She studied him for a moment before finally relenting.
“I guess I could ask around. My mom has my class list at home somewhere. Give me your number. I’ll call you later tonight.”
He would be at work later, and Kevin would have a meltdown if he caught Dooley on his cell. But so what? Let him fire Dooley. Let him try. He gave Cassie his number and thanked her. He started down the steps. She called him back.
“You don’t think she did it, do you?” she said. “You don’t think she killed Parker?”
“No.” It was the first time he’d said it out loud. He liked the way he felt saying it, confident, sure of himself. “No, I don’t.” Beth wasn’t a killer. And when you came right down to it, Dooley bet there were a lot of people who’d like to see old Parker dead.
The store was busier than usual for a Friday night, and Friday nights were second only to Saturday nights. Dooley had no trouble keeping himself occupied, but Cassie was never far from his mind. She’d seemed okay when he’d talked to her. But would she come through? Eight o’clock passed and he hadn’t heard from her. Kevin went on his break, and Dooley mouthed a prayer: Now would be a perfect time for her to call.
She didn’t.
Kevin came back and slipped behind the counter with Dooley so that Rashid could take his break. Rashid did what he always did: he stepped out onto the sidewalk, stood right on the other side of the store’s big front window, wearing his red video-store golf shirt, and lit a cigarette. Kevin rapped on the glass and waved at Rashid, the gesture meant to shoo him away from the store.
“It’s a family place,” he muttered to Dooley. “Parents don’t want their kids to see customer sales associates smoking.”
Rashid waved back, a big smile on his face. He took another long drag on his cigarette but didn’t move from the spot where he was standing. Dooley couldn’t tell if Rashid was being a rebel or if he genuinely didn’t understand Kevin’s gesture. He didn’t know how Rashid had got the job in the first place. If anyone ever asked him about a movie, it was a given that Rashid had never heard of it. He was also useless fielding questions about the latest release featuring whatever actor a customer was interested in. To tell him the plot of a movie you were looking for in the hope that he could supply the title was a sure route to disappointment. But Dooley got a kick out of how he got under Kevin’s skin. Kevin kept glancing over his shoulder as he scanned customer picks, took their money, and handed them their receipts. Only when Rashid had finally smoked his cigarette down to the filter did Kevin’s shoulders sink below his ears. When Rashid took another cigarette out of his pocket and used the first one to light it, Kevin’s whole body clenched again. The woman who stepped up to his cash looked at Rashid, then at Kevin, and said, “You people set a poor example.” Dooley chuckled. Kevin scowled at him.
Dooley felt his cell phone vibrate in his pocket. He turned away from Kevin so that he could check the display. Cassavettes, J. He didn’t recognize the name, but he had a feeling.
He glanced at Kevin, who had disposed of his last customer and had slipped out from behind the front counter to hurl the door open. He marched over to Rashid. Dooley turned so that his back was to the two of them and answered his phone.
“It’s Cassie,” the voice on the other end said. “You got a pen?”
Dooley said yes while he scrabbled for one. He grabbed a promotional flyer, flipped it over, and scrawled the names and phone numbers Cassie gave him. He asked for and got addresses, too. There were four altogether.
“I’m not a hundred percent sure if they were all at the party,” she said. “But I know they were all on the trip with Beth and I’ve seen at least three of them with Parker.”
“Thanks,” Dooley said. “I really appreciate it.”
“Yeah, well, good luck.”
“Cassie? You still there?”
“Yeah.”
“Have you talked to Beth?”
“Not this week,” she said. “Sorry.”
The electronic bell above the door beeped, and Kevin and Rashid came in. Dooley flipped his phone shut and slipped it back into his pocket.
“But I was on my break,” Rashid was saying. “And I wasn’t in the store.”
“You’re wearing a store shirt. People know you work here. It creates a negative impression.”
“I read the employee manual Mr. Fielding gave me when he hired me,” Rashid said. Dooley was surprised to hear it. “It says the store is smoke-free, but it doesn’t saying anything about not smoking on a public sidewalk.”
Dooley had read a few pages of the employee manual. Like most people with most manuals, he only opened it when he had a problem, usually with Kevin, and needed ammunition he could shoot back with. He supposed it was possible that Rashid had done the same thing.
By the time Dooley got out of the store, it was too late to start calling girls he didn’t know. He would have to wait until the next morning. If there was one thing he hated, it was waiting.
ELEVEN
Dooley got out of bed early for a Saturday morning, not that it did him any good. He figured he should wait until at least ten o’clock before he started calling the girls whose names Cassie had given him. Then he thought, what if they weren’t home when he finally called? Cassie had said she was going to look at the class list her mother had at home. That meant she’d given him parents’ phone numbers, not girls’ cell phone numbers, which made sense when he thought about the way Kate had spoken to Cassie and what Cassie had said to him. She went to the school but she sure wasn’t part of the in crowd. She probably didn’t have a lot of cell phone numbers.
A woman with an accent—he thought maybe she was Filipino—answered the phone at Monique Norton’s house.
“She is not available now,” the woman said.
“Do you know when she will be available?”
“Sorry, no. May I take a message?”
Dooley thought it over and decided no. If he managed to get Monique on the phone, she might talk to him. If he left a message, she might not call him back. He thanked the woman and moved on to the next number.
“Yes?” a sleep-hoarse voice said.
“Marie Beddoes?” The first name on the list Cassie had given him.”
“Yes?” The voice was slightly more alert. “Who is this?”
He took a deep breath. “My name is Dooley. I’m a friend of Beth Everley’s.”
He heard a chuckle.
“I heard you were more than a friend.”
“And I heard you were on that school trip with her.”
“Yeah? So?”
“I was hoping you could tell me what happened, you know, between Beth and Parker.”
“They hung together almost the whole week. Then she went up to his room with him.”
“Did you see them?”
“Go up to his room? No. But I saw them at the party. And I saw them leave together. And I saw Beth on the bus the next morning. She was sitting by herself. She looked upset. But, really, what did she think?”
“What do you mean?”
“If she wanted to put out for him, that’s her business. But thinking she was going to score Parker as a boyfriend? Not a chance.”
“Did she say that was what she wanted?”
“It’s not what she said. It’s how she acted—she stuck pretty close to Parker all week. It was obvious what was on her mind.”
Was it?
“Were you at the party at Parker’s house the night Parker was killed?” Dooley asked.
“Thanks a lot!” she said, sounding annoyed. What had sparked that? “I saw you there, so, yeah, I was there. Why?”
“Did you see Beth there?”
“No.” There was a strong hint of confusion in her voice now.
“What about Parker?”
“What about him?”
“What was he doing?”
“What Parker always does. Having fun. Parker loves to have fun.”
“What time did you leave the party?”
“Jesus, what are you, the cops? Who, by the way, I’ve already talked to.”
“You mind telling me what you told them?”
He heard a long, impatient sigh and was afraid she was going to hang up on him.
“I was at Parker’s until maybe one in the morning,” she said finally. “The party was still going strong when I left, but I had a headache. I said goodbye to Deecee when I left.”
“Deecee?”
“Parker’s sister,” she said, like, what kind of idiot was he that he didn’t know that. “I didn’t see Parker, though.”
“Do you know where he was?”
“Oh, stupid me. If I’d known you were going to ask me that, I would have turned on my X-ray vision.”
So that was a no.
“You remember what time it was the last time you saw him?”
“I don’t know. Ten, maybe ten-thirty.”
“Did you notice who he was with?”
“I don’t remember if he was with anyone special. There was a bunch of kids around him, like always. I just saw him, that’s all.”
“Okay. Thanks,” Dooley said.
The line went dead. She didn’t even say goodbye.
Rachel Silverman was next on the list.
“She’s at her class, dipshit,” said the kid who answered the phone at her house. Dooley would have bet anything he was Rachel’s kid brother. “I was hoping to catch her before she left. I’m supposed to pick her up after class, but I lost the address.”
“Then your ass is going to be in a sling,” the kid said.
“Do me a favor? Help me out. Where’s her class?”
“How would I know?” the kid said. “I got better things to do than keep track of stupid ballet classes.”
Dooley sensed he was about to hang up.
“Do you at least know the name of the place?” he said.
“Danse Classique Academy,” the kid said. “You guys get stupider and stupider. By the way, she’s not a natural blonde.”
“I know,” Dooley said, even though he had never met Rachel.
Danse Classique Academy was in the phone book and was located—big surprise—up near the tennis club that Parker had frequented. Dooley took the bus. When he got there, he tried the front door. It was locked. He walked around the place and heard someone playing a piano inside. It sounded like the kind of music he had heard in a movie that Beth had made him watch about a kid in England, a boy, who wanted to be a ballet dancer. The music he heard through the window stopped every so often and then started again, the player hammering out the same piece of music over and over. Dooley pictured skinny girls in leotards making frou-frou moves. Why did they bother? Who even went to the ballet? He circled back around to the front and waited. The better part of an hour passed before the door opened and girls started coming out. There weren’t that many of them—eight or nine at the most. Half of them were blondes, but which one was Rachel? He said her name out loud. Only one head turned. He moved toward her.
“Rachel Silverman?”
She looked him over.
“I’ve seen you around my school,” she said, large hazel eyes looking frankly into his. “You’re that guy Beth was seeing, right?”
He nodded and glanced at the girl beside Rachel, who was shorter and who, unlike Rachel, refused to meet his eyes. Dooley didn’t know her name, but he recognized her right away. She was the girl who had helped Nevin hand out the drinks that night at Parker’s party.
“What are you doing here?” Rachel said. Dooley was amazed at how direct the girls at Beth’s school were. He wasn’t amazed at the demanding, bitchy quality of their voices. He bet most of them were used to getting what they wanted when they wanted it.
“You were on the trip with Beth,” he said.
“We both were.” She nodded at the other girl, who peeked up at Dooley for all of a split-second before staring again at the flagstone under her feet.
“I was wondering ...”
“You were wondering how it went down between Beth and Parker, right?” Rachel smiled smugly at him when Dooley nodded. “Well, I’m sorry to tell you, Studly, but she’s the one who started it. She’s the one who wasn’t happy with the team assignments. She’s the one who asked to switch to Parker’s team. And she’s the one who went into the house with him that night. Nobody was twisting her arm.”
How many times had Dooley heard that? How many times had he wondered about that whole week—Beth and Parker working together, eating together, talking together? And then that party. If it hadn’t been for that party ...
“So she and Parker were pretty friendly, huh?” he said. He hated himself for it, but he asked it anyway, even knowing what all those girls were like, how they loved to talk, how they would be back at it on Monday, if not before, telling each other about him, about Beth’s boyfriend Dooley.
“Extremely friendly,” Rachel said. “She knew what she was doing—and what Parker was interested in. There’s no way she couldn’t have known what was going to happen.”
“Maybe she thought he was going to show her pictures from when he was in Africa,” Dooley said. “That’s what he told her.” Rachel laughed. “Get real. She makes happy with him all week, he invites her up to his room to show her pictures, they get it on, and the next thing you know, she’s crying rape? Please!”
“So, you don’t believe her?”
“She’s intense, you know?” She looked him over again. “I hear you’re pretty intense, too.”
“Beth told you that?” Jesus, what had she said?
“Beth doesn’t talk about you. But I heard it around, you know?”
No, he didn’t know. But he could imagine. A girl like her, maybe she’d known Winston Rhodes or some of the guys he hung around with.
“Parker likes to fool around,” she said. “Beth’s not the first girl who slipped between the sheets with him, thinking she’d landed him. But she hadn’t. His sister told me that Parker told her he’d made it clear from the start. They were just fooling around, that’s all. It wasn’t like a lifetime commitment.”
“You know she’s been arrested?” Dooley said.
“Yeah. And I’m not surprised. My dad’s a shrink, you know.”
Okay. And what the hell did that have to do with anything?
“He says someone like Beth, with her past, it was just a matter of time. You know about that, don’t you? About what happened to Beth’s dad and what her brother did? Beth was right there. She saw the whole thing. The way I heard it, it really messed her up. She was just a kid when it happened, and my dad says that when kids experience that kind of trauma, it can come back and bite them in the ass when they’re older.” Dooley bet her dad had a fancier way of saying it. “He says sometimes people who go through what Beth went through sublimate their feelings. You notice how she’s always perfect, right? Always prepared. Always keeps things neat and tidy. Totally anal. She’s trying to keep her life under control. Trying to keep it nice and clean and orderly—you know, keep the demons at bay.”
Dooley thought about Beth’s bedroom. He had been in awe the first time he saw it. It was completely white—the walls, the ceiling, the curtains, the bedding, the floor, all the furniture. It was like being in a house made of snow, except that whenever he was in there, he was hot all over, not cold. Did all that pure white mean something to Beth?
“You can only do that for so long,” Rachel said in a know-it-all tone that Dooley bet made for a lot of bitchy behind-her-back sniping among the girls at her school. “Eventually, something’s got to give. If you want my opinion”—which Dooley did not, in fact, want—“that’s what happened to her. She went in expecting something from Parker, and when she didn’t get it, she snapped. She tried to punish him by crying rape. When it became obvious that didn’t work, well, like you said, they arrested her for Parker’s murder.”
She sounded convinced of what she was saying. Dooley wondered how many other people thought the same thing.
“W
ere you at the party at Parker’s house the night he died?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Did you see Beth there?”
“No. But I didn’t see Parker, either, for most of the night. What does that prove?”
Maybe nothing. There was just one more thing he needed to know.
“Have you talked to the cops, Rachel?” He was pretty sure Randall would want to check with all the kids who knew Beth, all the ones who had been on the trip with her, all the ones who had been at Parker’s party that night.
“Not yet. But they called me. They asked me to come down so they could ask me some questions. I’m going in on Monday, with my dad’s lawyer.”
Terrific, Dooley thought. He could just picture what Randall would make of Rachel Silverman’s opinion.
After he left Rachel, he tried Ellie Davis. There was no answer at her house, and he didn’t leave a message. He tried Monique Norton again, too. She was still unavailable. He could think of only one other person who knew Beth and who had been on the trip and at both parties. But, boy, that was the last person in the world he wanted to talk to.
He went home and stared at his homework assignments for a couple of hours, the whole time thinking about Beth and wishing he could see her. He tried Ellie Davis and Monique Norton a few more times each. He tried Warren, too, and got him right away.
“She’s still up on seven,” he told Dooley. “I heard one of the aides say she was going to get an assessment on Monday, and if that went okay, they were going to transfer her somewhere else, you know, until she has her court date.”
“Any chance you can get to see her?” Dooley asked.
“There’s no way to get onto that floor without someone unlocking the door for you, and no one is going to unlock the door unless I’m there on legitimate business.”
“You can’t switch with someone?”
“I don’t know. It’s a big hospital. The scheduling is crazy.” He fell silent for a moment. Dooley waited. He heard a sigh. “There’s a guy who usually works up there—I switched shifts with him one time when he asked me. His brother was having a bachelor party and he told me he was going there specifically to get wasted, so no way did he want to come to work the next day. He said he owed me one.”
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