“How can you accuse me?” Heather said, tears welling in those blue eyes, her lips trembling, “After everything I’ve been through, after everything we’ve been through together—”
“Oh stop it,” I said. “Just stop lying.” I hadn’t even raised my voice, but my tone must have been enough. She stopped talking and froze, holding that wounded-deer expression that had moved me countless times, the doe-like vulnerable eyes, the flushed face, the hands nervously cradling her body. But I’d caught a tiny flicker in her eyes, a split-second calculation, and that was when I knew. Up until that moment I’d skirted along the edges of it, focusing on names and dates, specific lies, unable to face the big lie at the core. “Viktor never hit you, did he?” I said quietly.
She brought her hands up to shield her face, making a sound that might have been a sob, though everything she did was suspect to me now. Her muffled wail was clear enough: “How can you say that after everything he did to me?”
Julie shot me a nasty look. “Why are you treating her this way, Alison?”
“She’s lying,” I said to her, and then to Heather, “I knew it that day with the Nordstrom bag, but I didn’t want to face it.” She let her hands drop and looked at me, clearly confused. I walked closer and without warning I raised my hand as if I was going to strike her.
Julie cried “No!” but Heather didn’t even step back—she stood there, still looking wounded, the paper evidence of her lies at her feet.
I gave her a hard smile. “You didn’t flinch.”
Sarah said to me, “What the hell are you playing at?”
“She didn’t flinch. Not now, not the other day—not ever. If Viktor had been beating her, she’d flinch when someone came near her like that. That’s how abused people react.”
There was a moment of stunned silence, and then, to my surprise, Heather started to cry, not fake sobs this time, but real tears glistening like raindrops on her soft, rose-petal cheeks. “He hated it when I flinched,” she spat, swiping at her eyes. “It took a lot of practice, but he trained me not to.”
Julie gasped and said, “God, Heather, I’m so sorry,” moving in to comfort her. She shot me a dirty look over her shoulder. Sarah also seemed concerned, and I felt a different sort of doubt rise within me. What if I was wrong about the dates? About the abuse? Maybe the only lies were the ones I’d invented? But I’d checked those dates. I’d double-checked.
The buzzing of my cell phone stopped me before I could say anything. It skittered across the marble island just as Julie’s and then Heather and Sarah’s phones all beeped or chirped. “What on earth?” Julie said.
It was a text from a number I didn’t recognize, but the message was familiar: $20,000 in 3 days or I go to police.
chapter thirty-four
SARAH
Immediately after the text came two photos. The first was the same grainy shot of the four of us by Viktor’s car. The second was another photo from the same night, but this one included a clear shot of Julie’s car, license plate visible.
“Oh my God,” Julie said, dropping her phone on the island as if it were toxic. “How did he get our numbers?”
“We don’t know it’s a he. You couldn’t tell, remember?” Alison said. “Maybe it’s a she.” She looked accusingly at Heather. “Did you send these?”
“What are you talking about? I got the same text,” Heather said, holding out her phone so Alison could see. I believed her, but then I hadn’t stopped believing her—it was Alison who suddenly doubted her story. Maybe Heather hadn’t told us everything about Janice, but that didn’t mean she was lying. As for the receipts, Julie was probably right and Alison had confused the dates. Although that didn’t sound like Alison—I didn’t know what to think about it.
“Then who is sending these?” Julie demanded. “We already gave him money—is he just going to keep asking for more and more?”
“Well, I don’t have another five thousand dollars to give,” I said.
“We don’t have to,” Alison said. “This can end today. Now. We can go to the police.”
“Are you crazy?” Julie said. “We can’t go to the police.”
“Why not? She’s the one who shot her husband,” Alison said, pointing at Heather. “Let’s see if the police believe her story.” Grabbing her phone and purse from the island, she started out of the room, heading for the front door.
“You can’t tell it’s me in the photos with the body,” Heather said in a shrill voice. “If you talk, I talk, and I’ll tell them that you shot my husband.”
Alison pivoted in the doorway. “What’s our motive for killing him?” she scoffed. “They’d never believe you.”
“Oh really? The gun wasn’t even mine. It would be easy to convince the police that one of you shot him because you were trying to help me.”
Julie looked like she was going to be sick. “Alison, they’ll think I killed him.”
“We could tell them the truth,” Alison said. “You gave her the gun because Heather claimed she was being abused.”
“How is that going to work?” I said. “They’ll arrest all of us.”
“It’s three of us against Heather—she’ll get arrested, but if we tell the police the truth, then it will be three statements against hers. They probably won’t charge us at all.”
“Do you really think they’d believe any of you?” Heather said. “They’ve been watching all of us, not just me. Julie stole the gun, Sarah isn’t sober, and what do you think the police will make of your history, Alison?”
I opened my mouth to protest the smear, but stopped, distracted. What did she mean about Alison? I started to ask, but Julie spoke first. “She’s right, Alison,” she said in a pleading voice. “Even if they didn’t charge us everyone would find out—I’d lose my business, you could lose your job, too.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Alison said, but that was clearly just bravado speaking.
I sank into a kitchen chair, my head pounding. “What are we going to do?” I said. “I don’t have any more money.”
“Don’t look at me,” Heather said, and I saw that she was glaring at Alison. “The insurance company won’t pay until the police investigation is over. I don’t have the money either.”
“Pawn some more of your jewelry,” I said.
“I don’t have that much to pawn—Viktor didn’t give me that much.”
“That bracelet has to be worth something,” I said, looking her over. “And those earrings. I’m sure we could get something for those.” I stood up again, filled with a sudden manic energy. “Let’s go through the house—I’m sure we can come up with twenty thousand dollars’ worth of things here.”
Heather looked slightly panicked, but Julie started nodding, and I could see the fear wrestling with her usual Julie can-do positivity. “Yes, yes, we could sell the furniture for starters. That would raise the funds. People wouldn’t notice—not if you said you were downsizing.”
“And then what?” Alison said. “Say we come up with this twenty thousand dollars, who’s to say that the blackmailer won’t ask for another twenty-thousand-dollar installment and another after that?” She’d inched slowly back into the room, but she was still holding on to her purse.
“Surely he’s got to realize that we’re not made of money,” Julie moaned, as if she were talking about a bill collector. I had a sudden memory of my mother complaining this way about her children when we were young and left lights on throughout the house. “We’re not made of money,” she’d say in a tone that carried exactly that same sense of futility.
“If we could just find out who this asshole is,” I said.
Alison made a funny noise, like she’d just realized something, and, dropping her purse on the kitchen table, began typing away on her phone. “We can Google the number,” she said, tapping two-thumbed with a speed I envied. “Cell numbers aren’t listed, but it might show up somewhere.” She paused, staring intently at the screen.
“What is it? What did you find?” Julie asked.