"That's when you should've called for help," Kimberly said.
"Sure, and have everyone think I was some kind of a worthless jerk for being dumb enough to untie her."
Kimberly grimaced a bit. She lowered her eyes and looked ashamed. She didn't actually apologize, but she regretted being so sharp with me last night. You could tell.
"Boy," Connie said, "that Thelma read you like a book."
I looked at her and didn't make the mistake of asking, "What do you mean by that?" I kept my mouth shut, but it didn't help.
Billie asked, "What do you mean?"
"She knew just which buttons to push. Amazing. Rupert's got sex on the brain. There's no way in the world he's gonna miss out on the chance to wrestle with a woman."
I felt like my face might go up in flames. I said, "That's bull. We're talking about Thelma. God almighty, she's the last woman I'd ever want to wrestle with."
"Yeah, right."
"She's disgusting."
"As if you'd let a little thing like that get in your way."
"Yeah," I said, "look at you."
"Go fuck yourself."
Kimberly raised a hand. "Let's not get sidetracked here, kiddies."
Connie sneered at her and gave her the finger.
Kimberly ignored it. To me, she said, "So, did you agree to have this wrestling match?"
I frowned and tried to decide on the best way to answer. After a while, I said, "Well . . . she pushed me into it. She called me a chicken, and said I was too much of a wimp and a loser to beat her in a fair fight."
"So you went for it?" Kimberly asked.
"I had to."
Billie sighed. "You didn't have to prove anything to Thelma. She was just manipulating you."
"I guess . . . Well, not all the way. I mean, at first I agreed to wrestle her. But then she started to take off her clothes. She wanted us doing it naked."
"You figured you'd died and gone to Heaven," Connie said.
"I did not! I told her no. I said the deal was off, there wouldn't be any wrestling match, and I wanted her to hold out her hands so I could tie them. She wouldn't listen, though. She didn't pay any attention, and started taking off her clothes. It was like we were going to wrestle, no matter what I said. Before I knew what was happening, she had her blouse wide open and her shorts down. I didn't know what to do."
"Probably had a boner on you the size of the Washington Monument." Connie said that. Who else?
"I did not."
"Yeah, right."
"Leave him alone," Billie told her.
"The thing is, that's when I knew it had all gone too far. I started backing away from her. I was planning to go for the ax, and make her quit messing around, but all of a sudden she attacked me with a straight razor. She almost killed me." I met Connie's narrow eyes. "If you don't believe me, we can probably find the razor. I knocked it out of her hand. It's probably in the sand around here someplace."
Kimberly, who was wearing Keith's Hawaiian shirt this morning, slipped her hand into its left breast pocket and pulled out the razor. She flipped the blade open.
Billie pursed her lips and made a "Whuuu" sound.
I grimaced, myself, getting a good look at it in daylight and realizing how close it had come to slicing me up the middle.
"Has anyone ever seen this before?" Kimberly asked. She held it between her thumb and forefinger so that we could see the handle -- which looked like mother-of-pearl.
Connie shook her head.
Billie said, "Wicked-looking thing."
"Do you recognize it?"
"Me? No. I haven't seen a razor like that in years. My father had one that folded like that, but his had a green handle."
"How about you, Rupert?"
"I saw it last night. When she came at me with it."
"It's probably Wesley's," Connie said.
Kimberly nodded. "Maybe. It might even be Thelma's, for that matter."
"She didn't have it when I frisked her," Billie said. "I couldn't have missed a thing like that."
"Well," Kimberly said, "she sure got hold of it somewhere."
"Why didn't she just use it?" Connie asked.
"She tried," I pointed out.
"No, I mean to cut herself loose?"
"Maybe she couldn't get to it while her hands were tied," I suggested.
"But she must've gotten her hands undone before she came over to you," Billie said. "If we're right that she'd retied the rope to make it too tight, she would've probably had to untie it first."
Connie scowled. "This is getting too complicated."
"Yeah," I said. "We've got her untying her hands so she can tie them more tightly so she can come over here and trick me into untying them for her. That doesn't make any sense at all."
"Yeah. It does." Kimberly nodded and nibbled her lower lip for a few seconds. Then she said, "Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. We've been looking at it wrong. This wasn't about Thelma getting herself untied so she could escape. This was about killing Rupert."
"Terrific," I said.
She raised a finger. "Here's what I think happened." Looking at me, she said, "Back at the lagoon, Thelma tried to kill you by throwing that rock over the falls. She missed you, and hit Connie by mistake."
That's according to Thelma's version of what happened," Billie pointed out. "Might not be the truth."
"Whatever Wesley has in mind, he wants all the men dead first. That's how I see it," Kimberly said. "The thing is, he was too injured to try for Rupert, himself, so he ordered Thelma to do it. She screwed up and hit Connie. Then -- her story -- Wesley trashed her, so she killed him and came back to join up with us. I don't think so."
"You don't think he trashed her?" Billie asked.
"Somebody sure did," Connie said.
Kimberly nodded. "Yeah, Wesley probably did it to her. Or some of it. I bet most of it was self-inflicted."
"Would she do that?" Billie asked.
"Beat herself up? Maybe. I don't know. It wouldn't surprise me."
"You think she's a masochist?" Billie asked.
Connie snorted. "She's gotta be, she married Wesley."
"She couldn't have bitten herself in all those places," I pointed out.
"Not in all of them," Kimberly said. "I think it was probably a joint effort. The beating was supposed to be Thelma's excuse for killing Wesley, so it had to look good. She almost had to do some of it, herself. The beating was just too severe for Wesley to manage it by himself. In his condition? He might've given her some bites, but he couldn't have slapped her around and whipped her like that. She had to do that to herself. Most of it, anyway."
"Sick," Connie said.
"It was her ticket into our camp," Kimberly pointed out. "She could come in, show us those terrible wounds, and we'd be all set to believe she'd paid Wesley back by killing him."
"But we didn't believe her," I pointed out.
"No. Not entirely. I had my doubts all along that Wesley could've done that to her. But what I suspected -- and I think the rest of us did, too -- was that she'd been sent in here to set us up. If we believed her about killing Wesley, we'd let our guard down. That'd leave us open for a surprise attack. We also suspected that she might try to lead us into an ambush when we went looking for Wesley's body."
"Right," Connie said.
"But we were wrong. Completely wrong. She didn't come in to distract us or lead us into a trap so Wesley could nail us. You know what it was? From the very start? It was a one-woman mission to take out Rupert."
"Kill me?"
"Right."
"What does it mean?" Billie asked.
"Means, for one thing, Rupert's a very lucky fellow."
"That's me, lucky."
"Also means that Thelma's in this all the way with Wesley. She's perfectly willing to commit murder for him. She's a lot more dangerous than we thought."
"And trickier," I said.
"I always knew she was tricky," Kimberly said. "I just didn't know she was homicidal."
Billie, frowning, shook her head. "Do you think she was in on it with him?"