by Judy Clemens
“You’re stressing,” Death said. “I can tell.”
Casey kept her hand outstretched with its incriminating evidence.
Death put hand to heart. “Holy flora.”
Casey set the flower on her bed and slid the party photo from underneath her mattress, where she’d hidden it the night before.
Tara pointed at the clown. “It’s really the same flower, isn’t it?”
Casey’s head spun. This changed everything. If Dottie was the clown at the party but had lied about it ever since…She dropped onto the bed, careful not to crush the carnation.
“What does this mean?” Tara whispered.
“It means everything she and Vern have said is a lie. She was with Marianne the night of the party. The two of them were there.”
“But…” Tara sat beside her and repeated, “What does this mean?”
“It means Dottie and Vern have been living a lie all these years, letting people think it was random strangers who broke into the party. Letting all those other people be suspected.” She thought about the divorced couple, and the woman who moved to San Francisco because she felt she didn’t have any other choice.
“And Marianne? Where did she go?”
“What if she ran because she was afraid of getting caught, instead of leaving her family for some man? Maybe no one suspected an affair because it wasn’t true.”
“So she’s the one who tricked everyone into getting tied up? Dottie’s been covering for her all this time?”
Casey looked at the broken carnation. “But why would people think it was her, and not Dottie? Did her mask get pulled off? Did they recognize her voice? Since she and Dottie were best friends, wouldn’t people suspect Dottie, also?”
Death made a choking noise and looked upward, as if toward heaven. “Oh, God. I think I made a big mistake.”
Casey tried not to react, so Tara wouldn’t question it.
“I’ll be back.” Death, who was pale even for the Grim Reaper, left so quickly Casey could have sworn it created a black hole right there in her bedroom.
“That’s why people treat Dottie so badly,” Tara said. “Isn’t it?”
“What?” Casey had lost their train of conversation.
“That’s why they were so mean to her. Didn’t accept her. Because they think she had something to do with what happened at the party. They just couldn’t prove it.”
Casey wasn’t sure. Dottie had stolen Vern from Flower Pants, showed up in town pregnant with his child, and been seen to keep Marianne’s family in the dark about Marianne’s location. She had a long list of faults.
“But why would she keep it?” Tara said. “Doesn’t the flower incriminate her?”
“Not necessarily. What if she and Marianne had nothing to do with the trick played on the women? What if she simply didn’t want people to know she’d crashed the party? It would have made her seem desperate, since she hadn’t been invited.”
“So she kept it as a souvenir of one of the worst nights of her life?”
Casey walked to the corner and stared at the weird collection of items. Nothing could be hidden in the mobile, or the Homecoming ribbon. She took down the diploma and removed the backing from the frame. Nothing but the paper, which felt flimsier than a diploma should feel. Didn’t schools use card stock for that? She picked up the photo of the woman and the baby boy. The back came off easily, as if removed frequently. Casey’s heart pounded, and she slid the photo from the frame.
But it wasn’t the photo of the woman and baby that came out first. It was a picture of a bunch of women in costume, tied together on chairs, eyes wide. The sofa from the group picture sat in the background, and the ugly macramé hanger hung beside it. This was the same event.
But there were a couple of costumes missing. The devil sat in the second row of chairs, tied to Lucy and Wonder Woman. But Richard Nixon and the clown were nowhere to be seen.
Tara breathed in Casey’s ear. “Oh, my God. They really did it.”
They must have. Because someone took that picture.
A door banged upstairs, and footsteps tapped from one side of the house to the other.
Tara shot to the middle of the room.
Casey held up her hands in a placating gesture. “It’s okay. We didn’t leave any sign we’ve been going through things.”
“It’s not that. It’s what we found.”
Casey put the carnation back in the dried bouquet. She did the same with the photo, in the frame of the woman and boy.
Tara wrung her hands. “What are we going to do?”
“We’re going to go upstairs and tell Vern how sorry we are. And then we’re going to see what we can do to help.”
“And ignore this?”
“For the moment. I need to…I’ll wait until I can ask him.”
“But—”
“His wife just died, Tara.”
Tara closed her eyes. “Right. Sorry. I’m a little freaked out.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
Casey led the way upstairs. Vern was not in the kitchen or living room, and the door to his bedroom was closed. A car was pulling out of the drive, its lights flitting through the window and across the kitchen, then living room, before shooting out and pointing down the street.
Tara peered out the window. “The pastor just left him here?”
“Vern probably told him I’d be around. I don’t get the feeling Vern’s too up on wanting people in the house.” Except for when she’d shown up. He was all too ready to invite her in.
An invitation she regretted accepting at this point.
“I guess I’ll go,” Tara said. “Unless you need me to stay.” She obviously didn’t want to.
“We’ll be fine.”
Tara made a move toward the door, halted, then took another step. “Tell him…no, don’t tell him anything. Let me know…” She shook her head.
“I’ll be in touch.”
Tara closed the door softly.
Casey dreaded the next few minutes. But she knew they had to happen.
Casey went to the hallway and looked at the closed bedroom door. She could hear Vern moving around in there. Opening drawers, closing them. The bed springs creaking, as if he sat down and got up again.
Tonight was not the time to bring up the carnation or the Halloween party.
Casey went downstairs and sat on her bed, staring at the corner shrine to…whom? Or what? The baby they’d lost, or the horror they’d wreaked on this town? Did Dottie get to die in peace after what she’d done? Did Vern get to mourn, when others in Armstrong weren’t allowed closure after the death of Amelia Barrios, or the disappearance of Marianne Rush?
She retrieved the carnation and the photo of the terrified women, at the last second grabbing the group picture as well. She slid the photos into her back pocket and curled one hand around the flower. She knocked lightly on Vern’s bedroom door. “Vern? You okay?”
The bed creaked, and the door opened. Vern’s eyes were red, and his whole body slumped, as if the life had gone out of him.
So to speak.
They looked at each other for a few moments before Casey said, “Can I get you anything?”
“No.” He cleared his throat. “Thank you, though. I’ll be…all right.”
He would be. After a while. It’s not like Dottie’s death was a complete surprise. He’d known it was coming, just not that night.
“How about some coffee? Or tea?”
He looked at his bed, which remained torn apart on Dottie’s half, the covers flung back. “All right.”
He followed Casey and sat at the kitchen table while she found what she needed, tucking the flower behind Dottie’s pill bottles. In a few minutes she sat down with him, two hot mugs of tea in front of them. Casey’s eyes felt like sandpaper from lack of sleep, but her bl
ood pumped through her veins like she’d been sprinting. Or running from something. Which she kind of was.
“Vern…What happened that night?”
His head shot up and he spoke through clenched teeth. “My wife died.”
“No, not tonight. The other night. That Halloween.”
She saw the moment he realized what she was asking. His lips pinched into a tight line and he gripped his mug so hard Casey was afraid it might break. Or he might clock her with it.
“Dottie didn’t help you hand out candy at the store, did she? And Marianne didn’t beg off volunteering at the church.”
He didn’t move.
“You’ve been lying all these years. Hiding what really happened.”
When it appeared he wasn’t going to respond, Casey scraped her chair back and got the flower. She threw it on the table.
Vern’s eyes went wide, and the blood rushed from his face, making him almost as pale as Death had been before flying off. His voice shook. “Where did you get that?”
“In the basement, in the middle of the dried flower bouquet.”
He breathed with his mouth open, rasping. “Why did you…why did she…?”
“And then I found this.” Casey slid the photo of the tied-up women across the table.
He put a hand to his chest. Casey felt deja vu from when she’d talked with Dottie the day before. Was he having a heart attack? Was he going to die because of her, like Dottie had died because of Lisa? No matter how angry she was at him, she didn’t want that.
“Take a deep breath, Vern.”
He rasped, clutching his shirt.
Casey grabbed his wrist. “Vern! Stop. Breathe.”
He took several gulping breaths before managing a deep, halting inhale. He pulled his arm from her grasp. Pointed at the flower. “That’s…”
“From Dottie’s clown costume. And this?” She jabbed a finger at the picture. “This photo of these terrified women? It’s from the same night as this one.” She slammed the original group photo, before the “prank,” onto the table beside the new one.
He dropped his forehead to his hand and rolled it side to side.
“Dottie and Marianne were there. At the party.”
He stopped with the head rolling. Tears leaked from behind his hand.
“No. You don’t get to play the victim here. You have been lying to this town for forty-five years. You let suspicion hang over those other people, ruin their lives—”
“What people?”
“That couple getting a divorce, the woman having an affair, the greedy landowner. They had to move away because of all the crazy theories.”
Vern waved dismissively.
“You’ve kept Marianne from her children.”
He looked up at her, eyes wet.
“Why did she leave, and not you? What would have incriminated her? Why should she and her family suffer, but not you and Dottie?”
His face changed from despair to surprise, and finally anger.
“You think we haven’t suffered? You think we wanted to stay here in this town, where everybody treats us like scum? Where we might as well have been strangers? Where they…” He choked up. “Where they blamed us for the death of our baby?”
“But her death wasn’t because of something you did.”
“Tell that to the women in this town, that Anne Marie’s death wasn’t something we could have prevented. Something Dottie caused.”
“They blamed her?”
“She got sick with German measles, and it killed the baby. The others always hated Dottie, so this was just another reason to treat her badly, to say it was her fault.” He strode to the doorway and slammed the flat of his hand against the jamb. “Why didn’t they invite her? All of this could have been avoided if they’d just treated her with kindness.” His chin drooped and some of Casey’s anger melted away.
“I know they resented Dottie because she was an outsider,” Casey said. “And they had to show loyalty to Flower Pa— Ethel. Right?”
“So someone told you, huh? That I was engaged to Ethel? That I got Dottie pregnant?” He shook his head. “I never meant to hurt Ethel. But I met Dottie, and I couldn’t imagine life without her. I thought Ethel would get over it.”
But Casey knew how a teenage girl’s heart worked. How it could hurt. Could break.
“Did the others feel badly toward Marianne because she was friends with Dottie?” Casey remembered Marianne’s picture in the yearbook. That confidence. That smile. Those eyes.
“They never were huge Marianne fans. Too self-assured. Didn’t care enough what everyone else thought. Didn’t want to go along with the crowd. So when Dottie came home with me, it was like a gift for Marianne. Someone with a fresh view, who hadn’t been poisoned by the town.” He shook his head. “I should have told Dottie. I should have looked out for her enough to tell her. It would have saved her. Saved us.”
“Told her what? That the women in this town are spiteful and mean? I think she figured that out herself.”
“No. I mean, she did. But that’s not what I should have said.” He rubbed his eyes. “I should have told her that if she wanted to make a go of it in this town she should befriend the crowd, and leave Marianne Rush the hell alone.”
Chapter Thirty-seven
Casey screeched her chair across the floor and followed Vern into the living room. He stood in front of the picture window, staring at the closed curtain as if he could see out onto the street.
“You would have had her be friends with those awful women? Ethel? Wilma? The ones who were petty enough to not invite her to a frigging Halloween party?”
He spun on her. “And why do you think they didn’t invite her? Huh? Because she was friends with Marianne, who had no use for all of those people, as she made very clear. As soon as I brought Dottie home, Marianne descended on her, didn’t give her a choice. Came in preaching about the other women’s small minds and stupid decisions. Didn’t let her even try to get to know them. As soon as the first one showed up with a casserole, it was like they were trying to poison us.”
“So why didn’t you say anything?”
“What was I going to say? She was as in love with Marianne as she was with me. Or even more, sometimes. Speaking against her would have put a knife in our marriage.” He closed his eyes. “Instead, Marianne did it herself. Killed their friendship. Almost killed us. But she didn’t. It made us stronger.”
“Did it?”
He glanced at her, pain in his eyes. “What do you know?”
Quite a bit. But she wasn’t going to say that. “So getting back to that night…why did Marianne have to go, while you stayed?”
Vern turned back to the window. “Dottie loved her like a sister. Listened to her, believed everything she said. So when Dottie was ready to let the stupid women host their party, Marianne wasn’t having that. Oh, no. They couldn’t just let it happen and move on. They had to fight against it. Had to show those women who was boss.”
He walked slowly to the puffy chair and sank into it. “So Marianne got this grand idea. They would go to the party. They would play this trick on the women and have the last laugh.” His voice drifted away and he stared at his shoes.
“But it all went wrong.”
“It was fine, at first. No one recognized them, not behind those masks. The women thought they were part of their in group, and they’d see who it was after the costume judging. So when Marianne said they had a magic trick to show them all, they thought it was fun.” He gave a sharp laugh. “They were all drunk at that point. They did love to party, and having a free night away from the kids, what more could they ask for? Dottie said the wine, the coolers…those women drank and drank. It was no wonder they didn’t recognize Dottie or Marianne, and no wonder they went along with the whole trick.
“Dottie thought tying them up was
going to be the end of it. They would put them in knots and take off, get home to establish their alibis. No big deal. A joke. But Marianne couldn’t leave well enough alone. Had to raise the stakes. She told all those women they were going to set the house on fire. No cell phones, of course, and the landline was far enough away no one could reach it.”
“Why didn’t Dottie stop her?”
“No one stopped Marianne. Besides, poor Wilma had already wet herself, and the others showed they couldn’t act bravely. If Dottie admitted what they were doing, it would have been worse in this town than before.”
“But couldn’t she have at least said they weren’t going to burn the house down?”
“And make Marianne angry? Then she wouldn’t have had any friends at all.”
“So they left?”
Vern shook his head. “Marianne threatened them with the fire, and she and Dottie ran out. They thought it was funny, or at least, Marianne did. They stopped outside and watched through the window while the women tried to get untied. They were yelling and crying and screaming, and then poor Amelia, she couldn’t take it.” His eyes were watering again. “Every time I see Nell, I just…”
“Did Dottie see what was happening?”
“She wanted to call an ambulance, but Marianne wouldn’t let her go back in to use the phone because it would have given them away.”
So Marianne had taken away any chance Nell’s grandmother had of surviving.
“But Dottie said by the time she noticed Amelia, one of the women had gotten herself free and was able to call.”
“But the ambulance didn’t get there soon enough.”
He leaned forward, clasping his hands between his knees. “Dottie and Marianne didn’t stay to find out. They took off through the field. They’d parked their car out by an old cemetery, a half mile from the house.”
“I’ve been there. I saw your daughter’s grave.” Casey remembered the way Death had reacted to something there. Something so awful Death couldn’t even name it.
“They argued the whole way to the car. Dottie said she wouldn’t keep it a secret, they would have to tell the police what they’d done. Marianne refused. Said the women had it coming. Dottie said she was wrong, that no one deserved to be treated that way. To die because of a prank gone wrong.” He breathed in. Breathed out. “Dottie told Marianne she was going to tell, no matter what Marianne thought of it. Because it was Marianne’s idea. Her fault. All Dottie had wanted was to stay home and feel bad about not getting an invitation.”