“Quilla, for some reason I get the feeling that you’re angry at me for bringing up Gretchen. You asked me to help you nudge Perry Cobb. That’s all I’m trying to do. I’m sorry Gretchen Yearwood is a private person, but is her privacy more important than getting information that might lead to finding your Aunt’s killer?”
“No,” she snapped. She was silent for about ten seconds. “When Gretchen was little her father was accused of murdering her mother. She based the main character in The Cheerleader Wore Black on my Aunt. Aunt Brandy was in an accident and her face got cut up.”
I remembered the scar on Brandy Parker’s face in the picture Perry had shown to me.
“She was waiting to have plastic surgery when she… was murdered.” Quilla paused for a moment. “I think it’ll be better if you and I talk to Gretchen before Cobb?”
I didn’t see the purpose of it, but part of me looked forward to the idea of seeing Gretchen again. “Then let’s call her right this minute.”
Quilla pulled out her Blackberry. “I’m getting her Voicemail. Shit. She hasn’t gotten home from the cemetery yet. What should I say, Del?”
“Tell her that Perry Cobb will be calling her with regard to her friendship with your Aunt, but that we’d like to talk to her first.”
“Hi, Gretch. It’s Quilla. Listen, all kinds of things are happening. That dork, Perry Cobb, will probably be contacting you about Aunt Brandy. He’s investigating the case. So don’t freak out if he just shows up at your door. But more importantly, me and Del Coltrane, the Funeral Director guy, need to talk to you too. Call me.”
“Give her my number too. 509-5309.”
“You can call Del Coltrane at 509-5309. I’m with him now if you get this in the next few minutes. Bye.”
“She seems like a nice person.”
“She’s the best. Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“Your old girlfriend, Alyssa. Did you ever try to find her?”
“No. I wouldn’t have known where to look.”
“I guess that means you’re not relentless. I am. Once I set my mind to something I’m like a rabid pit bull. Like when I set out to find Gretchen.”
“How did you do that?”
“First thing I did was write a letter to the publisher, but they sent me a letter back saying that the author used a pen name, so I figured I was screwed. Then one day I was watching some talk show and they had this guy on who was an expert in finding people. He had this 800 number and he said it was okay to call him and bounce off your situation. So I called and I told him how I’d found the dedication and that I wanted to find out an author’s real name. He was nice and said that I could write to the Library of Congress and that if I was pushy enough and I reached some employee who was either in a good mood or hated their job and didn’t care about rules, that I might get the author’s real name. Which I did. Her real last name is Thistle, but she uses her mother’s maiden name professionally. When I found her and told her who I was she hugged me. Being around her is like being with my Aunt, even though they’re different personalities. Sometimes when I get sentimental I say to myself that the only good thing to come from Aunt Brandy disappearing was that I got to meet Gretchen.” She looked at me. “What happened to her mother and father was really awful. How could anyone think that Mister Thistle would do something like that?”
“Do you know him well?”
“Not really. He’s not all there. All he does is sit in his chair smoking cigarettes and listening to right wing talk radio.”
“Does he ever talk about what happened?”
“To me? No way. From what Gretchen says it’s something that never gets brought up because he doesn’t remember. He’s very mellow. Most of the time it’s like he’s stoned. And because she was so young when it happened, she doesn’t remember much. She was raised by her Aunt and all she knows is what her Aunt told her and what she read in the paper when she was older. It was pretty cut and dry. One day her mother didn’t come home. Her father calls the police around midnight saying that his wife’s not there and that being out late isn’t like her and all that kind of stuff. Next thing you know is that a week’s gone by and the cops are interviewing neighbors, and whoever, and it turns out that Gretchen’s mom and dad used to quarrel a lot and people heard him threaten her and junk and, well, suddenly he’s under arrest and in jail and saying he’s innocent and the biggest mystery of all is that there wasn’t any body.”
“No body?” The remark stunned me. Perry didn’t mention anything about there not being a body.
“It was never found.” Everybody said that Gretch’s father did something gruesome like chopping it up and stuff. That’s why it was so hard on Gretchen later on. Here she was, this little kid, and suddenly her mother is gone. Never heard from again. And the next thing she knows is that her father’s gone, stuck in some state institution, and she’s all alone except for her aunt and it was her mom’s sister and she hated Mister Thistle so she bad-mouthed him all during the time he was in the mental ward. That’s part of the reason why Gretchen was moved to write the book based on my Aunt.”
“How so?”
“It was like it was happening again for her.”
“What was happening again?”
“Somebody she cared about vanished. That’s one of the reasons Gretchen and I got close. We realized we had this bond of not knowing what happened to the person we each loved most in the whole world. You can’t imagine what the feeling of not knowing is like.”
Yes I can, I said to myself, thinking of Alyssa.
“What am I saying? Of course you can imagine what not knowing is like. You still don’t know where Alyssa is. That’s what Gretchen and I were talking about at the Funeral Home. She said to me that now, at long last, I knew what happened. She doesn’t.”
“Doesn’t what?”
“She doesn’t know what happened to her mother.”
“I thought her mother was murdered.”
Gently, Quilla said, “Gretchen doesn’t believe her mother is dead.”
Again, I was shocked. “What does she think?”
“That her Mom ran off with someone.”
“A lover?”
Quilla nodded yes. “Gretchen was like me. Once she was old enough to put two and two together she did all kinds of research. Almost like she was an investigative reporter. That’s what she wanted to be when she was a kid. She took these Journalism classes, and read books on it and junk, and she knew how to find information and ask questions. She’s convinced that her father didn’t do it. That’s why she lets him live with her. Her theory is that her parents had a shaky marriage. See, they had to get married. Her dad liked to get drunk and he’d hit her mom and stuff. Gretchen decided that her mom ran off with a lover.”
“If that’s the case, how does she justify her mother leaving her behind with an abusive drunk?”
“She thinks her mom had a plan. That she was going to come back for her, but when all the hubbub started with her father being accused of murder and with there not being a body, Gretchen thinks her mom concluded that if people thought she was dead she could disappear easier.”
“Under that scenario her mother just abandons Gretchen, leaving her with a father in an institution and no mother. Not a very loving gesture.”
“Gretchen explains that away by saying all the evidence indicates that her mom wasn’t a very good mother. Actually, that’s not the right way to put it. Gretchen thinks her mom wasn’t ready for motherhood. But the aunt who raised her was. So Gretchen thinks that since she was still a baby her mother figured she wouldn’t be too attached to her and that she’d grow up loving her Aunt as if she were her mother. But what Gretchen’s real mother didn’t count on was having a daughter like Gretchen.”