“What did you think?”
Mia bites her bottom lip. “Like I said, Kate was very private. She had this charming persona she could turn on, and most people bought into it. But that was just the mask she used to get through life. Deep down, she was somebody else.”
“Who was she?”
“I’m not sure. All I know is that she was way too sophisticated for Steve. Maybe for any guy our age.”
I look hard into Mia’s eyes, but I see no hidden meaning there. “What made her so sophisticated?”
“Her time in England. After her parents got divorced, she went over to London and lived with her dad for a while. She went to an exclusive school over there for three years during junior high. In the end it didn’t work out for her to stay, but when she got back here, she was way ahead of the rest of us. She was pretty intimidating with that English accent.”
“I can’t imagine you being intimidated.”
“Oh, I was. But last year I started catching up with her. And this year I passed her in every subject. I feel guilty saying it now, but I felt pretty good about that.”
Some of Drew’s words are coming back to me. “You play tennis, don’t you?”
“I’m on the team. I’m not as good as Kate. She was a machine. She won state in singles last year, and she was on her way to doing it again this year.”
“Didn’t Kate play competitive tennis with Ellen Elliott?”
“Hell, yes. They won the state open in city league tennis.”
“What do you think about Ellen?”
Mia’s eyes flicker with interest. “Are you asking for the official line, or what I really think?”
“What you really think.”
“She’s a cast-iron bitch.”
“Really?”
“Definitely. Very cold, very manipulative. How she treats you depends totally on who your parents are.”
“How did she treat Kate?”
“Are you kidding? Like her personal protégée. Ellen was number one in Georgia when
she
played in high school. I think she’s reliving her youth through Kate.”
“How did Kate treat Ellen?”
Mia shrugs. “Okay, I guess. She was nice to her, but…”
“What?”
“I don’t think Kate respected her. I heard her say things behind Ellen’s back. But then everybody does that.”
“What do you mean?”
“The women Ellen trains with for her marathons talk all kinds of shit about her when she’s not around. They say she’ll stab you in the back without thinking twice.”
“So why do they hang around with her?”
“Fear. Envy. Ellen Elliott is hot, rich, and married to Dr. Perfect. She’s the social arbiter of this place, in the under-forty crowd anyway. She has the life all the rest of them want.”
“That’s what they think.”
Mia looks expectantly at me, but I don’t elaborate.
“I think I know what you mean,” she says. “I don’t know what Dr. Elliott is doing married to her. No one does. He’s so nice—not to mention hot—and she’s so…I don’t know. Maybe she fooled him, too.”
“Maybe.” Mia is too bright for me to question like this for long. “You probably need to get going, huh?”
She nods without enthusiasm. “I guess. I feel sort of weird, you know?”
“Because of Kate?”
“Yeah. But not the way you’d think. Her dying changes a lot of things for me. I’ll be making the valedictory speech now, for one thing. And I wanted to do that. I have some things I want to say to our class, and to the parents. I didn’t want to take any spotlight off of Kate by saying them in my salutatorian speech. Now I can say them, I guess. But I didn’t want it like this.”
“Well, you certainly earned it. Kate only beat you out by…what?”
“A sixteenth of a point on the cumulative.” Mia smiles wryly. “She wasn’t as smart as people think. She acted like she never studied, but she did. Big-time. I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I guess I have some anger toward her. I’m not even sure why.”
“Try to tell me.”
Mia sighs and looks at the sidewalk. “Kate knew how to make you feel like shit when she wanted to. She would tear out your heart with a few words, then act like it was an innocent comment. She got Star Student because she outscored me by one point on the ACT, and she always made sure people knew that. But I outscored her by forty points on the SAT. You think she ever said one word about that?”
“What did you make?”
“Fifteen-forty.”
“Wow. So you two were basically rivals, not friends.”
Mia nods thoughtfully. “I’m more competitive than I should be, but for Kate, winning was an obsession. We were always the top contenders for everything. She was homecoming queen, I’m head cheerleader.” A strange look crosses Mia’s face. “I guess some people might say I had a motive for killing her, like that cheerleader-mom thing in Texas.”
“I don’t think you have to worry about that. I’ve never heard anyone say a bad word about you.”
An ironic laugh escapes her lips. “Oh, plenty gets said about me. But that’s another story. And don’t get me wrong about Kate. She had a tough family life. Her dad was a real asshole. When she showed her vulnerable side, it was hard not to feel for her. Especially for me. But I had to deal with the same shit, and I don’t use my intelligence to hurt people.”
Mia gazes down Washington Street, one of the most beautiful in the city, and shakes her head as though dismissing some useless thought. Mia’s father left her mother when Mia was two, and he’s hardly seen his daughter since. Economic support was the bare minimum dictated by the courts, and even that came on a sporadic basis.
“As far as Kate dying,” Mia says, “I guess I can’t really believe it yet. It just doesn’t make sense. It’s so
random.
”
“High school kids die in accidents like everyone else.”
“I know, but this is different.”
“Why?”
“After I called you, I got a few more calls. People are saying it wasn’t an accident at all. They’re saying somebody killed Kate. Did you know that?”
Could Drew be right?
“Why are they saying that?”
“Some of the nurses at the hospital said it looked like Kate was strangled and hit on the head.”
Despite my friendship with Drew, an image of him choking Kate fills my mind, and I shudder. “You know Natchez and gossip, Mia. Anything could have happened to Kate’s body while she was floating down that creek.”
“But why was she half naked? And why from the waist down? I suppose she could have been skinny-dipping, but with who? She wasn’t with Steve—or at least he claims she wasn’t. It makes me wonder if maybe Steve was right.”
At this point Kate’s classmates probably know twice as much about her death as the police department. “Right about what?”
“About Kate having another boyfriend. Someone none of us knew about. Someone who might get mad enough or crazy enough to kill her.”
“Can you see Kate making someone that angry?”
“Oh, yeah. When Kate got on her high horse, she could piss you off beyond belief. And as far as making someone crazy—a guy, I mean—she was a very sexual person. We talked a few times about it. She really thought she might be a nymphomaniac.”
“That term isn’t even used anymore, Mia. A lot of girls first experimenting with sex probably feel that way.”
She gives me a knowing look. “I’m not talking about experimentation. I’m no saint, okay? But Kate knew about things I’d never even heard of. She was as intense as any person I ever met, and she believed in giving herself pleasure. She, uh, this is kind of embarrassing, but she showed me a couple of toys once, and it shocked me. I know she freaked Steve out with some of the things she asked him to do, and that was over a year ago.”
Sex toys?
Drew’s words come back to me with fresh impact:
These kids aren’t like we were, Penn. You have no idea…
“I know you want to look in on Annie,” Mia says, picking up her backpack and slinging it over her shoulder. “I’ll get out of your hair. Sorry if I was too frank about that stuff.”
I step to my left and give her plenty of room to pass. “Don’t worry. I’ve seen just about everything in my day.”
She gives me a sly look that belies her age. “Have you? I figured you for a straight arrow. I asked my mom about you, but she won’t tell me anything. She obviously likes you, but she gets all cryptic when I bring you up.”
I feel myself flush. “Be careful driving. Your mind’s not going to be on the road.”
Mia takes her cell phone from her purse and holds it to her ear. It must have been set to vibrate. “She did?…No way…That’s just
weird
…I will. Later.” She puts the phone back in her purse and stares blankly up the street again.
“What is it?” I ask.
Mia’s eyes betray a puzzlement I’ve never seen in them before. “That was Laura Andrews. Her mom’s one of the nurses who tended to Kate. She just told Laura that Kate was raped.”
“What?”
“She said Kate had a lot of trauma—down there, you know?”
My thoughts return to Drew. If Kate was raped, I hope he never has to know it. But of course he will, like everyone else in town. It suddenly occurs to me that by hoping to protect Drew from this knowledge, I’m assuming he is innocent of the crime. That’s a dangerous assumption for any lawyer to make, but I’ve already made it. I simply cannot imagine Drew Elliott raping any woman, much less a high school girl.
“Let’s hope that’s not true,” I murmur, recalling the shattered rape victims I tried to avenge as a prosecutor in Houston.
“Yeah,” Mia echoes. “That’s too horrible even to think about.”
“So don’t. Think about driving.”
Mia forces a smile. “No worries. Do you need me tomorrow?”
“I may, if you can spare the time.” I’m thinking of Drew and his request for help.
“Just call my cell.”
She walks to her car, a blue Honda Accord, and climbs in. I watch to make sure she gets safely away, then walk up the steps into my house. As I close the door, my study phone rings. I trot to my desk and look at the caller ID:ANDREW ELLIOTT, M.D.
“Drew?” I answer.
“Can you talk?” he asks, his voice crackling with anxiety.
“Sure. What is it?”
“I’m at Kate’s house. I just got a call on my cell phone.”
“From who?”
“I don’t know. But he told me to leave a gym bag with twenty thousand dollars in it on the fifty-yard line of the St. Stephen’s football field. He said if I don’t, he’ll tell the police I was screwing Kate Townsend.”
Shit.
“You told me nobody knew about the affair.”
“Nobody did. I have no idea who this could be.”
My mind is whirling with memories of similar situations when I worked for the D.A. in Houston. “When does he want the money?”
“One hour from now.”
Chapter
3
“Penn?” Drew says, breathing shallowly. “Are you there?”
My old friend’s words have paralyzed me in the study of my house. “Twenty thousand dollars cash in an
hour?
At nine o’clock at night? That’s crazy. That’s impossible.”
“No, it’s not. I have the cash. We have a safe here in the house. Three, actually. One for documents, one for guns, one for cash and jewelry.”
I should have guessed. Drew Elliott lives in a stunning Victorian palace sited on five acres in one of the affluent subdivisions near St. Stephen’s, a mansion that contains every technological gadget known to man. “Do you think the blackmailer knows that?”
“He said he knew I had the money.”
“Did you recognize the voice?”
“No. But it sounded like a black kid.”
“A black kid? Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure. He asked for drugs, too.”
“Drugs?”
“Prescription drugs. Painkillers. Anything I have. He said I should consider this drop as a down payment. His words. A sign of good faith.”
“I hear something in your voice I don’t like, Drew.”
“I know what you’re going to say, but—”
“You’re not delivering that money, brother. You have two choices. Ignore the call, or phone the police and tell them everything right now.”
Drew is silent for too long. “There’s a third choice,” he says.
“Drew, listen to me. There is no upside to paying this money. Just by showing up, you’d be admitting some guilt. You could also be taking your life into your hands.”
“Because the caller could be Kate’s killer? That’s what you were thinking, right?”
He has me. “I guess so.”
“That’s what I’m thinking, too.”
“Then you should call the cops. At this point, an act of God couldn’t keep your affair with Kate from becoming public. You have to think damage control now. It’s a hundred times better if the police learn the story from you than from someone else. Better for your family, too. Think of Tim.”
“I have until tomorrow morning to make that decision.”
“Don’t assume that.”
“Penn, the guy who called me probably murdered Kate. I want to see his face. I want to—”
“I know what you want to do. Forget it. Go home, mix yourself a stiff drink, and start thinking about what’s best for your son. That ought to be a change.”
Drew sucks in air as though I’ve knocked the wind out of him. “I know Tim needs me, okay?”
“You haven’t been acting like you do. Tim would be lost without you. And if you really think Ellen isn’t a good person, that’s twice the reason to keep yourself out of jail.”
More silence. “You’re right. Goddamn it, I just need to do
something
about Kate.”
“There’s nothing you can do. It’s time to suck it up and be a man. Kate’s beyond help. She’s gone. All you can do now is pick up the pieces of your own family.”
“Daddy?”
comes a small voice.
Glancing toward the hall, I see my daughter poke her head around the kitchen door frame. Annie is a physical echo of her mother, a tawny-haired beauty with eyes that miss nothing. This is both a blessing and a curse, as I am continually confronted by what is essentially the ghost of my dead wife.
“Annie’s calling me, Drew. I need to go. You go home and calm down. I’ll call you in a bit and we’ll decide what you’re going to do.”
Silence.
“Drew?”
“I will.”
“How’s Jenny handling it?”