by John Saul
Instead, she was sure, they would haunt her dreams for a very long time.
ALISON ACTUALLY DID LAUGH out loud reading Cindy’s recounting of her parents’ attempt to get the whole family ready to go to Mexico for spring break. It might have worked out if there’d only been two kids, but given that Cindy was the oldest of a flock of eight, things had gone from bad to worse to disastrous in a hurry, and by the time she got to the part where Cindy’s youngest brother got left in a gas station in Ensenada, she was laughing so hard her eyes were blurring with tears. She was just about to type a response to Cindy’s Instant Message when she heard a soft knock on her door.
“Come in.”
Her father opened the door. “Hey.”
Alison typed SB to Cindy, hoping the other girl wouldn’t have to stand by for more than a minute or two, then turned to her dad. “Hi. C’mon in.”
“Just for a minute—we’re headed to bed, but I wanted to say good-night and tell you what a great day we had.”
“It was fun,” Alison said. “I love the beach.”
“And we forget how much we enjoy it, so thanks for reminding us. Not that we’ll find the time to get back to it on our own, but at least next time you won’t have to talk us into it.” Michael dropped onto the edge of Alison’s bed. “I also want to tell you how much I love having you here, and Scott does, too.”
Alison looked at her hands and willed herself not to start crying. “I like it, too,” she said, letting only the slightest tremble creep into her voice. She wanted to ask him why she couldn’t just stay here, and not go to Beverly Hills and Wilson Academy and everything else her mom was planning. If she lived here, she could take the bus to Santa Monica High every day, and even though the house was in the hills, it wasn’t much different than what she’d been used to before—
She tried to cut off the thought, but couldn’t quite do it.
—before everything that had happened a year ago. And now everything had already been decided, and there was nothing she could say to change it.
“What are you doing?” her father finally asked as the silence went on too long.
“Just chatting with Cindy,” Alison replied, seizing the opportunity to talk about something better than the future that was about to begin. But as she saw the smile on her father’s face fade, she realized she’d made a mistake.
“Chat?” Michael asked. “You chat online?” He stood up and came over to the computer.
“I’m just talking to Cindy,” Alison said, but even she could hear the defensiveness in her voice. Here came the lecture, just like it had come to at least half her friends….
“With anyone else?” Michael pressed.
Alison hesitated, but knew her father wouldn’t believe that Cindy was really the only person she ever IMed with. “Sometimes. It’s no big deal—everybody does it.”
Michael’s brows furrowed. “Where do you chat? How do you find people to chat with?”
“MySpace, usually.”
“MySpace? You have a MySpace page?”
Alison’s eyes rolled. “Everybody does.”
Michael crouched next to her desk chair so his eyes were level with hers. “Do you remember those photographs this morning?”
Alison shuddered. “God, how could I forget?”
“I’m sorry you saw them, but in a way I hope you never forget them. The girl who was killed last night was at that warehouse to meet a boy she met online. She met him through her MySpace page.”
“That’s like saying she met him at church. Or at school. Literally everyone I know has a MySpace page. It doesn’t mean anything!”
“It means people you know nothing about can get in touch with you,” Michael said, rising from his crouch. “I want your page down tomorrow morning.”
Alison gaped at him. “You’re kidding!” How could someone like her father be so backward as to demand something so ridiculous? “It took me, like, weeks to get everything I want up on it.”
Michael’s expression didn’t change. “Do I look like I’m kidding? I want you to sign off with Cindy right now, go to bed, and take that page down tomorrow morning. And I don’t ever want to hear about you chatting online with anyone you don’t know, ever again. You and Cindy and the rest of your friends can use Windows Messenger or AOL or anything else. But not MySpace.”
“Come on, Dad! You’re overreacting,” Alison insisted, but her father’s expression remained implacable.
“You saw those pictures.”
“Like I’m going to go and get myself killed,” she said with all the sarcasm she could muster.
“Alison,” he said, his voice low and calm, but even more obdurate than before. “I’m telling you to do this because I’m your father and I know what’s important. One way or another, you’re going to do this, and I hope you’ll do it without complaining, because I’m telling you that what you’ve been doing is not good. Whether you believe me or not makes no difference—what you’ve been doing can be very dangerous, and it’s going to stop.”
Alison bit back the angry words that formed on her tongue and turned back to her monitor, where the cursor was blinking.
Cindy was still standing by.
And there was no use arguing. “Okay,” she sighed. “I’ll do it. I don’t want to, and I think you’re being ridiculous, but I’ll do it.”
Finally, Michael smiled. “You’re more than welcome to think I’m ridiculous. In fact, I hope I am being ridiculous, but I appreciate you doing this for me. When you’re eighteen, you can put whatever you want on MySpace and talk to whoever you want to. But you’re still my little girl, and I love you, and I’m going to protect you whether you want me to or not.” He kissed her on the top of the head. “And say hello to Cindy for me, okay?”
Alison ignored him and sat quietly with her hands in her lap until he’d left her room and closed the door. Then she began typing.
YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT MY DAD JUST SAID.
While she waited for Cindy to respond, she realized that her MySpace page would only be down for a week.
Next Sunday, she’d be moving to Beverly Hills, and her mom wouldn’t care what she was doing on her computer. She’d have the page back up before going to bed next Sunday night.
She just wouldn’t tell her father….
13
TOO BIG.
That was the problem—Conrad Dunn’s house was just too big. The weird thing was, it hadn’t seemed this huge when she’d been here before, but now that she was moving in, everything was just way too enormous.
The house. The garden. Her bedroom. Even the closet was so large that all her underwear vanished into a single one of the twenty-four shallow glass-fronted drawers built into the left front corner, while in the right front corner a rack big enough to hold at least a hundred pairs of shoes had swallowed up her half-dozen pairs as if they weren’t even there.
And halfway back on the left, her clothes—all of them—filled no more than a tenth of the space the closet provided.
Alison took the last empty box, which had contained what seemed like way more underwear then she needed until she unpacked it into that single drawer, and added it to the pile in the hall, then went back into her room.
Ruffles, the little white terrier that had belonged to Conrad’s first wife, watched her every move, looking as lost on the enormous bed as she felt in the room itself.
As she came close, his little nub of a tail began wagging furiously, and when she picked him up to stroke his soft fur, he wiggled around until he could lick her face. “I’ll never get used to it,” she said. “And you’re so tiny, just going downstairs is a major hike. How do you stand it?”
He licked her chin.
“You’d have loved my room at home. It wasn’t even a quarter as big as this, but at least I felt like I fit into it.” She gazed at the king-size bed with its vast expanse of brocade spread and the array of at least a dozen designer pillows—every one of them perfectly placed—and wondered how she was g
oing to cope with it. Even though all her stuff was now unpacked and put away, it still didn’t feel anything like her room should feel.
Instead, it felt like a hotel.
A huge, empty hotel. But it wasn’t a hotel, and never had been. Rather, it had been built by some old movie star who died before her mother had even been born. She still wasn’t sure how Conrad’s family had come to own it, let alone why they’d even wanted it.
Alison shivered and hugged Ruffles closer, carrying him to the window seat, where together they gazed out over the formal gardens and reflecting pool, at the far end of which was the swimming pool and cabana. A gardener was just finishing his day, picking up his tools and heading for the potting shed behind the garage. She sat then, with the dog, as the lights of Los Angeles began to shine and an orange sunset spread across the sky. The window seat, at least, felt the right size for her, and she suddenly knew that this was going to be her own personal space, the one small spot in the house that would be completely hers.
Getting up, she went to the closet, found the quilt her grandmother had made for her, brought it back and spread it out so it covered the needlepoint cushion on the seat. The fact that the homey, handmade quilt didn’t go at all with the decor of the rest of the room was just fine.
This nook was where she would make her home.
“Miss Alison?”
She started at the disembodied voice, then looked around for its source before remembering the intercom system her mother had told her about. She went to the small speaker on the wall by the door and pressed a white button. “Yes?”
“Dinner is served,” the faintly tinny voice said.
“Okay,” she replied. “Tell Mom I’ll be down in a minute.”
Now all she had to do was find her way to the dining room.
The empty moving boxes she had just put outside her door were already gone. She turned left and walked down the wide hallway lined with oil paintings hung on silk wallpaper, the sound of her footfalls swallowed by the Oriental runner that ran the full length of both the house’s wings.
At the top of the sweeping staircase that led down to the foyer, she gazed up at the domed ceiling that reminded her of a church, then started down toward the intricately inlaid marble floor, in the center of which stood a great round table with an enormous display of fresh flowers.
She paused, realizing she actually wasn’t sure where to find the dining room, then heard voices and the sound of silverware on china somewhere off to her left.
“There she is,” Conrad said, rising from his seat at the head of the dining room table as she came in.
The table had a dozen chairs around it tonight—with a dozen more standing against the walls for nights when the table was fully extended—but only three places were set, flanking Conrad. As she slid silently into the chair opposite her mother, Alison decided she’d far rather be eating at the breakfast bar at her dad and Scott’s house.
“Getting settled in?” her mother asked as Alison spread a linen napkin over her lap.
She nodded as a woman in a black uniform silently placed a small tossed salad in front of each of them.
“So tomorrow’s the big day at Wilson,” Conrad Dunn said. Though he was smiling at her, his expression did nothing at all to warm the chill the house had cast over her spirits. But despite her misgivings about not only the huge house, but Wilson Academy as well, she made herself nod in response to his words. “Are you excited?” her new stepfather went on.
She shrugged, not trusting her voice to conceal the misgivings churning through her.
“What’s the matter, honey?” her mother asked. “Are you all right?”
Alison nodded.
Conrad reached over and put his hand on hers. “You’ll fit right in,” he said. “There’s nothing to worry about at all.”
Alison slowly drew her hand away and put it in her lap.
He was probably right—she’d have new friends eventually, but after the wedding, she wasn’t sure she even wanted to be friends with the kids at Wilson.
“You’ll be fine, sweetheart,” her mother reassured her, and Alison nodded again, picked up her salad fork and firmly squelched the tears suddenly threatening to spill over her lids.
Taking a deep breath, she forced a smile to her face. “I want to know all about Paris,” she said. Her eyes fixed on her mother. “What was the absolutely best, best, best thing?”
Her first dinner in her new home began.
Somehow, she would get through it.
RISA SLIPPED into bed next to Conrad, who was reading a medical journal. “Honey?”
He looked up, smiled, took off his reading glasses and set them and the magazine on his nightstand, then held his arms open to her.
Risa snuggled into him. “What if the other kids aren’t nice to Alison? You know how kids can be—especially the kind who go to Wilson. They’ve already got their cliques. What if they don’t accept her?”
Conrad rubbed her shoulder gently. “Alison? She’ll do fine—she’s just like you. She can fit herself in anywhere.”
Risa nodded against his chest, hoping he was right, but still not sure. Alison had been so quiet tonight, at least until they started talking about Paris.
Risa snuggled closer.
“Trust me,” Conrad whispered. “She’ll be just fine.”
Finally content, Risa fell asleep in the warm security of her husband’s arms.
ALISON WAS PROPPED in the window seat with two of the pillows from the bed, her quilt wrapped around her, Ruffles stretched out along her thigh, and her computer in her lap.
She logged on to the MySpace page she had spent the last hour reconstructing.
And Cindy Kearns still wasn’t online.
She heard the tone signaling incoming e-mail and clicked on the button to open the program. There was a new e-mail titled, MYSPACE FRIEND REQUEST.
She opened it.
SETH8146 WOULD LIKE TO BE ADDED TO YOUR MYSPACE FRIENDS LIST.
She went back to her MySpace page and clicked on his profile. He was very cute, in a blond, surfer-guy kind of way, but there wasn’t much information about him.
An Instant Message box appeared from Seth28146.
HI. CUTE PIX OF U.
Alison’s fingers absently stroked the dog’s fur as she gazed at the blinking cursor.
What should she do? This was exactly what her dad had warned her about—chatting with strangers on her computer.
But what was the big deal? It wasn’t like she would make a date with him, or tell him where she lived, or anything at all. What harm could chatting do?
She looked over at the big, uninviting bed and realized that even if she shut off the computer and got into it, she’d just fret about tomorrow. She made up her mind. HI! she typed, and then hit SEND.
TINA WONG PERCHED on the edge of the hard gray metal folding chair next to Detective Evan Sands’s desk, unconsciously tapping her foot and checking her watch every few seconds.
Slowly, the squad room began to fill, but even when it seemed as if the room could hold no more people, neither Sands nor Rick McCoy had shown up. At 8:45, deciding she’d wasted enough of her time, she picked up her briefcase and rose to her feet. She had a lot more important things to do today than wait in vain for two cops who were even now probably sitting in some doughnut shop swapping lies and bad jokes.
As if on cue, Evan Sands pushed through the glass doors into the squad room and instantly spotted her. To his credit, he barely hesitated, keeping nearly all of his distaste for her out of his expression, but not enough to keep Tina from reading his animosity. Not that it mattered; as far as she was concerned, her job was to get the story and report it, and if some people—or even all people—found her irritating, that was just tough for them. Besides, Sands had no idea that she was bringing him a gift today, and even though the gift came with a price, she was sure that in the end he’d agree that he got the better end of the deal.
“Tina,” the detective said, ba
rely nodding to her. “I thought vampires were afraid of the daylight.”
“Funny,” she said without even a hint of a smile. “I want to talk with you privately.” Her eyes swept the room, but only about a quarter of the detective force even pretended not to be trying to hear every word she and Sands exchanged.
“Does that include McCoy?” Sands asked.
“Not a problem,” Tina said, checking her watch. “Assuming he’s planning to show up at all this morning.”
“He had the doughnut run this morning,” Sands told her as his partner, balancing two paper cups of coffee on a big, greasy box, backed through the door and let it swing shut behind him. He shot Sands a questioning look as he recognized Tina, which Sands responded to with a helpless gesture, clearly conveying that he wasn’t to be blamed for the fact that she’d trapped them both by getting into the squad room early enough to avoid being stopped.
Still, she could see that Sands seemed to understand her urgency and the importance of privacy, because he jerked his head for McCoy to follow them, then led the way through the back of the squad room into a small interrogation room, closing the door as soon as they were all inside.
“I’m not going to waste your time,” Tina said without spending so much as a second on pleasantries. “I want to know one thing in particular about Kimberly Elmont’s murder.”
Rick McCoy scoffed as he set the box on the table. “You and about a million other reporters.”
“We’re not giving out any specific information to anyone,” Sands said. “You know the drill. So why are you really here?”
“Because,” Tina said, ignoring McCoy and looking Sands directly in the eye, “I think I know something about that murder that you don’t know, and if you’ll answer one question, I can help you guys get Cop of the Year or Queen for a Day or whatever award they hand out around here.”
“Oooh,” Sands said, “I’m so excited I think I might wet myself.” Then he dropped the sarcasm. “Look, Tina—you know the rules. You give before you get. If you really know something, you have to tell us anyway, otherwise you’re withholding evidence or obstructing justice or anything else the D.A. can think up. So you go first, and if we like it, we’ll give you something back.”