Suicide Blondes

by T. Blake Braddy

  “We don’t need anything,” she says. “I thought I could trust you.”

  “You still can. I mean, I’m coming clean now, and I just hope you’ll give me another chance. I’ve changed all that. I’m—I’m not that person anymore.”

  “When?”

  “What?”

  “When’s the last time? When’s the last time you sifted through my profile? Maybe checked my direct messages?”

  “Last night,” I reply.

  And that seals it.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, hoping to undo some of the damage of my previous statement, but it doesn’t seem to have worked. Gillian looks pissed.

  “Get out,” she says.

  “What?”

  “Get the fuck out of my place.”

  “But Gil—”

  “I’m not saying it again. If you’re not out of here within the minute, I’m calling the cops. That will...complicate things for you, or am I wrong?”

  I get up and back out, but not before laying one last statement on the table for her.

  “Please consider getting some protection,” I say. “The detective will no doubt contact you. But we all need to be safe, at least until—”

  “Shut your fucking mouth,” she says. There is no ire in her statement, but she is emphatic enough that I trail off, because I don’t know how to react.

  She nods once but turns away, heading out to her balcony so she doesn’t have to see me leave.

  20

  As soon as I leave Gillian’s, I’m trying to get this Amelia person on the phone, because I feel like something she has to say can be critical in understanding the break in Madeline and Audrey’s relationship.

  When I finally get up the nerve, I call the number Gillian gave me, but there is no answer. The call goes to voicemail, and why wouldn’t it? Some rando with a Seattle number showing up on her phone?

  However, a few minutes later, it is my phone that lights up.

  “Hi, is this Mary Ellen Hanneford,” I say, once I answer. “Gillian Meitner told me to call you about something you witnessed between Madeline St. Clair and Audrey Winstead?”

  When I fill her in, she instantly knows.

  “Oh, yeah,” she says, “I remember that. It was in East Nashville, right near Mas Tacos Por Favor. I had stuffed myself on quinoa and sweet potato tacos, and I saw these two girls kind of screeching at one another.”

  “Did you hear what they were saying?”

  “Oh yeah,” she replies. “I should say I heard it before I saw it. There was this loud sound, and you know, when you’re not expecting it, these arguments come off like noise. Honestly, I thought it was homeless people having it out at The Pharmacy. It’s a local burger place—”

  “I know what it is. What were they saying? I mean, when you could finally hear it.”

  She takes a moment. “Honestly, I don't remember. Me and my friends, we felt like slumming it, so we went to a few places and drank cheap beer, and what I mostly remember is the hangover. I’m sorry I couldn’t be—”

  “Just tell me what you do remember.”

  When there is just more silence on the other end, I reply with, “Just think. Anything. Fragments of speech. Anything. It will help, I promise.”

  “What are you even doing this for?”

  I think of a thousand different reasons, but I settle on the truth. “It has to do with...what happened to Audrey.”

  “Oh my God,” she replies. “You don’t think she had anything to do with this, do you? Wasn’t she just attacked, too?”

  “She was,” I reply, “and she almost died.”

  “It was just awful,” she replies.

  The effort to relitigate all the fact surrounding Madeline’s death and Audrey’s attack just isn’t enough to sustain me right now, so I feel the annoyance creep into my voice.

  To stay calm, I try a different tack. “If you can’t remember anything—”

  “Oh, wait, there is something,” she interrupts.

  “What is it?”

  “Just before they started swinging, one of them asked the other, ‘Is it true?’ Something like that.”

  “And that’s it? No response? They just went to swinging?”

  “That’s close to it,” she replies. “There was just, like, this standoff in the middle of the street, cars passing by, and then the next moment they were swinging handbags at one another. Until Audrey’s husband—”

  “Jenkins.”

  “—pulled them apart. And then Audrey turns and hits him, too, before storming off. He kind of turns and shrugs at Madeline before trailing behind her.”

  “So do you think—?”

  “I don’t know what to think,” she replies. “I’m just the witness to the whole event. Two-thirds of them are now dead, so I’m not sad to say I’m glad I didn’t see more.”

  There’s a pause, as I try to think of a follow-up question, but the woman on the other end gears up to speak before I can manage to come up with something.

  “And that’s about all I remember,” Amelia says. “Now if you’ll excuse me...”

  She’s off the phone before I can respond, and I am left to contemplate just how this little nugget of information fits into the whole of the Suicide Blondes saga.

  I return to the rental property, where a smattering of media waits in the street for me. I push through by waving apologetically and gently pressing the gas so they can’t stop me. I’ve learned it’s best to be polite but firm in these situations.

  An unmarked car is in the driveaway. As soon as I pull in, a hulking figure gets out, and I recognize him immediately.

  In a single, fluid motion, I park and exit the vehicle. The “journalists” from the TV stations and newspapers remain out by the road.

  “Detective Ciccotelli,” I say, sounding more hyper than expected, “I was just on my way to speak with you.”

  “That so?”

  His tone is a little...off, and I suddenly feel the need to look around me. My whole body clenches, and I keep the keys handy, just in case I need to jump back behind the wheel. I can’t handle the way he’s looking at me.

  But, perhaps sensing my anxiety, he keeps his distance, stopping several steps from me and crossing his arms.

  “I’ve been doing some research,” I say, “and I want to catch you up on it.”

  For some reason, I expect him to be ecstatic about the possibility, but his face doesn’t change. He’s impassive, and there’s a sadness to his expression I can’t quite get over.

  At last, he makes a half-sighing noise and slicks his hair back with his dominant hand.

  “Miss Hanneford, I’m afraid I’m not here with good news.”

  “What is it?”

  “Would you mind coming with me? Maybe we could go inside for a minute?”

  “For what reason?”

  “I insist.” He glances toward the street. “The, um, vultures are out in full force, and I don’t want to give them the show they’ve come to expect.”

  I turn my attention toward them and get what he means. They’re keeping a safe distance, but it seems like the tide could burst at any moment.

  “Okay, let’s head inside. Want some coffee?”

  “You read my mind.”

  After the coffee is poured, I draw the blinds and lean against a nearby counter.

  “Okay,” I say, “I don’t suspect this will be easy. Go ahead. Let’s do this.”

  He clears his throat, but he never waivers. “We did some testing on Madeline St. Clair’s journal, and your fingerprints were all over it.”

  I feel relief wash over me. “Oh, I can explain that,” I say, think that it might be a little tricky but knowing that there isn’t going—

  “That isn’t all,” he continues. “We submitted a request for Mrs. St. Clair’s phone records, and as it turns out, you made a call to her home the night of her death. Is that true?”

  You need to be afraid of me.

  “Yes, but—”

  “And
the neighbors, they distinctly remember a woman matching your description driving a car exactly like yours here showing up drunk and angry the night of their deaths. Is that true?”

  “I—”

  “Making a scene and arguing with the husband, Colton Ambrose?”

  “Yes but—”

  “And then there’s the internet records. Is it untrue that you’ve been following her social media habits—how can I say this—obsessively?”

  Shit. Mentally, I try to calculate how many hours I’ve spent trolling through Madeline’s personal messages. Then I multiply that by three and come up with an ungodly number.

  “Miss Hanneford?”

  “I don’t have a good response to that.”

  “Well, there are...records of that sort of thing, and we will be checking in on them. We had no idea but we happened to receive a call from—”

  “Gillian Meitner,” I finish his sentence. “I figured as much.”

  “Any idea of why she knows such intimate information?”

  “I told her,” I say, sounding even more depressed than I feel.

  “And you didn’t feel any such need to avail us of the same information? Don’t you think that would have been helpful?”

  “I don’t know—I didn’t know—that it would turn out like this.”

  “In checking on our friend, Mr. Allred, we’ve found that his name isn’t on any flight manifest for a flight coming into Nashville since he walked out of his previous facility.”

  Just hearing this information makes my stomach go acidic.

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” I say. “He could have flown into another city, or used a different name or—

  “But is any of that likely? Remember Occam.”

  “Fuck Occam,” I reply. “There isn’t anything likely about any of this. What self-respecting cop would say any of this shit?”

  “Miss Hanneford—”

  “Really. I mean, come on.”

  “Miss Hanneford, I’m going to place you under arrest for the murder of Madeline St. Clair. I’m going to save you the embarrassment of frog marching you out of here—we have a car parked on an adjacent street—but I am going to have to take you with me.”

  My initial instinct is to run. My brain teems with potential locations where I could hide out until I get my thoughts together, but both Detective Ciccotelli and I know it’s not going to happen. Instead, I allow myself to be directed out the side entrance to a waiting unmarked police cruiser.

  The throng of reporters and camera crews hustle around to the side of the house to hurl questions at me, but I’m both too afraid and in too much shock to do anything but stare straight ahead.

  I’m sure that it’ll look good for the evening news on Channel 5.

  As we pull away, I turn to see the house just off 51st surrounded by paparazzi. Infested by them, like cockroaches who have discovered a crack in the foundation. Very soon, I am lost in my own head, waiting for the next phase of this charade to kick in.

  The next day passes in a blur. I spend most of it in my cell, awaiting arraignment. They’re really going to have to dig to put together a list of charges and a clear indictment. All they have is some flimsy physical evidence and some search histories. None of it seems enough to hold me, but here I am.

  But the fantasy bubble in my mind pops, and I’m left only with the sounds of loud people talking to the loud television in the common area. Occasionally, my face appears on-screen as the grisly details related to my crimes, both real and imagined, are read loud for the masses to see and believe, but otherwise, I am left to my own devices, to suffer inside my own head.

  Beyond the claustrophobia, though, jail isn’t that bad. Some people howl and cry at night, and someone’s always asking you for something—cigarettes or the food from your tray, for example—but they’re not altogether bad, so long as they keep their distance.

  The real problem with jail is the solitude, and not just because you are separated from friends and family. It’s the way that being alone highlights your deepest insecurities. I could spend that time thinking about a million different things and it would pass the time, but instead I am driven to contemplate the life and death of Everett Coughlin.

  It is pure torture.

  Over the years, I have spent an inordinate amount of time trying to blur the memories associated with that fevered, manic school year, but eventually they push through my imagined boundaries, and I become a captive audience to them. Thank God for the ravages of time and drinking, or else these memories might sting like alcohol on a fresh wound. Instead, it’s like watching TV at the bottom of a river bed.

  But the guilt remains, and so during the first twenty-four hours of my stay, I am treated to visions of the past that I’ve tried to suppress with the entirety of my being.

  THEN

  The law offices of Allen, Garrett, Donnelly, and Edmiston are large and inviting, though not for Mary Ellen, who sits curled in on herself on a couch in the corner. Her mother sits next to her, idly crocheting nothing in particular.

  Once the birdlike secretary leads them beyond the threshold, they are taken to a conference room and seated on one side all by themselves, while Madeline, Audrey, Gillian, their families, and their lawyers are seated on the other side.

  They have a lawyer, but he is not present today. He is not able to attend this little meeting, and despite his dire protestations, Mary Ellen and her mother do. Mary Ellen is under the naive impression that truth matters and her friends simply want the same things she does. They all want the truth to come out, and in the wake of Everett Coughlin’s death, it seems most important for all the lies and rumors to be outed and cast aside.

  But still, she can’t help but be nervous.

  Point of fact, she hasn’t spoken to any of the other girls since the night...of the incident. She’s tried a few times to get in touch with them but has had little success. Zero, in fact. She had recently come to the conclusion that she may never actually see Madeline and the others again.

  That is, until the representative lawyer for the St. Clairs contacted her and insisted they meet in an informal way and talk this through. On the phone, the jerk even emphasized the informality of it all. Maybe he did expect for her to bring her lawyer, but she didn’t hear it that way. He made it seem like a cordial invite, a palaver of no particular consequence.

  Even if not, perhaps her mother could have taken it upon herself to be responsible and insist on getting representation involved, but Mary Ellen’s mother is in no shape to be a parent. She is convinced she is a walking cancer cell, and no amount of logical intervention can disabuse her of her wild and—frankly—idiotic notions. She claims to be able to feel the cancer growing inside of her, even though that seems ridiculous on its face.

  So, with her mother slowly drifting out to sea on the force of her convictions, Mary Ellen is required to be the sound, thoughtful adult in this scenario. It makes her miss her father dearly.

  And Mary Ellen is not stupid. She may be naive, but she’s not stupid. As she sits here, across from the Murderer’s Row of lawyers on the other side, she realizes she should take leave until she can get her own counsel here, but she just can’t pull the trigger and say it. In part it is because she feels silly, that somehow asking to do the right thing will somehow make her look more credulous and unprepared, but mostly because she harbors the ill-conceived idea that they eill come to some kind of tacit understanding without lawyers and family.

  Maybe she is stupid, she thinks.

  But she persists in believing she will get herself out of this situation.

  “Miss Hanneford,” the hawkish gentleman to Madeline’s right says. Since her parents are seated to her left, it only makes sense to assume this is the same lawyer who contacted her. “We are so thankful for this opportunity to speak.”

  Mary Ellen nods. Since her mother is still crocheting, she gently elbows her to bring her into the conversation. She returns her hooks to their former position in her bag
and gazes blandly across the table.

  “Can I ask what this is all about?”

  Madeline’s lawyer, Mr. Schnell—he introduced himself when he called her—smiles graciously. He glances from his client back to Mary Ellen, and that’s when Mary Ellen notices it.

  Madeline St. Clair is glaring at her. Not looking. Not staring. She is giving Mary Ellen the stinkeye to end all stinkeyes.

  The rest of the crew refuses to engage her in eye contact. Gillian and Audrey are both staring down into their laps. In their faces, some semblance of embarrassment and shame has begun to form, but it’s not enough. Not enough for them to stand up. Not enough for them to tell the truth. Not enough for them to take responsibility.

  That’s when her heart sinks.

  This is the performance. This is how she is going to get out of this scot free and foist it all on Mary Ellen. She has the backing of her parents. Of her high-priced lawyer. Of her sycophants. She is the mastermind, and she is in complete control.

  “It is my understanding that you were, at some point, acquainted with my client and also with the other clients at this table. Is that true?”

  Years later, Mary Ellen will realize how shady—and potentially illegal—all of this is. But by then it’ll be too late. Being a teenager, she trusts the system to work. She believes in ideas like justice, and she expects law and order to mean exactly that. She believes this because of all the movies she has seen, and just how passionately her 8th grade teacher praised the ideas brought up in To Kill a Mockingbird.

  This moment, it is the first time she’s ever questioned the way things work, and even though she hopes for the best, she can’t help but expect the worst.

  “This situation...it’s complicated, isn’t it? Some horseplay entered into by one party, followed along by the other parties, ends in an unfortunate accident. Very messy. Quite unnerving for all those involved.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  She can’t believe it. She wonders: is Madeline actually going to admit to wrongdoing?

  “Well, I’m glad we can agree on that. Absolutely ecstatic. Now, onto the more...sensitive portion of this discussion.”