“Sorry I’m late, I couldn’t get away sooner,” Julie said when she was close. The man loaded his dog into the backseat and then stared at all of us for an uncomfortable minute before getting into the driver’s seat. “Who was that?” she asked.
“No idea, but we’re glad you’re here and he’s leaving.” Alison led the way to a wooden picnic table off to the side, near some trees, and tied George’s leash to one of the metal supports under the bench seats. He whined, pulling against it and shaking the table as Julie and I sat down across from her, brushing off the snow.
“Why was he looking at us that way? I swear, all of this is making me paranoid.” Julie looked around once more before saying in a low voice, “Do you have your letters?”
We exchanged ours and they were exactly the same except for the personal address. “Heather got one, too,” Alison said, showing us that letter and explaining how she’d gotten it.
“What are we going to do?” I said, pulling the thermos out of my bag and dropping it on the picnic table with a thunk.
“Shh,” Julie hissed. “Be quieter for starters. Is that coffee?”
I shook my head. “Something to take the edge off the cold. Here, I brought cups.”
Julie and Alison exchanged glances that I chose to ignore, pulling out small plastic shot glasses from my bag before unscrewing the thermos and pouring beautiful golden brown liquid into each one. Alison took a small sip of hers and coughed on the fumes. “Whiskey?”
“The best Kentucky bourbon,” I said. “It’s cold out here and I can’t face another discussion involving Viktor Lysenko without first having a drink.”
“You sound like you’ve already had one,” Julie said dryly, but before I could answer we heard another car approaching. I screwed the cap back on the thermos and we put the glasses out of sight, until we saw that it was Heather’s SUV. George barked and strained gamely at the leash, tail wagging as she got out of the car and raised a hand to us.
“Hi!” She sounded cheerful—a far cry from the grieving widow she’d presented at the funeral—and she crossed the ground at a good clip, zipping up her down jacket on the way. “Hello, George, hello!” She stroked his head as Alison tried to keep him from planting his dirty paws on her chest. “I’m so glad you called—Daniel’s staying over with his great-aunt and I couldn’t face being home with just my mother-in-law for company.” Her smile faded as she saw our somber expressions. “What is it? What’s happened?”
Alison found the letter addressed to Heather and handed it over. She took it from her gingerly, as if it were contagious, looking from Alison to the envelope and then to the other envelopes the rest of us were holding.
“What is this?” she said with a nervous laugh, but when nobody answered she hurriedly took out the letter and read it. She appeared visibly shaken, sinking down on the bench next to Julie and peering in the fading light at the photo on the bottom of the letter. I passed her a shot and she drank it in one go, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “Where did you get this? Did all of you get the same one?”
As we passed the other letters for her to compare, Alison explained how she’d taken Heather’s out of the mail at her house. “They’re identical except for our names,” I said. “Who could have written this?”
“How could they have seen us?” Heather said, her breath making little indignant clouds. “That’s what I want to know—we were careful. You said no one was around.” She looked accusingly at Alison and Julie.
“There was no one around,” I said. “We all looked. Someone must have followed us, but I didn’t see any other cars on that stretch of road that night—did you see any cars?” I appealed to Julie and Alison.
“No, but obviously this person was out there,” Alison said.
“They must have heard the news about Viktor and put it together,” Heather said in a dull voice, nervously smoothing the letter against her lap. She looked up at me, then the others. “I was so out of it that night—I thought you were being careful.” Her voice held a hint of accusation and I saw Alison stiffen. “How could you let someone see us?”
“We weren’t any more careless than you were that night,” I said with a growl, before pouring another shot and downing it.
“I don’t know, and it really doesn’t matter how they saw us,” Alison said, “the point is that they did and we’ve got to figure out what we’re going to do about it.”
“What if we did nothing,” Heather said. “We let this person go to the police—the photo doesn’t really show much.”
“Oh, that’s easy for you to say,” I said. “Your face isn’t visible in the photo.”
Julie said, “The letter said ‘photos’ plural. This is just one of the photos; who knows what the others show.”
Alison took a small sip of whiskey, obviously trying not to choke on it. “And the photo files will have the time stamp and probably the location as well—if this person takes them to the police then they’ll know we were there that night.”
“If that happened—if—then why couldn’t we just tell the truth at that point?” Julie nervously fiddled with her plastic cup. “We show the letters to the police and explain what happened that night. Viktor was abusing Heather—she shot him in self-defense.”
“With your gun? And we were just helping when we made sure he was dead and dumped the gun and his body?” I said. “It’s too late for that—we helped her commit a homicide and cover it up. We’d be charged as accessories.”
“So what—we just pay the blackmailer? How do we guarantee that they give us all the photos and get rid of any copies?” Alison said. I tried to refresh her shot glass, but she covered it.
I looked again at the photo included in the letter—four of us standing there in the dark by Viktor’s car. “We can’t guarantee it,” I said.
“What if we refused to pay until we see them delete the photos?” Julie said.
“How would we do that?” Alison sounded skeptical.
“The letter says we have to leave the money at the cemetery,” I said. “We could stake it out and demand the camera and the photos.”
“They’re digital,” Alison said. “And they’ve probably already downloaded them. We’d have to take this person’s computer, too, and delete their files.”
“Then what’s your plan?” I snapped.
“I don’t think we have much of a choice—we have to pay them.”
“I don’t know about you, but I don’t have a spare twenty grand just sitting around to give away to some shitty blackmailer.” I took another gulp of whiskey, feeling my face flush.
“What do you guys have?” Alison asked. “Because I think we’ve got to pool our money.”
There was silence for a long moment, but then Julie spoke. “I’ve got some money stashed away—it’s supposed to be our vacation fund. Brian doesn’t even know about it; I was going to surprise him.”
“Okay,” Alison said. “That’s a start. I don’t have a private fund, but if I added some bonus money I got from work along with other money set aside for emergencies, that would be over two thousand—I can contribute that. Plus, maybe I could sell something.”
“Well, I don’t even have a thousand,” I said in a flat tone, before downing another shot glass. The other three just stared at me and I said, “What? I’m a stay-at-home mom, remember? I don’t have the money you three have.”
“None of us has that kind of money just sitting around,” Alison said.
“What about some of that old furniture from your parents?” Julie asked me. “Weren’t you talking about selling that?”
“Yes, but to pay for a surprise anniversary trip for me and Eric, not for this.”
“I think he’d be even more surprised if you’re charged as an accessory,” Alison said pointedly.
I scowled. “It’s Heather’s fault we’re in this dilemma—what’s she planning to pay?”
Heather recoiled and Julie made a gasping noise, apparently shocked by my bluntness. She said, “You’re being unfair, Sarah.”
“It’s the truth, isn’t it?” I argued. “Besides, she’s got more money than all of us combined—why shouldn’t she pay the whole thing? She can just say it was for funeral expenses.”