Chapter 29
I know you’re involved.
Normally I would never click a link from someone I don’t know, but this time I have no choice. The moment I tap the screen, a website pops open and my throat constricts as the page loads, the spinning circle taunting me. An article from the Doomwood Falls Daily materializes.
The headline in fat, bold letters lets me know I’m absolutely not sleeping tonight:
BODY RECOVERED AT DOOMWOOD FALLS — FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED
Below those words a video auto-plays of police at the base of the waterfall.
Yellow caution tape flutters in the foreground as a reporter talks into a microphone, gesturing back at the waterfall behind her.
Flashlights cut through the inky background, which means the body must have been found last night.
Detective Yankovic would have asked me about it if I was a suspect, which he didn’t. Yet.
The anchor’s voice gives way to rushing water. The camera wobbles and then steadies, focusing on the falls in the background as white water tears itself apart over gray rock. The reporter steps back into frame, her jacket zipped up to her chin and makeup impossibly perfect for the late hour.
“Good evening,” she says, solemn as a church bell. “Authorities confirmed this evening that the body of an adult woman was recovered earlier today from Doomwood Falls. Police have identified the victim’s identity as Janet Vick.”
The name Janet Vick sounds familiar, but I can’t place where or why.
This woman is obviously connected to me, since her killer put Ivory’s necklace on her.
Or maybe her death has nothing to do with me and I stupidly bumbled my way into it anyway.
I lean closer, the proximity to my phone sharpening the reality of this.
The camera pans to the falls again and the spray catches the floodlights.
“We’re here at the river where she was found speaking with a witness,” the reporter continues, turning to a man standing just off-frame. Only part of him is visible with a baseball cap pulled low and red curls poking out from the brim. His hands are jammed into the pockets of a flannel jacket.
“Sir, can you tell us how you came across the body this evening?” the reporter asks matter-of-factly.
The man shifts his weight. He doesn’t look at the camera but stares somewhere over the reporter’s shoulder. “I was hiking and noticed something down by the rocks. Near the base of the falls. At first I thought it was trash. You know, a jacket or a bag. Stuff washes up there.”
My thumb hovers over the volume button. I turn it up.
“What made you realize it wasn’t?” The reporter verbally nudges him for more delicious details to feed the masses.
He clears his throat. “The color. And, uh, the way it didn’t move right. With the water. So I went closer. I shouldn’t have, probably.” He laughs once. “That’s when I saw hair.”
“Did you touch anything?”
“No,” he says quickly. “No. I backed up and called 9-1-1 and waited for the EMTs to show up.” He rubs his hands together, like he can scrub the memory off. “I didn’t see… I mean, I didn’t see any injuries. I wasn’t looking for that.”
The reporter nods respectfully. “Police have indicated the death is being investigated as suspicious,” she says, turning back to the camera. “If anyone has information—”
I mute it. The sound of the falls drops out, replaced by the hum of my refrigerator and my own breathing. Suspicious is just a placeholder for a deeper investigation that I fear will lead to me. The man shifts closer to the reporter, his face finally turning to the camera, and I scream.
“What the fu—!”
“Gianna Shari Catalano!” Mamma rebukes me from the kitchen doorway. “No cussing!” I wonder how much she’s heard so far today.
“What’s going on?” Luca chimes in, because there is no privacy in my home anymore. He’s scooping mouthfuls of cereal from a bowl and I realize it’s been days since I’ve eaten anything of substance.
I slam my phone screen-down onto the table and think I hear a crack. “Nothing is going on.”
Mamma raises an eyebrow. “It sure doesn’t sound like nothing.”
“Can you please just give me space?” I wave a hand to dismiss them both.
I can’t let them find out about what happened at the waterfall. Mamma would order me to go to the police, and I don’t trust my brother not to hold it over me how stupid I am for putting my DNA all over a murder victim.
Luca obliges and wanders upstairs slurping milk from his cereal bowl, but Mamma is more stubborn than me, Luca, and Zoomie combined. “I’m not giving you space until you tell me what’s going on. Are you in some kind of trouble?”
It occurs to me that if my DNA does turn up on Janet Vick’s body, I need to get ahead of it. Maybe telling Mamma is the only way out. With all of the secrets I’ve been hiding for so long, this is one I can’t keep in anymore.
“Yes, if you count falling behind on bills, losing my business, and a becoming the suspect in a murder investigation. You know, the usual trouble.”
The gap of skin between her gray eyebrows furrows. “What are you talking about?”
I suddenly rethink telling her. I don’t want to drag my mother into the hole I keep digging deeper and deeper. There’s no point burying us both. “Don’t worry about it.”
I snatch the phone up and hold it out of her sight, which of course she finds suspicious.
But she keeps staring at me, as mothers seem to have that sixth sense when their children are in distress.
During my teen rebellion years she put this unnerving skill to use, looking at me until my secrets spilled out on their own.
I grip the phone tighter so it doesn’t leap from my hand and confess.
“Why did you just say murder investigation?” she asks quietly. “Did you hear something about Ivory?”
“No, it’s not about her.”
“Then what, Shari? I’m your mother. You can trust me.”
She’s right, I can. And Luca too, who proved himself trustworthy to the point of doing something highly illegal for me right after I got out of prison. Although we never spoke of it after that day, he proved himself more than just a brother. He became my confidante.
“I’m afraid you’re going to never speak to me again once I tell you, Mamma, like how you stopped talking to me after my embezzlement conviction.”
My mother pulls me into a hug, and her chest heaves. Her tears mix with mine as she apologizes over and over. “I’m so sorry, bambina. That was cruel of me. Please forgive me.”
The truth pulses in my mind, a flashing warning sign that I can’t die with this secret.
I can’t be the only one who knows that I sank Janet Vick’s body under the water.
Did I kill her? No, of course not. I never saw the woman in my life.
But my hands were all over her. I swallow, and it tastes like guilt.
“There’s something I need to tell you. But I don’t want you to say anything until I’m finished.”
“I promise I won’t,” she says, drawing an invisible cross over herself from her forehead to her chin, then from shoulder to shoulder.
“Last night a woman’s body was found—it wasn’t Ivory—but I may have accidentally left my DNA on her after she was already dead and covered up the murder.”
Mamma doesn’t reply for a moment. I can’t tell if she understands what I’m saying at first, until she yells, “What in the heavens, Shari? Even your brother wouldn’t do something so… irresponsible!”
Irresponsible is Mamma’s version of a cuss word, and apparently I’m officially worse than Luca, who sets the bar pretty low. She sucks in a calming breath, sits down on the sofa, and pats the cushion next to me. “Sit, dear.”
I obey.
“Let’s figure it out together. First, did you know the woman?”
I shake my head. “No, I have no clue who she is.” But I do have an idea of how she might be connected to everything, and it could be why she’s dead.
“You’re going to need to explain the whole DNA situation to me. Why on earth were you anywhere near a dead woman?”
“I saw Ivory’s necklace on her and thought it was her. By the time I realized it wasn’t Ivory, I had already removed the necklace. I was trying to protect my friend, because if the police saw her necklace on that dead woman, they would have blamed her for the murder.”
Mamma stands up and heads to the kitchen. I follow her, already predicting exactly where she’s going. “We need biscotti for this conversation.” She hands me a cookie and I nibble a bite. I’m not hungry, but something about food is comforting.
“Anyway, I think she was Fred’s mistress. And I bet he killed her and planted Ivory’s necklace on her to frame Ivory so that the cops will think she murdered the mistress and ran.”
“So a little of your DNA may or may not be on her body. There’s no motive for you to kill her, right?”
“It gets worse, Mamma. Someone saw me tampering with the body, and this person is dead set on destroying my life…”
I turn my phone screen toward Mamma, replaying the news video for her. At the end of it, the interviewee turns to the screen and it’s Macho Marshall.