Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Jules: Age Seventeen
Connecticut
Rachel and Diana wouldn’t talk to them.
They were the girls that Belle had flagged as being fellow survivors.
Jules and Sadie had approached them together and gave their whole spiel about three other girls being drugged and assaulted in the exact same way, and how they were going to catch the rapist, but neither girl was willing to talk.
“Cowards,” Belle fumed, back in Jules’s bedroom.
“You have no idea,” Shelly quietly countered.
“You’re right. I’m sorry.” Belle immediately deflated as she hugged her friend.
“So now what?” Sadie asked, and everyone turned and looked at Jules.
Like they expected him to have all the answers.
Hobbit had gotten his markers out, in hopes they’d add two more colors of checks to the board, but now he put them away.
“We... keep digging,” Jules said, and yeah it sounded as toothless when he said it aloud as it had in his head. “We don’t stop. We can’t stop. Maybe... Belle could—”
“Be bait,” she finished for him, eagerly.
“Whoa,” Jules said as Tom sharply looked at him like What the hell. “No. No! That’s not what I was gonna say. I was gonna say maybe you could approach Diana or Rachel. Separately, see if maybe they’d talk to you—”
“But we know his MO,” Belle argued. “Suspect X. There’s another party tonight. Brian said Carter’s mom isn’t home after all this weekend, and that Brian’s brother was getting a keg. I’ll go, and make a lot of noise, you know, Poor pitiful me, Tom just dumped me—”
“Okay,” Tom jumped in. “A, who’s gonna believe that? And B, seriously?!”
“Tommy,” she said.
“Isabelle.” He matched her inflection exactly.
But she was just getting started. “But don’t you see?” she enthused. “I’ll be safe. You’ll be there—hiding in the bushes. Shelly, too. Ready to jump out and save me. And Jules and Sadie and Hobbit can be at the party—”
Hobbit tapped his evidence board. “Hello. Alone.” he said.
“Okay,” Belle said. “Right. All right, okay, Sadie should be in the bushes with Tom and Shelly, but...” She gasped.
“I know! Hobbit and Jules can pretend they’re together, and it’s new and it’s hot and it’s heavy and so so sexy, and they’re not paying attention to anyone but each other, least of all drama-queen me. ”
Ohhh-kay.
Jules glanced at the younger boy, whose expression was extremely doubtful. “I’m gonna borrow Tom’s A,” Hobbit said, “and go with Who’s gonna believe that?”
Shelly and Sadie both raised their hands. Of course they did.
Belle shrugged. “You’re an actor, Hob. You make ’em believe it.” She turned to Tom. “So I’d be alone according to the chart, but not alone.”
“Where’s the party?” Tom asked flatly.
“Carter Dorbert’s. He’s got that big, open backyard? We used to play dodgeball there, back in middle school,” she added for Jules’s benefit. “There’s a fence at the property line, with really thick bushes—evergreens—in front of it. It’s perfect.”
“We’ll need a shit-ton of DEET,” Sadie muttered.
“I have those hats with mosquito netting,” Shelly whispered back.
Hobbit was not on board. “Can we maybe, please ask Jules if this is okay with him because you’re all just assuming—”
“I think,” Jules said. “It could actually work. But Belle, you do not leave that yard and we—” he turned to Hobbit “—do not drink from that keg.”
“I promise I will not,” Hobbit confirmed, hand on his heart.
“This could go pretty late,” Shelly pointed out. “We usually don’t stay long at these things, but they can go on forever.” She looked at Sadie. “We should probably tell our moms we’re sleeping over at Belle’s.”
“Is it okay if I do that, too?” Jules asked Belle.
“Of course,” she said. “You, too, Hob.”
“Mmm, probably better if I just don’t ask,” Hobbit said. “They might not notice if I don’t come home, but if I ask, in advance...? Nah.”
Jules turned back to Belle. “Can we go see where the party’s gonna be—maybe drive by? Better yet, is there something we can drop off? Bags of chips or maybe a case of soda? Bottles with screw tops, that we know will be safe to drink from?”
“Absolutely,” Belle said. She looked around at her friends. “Who’s got money?”
“Great.” Tom took out his wallet and pulled out a ten. “Now I’m paying for this, too?”
Belle kissed him as she took the bill from him, even as Jules gently took his car keys from his other hand. Tom had the bigger car that would fit all six of them.
“I’ll drive,” Jules said.
“Fine with me,” Tom said, a tad more forcefully than usual.
“Maybe... you should try pretending that I’m David...?”
Jules sat beside Hobbit on the bench of a wooden picnic table on Carter Dorbert’s patio.
He’d been gazing across the bluestone pavers, to the far edge of the patio where Belle was near the keg, dramatically telling the story of her recent “breakup” with Tom to a small group of kids, most of them girls.
That was okay, because word would spread quickly, as was the small town way.
But now he turned and looked at Hobbit, realizing, “I’m doing this badly, aren’t I?”
“Well, you do kind of look like you’re a member of a secret service detail, assigned to protect Belle. The only things missing are the black suit and an earpiece. And maybe a sidearm under your jacket.”
“Hah,” Jules said. “That’ll be the day.”
“Ah could teach yew to shoot if yew want me to, City Boy,” Hobbit said in an exaggerated southern drawl. But then he quickly backpedaled. “I mean, at targets, in a firing range, with adult supervision. That wasn’t meant to be a... a... sexual inuendo.”
“I knew what you meant,” Jules said, “but thanks so much for making it impossible to ignore the double entendre. Damn, child.”
Hobbit blushed furiously. “Oh, my God, I’m so sorry, Grampa. I just... I didn’t want you to think that I’d intentionally...” He exhaled hard and started over. “I’m stupid, not creepy. I know you don’t need lessons—”
“Kevin. Breathe. It’s okay.”
The kid had really shined himself up for this party.
He was wearing freshly-washed jeans and a button-down shirt, sleeves rolled to his elbows, in a pretty green color that accentuated the hazel of his eyes.
His hair was artfully gelled—clearly Shelly and Sadie’s handiwork. He looked freaking adorable.
Jules, however, was wearing the same clothes he’d had on earlier in the day—his slightly ragged Mighty Mouse sweatshirt and jeans that were a day if not mere hours from the laundry hamper.
When he’d picked up Hobbit he’d instantly recognized his mistake.
If this really was a date, he would’ve—should’ve—gone to at least a little effort.
“Shit,” he’d said as Hobbit got in the car. “I should’ve changed.”
“Actually.” Hobbit graciously gave him an out. “This will read right. Your costume is perfect.” He chef-kissed his fingers for emphasis. “You’re you and a senior, and well, I’m me and I’m... me. It makes sense that my character would, you know. Try harder.”
“I guess,” Jules said. “But still...”
“It’s really okay,” Hobbit said. “This is just make-believe.”
They’d purposely arrived at Carter’s before Belle, in order to make a careful circuit of both the grounds and the house itself.
There was a bathroom not far from the kitchen door which was good, in case Belle needed to use the facilities—which she surely would since she’d be drinking beer.
They’d already set up a signal. If she started to loudly sing What I Did For Love, that meant she needed to pee.
At the very first Kiss today goodbye, Jules would go into the kitchen—ahead of her, so it wouldn’t look like he was following her—leaving Hobbit to continue to watch the backyard.
Jules would hang inside until she was ready to go back out.
If she started to sing anything else, that was the signal that she was feeling a little wonky or odd—or that she simply wanted to end this charade.
Jules had been adamant about that, and Tom was in full agreement.
If Belle got spooked, for any reason, she should trust her instincts, and they would all leave.
If she impulsively started to dance, however, she’d been careful to point out, she was just being herself.
As Jules and Hobbit had done their circuit, they’d also gotten a good look at who was at this party, so far at least, since it was still pretty early.
But the early-bird crowd pretty much included everyone on the previous party-goers list from the evidence board, and then some.
Because God forbid you arrive late, after the keg was empty.
Rodney Burke and his soccer boys were parked on the big sectional sofa in Carter’s family room, and the way Rod had looked up at them as they passed through had made Jules extremely aware that Hobbit was his perennial target.
The whole leaving-Hobbit-alone-out-in-the-yard thing suddenly seemed fraught with peril.
Jules found himself wishing he’d been able to talk the others into asking Joey and Topher for help.
But Belle had been adamant. For all they knew, Joey or Topher or Joey and Topher were their perps.
Jules was dead certain they weren’t, but she was right that both had appeared on the frequent party-goers list—along with most of the rest of the upperclassmen of the school, to be fair.
Still. They fit their profile for Suspect X.
Strong enough to carry an unconscious girl into the woods, check.
Access to a motor vehicle, check. Possessing a penis, check.
Until Jules spent a little time making sure they had alibis—the crime drama lingo had been flying fast and furious at this point in the pre-party conversation at the summer house—he’d had to agree it probably was better to hold their cards tightly to their chests.
So yeah. After unintentionally making sure Rod and his idiots saw that they were in attendance, Jules and Hobbit moseyed on outside, stopping in the kitchen to grab a couple of bottles of the Dr. Pepper that Tom had bought and that they’d helped drop off earlier that afternoon.