And then there was me, Regina thought. When I was fifteen I opened the door of the garage to put my bike away and found my father swinging from a rope. His eyes were bulging and his tongue was lapping over his chin. If he had to hang himself, why didn’t he do it in his office? He knew that I’d be the one to find him in the garage. I loved him so much! How could he have done that to me? The nightmares have never stopped. They always started with her getting off her bike.
Before she called the police, and the neighbor’s house where her mother was playing bridge, she had taken the suicide note her father had pinned to his shirt and hidden it. When the police came they said that most suicide victims leave a note for the family. Sobbing, her mother had searched the house for it, while Regina pretended to help.
The girls were my lifeline after that, Regina thought. We were such close friends. After the Gala and Betsy’s death, Claire and Nina and I were Alison’s bridesmaids. That had been such a stupid move. It was so soon after Betsy died; the tabloids had made a spectacle of the wedding. The headlines were all a rehashing of the Graduation Gala murder. That was when we realized that all four of us would continue to be under suspicion; maybe for the rest of our lives.
We never got together again, Regina lamented. After the wedding we all went out of our way to avoid any contact with each other. We all moved to different cities.
What would it be like to see them again, to be under the same roof? We were all so young then, so shocked and frightened when Betsy’s body was discovered. And the way the police questioned us, together, then separately. It’s a miracle one of us didn’t break down and confess to smothering her, the way they hammered at us. “We know it was somebody inside that house. Which one of you did it? If it wasn’t you, maybe it was one of your friends. Protect yourself. Tell us what you know.”
Regina thought of how the police had wondered if Betsy’s emeralds might have been the motive. She left them on the glass tray on her dressing table when she went to bed. They suggested that she woke up while she was being robbed and whoever was there panicked. One of her earrings was on the floor. Had Betsy dropped it when she took it off, or had someone, wearing gloves, panicked and dropped it when she woke up?
Regina got up slowly and looked around. She tried to visualize having three hundred thousand dollars in the bank. Almost half of that would go to income tax, she warned herself. But even so, it would be an unimaginable windfall. Or maybe it would bring back the days when her father had been so successful, and they, as well as Robert and Betsy Powell, had the big house in Salem Ridge with all the trimmings, housekeeper, a cook, a landscaper, a chauffeur, a top New York caterer for their frequent parties…
Regina looked around her one-room real estate office. Even with the Sheetrock walls painted light blue to coordinate with her white desk and the white armchairs with blue cushions for potential clients, the room looked like what it was: a brave effort to hide a thin budget. A garage is a garage is a garage, she thought, except for the one luxury I installed when I bought this property after the divorce.
The luxury was down the hall past the unisex restroom. Unmarked and always locked, it was a private bathroom with a Jacuzzi, steam shower, vanity sink, and wardrobe closet. It was here that sometimes, at the end of the day, she would shower, change, and then meet her friends or go out to a solitary dinner followed by a movie.
Earl had left her ten years ago, when Zach was going on nine. He hadn’t been able to put up with her bouts of depression. “Get help, Regina. I’m sick of the moods. I’m sick of the nightmares. It’s not good for our son, just in case you haven’t noticed.”
After the divorce, Earl, a computer salesman at the time, whose hobby had been writing songs, had finally sold a collection of his music to a major recording artist. His next step had been to marry budding rock singer Sonya Miles. When Sonya hit the charts with the album he wrote for her, Earl became a celebrity in the world he coveted. He took to that life as a duck takes to water, Regina thought as she walked over to the row of files on the far side of the room.
She took an unmarked package from the bottom of the locked file. Buried under miscellaneous real estate advertisements, it was a cardboard box that contained all the newspaper coverage of the Graduation Gala murder.
I haven’t looked at it in years, Regina thought as she carried the box back to her desk, laid it down, and opened it. Some of the newspapers had begun to crumble at the edges, but she found what she was looking for. It was the picture of Betsy and Robert Powell toasting the four graduates-Claire, Alison, Nina, and herself.
We were all so pretty, Regina thought. I remember how we went shopping for dresses together. We all had done well in college. We had our plans and hopes for the future. And they were all destroyed that night.
She put the newspapers back in the box, carried it over to the file, and dropped it in the bottom drawer, carefully concealing it below the ads. I’m going to take his damn money, she thought. And that producer’s as well. Maybe if I do, I can take hold of my life. I do know I can use some of the money to take Zach on a fun vacation, before he goes back to school.
She slammed the drawer, put the CLOSED sign in the window of the office, turned out the lights, locked the door, and went back to her private bath. In it, as the water ran in the Jacuzzi, she stripped and looked at herself in the full-length mirror on the door. I’ve got two months before the show and I need to lose twenty pounds, she thought. I want to look good when I get there and tell what I remember. I want Zach to be proud of me.
An unwanted thought crept into her mind. I know Earl always wondered if I was the one who killed Betsy. Did he ever plant that suspicion in Zach’s mind?
Regina knew she didn’t love Earl anymore, didn’t want him anymore, but even more than that, she didn’t want to have any more nightmares.
The Jacuzzi was filled with water. She stepped into it, leaned back, and closed her eyes.
As her curly black hair became straight and sleek around her face, she thought, This is my chance to convince everyone that I wasn’t the one who killed that rotten slut.
6
Rod Kimball signed for the certified letter and opened it while his wife, Alison, was busy filling a prescription. When the customer left she hurried over to take it from him.
“Who’s sending a registered letter?” she asked, her tone worried, as without breaking stride she took it from him, turned, and went back to the pharmacy area of their drugstore, giving him no chance to warn her of the contents. Dismayed, he watched as her face flushed, then paled as she read the two-page missive. Then she dropped it on the counter. “I can’t go through that again,” she cried, her voice trembling. “My God, do they think I’m crazy?”
“Take it easy, love,” Rod cautioned. Trying not to grimace with pain, he slid off the stool behind the checkout counter and reached for his crutches. Twenty years after the hit-and-run accident that had crippled him, pain was always a fact of life for him. Yet some days, like this one, cold and wet in late March in Cleveland, Ohio, it was more severe than others. Pain was etched into the lines around his eyes and the resolute set of his jaw. His dark brown hair had turned almost completely gray. He knew he looked older than his forty-two years. He hobbled over to Alison. Across the counter from her, his six-foot body towering over her petite frame, he felt an overwhelming need to protect her. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” he said firmly. “Tear up that letter.”