We Lie Here: A Thriller, page 18
Randy rolls his eyes. “Rob’s no idiot. Barbie left a few times, and he was okay. Sometimes she took Dom cuz she was pretty young. When she didn’t, Rob took care of both you girls like a champ.” He points his fork at me. “Braided your hair, dropped you at school, helped you with your science fair project.”
Elise covers her mouth with her hand. “You do know about that, right?” she asks me.
Randy sighs. “For Pete’s sake, El. She was there, for crying out loud.”
I nod, remembering that one time Mom did take Dominique and leave Dad and me. The memory comes alive and beats around my head like a stunned sparrow.
“Do you know where she went?” I ask.
Elise finishes chewing frittata, then dabs her mouth with a napkin. “To her quiet place.”
Her quiet place? That has to be the cabin.
“Of course, Rob kept calling her and begging her to come back home.” Elise wags her finger at Randy. “Do not rewrite history. Case of the Missing Dick, that’s what I’m sayin’.”
“Can we not?” Kayla says. “Yara’s not here for gossip about her parents’ marriage.”
“But I thought you wanted us to share memories and all that?” Elise holds my eyes as she bites into the french toast. Bananas tumble all over her tank top.
“I do,” I say, nodding enthusiastically.
She waves her hand. “And Barbie left because of stress. I mean, golly. She was trying to raise two girls in this place and have a career. I mean, getting pregnant with Dominique had caught both her and Rob off guard, you know? Especially since he was totally about to check out. Who wouldn’t flip?” She makes a finger gun, aims it at her temple, pulls the trigger. “Country road, take me home. Ha!”
Randy chuckles. “That Barbie, always quick on her toes. She beat him to the punch.”
A surprise pregnancy? Dad had been planning to leave us? Mom left before he did? What the . . . what?
“Your mom left,” Randy says to Kayla.
“Huh?” Kayla screeches.
“For an hour,” Elise says. “This place was just squeezing all the juice outta me. But then I missed my Kiki-boo and flew back like the Flash. And your daddy’s penis was right where I left it. Ha!” She squeezes Kayla’s cheeks, leaving glazed banana on my friend’s face. “Let’s all sit here twenty years from now, okay? I can’t wait to hear how many times either of you thought of walking away and leaving it all behind.”
“Barbie came back, too,” Randy says, “and that’s the best part of the story. And she and Rob lived happily ever after.” He snags more tofu nuggets from the plate.
“How long was my mother gone?” I ask.
Elise’s eyes roam the ceiling as she thinks. “About two weeks.”
The spaces between my ears click and thud. Two weeks. What the hell?
“I gotta tell you,” Elise continues, “all of us moms envied her. Golly, I mean, who doesn’t want to take a vacation without having to worry about kids and a husband for two whole weeks? Not this gal! Ha!”
Kayla and I take our bowls of store-bought lemon sorbet to sit beside the swimming pool. She checks the sofa cushions for scorpions, tarantulas, and other venomous creatures. A pale-yellow scorpion the length of a crayon scrambles off the seat and drops onto the concrete. Kayla lifts her boot and stomps it.
I shudder. “Ugh. I don’t miss this.”
“You were a supreme scorpion killer.” She takes her bowl and plops on the sofa.
Though the sun sits high above us, the slatted pergola protects us as we enjoy our dessert.
“You ask your boss about me coming on as a consultant?” she asks.
Oh. Yeah. “Yep, she’s put a pin in it.” My face burns from the acidic splash of lie. “I’ll keep you posted, but let me nudge her . . .”
I text Stephanie, the executive producer of Tough Cookie.
I may have a consultant replacement for Gemma
Kayla smiles and shimmies her shoulders.
“I gotta be honest,” I say. “I don’t remember that time my mom left for two weeks. Nor did I know that Dominique hadn’t been planned.” Or that my father planned to leave us.
Kayla’s smile dims. “My parents talk too much.”
I roll my eyes. “Parents are weird.”
“Mine were also swingers.”
“No way.”
“Way. Totally disgusting.”
I move my tongue against my molar to free a piece of cauliflower. “Your mom said my mom went to her ‘quiet place.’ That’s the same reason why I went to the cabin. Because Felicia told me it was Mom’s favorite place, but Mom . . . she brushed that off. Like she had no idea what I was talking about.”
“Maybe she wants to forget that part of her life,” Kayla suggests. “My mother acts like she never got behind the wheel of our minivan ten years ago and intentionally drove the wrong way onto the 14.”
My stomach twists. I remember that terrifying afternoon. Fortunately, a highway patrolman was leaving from that same exit and stopped what could’ve been devastating. Elise was hospitalized for a month afterward. There, the doctors pumped her full of the good stuff and, after a few weeks, wheeled her to Randy’s Subaru.
“Mysteries abound,” I say.
“Totally.”
“Speaking of mysteries,” I say. “Did Felicia die by suicide, or did someone force her into Lake Palmdale?”
Kayla clinks her spoon around the bowl.
“Was there a second set of footprints in the dirt by the shore?”
No reply.
“Any weapons?” I ask. “Like a gun? A knife?”
No reply.
“Cuz if so, that wouldn’t say ‘suicide’ to me. It would say that she was forced.”
She blinks at me. “Any reason why you’re asking about weapons and footprints?”
I scrunch my face. “Yes—I’m trying to figure out who killed my cousin. Duh. And I’ve been really nice to my mother lately so that she keeps spilling the family tea.” I waggle my head, then say, “Anyway, Felicia’s third husband, Will? He’s still DMing me.”
Kayla exhales, then peeks over at me. “And?”
“He’s bragging about how much money he has. He’s nowhere near mourning.”
Kayla grunts, “Hunh.”
“Here.” I screenshot the newer messages—his hunt for future investors in UPLIGHT and an offer to join the UPLIGHT family—and forward them to Kayla.
Kayla’s mouth twists as she reads the string. “What the hell?”
“Right?”
“I will say that Felicia knew that he was a low-down dirty dog. I have access to her phone, and she kept records of every time he left the house, went to the doctor, bought something. He followed her everywhere—and she thought he’d followed her up here.”
“The man in the Mazda, maybe?”
She blinks at me, tamps down a smile, says, “Sure.”
“Don’t do that,” I growl. “I’m not—” Oh, but you are, aren’t you?
Kayla tugs at a string on the cuff of her cargo pants. “Anyway, it sounds like he’d been trying to gaslight her. Made her think that she’d misplaced her keys. Left the back door open. Took money. And then she followed him to the Pink Cloud Motel in Pacoima. The kind of place with ‘No Prostitution Allowed’ signs and used condoms everywhere and bedbugs and bolted-down TVs.”
“Ew. Gross.”
“Felicia took screenshots of this text message conversation with his girlfriend, Soshea, saying that he’s gonna do it—”
“Do what?” I ask.
“That he’s gonna follow the plan. There’re a bunch of messages she saved like that.”
“What do you need me to do?”
“What you’re already doing,” Kayla says. “And save everything.”
We click spoons.
“You check the video from the surveillance cameras at the lake?” I ask, having watched it repeatedly last night.
She says nothing.
“I’m sure Cayden can help you with that.” I pause, then add, “There may have been a third person at the lake that night.”
Her eyes widen, and her cheeks and neck color. “Like I said, we’re looking at Miss Campbell’s phone records right now. There are messages with you, with Will, people at Northrop Grumman . . . She and her sister, Alicia, had some beef about money. There are a few numbers that are mysteries, but we’ll run ’em down.”
“Sounds good.”
“You called her around nine,” Kayla says. “Your number’s all over the place.”
I nod. “She kept drunk-texting me, and I finally had a free moment to talk to her.”
“But you didn’t.”
I shake my head.
“You use any other phone? Or Google Call or Skype or . . . ?”
“Nope,” I say. “Had she been drinking?”
“Yes.”
“Alone?” I ask.
Kayla nods. “We’re fingerprinting minibar bottles of rum found in her car.”
“Sounds like you’re treating this as a homicide.”
She squares her shoulders. “I’m treating this as an active investigation.”
I eat more sorbet and take my shot in the dark. “How long have you and Cayden been sleeping together?”
Her eyes go big and brighten with tears.
A hit dog hollers.
“Did he tell you . . . ?” she asks.
I push her knee. “Relax. I’m not gonna tell anybody.” I point my spoon at her. “Check out the surveillance cameras at the Fish and Fly Club, please.”
She swallows, nods, slumps.
The sorbet melts against my tongue, soothing all my itchy places.
“We found a note in her car,” Kayla offers.
I contain my gasp. This is the note I’ve been wondering about.
She finds it on her phone and reads.
I miss you so much . . . Please, I’m asking you to make it up to me . . . Call me and I’ll text you the location . . .
“May I have a copy of that?” I ask.
“I . . .” Kayla shakes her head.
Fine. I’ll ask Ransom to get it for me.
“Felicia kept saying she was running out of time,” I say. “Any idea what that meant?”
Kayla’s jawline tightens as she stares in the distance. “No idea.”
The dessert is gone. Store-bought sorbet was the best dish of the morning.
“Good thing is . . . ,” Kayla says, licking her spoon, “there was a scratch on Felicia’s face and hands, which implied that there’d been some kind of struggle. So we swabbed beneath her fingernails in case she got in a few swipes at her murderer. Happy to say that we recovered some DNA that didn’t belong to her, too. Whoever she fought in those last moments on land, they’re caught.” She winks at me. “It’s just a matter of time.”
33.
As soon as I hit the first red light after leaving the Kozlowskis’, I text Ransom.
I need a favor
I need more info on my cousin
You never answered me about dude in the green Mazda
All around me, cars and trucks bumble along, blaring horns and banging into potholes. People are minding their own business, just like Ransom is. Because he isn’t responding.
By the time I pull into the driveway at home, he still hasn’t responded.
Dominique isn’t home. Instead of answering my texts, she’s doing who knows what with her boyfriend. If he could snag that PDF of the initial investigation, what else could he find? And how much would I be willing to pay to read it?
The house hasn’t changed since I left it hours ago—drawn blinds, the smells of stale cigarettes, dust, and the plug-in fake freshness of freesia.
I find myself back in the attic, my new away place filled with my family’s yesterdays. I find myself holding that yearbook from Inglewood High School, 1987–1988, staring at young Felicia Campbell, young Barbara McGuire, and that blacked-out square. I consider Alicia’s picture. She and her twin had a beef about money. No big thing, right? I mean . . . Dominique and I are beefing about something every day, including how she’s always trying to spend my money.
Felicia struggled with both her sister and her third husband.
My stomach feels hollow, and sadness finds me again. It’s still sticky, and it still presses against my lungs. The longer I stay here, the heavier it gets. But I can’t leave, not yet.
Downstairs, the house comes alive with jangling keys and tapping footsteps.
Unable to find where she went those two weeks away from us, I leave the attic with Mom’s high school yearbook in my hand.
In the den, Mom hasn’t changed out of her “I won’t sweat today” tracksuit. She rests on the chaise with a book of crossword puzzles as an episode of Hoarders plays on the television. She looks content sitting there, chomping Nicorette in her alone time. I almost regret that I’m about to disturb it.
“Mother-dear!” I plop on the couch and my stomach growls. “That’s me.”
“Didn’t you eat?”
“I so-called ate at the Kozlowskis’.”
She peers at me over her reading glasses. “Cauliflower Wellington?”
“Yes. Also, these tofu-nugget things, some goopy sandwiches with fake cheese, and french toast covered in vegan yogurt.”
Her lip curls and she shivers. “Rob and I had dinner with them once. Never again.”
“Elise was telling me about the old days when we were all kids.”
Mom narrows her eyes. “Like?”
My mouth dries. I can’t mention anything that involves her leaving us for two weeks—the way her mouth has tightened tells me this. If I do mention it, she’ll disinvite Kayla and her family, and I don’t want that.
I clear my throat. “I probably shouldn’t repeat this . . . Elise and Randy were swingers.”
Mom sucks her teeth. “I knew that.”
“Ew? And that she was committed after the freeway incident.”
“They 5150ed that bitch and put her in the socks.”
“Yeah. I’d forgotten about that.”
She reaches for the foil pack of gum on the coffee table. “Seven letter word for ‘heating part of a kettle.’”
I rest my chin on my knees. “Element.”
I want to ask about so much, but it’s all one land mine after the next. The note found in Felicia’s car. The nameplate I found in the Camaro. An old girlfriend of Dad’s. And Dad having an affair and moments away from leaving us.
“I wanna show you something.” I pluck my phone from my pocket and show her the recording of the recording of Felicia at Lake Palmdale.
Mom stares at the screen, barely breathing. “Where’d you get that?”
“From the security system at the Fish and Fly.”
She points at my phone. “Do the police know who that is?”
I shake my head. “I think that her third husband and another person are in the second car.”
“Will?” Mom cants her head. “You know what? Cece told me that Lee caught him trying to change beneficiary designations on her bank account.”
“What?”
“Lee wasn’t stupid. Will’s gonna find out any minute now that he ain’t getting one thin dime of hers, so if he killed her, he’s wasted his life.”
My mind whirls. “Has Cece told this to Kayla?”
Mom shrugs, pops her gum between her teeth, then writes a word into the white squares. “What else are you investigating?”
“Since you asked . . .” I open the yearbook to the blacked-out graduation picture. “Who is this, and why were you so extreme? Like this person killed your puppy.”
Her hand claws at her bee pendant.
“It’s not Felicia,” I say.
“Have you read some of her letters?”
“I did. Yowza. But who is this?”
Mom squints at the blackened box. “Yara, sweetie. It’s been over thirty years since I graduated from high school.”
“Yeah, well, try to remember.”
She groans once she realizes I’m not gonna move on. “Fine. Gimme a moment.” Her shoulders droop and she pushes out a breath. “Okay, remember the really pretty girls who knew they were really pretty? The ones who always bragged that they didn’t have many girlfriends?”
“Ugh. Yeah.” Marley, that gray-eyed witch in high school. Eva, that blonde in college.
Mom taps the yearbook picture. “That was this chick. ‘Just friends’ with all the boys.”
“Let me guess: she also slept with all the boys, including your boyfriend.”
“Tale as old as time.” She twirls the pen between her fingers. “To goad. Four letters.”
I lean forward. “Mom, who did she steal from you?”
Mom’s neck continues to redden. “Who knows? He probably wasn’t worth much. I don’t even remember his name. He wasn’t the point, though. Her taking him from me made me do that.” She taps the picture. “If you think I’m crazy competitive now, imagine how bad I was back when I was full of estrogen and Funyuns.”
I grin and say, “Don’t fuck with Bee McG.”
“No, ma’am.”
I point to her photo at the bottom of the page. “You were cute, though.”
“Cute?”
“Stunning.”
“You can do better.”
“Your beauty transcended time . . . Spur.”
“What?” She wraps the gum she’s been chewing into a tissue.
“The clue,” I say, tapping her crossword puzzle. “To goad? It’s ‘spur.’”
“Ah.” She writes the word, then says, “Oh. Before I forget . . .” She pops up from the chaise and scurries out of the den.
On the television, the Hoarders team tries to wrangle over one thousand rats living in this poor guy’s disgusting house.
Mom returns, holding out a white envelope. “For you.”
Inside: the wedding certificate for Robert and Barbara Gibson, married on Saturday, May 15, 1999. Officiated by Reverend Timothy Bertram.
“I hate that Pastor Bertram is living down in Belize now,” I say, sticking the certificate back into the envelope. “I’d wanted him to come and renew your vows.”
