The Silent Sister(27)
Slowly, I turned to look at Jeannie. She stood next to me, her hands now pressed to her face, her blue eyes brimming with tears.
I nodded toward the article, still in the box. ACCUSED MURDERER LISA MACPHERSON ASSUMED DEAD. “What is this?” My voice was a whisper.
She reached for the box and gently worked it free of my grip. “He never wanted you to know,” she said, setting it back on the ledge. “I was hoping to get that box out of here before you stumbled across it. He would have wanted me to do that, but I wasn’t sure where he hid it, and I’ve been so worried that you’d…” She shook her head. “Just close it up and throw it away, Riley. That’s what he would have wanted.”
She was talking quickly, trying to get my mind off what I’d seen. I reached into the box and pulled out the article that called my sister a murderer.
“I don’t understand.” I read the headline again. “I don’t understand at all.”
“I know,” she said. “I know what you were told. That she killed herself because she was depressed and overworked. Your parents never wanted you to know the truth.”
“What truth?” I lifted the box again, carried it to the open rolltop desk, and sat down. I picked up article after article and that word kept jumping out at me from the headlines: Murder, Murder, Murder.
“That’s why they moved here after Lisa’s death.” Jeannie walked to the piano bench and sat down heavily. “They wanted to get you and Danny away from all the accusations and everything. They wanted to get you away from a place where you’d always be known as a murderer’s sister.”
I looked over at her. “She did it? She actually killed someone? Who? Why?”
“It was an accident.” Jeannie pressed her hand to the top of her head in aggravation. “Oh, your father would be so upset with me.”
“Tell me!” I said.
“She was about to go on trial,” Jeannie said, “and she believed she’d end up in prison for the rest of her life. The prosecution was going for first degree murder—‘planned and premeditated’—and that would have meant life in prison if they could prove it. But I think the real reason she killed herself was that she couldn’t live with what she’d done. Accident or not, she’d killed someone. Lisa was only seventeen—a child!—and she couldn’t get past the guilt.”
“My God.” I felt my whole body sag with the weight of the news. “Who was it?” I asked again. “Who did she kill?”
“His name was Steve Davis,” she said. “He was her violin teacher.”
I gasped, remembering the tall, slender conductor in the tapes. Was that who Jeannie was talking about?
“She was angry with him because he’d hurt her chance to get into Juilliard, but she never would have killed him over that,” Jeannie said. “She was such a quiet, gentle girl. She never would have intentionally killed anyone over anything. It was all so unbelievable.”
It was unbelievable, and I had so many questions. I paged through the articles until I found one of them with a picture of Steve Davis. He was definitely the man from the tapes. I pressed my hand to my mouth as I began to read the article to myself, while Jeannie sat quietly on the bench, waiting for me to learn the truth.
Lisa Beth MacPherson, the seventeen-year-old violinist awaiting trial in the murder of her former violin teacher Steven Davis, is missing and presumed dead. Ms. MacPherson’s yellow kayak was found in the frozen waters of the Potomac River near Fort Hunt Park in Alexandria Monday morning, and her white Honda Civic was parked at the side of the road south of the Belle Haven Marina. Her book bag and a wallet containing her driver’s license and more than thirty dollars in cash were in the vehicle. A blue jacket thought to be hers was found tangled in the icy reeds nearby.
Her father, Frank MacPherson, contacted police around eight o’clock Monday morning after finding an apparent suicide note in her bedroom. The contents of the note have not been made public, but a police spokesperson stated that the note indicated MacPherson’s intention to kill herself, and her father identified the handwriting as hers. MacPherson’s mother and younger siblings were out of town Monday morning.
Lisa MacPherson was out on bail in the October murder of Davis, who was forty-two at the time of his death. She was to be tried as an adult, and the trial was to begin this Wednesday. She was expected to testify that the shooting was accidental. MacPherson had planned to apply to the Juilliard School of Music for the fall 1990 semester, and Davis allegedly sent a derogatory letter about her to a colleague at the school, a fact prosecutors were expected to introduce as a possible motive. Davis had instructed MacPherson for most of her career, although at the time of the incident, she was studying with National Symphony violinist Caterina Thoreau.
Acquaintances stated that MacPherson had been extremely depressed in the months since her arrest. Upon hearing of her student’s probable suicide this morning, Caterina Thoreau made this statement to the press: “This is tragic news. Lisa is the most gifted student I’ve ever had the pleasure to teach and her future was bright. I’ve always believed that the shooting was accidental, and given Lisa’s sensitive nature, I can imagine how difficult it was for her to live with what happened. She held (Davis) in high esteem.”
Davis, who lived in McLean with his wife, Sondra Lynn Davis, was teaching at George Mason University at the time of his death. The couple had no children.