Brad saved lives. He biked. Over the phone line, he picked up that a good Catholic girl was calculating the number of inches of rope she needed to hang herself, while I sat inches from her the hour before and didn’t have a clue.
“I was wondering if you knew the full names of any of the other girls,” I said weakly. “I’d like to ask them the same thing. Maybe Brad told you… he thought it would be unethical for him to give me the names.”
“That doesn’t surprise me. He’s got the Jewish guilt thing going. Me, I’d like to help you, which is probably why he pointed you my way. I’ll need to call my parents, though. I’m sure they saved the document with all the names in it. They save everything.”
“Document?”
“That lawsuit drawn up by one of the girls’ fathers, some big-shot attorney. The sorority girl’s dad. Brook… Everheart? I think that’s it. Didn’t you ever see it? I’m pretty sure your name was in it, along with the rest of the girls whose pictures ran in the paper. It was never filed. Just used as blackmail against Windsor officials to keep this whole thing quiet. Mr. Everheart suggested to them that they were looking at a very large judgment. It was overkill-the university was bending over backward to make the situation right. They were horrified that our photos were printed in the school paper. Of course, I only knew all of this after the fact. I spent a couple of months at what my family likes to call a mental health spa. You didn’t know about the document? Didn’t Brook’s father call your parents, too? He must have. I don’t think they could have used your name in the suit otherwise.”
“I’m not sure,” I said slowly. “I spent some time abroad after that.”
“Maybe your parents wanted to take care of it for you. Try to protect you from thinking about it. As if they could. Some nights when I’m staring at the ceiling, it still comes back. He put his pocketknife to my throat. There’s a little scar there. I think if he’d moved the knife up a few inches and cut my face, I would have reported him to the police instead of trying to kill myself. It’s weird. How guilt works.” Her voice quivered. “I don’t know about your parents, but mine were torn to pieces. That was the worst part. I honestly think my father would have killed Pierce if someone else hadn’t beaten him to it.”
A high-pitched, drama-girl scream rang out in Renata Tadynski’s world. She put a hand over the phone and her muffled voiced called out, “Demitri Owens, knock it off!” Then, to me, “My English lit class is filing in, so I’ve got to go. One of my best students just unhooked a girl’s bra. Reached right under her shirt, two feet in front of a nun. It doesn’t work to threaten them with burning in hell anymore. A little devil with horns doesn’t seem that scary compared with some of their real-life daddies. I’ll try to round up those names for you. In the meantime, I’ll get some prayers going with Mary.”
I placed the phone gently on the nightstand, careful not to disturb the gun, and lay flat on the bed, staring up at the ceiling fan, hoping the spinning blades could lull me to sleep. The fan creaked and wobbled as the blades whipped around. I imagined it falling, crashing the plaster ceiling on top of me and the baby. That’s how Mike would find his family, cut up by a killer fan.
Could I possibly have two stalkers? One who left the rape report and one who smoked cigars? Maybe they could meet and duke it out. Take care of each other. In less than a minute, I sat at the kitchen table, powering up my laptop.
Brook Everheart.
I signed on to Facebook and searched for her name. Brook Everheart Marcum in Chicago, Illinois. A good guess. I thought for a second and typed a Facebook message to her:
Hi, Brook. We attended Windsor together thirteen years ago. I’m trying to find some of my fellow alums and sorority sisters.
Then I tacked an exclamation point to the end of every sentence because I figured that’s what a sorority sister would do.
Vague enough. Only the sorority part wasn’t true. I sent the message and made a friend request. Now I’d play the waiting game. I’m not sure what I expected to glean from viewing Brook’s Facebook page if she confirmed our friendship. But something.
I punched in Black Patch Cigar Co., found the main website, and was rewarded with a picture of my pirate feminist. A link to a blog declared it one of the best cigars in North America. A twenty-count box cost upward of a $100, and a bizarre and confusing hexagonal chart said the cigar leaned more toward spice and nut than peat and cocoa. At least that’s what I think it said. This was a whole new way to fall down the rabbit hole.
My cell phone sang and danced on the desk.
I breathed out slowly after reading the screen.
DUNN, LETICIA.
“Hi,” I said.
“This is Leticia Lee Dunn,” she said, as if we hadn’t shared an awkward hug less than twenty-four hours ago. “I am organizing a small memorial service for Caroline Warwick in my home, since that butcher from Dallas isn’t going to give up her body anytime soon. Tonight at seven-thirty. I know it’s late notice, but a lot of us are suffering. I expect you will be there?”
“Sure.” The word was out of my mouth before I could stop it.
“It’s women only.”
When I didn’t reply, she said, “So don’t bring Mike.”
“I got that.”
“Would you like to speak a few words?”
“No, no, I wouldn’t.” I spoke firmly. “I didn’t know her that well. Actually, I’m not sure I can make it, after all.”
“If I can pick you up at the airport when I’m out-of-my-mind bereaved, you can show up and say a few words about Caroline. I’ll put you down for five minutes. No, ten. Don’t be late.”
At 7:29 p.m., I drew the station wagon to a stop at the end of a long line of vehicles parked in a string down the curb of a bland, upscale street called La Mirada. Both sides were crammed with million-dollar brick homes barely distinguishable from one another.
About twenty seconds later, Jesse pulled in behind me and switched off his motor and headlights. I flipped him a thumbs-up. I had briefly poked my head in his car window and met Parker the dog before heading off to Letty’s express memorial.
Parker had licked my hand. Jesse had called me ma’am. Other than the ma’am and the 9 mm lying on the seat beside him, it sort of felt like a protective teenage brother had my back.
I walked quickly, scanning the numbers on the houses, pretty sure my destination was ten houses up with a large, glowing display of some kind in the front yard. The street was void of human life. My low heels clicked on the sidewalk. Not a tree big enough to hide anyone. The only other sound in the failing twilight was the hiss of a sprinkler system spitting on. I counted eight white Lexuses and five black BMWs before deciding it wasn’t that interesting to count them.
Letty’s cushy little neighborhood, made up of nondescript 5,000-square-foot houses and short lawns, wasn’t in Caroline Warwick’s astronomical league but it was more posh than any place I’d ever dreamed of living. The brick landscape grew up out of flat Texas farmland, one more layer of life on top of centuries-old Indian graves and thousand-year-old fossils and million-year-old dinosaur bones.
On time in Texas must mean Get there early. I picked up the pace, regretting my wardrobe choice-a dark blue suit with the waist button undone, a gray blouse that gapped a little between the top buttons if I moved my arms too much, and my mother’s pearls.
I used a Manolo Blahnik toe to scoot a Billabong skateboard left carelessly in the middle of the sidewalk onto a lawn. In Manhattan, it would have disappeared less than a minute after the kid abandoned it. Every kid on this block probably had at least one to spare.