by Joy Fielding
“She’s not here,” Brooke’s brother told me, his voice nasal and bored, barely audible above the television blaring in the background.
“What do you mean, she’s not there?”
“They went out a while ago.”
“Do you know where they went?”
“I heard them say something about a party.”
“Whose party? Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can I speak to your mother?” It was more demand than question. Stay calm, I tried to tell myself. There was nothing to worry about. Colin Friendly was headed northwest, not southeast. He wasn’t crazy enough to come back to Palm Beach. There was nothing for me to worry about.
“There’s nobody home but me,” the boy said. I pictured him sprawled out lazily on the family-room sofa, a bowl of potato chips at his side.
I hung up the phone, not sure what to do next.
“Don’t worry, Mom,” Sara said. “You know Michelle. She’ll be home by curfew.”
I checked my watch. It was barely eight o’clock. Michelle’s curfew was almost four hours away. Could I last that long? I checked my answering machine for messages. No one had called.
“What are you so worried about?” Sara asked, eyes growing fearful.
“I’d just feel better if I knew where she was.”
My mother began crying, swaying unsteadily from side to side. “I think I’d like to go home now,” she said.
“It’s okay, Mom. Everything’s okay.”
I asked Sara to get my mother ready for bed, and stay with her until she fell asleep. Then I marched into the family room and quietly placed a call to the police.
“My name is Kate Sinclair,” I began, my voice a whisper so as not to alarm my older daughter.
“I’m sorry,” said the officer who answered the phone. “You’ll have to speak up.”
I repeated my name, more loudly this time, then spelled it. “My sister is Jo Lynn Baker,” I told him. “Jo Lynn Friendly,” I immediately corrected, picturing the officer snap to attention on the other end of the line.
“Your sister is Jo Lynn Friendly?” There was a slight chuckle in his voice that told me he didn’t quite believe me.
“Yes, and I’m concerned that Colin Friendly might be headed this way.”
“And which way is that?” Again, the annoying chuckle wrapped around each word.
I gave him my address. “I’m not making this up,” I told him.
“What makes you think Colin Friendly might be heading back to Palm Beach?”
I told them about Colin’s phone call, his letter.
“Did you report these things to the police?” he asked.
“No. I guess I should have.”
“You have the letter?”
“I tore it up,” I said sheepishly.
“Can you hold on a minute?” He put me on hold before I could object.
I grabbed the remote-control unit, flipped on the TV. Immediately, Colin Friendly’s murderous face filled the screen, alternating with video footage of my sister at the courthouse. “Where are you?” I hissed at the screen. “Where the hell are you?”
The officer came back on the line. “We’re sending someone over to talk to you,” he said.
At 1 A.M., I was still sitting in front of the television, listening to tales of Colin’s horrible exploits and staring at his killer smile. The police had come and gone. And Michelle still wasn’t home.
By one-thirty, I was pacing the floor of the living room, and debating whether or not to call Larry in South Carolina. By two o’clock I was in tears, and wondering whether to check back with the police. They’d promised to patrol the neighborhood, despite the fact they were convinced Colin Friendly was heading in the opposite direction. So far, I hadn’t seen one police car drive by.
By two-thirty, when I finally heard Michelle’s key twisting in the front lock, I was such a mess that I didn’t know whether to hug her or yell at her. So I did both.
I ran toward her, arms extended, tears streaming the length of my face. “Where the hell have you been?” I was hugging her so tightly she couldn’t answer. “Do you know how late you are?”
Immediately, she began to whimper. “I’m sorry, Mom. We were at a party, and I had to wait until someone could give me a lift home.”
“You could have taken a taxi. Or called me. I would have picked you up.”
“It was so late. I thought you’d be asleep. I didn’t want to wake you.”
“Do you have any idea how frantic I’ve been?”
“I’m sorry, Mom. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s two-thirty in the morning.”
“It’ll never happen again.”
“You’re damn right it’ll never happen again.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.” A familiar whiff reached my nostrils. “Have you been smoking?”
“No,” she said immediately, backing out of my reach.
“You reek of cigarettes.”
“Lots of kids at the party were smoking.”
“But not you.”
“Not me. Honestly.”
I closed my eyes, rubbed my forehead. Was I crazy? Only minutes ago I’d been frantic that something might have happened to her; now I was upset that she might have been smoking. I was too old for this, I thought, double-locking the front door. Menopause and teenage girls—they definitely didn’t mix. “Go to bed,” I said. “We’ll deal with this in the morning.”
“I’m really sorry, Mom.”
“I know.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too. More than anything in the world.” Once again, I hugged her tightly against my breast. “Now get some sleep.”
I watched her walk away, wiping tears from sleepy eyes. Sooner or later, I thought, heading into the kitchen for a glass of ice water, they’re gonna get you.
I stared out the back window at the kaleidoscope of stars sprinkled across the black sky, finding the brightest one, making a wish. “I wish everything would go back to normal,” I said, walking back toward the living room, past the spot by the breakfast nook that, less than eight hours later, would be covered in blood.
Chapter 31
I undressed, washed my face, brushed my teeth, and crawled into bed, exhaustion coating me like a layer of heavy dust. It filled my nose and mouth, crawled inside my pores, sank beneath the layers of my skin, inhabited my insides, like a tapeworm, growing fat even as its host withers and dies.
Surprisingly, I slept very well.
There were no dreams, no disturbances, no waking up in the middle of the night, agonizing over bad choices or bad memories. I thought of nothing and no one—not Larry or Robert or Colin Friendly, not Sara or Michelle or Jo Lynn, not my mother or my father or my stepfather. No one. As soon as my head hit the pillow, my mind went totally, mercifully blank.
When I opened my eyes, it was eight o’clock the next morning, and the sun was pushing through my bedroom curtains, like a large fist. “Just another day in Paradise,” I said, swinging my legs out of bed and heading for the bathroom, fending off the intrusion of serious thought as I showered, dressed, and fiddled with my hair until it gave up and went totally limp. Only reluctantly did I leave the confines of my bedroom, stepping trepidly over the threshold into the main living space, hands crossed protectively over my chest, as if guarding my heart.
I stared at the front door. On the other side, the morning newspaper lay waiting, my sister no doubt featured prominently on the front page. I staggered, closed my eyes, turned away from the door. “Not before I’ve had my coffee,” I said, extending my arms, as if I could physically keep reality a comfortable distance away.
I’m not sure what I was thinking as I prepared the morning coffee. Probably I was trying very hard not to think, which only made things worse. Had my sister really had anything to do with Colin Friendly’s escape? How far was she prepared to go to help him? What would happen to her once Colin F
riendly was apprehended, as no doubt, sooner or later, he would be? Would the police file criminal charges against her? Would she go to jail? Or would they judge her to be unstable, force her to seek psychiatric help? Was there even the slightest possibility that something good might come of this fiasco?
I glanced toward the TV in the family room. Maybe my sister and Colin Friendly had already been apprehended. How long could they hide, after all? They weren’t the most inconspicuous of couples, and would have attracted attention even if their faces hadn’t been plastered across the front pages of newspapers for months. Jo Lynn’s weathered red Toyota was hardly the ideal choice of a getaway car. Surely, by now, someone had spotted them. “So turn on the TV and find out,” I said, but didn’t move. Whatever the news was, it wouldn’t be good.
Instead I reached for a coffee mug, selecting one with a pink flamingo etched into its side, china tail feathers serving as a handle, and Beautiful Palm Beach scribbled in black along its side. I filled the oversized mug with steaming coffee and carried it into the family room, where I lowered myself gently into the sofa and sat staring out the large expanse of floor-to-ceiling windows at the backyard. Another one of those magic days, I thought, where the blue of the sky is so intense, it almost hurts the eyes. “Wouldn’t you just love a sweater in that shade?” I heard Jo Lynn ask, and felt the mug in my hands about to slide through my fingers.
I gripped the flamingo’s tail tighter, almost snapped it off. “Relax,” I told myself. “The day has yet to begin.”
“Who are you talking to?” a voice behind me asked, and I jumped, the coffee flying out of the mug and into the air, as if it were lava erupting from a volcano. It burned my hands and slashed across the front of my yellow T-shirt like a knife, the resultant brown stain bearing an uncomfortable resemblance to dried blood. “Are you all right?” Sara asked, rushing forward, taking the mug from my hands, depositing it on the coffee table. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“I’m okay,” I told her. “I just need a wet cloth.”
“I’ll get it.” Sara was instantly in the kitchen, at the sink, back at my side, swatting at the front of my T-shirt with the wet dishrag. “I’m really sorry,” she said, tears forming in the corners of already swollen eyes.
“It’s okay, Sara. Really, I’m fine.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“I’m really sorry.”
I studied her face, still beautiful despite the swollen eyes and lack of sleep. I knew she was apologizing for more than the coffee.
“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry too.”
“I don’t know what comes over me sometimes. I just get so angry.”
I said nothing.
“I love you,” she said.
“I love you too.”
“Do you?” she asked plaintively.
“Always.”
Sara bit down on her bottom lip. It quivered beneath her teeth, broke free of her grasp. “How can you love me when I’m such an awful person?”
“You’re not an awful person, Sara.”
“Michelle never acts the way I do.”
“Michelle’s different than you are.”
“She’s so together. She knows who she is. She knows what she wants.”
“What do you want?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I’m so stupid.”
“You’re anything but stupid.”
“Then why do I do these things?”
“I don’t know,” I told her honestly. “Maybe it would help to talk to a therapist.”
“You are a therapist.”
“I’m also your mother. The two don’t seem to mix.”
Sara tried to smile, though her lips refused to hang on to it, and it slid off the side of her face. “Is there any news about Jo Lynn?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I’ve been afraid to find out.”
Sara quickly scooped up the remote-control unit from the coffee table and turned on the TV, flipping through a number of Sunday morning sermons before finding the news. I listened absently as a boyishly handsome announcer filled me in on the latest in global politics, then began a detailed report on the environment. With the flick of a button, he was gone, replaced by another boyishly handsome announcer. A major late-winter storm was about to hit sections of the Northeast, threatening to dump a possible three feet of snow on the area, he intoned, as images of high winds and swirling snow filled the screen.
And suddenly the snow disappeared into the Florida sunshine, and I found myself staring at a dilapidated old red Toyota, parked in front of a seedy-looking motel and surrounded by a virtual horde of state troopers. “My God,” I said, holding my breath, inching forward, my hands digging into the back of the sofa.
“Police report that they have located the vehicle they believe was used to aid in the escape of Colin Friendly from the Union Correctional Institution in Florida yesterday afternoon,” the announcement began. “A 1987 red Toyota, believed to belong to Jo Lynn Baker, recent bride of the convicted serial killer, was found parked in a wooded area near the family-owned and -operated Wayfarer’s Motel just outside of Jacksonville, Florida, early this morning.”
“Jacksonville?” Sara asked, echoing my thoughts. “They only got as far as Jacksonville?”
“Police are refusing to speculate whether the fugitive couple are still in the Jacksonville area,” the announcer continued, as pictures of Colin Friendly and my sister filled the screen. “They wish to remind the public that both Colin Friendly and his wife should be considered armed and extremely dangerous. If you see them, or have any information as to their whereabouts, contact the police immediately. Under no circumstances should they be approached.”
“How could she do this?” I muttered, sinking onto the arm of the sofa.
“Do you think they’ll get away?”
“No.”
“What’s going to happen to her?” Sara asked.
“I don’t know.”
“This just in,” the announcer continued, unable to disguise the excitement in his voice. He’s probably been waiting his whole life to say, “This just in,” I thought, as once again my breath constricted in my chest. “Police have confirmed that the body of a man matching Colin Friendly’s description has been found in the wooded area behind the Wayfarer’s Motel near Jacksonville.”
“My God.”
“What about Jo Lynn?” Sara asked.
“I repeat: police say they have recovered the body of a man believed to be Colin Friendly in a wooded area behind the Wayfarer’s Motel on the outskirts of Jacksonville, close to where the red Toyota belonging to his wife, the former Jo Lynn Baker, was spotted earlier this morning. Police are refusing further comment at this time, but promise to have a statement later in the day. Stay tuned for further developments as they occur. In other news …”
“He’s dead?” Sara asked. “Colin Friendly is dead?”
“I can’t believe it.”
“Do you think Jo Lynn killed him?”
“Jo Lynn couldn’t kill a bee if it were getting ready to sting her.”
“Then where is she? What’s happened to her?”
“I don’t know.” I stood up, sat back down again. “I don’t know what to do.”
“What to do about what?” Michelle asked, coming into the room, neatly dressed in denim shorts and a lime-green shirt. “What’s happening?”
“Colin Friendly’s dead and nobody knows what’s happened to Jo Lynn,” Sara told her.
“What?!”
“Maybe there’s something in the morning paper,” Sara said. “Where is it?”
“It’s still outside.”
“I’ll get it,” Sara volunteered, heading for the front door.
The phone rang. Michelle ran into the kitchen and answered it. It was Larry.
“You’ve heard?” he asked as Michelle handed me the phone.
“Just now—on the news.”
�
��Any word about Jo Lynn?”
“Nothing.”
“Okay, listen, hang tight. I’m on my way to the airport. I’m on standby for an earlier flight. I’ll be home as soon as I can. Don’t try to talk me out of it.”
“Hurry,” was all I said.
“Colin Friendly’s dead?” Michelle repeated.
“Apparently.”
“Good.” The front door opened and closed. “What’s it say in the paper?” Michelle called out.
There was no answer.
“Didn’t they deliver the paper?” I asked, rounding the corner into the breakfast nook.
What I saw next is carved deeply into my brain, like ancient hieroglyphics on the inside of a cave: my older daughter, in white sloppy shirt and boxer shorts, the newspaper dangling from her limp hand, uncombed multihued hair falling into wide, swollen eyes, tears falling into her open mouth, head thrust back, a long jagged-edged knife held across her throat.
“Oh, they delivered the paper, all right,” Colin Friendly said, smiling face pressing against Sara’s tear-stained cheek, one arm snaked around her waist, holding her firmly in place, the other around her neck, his hand pressing the knife to her jugular. “But you know how newspapers are. They never get anything right.”
For a moment, everything stopped—the humming of the refrigerator, the birds singing in the backyard, the blood running through my veins, my very breath. In the artificial silence, I registered Colin Friendly’s startling blue eyes, his wavy hair and twisted smile, the oddly conservative blue shirt and black linen pants that hung loosely on his wiry frame, the powerful hands that escaped from under cuffs a shade too long, the long slender fingers that were curled around the black handle of a long serrated knife, the jagged edge of which was pressed against my daughter’s tender flesh.
“Who’s here?” Michelle asked from the kitchen, coming into the breakfast nook, freezing momentarily when she saw the nightmarish tableau, then abruptly bolting for the sliding glass door at the back of the family room.
“Stop!” Colin Friendly called out. “Or I’ll slit her throat right here and now. Don’t think I won’t.”
Michelle came to an immediate halt.