Chapter 47
THE VERY SIGHT OF BARB standing on her porch makes Cole want to punch her in the face. But with her luck, someone will be walking by with their phone and catch the whole thing on video.
Then again, she can’t be canceled twice, can she?
“Why are you here?” Cole asks, forcing herself to unclench her fists.
“I have some questions for your dad about Figg,” Barb says, meeting her gaze as if she hadn’t recently confessed an act of betrayal so cutting it could have been a storyline on Trophy Wives. “Can I come in?”
“Of course you can come in, Barbie,” Richard Montes calls from the kitchen. “Just making some coffee. Cream and sugar, right?”
Reluctantly, Cole steps aside and allows Barb to enter.
Traitorous bitch. When it comes to human behavior, it actually takes a lot to surprise her.
But she was shocked to hell when Barb confessed that she wrote for Reality Bitch.
What a shitty thing to do to someone, let alone a person who was once your best friend. She had never known Barb to be shitty.
Then again, Cole’s always had a knack for bringing out the worst in people. It’s what makes her such a good trophy wife.
If Richard notices the renewed hostility between the two women when he brings out the coffee, he doesn’t address it.
“I’ve met a lot of sociopaths in my time, no doubt,” he says to them as they all take seats in the living room. “And I would say Sam Figg is definitely a sociopath. But that doesn’t automatically make him a bad person.”
Cole frowns at her father. “That makes no sense.”
“Sam is a bad person because he killed people,” Richard says, taking a sip of his coffee. “But he’s not a bad person because he’s a sociopath, you get me? Lots of people are sociopaths and don’t kill anyone.”
“We’ll have to agree to disagree, Mr. Montes,” Barb says politely. ”When did the two of you become cellmates?”
“Oh, not for a long while,” Richard says.
“Due to the severity of his crimes, he spent his first ten years in ad seg.” He notices Cole’s expression.
“Administrative segregation, otherwise known as solitary confinement. But Sam was no danger to anybody anymore. We got to know each other a bit when they released him into gen pop. Whatever demons he had that possessed him to kill those girls were long gone by the time we met. As I told Nicolette, we mostly played chess together. And we watched a lot of TV, including your show.”
“That’s weird,” Cole says.
“Yes, it was,” Richard says with a chuckle.
“He never recognized you as Lorelei’s friend.
I remember walking into the common room one evening, and there you were on the screen, looking all grown-up and glitzy and fighting with Cecily, the men all shouting at the TV and taking sides.
” He takes another sip from his mug. “Is Cecily single, by the way?”
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t ask me that and just throw up quietly in my mouth.”
On the other end of the sofa, Barb snorts. “So Figg never knew you were her father?”
“Never. You got to be careful in there. It’s dangerous if anyone knows you have family with money.” Richard glances at Cole. “I would have loved to brag about you, trust me.”
His casual compliment catches Cole off guard. In all her thirty-nine years, this is the first time either of her parents has ever implied they were proud of her. And if she’d had to guess which one might possibly say it one day, she’d probably have picked her mother, but only when drunk.
As if picking up on the awkwardness, Barb clears her throat. “I know you two have already talked about this, but can I ask what Figg said about that night with Lorelei?”
“Sam said when he left the Starlight, Lorelei was with you two, and she was just fine,” Richard says.
“That’s not what happened,” Cole says immediately.
“I . . . I wasn’t feeling well, so Marty—Lorelei’s stepbrother—took me and Barb to the hospital.
Last we saw Lorelei, she was still at the drive-in with Sam.
After Marty dropped us off, he said he had to head back.
He worked at the Starlight, and he needed to . . . finish cleaning up.”
She glances at Barb, who drops her gaze and becomes transfixed on an invisible piece of lint on her T-shirt.
Cole then forces herself to meet her father’s gaze.
His eyes are the same shade of brown as hers, the corners slightly turned down, which could make them look soulful or sad.
Right now, his eyes are knowing, as if he’s aware she’s not telling the truth.
“Ah,” her father says. “The stepbrother was one of Sam’s many theories.”
“That’s actually why I’m here,” Barb says. “What exactly did Figg say about Marty?”
“He said that Lorelei’s stepbrother was a strange bird, that he’d been hovering around you three all day, first at the park and then again at the drive-in,” Richard says. “Sam thought he had a weird obsession with Lorelei.”
“He did.” Barb looks over at Cole. “You remember how weird Marty was, right?”
“Yes, and I also remember that you tolerated him better than Lorelei and I ever did,” Cole says. “Which is why he kept hanging around.”
“Yes, because I wasn’t a complete asshole back then.”
“No, when it comes to assholery, you’re a late bloomer.”
“Takes one to known one—”
“Ladies,” Richard interjects. “Come on, now. Let’s all settle down—”
“Why are we talking about Marty, anyway?” Cole snaps, cutting him off. “Your friend Sam confessed. End of story. Why are we even discussing it?”
Back in the day, speaking to her father like this would have gotten her in trouble.
Richard was easily triggered by anything he perceived as disrespectful.
He would have gone from zero to sixty in one second, his hand at his belt buckle to let her know she was this close to getting whipped with it.
He’d never actually done it. But the rage in his eyes promised violence, and made her and Ray believe that one day he would use that belt on them.
He parented with fear . . . when he parented at all.
“Samuel Figg confessed,” Cole repeats. “Case closed.”
“Well, maybe not,” Richard says. “I got a call from that documentary producer early this morning. She’s finally put it together that I was one of Sam’s cellmates, and that I’m your father. She said she’s quite fascinated by how intertwined everyone is.”
Cole and Barb exchange another look.
“You spoke to Jana Jones?” Cole asks, her jaw tight. “Please tell me you didn’t give her an interview and sing Figg’s praises.”
“Hell no.” Richard frowns. “What do you take me for? We talked for a couple minutes, is all. Just long enough for her to tell me something she might not have mentioned to either of you.”
“Which is?”
Richard directs his gaze to Barb. “I’m assuming in your capacity as a journalist, you’ve seen your share of autopsy reports and crime scene photos?”
“Too many,” Barb answers.
“Did you ever see Lorelei’s?”
Barb blinks. “Of course not. We already know what happened to her, and I would never want to see her like . . . that.”
“Why are you asking her this?” Cole’s voice is sharp.
“Because Jana Jones has requested to see the autopsy on Lorelei,” Richard says. “And I don’t want you girls to be blindsided by that, in case there’s something in it that exonerates Sam and points the finger in a different direction. She said she’s just waiting for approval.”
Cole realizes she’s been holding her breath and she forces herself to exhale. “That’s appalling.”
“After Sam was arrested, they found that Polaroid of him and Lorelei at Wonderland in his car—”
“We know all this,” Cole says.
“Lorelei’s body had just turned up in the cranberry bog, and it was all over the news,” her father continues. “The deputy chief of Seaside himself drove up to Seattle to interrogate Sam.”
“Back then, that was Earl Schultz,” Barb says, and it sounds like she’s talking more to herself than to anyone else. “He eventually got promoted to chief. Worst one we ever had.”
“If you mean he was corrupt, then yeah, he was,” Richard says.
“His only agenda was to shut down any bad publicity that could hurt the park as quickly as possible. They needed Lorelei’s murder solved.
Figg told me they made him a deal, and he only confessed to Lorelei’s murder in exchange for getting life instead of the death penalty. ”
“So he says,” Barb says, sounding calm. “But there’s nobody who can corroborate this actually happened.
Earl Schultz died years ago, and I believe the ADA who made the deal with him has passed away as well.
And there’s nobody at the DA’s office or FBI task force—assuming any of them are still around after all this time—who’d ever confirm they bribed a false confession out of a serial killer. ”
“Who does Figg think killed her?” Cole says. The whole conversation is exhausting. “Marty?”
“He thinks it’s possible,” Richard says, and then pauses. “But he also said it could have been you two.”
Cole freezes, then chances a glance at Barb, whose expression remains stone-faced. “Why the hell would he say that?”
“He said you three had a weird love-hate relationship; that you were best friends who kind of hated each other,” Richard says.
“That’s bullshit,” Barb says with a sharp laugh.
“Is it?” Richard leans back in his chair. “Because that’s kind of how I remember it, too. You three were always mad each other about something.”
“Because we were teenage girls.” Cole glares at her father. “And how would you know, anyway? You were never there, and when you were, you were drunk and fighting with Mom and terrorizing me and Ray.”
A silence fell over the room.
“Samuel Figg’s a liar with zero credibility,” Barb says finally.
“Obviously he can say anything he wants because he’s got nothing to lose by saying it.
But his theory about Marty is an interesting one, I’ll give him that.
Marty is . . .” She stops, thinking. Whatever it was she was going to say, Barb seems not to want to say it in front of Richard. “Marty was a weird one.”
“And here I thought you two were friends.” Cole can’t resist taking a jab. “Guess you were two-faced then and now.”
Barb turns toward her. “You’re calling me two-faced? You, the trophy wife who’d stab any of her friends in the back for more airtime?”
“It’s television, Barb. Maybe if you understood the difference between what’s real and not real, you’d actually have a life.”
“Maybe if you weren’t such a self-absorbed bitch, you wouldn’t be the most hated reality star in television.”
“At least I’ve never pretended to like someone I didn’t,” Cole says. “I might have been a bitch when we were kids, but you always knew where you stood with me, Barb. I wasn’t standing around seething with secret resentment that then spills out onto some sleezy gossip site for clicks years later.”
“No, you ran away, leaving me here to deal with what we did to Lorelei—” Barb says, then stops, her face turning red. She knows she said too much.
Frozen, the two women stare at each other. In the abrupt silence, Barb’s words hang in the air like a cloud threatening rain. Seconds pass with nobody saying anything, and then the silence is finally broken when Richard clears his throat.
“Listen to me, girls,” he says quietly. “Whatever happened back then with your friend, you can’t change it now, no matter how much you might wish you could.
But you were just kids, and the person serving time for it deserves to be behind bars.
But Barbie’s right. Figg’s got nothing to lose now by floating an alternate theory to an overeager young producer on a mission to stir up old shit. ”
Cole exhales, and Barb does the same.
Richard leans forward. “My advice to you both, not that you asked for it, would be to take a good look at Lorelei’s autopsy report. Whatever Jana Jones is going to find, you want to make sure you find it first.”