Unbreathed Memories

chapter 20

It had been two weeks since Dennis first showed us Fiona Voorhis’s last sad letters. Connie sat across from me at my kitchen table with a half-eaten piece of apple pie in front of her. “You did what?” Her voice cut through the air like a saw hitting a nail.

“I sent him a note.”

“What kind of note?”

“I got to thinking about that dumb movie I Know What You Did Last Summer.”

She closed her eyes. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing.”

“So I sent him a note saying, ‘I know what you did.’ And I stapled it to a clipping from the Sun about this guy who’s on trial for abusing his daughters.”

“Hannah, are you nuts?”

“It was anonymous. He won’t know who sent it.”

Connie laid down her fork and relaxed into her chair. “So what’s the point?”

Connie was going to hate what I was about to tell her. “Well, I suggested he meet me at All Hallows to talk about it. At seven tonight.”

I was right. Connie half rose from her chair with a murderous gleam in her eyes, then sat down abruptly.

“The way I figure it, Connie, if he’s guilty, he’ll turn up just to see what I know. If he’s not guilty, he’ll ignore it. Tear up the note and throw it away.”

“What reason would he have to show up? You can’t prove he abused his daughter.”

“I know that, but he doesn’t.” I avoided her eyes. “I lied. I told him I had evidence he might be interested in.”

Connie’s silver earrings bounced against her neck. “Oh, Lord! And I suppose you’ll want me to go along with you on this?”

“Well, yes. Why else would I tell you?”

She frowned. “Dennis isn’t going to like this.”

“I don’t suppose he will, but I’m counting on you to get him to come along.”

“What!” Connie spluttered, her face an alarming shade of pink.

“Don’t blow a gasket, Connie.”

“Easy for you to say. I’m panicking. You are dangerous to know.”

“I’ve got it all figured out. Georgina told me about the sound system they use at All Hallows to record the sermons. It’s installed in the fellowship hall somewhere, underneath the sanctuary.” I had been trying to remember if I had seen an AV closet the night I crashed the therapy session. It might have been behind any one of several closed doors.

Connie avoided me by closing her eyes and resting her forehead on the palm of her hand.

“If Voorhis shows up in the sanctuary, I’ll get him to confess and we’ll have it all on tape,” I argued.

“Hannah, I told you. Dennis will have no part of this.”

“Why not?”

“It’s got to be illegal, for one thing.”

“That’s just on TV.” I leaned over and tried to look up into her eyes. “Look, I swear to you. Dr. Voorhis came to my hospital room. I was not imagining it. And don’t forget what Dennis found out about Fiona Voorhis.”

“Hannah, have you ever stopped to consider that Fiona Voorhis might have been deranged?” Connie skewered me with her eyes. “Just like a certain sister-in-law I could mention.”

“I agree. Any one of these facts taken separately mightn’t amount to much, but put it together with what Stephanie Golden told me about her last session with Diane Sturgis and it all adds up.”

“To what?”

I felt for the plastic syringe cap, still in my pocket. Whenever I began to doubt myself, I’d wrap my fingers around that solid object and know I was completely sane. “It adds up to the fact that Voorhis killed Diane when she confronted him about his abuse. What’s more, he knows I know it.”

Connie studied me seriously. “Consider this. If Voorhis really visited your hospital room, then the man is dangerous.”

“Exactly! That’s why I need Dennis. If things get dicey, Dennis will leap out of the woodwork and make an arrest.”

“Dennis can’t do that! It’s not his jurisdiction. You’ll have to pull your own chestnuts out of the fire this time, Hannah.”

Connie was remembering how Dennis had raced to the rescue the last time I had a showdown with someone intent on murder. Now I’d stuck my neck out again. “Well, it’s too late now. Voorhis must have my envelope. If he comes, he comes.”

“Why don’t we just stake out the church, hide in the bushes or something, and see if he shows up?” Connie didn’t give in easily, but I was heartened to hear the “we.”

“That won’t do any good. We’ll know, but where’s the proof?” I shook my head. “Nope. We’ve got to get him to admit to everything on tape.”

Connie was close to tears. “What a mess.”

I smiled crookedly at her. “But, as you say, he won’t show up and we can all go out afterward for pizza and talk about how crazy Hannah is.”

Connie cocked her head to one side. “How are you going to get into the church? It’s Friday, for Pete’s sake.”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the second object that I kept there. “I’ve got a key.”

“How on earth…?”

“I slipped it off Georgina’s key chain the day I was watching the kids. I had it duplicated.”

“Is there anything you haven’t thought of?” Connie sounded disgusted.

“Well, I’m not exactly sure how I’ll set up the recording equipment because I’ve never seen it, but I’m counting on the church warden being there. He usually is. And he’s such an old maid, he’d never refuse a policeman’s direct request.” I paused to see if she took my point. When she didn’t say anything, I drove it home. “That’s why I need Dennis.”

“Dream on, Hannah. Dennis could never afford to be involved in an unauthorized taping outside his jurisdiction.” She raised an eyebrow. “What do you need the church warden for?”

“Lionel Streeting? He’s got the key to the AV room.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t had that copied, too,” Connie muttered.

I made up my mind. “Look, we can do this without Dennis. I’ll talk to Streeting myself. He’s seen me, but he doesn’t have a clue who I really am. I’ll just tell him I’m from the police.”

“And when he asks to see your badge?”

“I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”

In the end, we didn’t need the key. When we got to All Hallows, the door to the parish hall was unlocked. Since Dennis wouldn’t be involved, I hadn’t dared tell Paul what I was up to, and in the absence of Dennis, Connie had finally agreed to come along, reluctant to leave me on my own. Following the same route as on my previous visit to the therapy group, Connie and I made our way along the darkened corridors.

“Do you suppose Lionel is here tonight?”

“If the door’s unlocked, he must be. We can always check his office.”

When we found it, the door to the Senior Warden’s office was closed, but a light had been left on inside that spilled out over the transom.

I rapped on the door, but there was no answer.

“Wonder where he is?” whispered Connie.

I shrugged and led Connie down the stairs that would eventually bring us to the fellowship hall.

Suddenly she grabbed my arm and jerked me to a halt. “What’s that?”

“What?”

“That sound.”

We stood in silence, listening. Somewhere nearby, someone was whistling the theme from the movie Titanic. “Must be Lionel,” I whispered back.

“I think we should get out of here, Hannah!”

“Shush. We can handle Lionel.”

We followed the sound of the whistling to an area near the church kitchen where we found the door to the ladies’ room propped open with a wooden wedge. The whistling emanated from inside. “Mr. Streeting?” I warbled.

The whistling ceased. Lionel emerged, blinking furiously, a roll of toilet tissue in each hand. “What do you want?” he asked. Then, recognizing me, added, “Mrs. Ives, is it? You’ve got the wrong day for therapy. That’s Wednesday.”

“I’m not here for therapy, Mr. Streeting. We’re private detectives.” I turned to my sister-in-law. “This is my partner, Connie Ives.”

Connie’s mouth flopped open and shut. Lionel’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “I thought you were here for therapy the other night.”

“No, sir. I’m sorry if I misled you, but we’re investigating the murder of Diane Sturges. Our client is one of her patients.”

Lionel stared, his eyes enormous behind his glasses, the rolls of toilet paper quite forgotten. A war between propriety and curiosity must have been going on inside his head. Curiosity won out. He tucked the toilet paper under his arm. “What can I do for you, then?”

“You can help us set a trap for her killer.”

His eyes widened. “A trap? How?”

“We have reason to believe that the killer will show up in the sanctuary tonight. Our plan is to trap him into a confession and record it on tape.” Talking like that, I hoped I wouldn’t get cited for overacting.

Lionel wagged his head back and forth. “I don’t know. That sounds pretty dangerous.”

I grasped his arm and pulled him aside, speaking to him softly in what I hoped was a conspiratorial way. “He’s also a pedophile, Mr. Streeting. We must get that man off the streets.”

Lionel appeared to be wavering, but suddenly his eyes narrowed. “Wait a minute! Everyone knows about that Monica Lewinsky thing. Isn’t it illegal to tape-record somebody without his knowledge?”

Of course it was. Everyone living in the state of Maryland during the whole unfortunate scandal knew that.

My mind was working fast. I remembered that Linda Tripp had recorded her conversations with Monica over a telephone. She’d also turned her tapes over to a New York City literary agent-how selfless, how patriotic-not to the police. I reminded Lionel of this.

I could see him taking it in. “I see, not quite the same thing, then, is it?”

“No, sir.”

He chewed on this for a while, running an index finger absentmindedly around and around the inside of one of the toilet paper rolls. “I see your point, Mrs. Ives,” he said at last. “How can I help?”

“We know you record the sermons each Sunday, Mr. Streeting. Is it possible to set that equipment up now?” I pushed up the sleeve of my sweater and checked the time. “It’s just now six o’clock. If anything happens, and I’ve no guarantee that it will, we’ll need to be ready to record around seven.”

Suddenly noticing the toilet paper, Lionel blushed to the roots of his five-o’clock shadow. He waved a roll in our direction. “I was just checking the rest rooms for… well, you know.”

Connie stepped forward. “Please go ahead and finish up, Mr. Streeting.” She nodded toward the fellowship hall. “Then we’ll need to stake out the sanctuary. Is this the way, sir?”

“Yes, yes. Just give me a minute.” He disappeared into the ladies’ room.

“Stake out? Sir?” I silently mouthed to Connie.

She shrugged. “In for a penny, in for a pound.”

Before I could comment, the light in the rest room snapped out and Lionel reappeared, empty-handed. He kicked out the wooden wedge and pulled the door shut behind him. “Follow me, ladies.”

Lionel led us down the corridor, past the kitchen, and into the deserted fellowship hall. I noticed that the chairs we had used during therapy had been folded and stacked neatly in a corner. In their place, long tables had been arranged, their tops covered with paper tablecloths taped down at each corner with red Mystik tape. “The monthly potluck supper,” Lionel explained. He stopped. “Here we are.”

“Here” was a solid wooden door with “Janitor” painted on it in three-inch-high block letters.

Streeting extracted a wad of keys from his pocket and unlocked the door, opening it to reveal a small, tidy room furnished with a metal desk and a gooseneck lamp. On a bookshelf behind the desk sat a professional-size cassette tape deck, an ancient reel-to-reel tape recorder, an amplifier, a tuner, several microphones, and assorted rectangular boxes labeled “Sony.”

I peeked into one of the boxes and took out a blank cassette tape.

“We record sermons for our shut-ins,” he explained.

I nodded and handed him the tape. “Can you set it up to record?”

“Certainly. Certainly.” Lionel mashed a red button on a wall-mounted power strip, causing all the equipment to spring to life. Digital displays glowed orange and green; red gauges oscillated wildly as if a radio were playing silently. He fiddled with some dials, flipped up a toggle switch, then slipped the tape I had given him into the drive.

“How do you activate the system?” I asked.

“I do that from here.” He rested a hand on each hip, elbows pointing out. “I call it my command center.” He pointed to a chair. On a shelf directly behind it sat a pair of identical speakers a few feet apart and angled in slightly. “I come down during the church announcements and turn it all on. Father Wylands always says a prayer before the sermon, so when I hear, ‘Let us pray,’ I push the record button and let ’er go.”

I nodded, pretending to be impressed, but I was thinking how much easier it would be if the whole shebang could be operated by Father Wylands from a switch in the pulpit. But in that case, Lionel the High Lord of Toilet Paper and Everything Else would have one less excuse to hang around the church at night. “Can you show me the sanctuary?”

Leaving his equipment turned on, but carefully locking the door behind him, Lionel led us to a small door set in the wall. Surprisingly, it led to a spiral staircase about two and one half feet wide. He flipped on a light and began to climb, motioning for us to follow. “Careful!” he called down over his shoulder.

We wound around and around as we ascended, and I was thanking my lucky stars I wasn’t any wider in the hips or especially prone to dizzy spells. At the top, we emerged through a door in the wall of the chancel just to the right of the altar. The door would be hidden from the congregation by the carved wooden bulk of the organ. “This is how our organist gets from the front of the church to the back balcony without interrupting the service.” Lionel gestured toward the balcony, several hundred feet away. “The choir sits up there.”

I wondered how Georgina managed to play the organ and conduct the choir at the same time, separated as they were by what seemed like half the length of a football field. Lionel must have read my thoughts. “There’s another organ in the balcony, Mrs. Ives. Not a fine pipe organ like this one, of course.” He stroked the wooden case lovingly. “But adequate.” He polished an imaginary fingerprint off the case with the sleeve of his jacket.

“And the microphones?” Connie inquired. “Where might they be?”

Lionel snapped out of his reverie. “Ah, yes. The microphones. Let me show you. We have several.”

The pulpit at All Hallows was also carved of dark wood, but much more elaborately than the organ. I counted twelve full-length statues of the Apostles around its base. An eagle, its wings spread out to hold whatever papers the priest preached from, decorated the top. Three short steps led from the chancel up to the pulpit. Lionel tiptoed up the steps, opened a small gate, then stepped inside the pulpit. “One mike is here.” He pointed to a lavalier-style microphone that hung from a hook just inside the gate. “Father Wylands just clips it to his robe before he begins, although why he needs a lavalier mike, I couldn’t say. It’s not as if he ever goes anywhere while he’s preaching.” He stepped out, closing the gate behind him.

I noticed the long cord attached to the microphone and asked, “Aren’t these microphones usually wireless?”

Lionel smiled down at me condescendingly. “Well, yes. But Father is hopelessly old-fashioned… and frugal. We’ll use these until they wear out, I’m quite certain.”

He waited until I had backed down the steps out of his way, then swanned after me, crossing the chancel to a lectern, also made of wood, but of a much plainer design. “We’ve a stationary microphone here,” he explained. “It’s so the readers can be heard by the congregation. Some of the women-” He stopped, looked from Connie to me, and evidently decided that whatever he had been about to say about women as readers wouldn’t sit well with a pair of female private detectives. Instead, he pointed to a toggle switch mounted on the underside of the lectern. “But if I flip this switch here, the lectern can be patched into the recording system as well.”

Connie had been observing this performance in silence. “Any other microphones?” she asked. “Like in the back?”

Lionel shook his head. “No, no. That’s it.”

“How can we be sure they’re working properly?” I asked.

Lionel’s face assumed a pained expression, as if we were questioning his integrity. “They work every Sunday. I don’t know why they wouldn’t work now.” I stood my ground and simply stared at the man until he felt compelled to fill the silence. “But perhaps we should test it.”

“Yes,” I said. “Perhaps that would be best. Connie?”

Lionel bobbed and weaved his way back toward the spiral staircase with Connie at his heels. I checked my watch. Six-fifteen. In forty-five minutes we should know one way or the other about Dr. Voorhis.

I was standing at the lectern looking out over the empty pews and trying to calm my jittery nerves when Lionel materialized behind me. “Mrs. Ives?”

When I could breathe again, I said, “Yes?”

“When I get everything ready to go, I’ll send the other Mrs. Ives up to tell you. Then you just speak into the microphones in a normal voice.”

“Like this?” I leaned close to the microphone and intoned, “ ‘ ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves…’ ”

He raised both hands, palm out. “Not that loud, Mrs. Ives.”

I straightened and took a step backward. “Like this? ‘… did gyre and gimble in the wabe.’ ”

He smiled a thin-lipped smile. “Much better.” He executed an elegant about-face. “About five minutes,” he called over his shoulder, and disappeared back down the rabbit hole.

“ ‘All mimsy were the borogoves,’ ” I continued, addressing the board on which the numbers for the hymns for the Seventh Sunday after Epiphany were displayed: 119, 123, and 128. I recognized 128-“We Three Kings.” I tried out the tune with “and the mome raths outgrabe,” but it didn’t fit.

“Very enlightening.” The familiar voice of Dr. Voorhis, smooth as satin, came at me out of nowhere.

“I haven’t gotten to the best bits,” I said into the shadows. I tried not to think about the Jabberwock, especially the bit about the vorpal blade that went snicker-snack.

Voorhis emerged from the baptistry alcove just to my left and stood squinting up at me in the dim light.

“You’re early,” I said, stating the obvious.

“I like to be prepared.” It was a statement of fact, cool and dispassionate. “I knew who you were, you see.”

“How? My note was anonymous.”

“When you telephoned Claudia pretending to be from the police, Claudia was concerned. She called me. I simply dialed the number that had appeared on her caller ID. Need I tell you that it didn’t ring at the police department?” I remembered, sheepishly, the threatening call my mother had answered on my phone. “I was going to pay you a visit in Annapolis, but then your note arrived.” His teeth, long and narrow, flashed white. “This arrangement is much more convenient.”

I wondered how long he had been standing in the alcove, listening. If he knew about the microphones, my proverbial goose would be cooked. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“There’s a side door, Mrs. Ives.” He gestured toward the baptistry behind him. “It responded conveniently to manipulation by credit card.”

“I see.”

Voorhis took a tentative step forward, then paused in the side aisle, blocking my view of a marble memorial shelf on which someone had placed a vase of fresh flowers. “You said you had something to discuss, Mrs. Ives. So, here I am.” He waved a ringed hand. “Discuss.”

My fingers found the toggle switch on the lectern. Praying it wouldn’t respond with a telltale click, I turned on the microphone. I steadied myself with both hands gripping the lectern. “The very fact that you’re here, Dr. Voorhis, answers one question.”

“And that is?”

“That you sexually abused your daughter, Diane.”

“Abuse?” His hand rested on a pew. I could see the glint of a stone in his Johns Hopkins ring. “What nonsense! I loved my daughter, and she loved me. She was my joy, and I hers. Our times together were… special.”

My stomach lurched, and it was all I could do to keep from throwing up. I could tell by the expression on Dr. Voorhis’s face that he actually believed what he was saying.

“But she was only a child!”

He shook his head. “You don’t understand. I didn’t abuse Diane.” He addressed me as he would a difficult and not very intelligent child. “Mrs. Ives, Mrs. Ives. How can it possibly be abuse, when she enjoyed it, too?”

My head reeled. I tried to imagine what I would do if I caught Paul fondling Emily. I felt like flying across the sanctuary and tearing this creep’s face off with my bare hands, slowly, strip by painful strip.

“Your wife found out about it, didn’t she?”

His silver eyebrows nearly met. “My wife?”

“The first Mrs. Voorhis. She couldn’t live with that knowledge, could she?”

“What do you know about that?”

“I can read old newspapers, Dr. Voorhis. I know about the suicide note.”

Suddenly I began to panic. What if the lectern mike wasn’t patched in? What if Lionel had actually thrown the switch when he was showing it to us earlier? What if I had turned it off instead of on? I would have to lure the doctor closer to the microphone in the pulpit.

I stepped out from behind the security of the lectern feeling small and vulnerable. Dr. Voorhis stood only twenty feet away.

“You don’t know anything, Mrs. Ives. My wife was deranged. That note you refer to was full of delusional crap.”

“If it was all crap, why did you leave Waterville?”

“Small town. Smaller minds. There were some who believed the lies Fiona told about Diane and me. She was a disturbed woman, Mrs. Ives. Very disturbed.” He took another step in my direction and I retreated, inching toward the pulpit as casually as I could without alarming him.

“But Diane came to believe it, too, didn’t she, Dr. Voorhis?”

Since our conversation began, the doctor’s attention had never wavered from my face, but he stared at me then with frightening intensity. “It’s a dangerous thing when a doctor wanders down a pseudoscientific path and suddenly begins to believe all the garbage she’s been peddling.”

“Tell me, what happened the afternoon she died?”

We stood face-to-face, separated only by the three steps that led from the sanctuary up to the chancel. “She said she had something important to ask me.” He smiled, remembering. “Diane was always asking me for advice about something-taxes, investments. So when I got to her office I was completely blindsided. To put it simply, she attacked me. She held me responsible for her mother’s suicide, for having to leave her friends in Waterville.” He stroked his tie. “Seems I’d ruined her life. Balls! She was a successful student because of me. She became a respected therapist because of me!”

“Why did you kill her?”

He thrust a hand into his jacket pocket, and I held my breath. Did he have a gun?

“I didn’t mean to,” he said at last. “It was an accident. Diane threatened to ruin my career. I tried to talk sense into her, of course, but I’d never seen such hate! After all I’d done for my daughter, she was out to ruin me.” He touched a spot on his cheek, as if it were still tender from a blow. “She came at me, swinging with both fists. Then she started screaming. She was hysterical. I just wanted to calm her down, for Christ’s sake. Somehow we ended up on the balcony… I’m not sure what happened next. She just tumbled over the railing.” Voorhis’s dark wool suit, so well-tailored only minutes before, suddenly didn’t seem to fit correctly. “I loved her so much…”

“You have a curious way of showing it.”

“Ah, yes. The abuse. That’s a laugh!” He paused, one hand still in the pocket of his jacket. “She started it, you know. When she was three. She loved to take a bath with her daddy. Then when she was five, she kept crawling into my bed, begging for a back rub. At first it was just cuddling. But then…” He lounged against the first pew, lost in thought. “Such a sexy little girl. So provocative, I couldn’t help myself; no man could. You should have seen how she dressed in junior high-those skintight miniskirts and low-cut tank tops. Half the time she didn’t even wear a bra. I begged Fiona to do something about the way Diane dressed, but she didn’t. Oh, Diane knew what she was doing, all right.”

“That is sexual abuse,” I insisted. “No matter what her age, no matter what your relationship with her was, you had all the power. And if you used that power to pressure your daughter into a sexual relationship, your wife was right. Diane was being abused.”

I studied his face, searching it for signs of understanding. “Dr. Voorhis, even if Diane walked into your bedroom stark naked and came on to you, as a responsible adult you should have said, ‘Whoa. We’ve got a problem here.’ You were her father! Why didn’t you get her some professional help?”

He looked confused. “One night not long after Diane turned fourteen, she asked me to stop. And I did. It was over.”

That may have settled the matter for him, but not for me. “But, Dr. Voorhis…”

He advanced. “How can I make you understand?”

I retreated. I raised my hand as if to steady myself against the pulpit, but I was carefully feeling around for the microphone cord. If Voorhis got any closer, I planned to grab the microphone and scream the church down. I know it sounds insane under the circumstances, but I almost smiled, imagining Lionel sitting down below in his headphones, fiddling with his dials. I would rupture his eardrums for sure.

“That day in her office, she said she hoped I’d get AIDS or Alzheimer’s disease. She told me she’d dance on my grave the day I died.” Tears glistened in his eyes and he seemed somewhere far away. “She was Daddy’s special little girl.”

My searching fingers found the microphone cord, and as I began to curl them around it, Dr. Voorhis suddenly snapped to attention and took another step toward me. “As much as I loved her, I couldn’t afford to have this become public knowledge.”

I stalled for time. He was so close that I could tell that the paisley swirls on his tie were actually multicolored fish. “You got away with it before, in Waterville,” I said. “You could get away with it again.”

“Ah, but that was a very different time and place, Mrs. Ives. Very different. Nowadays, a man can be branded guilty of sexual abuse on the flimsiest of evidence-branded with an indelible A, if you will, that all the evidence to the contrary cannot erase. No, I can’t afford to have even a hint of this known. I work with children, Mrs. Ives. It would ruin me.”

His voice was steady and so calm that I was totally unprepared for what came next. Voorhis’s arm shot out and circled my neck in a dangerous embrace, slamming my forehead against his chest. I managed to grab the microphone cord, but it dangled loosely from my hand.

Voorhis reached around me with his left hand. I felt it slide slowly, almost sensuously down my arm until his hand reached mine and he was able to prize the microphone from my fingers. His arm tightened around my neck, like a vise, and my nose was squashed flat against his tie. I could barely breathe, let alone scream.

A sudden jerk nearly snapped my neck. Voorhis had yanked the microphone cord from its socket. Seconds later, he looped the cord around my neck and was using both hands, those hands that should have been dedicated to healing, to draw the cord tight. I couldn’t speak, swallow, scream, or breathe. I clawed at the ever-tightening cord, but couldn’t get my fingers under it.

I aimed a knee at his groin. A yelp told me I’d made contact with the target, but the pressure around my neck only increased. Voorhis’s face, inches from my own, remained impassive. Except for a thin sheen of sweat across his brow, he could have been preparing his taxes or waiting in traffic for a light to change. The space behind my eyes turned red with the pulsing blood inside my head, then black, as waves of darkness washed over me. My knees buckled.

When you’re dying, they say your life passes before your eyes. Not so. My last thought before I slipped into unconsciousness was Listerine. His breath smells of Listerine. Imagine! Remembering to use a mouthwash before setting out to kill somebody.