by Diane Hoh
“Your dress isn’t here. I took it home with me, so no one would buy it.”
“Good thinking. Thanks.” Margaret barely knew Lucas. Why would he try to poison her? But he was a big guy. He could easily have lifted her into that Dumpster.
As Adrienne went to phone the police, the door flew open and Caroline breezed in. She seemed surprised to find Margaret standing just inside the entrance. Her face fell. “Now what?”
Margaret told her about the dress.
“I don’t see what’s so scary about that,” Caroline said. “A missing dress? We already know whoever is doing this doesn’t want his victims to attend the prom, right? In Beth’s case, he must have thought another act of violence was too risky, with every police officer in town looking for him. So he just took the dress. You should be relieved, not worried.”
Skepticism moved Margaret to say, “Caroline, everyone who knows Beth knows she can afford to buy another dress in plenty of time for the prom. Stealing the one she already bought isn’t going to keep her home.” Then she repeated what Adrienne had told her about the insecticide in Kiki’s garage.
“Lucas?” Caroline asked skeptically. “That’s crazy. Why would Lucas poison you? He doesn’t even know you.”
“I know it’s crazy,” Margaret said pointedly. “Doesn’t that tell you something? Look, Scott’s got the van. Will you take me to find Beth? We should warn her. Don’t tell my mother. She’ll never let us go. I’ll tell her we have errands to run for the prom. She’ll let me go if I don’t go alone.”
Adrienne returned to say that she had called Beth’s house first. “She had a hair appointment this afternoon,” Adrienne said. “The housekeeper didn’t know where, but the officer I spoke to then said he’d find out. There’s nothing more we can do now.”
Oh, yeah, there is, Margaret thought. We can find Beth ourselves, and tell her what’s going on.
She told Adrienne they had errands to run, and although her mother expressed reservations about Margaret leaving the store, she finally gave in. “Come back here the minute you’re done, okay? And be careful, Margaret. You and Caroline stay together the whole time, promise?”
Margaret promised. While Caroline ran to the rest room to adjust an irritating contact lens, Margaret limped upstairs to deposit her books and sweater in the Sweatbox. After one more anxious warning from Adrienne to be careful, they left the store.
In the car, Caroline asked, “So Beth’s having her hair done. Any idea where?”
“Probably the most expensive, classiest shop in town.”
“That would be on the East Side,” Caroline said. “Out there by Toomey Hills, where all the Pops live. I’m game if you are.” She grinned. “Although the air will probably be much more rarified there than it is down here. Maybe we should take oxygen masks. I still think you’re overreacting. It’s not like Beth was actually attacked.”
Not yet, Margaret thought.
“This is kind of fun,” Caroline said cheerfully as she expertly wove her car through traffic toward the East Side of Toomey. “Like being on a treasure hunt. Or, we could pretend we’re detectives, looking for a missing witness, right? We used to do silly stuff like that all the time, Margaret. Remember? And when we went out to the Point, we pretended we were members of an international secret organization. You and Jeannine and Lacey and I.”
“We were little kids then, Caroline, and besides, we were never in any real danger.” Margaret’s knee was throbbing, and her head ached. She had no idea what they were going to say when they found Beth. We just came to inform you that someone stole your prom dress and my mother thinks that means something ominous and she also thinks you shouldn’t get too cozy with your boyfriend right now? What was Beth supposed to do about all of that? No point in buying a new dress, since she might not be going with Lucas, after all. If Lucas had stolen that insecticide and dumped it into a carton of milk at Quartet, Lucas wouldn’t be going to the prom.
And so Beth wouldn’t go, and then Beth wouldn’t be queen, which was what she wanted more than anything. The drawing proved that. Margaret’s mind raced. Just how much did Lucas love Beth? Enough to erase all of the competition for something that Beth really wanted?
But I’m no competition for Beth, Margaret reminded herself sternly. Unless Lucas believed that if she went with Mitch, she might stand a chance simply because Mitch was so popular. Was that possible?
But if she was right, Beth was the one girl in Toomey who didn’t have to worry. Lucas was trying to protect her, not hurt her. Still, she had a right to know what was going on.
Why would Lucas have stolen her prom dress?
“This is so stupid!” Margaret cried heatedly, startling Caroline, who jumped. “I cannot believe that someone is attacking girls to keep them from attending their senior prom! It’s so totally insane! I just don’t get it.”
“I do.” The late afternoon sun was hitting the windshield. Caroline pulled the visor on her side into place to shield her eyes. “I kind of know how they feel.”
“Oh, Caroline, that’s ridiculous! You do not! You’ve never hurt another person in your life!”
“You haven’t known me my whole life. Only since fifth grade. Anyway, I didn’t say I agreed with what he or she is doing. But it’s obviously someone who isn’t going to the dance, hasn’t been invited, and is angry about it. And that I do understand. You should, too. Heaven knows we’ve sat out enough formal dances.”
Although Margaret’s new theory was very different from Caroline’s, she didn’t say so. She could be totally off-base about Lucas. “Yes, but we never felt like killing anyone, did we?”
Caroline’s half smile was impossible to read. “No, I guess not. Might have thought about it once or twice, though. Didn’t you?”
“No. Do you really think we know someone who is so insane they did more than just think about it?”
“Sure.” Caroline whipped the car around a sharp corner. “Maybe even more than one person. It’s just not the kind of insanity that’s obvious, that’s all. We studied people like that in psychology class, remember? The kind who keep their sickness hidden. They’re very clever. No one ever knows how sick they are until something horrible happens. Like now. Because the rest of the time, the signs aren’t right out there in front of us. We all have these weird ideas about insanity, images of screaming, shrieking people running around in the streets. It’s hardly ever really like that. It’s a lot more subtle, especially with someone who kills people.”
“What makes you such an expert?” Margaret was thinking that Caroline’s description could fit Lucas. He seemed normal enough.
“I’ve read a lot about it. The subject interests me, and as you know, I have a lot of time on my hands to read. And we do know people like that, Margaret. I’ll bet we’d be really surprised to find out who they are. Probably the people we would least suspect. Kiki, frankly, always struck me as teetering on the edge. She was trying too hard. Liza, too, and Beth never quite measured up to the others, so that could have driven her over the edge.”
Caroline screeched to a halt in front of a small, upscale shopping center, set some distance back from the street and beautifully landscaped with neatly trimmed spring flower beds. A sign in hot pink hanging in front of one of the low, white buildings read, Shear Delight. “You just never know about people, Margaret. You think you know them, but you don’t. Not really.”
While Margaret dealt with that depressing thought, they climbed out of the car into bright sunshine.
“Did you know that David’s taking a cousin of his to the prom?” Margaret asked as they hurried to the salon entrance. “She’s only a sophomore. Kiki set it up. She didn’t want David to miss his prom. I think that’s kind of nice, don’t you? That she cared enough to make him go even though she couldn’t?”
“Adorable.” Caroline opened the salon door. “He sure wasn’t available very long. Lacey’s crushed. So is every other girl at school who doesn’t have a date yet.”
“I’m sure.”
Beth wasn’t in the salon, and they were told that no one by that name had an appointment.
Back in the car, they hit three more salons in East Toomey. Margaret’s anxiety increased when they didn’t find Beth in any of them. Had the police taken her mother’s call seriously? Were they looking for Beth, too? And maybe Lucas as well?
“This isn’t fun anymore,” Caroline commented as they drove through the streets of East Toomey. “We’ll try one more, and then that’s it. I’m tired. There’s a place a couple of blocks up that’s veddy posh. Let’s hope she’s in there.”
“This was never fun,” Margaret retorted. “We’re not looking for Beth to invite her to a slumber party, Caroline. We’re looking for her to give her bad news. How could that possibly be fun?”
“Well, you know what I mean. It’s kind of fun for the two of us to be doing something together. Like we used to. Graduation is scaring me a little, Margaret. I mean, I know we’re both going to State together, but I have this awful feeling that things will be really different at college.” Caroline turned a corner. “Anyway, I know Mitch is going there, too, so you’ll probably be spending tons of time with him and will forget about all your old friends. We said that would never happen, but all kids say that. Then they grow up and it happens.” There was no cheerfulness left in her voice as she added, “I just have this awful feeling about everything changing.”
“It could change in a good way,” Margaret said, and at the same moment, spotted Beth, with a new haircut, walking to her car, parked at the curb directly in front of them. “There she is!” she shrieked. “There’s Beth!”
Then everything happened at once. And even though Margaret knew it had to have happened quickly, in a matter of seconds, it seemed to her to have taken place in slow motion.
Beth climbed into her car.
Caroline slammed on the brake.
Her car squealed to a halt.
But not in time.
It crashed with a resounding clang of metal on metal into the back of Beth’s shiny new graduation present, a bright yellow Acura.
The impact popped Beth’s trunk lid.
People coming out of the shopping center came to a standstill. People driving by on the tree-lined side street slowed. Some cars came to a halt. A woman coming out of the salon whirled and ran back inside to phone for help.
“Oh, no, oh, no,” Caroline moaned as her own car shuddered to a halt, “I don’t have my contacts in. They were driving me nuts so I took them out at the store and it says on my license, Must wear corrective lenses. Oh, no, I am going to be in such trouble for this!” Unbloodied and unbruised thanks to her safety belt, Caroline turned to Margaret, desperation in her eyes. “Margaret, please, if you’ve ever been my friend for even one second, be my friend now! Do not, please, do not mention to the police officer who will surely be here any second now, that I am not wearing my contacts, okay? Please, Margaret! I’m in enough trouble as it is. My dad is going to have seven fits!”
Shaken but uninjured, Margaret asked, “Won’t a police officer be able to tell that you don’t have your lenses in?”
“No, of course not. Just don’t say anything, okay?” Caroline’s hands were shaking visibly. “We’d better go face the music.” She uttered a short, bitter laugh. “And you thought we were already bringing her bad news, right?”
Eddie McGill pulled up in a cruiser. He was alone. His window down, he glanced at the driver of the damaged car and called as the two girls slowly emerged from their own car, “Driver’s okay. Bumped her head is all, looks like. Be right with you,” and he pulled the car over to the curb across the street.
“I am a dead person,” Caroline muttered as Beth pushed open the driver’s door and slowly, carefully climbed out, one hand to her forehead. “I won’t be allowed to drive again until I’m seventy-five years old.”
Beth, still holding her head, walked dazedly around to the rear of her car, staring at the damage in horrified dismay.
“Beth,” Caroline stammered, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, the sun was in my eyes and I didn’t realize how close we were. Our insurance will pay for the damage. I am really sorry.”
Beth moved then, took a step, then another toward the rear of her car, just as Officer McGill arrived. “I see you found her for me,” he said to Margaret and Caroline. “Got a call to keep an eye out for this car. Didn’t quite expect to find it in this shape, though.”
“I should close that trunk,” Beth said, her voice emotionless. “I should go do that.”
Margaret was standing directly to the right of the popped lid. “It probably won’t close,” she said, “but I’ll give it a shot.” She put a hand on the trunk lid and would have tried to shove it closed if she hadn’t seen the contents. What she saw inside the trunk brought a gasp of disbelief.
Hearing the gasp, McGill moved to join Margaret behind the car. “What?”
Margaret said nothing. But her eyes never left the interior of the trunk.
“Well, well, well,” Mitch’s brother said slowly. “What have we here?” He reached into the trunk to lift out and display in front of Beth and Caroline a beautiful red dress with spaghetti straps and a short, full skirt. He handed the dress to Margaret, who took it, and then his hands went into the depths of the trunk again. A pale blue dress, slender and delicate as a flower.
Beth’s gown.
She stole it herself? Margaret thought, her eyes on Officer McGill’s hands. Why would she do that? And what is she doing with Stephanie’s dress?
The hands dipped into the trunk again. This time when they came out, the dress was black. Liza’s. Adrienne must not have noticed yet that it, too, was missing, or she would have said something.
Margaret was now holding all three dresses. When the officer reached into the trunk again, the item he brought forth was much smaller. A headband in a vivid yellow print. “That’s Stephanie’s!” Margaret cried. “Stephanie Markham’s. She was wearing it the day of the picnic. We all thought it came off and blew out to sea when she fell, but there it is! And,” waving the clothing in her arms, “this red dress is the prom dress my mother told you about. It was stolen from the store, remember? All three of these dresses are from the store and here they are, in …” Margaret looked up at Beth standing beside the trunk, her face bone-white “… in Beth’s trunk,” she finished lamely.
“What else is in there?” Caroline asked, coming up behind Margaret.
“Well, there’s this,” the officer said, holding up a large plastic bottle with a red label. “Insecticide.” He turned to Beth. “Now why would someone be carrying a bottle of insecticide around in their car trunk, unless they’re in the gardening business. Which I don’t think you are, miss, am I right?”
“I … I …” Beth looked very ill.
“And here,” Eddie McGill said, replacing the insecticide bottle and reaching into the trunk again, “we have what I suspect might be the money missing from Toomey High School.” This time, he held up a gray metal box, clearly labeled on the top Prom.
But he dropped it back into the trunk in time to catch Beth as her eyes closed and her knees folded like paper money, and she collapsed.
The officer caught her before she hit the ground.
Chapter 24
“I DON’T SEE WHY you’re so bent out of shape about this,” Caroline said on the way home. Beth, who had regained consciousness once only to immediately faint again, had been taken to a hospital under police guard. “Didn’t I tell you it would be someone we’d least suspect? Beth was the nicest of the Pops, so we should have guessed it was her.”
Margaret remembered Beth asking her in the hospital if she had seen the person who had attacked her at the Dumpster. Probably afraid that I could identify her, Margaret thought numbly. She told Caroline about the drawing. “I can’t believe she wanted to be queen that much. Enough to kill. And me? She thought I was competition?”
“Because you’re going with Mitch. He’s a popula
r guy. Besides,” Caroline added matter-of-factly, “by the time Adrienne works her magic on you, you’ll be the prettiest girl at that dance.”
“Where on earth have you been?” Adrienne greeted Margaret worriedly as she entered the shop. Caroline had the rest of the afternoon off. She had dropped off Margaret, promising to call later, and driven away. “I’ve been frantic. I didn’t expect you to be gone so long. The police just called. They’ve found Beth. It’s all over, Margaret.” Relief coated Adrienne’s words, and her normal color had returned. “That poor child is responsible for the horrible things that have been going on in town. Her mother must just be distraught.”
Margaret explained, to Adrienne’s horror, her involvement in Beth’s being taken away for questioning. “I thought it was Lucas,” she admitted. “It’s hard to believe Beth is strong enough to toss me into that Dumpster.”
Adrienne looked unhappy. Of all the silent partners, she liked Beth’s mother best. “Strength of a madman, I guess. Isn’t that what they say? On the other hand, Margaret, we don’t have any real proof that Beth did those things. Maybe she didn’t. We should wait and see.”
“Mo-om! I saw the stuff in her trunk! It was all there. Car trunks lock automatically. You need a key to open them. Beth had a key. End of story.”
“They didn’t take her to the police station,” Adrienne said, locking the front door and turned the sign to read closed. “She’s in the hospital right now, under police guard. She’ll stay there until they know she’s okay.” She moved to the rear of the store, to the cash register. “Is that why you were gone so long? Because of the accident?”
Margaret confessed then, that they hadn’t gone to run errands. That they’d left the store to look for Beth. “It took us forever to find the right salon.”
Adrienne looked up from the register, a puzzled crease furrowing her brow. “I don’t understand. Caroline knew where Beth was. I told her.”