“What?” Joelen asked, giving her a sideways glance. “Have I got a booger hanging out of my nose?” And, Deirdre noted, she still said exactly what she thought.
“Sorry,” Deirdre said. “Didn’t mean to be ogling you. It’s been a crazy day. The police came this morning to search the house and the garage. Now they’re back to talk to me. In the meanwhile, I found out that I’m my dad’s literary executor, which means I have to deal with all of his shit. Like, one of the things he’s got? Remember your mom’s yellow dress?” She hadn’t meant to say any of that, but there it was.
“My mother’s yellow dress?”
“The one she let me wear to her party . . . you know, that night.”
“That . . . ?” At first Joelen looked puzzled. Then, “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” She pulled the car over to the curb and stopped. She turned in her seat and faced Deirdre. “What are you talking about?”
“The dress your mother let me wear to her party that night. It was in a pile of stuff that Dad wanted Henry to throw away.”
“So how did your father end up with it?”
“All I know is that he did.”
Joelen stared out through the windshield, her brow wrinkled, shaking her head. “I have no idea how your father got that dress,” she said at last, turning back to Deirdre. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”
Deirdre took a shuddering breath. “Was I there when Tito got stabbed?”
“You were in the house.”
“But was I in the room?”
“Why would you think that?”
“Because the dress. It’s got dark stains on it.”
“And you think—?”
“I don’t know what to think. I’m just asking.”
Joelen held Deirdre’s gaze for a long moment. “No, honey. You were not. You were fast asleep in your jammies.”
“You’re sure?”
“Sure as hell.” Joelen looked over her shoulder and pulled away from the curb. “I was there. You were not.”
Deirdre leaned back and felt the tension drain from her neck and shoulders.
After a long silence, Joelen said, “I’m sorry we didn’t keep in touch.”
“Me too. I tried to call. I wrote.”
“I was trying to become invisible. Besides, they sent me away.” Joelen stopped at Sunset, signaled right, and waited as cars streamed past.
“Where?”
“After the verdict, they sent me to juvie.” She pulled into traffic. “Which wasn’t really as bad as you might imagine. I met some fascinating people.” She laughed. “Then the judge sent me to live with my aunt Evelyn in Des Moines, for God’s sake. Not so fascinating. Fields and fields of wheat. I finished high school there. For a year I was Jennifer, so no one knew who I really was or why I was there, and I was damn well going to keep it that way. I didn’t make a single friend.”
“You must have gone bonkers.”
“I did. A little.” Joelen gave a bitter laugh. “Poor Aunt Evelyn, God bless her. She had one black-and-white television set and she had it on all the time. She was addicted to the Price Is Right, Queen for a Day, Search for Tomorrow, Guiding Light.” Joelen rolled her eyes. “And, oh yeah, wrestling. The only books in the house were steamy romance novels. And the Bible, of course. We went to the mall every Saturday, church every Sunday.” She signaled right. “Supposedly that was more therapeutic than living with my mom. I had to stay until I was eighteen.”
She turned into the familiar driveway and stopped at a metal gate that hadn’t been there years earlier. NO TRESPASSING and PROTECTED BY FIVE STAR SECURITY signs hung on it. Joelen rolled down the window, reached out, and pressed a button on an intercom box.
It took a while for anyone to answer. At last a man’s tinny voice croaked out, “Yeah?” “Hey, it’s me,” Joelen said.
Slowly the gate swung open and Joelen drove through and up the winding driveway. Deirdre turned and looked over her shoulder. The gate began to swing shut.
The rest of the driveway up to the house looked familiar: a tennis court, then farther along a carport sheltered under a bank of bougainvillea. Alongside the carport a white fence surrounded a kidney-shaped pool and pool house. The driveway curved back on itself and climbed. From above Deirdre could see that the pool was half-full, and the water in it had turned a sickly green.
Joelen stopped alongside a motorcycle in a broad parking area in front of the house, just feet from the front door. Deirdre picked up her crutch and started to open the door.
“Deeds?” Joelen said. The familiar nickname that only Henry still called her brought Deirdre up short. “I heard about what happened to your leg,” Joelen said, her eye on the crutch. “Tough break. I didn’t find out until I got back from Iowa. I tried to call you, but you were already away at college.”
Deirdre had spent the summer after she graduated from high school at UC San Diego and fallen in love with art history. She’d been desperate to get away from Beverly Hills, to meet people who didn’t know her as either Joelen Nichol’s onetime best friend or the crippled girl everyone pitied.
Joelen’s look turned serious. “So why do the police want to talk to you?”
“All I know is Sy said if they came back, not to talk to them alone.”
“Sy.” Joelen blinked. “You mean, it wasn’t an accident.”
Deirdre looked down into her lap.
“How awful. I’m sorry,” Joelen said. “But they can’t think it was you.”
“I don’t know what they think. And I didn’t want to find out when I was alone.”
Joelen pushed open the car door and got out. Deirdre followed her to the columned portico. “Listen to Sy,” Joelen said, “and do exactly what he tells you. I don’t even want to think what might have happened to me if I hadn’t.”
“Is he still your mom’s lawyer?”
“And friend. He’s really been there for us. It’s great that you’ve got him in your corner. And your family, too, of course. Where’s your mom?”
“Living in the desert on a monastic retreat. She’ll show up. Eventually.”
“Here’s a scary thought,” Joelen said, holding the front door of the house open for Deirdre. “Marooned on a desert island with your mother and my mother. Gilligan’s Island meets . . .”
“Dallas,” Deirdre said. It was a game she and Joelen used to play, and any other time Deirdre would have added on with wearing . . . or eating . . . or singing . . . But at that moment, Deirdre couldn’t have come up with anything else clever if her life depended on it. All she wanted to do was talk to Sy.
Chapter 15
Deirdre stood for a moment in the massive two-story entryway. She hadn’t been in this house in more than twenty years. The once uneven stucco walls of the entryway were paneled over with a light wood, like a patterned birch. The floor, once rich terra-cotta tile, was now inset with slabs of peach-colored marble. The generous staircase was carpeted in thick white pile, the wrought-iron handrail that had once wound up to the second floor replaced by opulent carved and gilded balusters. Hanging from the ceiling was a massive Lucite and crystal chandelier that would have been right at home in a Las Vegas hotel.
A young man, dark and handsome, looked down at Deirdre from the landing halfway up the stairs. Deirdre felt a jolt of recognition. Before she could process it, Joelen pulled her across the entryway and down two steps into a white-carpeted living room, its windows swathed in gauzy white. “Bunny!” Joelen called out as she headed for the door at the far end of the living room.
Deirdre remembered how weird it had seemed the first time she’d heard Joelen call her mother Bunny instead of Mom. Then it turned out to be a ’60s thing. As usual, the Nichols were ahead of the curve and the Ungers were behind it.