Beverly Connor - Dead Past

Laura’s blue eyes twinkled as she greeted Diane. “I knew you would find something,” she said.

She was dressed in a lime green silk suit. Her blond hair was shoulder length and turned under. Laura always looked so well groomed, thought Diane. She and Kendel would make a pair.

“I’m not sure I have,” said Diane. “I wanted to bounce it off you first.”

“Bounce away. Can I get you some coffee first? Tea?”

Diane shook her head. “Just had a milk shake.”

“How do you do that and stay so slim? I have to watch everything I eat,” said Laura.

“I burn it, I suppose. Nervous energy.”

Diane sat down on a small sofa next to the warm fire. Laura sat opposite her in a comfortable looking wingback chair.

“I looked over the information you sent. Only two things caught my attention in the reports. One was the jogger who fell, and the other was the kid next door who heard Juliet say something suggestive to someone.”

“I agree about the child next door, but what about the jogger?”

“I think the jogger’s fall was a ruse to divert attention while the kidnapper grabbed Juliet. I’ll call the authorities in Arizona where she was kidnapped and find out if a composite sketch was ever drawn of her. But the main thing I wanted to talk with you about is this: Listening to the tape of her talking about her memories of that time, I had an epiphany.”

“What’s that?” Laura leaned forward, her elbows on the arms of her chair.

“I don’t think her memories are of one crime, but are of two separate crimes,” said Diane.

Laura sat back in her chair, shocked.

“How in the world?” said Laura. “Two crimes? Tell me.”

“Remember, it’s a tenuous thread I’m working with here,” warned Diane.

“It would have to be. If it were obvious, I’d have seen it. This is why I asked you to look at it. Please, go on. I’m all ears.”

“In what Juliet was saying on the tape, she is having a hard time separating her dreams and her fears from her memories.”

Laura nodded. “That’s common, especially in early memories.”

“Sometimes those memories are in code,” said Diane.

“OK…” Laura was more tentative in her affirmation this time.

“When you asked Juliet what she meant by new dolls, she said “dolls in boxes.” I don’t think she meant that. I think her brain has combined memories.”

“Combining memories is common even when a person is an adult,” agreed Laura.

Diane was trying to explain her reasoning in a linear fashion to Laura, but the idea had come to her all at once and she wasn’t sure where to begin.

“Juliet said her grandmother accused her of stealing a doll. I think this was real and occurred near the time of Event One-Event Two being her kidnapping. And because the grandmother’s accusation was close in time to the two major traumas and held some visual similarities, the doll became the code for the rest of it.

“When Juliet first came to work at the museum, Andie made her a gift basket, as she does for all new employees. Because seashells were a speciality of Juliet’s, Andie used that as a basis for the theme of the basket. The centerpiece was a doll-Ariel, the mermaid from Walt Disney.”

Diane saw the frown that briefly creased Laura’s forehead. Ariel was the name of Diane’s adopted daughter, who was killed. Ariel had named herself after the Disney character because she wanted to start a new life with a new name-Ariel Fallon. Diane continued.

“When Juliet saw the basket on her desk, she freaked. I mean really freaked. It was much worse than when Kendel found the museum snake coiled up in her desk drawer-and that was an event we will all remember for some time to come. Juliet was very embarrassed at her reaction and muttered something about being afraid of new dolls. Andie had taken the doll out of the packaging when she made the basket. It wasn’t in a box.”

Diane stopped to let it sink in.

“I’m sorry,” said Laura. “I don’t see the significance of that, and I can see by your face that it is significant, but I need a little more.”

“Juliet said, ‘I remember being in a dark room with new dolls.’ You asked what she meant by new dolls, and she said, ‘Dolls still in the box.’ But we know from her reaction to the welcome basket that she was scared witless by a doll that was not in a box.”

“OK,” said Laura, still sounding unsure. “So what did she mean?”

“There is something else common to new dolls besides the cardboard box they often come in. I saw it last night when I passed the museum store and saw all the Dora the Explorer dolls lined up together on the shelf. It was really very eerie. In the low nighttime lighting of the gift shop, each of the little dolls was peering out at me from behind the cellophane window in its box. Andie’s basket didn’t have the doll in a box, but there was cellophane around the whole basket-and Ariel the mermaid was peering out from inside the plastic.”

Diane could see from the puzzled look on Laura’s face that this really cleared it up for her.

“Are you saying Juliet would be afraid of an old doll if it was wrapped in cellophane?”

“Yes.”

“And this means?”

“The room of dolls she saw in her memory weren’t dolls; they were murdered people wrapped in plastic, and this was the first psychological trauma for her and may have led to Event Two-her kidnapping.”

If Laura was shocked before, she was stunned into silence now. She sat back in her chair, staring in disbelief at Diane.

Diane pulled out the tape that Laura had sent her.

“Here, play the part where she is telling you what her memories are. Instead of it being a room full of dolls, think mass murder scene and listen to how the rest of her memories sound.”

Laura put the tape in her recorder, found the right place, and played it. At the end of the sequence she stopped the tape.

“It is scarier, hearing it from the perspective you describe, I’ll grant you that,” said Laura.

“The sequence also makes more sense,” said Diane. “The fear she has of the room makes more sense and the running makes more sense.”

“Yes, it does,” agreed Laura. “But…”

“I know. I said it’s tenuous. But I think it is worth investigating.”

“What in the world made you think of murder victims?” asked Laura.

“A couple of things. In the morgue tent, we were short on body bags and had to cover the victims with plastic until bags arrived. Looking at the burned bodies through the plastic was eerie, to say the least. It reminded me of a murder in Atlanta recently where the killer used plastic to wrap the victim and hid him in a wall. Plastic is popular with killers because if you wrap the victim up just right, the blood doesn’t leak out.”

“My God.” Laura shook her head as if shaking the image out. “Can you investigate this?” asked Laura. “Would you even know where to begin? I really don’t want to hit Juliet with this, especially since at the moment it’s no more than speculation.”

“I agree. And, yes, I can investigate it. First, there are some things I’d like to know. We know she was kidnapped from her home in Arizona, but what was she doing in the weeks before the kidnapping? Was she at home in Arizona or was she somewhere else? You can ask her that, can’t you?” said Diane.

“Where she was?” asked Laura. “What makes you think she may not have been at home?”

“Because of something else that struck me on the tape,” said Diane.

“I must say, Diane, you got a lot more out of the short conversation than I did,” said Laura. “What else did you notice?”

“Andie’s basket had the mermaid doll that we think was the trigger that set off Juliet’s fear attack, but the basket also contained a lot of seashells. Even though Juliet likes seashells-she’s made a career of mollusks-the juxtaposition might be important in her memory.”