The Tease (The Darling Killer Trilogy) (10 page)

I introduced myself. “I’m so sorry for your loss,” I said, squeezing her mother’s hand.

“Thank you,” her mother said. “You were in her dance group, weren’t you?”

I nodded.

“Lisa just loved you girls,” she said. “She talked about the fun you had all the time—” her voice broke, and she steadied it.

“Thank you for being here,” her father said.

I murmured a few more senseless words of condolence, and we moved on. Tish blinked and blotted her eyes again.

“Are you ok?” I whispered.

She shrugged, smiling even though her chin quivered. “My parents haven’t spoken to me in a few years,” she said. “They’re, um, very conservative. So that was a little hard for me.”

I just barely stopped myself from saying “That explains a lot” out loud and put an arm around her shoulder. The other girls started to filter in. Pip, tall and lean, her dark auburn hair pulled away from her face, wore a black gown, floor-length and backless. She looked like an Argentinian opera singer with a dark red flower pinned to the bun at the nape of her neck. Her husband, Dave I think, held her arm. He was polite, but shy behind his glasses. Sasha followed shortly thereafter in a navy dress with a slim waist and full skirt; she had dyed the underside of her long blonde hair with a rich cobalt. Frenchie and Ronnie arrived together; Frenchie in a drapy black dress that emphasized her ample bust and swept away from her hips, and Ronnie in a dress so purple it was almost black and a tiny sequined black bolero jacket. Trixie, fresh-faced and freckled, wore a black 20’s style headband with rhinestones in her platinum bobbed hair, and a deep emerald dress with black faux fur around the wide collar. Grant arrived in a dark grey suit, his hair neatly brushed and pulled into a ponytail.

“How are you holding up?” he asked.

“Okay,” I said. “You?” Dark shadows under his eyes emphasized his unusual pallor, giving him a haggard look despite his neat hair and clean-shaven face.

He shrugged. “It’s hard,” he said. “I’ve never known someone who died before.”

Monica arrived in a glittery black gown, her wild curls pinned back on one side with a fascinator made of teal roses and peacock feathers. Deep plum lipstick completed the look of a lush Billie Holiday.

“Hello, Anna,” a familiar, male voice said behind me. I noticed Monica raise her eyebrows before I turned around.

“Kevin,” I said, barely managing to keep my voice out of the upper registers. “Um, hi.”

“Hi.” He rocked back on his heels slightly, hands in his pockets. His dark suit made him look even more tall and lean, and with his blonde hair chaotic around his face, he reminded me of a young David Bowie. “I, um.” He leaned closer so that only I could hear him. “I know we’ve only gone on the one date, but it didn’t feel right to make you do this by yourself.”

I was glad his lips were so close to my ear, because I gaped at his shoulder like a moron. I was accustomed to shows of gallantry when there’s an audience. Josh used grand, sweeping motions to hold doors open for me, pull my chair out at dinner, or take my coat. Actual consideration of my feelings was a little staggering.

Unless this isn’t healthy. It is a little weird. Maybe he’s obsessed or—

I guess I was silent a little too long.

“I’m sorry if I’m intruding,” he said. “I should’ve called. I just wanted to be here in case you needed someone.”

I recovered myself and hugged him. “This is so thoughtful of you.”

I introduced him to Monica and the rest of the girls. He had a polite, reserved smile. “I wish the circumstances were better,” he said to them.

“Kevin, how sweet of you to be here,” Tish said, embracing him. She kept her arms around him a little longer than strict politeness required.
She’s grieving,
I reminded myself.

“I’m sorry for your loss, Tish,” he said. Such an odd thing we say.
Sorry for your loss.
As if we’d just misplaced her.

She nodded and dabbed again at her eyes with her hankie. How did she cry without her nose turning red?

A familiar female voice caught my attention. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Detective Brack clasping Lisa’s mother’s hand. “Go easy on yourself,” she said. “There’s no such thing as ‘normal’ right now.” Kindness softened her voice and her harsh features, which startled me enough that my mind went blank for a moment.

She’s beautiful
, I thought, and then,
Oh. She’s not a bitch. She’s a bitch to
me.

I noticed Detective Santiago’s face in the crowd as we milled in for the service. He nodded at me, and I nodded back. As we sat, I thought how nice it was of them to be there, and then a chilling thought struck me.
The killer might be here to relive the fantasy.
I fought the urge to turn around and study every face in the room.

The service was hard. The priest, who was probably in his late thirties, had thick glasses, short brown hair, and a wide jaw. He talked about Lisa in a way that I found irritatingly familiar without talking about her sense of humor, her love of dance, her lightheartedness.

Hell, maybe he did know her. Maybe she went to church every week, and I didn’t know about it. He did know she was vibrant and alive, without one mean bone in her body. But he never mentioned the murder.

I didn’t expect that to make me so angry. As he finished the eulogy, and the other girls sniffled and blotted their eyes, I stared at him with my own eyes dry and hot. Maybe her parents asked him not to say anything about it; I don’t know. I still wanted to clench my fists and shout at him.
She was murdered. She was murdered, and it was horrible. We found her lying on that cold floor, so broken and sordid, and you have the fucking temerity to talk about how she’s yukking it up in Heaven? She died terrified with a stranger’s hands around her throat. Don’t pretend you’re any kind of authority on comfort.

Finally, it was over. As we filtered out, I searched the entire crowd with my eyes, analyzing the features of each face for remorse or pleasure. All I read was sadness and exhaustion. I was surprised to lock gazes with Detective Brack again and notice that her eyes were bloodshot. A ball of tissue peeked out of her clenched hand. She gave me another tight-lipped nod and walked out into the lobby.

She might have hated me, but she cared about catching Lisa’s killer. She couldn’t have gotten a Detective shield by letting people see her cry.
You can have all the contempt for me you want
, I told her silently.
You can project everything you dislike about other women on to me if you need to. Just stay that determined. Stay that driven. Catch him, and I don’t care if you hate me.

Kevin pulled me off to the side. The girls were all in a cluster, doubtless making plans for lunch. I couldn’t help glancing at them, but turned my focus back to Kevin.

“Do you need anything?” he asked me.

I smiled a little and shook my head. “Not in this moment,” I said. “Thank you for being here.”

He kissed my cheek. “I’ll call you about Friday?”

I nodded, and as he left, I couldn’t help touching my fingertips to my cheek where he had kissed me. It was wrong, all wrong to get hung up on that at Lisa’s funeral, but I wanted him to do it again.

I don’t know how long I stood there like an idiot, but once I turned to join the group, Monica gave me a smirk that spoke volumes.

• • •

Even though we looked like we should head to an exclusive club for martinis, or possibly perch on giant martini glasses, we headed to a little diner called the Rainbow. Frenchie had grown up in the area, so we all headed down Roselle road behind her. Well. All except Monica, who had to go back to work. “They might be extubating a baby this afternoon,” she whispered to me. “I want to be there for the family.”

I gave her a big hug before she left, willing whatever reserve of strength I had to her. I don’t know how she does it.

The Rainbow was comfortingly unremarkable. From the brown-tiled floor to the mauve leather seats to the potted plants in the corners, from the smell of weak coffee and pancakes to the middle-aged waitress with magenta lip liner and a tendency to call everyone “Hon,” it was exactly the sort of place I used to go after concerts, or when my friends and I were too young to go to bars. Even though I didn’t feel like eating, I scanned the menu. All the familiar items were there: breakfast skillets, pancakes, turkey club sandwiches, French dips, grilled cheese, patty melts. I found that strangely reassuring.

We talked gaily about shoes and handbags, but the conversation kept falling flat. Our eyes were all bloodshot, and the corners didn’t crinkle when we laughed.

“Maybe we should talk about it,” I said.

“About what?” Tish asked.

“About the elephant in the room. Lisa.”

“She will come back and haunt you for calling her fat,” Sasha said, even though her full lips only half-smiled. We all shared a laugh, which felt good and a little disloyal.

“Seriously,” I said. “Should we talk about it?”

There’s a big difference between being a friend and being a therapist. You can’t be objective about your friends, so you can’t really decide when they need to be pushed or challenged. You also can’t just listen without thinking about what you need out of the relationship. However, I can still tell when people need to talk, and the girls needed to talk.

“It just doesn’t make sense,” burst Ronnie.

“I can’t sleep,” Frenchie said. “I have such bad nightmares…”

“I do too,” Pip assured her quietly.

“I think I had a panic attack in the car last night,” Sasha said, wrapping her arms around her broad shoulders. “I just couldn’t breathe.”

“I’ve been on a martini and Snickers ice cream bender every night,” Tish confessed, idly stirring her coffee. None of her glittery red lipstick had transferred to the cup. I wondered how. “I watch tearjerker films and cry until I can sleep.”

“I wish I knew when I was going to cry,” Trixie said. “I have these crying fits. They come out of nowhere and I can’t stop. I’ve had to take the week off work.”

“No one I know has ever died before,” Frenchie said. “I was feeling like… I don’t know, like I’m nuts.” She paused. “You guys, I’m scared to go back to the theater.”

“Me, too,” Pip said.

Several other girls chimed or looked agreement. I still hadn’t spoken. My mind was churning away.
Bereavement, acute stress, PTSD doesn’t matter we don’t diagnose our friends wish I could fix it Tish’s perfect lipstick Ronnie’s bloodshot brown eyes I am here for you what was Kevin doing there is he for real Lisa’s sister so sad—

“We can’t let him take that away from us,” Tish said. “He already took Lisa. Is he going to take our show too?”

That startled me out of my reverie. I stared.

“But what if he comes back?” Trixie said.

“And how can we even walk into the dressing room?” Frenchie asked.

“It’s normal,” I said slowly, feeling the words out as I said them, “to feel a sense of trauma about the place. But if you look at the Darling Killer’s history, he’s never gone back to the same location twice.”
Hotel alley boat home theater.

“It’s creepy,” Pip shuddered. “I read the articles – it looks totally random. Like it’d be one thing if he preferred brunettes; I could dye my hair blonde and at least feel a little better. But it’s random.”

“It can’t be random,” I said. “All killers have a type. There’s something he notices, and it’s a big deal to him, even if we can’t see it.”

“How do you guard against something when you don’t know what it is?” Sasha asked, then shuddered.

“No one goes anywhere alone,” Tish announced. “To the parking lot, to the dressing room, anywhere. It’s a lot harder for an attacker to handle two people than one.”

“Do you really think we’re okay at the theater?” Trixie asked.

“He’s never killed in the same location twice,” I repeated. “Not even in the same kind of location. We’re probably safer there than we are here.”

We paused and looked around the room. An elderly couple sat in a booth in one corner. Some high school kids occupied another table. That was it.

“I think the police would’ve told us not to go back there,” Frenchie said, “if they thought we could all get killed.”

“Tish told me that ticket sales are up,” Sasha said, and Tish nodded. “People want to see where it happened. That’s kind of sick.”

A general murmur of agreement went around the room.

“But Tish made another good point,” I said. “Are we going to let them take this away from us? Are we going to let
him
take this away from us?”

“Um, maybe,” Ronnie said. “It’s pretty fucking scary.”

Trixie squeezed her hand. “It is,” she agreed. “But I don’t think Lisa would want us to quit.”

“Hell, no,” Tish said. “Never.”

I held up my coffee mug. “To the show going on.”

“To the show going on,” the others said, and we clinked our mugs together.

“I wish I’d brought my flask,” Pip said, staring into her coffee. “I’d love a shot of Jameson’s in this.”

“Speaking of coffee,” Trixie said, “who’s that guy who came to see you, Anna?”

The other girls oohed and leaned in as I drew my brows together. “Speaking of coffee?” I said.

“OK, so there’s no good segue,” she said, an impish smile playing on her freckled face. “I just really want to know.”

I blushed.

“His name is Kevin,” Tish smirked, giving me a sidelong glance.

“How did you meet him?” Trixie asked.

“Tish threw me at him,” I said lightly.

“It’s about time,” Sasha said. “I never liked that Josh guy.”

I took a sip of water to cover my reaction.

“Kevin’s cute,” Pip said. I flashed her a grateful smile. She was the only one who had an idea of how bad things had gotten with Josh.

“He must really like you,” Ronnie said. “That’s sweet.”

I squirmed, but forced myself to smile a little. I was rather desperately uncomfortable discussing my questionable love life, but I could tell that the girls were eager to think about something else, so I was willing to go with it. “He is sweet,” I said. “I’m just taking things slow for now, but I’m going to see him again this week.”