Chapter Thirteen #2
“Maybe she wanted to confess something, then had a change of heart,” Summer says, then takes another bite.
“It doesn’t feel like that to me.”
“What does it feel like to you?” Kat says, her voice sharp. “Because if Heather isn’t responsible for whoever was found in that wall, then who is responsible?”
Summer takes a sip of tea. “She’s got a point.”
“Are you saying it could be one of us?” Kat says, straightening her shoulders.
“I’m not saying anything.”
Summer looks between us.
Kat narrows her eyes. “Feels like you are.”
“Kat, stop,” Summer says. She looks at me. “So, do we . . . are we . . . should we contact our lawyers?”
“Oh my God, Summer,” Kat says. “No.”
Now it’s my turn to look between them, my reporter brain racing. I may need to talk to them separately next time. And Summer is not crazy for thinking that. Soon enough we’ll all be talking to detectives, both in Miami and in Natchitoches. A lawyer may not be the worst idea.
We sit for a few seconds in silence; then I say, “On another note, have either of your parents mentioned someone possibly hanging around their houses, watching them?”
Kat shakes her head.
Summer’s brow crinkles. “No. Why?”
“Just curious.”
I detect movement in the corner of the room, near the kitchen. I glance in that direction, and Martha Lee is standing in the doorway, watching our table.
“Are you going to work on this story?” Summer says.
I look back to them. “I’m not sure,” I say. When I glance toward the kitchen again, Martha is gone.
“No way you can work on it,” Kat says. “Right? I mean. You could be a suspect.”
Summer chokes on her next sip.
“Excuse me?” I say.
“I’m just kidding,” Kat says. “Lighten up.”
It’s like we’ve picked back up where we left off. Kat throwing bombs, then acting surprised when they go off.
“Well, I think whatever we talk about should be off the record,” Summer says.
“Agreed,” Kat says, looking at me. “I’d think you of all people would agree.”
Suddenly the giggles from the back room are too loud. And our waitress, who has stopped to refill my water, too attentive.
“We’re good,” I say to our server in a clipped voice as she is mid-pour. She fumbles, spills a little, apologizes, and walks away.
“What do you mean by that?” I say to Kat.
“You know what I mean. You were the one yelling first about seeing Johnny in the woods that night.”
“I don’t remember it that way.” My palms are starting to sweat, so I wipe them on my pants under the table.
“Yeah, you probably don’t remember,” Kat says. “You were so wasted you passed out on top of the picnic table.”
We’d been in our usual spot earlier that night, in the back of the school.
Kat lying flat on the table, Summer and I lying flat on the benches on either side, below her.
Kat and I passing a joint between us and singing “Goody Two Shoes” to Summer for not joining us.
An empty bottle of Taaka vodka resting on Kat’s flat stomach.
We were talking about how messed up it was we had to spend Thanksgiving at the school.
Then, at some point, I was alone. And then I saw Heather running for the woods, her red coat standing out against the dark woods. Then I saw Johnny.
“We were all on the picnic table,” I say to them.
“Yeah,” Kat says.
“But you two left me out there alone at one point,” I say.
“I don’t think so,” Kat says. “And look, Johnny was always creeping around in those woods. You were just the only one who saw him that night.”
Summer is looking between us like she’s watching a tennis match.
I turn to her. “Is that right?”
Summer nods.
Now my hands aren’t the only things sweating.
I want to take off my jacket and fan my face, but I don’t want to show my discomfort.
I need to stay composed. Stay calm, I tell myself, but my central nervous system is blatantly ignoring me and sending signals to my brain that I’m in danger.
I work to keep my foot from tapping again.
“That place was always cursed,” Summer says softly, not looking up.
“There were lots of unfortunate incidents there,” Kat says.
“Unfortunate incidents?” I say. “Seriously? Was Halloween an unfortunate incident?”
“I don’t like conflict,” Summer says.
“This isn’t conflict, Summer,” Kat says. “This is grown-ass women talking. And Halloween was an accident. Lisbeth Warrington was the most accident-prone student at Poison Wood.”
“She wasn’t the only one up in that tree,” Summer says. “Heather was up there with her. When it happened.”
“Summer,” I say.
“What? It’s true.”
“Because Kat dared Heather to go up,” I say. “A junior prank to scare the seniors trying to scare the freshman. It was so messed up.”
“No, I didn’t,” Kat says to me. “You’re the one who dared her.”
“Absolutely not,” I say.
“Whatever. She surprised us,” Kat says. “And Lisbeth slipped.” She pauses, then lowers her chin and winks. “Maybe.”
Summer shrugs. “Or she jumped. Or . . . Heather pushed her.”
“Stop,” I say. I may not remember other nights at Poison Wood, but that one is still crystal clear. “Heather had nothing to do with it. She was trying to help Lisbeth. We even went to the hospital to see her.”
Kat’s mouth falls open. “What? Why did you go see Lisbeth?”
Heather, Lisbeth, and I had formed a study group, and even though I wasn’t as close with Lisbeth, Heather had begged me to go to the hospital with her.
I’d agreed to go, but it wasn’t until I saw Lisbeth in her hospital room that I realized what I’d agreed to.
She was hooked up to so many machines, I knew she would die.
Heather went in and held her hand, but I stayed out in the hall, watching through a crack in the door.
Sometimes I think back to that moment and wonder if that’s what first put me on the path to wanting to be a reporter, where I could uncover the truth and prove it.
The rumors at Poison Wood had already started by then.
Younger girls whispering that Lisbeth had been pushed and that I’d egged it on by daring Heather.
Crowley was trying to control the rumors, but as usual, he was no match for the girls.
Some even blamed him, saying he should have put a stop to the Halloween tradition when he became headmaster.
“They say only guilty people return to the scene of a crime,” Summer says, sitting back in her chair.
“The hospital wasn’t a crime scene,” I say in a short tone.
“Y’all weren’t even friends,” Kat says. “And Heather hated Lisbeth.”
“No, she didn’t,” I say.
Kat and Summer exchange a look, and Summer says, “She kind of hated her. Because of that boy they both dated.”
“Jeremy something,” Kat says. “The one with the glass eye. Wasn’t his dad a billionaire or something?”
“Robicheaux,” Summer says, batting her eyelashes.
“Oh right,” Kat says to her. “He’s on your trail of tears too. Him and his eyeball.”
“Hey,” Summer says. “He gave that to me. With a note that said I only have eye for you.”
Kat and Summer start laughing so hard other people around us turn to stare. As I watch them, an uncomfortable feeling tries to worm its way back in. A need to do anything to be included, anything to get Kat’s attention back on me. I choke it down with a sip of my water.
“Whatever happened to him?” Summer directs the question at Kat.
“He and that one boyfriend you called The Idiot are probably somewhere together still crying,” she says.
I’d forgotten about The Idiot. We never got to meet him. Every time we snuck out to see the other boys at St. Matthews, The Idiot was never with them. Summer kept him a secret.
“Yeah, well, you slept with that Jeremy guy,” Summer says to Kat.
“No, I didn’t,” Kat says. “I absolutely did not.”
Kat’s tone is so matter of fact it immediately triggers that instinctual switch inside me that tells me when I’m talking to a liar.
It’s the switch I listened to when I broke the story in Kansas City.
The multihomicide and the minister I ultimately exposed as the killer.
It’s the instinct I ignored in Broken Bayou when I thought I could interview a killer on my own, my tunnel vision getting in the way.
I’m not going to ignore it again. And then Kat gives me a gift.
She scratches her jaw with her left hand and blinks rapidly.
I’m always looking for clusters of microexpressions when someone is speaking to me.
Nonverbal communication is more important to me than anything that comes out of people’s mouths.
Our bodies like the truth, and when our words don’t deliver it, they react accordingly.
Just like the minister in Kansas City who told me over and over he didn’t do it and the whole time he was talking, he was nodding his head up and down, yes.
I’m starting to regret having this conversation here. It’s too loud and too crowded and the heat way too fucking high.
“Did you go to Lisbeth’s funeral?” Summer says.
I shake my head. I couldn’t do it. The only other funeral I’d been to was my mother’s, and there was no way I was going to sit and look at a coffin and smell the overly sweet cologne and watch everyone cry.
“You know she didn’t go,” Kat says. “We all got drunk together that day.”
“So how long will you be in town?” I say, diverting attention away from the topic of Lisbeth.
“Probably not too long,” Kat says. “We’re staying close by in case you want to meet up again.”
“The sooner we get out of here, the better,” Summer says under her breath.
Our server returns with three dessert plates and sets one in front of each of us. “Chantilly cake,” she says. “Compliments of the chef.”
Summer smiles. “I love Chantilly cake.”
I look down at my piece, and as I slice my fork through the whipped icing and berries, it hits a note folded on the plate.
Kat and Summer are talking to one another as I slide it beneath the table and open it. A phone number is on it, and after the number are three words: Follow the money.