Spin a Wicked Web (18 page)

Gabi said in a suddenly quiet voice, "I know Rocky's reaction
must seem odd."

I tried to switch gears from our previous light-hearted conversation. "He's grieving. Everyone does that differently."

"There was a policewoman here yesterday."

"He mentioned that."

"She asked a lot of questions."

"Well, that's her job," I said.

She shifted in the chair beside mine. "Some of the questions
were a little harsh. Put Rocky on edge. She almost acted like it was
Ariel's fault she got killed."

Nice, Robin. Real nice.

"But he answered the questions, didn't he?" Of course I itched
to know what the questions-and answers-were, but I resisted.
"Because he wants to find out who killed his sister, too."

"Oh, sure. Of course. It was just kind of hard on him, you know.
He loved Ariel, but she's caused him a lot of grief over the years. At
least this will be the last of it."

"The money?" I asked.

"And the men."

I took a chance. "You know, she was having an affair with the
husband of one of the other artists at the co-op."

Gabi shook her head. "Another married man? Of course she
was.

I shrugged. "Maybe they fell in love. It happens."

"Oh, she wasn't in love." Gabi sipped her wine. "Ariel didn't
know how to love, not really. Trust me, she benefited in some very
practical way."

"How sad."

Gabi was silent for a moment. "And dangerous."

Maybe it was the hour, maybe the wine, but the conversation
was taking a baffling turn. "Dangerous how?"

"Their parents. She didn't get along with them. Always felt like
they were too hard on her."

I waited.

Gabi leaned in, the cloying smell of cheap wine rolling off her.
"The car wreck. I saw Ariel doing something to their car before
they left that day." She sat back.

It took me a moment. "Are you saying she caused the crash that
killed their parents?"

Light leaking out of the window from inside illuminated the
fear on Gabi's face when she realized she'd said too much. "Oh,
heavens no. It's not like that"

"Then what did you mean?" I asked.

Gabi looked toward the screen door and lowered her voice
even more. I could hardly hear her as she said, "Just forget I said
anything, okay? It doesn't matter now anyway, does it? She's dead."
She put her hand to her forehead. "I guess I just can't hold my
wine. Please don't say anything to Rocky."

"He doesn't know?" I asked.

She shook her head again, her chin swinging back and forth in
an exaggerated way. "There's nothing to know."

I WAS AWAKENED BY the distant sound of a rooster the next morning, crowing at the brightening hour of five a.m. Too early to go
downstairs, and no way was I going back to sleep. I'd been half
thinking, half dreaming about what I'd learned about Ariel so far,
and now that I was fully awake the thoughts were clamoring too
loud to allow further rest. Plumping my pillows and sitting up in
bed, I took in the details of the Kaminski's guest room. I'd been too
tired the night before to do much more than change into Gabi's kind
offer of a nightgown, turn out the light, and climb into bed.

Looking around in the dawn light, I saw cream-painted walls
and a ceiling so pink it was almost fuchsia. Next to the louvered
doors of the closet, an old-fashioned white dressing table dominated one corner, the surface noticeably empty of girlish potions
and unguents. Opposite the window hung two giant posters, both
velvet textured and brightly colored so they'd glow under a black
light. The first showed a rather petulant-looking fairy with elaborate, luminous wings; the second depicted a winding road to an imposing castle that could have been either romantically gothic,
or frighteningly Bram Stoker. I found both of them a little creepy,
and was glad I hadn't noticed them before dropping off to sleep
the night before. A battered dresser, gauzy pink curtains, and the
double bed-dressed in pink and white gingham, for heaven's
sake-rounded out the furnishings.

With two boys in the house now, and the fact that the Kaminski children had grown up here, there was no other reasonable explanation: I was in Ariel's girlhood room. The thought gave me a
bit of a turn, then made me curious. After my interesting evening
with her family, especially Gabi, my mental picture of Ariel was
beginning to fill out. Still, I had to remember that, while the information I was getting from Gabi didn't really contradict anything
I'd learned earlier, it was still just one source.

Swinging my legs over the edge of the bed, I reached for my
shorts, now in a crumpled heap on the floor. I must have been too
tired to fold them. Wouldn't Barr love living with a slob like me?
He should count himself lucky I'd put off moving in.

I dressed, happy enough to add the hooded sweatshirt Gabi had
given me to wear the night before to my early morning attire.It was
chilly in the new dawn, and likely to stay that way until the sun had
a chance to work her magic. No one seemed to be moving around
in the household yet.

I eyed the closet.

The louvered doors didn't open smoothly, but I managed to
make a minimum of racket. It was stuffed with clothes, most of
them winter garb that looked like it belonged to the entire family.
Gabi made good use of Ariel's old closet for storage. Well, what did I expect? A shrine to the departed sister? Hardly. I wondered whether
Ariel had resented her space being taken over like that.

Quietly pawing through the items hanging on the rod, I found
two dresses in the back that were certainly not suitable winter
wear. They were too skimpy for most summer temperatures, and
even then only if you were going for a certain look. I took one out
and held it up to the window, noting the outline of the corner of
the barn roof outside through the flimsy material.

Wow. There was a part of me that was slightly scandalized, and
part of me that admired anyone with the chutzpah to actually wear
something like that in public.

More rooting around revealed a few more pieces of barely-there
clothing items: tiny halters, short short skirts, and the like. But nothing of real interest. So Ariel had dressed like a hooker when she lived
at home-what bearing did that have on her murder? Whenever I'd
seen her she'd been dressed provocatively, but nothing like this. It
appeared her taste in clothing had matured a little.

I closed the doors to the closet and began opening drawers. I
mean, after all, if you put someone in a room for the night and say
it's the "guest room," it's not exactly surprising if they open a few
drawers, right?

The dressing table held precisely nothing. Not even dust. Thoroughly cleaned out. The small bureau held two utterly empty
drawers, but the third, bottom drawer, was full of high school annuals. Some of them were Rocky's, and some were Ariel's. The siblings had been five years apart in age, so their high school careers
hadn't overlapped; eight annuals altogether.

Settling myself cross-legged on the floor, I pulled out the first
one and thumbed through it. Rocky's, when he was a junior. He was nice enough looking now, but the school picture had captured a
gleam in his eye that seemed to be missing in the man I'd met yesterday. He'd been one of the more active kids in school: on the football, basketball, and wrestling teams, as well as belonging to Future
Farmers of America and Future Business Leaders of America. The
abundance of friends and teachers who had signed his yearbook,
and what they wrote, indicated he was well-liked by a variety of
people. In fact, he'd been quite the big fish in the small pond of the
La Conner school system. I flipped through a few more pages and
found Gabi's picture. She was a year younger than Rocky and
sported a very short haircut. She had a big happy grin pasted on her
face. No doubt a ridiculously well-adjusted teenager.

All his annuals had the same flavor, but when I got to his sister's,
they told a slightly different story. The pictures of Ariel as a freshman and a sophomore showed a gawky girl, first slightly gaptoothed, then second with braces presumably to correct said gap.
All light-brown hair and hesitant smile, she looked skinny and awkward and very, very uncomfortable about having her picture taken.
Frightened, tenuous, unsure; it was shocking how different that little girl in the pictures was from the young woman I'd known.

Something must have happened in the summer between her
sophomore and junior year, though, because the Ariel pictured in
the last two yearbooks was quite different. She'd dyed her hair
blonde, loaded on the eye-liner, lowered her neckline by a degree
that no doubt tempted official school reprimand, and gazed at the
camera with a hard, determined smile.

Ariel had been sixteen when her parents died. My bet was that
it happened between those two yearbook photos. Could her transformation have been a reaction to losing her mother and father?

The new and improved Ariel was certainly sexier in a crass kind
of way, and, if the story about the English teacher was true, she'd
put it to immediate use. Could Gabi have been jealous of her
sister-in-law? Or did she just dislike her? What I'd learned so far
about Ariel painted her as the kind of person who demanded instant gratification, took shortcuts to get what she wanted, and was
not willing to wait. Impatient. Owed.

In fact, Ariel was beginning to sound like a bit of a sociopath.
Could you be a bit of a sociopath? Or was that like being a little
pregnant? She was charming as the dickens up front, but as you got
to know her those charms faded. A social parasite, taking advantage
of the people around her-and especially taking advantage of the
particular weaknesses of men-to get what she wanted.

Except she wasn't all that good at it. At least not yet. Still young.
And possibly becoming more effective with time.

What had Scott Popper offered her? What practical benefit, as
Gabi put it, had Ariel reaped from the affair?

Scott Popper, ready to leave his wife to be with Ariel.

Who died in a car wreck.

Lifting the books to place them back in the drawer, I nearly
dropped them.

A good driver, a semi-professional driver, for that matter. Certainly
well trained as a police officer. Scott Popper, who died in a car wreck.

Just as his lover's parents had.

His lover, who, whatever she might have wanted from him,
might not have wanted his city-salaried self on her hands full
time.

His lover, the girl who was such a good car mechanic.

I MANAGED TO RETURN the high school yearbooks to the dresser
drawer. When I pushed the drawer back in, it shrieked as if in
agony. Slowly, I pulled it back out and tried to re-align the gliders.
This time it slid on the track with only a low moan, but wouldn't
go all the way in. I removed the drawer completely and, on my
hands and knees, peered into the dark recesses under the dresser.

Something on the floor, way back there.

I leaned in, cheek to the floor and butt up in the air, and scrabbled among the dust bunnies with my fingertips. Finally, I grasped
hold of the edge of whatever it was and dragged it out to the light
of day.

A book, fabric covered, with one corner all bent up from having the drawer jam into it. It was filthy, and one edge had yellowed
after obvious water damage. I opened it and recognized Ariel's
spiky handwriting from the few times I'd seen it at the co-op.

Footsteps in the hallway paused outside my door. I froze.

An eon later, they moved on and went downstairs. Hurriedly, I
pushed the drawer back in. It moaned like a wounded animal
again. Standing, I took the book and stuffed it into the bottom
recesses of my tote bag. Then I pulled the covers up, tidied the
bed, grabbed the toothbrush Gabi had given me the night before,
and opened the door.