She saw the look the sheriff exchanged with Ben.
“You don’t believe me!”
The sheriff ignored her comment. He just began turning papers over, one after another, in the folder.
“Ben, you believe me, don’t you?” Daphne asked.
“I believe that you saw something,” he replied.
“Nope,” the sheriff said, closing the folder. “No license for any clown.”
“If some madman was going to start murdering people dressed up like a clown, he wouldn’t apply for a license from the town,” Daphne snapped.
Sheriff Patterson shrugged. “Look. I appreciate the tip. I told you I wanted you to keep us informed of everything. So I’ll follow up. I’ll ask around. If there was a clown parading around Main Street yesterday, people would’ve seen him.”
“Ask the violinist! April! Ask her!” Daphne said, almost shouting.
The sheriff gave her a crooked smile. “I intend to. Now, thanks for coming in, Miss May.”
Back at Witherswood, Daphne decided the time had come to find out a little bit more about the villainous Pete Witherspoon Senior, who had killed seventeen people dressed as a clown. Under the pretense of doing preparation for Christopher’s next lesson, Daphne arranged to use the computer in the library. The house was very quiet. Everyone seemed to be in his or her own room. Except for Ben, who had gone to Portland for the evening to see friends. He’d invited her to come along, telling her she’d have fun, but she’d declined. Ben said it might do her good to get out of the house. But Daphne had other plans for the evening.
She had just brought up Google and her fingers were hovering over the keypad, ready to type in her search request, when suddenly very cold hands pressed themselves against the back of her neck and her shoulders. Daphne let out a small gasp.
“So sorry,” came a man’s voice from behind her. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Daphne turned around. It was Donovan. She glared at him, then turned back in her seat toward the computer screen.
“Somehow I think you
did
mean to startle me,” she said.
He removed his hands. “Oh, now, Daphne, darling. You’ve been here more than a month now, and every time I smile at you, or just try to be friendly, you give me the cold shoulder.”
He walked around to lean against the desk, facing her. He was pouting comically.
“I’m sorry, Donovan, but I’m trying to prepare Christopher’s lesson.”
“I was thinking of going for a walk along the cliffs,” he said. “Pretty soon it will be too cold to go out there. Want to come along?”
She gave him an icy stare. “Why don’t you ask Suzanne?”
“She’s already gone to bed.” He smiled, and showed off those dimples. Daphne had to look away. He might be revolting, but he was still ridiculously handsome.
“I need to do some work,” she said.
Suddenly, before she even knew what was happening, Donovan reached over, placed his hand on her cheek, and pulled her in toward him, attempting to kiss her. Daphne recoiled, and when she had shaken his hand free of her face, she looked up at him with fire in her eyes, and slapped him across the face.
She could see the slap stung. Donovan’s hand went to his cheek. His eyes burned.
“What’s going on in here?”
This was a new voice. Daphne looked around.
Suzanne.
Donovan’s fiancée was standing in the doorway, wearing a pink flannel nightdress, and she was shooting daggers from her eyes.
“Daphne was procrastinating on her lesson plans,” Donovan said. “You really should get back to work now, Daphne.” He moved away from the desk, going over to stand by Suzanne’s side.
Daphne saw the accusation in Suzanne’s expression. She wanted to speak the truth, to tell her what Donovan had just done, but she held her tongue. She spun around in her chair and faced the computer screen.
“Come on, Donovan. Let the little governess do her work,” Suzanne said acidly.
From the corner of her eye, Daphne saw the two of them leave.
But seconds later, Donovan had stuck his head back into the room. “You’ll pay for that,” he whispered, and then was gone again.
Daphne’s heart was beating in her ears. She wanted to get out of this house! Ben had asked her if it all was too much. Yes, yes, it was. She felt as if she might cry.
Taking a deep breath, she resumed her Internet research.
What she discovered did not change her desire to leave Witherswood. In fact, it only made her want to bolt more.
There were plenty of news stories on the Internet about the murders in Point Woebegone twenty-five years earlier. Actually, they began twenty-five years ago but continued for two years after that. The last killings, those of Gregory’s parents, had taken place twenty-three years previous, almost to the very day. It was on a night much like this one that a panicked, desperate Pete Witherspoon Senior, discovered by his sons to be a murderer, had lashed out. He killed his elder son, John, and then, stumbling upon the Winstons, had slaughtered them as well. He’d slit both of their throats, and they’d bled to death on the floor of the foyer. The police had questioned Boris, the butler, about whether he had heard anything, but he said he did not. Reading between the lines, Daphne seemed to gather that the police doubted Boris’s story, remarking how loyal he had always been to the master of the house.
Pete Senior had fled into the woods, and it had been Pete Junior who apprehended him, and held him for the sheriff. How terrible that must have been for Mr. Witherspoon—to have to hold his own father, a serial killer, and await the arrival of the police. Again Daphne’s heart went out to him. But, if Gregory was right and the younger Pete had known his father was the killer, even for just a brief time, his failure to turn him in immediately meant that not only were Gregory’s parents killed, but Pete’s older brother, John, as well.
It occurred to Daphne as she sat there reading the news articles online—frequently glancing over her shoulder to make sure no one saw what she was doing—that John, being the oldest, would have been the one to inherit the family businesses, or at least take the lead on them. That was how things usually worked. But with John’s death, Pete became the sole proprietor of the family businesses, though she had seen Abigail’s name on the Witherspoon business letterhead as well, as a partner.
But as terrible as these last three murders were, it was the fourteen previous ones that really devastated her. That was because the victims were all children. What a sick man to end the lives of children! And yes, as Daphne read in article after article, he had frequently dressed as a clown to get their attention. It was during high summer tourist season, when all sorts of street performers strolled down busy Main Street. A funny clown—with balloons—would waddle through the crowd, spot a child standing all alone, and cheerfully offer him or her a balloon. A number of witnesses on different occasions would report seeing a child walk off with a clown—a child whose body would be found, hours later, with his or her throat slit from ear to ear.
In one case, a little girl by the name of Audrey Kearns, just nine years old, was found—Daphne gasped—in a Dumpster on a side road off Main Street.
She strained to see the grainy image of the street on the screen. It was clear enough for her to realize it was the same side street, same parking lot, if not the very same Dumpster, where she had seen the clown.
More than ever, she believed there was a copycat killer on the loose. But so far he had not struck again. Was he waiting?
Daphne shuddered as a thought occurred to her. Was he waiting for her?
She had told the sheriff about seeing him at the inn, after all.
Suddenly Daphne felt terribly frightened. But she forced herself to read the last of the articles.
Once police realized it was a clown who was killing children, Pete Senior ditched the costume, and found other ways to get his victims. Shopping malls, grocery stores, bus stops. In all, fourteen bodies were found—but in the period of those two years, another seven children went missing from the surrounding towns. Police wondered if Pete had been involved. They never found out, however, nor were bodies ever found.
Pete Senior certainly planned to tell no secrets. He said nothing once he was apprehended, not even to his court-appointed lawyer. People were screaming in the street to hang him, but Maine has no death penalty. Pete saved them all the trouble. Apparently planning for such an eventuality, he had secreted several Seconal tablets somewhere on his body—investigators suspected in his rectum—and that night, in his cell, he swallowed them. He was dead when the guard came by in the morning.
The sheriff at the time was roundly condemned for allowing this to happen, and when he ran for reelection the next year, he was defeated—by a man named Joseph Patterson.
As for the Witherspoons, a final article in the set Daphne’s search had located revealed that the family, deep in shame, had withdrawn to Witherswood and was rarely ever seen in the village. The little boys, Donovan, Gabriel and Benjamin, were homeschooled by tutors. Pete Junior saw to it that monetary gifts were made to all of the victims’ families—including, it was noted, to the uncle and aunt who had taken in the Winstons’ little son, Gregory.
But even that financial gift would not be enough for Gregory to forgive Pete for his delay in action. No amount of money could ever replace a mother and a father.
Daphne understood that part all too well.
It was almost one o’clock in the morning when she shut off the computer. As she did so, she heard the front door open and close. Padding slowly through the dark house, Daphne peered into the foyer, and saw Ben returning from his night out.
“Still up?” he asked.
“Working on Christopher’s lesson plans,” she said. She knew she could trust Ben, but she just didn’t want to talk about all that death right at the moment.
They headed into the parlor and sat opposite each other on two sofas that flanked a long glass coffee table. Ben told her he wished she’d gone with him to Portland. He and his friends had gone out to dinner and seen a movie. “Sometimes you just have to get out of Point Woebegone,” he said.
“Why do you stay here?” she asked.
“I’ll leave eventually,” he said. “I suppose when I find the right guy.”
“Wouldn’t that be easier to do in Portland than up here?”
He admitted that it would, but he felt he couldn’t leave Gabriel. “You know, ever since his accident ...” His voice cracked a little, in emotion. “When our mother died a few years ago, she asked me to always look out for Gabe, so I feel an obligation.”
“How did Gabriel become disabled?” Daphne asked.
“We were out riding.” It was clear that Ben had a difficult time recounting the events of that day. “The three of us. Me, Gabe, Donovan. We were all in our late teens. We were racing to see who could get to the point first, and Donovan was in the lead, I was next, and Gabe was coming in third. It hadn’t been a good day for Gabe. He’d seen Kathy Swenson that morning.”
“His girlfriend,” Daphne said. “The one Donovan stole away.”
“That’s right. He’d run into her in the village. She wouldn’t speak to him. After stealing her away, Donovan had dumped her, and now she blamed our whole family, said we were cursed. She was crazy to ever get mixed up with any of us.”
“Poor Gabe.”
“Yeah, he really loved Kathy. Anyway, he and Donovan get into a fight about it, Donovan being a jerk and telling him the best guy had won and the best guy had dumped the chick because she wasn’t worth it after all.” He frowned. “Donovan can be a real prick at times.”
Daphne just smiled.
“So I break them up, suggest we all go for a ride to cool down their tempers. Off we go—and right away Donovan is bragging he’s going to win, and I think it just pissed Gabe off. So all of a sudden there’s Gabe slapping his horse to go faster. He’s determined to beat us both. He passes me by, but then, before he can pass Donovan—he’s down.” Ben grimaced. “Part of me has always wondered ...” His voice trailed off.
“Wondered what?”
“I shouldn’t say it. I have no proof. But I’ve wondered if Donovan moved his horse deliberately into Gabe’s, so he couldn’t pass, and then, not meaning to, of course, caused Gabe’s horse to stumble.” His voice was thick with emotion. “I remember seeing my brother’s body fly through the air like a rag doll.”
“Oh my God,” Daphne said, her hand covering her mouth.
“He broke his spine. For a while, however, the doctors were optimistic that he’d walk again. The spine healed very well. But he never could walk despite what the doctors had said. And so Gabe just spiraled down into a depression that he’s never really gotten past. It’s been almost a decade. But I think he lives that day over and over in his mind.”
“No wonder he seems so withdrawn.”
Ben sighed. “And you know, it goes back even before that, too. Gabe was never as good in his studies as I was in mine. Our tutor was always telling him he wasn’t as smart as me. And the girls always seemed to prefer Donovan to him. So Gabe had a chip on his shoulder even before his accident. Probably more than any of us, he really resented being cooped up in this house, never being able to socialize in the village, because of Uncle Pete’s lingering shame over his father’s deeds. Our mother acquiesced to everything Uncle Pete wanted, because he was paying the bills.”