Dawn licked her lips. “Does it matter?”
“Braden,” Ellie breathed, looking sick.
“Mindy was an opportunistic bottom-feeder,” Dawn said, slitting her eyes. “She’d been draining me for years—forty bucks for a soccer uniform here, seventy dollars for Braden’s college fund there—ever since Evangeline’s fall. She knew I wasn’t in my room that night like I’d told the police. The morning after, she came in to change the bed and mentioned, oh so innocently, that she’d come by to bring me fresh towels the night before, that the dryer had been broken, which was why she was doing it so late, but I hadn’t been there. She didn’t ask where I’d been, but the question danced between us. I froze, feeling sick, but I felt relieved, too. It was over. But then, a lie popped into my head and I heard myself telling her I’d gone out to meet a woman, a married woman, and she smiled this tiny smile. She didn’t blackmail me outright—she just started talking about an upcoming date and how she wished she could afford a new dress. I asked if I could contribute, mumbled something about wanting her to feel special for her special date, and that was that.”
“She probably wanted more this time, didn’t she?” Laurel said, conscious of the way they’d all stilled as Dawn recounted her story. “Since she’d been let go, she needed more money.”
“You always have to be right, Laurel, don’t you?” Dawn said, the words saturated with resentment. “No matter who it hurts. I pity anyone unfortunate enough to end up in your courtroom.” Without warning, she picked up one of the heavy chairs and slung it toward Laurel.
Laurel tried to sidestep it, but it crunched into her shins and she fell over it, bolts of pain lighting up her legs. Before Geneva or Ellie could come around the table, Dawn ran out of the room. Disentangling herself from the chair, Laurel went after her, hobbling at first but picking up speed as the pain in her legs receded.
Boone’s voice said “What the hell?” as Laurel reached the foyer. Looking pissed off, he was backed against the doorframe as if Dawn had bumped past him. He was staring after her as she ran flat-out for the yellow Mustang.
“Stop her,” Laurel gasped. “She killed Mindy.”
Boone didn’t hesitate. He leaped down the stairs and sprinted toward Dawn, running with a power and athleticism that would have been impressive even if he’d been fifteen years younger. Laurel followed him, dimly aware of footsteps behind her. Dawn skidded to a halt in a swirl of hair and desperation beside the car, wrenched the door open, and gunned the engine before she pulled her left leg inside. The Mustang jumped forward with the door still open. Boone lunged for it, but he missed and almost fell as the powerful car accelerated in a blast of gravel. It caromed down the driveway, fishtailing on the first curve.
Boone was on his radio immediately, vectoring patrol cars toward the Mustang and ordering a roadblock. Ellie came to a panting halt beside Laurel. “Where does she think she’s going?” she asked.
Laurel shook her head. She couldn’t imagine that Dawn had a plan or a destination. She was running on instinct, running to nowhere.
Boone came up to them, tucking in a shirt tail that had pulled loose. “There’s nowhere for her to go. We’ll—”
Before he could finish the sentence, there came a screeching of brakes that made Laurel’s teeth ache and the gut-wrenching kee-scrunch of a high speed crash, of compacted steel and shattered glass, and a scream that might have been human or might have been the car’s roof shearing off. A plume of smoke rose from the direction of the stone pillars.
Thirty-Two
The next morning, Laurel folded the last T-shirt and laid it in her suitcase. Her eyes felt gritty, as if she hadn’t slept for weeks. They’d sat vigil at the hospital, waiting for the surgeon to emerge from the operating room and tell them Dawn would be okay. They’d all been there—Ellie and Scott, fingers linked and talking softly; Geneva and Geonwoo, sitting with shoulders touching, jiggling tiny Lila when she got fussy; a variety of cops and deputies and hospital personnel rotating in and out. Someone had three pizzas delivered, and it would almost have felt cozy if their reason for being there hadn’t hung over them like a damp mohair blanket, heavy and itchy.
Near sunset, Laurel had made her way to a vending machine down the hall. While she waited for it to spit out the suspicious liquid it called “coffee,” she leaned her head against the machine’s cool metal front. A hand landed on her shoulder, and she turned to find Geneva and Ellie standing behind her. Geneva’s hand squeezed her shoulder.
“Buy you a coffee?” Laurel asked with a strained smile.
“I need sugar.” Ellie fed coins into a candy machine and retrieved the PayDay bar that plonked into the tray.
“I’m coffeed out,” Geneva said, shaking her head. “Never thought I’d say that after nine caffeineless months.”
Without talking about it, they settled at the single round melamine table pushed into a corner beneath a window. Its surface was ringed with coffee and soda stains, and Ellie pulled a wipe from her purse to clean it off. The vending machines’ humming was soothing. The window looked down on a parking lot and Laurel watched as a man parked haphazardly, ran around his car to the passenger seat, and helped his very pregnant wife out of the car. Life and death, she thought. Life and death every day in a hospital. What an emotional roller-coaster. How did doctors and nurses do it?
“Do you think she’ll make it?” Ellie asked.
No one answered her for a long minute, and then Geneva said, “If she wants to, maybe.”
They pondered that in silence, and Laurel wondered if Dawn had crashed the car on purpose or if she’d merely lost control and slammed into the stone pillars by accident in her rush to escape. They might never know. “She’ll spend the rest of her life in prison if she does,” she pointed out.
Ellie twisted her PayDay wrapper, making a crinkling sound. Without meeting their eyes, she asked, “If you find out that a friend wasn’t really a friend, does that cancel out all the good times you had together when you thought she was a friend?” She sounded close to tears.
Geneva put a hand over Ellie’s hand and stilled it. “Dawn was our friend—”
“Don’t say she is our friend,” Ellie said swiftly, withdrawing her hand.
“I wasn’t going to. But she was our friend, a true friend, for many years. She lost her way.”
Laurel wondered, as she had fifty times that day, if Dawn would have tried to kill her in the bathroom if Geneva hadn’t come by. Thinking about it filled her chest cavity with concrete and she found it hard to breathe. “She crippled Evangeline and murdered Mindy,” she said drily, trying to dispel the feeling. “That’s a lot of lost.”
“You could almost say she killed Evangeline, too,” Ellie said.
“However you want to phrase it,” Geneva persevered, “whatever she did ten years ago and this week, it doesn’t ‘cancel out’ the times we shared in college, or mean she was faking her friendship. I’ll never forget the time she missed her plane to pick me up after I sneaked out the kitchen door of L’Escargot to escape a date who turned out to be a total psychopath. She was supposed to be flying to New York for that gallery internship but when I called, she came to get me. That’s the last time I ever went anywhere without cab money, I’ll tell you.”
“I remember that guy,” Ellie murmured. “Ronald.”
“Roald,” Geneva corrected, giving the word a snooty twist.
“Will you visit her in prison?” Laurel asked baldly, looking from Geneva to Ellie.
After a moment, they both shook their heads. “Me neither,” she said. “At least, I don’t think I will.”
“I’ll pray for her and for the grace to forgive her,” Geneva said. “Mama Gran would want me to do that.”
“I won’t forgive her.” Ellie’s face set mulishly. Tears made her eyes shiny. “What she did ten years ago brought us to today. She’s responsible, directly or indirectl
y, for two deaths, not to mention she split us apart for ten years.” She reached out to each of them and took their hands in hers. “Can we be friends again? I mean real friends? Call on the phone friends, go to visit friends, bitch about husbands and kids and celebrate losing five pounds or getting a new job friends? I’ve missed you guys so much.”
Laurel had been thinking the same thing, how much she’d missed these women. It would be hard—they didn’t live in the same town and they were at different life points, with Ellie saying goodbye to her kids and Geneva embarking on raising her first baby. And me about to try to have one, and be a single mom and a judge. But they were smart and determined and they had FaceTime. “Yes, we can,” she said definitively.
“Chicago’s only a bit more than an hour from Denver by air,” Geneva put in. She smiled and then winced, cupping a hand over her breast. “My boobs hurt—it’s time to feed Lila.”
They returned to the waiting room to be greeted by Lila’s fretful mewling and the sight of a scrubs-garbed woman talking to the men. Geonwoo, taller than the others, looked over their heads as the women entered. He shook his head slowly from side to side.
Laurel closed her suitcase and zipped it decisively. Swinging it off the bed, she left the room. The hall was quiet as she strode toward the entryway. Almost eerily so. No construction workers today, and the cops had finished their crime scene analysis, leaving strands of yellow and black tape to rope off the elevator shaft. She was the last one. Ellie and Scott had left before dawn to catch a flight out of Charlotte, and Geneva and her family were returning to Chicago in a rental car, not wanting to expose two-day-old Lila to the hazards of airline travel and being cooped up with a couple hundred coughing, sneezing, possibly infectious people. “I’m turning into Ellie,” Geneva had laughed as she hugged Laurel goodbye. She held her at arm’s length and gave her a little shake. “Go be the thoughtful, fair, and compassionate person you are on that judge’s bench. You’re going to be a damn fine judge.”
“I’m going to try,” Laurel had said with a smile. “It feels like what I’m meant to do.” She was eager now to take the oath and tackle her new duties. She might not always get it right, but she would try her damnedest. Same with being a mom.
She resisted the urge to go from room to room and say goodbye to Cygne. It was sentimental and, truth be told, she wasn’t sure she was entirely sorry to be leaving the castle and its memories behind. She glanced up the curving staircase as she reached the foyer and was captivated by a spiral of dust motes dancing in the sunshine streaming through the arched windows. A clank from the direction of the kitchen broke the moment; the new manager, sent by the corporation to oversee construction, as he’d officiously told them last night, must be fighting with the espresso machine. No need to let him know she was leaving.
Pulling open the heavy door, Laurel stopped on the threshold, startled by the sight of Judah Boone leaning back against his patrol car, arms crossed over his chest. A sheen of sweat made his dark brow shine, and his uniform was as rumpled as always. The gray threaded through his hair gleamed brightly under the sun’s glare. Her heart beat a little faster at the sight of him and she couldn’t hold back a smile, although she asked, “Come to follow me to the county line to make sure I’m permanently out of your hair?”
Boone straightened and came to her, taking the suitcase without asking. His brown eyes searched her face. Apparently satisfied with what he saw there, he gave a shallow nod. “No.” They walked slowly toward her rental car, parked beside what must be the new manager’s SUV. “I came to see you off.”
“To say goodbye?” She made a visor of her hand to shade her eyes and looked up at him.
“I hope not.”
She sucked in a tiny breath and looked a question at him.
“I’ve got a brother in Aspen,” he said nonchalantly. “I visit him on occasion.”
“Aspen? La-di-da.” She tried to keep the moment light, although her heart thudded against her rib cage.
He grinned. “Yeah, he’s the filthy-rich venture capitalist and I’m the cop. Mom swears she loves us both the same, but Micah made a lot of points when he bought her a Mercedes for her seventieth birthday.” He paused, tugging at his lower lip. “Anyway, it’s been too long since I’ve been out there. I’m about due for a visit.”
His gaze swept her face and she sensed an unusual uncertainty in him. His vulnerability made her swallow hard. “If you come through Denver,” she said, “you should call me. I suspect you can find the number,” she added with a hint of asperity.
“If I put my mind to it.” He shoved her suitcase onto the back seat and then opened the driver’s door. “Drive safely.”
She touched his upper arm, feeling his solid biceps tense under her fingers. “I’ll look forward to seeing you,” she said with simple sincerity. She hesitated, somehow feeling awkward and uncertain and happy and hopeful all at the same time, conscious of the warmth and scent of butterscotch emanating from him. Giving in to impulse, she stood on tiptoe and pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth. His skin was firm and the hint of stubble tickled her lips. She pulled away and scanned his face. “See you soon?”
“Micah smokes a twenty-five-pound turkey every year for Thanksgiving, and his wife Cassie makes the best sweet potato casserole you ever tasted,” he said.
With a smile of acknowledgment, Laurel slid into the car. Boone closed the door with a solid thunk. As she started the engine, he slapped the trunk twice and stepped back. She pulled away, driving slowly so the car wouldn’t spit gravel at him. On the driveway, she pressed on the accelerator and started into the first curve, her eyes on the rearview mirror. Boone was heading toward his car, Cygne golden and substantial and impervious behind him. A shadow moved behind a fifth-floor window, catching Laurel’s eye and making her foot hesitate over the brake pedal. Has to be a trick of the light. She blinked twice and looked again. Now the windows were opaqued by the light’s angle, with nothing visible behind them. Of course not.
She guided the car through the curve, picking up speed. There was a flash of blue lake after the second bend, the silhouette of chimneys behind a scrim of red leaves as she curved to the right, and then she lost sight of the castle.
the end
Acknowledgments
I owe a huge thank-you to all the folks at Midnight Ink who have helped to make That Last Weekend the novel it is, especially Terri Bischoff and Sandy Sullivan for their editing efforts, Bob Gaul for the spiffy interior design, Ellen Lawson for the stunning cover, Katie Mickschl for her outreach activities, and everyone else who works behind the scenes.
I am also supremely grateful for my friends who have taught me so much about myself and friendship through the years. This book, which is as much about friendship as it is about obsession and murder, would not have been possible without Amy, Cindy, Jill, Katie, Linda, Nancy, Patrick, Sam, Steve, Susan, and so many more. You enrich my life greatly. (Family members: you’re not listed here, but you’re all friends as well as kin. I love you!) As Hubert H. Humphrey puts it, “The greatest gift of life is friendship, and I have received it.”
Photo by bluefoxphotography.com
About the Author
Laura DiSilverio is the national bestselling and award-winning author of twenty mystery and suspense novels and a YA dystopian trilogy. Her 2015 standalone, The Reckoning Stones, won the Colorado Book Award for Mystery, and Library Journal named her most recent title, Close Call, one of the Top Five mysteries of 2016. Her books have received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Booklist, and Kirkus. She is a former Air Force intelligence officer and past President of Sisters in Crime. She can be found online at www.LauraDiSilverio.com.
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