Cold Truth

8

“What are you all dressed up for?” Cass stopped just inside the front door as Lucy was coming down the steps.

“Cassie, it’s Friday night.” Lucy dropped her purse on a chair and leaned over to tighten a strap on her sandal. “Aren’t these cute?”

Lucy raised her foot and wiggled it, showing off the pink flowers that ran across the toes. “I picked them up in that little shop out on Route Nine this morning.”

“Yeah, they’re real cute, but I don’t understand why you’re wearing them or why you’re dressed up.” Cass walked past her into the kitchen, where she lifted the lid on a pot. “Ummm. Chicken noodle soup. That’s great, Luce, thank you. I am just dying.”

“Well, let’s hope you revive soon. The Clarks ’ clambake is tonight.”

“What?” Cass frowned and spooned soup into a bowl.

“The Clarks. Cathy and Eddie Clark? They were in my mom’s class at Regional? They own the marina out near the lagoon?”

“So?”

“So they invited everyone who’s come back for the dedication of the new high school to a big party, which is tonight. It should be a pretty lively group, since the all-class reunion of the old high school is next week. I know you got an invitation for it, everyone who ever went to Regional did.”

“Lucy, I’m in the middle of a serial homicide investigation. Four women have died in the past week. I have been pulling double shifts for almost a week now. I’m exhausted. I need sleep. I have to be sharp tomorrow. The FBI offered to send us some help and he’s coming in the morning for a briefing. One agent. Dead bodies piling up, no suspects, and they send us one agent.” She made a face. “I guess I shouldn’t complain, though. At least there will be someone else to help share the load. Not that I look forward to sharing my case with the Feds, but sometimes you just have to bite the bullet, you know? We need help. I need help. I could kill Spencer for walking out the way he did, but there it is. Anyway, I’d like to be coherent when I have to sit down and talk with this guy.”

She rubbed her eyes with the palms of her hands.

“God, I hope he’s not an asshole.” Cass sighed deeply. “In any event, the last thing I feel like doing is partying.”

Cass downed several spoonfuls of soup before looking up from the bowl, to find Lucy staring at her.

“What?” Cass asked. “Look, there’s no reason you can’t go. You don’t have to stay home and baby-sit me. I’ll be asleep before my head hits the pillow. I’ll never even know you’ve gone. Besides, it’s coming up on nine. Don’t you think all those clams will have been baked by now?”

“I can’t go by myself, Cass. I haven’t seen any of these people in a hundred years. No one will talk to me.”

“Why would you want to go to a party where no one will talk to you?”

“They would if you were with me. You still live here, you know everyone. People will talk to you.”

“The question was, why do you want to go?”

“I just… I don’t know, I want to feel connected to something, I guess.” Lucy sat in the chair opposite from Cass, leaned her elbows on the tabletop, and rested her chin in her hands. “I feel so… so…”

“Spit it out, Luce.”

“I feel like I don’t belong anywhere right now. I don’t feel as if I even have a home anymore. My rat-bastard husband took that from me.” Her eyes brimmed with tears and her bottom lip quivered. “Everyone in town must know what’s been going on. I feel like I don’t have anything left now. I feel like I’ve lost it all.”

Lucy picked at her nail polish.

“Stop that,” Cass told her. “You just paid for that manicure.”

“Right.” Lucy clasped her hands together. “Anyway, if I don’t belong there, I have to belong somewhere. I was hoping it would be here. I was hoping, oh, I don’t know, that maybe I’d see some of my old friends and reconnect with them. Maybe I could start to build a life for myself away from Hopewell. Maybe bring the kids here to live with me-not here, to this house, I’d get my own-but here in Bowers Inlet. Maybe I could even get a job.”

“Not-gasp-a job!”

“Very funny. There are things I could do. I just haven’t worked in a long time because… well, there were the kids, and then… well, I didn’t have to. David always gave me a very generous allowance. I will say that for the man.”

Lucy crossed her legs under the table and Cass could feel the slight breeze stirred up by her cousin’s foot, which was bouncing with nerves and tension.

“You’re right, though. You are tired, and I am a totally thoughtless, immature, self-centered bitch for not even taking that into consideration. I’m sorry. I was only thinking of myself.”

Lucy forced a smile, then stood up and patted Cass on the back. “Finish your soup, then go ahead and turn in. I’ll go up and change. I’m sorry I wasn’t more considerate. I don’t know what I was thinking.” She tried to lighten up. “Well, of course, I obviously wasn’t thinking. I’m really sorry.”

Lucy began rinsing out glasses at the sink. Her shoulders were bunched and tight. Cass could tell even from looking at her back that Lucy was trying not to cry.

“I’m sorry, too. Sorry I didn’t realize how hard this situation has been for you.”

“I think you’ve had other, more important things on your mind.”

“Well, look, Luce, how ’bout we go for an hour. Would you be content with just an hour? I honestly don’t think I’d last much longer than that.”

“It’s okay. Really. You should go to bed.”

“Oh, hell, Lucy.” Cass finished the last bit of soup. “I can get changed in a flash.”

“Are you sure? You don’t have to…”

“I’m sure. The soup revived me. Besides,” Cass pointed to Lucy’s hot pink Capri pants, “we can’t let those go to waste.”

“Well, yay! I’ll come home the minute you tell me you’re ready to leave, I promise.” Lucy’s face lit up. “Now, you run upstairs and take a real quick shower while I straighten up the kitchen a bit.”

“I’ll be down in twenty minutes.”

“I’ll be up in fifteen to do your face.”

There were a surprising number of people still standing around the bar in the tent that had been erected in the Clarks ’ backyard to celebrate the festivities surrounding the demolition of the old high school and the dedication of the new one. Beyond the tent, a wooden dock, weathered gray, separated the back of the property from the bay.

“Hey, Cass. Over here,” someone called when Cass and Lucy entered the tent.

Cass nudged Lucy with her elbow. “There’s Connie-remember her from basketball?”

“Sure.” Lucy nodded, then waved. “Hi, Connie!”

“Is that Lucy Donovan? For heaven’s sake, girl, come right on over here…”

Cass ordered a club soda and lime for herself and a beer for Lucy from the young bartender, and joined in the conversation with several old classmates.

“I can’t believe you’re a cop,” someone in the group teased. “Aren’t you the one who used to sneak beers from that refrigerator in your aunt’s basement and go sit out on the jetty and toss ’em back?”

“That was Lucy,” Cass denied with a straight face.

“Liar, liar, pants on fire.” Lucy laughed. “I heard that.”

Cass spent several long minutes admiring the photographs of old friends’ children, a few more catching up with classmates who had moved away and returned for the weeklong festivities. She hadn’t realized that so many people had gotten so involved with this old school-new school thing. To her, it was little more than one old building coming down, a newer one going up. But then again, she wasn’t as sentimental as some.

The recent killings were the main topic of conversation, much as she’d suspected they might be, but as the evening wound down, the chatter became lighter, less intense, more personal. Signaling Lucy by pointing to her watch, Cass made it clear it was past time to go. True to her word, Lucy said her good-byes and looped an arm through Cass’s.

“You are the best, you know that?” Lucy told her. “I had such a good time. It was fun to see everyone again, I don’t know why I didn’t keep in touch with those girls. Thanks, Cassie. I owe you.”

“Drive me home and we’ll call it even.” Cass tossed the car keys and Lucy caught them with one hand.

“Poor Cassie, hunting serial killers by day, being dragged around town by her selfish, loony cousin by night.” Lucy got behind the wheel of Cass’s car and slid the key into the ignition. “God will reward you for your good deed.”

“I hope it’s with a good night’s sleep.”

Here and there throughout the tent or around the bar, classmates had gathered to catch up with one another’s lives. Just inside the tent, a group of middle-aged men gathered at a round table. They’d spent most of the night talking about the old times, and doing a little catching up as well. Many of them had remained close enough to the shore towns to come back every summer with families of their own, often returning to the same houses in which they’d grown up. Some still lived in those towns. Others had left the Jersey coast to seek their fortunes elsewhere.

In groups of threes and fours, they struggled to be overheard above the music, which was loudest this close to the speakers.

“Howard, how’s your sister doing these days?”

“Hey, Ebberle, that your Corvette parked out there? You trying to recapture your youth, or what?”

“Did you see Debbie Ellis? Can we say face-lift?”

“Check out the rock old Paulie’s young wife is sporting. You know he never gave Patsy a rock that big…”

He was standing halfway between the table and the bar, listening to some idle chatter, when he saw her, and his heart stopped beating in his chest.

“… so I said, listen, Hal, you can give me a better deal than that on this boat. You know she’s been sitting in dry dock for- Hey, buddy, you all right?”

His companion tapped him on the back.

“You’ve gone white as a sheet, like you’ve seen a ghost.”

The friend followed his gaze across the bar.

“You’re looking at Bob Burke’s girl there? Yeah, she’s a cop here in Bowers Inlet now. And a damned fine one, too. I hear she’s won all kinds of commendations. She’s living in the old Marshall place on Brighton, old lady Marshall left the house to her and her cousin.”

“She’s beautiful. She looks so much like her mother.” He somehow managed to get the words out.

“Oh, no, no. You’re looking at the other girl. That’s the cousin, Kimmie Donovan’s daughter. You must remember Kimmie if you remember Jenny. The Marshall sisters? They were some ten years, maybe fifteen years or so ahead of us, I don’t recall exactly. Kimmie married Pete Donovan… used to race cars on Sunday nights down on Lagoon Lane?”

He couldn’t take his eyes off her.

“But you’re right, man, it’s unbelievable how much Kimmie’s girl looks like Jenny. It’s all that dark hair. Boy, she was a looker, that Jenny Marshall. Damned shame, wasn’t it, about her and Bob… they had another daughter who was killed, too. Bastard. Wiped out that whole family, or tried to. Cassie was lucky to get out of there alive, that’s for sure. Damned shame. I hope that bastard Wayne Fulmer rots in hell for what he did to that family. I heard he died about ten years back, still in prison. Stomach cancer, I heard. I hope he suffered. I hope he suffered real bad. He got off easy, you ask me.” The companion took a long swig of his beer.

“They should have turned him over to us, you know? We would have known what to do with that bastard, after what he did to Jenny and Bob and that little girl of theirs. Boy, that was a summer to remember, wasn’t it? First that wacko Fulmer goes nuts and all but wipes out the Burkes, then all those women got themselves killed. Damned Bayside Strangler.” He took another sip of his beer. “Hell of a thing for the town to be remembered for, isn’t it? And now it’s déjà vu all over again, like they say. I told my kid she goes no place without three or four other girls and a couple’a guys while we’re down here. You never know what this bastard is thinking…”

He’d been murmuring agreement. Yes, yes, of course, the man who’d been convicted of murdering the Burke family got off easy. Yes, yes, dying of cancer was too good for him. He should rot in hell. Yes, it’s crazy that someone’s going around acting like the Strangler. Yes, you can’t be too careful…

He barely heard a word, hardly knew what he was saying.

He said his good nights, then hurried to the parking lot. The last he saw of her was the sweep of long hair as she got into the car.

He stood in the shadows and watched her drive away, his heart pounding and his knees shaking, wanting her.

The car turned right at the stop sign and disappeared into the night. But it was okay, he told himself.

She wouldn’t be hard to find.