Spin a Wicked Web

EIGHTEEN

I WAS AWAKENED BY the distant sound of a rooster the next morning, crowing at the brightening hour of five a.m. Too early to go downstairs, and no way was I going back to sleep. I'd been half thinking, half dreaming about what I'd learned about Ariel so far, and now that I was fully awake the thoughts were clamoring too loud to allow further rest. Plumping my pillows and sitting up in bed, I took in the details of the Kaminski's guest room. I'd been too tired the night before to do much more than change into Gabi's kind offer of a nightgown, turn out the light, and climb into bed.

Looking around in the dawn light, I saw cream-painted walls and a ceiling so pink it was almost fuchsia. Next to the louvered doors of the closet, an old-fashioned white dressing table dominated one corner, the surface noticeably empty of girlish potions and unguents. Opposite the window hung two giant posters, both velvet textured and brightly colored so they'd glow under a black light. The first showed a rather petulant-looking fairy with elaborate, luminous wings; the second depicted a winding road to an imposing castle that could have been either romantically gothic, or frighteningly Bram Stoker. I found both of them a little creepy, and was glad I hadn't noticed them before dropping off to sleep the night before. A battered dresser, gauzy pink curtains, and the double bed-dressed in pink and white gingham, for heaven's sake-rounded out the furnishings.

With two boys in the house now, and the fact that the Kaminski children had grown up here, there was no other reasonable explanation: I was in Ariel's girlhood room. The thought gave me a bit of a turn, then made me curious. After my interesting evening with her family, especially Gabi, my mental picture of Ariel was beginning to fill out. Still, I had to remember that, while the information I was getting from Gabi didn't really contradict anything I'd learned earlier, it was still just one source.

Swinging my legs over the edge of the bed, I reached for my shorts, now in a crumpled heap on the floor. I must have been too tired to fold them. Wouldn't Barr love living with a slob like me? He should count himself lucky I'd put off moving in.

I dressed, happy enough to add the hooded sweatshirt Gabi had given me to wear the night before to my early morning attire.It was chilly in the new dawn, and likely to stay that way until the sun had a chance to work her magic. No one seemed to be moving around in the household yet.

I eyed the closet.

The louvered doors didn't open smoothly, but I managed to make a minimum of racket. It was stuffed with clothes, most of them winter garb that looked like it belonged to the entire family. Gabi made good use of Ariel's old closet for storage. Well, what did I expect? A shrine to the departed sister? Hardly. I wondered whether Ariel had resented her space being taken over like that.

Quietly pawing through the items hanging on the rod, I found two dresses in the back that were certainly not suitable winter wear. They were too skimpy for most summer temperatures, and even then only if you were going for a certain look. I took one out and held it up to the window, noting the outline of the corner of the barn roof outside through the flimsy material.

Wow. There was a part of me that was slightly scandalized, and part of me that admired anyone with the chutzpah to actually wear something like that in public.

More rooting around revealed a few more pieces of barely-there clothing items: tiny halters, short short skirts, and the like. But nothing of real interest. So Ariel had dressed like a hooker when she lived at home-what bearing did that have on her murder? Whenever I'd seen her she'd been dressed provocatively, but nothing like this. It appeared her taste in clothing had matured a little.

I closed the doors to the closet and began opening drawers. I mean, after all, if you put someone in a room for the night and say it's the "guest room," it's not exactly surprising if they open a few drawers, right?

The dressing table held precisely nothing. Not even dust. Thoroughly cleaned out. The small bureau held two utterly empty drawers, but the third, bottom drawer, was full of high school annuals. Some of them were Rocky's, and some were Ariel's. The siblings had been five years apart in age, so their high school careers hadn't overlapped; eight annuals altogether.

Settling myself cross-legged on the floor, I pulled out the first one and thumbed through it. Rocky's, when he was a junior. He was nice enough looking now, but the school picture had captured a gleam in his eye that seemed to be missing in the man I'd met yesterday. He'd been one of the more active kids in school: on the football, basketball, and wrestling teams, as well as belonging to Future Farmers of America and Future Business Leaders of America. The abundance of friends and teachers who had signed his yearbook, and what they wrote, indicated he was well-liked by a variety of people. In fact, he'd been quite the big fish in the small pond of the La Conner school system. I flipped through a few more pages and found Gabi's picture. She was a year younger than Rocky and sported a very short haircut. She had a big happy grin pasted on her face. No doubt a ridiculously well-adjusted teenager.

All his annuals had the same flavor, but when I got to his sister's, they told a slightly different story. The pictures of Ariel as a freshman and a sophomore showed a gawky girl, first slightly gaptoothed, then second with braces presumably to correct said gap. All light-brown hair and hesitant smile, she looked skinny and awkward and very, very uncomfortable about having her picture taken. Frightened, tenuous, unsure; it was shocking how different that little girl in the pictures was from the young woman I'd known.

Something must have happened in the summer between her sophomore and junior year, though, because the Ariel pictured in the last two yearbooks was quite different. She'd dyed her hair blonde, loaded on the eye-liner, lowered her neckline by a degree that no doubt tempted official school reprimand, and gazed at the camera with a hard, determined smile.

Ariel had been sixteen when her parents died. My bet was that it happened between those two yearbook photos. Could her transformation have been a reaction to losing her mother and father?

The new and improved Ariel was certainly sexier in a crass kind of way, and, if the story about the English teacher was true, she'd put it to immediate use. Could Gabi have been jealous of her sister-in-law? Or did she just dislike her? What I'd learned so far about Ariel painted her as the kind of person who demanded instant gratification, took shortcuts to get what she wanted, and was not willing to wait. Impatient. Owed.

In fact, Ariel was beginning to sound like a bit of a sociopath. Could you be a bit of a sociopath? Or was that like being a little pregnant? She was charming as the dickens up front, but as you got to know her those charms faded. A social parasite, taking advantage of the people around her-and especially taking advantage of the particular weaknesses of men-to get what she wanted.

Except she wasn't all that good at it. At least not yet. Still young. And possibly becoming more effective with time.

What had Scott Popper offered her? What practical benefit, as Gabi put it, had Ariel reaped from the affair?

Scott Popper, ready to leave his wife to be with Ariel.

Who died in a car wreck.

Lifting the books to place them back in the drawer, I nearly dropped them.

A good driver, a semi-professional driver, for that matter. Certainly well trained as a police officer. Scott Popper, who died in a car wreck.

Just as his lover's parents had.

His lover, who, whatever she might have wanted from him, might not have wanted his city-salaried self on her hands full time.

His lover, the girl who was such a good car mechanic.