“Yeah, my mom told me he was around.”
Nina chews on her lip, and then looks relieved to move her cart forward again. She leans around the rows of snacks and lip balm. “Let’s get together soon, okay? I’ll call the house. You have to come by, see the kids.”
There’s no way she actually wants me to see her kids. I am not child appropriate. She really is just being polite this time. “Sure.”
She smiles. “I’ll talk to you soon, Lucy.”
Listen for the Lie Podcast with Ben Owens EPISODE TWO—“SHE WOULD NOT HESITATE TO CUT A BITCH”
I spoke to many of Lucy’s former friends and people she grew up with, and a theme emerged in our talks.
Jill:????????????????Lucy had a temper. She would not hesitate to cut a bitch.
That’s Jill Lopez. It was actually her wedding that Lucy and Savannah attended the night of the murder, a fact that she doesn’t appreciate me bringing up.
Jill:????????????????Yes, it was my wedding. And yes, I’m pissed at Lucy for ruining that memory for me forever. I didn’t even know her all that well. I shouldn’t have invited her, but my mom wanted to invite like, all of Plumpton.
Ben:???????????????But you knew Lucy well enough to know that “she would not hesitate to cut a bitch”?
Jill:????????????????Everyone knew that.
Ross Ayers, a high school classmate, personally got a taste of Lucy’s temper.
Ross:??????????????See that? Right there?
Ben:???????????????Your nose?
Ross:??????????????That bump? That’s Lucy. She broke it senior year.
Ben:???????????????She broke your nose?
Ross:??????????????Yep. I wish I could have testified at a trial, tell everyone how crazy she was. I wasn’t even the first guy she hit! She decked a dude at the CVS a few months earlier.
Ben:???????????????What happened? When Lucy hit you, I mean.
Ross:??????????????We were in the parking lot after school—me and some friends—just hanging around, waiting for our rides, when Lucy comes out. Lucy sees me and she just totally freaks out. This chick has murder in her eyes. Some guys nearby had just come from playing basketball, and she snatches the ball out of their hands and chucks it at me. From like only a few feet away. Hits me right in the nose. Then she screamed something—I don’t even remember what she said—punches me, and leaves. Well, no, she didn’t leave. A friend dragged her away.
Ben:???????????????Why did she do that? Had you two interacted before?
Ross:??????????????Barely! Some in class and stuff, but I don’t think we’d ever even had a conversation. She just lost it. I don’t know why.
I then spoke to Emmett Chapman. Emmett was one of Lucy’s closest friends in high school.
Emmett:????????Lucy and I were friends … forever? I can’t actually remember school without Lucy. Back in elementary school our teachers would make us line up alphabetically, and Lucy was always right behind me. Chapman and Chase. And she started sticking up for me all the time, so we became friends.
Ben:???????????????Sticking up for you?
Emmett:????????Yeah, I was bullied a lot in elementary school. I was tiny and just an easy target in general, so I dealt with a lot of shit. But Lucy was always kind to me. She wasn’t afraid to be loud. I was such a shy kid. She yelled at people for me.
Ben:???????????????So, she had a temper? I’m hearing that a lot from people.
Emmett:????????Um, I don’t know if I’d say that. No, I wouldn’t say that.
Ben:???????????????Did you guys stay in touch after high school?
Emmett:????????Yeah. We both went to UT, but we didn’t hang out as much after freshman year. We just fell in with different crowds and did our own thing. But we both came back to Plumpton after graduation, and we became good friends again. I actually hung out with Matt and Lucy all the time, with the woman I was dating back then. They were our couple friends.
Ben:???????????????Were you friends with Savannah too?
Emmett:????????Yeah, definitely. Not in high school, but later, when we all moved back, yeah.
Ben:???????????????Were you two close?
Emmett:????????No, I was better friends with Matt and Lucy. But Savvy was always really nice to me. Savvy was nice to everyone.
Ben:???????????????How would you describe Lucy and Savannah’s relationship?
Emmett:????????They were close. I don’t know what else to say. People always seem to want me to uncover some big hidden secret, or say that I could tell they secretly hated each other, but I didn’t see any of that.
Ben:???????????????What did you think, when you heard that Lucy was the prime suspect in Savannah’s murder?
Emmett:????????I was shocked. Never in a million years did I think Lucy would hurt Savvy.
CHAPTER TEN
LUCY
Sunday evening, Grandma sends me to pick up dinner for the two of us at Plumpton Diner. On my way out, Mom informs me that their salads are disgusting and warns me against ordering one.
“Who orders salad at a diner?” I ask, one foot out the door, the sticky humidity and chilly air-conditioning mixing together in a weird, unpleasant way.
She sniffs. “Well, everything else there is dripping in grease.”
“Sounds delicious.”
I escape before she can invite herself along.
The diner has been around since I was a kid, and it looks exactly the same on the outside. On the inside, the seats have been upgraded from cracked red plastic to a much nicer shade of blue. It’s cleaner than I remember.
I walk to the counter and ask the red-haired teenager standing there about our order. Judging from the bored look on his face, he doesn’t appear to recognize me.
“It’s not ready yet.” He looks down at his phone, scratching at a pimple on his cheek. “You can sit wherever while you wait.”
I slide onto an unsteady stool at the counter, glancing around at the other diners. It’s early for dinner—five o’clock—and the place is pretty empty. There’s a couple in the corner. A mom with her two kids at a table nearby.
And a dark-haired man by himself in a booth by the window, staring at me.
I recognize him right away. Ben Owens. Smug podcaster.
He lifts one hand. He’s waving at me.
I almost laugh.
And then, I imagine getting back in my car and ramming it into the side of the diner. Straight through the window. Ben’s body sprawled out on my hood.
“Hitting him with your car is bo-ring,” the voice whispers in my ear. “Put your hands around his neck until you can feel the life drain out of him. That’d be fun, right? He probably deserves it. They always deserve it. Let’s kill—”
Shut up, I tell the voice calmly.
It can’t be a good sign that I’ve started talking back to it again.
Ben doesn’t move, but he tilts his head slightly, an expectant look on his face. It’s an invitation, maybe.
I imagine that he’ll just get up and walk over to me if I decline the invitation.
I slide off my stool and walk across the diner.
“Such a lovely throat you have there, sir,” the voice says. “It would be a shame if something happened to it.”
He smiles, flashing his perfect, white teeth. Braces and regular whitening. Those teeth did not happen by accident.
I suspect that nothing about Ben Owens is an accident.
He extends his hand. “Hi. Ben Owens.”
I ignore the hand. “I know who you are.”
He gestures to the seat across from him. There’s a half-eaten sandwich on the table next to a laptop, which he closes and pushes aside. He also flips over a small notebook so I can’t see what was written there.
“Please, sit.”
I’m still standing next to his booth like an idiot, and I guess I didn’t come over just to say hi.
I slide into the seat. He drops his pen on the floor and has to get out of his seat to retrieve it. He’s flustered.
I imagined him a lot smoother. Confident. Working a room.
He settles back into his booth. His dark eyes meet mine briefly, and then his gaze is anywhere but at me. I don’t know whether he’s nervous or embarrassed or just really high-strung.