by Evan Ronan
“Finally,” he says, exasperated. “I thought you weren’t interested any more. I had an REIT through here today. They’re getting their paperwork together. Should I call and tell them to hold off?”
“I’m working with my lender on a couple minor things. Can I get you back tomorrow?”
Long pause. “You told me you had pre-approval.”
“I did.” I breathe and add, “They just have to clear a couple things up on their end. I should be able to make you a firm offer tomorrow.”
“Hmmm. Well, Greg, that doesn’t sound very promising. I thought you were ready to go.”
“And I am. I just hope you’re ready.”
“You had said three seventy-five. Is that your best offer?”
“I said three five, actually.”
“Oh? I could have sworn … if that’s all you’re willing to offer, then I will wait the extra day because I think the other group is coming in with something better.”
Shit.
“I’ll be ready to move tomorrow,” I assure him. “No bullshit. We can close it fast.”
“You better be ready. Enjoy your evening.”
Thirty-Two
The next morning, I drive out to Collegeville again. Molly is teaching a class in the early morning, but she frees up around eleven. I offer to buy her a coffee at the student center.
The pain is wonky this morning. The dull ache in my head is gone and the wrist is eerily quiet. But today my rib feels like it’s been broken all over again and the pain in my shoulder blade has migrated down my back. The human body is a weird thing.
Nothing beats a college campus on a Friday morning in spring. There’s a buzz in the air as kids head to class or decide to cut and get started on their weekend early. It makes me miss college.
I’ve been nursing a coffee that is surprisingly good in the student center when I see Molly come in through the automatic doors. Today she’s wearing a t-shirt with a different college’s name stenciled across the front. I wonder if she taught her class in that outfit because it isn’t what you’d call “professorly.”
She sees me from across the atrium and comes over.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
“Coffee?” I ask.
She shrugs. “Alright.”
A bit subdued this morning, compared to the other day. I bring my coffee and pay for hers, then she leads me to a quieter lounge on the second floor where we can talk. Nobody else is around.
“The undergrads stay downstairs. Hardly anybody else comes up here.”
She sips her coffee. “This tastes like shit. Next time you come out here, bring Starbucks.”
“I’ll do that.” I laugh. “So, Molly, I’m wondering why you lied to me.”
She stops. Mid-sip. Eyes me over the rim of the cup.
Very slowly, very mechanically, she puts the cup down on the end table next to her seat.
“What, exactly, did I lie about?”
“Maybe lie is too strong a word,” I say.
We watch each other a moment. I see the anger welling up behind those eyes. That rage.
Did you kill your best friend?
“You told me you had a crush on Henry, not that you were obsessed with him.”
“I was not obsessed.”
“You told me that Henry and Julie were only together one night.”
“I … never said that. I just agreed they were together when you brought it up. I never specified how long.”
I run through the data banks and my memory agrees with her. But I pretend like it doesn’t. “Not how I remember it. But I’m splitting hairs. I guess the real point I’m here—you and Julie argued and fought a lot about Henry. It wasn’t one time.”
“Yeah.”
“You had a big blowout fight at the graduation party. You didn’t mention that.”
“It wasn’t a blowout. It was just a disagreement.”
“That’s not what I hear.”
She leans forward. “Then whoever you’ve been talking to had better learn to tell the truth.”
I plow ahead. “You weren’t on speaking terms, and out of the blue, you walked up to Julie, unprovoked, and started yelling at her.”
“Whoa!” She sits back in her chair. The tell is revealing. I’ve got her, finally, on the defensive. “I wasn’t yelling. And whatever I said, she had it coming.”
“What did you say?”
She looks away. Doesn’t say a word. Doesn’t move for ten seconds. I’m about to give her a delay of game warning, when she finally breaks the silence.
“Henry did something stupid. Julie found out. And she was going to go to the police about it.”
I feel like I’ve just been hit in the back of the head by a baseball bat. Because now I know from past experience exactly what that actually feels like.
“What did Henry do?”
“She was toying with him. Julie had him totally wrapped around her finger. It was sick. She treated him like a dog. She’d say come, and he would. She’d say go, and he’d leave with his tail between his legs. Whatever Julie wanted, Julie got with him. He was her slave. Mentally and emotionally. It wasn’t right. That’s why he acted out of character.”
There is a rage inside her, battling to get out.
“She played him,” I say, like I agree with her. “I get it. For months she led him on. He thought once she broke up with Nick they’d finally be together, right?”
“He didn’t just think it. She told him that.”
“She told him that?”
Molly nods indignantly. “Then, when it was time to be with Henry, she changed her mind. It broke his heart. She took a hammer and shattered it into a thousand pieces.”
“And he was devastated.”
“That’s an understatement.” She hugs herself. “He was ruined. He’d wanted Julie his whole life. She knew that. She knew that and she led him on anyway.”
“Maybe she wasn’t leading him on,” I say. “Maybe she honest to goodness thought they could be together once she was free and clear of Nick. But then, when she got free and clear, maybe she realized she needed to be alone for a while. Being single can open a person’s eyes.”
She shrugs. “Either way, no matter what she thought, she knew how it would hurt him. Henry was heart-broken. I’m amazed he didn’t off himself to be honest. The last few days of school, I saw him wandering the hallways with these dead eyes. He’d walk right past his classroom, not even realize where he was. He didn’t speak to anybody. I tried talking to him but he didn’t want anything to do with me.”
“Because you were stalking him.”
“I was NOT!” she rages.
“He told you time and time again he didn’t want a relationship.”
“I was just a dumb kid!” she says. “I didn’t know how to handle rejection! That doesn’t make me evil, does it?”
“No.”
But killing your best friend makes you evil.
“What did Henry do then? Why was Julie thinking about going to the police?”
She sits back once more, aggressively leaning away from me and angling herself so her eyes are focused on the ceiling.
Can’t look me in the eye right now.
“He was hurt. He did something really stupid, and like I said, completely out of character.”
If I didn’t know any better, I’d think she still had feelings for the guy.
“What did Henry do?”
She sighs. “I don’t want him getting into trouble. Can this stay between us?”
I balk.
She sits up, grabs her coffee, and stands. “Or I’m leaving.”
“Okay,” I say, willing to break my promise later if it turns out whatever she’s about to share leads me or the police to the killer. “It’ll stay between us.”
Hesitantly, she sits back down.
“Did you ever hear about that private forum, where kids went to share videos and post anonymously?”
This time my jaw literally hits the
floor. I remember reading something about this a couple years ago. The police busted a few guys that had posted there but were unable to get the people who’d created and maintained the site. Nobody local had gotten in trouble, though.
She continues. “Henry went in there anonymously and shared information about Julie.”
“Pictures?”
She nods. “He filmed them one time.”
“You said he went in there anonymously. But wouldn’t everybody have seen him in the video too?”
“He filmed it from his … what do you call it?”
I don’t know what she’s talking about.
“You know, like, he was holding the camera.”
“He shot it from his point of view?”
She nods.
“Jesus.”
I hadn’t intended to curse out loud. But the thought of Henry filming them and then putting it online for anybody with access to that illegal site to view … it’s disgusting.
And then my coffee almost does a round trip. As I put two and two together.
Warren John Fereday, that fucking pedophile, must have had access to the site. That way he would have seen the video of Julie and known she was …
Oh God.
“Are you alright?” Molly asks. I must look ready to throw up.
“I’m fine.” Try to rally. “How did you find out?”
“A rumor started going around school. That was how Nick found out she was having sex with somebody else.”
I sit back. Say nothing.
“Henry took the video down the same day,” Molly says. “He felt bad about it.”
“How do you know he took the video down the same day?”
“He said he did … I guess I don’t.”
“But still you stuck up for Henry. Why?”
“Because I loved him, okay? I don’t know why, I just did. I was a dumb girl who’d never had a boyfriend before. So I believed him.”
“And you don’t think he should get in trouble for putting up what was intended to be a private video?”
“That’s right.” She points at me emphatically. “It’s easy for you to come in after the fact and judge everybody. Judge Julie, me, and Henry. But we were just kids. And you weren’t there to see how messed up Henry was. She really fried his brain. You have no idea.”
“Julie had done him wrong, so Henry gets to do her wrong? Is that the reasoning?”
“Yes.” She grows even more defiant. “Yes, that’s what I thought and it’s what I think now. She used him throughout high school, then she led him on. Julie got what she deserved when he posted that video and everybody got to see her.”
“Come on, Molly.” I lean in and try to keep my voice gentle. “Do you really still think that?”
She looks away. Her bottom lip trembles.
I wait a moment. She is giving off a confessional-type vibe and I don’t want to break the spell. But a half minute passes like that, with her trying not to cry.
I say, “You stuck up for Henry because you loved him.”
She nods. I don’t think she can say anything right now, or she’ll burst into tears.
“I understand,” I say. “You stuck up for him because you saw how poorly Julie had treated him. She was going to ruin his life by going to the police about the video.”
“She already did ruin his life by screwing with his mind and breaking his heart. But going to the school or the cops would have been like insult to injury. You know what would have happened to him if he got in trouble for that video?”
I nod. Keep this thought to myself: he would have gotten what he deserved.
“And so you confronted her at the graduation party.”
She nods, looks a little bit further away. We’re coming to it now. I can feel it.
“What did you say?”
“I told her …” She squeezed her eyes shut, and we’re on the verge. “I told her I’d kill her if she went to the police.”
Thirty-Three
If I had cuffs I would have slapped them on her wrists. If I was a cop, I would have read her the Miranda rights.
But instead I probe for more information.
“Did you mean it?”
“No,” she insists. “No. It’s a thing you say, you know. I’m going to kill you.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.” Finally she opens her eyes. “I’m not a murderer.”
“What did she say, when you told her you’d kill her?”
Molly wipes under her eyes, reaches for her coffee, realizes it’s a weird moment to be drinking coffee.
Stops.
She doesn’t know what to do with her hands. How to act.
The air of guilt all around her.
“She said I was a horrible friend.”
Her voice breaks. It’s the worst thing, I realize, that anybody has ever said about her.
Molly wipes under her leaking eyes, but this just smears her makeup worse. “She said she never wanted to talk to me again. She said I was enabling Henry, and that he would do it to someone else one day.”
All of this is juicy, more and more motive, but it still points to two people.
Molly and Henry.
Which one killed her?
“Did Henry know she was thinking about going to the police?” I ask.
“No. Julie only told the girls.”
“Come on,” I say, incredulously, “it’s high school in what is still a small town. Everybody knows everybody. If one person knew, it’s likely somebody else did too. Henry was part of your clique. He had to know.”
She puts the wall back up.
“Nick killed her. That’s all that matters. Everything else that happened, none of it needs to be known. It’ll only get people in trouble. We’re all stupid in high school. We shouldn’t be punished our entire lives for it.”
“Molly, what happened after Julie left the party?”
“I went to talk to Henry. I wanted to warn him because he didn’t know—but he screamed in my face to leave him alone.”
“Why?”
“He was depressed by his situation with Julie and worn out by me.”
“So you didn’t tell him?”
She shakes her head no.
“You sure about that?”
“Yes.”
“But he probably knew what Julie was thinking about doing. He had to.”
“I don’t think he did.”
“Don’t stick up for him, Molly,” I say. “He might have killed Julie. Unless of course you think she deserved it.”
She stands up and slaps me. Hard. Right across the face. It stings. My eyes water. But I don’t react otherwise. I just look at her and nod.
“That was a pretty good shot.”
“Stay away from me.”
Molly gallops out of there, leaving her coffee.
Thirty-Four
Molly or Henry?
Or Nick?
Why didn’t anyone bring this up when Nick was arrested[BO1]?
Because he looked guilty as sin. And because he didn’t know about any of it. And because all the evidence pointed at him. And because he was a head case.
“Come on, Greg. Who did this?”
I have a voicemail from Denise. Asking me to come over tonight for dinner. All the old feelings are starting to come up again with her. Am I being an idiot?
Probably.
But still, high school was a long time ago. We’ve both had over twenty years to mature and discover for ourselves, sometimes painfully, just what—and who—we wanted out of life. We’re forty years old. We’ve gotta be smarter now.
Right?
Or maybe we’re just falling into our old patterns of behavior. Just like old friends do. When I get together with my college buddies, I turn into a drunken, raving lunatic. When I see my buddies from high school, I get the urge to throw the football around.
Is it as simple as that? Maybe Denise just triggers a different version of Greg Owen to come out and act like he’s a c
onfused and horny eighteen-year-old kid again.
I don’t call her back. I’m too busy being confused.
I try Steve at the mortgage company. No answer.
I open the pool hall an hour late. Wally and Roy are ready to break into the place.
“Where have you been?” Roy asks.
“Doing more important things.”
“Like sleeping?”
I let them in. It takes me twenty minutes to get the place cleaned up from the night before, when Bernie the freeloader ambles in.
“Hey, Greg.” He smiles. “Do you have my money?”
“Sure.” I go into the register and take out what I owe him. “Want to earn some more?”
“I don’t know, Greg. I worked pretty hard this week. I think I owe it to myself to take a nice, long weekend.”
Bernie worked, in total, about six hours this week. All of it under the table. All of it for a wage much higher than anybody else would pay him.
He leaves.
Wally says, “Some guys know how to work the system.”
“I’m not one of them,” I say, mentally tallying last month’s income from all my different businesses and coming up shorter than where I wanted to be.
Everybody hustles.
But few get ahead.
Where’s the game-changer?
Damned if I know.
If my old man were still alive and listening to my thoughts, he’d say something like: You just gotta keep working and keep working harder.
But here’s what I’ve learned over my four decades on this planet.
Hard work doesn’t always pay off.
The only thing that pays off is smart work.
I just haven’t figured out what that is yet.
“Greg,” Roy says, “the tables are a little messy. When was the last time you brushed them off?”
“I’ll get right on that.”
And I head into the back.
It’s my day to mind the store, but I don’t feel like being here. I’ve got a line on something now. I can see an end to this investigation, even though I don’t know what that end is yet. I’ve just gotta talk to some more people. Shake a few trees and see what comes falling out.
I go online and track down Deanna. Her address is in town. She has a Facebook page that also lists her employer.