4th of July

Chapter 119

OUR KNEES ALMOST TOUCHED under the small table at the back of the restaurant near the restrooms. We had salads and coffee in front of us, but Rebecca wasn’t eating. And she wasn’t yet ready to talk.

She pulled on the little gold cross hanging from a chain around her neck, sliding it back and forth.

I thought I understood her conflict. She wanted to be the one to tell the real information, but at the same time, she didn’t want to blow the whistle where her friends could hear it.

“I don’t know anything, understand?” Rebecca said at last. “And I certainly don’t know anything about the murders. But Ben was under some kind of shadow lately.”

“Can you elaborate, Rebecca?”

“Well, he was unusually moody. Snapped at a couple of his patients, which, let me tell you, was rare. When I asked him what was going on, he denied that he was having problems.”

“You knew Lorelei?”

“Sure. They met at church, and frankly I was surprised Ben married her. I think he was lonely and she looked up to him.” Rebecca sighed. “Lorelei was pretty simple. She was a childlike woman who liked to shop. No one hated her.”

“Interesting observation,” I said. And that was all the encouragement Rebecca needed to say what she’d wanted to say all along.

She looked as though she were standing on the edge of a diving board and the pool was far, far below.

She took a breath and dove.

“Did you know about the first Mrs. O’Malley?” she asked me. “Did you know that Sandra O’Malley killed herself? Hanged herself in her own garage?”