I’m guessing that Chelsey came over barefoot in just her swimsuit, because that would explain why she didn’t have shoes. I mean, she couldn’t have had her own shoes with her, because Tanner and Lauren would have put them back on her, right? Tanner and Lauren could dress her in some of Lauren’s clothes; we all dress pretty much alike so maybe no one would notice. But they couldn’t dump her out with no shoes on, because then you guys would totally know she didn’t get way over to the east side under her own power. The thing is, Lauren’s feet are, like, three sizes bigger than Chelsey’s, so none of her shoes would fit. Plus, the way Chelsey’s dad was always ragging on her to set the alarm if she left the house, I bet Lauren and Tanner couldn’t get back into Chelsey’s house to get any shoes to put on her. But if Consuelo was as proud of her Wal-Mart shoes as Lupe was, maybe she showed them to Lauren. Chelsey has little feet like Consuelo does, and so Chelsey ends up wearing Consuelo’s shoes.
So I’m totally not telling you how to do your job or anything, but I do watch CSI, and if I were you, here’s what I’d do. The quarry? The one where the party was at? I’d look back out there for that dumb monkey, because if it’s not broken, they must have ditched it somewhere. Lauren wouldn’t be smart enough to think of a place and Tanner hasn’t lived here long enough to know the area well. And I’d spray some of that blood-finding spray in the trunk of Lauren’s BMW, because they couldn’t have hauled a body around in Tanner’s Jeep. You might spray that stuff around the base of that monkey pillar, too. Then check with Consuelo — I bet you a million dollars her new shoes are gone. And ask Tanner why he lied about Chelsey’s jacket. That part I can’t figure out, unless he just got scared and decided it would be better to act like he didn’t see her that day at all. Really, all you probably have to do is tell one that the other confessed, like they do on Law & Order. They’ll totally spit it all out — I don’t think Lauren would go to prison for Tanner, and I guarantee he wouldn’t go to prison for her, he’s too pretty.
Anyway, I hope this helps you and that you can prove it. It feels like the least I can do for Chelsey, you know? But this isn’t easy for me. Lauren and Tanner may have killed Chelsey, but I’m killing the Royals, which may not be a big deal to you, but it’s a big deal to me. I mean, you don’t know how vicious some girls can be, and now it will be just Madison and me against everyone else. So I really hope it’s worth it, because once this gets out at school, the rest of the year is totally going to suck.
Copyright ©2006 by Jodi Tamara Harrison
Goodbye, Friends
by Louis Sanders
Louis Sanders, a.k.a. Elie Robert-Nicoud, has had three novels published in his native France by Rivages Noir. All have been translated and published in English in the U.K. by Serpent’s Tail. See Death in the Dordogne, The Englishman’s Wife, and An Ignoble Profession. The latter was awarded the literary prize of the Cognac Crime Film Festival in 2003. The author did his own translation of this new story, he’s recently begun to write stories in English.
“It was better before,” I thought to myself as I sat at the terrace of a café in front of Brantôme Abbey. And like all tourists, I added, “It’s getting too touristy here.”
Before... That was when I used to come and visit John and Mary, when I would spend almost all my holidays with them. Maybe six or seven years ago. Like so many English people, they’d bought a house in the southwest of France, in the Dordogne, in between Brantôme and Bourdeilles, and they’d spent years restoring it to their idea of a rural Eden.
When I talked about them, I would say rather childishly, “They’re my best friends.”
It was a sunny day, Friday morning; the thick heat of July slowed everything and everyone down. The French peasants with their berets and their blue jackets were the only ones who didn’t seem to feel it. Mary used to love the sight of them, little clichés of the French countryside. I liked it too, I suppose that’s what you do when you’re a tourist, you look for more clichés, you want to see what you already know about a place. They were talking amongst themselves, both hands resting on a walking stick, or with their big bellies forward, hands in their pockets. They didn’t pay attention to the people from Bordeaux, or the Parisians, or the Dutch, or the English, walking around in sandals with a container of cheap Bergerac wine in each hand.
There were two empty chairs in front of me, and maybe it wasn’t entirely by chance. It was almost as if I were waiting for John and Mary to come and join me. I’d met John at university twenty years before; he was one of those people who can never be content with the place they’re in. They can’t look at a landscape without dreaming of somewhere else. And while he was admiring Brantôme Abbey on the other side of the river, or the narrow streets, paved and empty all around, he would start talking about South America, Argentina, where I’d never been and which that particular year seemed to him to be a more desirable destination than any other. A few years before he’d craved to be on a South Sea island, or in Turkey, and even before that Western Canada, just to give a few examples. Eventually Argentina had become an obsession with him and it came back into the conversation more often than any other part of the globe. Just as, in the old days, he’d become obsessed with the South of France, where he’d finally settled and which didn’t interest him anymore.
I was staying in a bed-and-breakfast run by an English couple, not far from John and Mary’s house, behind the cliffs along the river.
There were medieval castles perched on those enormous rocks, and each time we drove past a certain one, Mary would say: “That’s the house I’d like to have.” That was when we’d go and have a drink in the evening, around seven, on a little square by the château in Bourdeilles. You could have thought you were back in the ‘fifties, the ‘sixties, the seventeenth century, or the Middle Ages; you just had to choose where your nostalgia would take you. A French provincial village.
But John went on and on about Argentina. Even when we talked on the phone, long distance. And one day, the news stopped coming. I waited, hoping that I would get a postcard showing what had obsessed him for so long. An invitation to Argentina, or anywhere else. I had thought I was more to them than just a now useless object that had belonged to their English or Dordogne life, a piece of furniture too cumbersome to be carried around. I didn’t wish them well at that moment, because I was hurt, and I must confess that I almost hoped their silence could be explained by some terrible misadventure.