Daddy's Little Girl

Introduction:

Daddy’s Little Girl

THE POINT OF A THRILLER isn’t to thrill.

Thrills are a symptom of the experience: The rising tension in your chest. The flush in your cheeks. The movement of your eyes, unable to resist skipping ahead to see what’s about to happen, then darting back, afraid to miss a single thing. The compulsion to read just a little more, in defiance of your circadian rhythms or life’s demands.

Yet, a novel isn’t a roller coaster. The novelist can’t physically swoop you up to great heights, drop you so fast your stomach wrenches, and leave you motion sick, exhilarated, and eager to get back in line. And even the theme park designers at Disney Imagineering know that the surest way to a thrill is through an older, more primal kind of technology: the power of good storytelling.

Word for word, the writer must create a human voice that resonates in the reader’s mind. By using the tools of narrative—character and place, actions and consequences, expectation and surprise—a novel immerses us in the story. The more vivid, the more it becomes our experience, rather than one we’re being told about. In the case of a thriller like Daddy’s Little Girl, we face its highs and lows, dread and relief, without leaving the couch and without the need for safety harnesses.

The thrills are the side effect. The obligation of a thriller writer is to tell a story so damn well that thrills follow, as naturally a fever follows from catching a flu virus.

Mary Higgins Clark, the Queen of Suspense, knew this better than anyone. She used every storytelling tool at her disposal to play on the grim curiosity we all harbor and explore through crime fiction. Her novels follow women in a world of suspicious men—a familiar reality. Those women are unique, strong, tenacious, creative. They’ve often experienced tragedy, something Higgins Clark drew on from her own experience, losing her father at an early age and then her husband when her children were still young. But she also witnessed her mother’s resilience and thus learned how to pick up the pieces and persevere—and she lent that knowledge to her characters as well.

She used her gift for storytelling, year after year, novel after novel, to become one of the biggest names in mystery fiction. But Daddy’s Little Girl is unusual among her thirty-eight solely authored novels. Throughout her career she was known for her brisk, compassionate third-person stories. Here she writes largely in the first person—an experiment she’d only repeat a few times—to unusually thrilling effect.

A short first section, in her traditional third person, introduces us to the story through the point of view of Ellie Cavanaugh, a seven-year-old girl, on the day that would destroy her family. Her older sister, Andrea, is missing. We may suspect she is dead, but Ellie’s naïve perspective make us yearn for her to be okay: "She slipped out of bed, rushed across the room, and darted down the hall to Andrea’s room. Be there, she begged. Please be there." The simple language for how Ellie perceives makes every detail resonate with potential. The visible way her mother is distraught. Her father’s tense reserve, and how she is aware of what that means because it’s how he acts when, as a state police officer, he comes home after witnessing something unspeakably sad. She knows without saying.

But she also knows something they don’t: Andrea, only fifteen, has still been meeting up with the son of the town’s wealthiest family who already has a troubling reputation.

This is the beginning of Ellie’s guilt. We unravel the fissures between her mother and father, why they moved to this wealthier town, and the ways Ellie was trying to be a good little sister. It colors how we see the other possible suspects: a man going door to door raising funds for charity, the town’s handyman, a young man with a developmental disorder. Every detail will haunt her for the rest of her life. The empathy for Ellie and the way the novel makes room for us to feel it suddenly tightens its grip on us. Suspense is not only generated from demands of the crime and plot but the heart, too.

Then, after those first few chapters, the book leaps ahead and we begin getting the story in Ellie’s own words. Shifting to the first person is a risk, even for Mary herself, but it reveals how the seeds of trauma and guilt—planted in the child’s mind—formed the foundation of how Ellie understands herself. Now an investigative reporter in Atlanta, she finds her past haunting her in unexpected ways. She has few relationships but professional ones. But she is ferocious about the truth—finding it, exposing it, being heard. The child is mother of the woman: unwilling to be dismissed or disbelieved.

Her campaign to expose the truth could be called revenge, though that misses the mark. Investigation is a process, but what we know about young Ellie and the gap between her and the adult telling us this story make it seem more like a ritual—a sacred duty, a compulsion. The steps she takes go beyond mere reporting. She disregards both her own comfort and her safety. She puts herself at the mercy of violent criminals in hopes of landing a lead and alienates herself further from the community she used to call home. She will almost die several times. Why? The same reason for most rituals: the hope for epiphany, the revelation of truth, and perhaps, after carrying the weight of tragedy for so many years, that she might emerge on the other side of it changed.

Midway through her campaign, Ellie drives past Graymoor Monastery and recalls:

"Grammar school. Praying the Angelus at noon. And the Angel of the Lord announced to Mary… And Mary’s response to Elizabeth. My soul doth magnify the Lord…. And my spirit doth rejoice…

Maybe someday my spirit will again rejoice, I thought as I turned on the radio.

But not yet."

The context here is Catholic, but it could be any folktale. There’s a fabulism to trauma. It dislocates you from time. Before and After become distinct worlds, separated by a portal that you can’t access. Like fairy tales, possibilities unspool in which everything lost could somehow be recovered—or if not that, the tales make who should carry the blame clearer and the shame the survivors feel sharper. If only I had done something different. If only that circumstance had been slightly changed. The idea of that—that the life you deserved was so close you should be able to reach out and grab hold, drag it back, but you can’t—is part of the torture of grief.

Ellie’s investigation brings this grief to life. We’re not only riveted because of the suspense and reveals of the mystery unfolding—that ultimately becomes the scaffolding for Ellie’s pain and guilt, her drive and courage, and the way the story makes her somehow both an everywoman and a mythic figure.

Another element of Mary Higgins Clark’s skill is how a fundamental earnestness, even sweetness, threads through the journey. She is unafraid to look at the depravity in human nature, but in Ellie’s return to her hometown and some of the interactions with people she used to know—a supportive older neighbor, a well-meaning detective, one of her sister’s old friends—we find signs of kindness and care that balance the darkness: Here in their presence, even after all this time, I am not a stranger and I am not alone.

Familiar sights, like her old house itself, cause pain but also bring back long avoided yet sweet memories, like one of helping her big sister set the table while Andrea made jokes about who’d be coming: "Today Lord Malcolm Bigbottom will be our guest." The sweetness balances the bitter in order to draw us deeper into the story, keeping us hungry for how it might end.

And for a novel about how a single act of violence can shatter so many lives, the conclusion illuminates how a life can be rebuilt. Not the same as the past, but a reimagining of new future. If that isn’t thrilling, I don’t want to know what is.

Despite the vile crimes, disturbing forces, and morally bankrupt people and institutions, Daddy’s Little Girl reaches for an experience so many writers are afraid to portray because they know how hard it is to earn one: a happy ending.

Mary Higgins Clark earned it. This novel is a testament to her sensitivity and skill over a career not likely to be repeated in American mystery fiction.

Patrick Coleman

March 2024

Part One

1

WHEN ELLIE AWOKE that morning, it was with the sense that something terrible had happened.

Instinctively she reached for Bones, the soft and cuddly stuffed dog who had shared her pillow ever since she could remember. When she’d had her seventh birthday last month, Andrea, her fifteen-year-old sister, had teased her that it was time to toss Bones in the attic.

Then Ellie remembered what was wrong: Andrea hadn’t come home last night. After dinner, she had gone to her best friend Joan’s house to study for a math test. She had promised to be home by nine o’clock. At quarter of nine, Mommy went to Joan’s house to walk Andrea home, but they said Andrea had left at eight o’clock.

Mommy had come back home worried and almost crying, just as Daddy got in from work. Daddy was a lieutenant in the New York State Police. Right away he and Mommy had started calling all of Andrea’s friends, but no one had seen her. Then Daddy said he was going to drive around to the bowling alley and to the ice cream parlor, just in case Andrea had gone there.

If she lied about doing homework until nine o’clock, she won’t set foot out of this house for six months, he’d said angrily, and then he’d turned to Mommy: If I said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times—I don’t want her to go out after dark alone.

Despite his raised voice, Ellie could tell that Daddy was more worried than angry.

For heaven’s sake, Ted, she went out at seven o’clock. She got to Joan’s. She was planning to be home by nine, and I even walked over there to meet her.

"Then where is she?"

They made Ellie go to bed, and, eventually, she fell asleep waking only now. Maybe Andrea was home by now, she thought hopefully. She slipped out of bed, rushed across the room, and darted down the hall to Andrea’s room. Be there, she begged. Please be there. She opened the door. Andrea’s bed had not been slept in.

Her bare feet silent on the steps, Ellie hurried downstairs. Their neighbor, Mrs. Hilmer, was sitting with Mommy in the kitchen. Mommy was wearing the same clothes she had on last night, and she looked as if she’d been crying for a long time.

Ellie ran to her. Mommy.

Mommy hugged her and began to sob. Ellie felt Mommy’s hand clutching her shoulder, so hard that she was almost hurting her.

Mommy, where’s Andrea?

We . . . don’t . . . know. Daddy and the police are looking for her.

Ellie, why don’t you get dressed, and I’ll fix you some breakfast? Mrs. Hilmer asked.

No one was saying that she should hurry up because the school bus would be coming pretty soon. Without asking, Ellie knew she wouldn’t be going to school today.

She dutifully washed her face and hands and brushed her teeth and hair, and then put on play clothes—a turtleneck shirt and her favorite blue slacks—and went downstairs again.

Just as she sat at the table where Mrs. Hilmer had put out juice and cornflakes, Daddy came through the kitchen door. No sign of her, he said. We’ve looked everywhere. There was a guy collecting for some phony charity ringing doorbells in town yesterday. He was in the diner last night and left around eight o’clock. He would have passed Joan’s house on the way to the highway around the time Andrea left. They’re looking for him.

Ellie could tell that Daddy was almost crying. He also hadn’t seemed to notice her, but she didn’t mind. Sometimes when Daddy came home he was upset because something sad had happened while he was at work, and for a while he’d be very quiet. He had that same look on his face now.

Andrea was hiding—Ellie was sure of it. She had probably left Joan’s house early on purpose because she was meeting Rob Westerfield in the hideout, then maybe it got late and she was afraid to come home. Daddy had said that if she ever lied again about where she’d been, he’d make her quit the school band. He’d said that when he found out she had gone for a ride with Rob Westerfield in his car when she was supposed to be at the library.

Andrea loved being in the band; last year she’d been the only freshman chosen for the flute section. But if she’d left Joan’s house early and gone to the hideout to meet Rob, and Daddy found out, that would mean she’d have to give it up. Mommy always said that Andrea could twist Daddy around her little finger, but she didn’t say that last month when one of the state troopers told Daddy he’d stopped Rob West-erfield to give him a ticket for speeding and that Andrea was with him at the time.

Daddy hadn’t said anything about it until after dinner. Then he asked Andrea how long she’d been at the library.

She didn’t answer him.

Then he said, "I see you’re smart enough to realize that the trooper who gave Westerfield the ticket would tell me you were with him. Andrea, that guy is not only rich and spoiled, he’s a bad apple through and through. When he kills himself speeding, you’re not going to be in the car. You are absolutely forbidden to have anything to do with him."

The hideout was in the garage behind the great big house that old Mrs. Westerfield, Rob’s grandmother, lived in all summer. It was always unlocked, and sometimes Andrea and her friends sneaked in there and smoked cigarettes. Andrea had taken Ellie there a couple of times when she was babysitting her.

Her friends had been really mad at Andrea for bringing her along, but she had said, Ellie is a good kid. She’s not a snitch. Hearing that had made Ellie feel great, but Andrea hadn’t let Ellie have even one puff of the cigarette.

Ellie was sure that last night Andrea had left Joan’s house early because she was planning to meet Rob Westerfield. Ellie had heard her when she talked to him on the phone yesterday, and when she was finished, she was practically crying. I told Rob I was going to the mixer with Paulie, she said, and now he’s really mad at me.

Ellie thought about the conversation as she finished the cornflakes and juice. Daddy was standing at the stove. He was holding a cup of coffee. Mommy was crying again but making almost no sound.

Then, for the first time, Daddy seemed to notice her: Ellie, I think you’d be better off in school. At lunchtime I’ll take you over.

Is it all right if I go outside now?

Yes. But stay around the house.

Ellie ran for her jacket and was quickly out the door. It was the fifteenth of November, and the leaves were damp and felt sloshy underfoot. The sky was heavy with clouds, and she could tell it was going to rain again. Ellie wished they were back in Irvington where they used to live. It was lonesome here. Mrs. Hilmer’s house was the only other one on this road.

Daddy had liked living in Irvington, but they’d moved here, five towns away, because Mommy wanted a bigger house and more property. They found they could afford that if they moved farther up in Westchester, to a town that hadn’t yet become a suburb of New York City.

When Daddy said he missed Irvington, where he’d grown up and where they’d lived until two years ago, Mommy would tell him how great the new house was. Then he’d say that in Irvington we had a million-dollar view of the Hudson River and the Tappan Zee Bridge, and he didn’t have to drive five miles for a newspaper or a loaf of bread.

There were woods all around their property. The big Westerfield house was directly behind theirs, but on the other side of the woods. Glancing back at the kitchen window to make sure no one had seen her, Ellie began to dart through the trees.

Five minutes later she reached the clearing and ran across the field to where the Westerfield property began. Feeling more and more alone, she raced up the long driveway and darted around the mansion, a small figure lost in the lengthening shadows of the approaching storm.

There was a side door to the garage, and that was the one that was unlocked. Even so, it was hard for Ellie to turn the handle. Finally she succeeded and stepped into the gloom of the interior. The garage was big enough to hold four cars, but the only one Mrs. Westerfield left after the summer was the van. Andrea and her friends had brought some old blankets to sit on when they went there. They always sat in the same spot, at the back of the garage behind the van, so that if anyone happened to look in the window, they wouldn’t be able to see them. Ellie knew that was where Andrea would be hiding if she was here.

She didn’t know why she felt suddenly afraid, but she did. Now, instead of running, she had to practically drag her feet to make them move toward the back of the garage. But then she saw it—the edge of the blanket peeking out from behind the van. Andrea was here! She and her friends would never have left the blankets out; when they left, they always folded them and hid them in the cabinet with the cleaning supplies.

Andrea . . . Now she ran, calling softly so that Andrea wouldn’t be scared. She was probably asleep, Ellie decided.

Yes, she was. Even though the garage was filled with shadows, Ellie could see Andrea’s long hair trailing out from under the blankets.

Andrea, it’s me. Ellie sank to her knees beside Andrea and pulled back the blanket covering her face.

Andrea had a mask on, a terrible monster mask that looked all sticky and gummy. Ellie reached down to pull it off, and her fingers went into a broken space in Andrea’s forehead. As she jerked back, she became aware of the pool of Andrea’s blood, soaking through her slacks.

Then, from somewhere in the big room, she was sure she heard someone breathing—harsh, heavy, sucking-in breaths that broke off in a kind of giggle.

Terrified, she tried to get up, but her knees slid in the blood and she fell forward across Andrea’s chest. Her lips grazed something smooth and cold—Andrea’s gold locket. Then she managed to scramble to her feet, and she turned and began to run.

She did not know she was shrieking until she was almost home, and Ted and Genine Cavanaugh ran into the backyard to see their younger daughter burst out of the woods, her arms outstretched, her little form covered in her sister’s blood.

2

WITH THE EXCEPTION of when his team practiced or had a game during the baseball season, sixteen-year-old Paulie Stroebel worked in Hillwood’s service station after school and all day Saturday. The alternative was to help out during those same hours at his parents’ delicatessen a block away on Main Street, something he’d been doing from the time he was seven years old.

Slow academically, but good with things mechanical, he loved to repair cars, and his parents had been understanding of his desire to work for someone else. With unruly blond hair, blue eyes, round cheeks, and a stocky five-foot-eight frame, Paulie was considered a quiet, hardworking employee by his boss at the service station and something of a dopey nerd by his fellow students at Delano High. His one achievement in school was to be on the football team.

On Friday, when word of Andrea Cavanaugh’s murder reached the school, guidance counselors were sent to all the classes to break the news to the students. Paul was in the middle of a study period when Miss Watkins came into his classroom, whispered to the teacher, and rapped on the desk for attention.

I have very sad news for all of you, she began. We have just learned . . . In halting sentences she informed them that sophomore Andrea Cavanaugh had been killed, the victim of foul play. The reaction was a chorus of shocked gasps and tearful protests.

Then a shouted No! silenced the others. Quiet, placid Paulie Stroebel, his face twisted in grief, had sprung to his feet. As his classmates stared at him, his shoulders began to shake. Fierce sobs racked his body, and he ran from the room. As the door closed behind him, he said something in a voice too muffled for most of them to hear. However, the student seated nearest the door later swore that his words were I can’t believe she’s dead!

Emma Watkins, the guidance counselor, already stunned by the tragedy, felt as though a knife had gone through her. She was fond of Paulie and understood the isolation of the earnestly plodding student who tried so hard to please.

She herself was positive that the anguished words he shouted were I didn’t think she was dead.

That afternoon, for the first time in the six months he’d been working at the service station, Paulie did not show up, nor did he call his boss to explain his absence. When his parents got home that evening, they found him lying on top of the bed, staring at the ceiling, pictures of Andrea scattered beside him.

Both Hans and Anja Wagner Stroebel had been born in Germany, and they immigrated to the United States with their parents when they were children. They had met and married in their late thirties and used their combined savings to open the delicatessen. By nature undemonstrative, they were fiercely protective of their only son.

Everyone who came into the store was talking about the murder, asking each other who could possibly have committed such a terrible crime. The Cavanaughs were regular customers at the deli, and the Stroebels joined in the shocked discussion that Andrea might have been planning to meet someone in the garage on the Westerfield estate.

They agreed that she was pretty, but a bit headstrong. She was supposed to be doing homework with Joan Lashley until nine o’clock, but had left unexpectedly early. Had she planned to meet someone, or had she been waylaid on the way home?

Anja Stroebel acted instinctively when she saw the pictures on her son’s bed. She swooped them up and put them in her pocketbook. At her husband’s questioning glance, she shook her head, indicating that he was to ask no questions. Then she sat down next to Paulie, and put her arms around him.

Andrea was such a pretty girl, she said soothingly, her voice heavy with the accent that became stronger when she was upset. I remember how she congratulated you when you made that great catch and saved the game last spring. Like her other friends, you are very, very sad.

At first it seemed to Paulie that his mother was talking to him from a distant place. Like her other friends. What did she mean?

The police will be looking for anyone who has been a particular friend to Andrea, Paulie, she said slowly but firmly.

I invited her to a mixer, he said, the words coming haltingly. She said she would go with me.

Anja was sure her son had never asked a girl for a date before. Last year he had refused to go to his sophomore dance.

Then you liked her, Paulie?

Paulie Stroebel began to cry. "Mama, I loved her