Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [98]
JonBenét played a lot with Daphne, the Whites’ little girl. They were real close. And Burke had his friends, the Walker and Stine children.
When the Ramseys traveled, I started taking the children’s dog, Jacques, home with me. It would always yip, yip, yip, and I couldn’t take it. Joe Barnhill, the elderly neighbor from across the street, started watching Jacques, and they got attached to each other. Before long the dog was always running across the street to the Barnhills’ house. Jacques started staying there, and when JonBenét wanted to see her dog, she went over and played with him.
In the summer of 252
96, JonBenét started wearing those diaper-type underpants—Pull-Ups. She even wore them to bed. There was always a wet one in the trash. By the end of the summer, Patsy was trying to get her to do without them. Then JonBenét started wetting the bed again. Almost every day I was there, there was a wet bed. Patsy said she wasn’t going to use Pull-Ups again. She just put a plastic cover on the bed. No big deal to her. By the time I’d come in the morning, Patsy would have all the sheets off the bed and in the laundry. JonBenét’s white blanket would already be in the dryer. The Ramseys had two washer-dryers—one in the basement and a stackable unit in a closet just outside JonBenét’s room.
Patsy started to take a painting class, and JonBenét drew a lot with crayons and markers. People and flowers. They had a big easel, but most of the time JonBenét painted on a card table in the butler’s kitchen. Patsy had her paints and brushes in a white paint tote. Sometimes she asked me to take her paints down to the basement when she was having some kind of party. That’s what she’d say about everything, any kind of clutter: “Just take it down to the basement. I don’t want to see it.” On the day of the Ramseys’ Christmas party, I took the paint tote downstairs.
Evenings were for the family. They did homework and had dinner together. Patsy worked on school projects with the kids. She was always doing something for the children on her computer. She read to them at bedtime. Sometimes she asked me to baby-sit if she couldn’t find a sitter.
Patsy spent a lot of time alone in the house while John was away on business. She never kept a baseball bat under the bed, or Mace. Never even set the alarm. She didn’t like it, because it went off accidentally and it drove the police crazy.
The last month I was there, nothing was different. Patsy went to New York with her family and some friends. JonBenét even ice-skated at Rockefeller Center. When they came back, they got ready for another pageant. Patsy was always putting things off until the last minute.
On December 23, JonBenét was playing with makeup. “JonBenét, you are not going anywhere with all that on,” Patsy told her. “You take some of it off.” JonBenét did. At one o’clock she went to play with some friends and was back by four o’clock. Late that afternoon, she didn’t want to wear a dress for their Christmas party. Patsy got a little agitated. Finally, JonBenét put on a velvet one with short sleeves.
I stuck around with my daughter Ariana to see Santa. We hadn’t planned to stay, so Ariana wasn’t dressed up. Patsy gave my daughter a Christmas sweater and a vest. Even lent her a pair of her shoes. At the last minute, Patsy wrote a little verse about Ariana for Santa to read.
At 5:30 P.M. Santa showed up. By then the Barnhills, the Fernies, the Stines, Pinky Barber, and the Whites, who came with Priscilla’s parents, had all arrived. Maybe eight couples and their children. Most of the