Get Even, page 25
Margot. Olivia had worked so hard to put that night back in seventh grade out of her mind. She’d known, deep down, that Amber was leading her into something sketchy, but she hadn’t been strong enough to speak up. She wasn’t popular then, just a poor kid from a broken home, so when Amber started buddying up to her, Olivia was flattered. And too scared of having that kernel of friendship withdrawn to speak up when she realized what was happening.
Then the day freshman year when by some bizarre twist of the universe, she and Margot had been assigned to the same project in religion class. She’d wanted to say something, to apologize. But how do you say you’re sorry you ruined someone’s life? They don’t exactly make a Hallmark card for that. When Kitty had approached them all about starting a secret revenge society, Olivia saw an opportunity. Maybe she couldn’t erase what she’d done, but she could at least try to make up for it.
But that was over now. Done and finished. DGM was no more, and all Olivia wanted to do was get away from the Ledge, away from the rest of DGM, and away from the site of her total and utter humiliation.
Slight problem. Peanut was her ride home, and Peanut was still inside the club. She had four dollars in her purse and her mom was passed out on the couch at home, which left only two options: walk or take the bus.
Walking five miles home on a chilly fall night sounded so romantic, like Kate Winslet caught in the rain returning from Willoughby’s. Maybe she’d catch pneumonia too, and practically die. That would show Donté how much she loved him, how much he’d hurt her. Then he’d be sorry.
Olivia stared at her feet. The black lace peep toes were sexy as hell, exposing just a hint of her scarlet toenails. But the skin around those toenails was rapidly turning a matching shade of red, and the backs of both of her heels were raw from the friction of an unfamiliar pair of shoes. Blister city in the morning. Walking was out of the question.
With a sigh, Olivia pushed herself off the wall and picked her way down the darkened alley, the shortest distance to the bus stop. It was creepily atmospheric, like something out of a movie set, and Olivia found herself tiptoeing past ominous Dumpster bins and piled-up garbage bags. She kept her eyes on the broken pavement, a necessity if she didn’t want to trip in an asphalt pothole and break her ankle. The light from the waning moon illuminated the cracked surface, veined like the parched desert as she forced herself to put one foot in front of the other.
Just a few more feet. But as she neared the end of the alley, something caught her eye. Not a garbage bag, or discarded furniture. It looked like a shoe, lying at a strange, unnatural angle. Like it was still attached to something.
Like it was still attached to a leg.
Olivia’s brain registered this fact too late. She stumbled around the corner of the building and stopped cold.
Lying facedown in the alley was a body.
Olivia had a split second to take in the camouflage pants, the bald head splattered with blood, before she started to scream.
FIFTY
LOGAN SHIFTED HIS CAR INTO PARK AND KILLED THE ENGINE. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?”
“Yeah.” Margot stared out the passenger window at her mom’s silver Prius sitting alone in the abandoned Coffee Clash parking lot. It was well past midnight, more than two hours after her parents’ arbitrary curfew, and though she’d called to tell them about Coach Creed’s murder and how the police kept everyone in the club until they could secure the scene and ask questions, it hadn’t mattered. She wasn’t sure if they were more upset that she was out past ten o’clock or that she’d somehow gotten mixed up in a murder investigation the first time they’d allowed her to venture out alone. With any luck, she’d only be put on lockdown until she was eighteen.
But the potential parental freak-out was nothing compared to Coach Creed’s death. A teacher—and another DGM victim—had been murdered, and since he’d been Margot’s prime suspect in Ronny’s death, all of her theories were officially blown out of the water. Logan laid his hand on top of hers. “I sure didn’t picture our first date ending like this.”
“You mean you didn’t plan on a murder investigation?”
He laughed. “Yeah, I planned that just for you. Guy’s got to impress a girl.” He leaned in closer. “I was hoping for something a little less police procedural, and a little more romantic.”
Margot’s heart might technically have stopped beating momentarily as he tilted his head, easing his lips close to hers. He was going to kiss her. He wanted to kiss her. No one had ever wanted to kiss her in the history of boys kissing girls.
Logan’s lips brushed against hers, and Margot’s mind fell instantly silent. All she could focus on was the tingling sensation. Logan paused, waiting for the green light. She smiled a fraction.
That was all he needed.
Logan kissed her, and her legs went limp. He nuzzled her upper and lower lips separately, then pulled back and cupped her face with his hand. She gazed into his eyes, desperate to feel his lips on hers again. Instead, he kissed her eyelids, left then right, as if he was afraid she was going to break.
He might be a killer.
No. She’d read Christopher’s emails. She knew his voice, the way he talked, the way he acted, and it was nothing like Logan. Besides, he’d been by her side most of the night, his body pressed against her own. Best alibi ever.
Something stirred deep within her. She didn’t want soft and romantic, she wanted to feel every piece of him. She pushed herself up in the seat, hooking one leg underneath her, and launched herself into his arms.
Logan easily met her ferocious kiss with one of his own. Then his hands were in her hair, pulling the clip out so he could run his fingers through her long, tangled curls. Margot had no idea what she was doing with her hands: they seemed to have developed a mind of their own as they caressed Logan’s chest.
Nothing mattered. Not Coach Creed or Ronny DeStefano or DGM. Certainly not her parents impatiently awaiting her at home. The whole world had disappeared, leaving just Margot and Logan and the interior of his SUV, the only sounds she could hear, blood rushing through her ears and the sharp pounding of her own heart.
Without warning, Logan pulled away.
“What’s wrong?” Margot panted.
“Nothing,” Logan said, panting too. “Just realized that your parents might ban me from ever seeing you again if you’re this late for curfew.”
Margot rested her head on Logan’s shoulder. “They don’t know I’m out with you.”
“They don’t?” Logan sounded hurt.
Margot sighed. Normally she would have been terrified that she’d offended him, but for some reason, she was oddly calm.
“Baby steps,” she said. “They’re not exactly lenient.”
Logan brushed her cheek with his hand. “I don’t scare easily.”
As he kissed her, Margot swore she’d never be scared again.
Bree pulled her dad’s Lexus into the garage and sat in the driver’s seat until the door had fully closed behind her. She was exhausted, so tired the backs of her eyeballs felt like they were made of lead and were threatening to drop out of her skull into her lower intestines if she didn’t get herself into a prone position as soon as possible.
Yet as she sat there in the darkened garage, her hands shook uncontrollably. Coach Creed was dead. The killer was still on the loose. A serial killer, who apparently held all of DGM’s secrets in his or her hands. And the suspect list was a short one: Theo Baranski, Amber and Rex, Christopher Beeman, and John.
John had decided to get a ride home with Shane, and Bree hadn’t fought him on it. Ever since the show ended, things had been super awkward between them. He’d avoided her, easy enough in the chaos that ensued once the police arrived. John had been the first person they’d questioned, since Coach Creed had showed up at the Ledge like Salome screaming for John’s head on a platter. They’d sat together in the dressing room, an uncomfortable and seemingly impenetrable silence between them. Shane and Grizzly talked a mile a minute about the show, what had worked well and what hadn’t, while Devil Dan nervously air drummed so obsessively that after about an hour of nonstop movement she had wanted to rip the drumsticks from his hands and break them over her knee.
John had spent the time doing anything to avoid looking at, talking to, or interacting with Bree in any way. Normally, she would have broken the tension with some well-timed Star Wars, but tonight she’d let it go. She wasn’t interested in having a conversation with him because, shit, what would she say?
Even now, sitting in the car by herself, her stomach dropped as she remembered John leaning in to kiss her. But that wasn’t the worst. The female scream that went up when Shane said, “And, ladies, I hear he’s single.” It had felt as if someone had punched her in the kidneys with a pair of brass knuckles.
Bree forced the memory from her mind. She wasn’t going to deal with it, wasn’t going to think about it. Avoidance was a coping strategy, wasn’t it?
She was about to get out of the car, when her eye caught something in the rearview mirror. A yellow envelope in the backseat.
Kitty wasn’t even remotely tired as she traipsed down the hallway to her bedroom. Coach Creed was dead. Their main suspect. She thought back to the look on his face in the parking lot, the murderous rage in his eyes, then to the list of suspects. Did they have two murderers on their hands, or just one? And how did the anonymous envelopes factor in?
Thoughts of Barbara Ann haunted her. As much as she’d told herself over the years that she’d done the right thing, hadn’t forming DGM been an admission of her guilt? Like she was attempting to make up for her own misdeeds by helping others?
And while Kitty never thought for a second that Barbara Ann would get expelled from Bishop DuMaine, she’d believed—no, worse, she’d hoped—that Barbara Ann’s involvement in the scandal would get her suspended from the team for at least a semester, during which time Kitty would take over as team captain. . . .
Olivia was right. It had been selfish. And she’d ruined Barbara Ann’s chances at the same scholarships Kitty was vying for.
Kitty sighed as she slowly pushed open her bedroom door. Even a hundred DGM revenge missions couldn’t absolve her of that.
She was about to collapse into bed when she saw the envelope propped up against her pillows.
Olivia stared at the envelope. Another one. The sleeping pill she’d taken was already making her brain thick and fuzzy, but she wasn’t hallucinating.
What would it be this time? She wasn’t sure she could handle the contents after everything that had happened that night.
With a trembling hand, Olivia placed the envelope on her nightstand, vowing not to look at it until morning. But as she lay there, desperate for sleep to overtake her, she couldn’t shake the nagging voice in her head. A quick peek. Nothing more.
Fine. Olivia sat up in bed and opened the envelope.
Another photo. It was from a newspaper; the image of four girls seated around a library table was blurry in its grayscale, but the girls’ faces were distinct and recognizable. Margot, Kitty, Bree, and Olivia.
Beneath the photo was a line of text.
Turn yourselves in or else. You have until opening night.
Margot stared at the photo. She felt no panic, no fear. As if she’d known this was coming. She turned off the light and lay back against the pillows.
“And so it ends,” she said out loud.
FIFTY-ONE
BREE SPENT ALL OF MONDAY THINKING ABOUT THE MYSTERIOUS envelopes, squirreled away in her bedroom since classes had been canceled. They were the key to finding a murderer, she felt it in her gut; if she could figure out who sent them, she could exonerate both DGM and John.
Basically, it came down to two options: either there had been two killers—Coach Creed, who killed Ronny, and someone else, who’d killed him—or both murders had been committed by the same person, who’d just been upgraded to serial psychopath.
Personally, she leaned toward the second option. “Serial psychopath” fit in better with the anonymous envelopes, especially the last one. Turn yourselves in or else. You have until opening night.
Two killers or one, the result was the same—a murderer was still out there. And she was tired of letting him or her call the shots.
Bree returned to the list of suspects. Rex and Amber were the next logical choice after Coach Creed, and then there was Margot’s broken-record hypothesis: the killer was a member of DGM.
She had to admit Margot had a point. They had all been inside the club when Coach Creed was murdered, but how hard would it have been to lure him into the alley, slip outside, and clobber him without anyone noticing? Not exactly rocket science.
A few days ago, Bree wouldn’t have thought Olivia, Kitty, or Margot capable of such a crime, but last night’s blowout in the ladies’ room had made her think. How well did she really know them? She hadn’t known about Margot’s suicide attempt or about the photo that had precipitated it. A photo Olivia had taken. And she certainly would never have imagined Kitty would have stabbed one of her teammates in the back, even unintentionally. If she’d do it to a volleyball player, wouldn’t she do it to a member of DGM?
And then there was John. As much as Bree hated to admit it, the photo that had been left in her car was the same one John had torn from the DuMaine Dispatch last week. And he had been in her car last night, placing his Fender case in the backseat while they drove to the Ledge. Could he possibly be the one pulling the strings?
Bree forced the thought from her mind. She absolutely, positively refused to believe that John murdered anyone. Even Coach Creed.
Despite all the options, Bree’s mind kept drifting to Christopher Beeman. So many clues pointed in his direction. Could her junior high crush have returned to Menlo Park as a cold-blooded killer?
She thought of Theo Baranski. Like sixth-grade Christopher, he was short and overweight, and like Christopher, Theo was an observer, the kid who was always watching what everyone else was doing. But there was something off about their personalities, something that didn’t jibe in her mind. She couldn’t bring herself to believe that Theo and Christopher were one and the same.
Logan Blaine, however, was a different story. True, he didn’t look much like the Christopher that Bree remembered, but puberty did that to boys. Could he have returned from Archway a taller, leaner, blonder version of himself? He was starring in the school play, after all. Maybe he was a better actor than anyone realized? She wasn’t sure. She needed a second opinion.
Perhaps it was time to tell the girls about Christopher.
The thought of reliving the events of sixth grade made Bree’s stomach churn. Christopher had been her friend, in the way that most sixth graders of the opposite sex are friends, which is to say that Bree had an enormous crush on Christopher, to which he was totally and completely oblivious. She’d tried everything to get his attention, from sitting next to him at weekly mass to joining his solitary play at recess. He was a loner, picked on by the boys at school as he was a little overweight, preferred art to sports, and had, according to the ruling posse of boys led by Rex Cavanaugh, a “raging case of gay face.”
Which had become his nickname. “Hey, Gay Face!” was a common mode of getting Christopher’s attention, and in typical Catholic school fashion, no adults who caught wind of the name-calling stepped in to correct it.
So after months of hanging out with Christopher, Bree had finally told Christopher that she really, really liked him.
It hadn’t gone over so well.
Christopher had physically recoiled from the idea of romantic feelings for Bree, his face horrified. Humiliated and despondent, Bree did something that she was still so ashamed of, the memory of it made her hands go ice cold. She’d joined in the bullying.
She still remembered the look on Christopher’s face the first time Bree called him “Gay Face” in the cafeteria. As if all the hope had been stomped out of him. His eyes weren’t sad or angry, just disappointed, which was somehow worse than the other two combined. He’d shaken his head and stared at his uneaten lunch.
It was the last time Bree had seen him.
That night, Christopher had made a stunning confession to his parents. Or so the rumor went. He told them about the bullying at school, about the name-calling and the gay shaming. And then he told his parents that he thought he was bisexual, and had already experienced an “encounter” with another boy at school.
A shitstorm ensued. The Beemans pulled their son out of St. Alban’s faster than the Pope could grant absolution. Before Bree could even call him, Christopher’s cell phone number had been changed, his Facebook account deleted, and when their sixth-grade teacher finally addressed the class about what happened to Christopher, Bree learned that he’d been sent away to a military academy in Arizona. Archway.
And it was Bree’s fault.
Now two people were dead, and Christopher Beeman seemed to be the key to the killings. Would he kill again? Would a member of DGM be next?
Bree clenched her fists. She wasn’t going to let that happen.
She may have ignored 95 percent of what her father said, but one piece of advice had stuck with her: in politics, the best defense was a good offense.
It was time to fight back.
When school resumed Tuesday morning, Olivia’s first thought was that she needed to talk to Margot.
She’d looked for her in the halls between class and in the quad at lunch, but without any luck. Rehearsal after school would be her next opportunity, and with an hour to kill before her first scene run-through, Olivia headed backstage. Margot usually camped out in a dressing room, taking sign-ups for line coachings. But today, the dressing rooms had been requisitioned for costume fittings.
