by Tom Becker
“I don’t understand,” Darla said slowly. “Why would they do that?”
“Because they can,” replied Sasha. “Because they’re rich and good-looking and nobody ever tells them no. Because they’re not very nice people. Look, I didn’t want to make things worse for you, but I thought you should know.”
“Yeah,” Darla said hesitantly. “OK.” What did Sasha want Darla to say to her – thanks? Darla wasn’t sure she was better off for knowing about Plain Girls, she certainly didn’t feel any better. She stood up. “Listen, I have to go. Hopper will be wondering where I got to.”
“I’ll give you a ride home,” said Frank.
Sasha nodded. “Take care of yourself, Darla,” she said softly. “There are wolves in these hills.”
She shut her computer and lay back on her mattress. As Frank and Darla went down the stairs, loud guitar music came crashing out from Sasha’s room. A woman appeared in the hallway below. Like Sasha, she was strikingly pretty, with sharp cheekbones and cropped dark hair.
“Hey, Patti,” Frank said easily. “Just taking Darla here home.”
Mrs Haas peered up the staircase toward them. “Where’s Sasha? It’s nearly time for dinner.”
“She’s in her room,” Frank replied, pointing back toward Sasha’s bedroom door. “Don’t you remember saying hello when we got in?”
Patti looked vague for a second. The she smiled quickly. “Well now, of course I do, Franklin. You kids come in and out so often, it’s just hard to keep track sometimes.” She nodded toward the window. “You drive carefully, now. It’s raining.”
As Patti disappeared off into the kitchen, Darla shot Frank a questioning look.
“She’s fine,” he whispered. “Sometimes she can zone in and out a bit.”
The storm clouds had brought a premature evening to Saffron Hills. Raindrops were hammering down on to the driveway, and even though they ran to the pick-up truck Darla’s clothes were wet through by the time she had climbed into the passenger seat. Frank took off his glasses and wiped them dry, running a hand through his damp hair. He turned on the engine and sent the wipers creaking across the windshield, before reversing the pick-up out of the driveway.
“So do you live around here too?” Darla asked him.
Frank snorted. “Hardly. I live on the budget side of town. But I spend most nights at Sasha’s.”
Darla’s eyes widened. “Her parents let you?”
“Let me? They positively beg me to stay over. Occasionally I even persuade Sasha to come out of her room and talk to them.”
Darla couldn’t imagine Hopper being so relaxed about a boy staying over at their place, but then again she wasn’t sure there was anything going on between Frank and Sasha. They were thick as thieves, but there was nothing romantic about the way they were with each other – more like best friends, with a host of secrets that they knew and weren’t going to share with anyone else.
“So this is Sasha’s truck?” Darla said. “Don’t you get bored driving her about all the time?”
Frank shrugged. “I haven’t got a ride, and it’s not like Sasha can drive. A few months back the rent-a-cops caught her behind the wheel with a forty of bourbon. Her pop’s some kind of high-powered lawyer, and he managed to persuade them to keep it off her record on the understanding that she wouldn’t drive for a year.”
“Really?”
“That’s how things work in Saffron Hills,” Frank told her. “If you’ve got money, there ain’t much you can’t get away with.”
“Explains a lot about the people around here,” Darla said dryly.
“I know what you mean, but let me tell you a little secret about Sasha,” Frank said. “As hard as she tries, and as much as she wants to be … she’s not a total bitch.”
Darla giggled.
“There are even times – brief moments, admittedly – when she’s almost nice,” Frank continued. “I remember once—Hey!”
A pair of headlights exploded out of the gloom, shining right in their eyes and dazzling them. Frank swerved to the side of the road, the pick-up’s tyres skidding in the wet. A red truck hurtled past them through the darkness, its engine growling like a creature on the prowl. Sasha’s warning echoed in Darla’s head: There are wolves in these hills…
“Who the heck was that?” muttered Frank. “That was not cool.”
Darla barely heard him. They had come to a stop outside a set of long railings in front of a mansion. The electronic gate was wide open, the building behind it shrouded in darkness. But Darla recognized it at once. During her vision in Annie’s backyard, there had been a series of photographs of the mansion in the eerie album – the single lit window in the darkness, the flash of bright blond hair. Someone had been watching this house.
“Whose house is that?” she asked quietly.
“That’s Natalie’s place,” Frank told her. “The Picture Perfect Palace.”
“The gate’s open,” said Darla.
“So?” said Frank.
She stared at the house. Maybe it was all just a coincidence – her vision, this house, the red truck hurtling out of the rain. It was just an open gate, there was no reason to think that anything was wrong. So why was her skin crawling as though she was covered in a thousand tiny insects?
Darla opened the truck door.
“I’ll be back in a second,” she said.
“Wait, what?”
She was already out of the truck, hurrying through the rain towards the McRae house. As she slipped through the open gate, Frank jumped out and chased her up the path.
“Are you crazy?” he called out. “Come back!”
Darla couldn’t have explained if she’d wanted to. But the terrible feeling that something was wrong wouldn’t leave her. Her clothes were wet through by the time she had reached the shelter of the porch, rain hammering down upon the eaves. As she reached for the doorbell Frank caught up with her.
“You’re going to call on Natalie McRae?” He laughed in disbelief. “Are you kidding me? You do remember her, right – tall girl? Blond? Composed entirely of evil?”
“Wait in the truck if you want,” Darla said.
He muttered something under his breath, but didn’t move. Darla pressed the doorbell, a melodic chime ringing out. No one came to answer. She cautiously tried the handle, and the door swung open.
“Hello?” she called out. “Natalie? Y’all home?”
The hall was dark, the only sound an electronic beeping coming from a box on the nearby wall. Shards of glass covered the floor around the foot of the stairs. Everything about the stillness of the house was wrong. Glancing at Frank, Darla stepped inside the hall. A piercing alarm went off, electronic shrieks of distress echoing through the mansion. The lights blinked on above Darla’s head as she hurried towards the stairs, only to stop and stare in horror at the scene before her.
Natalie McRae was strung up in the shattered remains of a display cabinet, her wrists tied with silk pageant sashes and her arms jutting out awkwardly at her side. She was dressed in a flowing red ballgown, her bare arms covered in cuts and scratches and her beautiful face disfigured by a wicked diagonal cut across her nose and cheek. She looked like a broken doll on puppet strings. Behind her, a series of old photographs of a smiling and victorious beauty queen were now flecked with Natalie’s blood. Something was protruding out of her chest. Bile rose in Darla’s throat when she realized what it was.
A diamond tiara.
Chapter Nine
The next few hours were a nightmarish blur. Darla remembered a hand on her arm – Frank, his face as white as a sheet, dragging her out of the McRae house. She stood in the rain, staring vacantly into space as he threw up in the bushes. Suddenly the hills were alive with flashing blue lights – Darla later learned that the local security guards had been automatically alerted when the McRae’s alarm went off. But there was nothing they could do now. There was nothing anyone could do. Someone wrapped a blanket around Darla as she sat on the kerb. Voic
es asked her questions. She wasn’t sure what she said back. All she could think about was Natalie’s body hanging inside the display cabinet, the malice and the effort it must have taken to arrange her just so.
Darla and Frank were driven to the local police station down on the strip, where they were split up and Darla was taken to a room with mirrors running the length of the wall. She avoided her own reflection, suddenly scared what else she might see. Someone gave her coffee; she didn’t drink it, but she remembered the feeling of the warm polystyrene cup in her hands. There were more questions, men scribbling her replies down in their notepads. Finally the door to the interview room opened and Hopper appeared, his eyes glancing warily towards the long mirror and whoever might be watching them from the other side.
“You all right, darlin’?” he asked.
Darla nodded quickly. She knew that her daddy wouldn’t want to spend a second longer in the police station than he had to – fortunately the questions had ended for now, and they were allowed to leave. Hopper drove home slowly through the teeming rain, deep puddles forming on the creek road. Darla was glad when their house came into view, lights burning brightly in the front window. When Hopper parked the car and turned off the engine she didn’t move, her brain whirring as she gazed towards the lights.
Darla looked up to find Hopper studying her thoughtfully. “Something on your mind?”
“It’s nothing,” she said quickly.
“You sure? You’ve had a hell of a fright, darlin’, a hell of a fright. I can’t believe what’s happened. It’s a terrible tragedy. And if there’s anything you want to talk about, that’s what I’m here for.”
“It’s just…” Darla hesitated. “Before we went by Natalie’s house, this red truck came shooting past us, shining the headlights right into our eyes. It reminded me of when we came to Saffron Hills that first morning, and that guy who nearly ran us off the road.”
“I believe the man’s name was Leeroy Mills,” Hopper said.
“What if it was him again? Luis said he lived in a trailer down by the creek – what was he doing up in the hills?”
“No crime in driving down a road, Darla, no matter how rich the neighbourhood.”
“I know, but—”
“Luis said Leeroy had a record, right? Listen, the first thing the cops are going to do is pay a visit to all the known criminals in the area and see if they can put them near the McRae house. If Leeroy was hanging around they’ll find out and he’ll be in a jail cell before the end of the week. Trust me on this one.”
A nasty thought occurred to Darla. “What about you, Daddy? The cops won’t come looking for you, will they?”
“I sincerely hope not, darlin’,” Hopper replied. “I ain’t never done anything that could make a man think I’d kill a girl. But it might be an idea to try to keep a low profile from now on. Both of us.”
He squeezed her hand.
“Come on,” he said. “We can’t sit out here all night.”
All of a sudden Darla felt utterly exhausted, as though her insides had been scooped out. She went to her room and climbed into bed fully dressed. But her mind was racing too fast to sleep, and an hour later she heard Hopper creep out of the house. Darla was still awake when he came back, announcing his return with the familiar fumble of the key in the lock, muffled swearing and clinking bottles.
The next day Darla got up late and didn’t go to school, while a bleary-eyed Hopper called in sick. They sat on the couch, watching TV in silence.
A breezy knock on her bedroom door woke Darla up the next morning. Hopper came into her room, fiddling with his tie, and pushed open the drapes.
“Rise and shine, Darla!” he said. “Day’s a wastin’!”
He was acting cheerily but Darla knew that it was just a façade. It was the day after the day after; Hopper always felt guilty then.
“I don’t feel well,” Darla said feebly.
“Ain’t takin’ no for an answer. Come on.”
He hauled Darla out of bed, guiding her towards the bathroom and shutting the door behind her.
“Don’t forget to scrub between your toes!” he called through the door, as if she was a little girl.
As she showered Darla dreamed up morbid ways she might avoid having to go to school. Hopper could crash the Buick on the way, killing them both. There might be a bomb scare; the West Academy might actually blow up. Or maybe someone might stumble across a body in the classroom… Darla shook her head. It was too horrible to think about. When she had dressed she came out of her room to find Hopper waiting impatiently for her.
“I was going to offer you a ride to school,” he said, peering out of the window. “But it looks like someone already beat me to it.”
When Darla trudged over to the window, she saw Sasha’s black pick-up parked outside their front lawn. Frank was sitting behind the wheel, engrossed in a book, while Sasha sunned herself on top of the truck, her back against the windshield. She was wearing a pair of large sunglasses, an oversized plaid shirt and denim shorts, her bare legs stretching out across the hood.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Hopper. “That’s the girl from the record store, isn’t it? Is she a friend of yours now?”
“I don’t know,” Darla replied truthfully. “Maybe.”
“Good for you. Can’t never have too many friends – even if they are, you know, psychos.” Hopper clicked his fingers. “I almost forgot,” he said. “Annie, the artist lady across the road – I invited her round to dinner tomorrow night.”
Darla blinked with surprise. “Really?”
“Looks like we might be here for a while, so no harm in making nice with the neighbours. But make sure you’re here in good time. I don’t want her thinking I’m trying to romance her on the sly.”
“Why ever would she think that, Daddy?” Darla said innocently. “She doesn’t know you yet.”
Hopper left the house, and she watched through the window as he marched down the path and unlocked the Buick.
“Morning, folks,” he called out to Frank and Sasha. “Darla’ll be out in just a moment.”
Sasha flicked him a lazy salute.
Darla waited until Hopper had driven away before grabbing her schoolbag and heading outside. The sun was a yellow disc in a cloudless blue sky, the trees alive with birdsong. It seemed impossible that this could be the same town where a girl had been brutally murdered.
“Hey,” said Sasha, slipping down from the hood.
“What are y’all doing here?” asked Darla. “How did you find me?”
“It was easy,” Frank said airily. “We just followed the trail of blood and dismembered body parts.”
Sasha pushed up her sunglasses and stared at him. “Really?” she said.
He looked a little sheepish. “Too soon?”
“Maybe a little,” Darla said.
“You gotta admit, Darla, as first days go, that was pretty intense,” said Sasha. “When you didn’t show up at school yesterday Frank got worried, so we thought we’d swing by and see how you were doing.”
“Hey!” Frank protested. “You were worried too!”
“I was concerned,” corrected Sasha. “There is a difference, Franklin.”
“Does everyone know?” Darla asked them. “You know, about Natalie?”
Sasha laughed incredulously. “Does everyone know? The Prom Queen In Waiting was savagely murdered in her own home, Darla – so yeah, it’s cropped up in the occasional conversation.”
“School was unbelievable yesterday,” added Frank, with a hint of ghoulish glee. “Guys arguing, girls running crying through the halls. Everyone talking about angels and…”
Sasha shot him a warning look, and he fell silent. Darla couldn’t help thinking back to the moments after they had found Natalie’s body – Frank throwing up in the bushes outside the McRae’s house, his face as pale as a ghost. She wondered if he was really being insensitive, or whether it was just an act to show Sasha that he hadn’t been scared. Either
way, she was too grateful that they had come to pick her up to say anything.
As soon as they pulled up outside the West Academy, Darla knew she was in for a long day. Heads instantly swivelled in her direction. Mouths dropped open. In the halls, in the homeroom, people openly stared at her, nudging one another and whispering behind their hands. It was like her first day all over again – only ten times worse.
“I guess people know it was Frank and me who found the body, then,” Darla said to Sasha.
“Ignore them,” she replied breezily. “That’s what I always do.”
After homeroom the entire school was summoned to the gym for an emergency assembly. Darla huddled between Sasha and Frank on the top bleacher, wishing she could melt like ice through the cracks in the seats and flow out of the gym. It looked like the entire teaching faculty had taken seats behind a microphone stand set up in the middle of the court. Darla caught a glimpse of Annie: the art teacher was gazing off into the distance, her hands clasped together in her lap. After a couple of minutes Principal Bell entered the gym and took the microphone. His face was drawn, and he hadn’t shaved that morning. He began to talk gravely about Natalie’s death – careful, Darla noted, not to use the word ‘murder’. It was a terrible shock, a tragedy. Grief counsellors would be available for any student who wanted to talk about what had happened. The West Academy would be closed the following day to enable any students who wished to attend Natalie’s funeral to do so. Principal Bell shuffled his notes, and coughed.
“Now,” he said. “I’m aware that there are lurid rumours going around the school about exactly what took place on Wednesday night. Please, I’d like you all to think about Natalie’s family and friends. They’ve suffered enough with this tragic loss without malicious gossip causing them further distress.”
The principal dismissed them, and the students began to file out of the bleachers. As Darla went down the steps someone shoved her in the shoulder, pushing her into Frank.