Alison pulled free from my grip, giving me a What the hell? face as we both heard the sound of an engine and Julie’s car came into view. She pulled into a spot down from mine as King’s owner yanked him toward the parking lot and the mystery car. We hurried toward Julie, careful to stay clear of the man’s car.
“Sorry I’m late, I couldn’t get away sooner,” Julie said when she was close. The man loaded his dog into the backseat and then stared at all of us for an uncomfortable minute before getting into the driver’s seat. “Who was that?” she asked.
“No idea, but we’re glad you’re here and he’s leaving.” Alison led the way to a wooden picnic table off to the side, near some trees, and tied George’s leash to one of the metal supports under the bench seats. He whined, pulling against it and shaking the table as Julie and I sat down across from her, brushing off the snow.
“Why was he looking at us that way? I swear, all of this is making me paranoid.” Julie looked around once more before saying in a low voice, “Do you have your letters?”
We exchanged ours and they were exactly the same except for the personal address. “Heather got one, too,” Alison said, showing us that letter and explaining how she’d gotten it.
“What are we going to do?” I said, pulling the thermos out of my bag and dropping it on the picnic table with a thunk.
“Shh,” Julie hissed. “Be quieter for starters. Is that coffee?”
I shook my head. “Something to take the edge off the cold. Here, I brought cups.”
Julie and Alison exchanged glances that I chose to ignore, pulling out small plastic shot glasses from my bag before unscrewing the thermos and pouring beautiful golden brown liquid into each one. Alison took a small sip of hers and coughed on the fumes. “Whiskey?”
“The best Kentucky bourbon,” I said. “It’s cold out here and I can’t face another discussion involving Viktor Lysenko without first having a drink.”
“You sound like you’ve already had one,” Julie said dryly, but before I could answer we heard another car approaching. I screwed the cap back on the thermos and we put the glasses out of sight, until we saw that it was Heather’s SUV. George barked and strained gamely at the leash, tail wagging as she got out of the car and raised a hand to us.
“Hi!” She sounded cheerful—a far cry from the grieving widow she’d presented at the funeral—and she crossed the ground at a good clip, zipping up her down jacket on the way. “Hello, George, hello!” She stroked his head as Alison tried to keep him from planting his dirty paws on her chest. “I’m so glad you called—Daniel’s staying over with his great-aunt and I couldn’t face being home with just my mother-in-law for company.” Her smile faded as she saw our somber expressions. “What is it? What’s happened?”
Alison found the letter addressed to Heather and handed it over. She took it from her gingerly, as if it were contagious, looking from Alison to the envelope and then to the other envelopes the rest of us were holding.
“What is this?” she said with a nervous laugh, but when nobody answered she hurriedly took out the letter and read it. She appeared visibly shaken, sinking down on the bench next to Julie and peering in the fading light at the photo on the bottom of the letter. I passed her a shot and she drank it in one go, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “Where did you get this? Did all of you get the same one?”
As we passed the other letters for her to compare, Alison explained how she’d taken Heather’s out of the mail at her house. “They’re identical except for our names,” I said. “Who could have written this?”
“How could they have seen us?” Heather said, her breath making little indignant clouds. “That’s what I want to know—we were careful. You said no one was around.” She looked accusingly at Alison and Julie.
“There was no one around,” I said. “We all looked. Someone must have followed us, but I didn’t see any other cars on that stretch of road that night—did you see any cars?” I appealed to Julie and Alison.
“No, but obviously this person was out there,” Alison said.
“They must have heard the news about Viktor and put it together,” Heather said in a dull voice, nervously smoothing the letter against her lap. She looked up at me, then the others. “I was so out of it that night—I thought you were being careful.” Her voice held a hint of accusation and I saw Alison stiffen. “How could you let someone see us?”
“We weren’t any more careless than you were that night,” I said with a growl, before pouring another shot and downing it.
“I don’t know, and it really doesn’t matter how they saw us,” Alison said, “the point is that they did and we’ve got to figure out what we’re going to do about it.”
“What if we did nothing,” Heather said. “We let this person go to the police—the photo doesn’t really show much.”
“Oh, that’s easy for you to say,” I said. “Your face isn’t visible in the photo.”
Julie said, “The letter said ‘photos’ plural. This is just one of the photos; who knows what the others show.”
Alison took a small sip of whiskey, obviously trying not to choke on it. “And the photo files will have the time stamp and probably the location as well—if this person takes them to the police then they’ll know we were there that night.”
“If that happened—if—then why couldn’t we just tell the truth at that point?” Julie nervously fiddled with her plastic cup. “We show the letters to the police and explain what happened that night. Viktor was abusing Heather—she shot him in self-defense.”
“With your gun? And we were just helping when we made sure he was dead and dumped the gun and his body?” I said. “It’s too late for that—we helped her commit a homicide and cover it up. We’d be charged as accessories.”
“So what—we just pay the blackmailer? How do we guarantee that they give us all the photos and get rid of any copies?” Alison said. I tried to refresh her shot glass, but she covered it.
I looked again at the photo included in the letter—four of us standing there in the dark by Viktor’s car. “We can’t guarantee it,” I said.
“What if we refused to pay until we see them delete the photos?” Julie said.
“How would we do that?” Alison sounded skeptical.
“The letter says we have to leave the money at the cemetery,” I said. “We could stake it out and demand the camera and the photos.”
“They’re digital,” Alison said. “And they’ve probably already downloaded them. We’d have to take this person’s computer, too, and delete their files.”
“Then what’s your plan?” I snapped.
“I don’t think we have much of a choice—we have to pay them.”
“I don’t know about you, but I don’t have a spare twenty grand just sitting around to give away to some shitty blackmailer.” I took another gulp of whiskey, feeling my face flush.
“What do you guys have?” Alison asked. “Because I think we’ve got to pool our money.”
There was silence for a long moment, but then Julie spoke. “I’ve got some money stashed away—it’s supposed to be our vacation fund. Brian doesn’t even know about it; I was going to surprise him.”
“Okay,” Alison said. “That’s a start. I don’t have a private fund, but if I added some bonus money I got from work along with other money set aside for emergencies, that would be over two thousand—I can contribute that. Plus, maybe I could sell something.”
“Well, I don’t even have a thousand,” I said in a flat tone, before downing another shot glass. The other three just stared at me and I said, “What? I’m a stay-at-home mom, remember? I don’t have the money you three have.”
“None of us has that kind of money just sitting around,” Alison said.
“What about some of that old furniture from your parents?” Julie asked me. “Weren’t you talking about selling that?”
“Yes, but to pay for a surprise anniversary trip for me and Eric, not for this.”
I scowled. “It’s Heather’s fault we’re in this dilemma—what’s she planning to pay?”
Heather recoiled and Julie made a gasping noise, apparently shocked by my bluntness. She said, “You’re being unfair, Sarah.”
“It’s the truth, isn’t it?” I argued. “Besides, she’s got more money than all of us combined—why shouldn’t she pay the whole thing? She can just say it was for funeral expenses.”
“Those costs were already paid,” Heather said in a quiet voice. “I can’t withdraw that much—the police would notice.”
“What about the life insurance?” I said. “I’m sure you’re getting a big chunk of change from that.”
Julie glared at me, as Heather said, “I haven’t got the insurance money yet—it takes time. Look, I can pay you all back.”
“Don’t be silly, this isn’t just your problem—we’re in this together,” Julie said in a firm voice. “We’ll all pay.”
“We should split it evenly,” Alison said. “If we each contribute five thousand dollars we can pay him off.”
“I’ll find it somewhere,” Heather said.
I snorted. “Oh, I’m sure you’ve got some portable wealth—all you have to do is sell some jewelry.”
“Or we could sell it for you,” Julie said. “You have to be very careful that the police don’t catch wind of this.”
For a few minutes none of us said anything, just sitting there wrestling with the implications of the decision. I poured another shot of whiskey and this time Julie spoke up. “Don’t have another one or you won’t be able to drive home.”
“I’m fine,” I said, but Alison snatched the cup away, splashing whiskey onto the wooden table and across the snow-covered ground.
“You’re not fine; you’re drunk,” she said. “You think we haven’t noticed? Get a grip and sober up—you’re risking everything with this behavior.”
“Me?” I spluttered. “How is this my fault? If she’d just had the common sense to leave him.” I pointed at Heather, who flushed under the scrutiny.
“Stop it,” Alison said. “This isn’t her fault.”
“It’s nobody’s fault,” Julie said. “Let’s all just calm down.” Ever the peacemaker, she didn’t point out that I was telling the truth.
Alison closed her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose. “We have five days to collect the money,” she said when she opened them. “It’s just one more hurdle—we can’t give up.”
No one said anything to contradict her, but the light was going, so I put away the thermos and we pocketed our letters and walked quietly back to our cars. “Are you sure you’re okay to drive?” Julie asked me. Alison was busy getting George into the back of her car and she and Heather didn’t hear me say, “I told you, I’m fine.” But I know they all saw me peel out a minute later, leaving sooner and faster than everyone else.
As night fell, so did my mood. I took a long route home, trying to figure out where on earth I could get $5,000 without Eric finding out about it. What had possessed Alison to suggest that we split it evenly? This wasn’t some girls’ night out, we weren’t splitting the cost of dinner or a bar bill—this was $20,000. Julie and Heather could find this money pretty easily, but what about me and Alison? Count on her to act like some goody-two-shoes Girl Scout.
We tended to dance around finances in our friendship. Of course, we all knew that Heather and Julie had more money than Alison and I did, but the closest we’d ever come to having tension over that difference was last year. About six months before our youngest kids were starting elementary school, Heather mentioned that Viktor wanted to send Daniel to Sewickley Academy, a private school, instead of Sewickley Elementary, the public school where all of our kids were enrolled. That got Julie talking about enrolling her kids there, too, even though Owen was already in third grade at the public school. I have to admit that I got a little huffy about that, making a few pointed comments about some people thinking they were better than everybody else. Things had been tense for a little while, but in the end Daniel went to Sewickley Elementary and Julie enrolled Aubrey there as well, and the talk of private school and tuition just died away.
Until that decision to split the extortion cost evenly, money hadn’t caused any serious problem among us. Later, Alison texted me to say that if we weren’t careful, this tension could cause a crack in our friendship. We had no idea how much worse things could get. And Alison didn’t realize that the crack was already there, just waiting for the catalyst to push us apart.
chapter twenty-five
JULIE
There was a part of me that wanted to run away and leave the others to deal with this mess. I’d won one of those top-producer prize packages from my agency—a two-person trip to Cancún—and I called Brian to propose that we use it right away. He’d just gotten back to his hotel room in Kansas City and sounded exhausted.
“Now? Hon, I’d love to vacation with you, but this is the worst time of year for me, you know that.”
“Think about it—sand, warm sun, cocktails on the beach. People waiting on us, instead of us waiting on them.”
“But what about the kids?”
“Your mom would watch them, or my sister. She’s offered before. I know she’d take them if I asked.”
“But it’s the middle of the school year. Why not wait until summer and then we can all go away together?”
It made perfect sense, of course it did, but I didn’t want sense, I wanted to escape.
“Hon? Are you okay? What’s with this sudden travel bug?”
“Nothing. I’m just tired.”
Brian sighed. “Tell me about it. If I have to listen to another presentation on biotech software I might seriously kill someone.”
The word made me recoil; I was glad he couldn’t see me. “Would you ever?” I asked on impulse.
“Would I ever what?”
“Kill someone. Would you ever?”
Brian laughed. “What is this? Are you messing with me?”
“No, I mean, it’s just a question. Could you ever kill someone? If they were hurting you or me or the kids?”
“I guess I could—especially if you or the kids were being threatened. But seriously, Jules, you’re acting weird—what is this?”
“Nothing, it’s nothing. Just too much to drink tonight, I guess.”
“Yeah, I think so.” Brian chuckled a little. “I miss you, hon.”
“I miss you, too.” My eyes and my voice filled with tears, surprising me as much as him.
“Hey, it’s okay, I’ll be back in a few days.”
“I know, I know.”
“Is it the kids? Are they bugging you? Because I’m going to give them holy hell if they’re giving you a hard time.”
“No, it’s not the kids, they’re fine. I just miss you when you’re away, that’s all.”
I wanted to tell him—I needed so much to talk to someone other than Sarah, Alison, or Heather—but I couldn’t do it. Not now. Not after what we’d done. No one could know.
* * *
We had only a week to gather the money. Getting mine was pretty easy; I took $5,000 from the private account that I’d set up as a vacation fund. When I asked for that amount in cash, the bank teller, a blue-haired old woman whom I’d known for years, raised an eyebrow and asked with a cackling laugh if I was planning a little retail therapy. I hoped she wouldn’t make that joke the next time she saw Brian.
Sarah was the one I was worried about most. I knew that she and Eric shared all their accounts and he handled all their bills and record keeping. How was she going to manage to pull together $5,000 without him knowing about it? I wanted to offer to pay her half, but I knew that could cause problems between us, and what about Alison? Her finances couldn’t be that much better than Sarah’s, but it wouldn’t have been fair to offer to pay Sarah’s share and not Alison’s.
Two
days after we met at the park I ran into Sarah, relieved that she seemed sober and had taken some furniture she’d inherited to an antiques dealer. “A solid Sheraton dining room set, oak bookcases, and a glass-topped side table and they only gave me twenty-five hundred dollars,” she complained. “They’re going to turn right around and sell the dining room set alone for over a thousand dollars. Thieving bastards!”
“Can you raise the rest?”
“I’ll find it somewhere,” she said. “What choice do I have? But I’m screwed if Eric wants to go to the storage locker any time soon. He won’t miss the furniture, but he’ll sure as hell miss the money I should have from its sale. Last night he asked why I was so jumpy—if he only knew.”
“You didn’t say anything, did you?”
“Of course not.” She gave me a withering look. “I told him that if he’d stop sneaking up on me I wouldn’t have anything to be jumpy about.”
I smiled at that; typical Sarah. “I guess the best defense is a good offense.”
She smiled then, too. “Don’t talk Steelers at me. You know I don’t like these football analogies.”
She’d somehow found all the money by Thursday when we gathered to plan the drop-off. We met at Alison’s house in the early afternoon while the kids were still in school and her husband was at work.
“So this is what twenty thousand dollars in cash looks like,” Heather said in a slightly awed tone. We were standing around Alison’s kitchen table looking at the stacks of bills all neatly lined up on the scarred oak top. “What are we going to carry it in?”
“This.” Alison produced a small black duffel bag. “But let’s wrap it in a garbage bag, too, just in case anyone looks inside the duffel.”
All of us standing around that pile of cash and a duffel bag wearing latex gloves—it was surreal. “I feel like we’re playing drug dealers in some police drama,” I said with a light laugh, but nobody joined in. Alison kept putting her hand to her mouth, then dropping it, like she was going to bite her nails, but kept forgetting she couldn’t reach them because of the gloves. Sarah looked particularly stressed.
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