker?"

"Was she strangled like the others?"

"No," I said. And then I stopped. I turned to Katy. She had heard it too. "Did you say others?"

"Yes."

"What others?"

"Julie was strangled," she said.

"Right."

Her shoulders slumped. The wrinkles on her face seemed more pronounced now, the crevices sinking deeper into the flesh. Our visit had unleashed demons she had stuffed in boxes or maybe buried beneath the Di accoutrements. "You don't know about Laura Emerson, do you?"

Katy and I exchanged another glance. "No," I said.

Rose Baker's eyes started darting across the walls again. "Are you sure you won't have some tea?"

"Please, Mrs. Baker. Who is Laura Emerson?"

She stood and hobbled over to the fireplace mantel. Her fingers reached out and gently touched down on a ceramic bust of Di. "Another sorority sister," she said. "Laura was a year behind Julie."

"What happened to her?" I asked.

She found a piece of dirt stuck on the ceramic bust. She used her nail to scratch it off. "Laura was found dead near her home in North Dakota eight months before Julie. She'd been strangled too."

Icy hands were grabbing at my legs, pulling me back under. Katy's face was white. She shrugged at me, letting me know that this was new to her too.

"Did they ever find her killer?" I asked.

"No," Rose Baker said. "Never."

I tried to sift through it, process this new data, get a grip on what this all meant. "Mrs. Baker, did the police question you after Julie's murder?"

"Not the police," she said.

"But someone did?"

She nodded. "Two men from the FBI."

"Do you remember their names?"

"No."

"Did they ask you about Laura Emerson?"

"No. But I told them anyway."

"What did you say?"

"I reminded them that another girl had been strangled."

"How did they react to that?"

"They told me that I should keep that to myself. That saying something could compromise the investigation."

Too fast, I thought. This was all coming at me too fast. It would not compute. Three young women were dead. Three women from the same sorority house. That was a pattern if ever I saw one. A pattern meant that Julie's murder was not the random, solo act of violence that the FBI had led us and the world to believe.

And worst of all, the FBI knew it. They had lied to us all these years.

The question now was, why.