The Foxglove Killings

by Tara Kelly

  I finished tying my apron and headed into the chaos. Rhonda made a beeline for me, coffee pitcher in hand. Her lips were pinched into an anxious pucker.

  “Hit those obnoxious punks first,” she whispered, nodding at our biggest booth.

  My heart about stopped. There were familiar faces in that booth. Christian. Gabi. Amber Connelly. And Zach himself. He had a hell of a lot of nerve coming in here.

  Two days after we broke up, I saw him walking down First Avenue, holding hands with Amber. They’d gone out for almost two years before he broke up with her at the end of his junior year. She’d been trying to get him back ever since.

  Guess they were still together.

  “Goldilocks hasn’t put that camera down for a second,” Rhonda said, referencing Christian. “He’s irritating folks.”

  “Great,” I muttered.

  “Use that pretty young thing persuasion.” She elbowed me and trotted off.

  Cakes like Christian couldn’t be persuaded to do anything, unless it was money or their mom doing the talking. This town was like Vegas for them—what happened here stayed here.

  I’d replayed this scene in my head a million different ways—seeing Zach again. Sometimes I ignored him. Sometimes I smiled real big and acted like I couldn’t care less. My favorite idea was a chocolate cream pie right in his face. He hated chocolate.

  Instead I stood there like a moron. His dark eyes met mine for the quickest second. I could’ve been anyone.

  He’d cut off his long dark hair—it was spiked and messy now, as if he’d rolled out of bed. It probably meant he was playing guitar for a new band, a different genre, no doubt. He changed bands like underwear.

  “Nova!” Rhonda called. “What are you doing? Get moving.”

  I needed a minute to become bulletproof. Suck it up and smile, Nova. He’s dead to you.

  If I were water, Amber’s stare would’ve frozen me in my tracks. I swore she inched closer to Zach as I approached their table. Amber was never the prettiest girl in the room, but she knew how to work what she had. Thick red hair. Black eyeliner applied with precision around her close-set green eyes. And then there was her rack, a perky set of double Ds under a tight cami. That alone turned heads.

  Christian peered at me through the viewfinder of his fancy camcorder. His blond hair looked like he hadn’t combed it in a month, and his gray hoodie had been frayed in strategic places. I never understood shelling out hundreds of dollars to look unkempt. Why not skip doing laundry and not bathe for a few weeks?

  The camera lens zoomed out, aiming at my chest. His lips curved up. “How’ve you been, Nova?”

  Like he cared. “Great.”

  “That Nova?” a curly-haired guy I didn’t recognize muttered.

  He said “that” like I was the lowest form of life. Amber smirked, her chrome-colored nails drawing circles against the menu. It took everything I had to not flip them off.

  “Know what you want?” I asked.

  Zach studied the menu, even though I knew what he was getting. A stack of buttermilk pancakes and a side of bacon. Safe and boring.

  “What’s good here?” the curly-haired guy asked, eyeing me up and down.

  “Anything,” I said.

  Christian finally put his camera down. His eyes were bloodshot and glassy. He probably hadn’t been to bed yet. “What’s in the avocado omelet?”

  “Avocado.” I stopped there since the ingredients were clearly listed on the menu. “We can add jalapenos for an extra fifty cents, if you can handle it.” I knew Christian would take the bait.

  He did. I wrote down his order with “+5” next to it. This told Grandpa to go hog wild with the jalapenos.

  “And you?” I asked Curly.

  “I’ll have, um…” He flipped through the menu. “I don’t know yet.”

  “Excuse me!” A woman two booths down waved her arms like she was on a deserted island and I was a helicopter. “We were here before them.”

  “Sorry, ma’am. I’ll be right with you,” I called over.

  “What—she can’t wait to grow another chin?” Christian asked, loud enough for the woman to hear.

  Amber put her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide and smiling. Gabi had no reaction, like usual. Zach at least had the sense to look embarrassed.

  “Do you guys need another minute?” I asked, trying to keep my tone even.

  “Just order, dick,” Christian said to his curly-haired friend.

  “Fine, damn. I’ll have…” Curly flipped through the menu again. “Chocolate chip pancakes. And a Coke.”

  Gabi smiled at me, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “I’ll have a veggie egg white omelette. No cheese. You probably can’t steam it, right?”

  Amber rolled her eyes at Zach.

  “We’re not set up for that,” I said. I guess when you were rich enough to have a personal chef, you expected one everywhere you went.

  “Can I get olive oil instead of butter then?” she asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Hey!” Someone else called behind me. “Can we get some syrup?”

  I squeezed my pen and counted to ten in my head as the others ordered. Neither Amber nor Zach looked me in the eye when they spoke. Cowards.

  I grabbed their menus and turned, almost walking right into Brandon Koza. He was wearing a diner shirt and looking completely lost.

  “Hey.” He gave me one of his ready-for-TV smiles. With Eurasian features, black hair, and pale brown eyes, the guy had his share of fans at our whiter-than-white school where they thought he was “exotic.” “Your mom told me to shadow you…”

  The cakes whispered something behind us. Brandon glanced over at them, his smile fading. Amber laughed.

  “Of course she did.” I pointed to the table next to us. “Get them some syrup, will you? Thanks.”

  As soon as I got the chance, I asked Mom to cover my tables for a minute and made a beeline for the bathroom. Once locked behind the metal door of the handicapped stall, I exhaled, relieving the pressure in my chest. I used to get angry at girls who went to pieces over some jackass guy, thinking they were weak. The old me would’ve told myself to grow a pair. But right now I wanted to hide.

  I slammed my knuckles into the divider, imagining Zach’s face. All I got was a sore hand.

  The door to the bathroom squeaked open, and heels clanked against the tile floor. I slowed my breaths, trying to regain my composure.

  “I’m ready to kill someone. Stop me.” Amber’s Texas twang gave her away instantly. She was originally from Dallas, but she’d moved to Mercer Island, Washington, her freshman year. Her dad worked with Zach’s mom at Microsoft. They’d met at one of their parents’ parties and hit it off after they’d sneaked a bottle of wine into his room.

  “Gabi,” she continued. “She can’t even eat a real meal.” Pause. “We’re at the Spoon, which is beyond awkward. But of course Christian had to eat here.”

  I peeked through the crack in the door. She stood in front of the sink closest to me, her cell phone glued to her ear. I briefly considered jumping her, if only this wasn’t my family’s livelihood.

  “She hasn’t said a single word to me,” Amber said. “Christian needs a drool bucket just to be near her. It’s disgusting.” She fished a brush out of her cloth bag. “Oh, but guess who works here now?” She paused again. “Brandon Koza.”

  Why was that so amusing?

  “I wish you were, too. You keep me sane. My life sucks so bad right now.” She let her friend talk for maybe ten seconds before diving in again. “Zach can’t keep his eyes off Diner Skank. He thinks I don’t notice. Asshole.”

  I prayed that she’d leave before I lost control and busted out of here.

  “He’s still defending her. I’m sick of it!”

  What?

  Amber raked the brush through her red curls. “You can’t tell anyone this, okay?” Her voice got softer, but it was clearly something she was dying to spill. “I was pissed at Zach last night.” She mumble
d something I couldn’t catch. “So me and Holly got really drunk. We started taking random stuff out of her fridge, blending it together, and daring each other to try it. Like barbecue sauce and eggs and jelly—I know!” She laughed. “We’d had, like, eight shots at that point. That’s my excuse.”

  My heart was pounding now. I knew what was coming.

  “Anyway, this stuff looked like blood. Holly wanted to write all over Zach’s car with it. Then I thought, wait. He’d know it was us. But I know where Nova lives.” Her voice softened to a gleeful whisper. “So, we get there at three in the morning and there’s a light on.” She got quiet for a few seconds. “Yep. With some guy in her bed. Big shock.”

  Did she not recognize Alex? She’d only made fun of him every summer since we were fourteen. That was the summer she’d invited Alex to Winchester Beach, pretty much hookup central around here. When Alex showed, Christian and his friends told him to strip or they’d destroy his skateboard, a board his Uncle Joel designed and made for him. He had to walk home naked.

  Alex never went into much detail about what exactly happened, but Megan told me she heard him crying that night. He never cried, at least not in front of me.

  My fingers reached for the lock, and I shoved the door open, letting it bang against the wall.

  Amber jumped, eyes wide, mouth open. “I have to go,” she said, hanging up.

  I didn’t say a word or move. I just stared her down. Sometimes saying nothing at all was best. It made people wonder what you’d do next.

  But I wanted to slug her so bad my nails cut into my palms.

  “Shit,” she muttered before turning and leaving with her tail between her legs.

  I wished I could say that was enough for me. But it wasn’t. Not even close.

  The diner didn’t slow down until after two. We were down to a trucker and Matt and Jenika’s friend Tyler’s doting environmentalist mom who was talking away to Rhonda, using big hand gestures. Even she couldn’t figure out how she produced Tyler.

  Brandon was helping me wipe down the tables and refill the ketchup bottles. He’d been following me for the last several hours, silent and attentive. I felt kind of bad for snapping at him this morning.

  “So, if you have any questions,” I said, scrubbing down a particularly soiled booth, “this is about as quiet as it gets.”

  Brandon walked by with an armful of ketchup bottles. “Do Christian and his band of assholes come in a lot?”

  “Aren’t you kind of friends?”

  “Not any more than you are.”

  “Huh.” I gave the table one last wipe. “Gabi seems pretty tight with them.”

  “She is.” He clanked down the last ketchup bottle. “Is it cool if I take a ten? I need a smoke.”

  If he was a smoker before, I hadn’t noticed it. Not that I kept tabs on him. “Sure.”

  “Can I go out back? My mom drives by here a lot and…”

  “Got it.” I tried not to laugh. Having the chief of police for a mom had to suck, especially if she was as hard as she seemed. Of course she had to stand her ground with the racist old-timers in this town who thought a five-foot-two Filipina had no business running their police department.

  “Mind if I join you?” I asked Brandon. “I could use the air.” The sweat was eating through my shirt.

  His eyes widened a little, but he nodded.

  We leaned against the wall of the diner, the sour smell of the Dumpster all too close. Our view consisted of the small gravel lot Mom and Gramps parked in, a banged-up metal fence, and the abandoned Pacific Sunrise motel. The pink doors advertised that it hadn’t been updated since the ’70s.

  Brandon lit a cigarette and offered one to me, but I shook my head. I’d tried my mom’s menthols when I was twelve. Alex completely flipped out and told me I was going to die. I smiled a little, remembering how he tried to flush the entire pack down the toilet.

  “What’d they do to you—Christian and ‘his band of assholes’?” I asked. Considering Amber said Brandon’s name like some inside joke, it was clear he’d been ousted.

  He shrugged, blowing the remnants of a drag toward the overcast sky. “Nothing like what Zach did to you.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. Just about everyone outside Alex believed that I’d cheated on Zach. That he was right to dump me.

  “Just all that stuff he said about you.”

  My skin went cold. “Like what?”

  Brandon flicked his ashes, keeping his gaze on the ground. “You know. About you being…” He took that moment to take another drag.

  “Spit it out.”

  “Skanky,” he said. “The trout thing.”

  My stomach felt as if it was being turned inside out. “Christian started that rumor.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Did you actually hear Zach say it?” I asked.

  He finally glanced up at me, pity in his eyes. “Sorry. I thought you knew.”

  I wanted to scream Zach’s secrets from the rooftops. That he was afraid of his mom. That he hated Christian, but he was too scared to stand up to him. Hell, Zach was afraid of the world.

  Silence fell between us. The jittery kind where nobody knows what to say next. I felt this urge to let out my every hateful thought, but Brandon was only the messenger. Someone who barely knew me. What good would it do?

  “I heard you found that deer,” he said, finally. “It was pretty bad, huh?”

  “Yeah…” Just when I’d managed to block out that image for an hour. “What the hell is going on?”

  He shook his head. “No idea. But De Luca is all over my mom about it.”

  “Does she have any leads?”

  “Nothing I can talk about.”

  “I can keep a secret.”

  He laughed, dropping his cigarette to the ground. “Nobody can keep a secret.”

  “There was a foxglove left with the raccoon, too, right? In its mouth?”

  He cocked his head, squinting at me. “Where’d you hear that?”

  “From a friend.”

  His lips turned up at the corners. “Gabi didn’t waste any time…”

  “Was she not supposed to talk about it?”

  “My mom told them not to share the details right now.” He shrugged. “I’m sure Gabi couldn’t help herself.”

  I wanted to ask him what happened between him and Gabi, but I had a feeling he’d dodge that question, too.

  “Well, to be fair, I guessed it was the same deal as the deer,” I said.

  His smile broadened. “Good work, Detective.”

  “One day, I hope.”

  “A cop—you? Really?”

  “Like you know me well enough to be surprised.”

  His fingers drummed against the pockets of his jeans, as if he was thinking of the right thing to say.

  “Don’t tell me I don’t seem like the type,” I said. “I’ll punch you.”

  He breathed out a laugh. “I believe it.”

  Brandon wasn’t the first person to have that reaction. When I told Zach, he grinned and said, you’re too cute to be a cop. It felt like a compliment at the time, like a lot of the things he said. He had a real knack for making insults feel good.

  To most people around here, even before the rumors started, I was what Amber called me—Diner Skank. The cheap kind of pretty. Boobs too big for my frame, skinny legs, and what Josh Byers called blow me lips. He’d sit behind me in trig every day, whispering it over and over. I could still feel his hot breath on the back of my neck, his chewed-up pencil eraser poking at my spine.

  I was that cliché girl destined to grow old waiting tables, hoping to catch some sugar daddy’s eye.

  Fuck that and fuck them. I was the girl destined to prove them all wrong.

  “Isn’t this how serial killers get their start?” I asked.

  “Sometimes.” Brandon fingered another cigarette in his pack. “You never know around here, right?”

  “No kidding.”

  While Emerald
Cove didn’t see much action in the crime department, there was no shortage of weird. Not just here, but all up and down the Pacific Northwest coast. Shoes washing onshore with decayed feet inside. Decades of young girls disappearing. Group suicides nobody could explain.

  Sometimes in the winter, when the fog rolled in and silenced the waves, it felt as if death had its fingers around my neck. Fingers like frostbitten twigs that made me ache inside. Naturally I passed the time by reading dozens of books about serial killers and cold cases. I’d looked into a lot of the local urban legends Gramps shared with me, about people who vanished one day or were supposedly murdered by vengeful spirits. Many of the legends had grown from true stories where the victim’s loved ones were desperate for an answer. Any answer.

  “So does Alex have a death wish?” Brandon asked, startling me.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Heard he’s going to fight Matt today.”

  “What? From who?”

  Brandon’s eyebrows rose. “You don’t know?”

  “Who told you that?” I repeated, my pulse rising. So help me if Alex decided to do this without telling me…

  “Haley St. James was here earlier. I heard her talking about it.”

  My fingers curled inside my palms. “Did she say when?”

  “No… Are—”

  I was already opening the back door before he could finish. The muscles in my legs tensed with adrenaline. I needed to get a hold of Alex. Talk him out of this stupidity.

  I headed into our closet-sized office that actually was a closet at one time and picked up the old yellow phone on the wall, dialing Alex’s house. “Please be there,” I muttered, as each ring lasted an eternity.

  “Hello?” Megan answered, sounding a bit out of breath.

  “Hey—is Alex there?”

  Silence.

  “Megan?” I shut my eyes. She always lost the ability to speak when she was scared or upset. “What happened?”

  “Matt showed up at our house with Jenika a minute ago and…” She paused. “Alex went with them.”

  “Where did they go?”

  “The Deception Creek Trail. I was just about to leave—follow them.”

  “Don’t. I’ll take care of it.” I’d much rather they kicked the crap out of me than Megan. She’d never even been in a fight.