by Tom Becker
The Realtor King of Saffron Hills was standing with his wife Celeste, whom Darla recognized from the photograph on Luis’s desk in his office. A little boy was pulling at her sleeve, pointing excitedly at the brightly lit storefront across the street. Celeste laughed and nodded, kissing her husband on the cheek before leading the boy out of the church grounds. Seized by a sudden, reckless thought, Darla slipped through the crowd towards Luis.
“Mr Gonzalez?”
He blinked with surprise at the sight of her. “Hopper’s girl? What are you doing here?”
“I need to talk to you.”
“Hey listen,” said Luis, holding up his hands, “if Hopper wants to talk to me about the lease, he can do it himself.”
“It’s not about the house,” Darla told him. “It’s about Sidney. My mom.”
A shadow fell across Luis’s face. “I’m sorry, I can’t help you,” he said, glancing over in the direction of the departing Celeste. “I didn’t really know her. You should talk to Hopper.”
Darla caught his arm as he tried to walk away. “You said you came to Saffron Hills because of something she said,” she reminded him. “That’s an awful long way, Mr Gonzalez. You must have known her a little bit.”
“It was a long time ago,” he insisted. “I don’t remember much of it.”
“Anything. Please.”
Luis looked around helplessly. “What do you want me to say?” he said in a low voice. “A lot of things happened in New Mexico that shouldn’t have. Me and Hopper were different people back then. We fell into business together, made a little money. Sidney used to stay in the trailer looking after you – you couldn’t have been more than two or three. She was a nice lady, didn’t complain, just went along with things. Most girls, they end up with someone like Hopper and they’re going to be bitching and whining day and night, but Sidney wasn’t like that.”
“Did she talk about growing up – about Saffron Hills?”
“Not much,” said Luis. “Coded hints, mostly.”
“Hints about what?”
“That something bad had happened here. You gotta understand, Darla, back in those days pretty much everyone I met was running away from something. Sidney wasn’t any different. She had demons, all right. I could see it in her eyes.”
Demons. Darla shivered, trying to push the image of the half-opened bathroom door from her mind, Hopper screaming at her younger self to look away. “So why did you come here?”
Luis shrugged. “It sounded like a rich place, and I figured I could make some easy money. But when I got here I met Celeste and suddenly I found something I wanted more than money. So I went straight, worked two jobs whilst I studied for my realtor’s license. Now I’m a husband and a father and an honest-to-goodness citizen.”
There was pride in Luis’s voice as he spoke.
“Did you ask if anyone knew my mom?” asked Darla.
“I kept my mouth shut,” Luis replied firmly. “I left that part of my life behind me in New Mexico. At least, I thought I had. Then you and Hopper walked in through my door.”
“What about Walter West?” said Darla, thinking back to the photograph of her mom. “Do you think she might have known him?”
Luis shrugged. “Who knows? I wasn’t around back then, and people round here don’t really like to talk about that guy. I did a bit of digging around Tall Pines a few years back – that mansion is the Holy Grail of South Carolina real estate. But the title deeds are a mess. When Allen and Madeline died they should have passed to Walter’s sister, Amy—”
“There was a sister?”
“Sure, like I said, her name was Amy. She went to school in another county so she wasn’t well known around here. When her parents died people tried to track her down but she’d moved out of the state. So the house just sits there, gathering dust and a bad reputation. It’s a real shame, you know? I’ve seen the photos – it was a beautiful property.” He glanced across the street, to where his wife and son were staring into the shop window. “Listen, I gotta go, Celeste and Rafael will be waiting for me. Don’t tell Hopper we talked, OK?”
“I won’t.”
“I mean it, Darla!” Luis said urgently. “He’s your father and I know he can be charming but Hopper’s got a dark side and I don’t want to make him mad. I saw some things in New Mexico, when he’d been drinking…”
He stopped abruptly, aware that he had said too much.
“I promise I won’t say anything,” Darla told him.
Luis nodded, and turned to walk away.
“Thank you,” she added quickly, almost embarrassed. “For everything. It’s because of you that we got to sleep with a roof over our head, and now Hopper’s got a real job. Maybe one day he might become a honest-to-goodness citizen too.”
A small smile of surprise flickered on the realtor’s face. Then he was gone. Darla turned back to find Annie watching her from across the church lawn, a curious expression on her face.
“Darla? Darla!”
It was Hopper, hurrying over to her. “Where in God’s name did you go running off to?” he said crossly. “I was gonna introduce you to my boss, but I turned around and you’d gone.”
“Sorry, Daddy,” Darla replied. “I saw a friend from school.”
“Sasha?”
“No, um, someone else. How was your boss?” Darla asked, quickly changing the subject.
“He had some news,” said Hopper.
“Good news or bad?”
“I’m hopin’ it’s good news, if it means these killings will stop. The cops arrested Leeroy Mills this afternoon – they’re questioning him over the murders.”
Chapter Seventeen
It was Saturday afternoon. Darla wandered up and down the aisles of a deserted Criminal Records, leafing aimlessly through the stacks of vinyl. Occasionally she held one up for Sasha to inspect – and almost every time received a thumbs-down in reply. Since Darla had arrived at the record store only a handful of customers had shuffled through the door, almost all of them teenage boys. Judging by their furtive glances towards Sasha at the counter, they weren’t there for the music. It was almost funny when one of them summoned the courage to buy something, red-faced and stuttering at Sasha before fleeing out of the store. Sasha – as usual – either didn’t notice her admirers, or didn’t care. No one so much as looked at Darla. She was utterly invisible.
She had only decided to come down to the mall at the last minute, when Hopper had pulled an extra shift at the music store. It felt as though the town had breathed a sigh of relief at the news of Leeroy Mills’ arrest. He was a known troublemaker with a criminal record – it stood to reason that he was the Angel Taker. Darla only prayed they were right. As she’d walked through the mall towards Criminal Records, she had looked up to the spot where she had first seen Natalie McRae and her friends. They had looked so beautiful and haughty they had seemed almost untouchable, but now three of them were gone for ever. Their ghostly presence seemed to shimmer in the air where they had once stood.
At least Sasha had been pleased to see Darla, telling her with a groan that she was dying of boredom. Now Darla picked out a fresh record sleeve and held it up so her friend, who was sprawled lazily out across the counter, could see it. Sasha nodded approvingly.
“Sleater-Kinney? That is a serious record you are holding right there,” she said. “Hey, if you like that, you should try X-Ray Spex. Poly Styrene is, like, the First Lady of punk. No, screw that, she’s the president of punk.”
Darla nodded dutifully. As hard as she was trying, Sasha was never going to turn Darla into some great music expert. Slipping the Sleater-Kinney record back with the others, she glanced up at the clock.
“That’s an hour since anyone came in,” she said. “Is it always this quiet in here?”
“It is always this quiet in here,” replied Sasha. “If it weren’t for my dad, Danny would have had to close the store years ago.”
“Danny?”
“The store owner – and t
he only other person in Saffron Hills with any taste in music. My dad writes him a cheque every now and again to keep this place open. I think it’s the only reason he lets me work here. But c’mon, where else am I going to get a job?”
It was a good question. Darla couldn’t imagine Sasha flipping burgers or waitressing or being a maid in a hotel. Then again, it was easier to be a rebel and do what you wanted if you had a rich daddy who was willing to foot the bill.
Sasha’s phone buzzed on the counter. She checked the screen, sitting abruptly up.
“What is it?” asked Darla.
“Frank’s sent me a link to some kind of blog. Said I should check it out… Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me!”
Darla put down the record and came over to look at Sasha’s phone. Beneath the headline ‘SLAY CHEESE!’ was a photograph of a page from a West Academy yearbook, splattered with lurid red streaks. Natalie, Ryan and TJ were all there. Over Sasha’s shoulder, Darla read:
Twenty years after infamous son of Saffron Walter West killed a beauty queen and ended up swinging from a tree in his backyard, the town is wondering whether there’s a new Angel Taker on the prowl. Three West Academy students – Natalie McRae, Ryan Cafferty and TJ Phillips – have been brutally murdered in the space of a week: stabbed, strangled and electrocuted. With beautiful people once again becoming an endangered species, you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to work out that Carmen Russo and Gabrielle Jones might be the next names on the Angel Taker’s hit list.
Any normal town would be in lockdown until the killer is caught, but then Saffron Hills is only slightly less crazy than our knife-wielding red-haloed friend. Word is that the powers that be are determined to protect their precious sponsorship money and make sure that the Miss Saffron beauty pageant goes ahead next week. At least there’s a suspect in police custody, so let’s hope they’ve got the right guy – else the winner might find themselves getting a victory slash instead of a victory sash…
Sasha groaned. “Really? I mean, isn’t it bad enough that some freak is going around killing people without stuff like this? People are ghouls, Darla. There’s no other word for it.”
Darla nodded in agreement. The blog was drenched in sick glee that made it seem that whoever had written it was actually enjoying what was happening in Saffron Hills.
“Does it say who wrote it?” she said.
Sasha scrolled to the bottom of the page. “Doesn’t look like it.”
“Maybe it’s the killer,” Darla suggested, “trying to get more attention.”
“Maybe. More likely it’s someone from the West Academy. A loser with questionable hygiene and no friends who’ll get a kick out of upsetting people.”
“It might not work. People might not read it.”
Sasha rolled her eyes. “Darla, everyone is going to read it.”
They were interrupted by an unexpected sound: the bell above the door ringing. Someone had entered the store. Darla looked up to see Patti Haas peering uncertainly into the gloomy interior.
“Sasha, darling?” she called out. “Are you there?”
“Mom?” replied Sasha. “What are you doing here?”
Patti edged towards them along the aisles, carefully skirting around a patch of damp on the floor. “It’s very dark in here,” she complained. “I can barely see a thing.”
“It’s called mood lighting, Mom.” The petulant tone of Sasha’s voice made Darla smile – she sounded like a little girl. “I thought I told you not to come in here!”
“I know you did, dear,” Patti replied vaguely. “But I was walking past and I thought it would be rude not to say hello. I don’t know why you’re so worried, anyway. I’m not going to start plastering baby photographs of you on the wall.” She peered around at the peeling band posters. “Although anything would be an improvement on the current decor.”
Darla tried to stifle a giggle, and failed. Sasha glared at her.
“Who’s your new friend?” asked Patti.
“Her name’s Darla, Mom,” Sasha sighed. “You’ve met her before.”
As Patti stared at Darla, her face suddenly broke into a smile. “Why yes, of course!” she said. “You came over to the house with Franklin. I’m glad to see you girls are sticking together. This is no time to be going about on your own.”
“If you mean the killings, they arrested somebody,” Sasha told her.
“So I heard,” Patti said dubiously. “As if Leeroy Mills could be capable of all this… evil. Nothing changes in this town – the innocent get hurt, and the guilty get away with it. It was the same when I was your age.”
“That guy is not innocent, Mom, take it from us.”
“Who do you mean, ‘the guilty’?” Darla asked suddenly. “Like Walter West?”
The change in Patti was instantaneous. Her eyes narrowing, she grabbed hold of Darla’s arm. “What do you know about him?”
“N-nothing…” Darla stuttered. “I just…”
“You stay away from that man, you hear me? He’s evil. I don’t want him anywhere near my girl.”
“Okay, Mom, okay!” said Sasha. “Walter West’s dead, remember?”
Patti squeezed even tighter. “Crystal was a sweet, beautiful girl, and when they pulled her out of the creek her skull had been shattered,” she told Darla fiercely. “You remember that.”
“Mom, let go of her!”
Sasha pulled the shocked Darla away and marched Patti down the aisle towards the exit, firmly closing the door behind her.
“I’m really sorry about that,” she told Darla, returning to sit on the counter. “Don’t take it personally.”
“It’s my fault,” said Darla. “I shouldn’t have upset her.”
Sasha picked at her black nail polish. “It’s not you. Mom’s on Xanax to stop her getting panic attacks. She used to get them a lot when I was younger. They’re … they’re pretty scary.”
Sasha studiously refused to look up as she spoke, concentrating on her nails. For the first time, Darla felt she was looking at how her friend truly felt – as though Sasha had unlocked a padlock like the one she kept on her bedroom door, and allowed Darla a glimpse inside. Aware of Darla’s sympathetic gaze, Sasha looked up and smiled brightly. The door slammed shut again.
“You know what we need?” she said briskly. “Music. This is supposed to be a record store, after all.”
She jumped down from counter and put on a record, cranking up the volume with a whoop and dancing along the aisles. Darla rubbed her sore arm, thinking about what Patti had said to her. Sasha’s mom had been talking as though Walter West wasn’t dead at all, even though the rest of the town seemed certain that he was. Could it really be down to her medication?
“Come and dance with me!” Sasha called out.
Darla shook her head. “I’m gonna go,” she said. “Hopper will be home from work soon.”
She hugged Sasha and left Criminal Records, leaving her friend defiantly dancing on her own. Stores in the mall were closing for the afternoon, the last remaining customers drifting away. Chairs were being put on tables in the café forecourt. The banner advertising the Miss Saffron pageant rippled forlornly above Darla’s head. As she headed past the elevators Darla felt a hot itch on the back of her neck. Glancing towards the upper floor, she saw someone hurriedly draw back from the balustrade. She was being watched.
Trying to keep calm, Darla threaded a path through the café tables and slipped out of the mall through a side door. She found herself on a quiet street facing a small, smart building set back from the sidewalk – the Taylor gallery. Offering up a silent prayer of thanks, Darla hurried across the street and pushed through the glass door, a small bell tinkling above her head. There was no sign of Annie, though a half-drunk mug of coffee was cooling on the sales counter. Darla looked back through the glass door at the empty street. Whoever had been watching her must have got bored – if anyone had been watching her. It was getting harder and harder for Darla to be sure what she was seeing was real or
not.
She turned and examined the silent gallery. Dividing walls ran at angles across the room, artfully chopping up the space and turning it into a maze of alcoves. As Darla wandered curiously through the gallery in search of Annie, at every corner she was confronted with a new piece of artwork. A shattered mirror, cracks in the glass spreading out like a jagged cobweb. A video running alongside the artwork showed Annie taking a giant hammer to the mirror, the footage playing over and over on a loop. A giant doll’s house, that when Darla crouched down to look through a window she saw was in fact an empty shell. Over dinner, Annie had told Hopper that art was all about how people reacted to it – and it felt as though every piece in this gallery had been designed to unsettle and disturb.
In the final alcove there was a self-portrait of Annie sitting in an artist’s studio, her intelligent hazel eyes examining Darla. Next to the self-portrait were four exact reproductions, each increasingly disfigured with black daubs of paint until Annie’s face was completely obscured. Darla couldn’t understand why Annie would go to so much trouble to paint such a beautiful picture only to deface it afterwards, like a child with a crayon. Maybe that was why Annie was the artist, and she wasn’t.
As Darla stared at the paintings, the bell above the gallery door rang out again.
“Annie?” Darla called out. “Is that you?”
No reply.
Darla peered around the dividing wall back towards the front of the gallery, but there was no one there. Maybe whoever it was had seen there was no one behind the counter and left. Or maybe whoever it was just didn’t want Darla to see them.
“Hello?” she said. “Is anybody there?”
The lights went out, plunging the gallery into darkness.
Chapter Eighteen