What It Was Like (36 page)

I wasn't sure that I heard her correctly.

“We're going to take them out of here and drive them to a place where they'll never be found,” she said.

“And where is that?”

“The Quarry,” she said simply.

It took me a moment to connect her words to my memory of the Quarry itself.

“I've actually thought about this,” she said, her eyes not focusing on anything: she was all in her daydreams. “How I'd get rid of Eleanor if it ever came to this.”

I let her go on.

“I knew it could happen someday,” Rachel said. “Not ‘knew' so much as
felt
it could. If she didn't kill me first. There were nights when I swear I thought she was going to do it. Stab me, or something. You know about the cigarette burns. But there were the slaps and the pinches, all the time.
All
the time.”

I think I said again, “What are we going to do?” but I'm not exactly sure of that fact.

Rachel walked a couple of steps and looked down at Eleanor's body.

“I can't believe this,” she said. “This is . . . this is . . .
poetic justice
is what it is. This is what she got from pushing me and pushing me and pushing me, my whole life. It was what she . . . deserved.”

Her tone suddenly intensified. “And then when she said that she had a big fight with Herb tonight! And a lot of people saw them! If she disappears, they're gonna blame
him
. He's a violent guy. It's almost too perfect.”

“‘Disappears'?” I repeated the word, not sure I wanted to follow her meaning.

“There are those swamps by the airport,” she considered. “By Kennedy. That's where the Mafia dumps dead bodies, isn't it?”

“I don't know,” I said. “I think so,” not really thinking at all.

“But that would be too obvious,” she said. “And too close to here. No, it has to be the Quarry. Just where we saw those Boonies dump all that stuff. You saw it! Stuff gets dumped into the Quarry all the time! No one cares. We'll just take them up there, and they'll just be . . . disappeared.”

“‘Disappeared,'” I repeated.

She tried to sound confident, but I wasn't sure of anything at that moment.

“Don't you see? The best thing is to get them far away from here! Far
far
away from here,” she said in an urgent voice. “If we do this right, right now, no one will catch us. No one will evereverever look for them up there. No one will find out.”

“And what happens when people come looking for Eleanor here?” I asked.

“We play dumb,” she said. “We don't know anything.”

“And what about
Nanci?
”

“No one cares about her!” Rachel scoffed. “Her drunk parents don't care about her! That's why they're always traveling someplace. I was her best friend, and you saw how she treated – no, sorry –
Eleanor
was her best friend. . . . So they disappeared
together
! We know that
Pauline
knew that they were involved.”

Rachel was getting more animated now, thinking out loud, trying to get some sense of action into me. I admit that I was still in some kind of mental fog. Rachel saw that my eyes were straying, looking at Nanci's body on the floor by the fireplace.

“She
betrayed
me! And betrayed you!” Rachel said passionately. “All of our secrets, all of
your
secrets, she told to Eleanor. And Eleanor probably told them to Herb! Doesn't that just disgust you, to think that Herb knew all our secrets?”

I thought of Herb's raspy, knowing “
Don't be a sucker!
” in the parking lot of that Greek diner, and it made me heartsick.

“And she pretended to be my friend!” Rachel continued scornfully. “She'd work me up and get me to talk
against
Eleanor.
She's
the one who told me to ditch class to go see you. She drove me to the train that day! I think she
wanted
us to break up – no, more than that: she wanted us to really crash and burn.”

“Crash and burn,” I repeated.

“
She's
the one who kept the whole Eric thing going, just to make you jealous, just to put a wedge between us. … What kind of a person is that? To give your whole life to revenge?” Rachel wondered.

We looked down at the two bodies. There was a pool of blood on the floor under Nanci's head, but it had stopped spreading. Eleanor's body just lay there.

“What are we going to do?” I repeated.

Right at that moment, we had a choice –
I
had a choice. We could have called the police, told them what happened, thrown ourselves on their mercy, and taken the consequences.

Or I could have listened to Rachel.

“I know what I'm
not
going to do,” she said passionately, just inches from my face. “I'm not going to stay here and wait for the police. I'm not going to let my life be ruined. I'm going to do something to save myself. I am not going to let her win. I'm going to
fight
for my life, now that I'm free of her. And I am
not
going to any jail either, I'll tell you that. I've
been
in jail all my life. No, we're going to get these bodies out of here, we're going to clean up this place, and we're going to drive them far away from here. We're going to drive them up to the Quarry and dump them, and we're going to get away with this.”

I don't think I ever heard her sound so sure of anything as long as I'd known her. In a way, this was the
realest
Rachel I'd ever seen.

“We've got to save
us
!” she said, grabbing my arm the way she did when she felt strongly about something. “And we can. We can!”

I stood there for I don't know how long – a few seconds? my whole life? – not wanting to think, wanting to go back in Time, be invisible, anything but what was actually happening.

“What do you want to do?” asked Rachel. “Leave them there until they rot?”

“I didn't say that,” I said. I didn't say anything for a long moment. I don't know if I thought this explicitly, or if it was just in the back of my confused, shattered mind, but at that moment I had two choices: either walk out of that house, go to the police and tell them what Rachel had done, or stay there and help her conceal it.

“We'll do this properly,” she insisted, penetrating me with those gorgeous blue-blue eyes once more. “We'll do this properly and then we'll be free forever. Free forever! You and me. Just as we always wanted.”

So I stayed . . . and did what I did.

≁

This was the plan. We would put the bodies in the trunk of Eleanor's Cadillac and drive up to Mooncliff – me, driving the Caddy, and Rachel, driving her Mustang behind me. We'd dump the Caddy in the Quarry and immediately drive back home in the Mustang. Put it all a couple hundred miles away and under water, and everything would be gone. Disappeared. As simple as that.

We got dressed and went into action.

“Watch out! Max is out!” yelled Rachel. “He'll track the you-know-what all over!”

The you-know-what was already all over the floor. Well, not all over. Actually, there wasn't that much, considering that there are eight pints of blood in the average human body. More useless
Jeopardy
knowledge.

Rachel had gone to the laundry room for cleaning supplies and accidentally let Max out. And, sure enough, the dog came running in and went straight to Eleanor's body. She had started to sniff at the leg of Eleanor's purple pantsuit when I scooped her up, well before she could sniff her way up the body.

The little dog turned in my hands and actually tried to nip me – the first time she had done that since that first walk on Buckingham-whatever-Terrace – but I held on. She squirmed and yipped. Maybe the animal in her sensed what had happened in the room, maybe not. But she was very squiggly and resistant as I ran with her back to the laundry room.

“Great,” said Rachel, standing in the kitchen with a mop, a roll of paper towels, and a bucket filled with all kinds of cleaning supplies (Lestoil, Clorox, and a big bottle of Mr. Clean) as I whisked past with the wriggling Max. “Thanks.”

I dropped Max gently onto the floor of the laundry room, said “Stay, Max!” as she scampered away, and shut the door behind her.

“Good dog,” I said to myself, taking a breath.

A lot of what happens from here on in is, I confess, horrible. There are many other words for it, but “horrible” is an accurate start. It's what I would have said at the trial, if the Assistant D.A. had been smart enough and had gotten the chance to get it out of me on the witness stand. I don't really know why I'm saying it all now. I think it's because, finally, I have to.

I walked back into the back room, and Rachel was already on her knees, using paper towels to mop up the blood that had pooled around Nanci's head. Smart girl, she had on a pair of big yellow Playtex Living gloves to protect her hands. I saw that she was working quickly and methodically.

I said, “Be careful.” Which was kind of a stupid, unnecessary thing to say, but she let it pass.

Without looking up at me, she said, “OK. What do you want to do with
her
?”

I knew she meant Eleanor.

“Well,” I said. “Didn't you say we were going to put them in the trunk of Eleanor's Cadillac? I mean we're not going to sit them up in the backseat, right?”

I walked a little closer and looked down at Eleanor's body, still on the floor, still very dead. I hadn't really looked into her face. Her head had been turned away from me, face down on the floor when she landed, and I hadn't seen her face . . . until then.

She was never a pretty woman, to say the least. I think that was part of her hatred of Rachel: sheer jealousy. But in Death's odd kind of mercy, even with her face half smushed against the floor, she looked almost pretty. Her face was certainly relaxed, not screwed up and sour from the toxic feelings inside her. Whenever I met her, she always seemed bent on saying something cutting, something “witty.” At least at that moment she seemed to be at peace.

“Where are the keys?” I asked.

“Give me a minute,” she said, still kneeling by Nanci, wiping the floor with another paper towel and deliberately, with both hands, putting it into the big brown paper grocery bag that she had stood up next to her. Already the room smelled like bleach and ammonia combined. At that particular moment, it was a great smell.

I didn't want to rush Rachel or make her nervous, but I knew we had a lot to do before we got out of there that night, in terms of making things clean and presentable. And that was only temporarily: I knew we would have to do a lot more cleaning up once we got back. But if we really were going to dump the Cadillac in the Quarry and not be seen, we had to get there well before daybreak. According to the big, ugly clock over the mantel it was 10:45 p.m. I figured that we had about six hours before dawn. The drive was about three hours. We could definitely make it but only if
 
we moved quickly and intelligently.

Everything I'm going to say from here on in makes me look bad. I mean, worse. I know that. I'm sorry, Counselor, but it's too late to stop now. Keep reading.

“We should put them in something,” I said. “To carry them out to the car. So we don't track anything around here. Anymore than necessary.”

Rachel straightened up for a moment and agreed, “You're right.”

She carefully removed the Playtex gloves and carefully laid them on the edge of the brown paper bag, making sure they would stay balanced there, and not fall or touch anything. Then she sat back on her heels and sprang up to her feet, all in one motion.

“There's something in the garage, I think,” she said.

I followed her out of the room toward the kitchen, where we could get out to the garage.

“How're you doin'?” I asked her.

“Good,” she said, not turning around.

I didn't say anything else to Rachel. As long as she seemed “OK,” I didn't want to open anything up by asking her anything other than what was absolutely necessary.
I
certainly didn't want to think too deeply about what we were doing: I just concentrated on
doing it
. And she didn't say anything either.

As we entered the kitchen, Max started to bark.

“Shut up, Max!” said Rachel as she opened the door to the laundry room, blocking the dog from leaving with her leg. “Stay!”

I scooted in behind Rachel and closed the door, keeping Max inside.

“Good dog,” I said as I followed Rachel out the other door and into the garage.

It was cold in the garage. Well, cool. It was April, the cruelest month “breeding”, and nights were still T.S. Eliot-chilly. It would be really cold up at the Quarry, but I put that thought out of my mind for the moment as I walked around Rachel's Mustang. Eleanor's big white Cadillac was parked on the far side, against the wall, waiting for me.

“I wish we didn't have to have the lights on,” I said, worrying about who might see us from outside. Not that there were any neighbors nearby, but still, I was worried about
everything
. Which was the correct way to be.

“How are we gonna see?” Rachel countered, and she was right, of course. It was a dark, dark night out there.

Still, I thought about all the private security “rent-a-cop” cars I saw driving around her neighborhood at night, but kept that thought to myself. If someone came by, we would have to deal with that.

“There!” Rachel said, pointing to an upper shelf. “Those big canvas things.”

I had to get a ladder, set it up, make noise, and take time, but I climbed up to where Rachel had indicated. Thank goodness there were no houses right near the Princes'; no pain-in-the-ass neighbors to see or hear anything going bump and scrape and bang in the night.

“These?” I asked, touching a piece of stiff, cream-colored canvas.

“Yeah!” she said. “Get those down!”

I pulled hard and two big things fell off the shelf, but they weren't that heavy. They were made of canvas and almost floated to the ground. I climbed down as Rachel was unfolding one of them.

“These are the covers that go over the loungers outside,” said Rachel. “During winter.”

She spread out one of the canvas covers; it was about eight feet long and three feet wide, open on top but with sides, to keep everything in.

“These are perfect!” I said. “Let's go.”

We took the two covers back inside, through the laundry room, kitchen, and dining room. Nothing had changed in the back room. Eleanor and Nanci were exactly where we left them, not that I had expected anything else. But it would have been so nice if their bodies had miraculously vanished. No such luck. Not that we deserved any.

“OK,” I said. “You take this one over by Nanci, and I'll deal with Eleanor.”

I could see that Rachel was completely ready to defer to me on how to do what we had to do.

“OK,” I repeated, trying to think, trying not to look like I was stalling, trying to stay in control of the situation for Rachel's sake (and, yes, Counselor, I know what I'm saying). “Help me lay this out.”

After Rachel put one canvas cover by Nanci, she helped me unfold the other one next to Eleanor. It was stiff and crinkly, but when we got it open, it made a perfect vessel for moving what we had to move. Which were “bodies.”

I knew I had to touch Eleanor, to move her into the pocket of canvas. I don't think I'd ever touched her, except for that first insincere, bony handshake at the Costa Brava. I looked down at her on the floor, mesmerized by her limp, loose-angled body, her half-hidden face, and by Death itself, still right there.

“Hell-eanor…Hell-eanor…Hell-eanor…Hell-eanor.”

Four times I think I said her name. I don't know if I was apologizing, or trying to exorcize her evil soul, or saying a prayer, or conceding victory.

“Go on, baby,” Rachel urged. “We have to do this.”

Carefully I leaned over and took hold of both of her ankles, one at a time. She was wearing nylon stockings under the legs of her pantsuit, and her narrow ankles felt slippery in my grip. I moved her legs over onto the canvas while Rachel held it in place with her foot. Then I moved up to Eleanor's upper body. She was sort of on her side, sort of face down, so I had to change her position. That's when I saw the other side of her head, where Rachel hit her. It was all smashed in and creased with blood in her reddish hair. I think I saw a little bit of her brain, but then I made myself look away. I had already seen too many things that night that I knew I would want to forget. This was just one more.

Without trying to look too closely at what I was doing, I transferred Eleanor's upper body, holding her under the armpits, onto the canvas. I looked down at the floor under Eleanor as I moved her. No blood on the floor, but that didn't prove anything.

“You're gonna have to wipe over here after we move her,” I said.

“I'm gonna wipe down
everything,
” she said. “Believe me:
everything
!”

I looked at Rachel, and she seemed well-resolved and in control. Good for her. And good for me. I was going to need a focused Rachel to get this thing done.

When Eleanor was safely inside the canvas, I said to Rachel, “You should go get the car keys and get the trunk open.”

“Right!” she said firmly. “I'll go get 'em.”

She turned and walked straight out of the room.

I reached down and shifted one of Eleanor's legs, to get her more centered in the canvas. Then I tugged at the canvas. It would slide easily on the floor, but would that be a good idea? Shouldn't we carry her and not leave any traces of canvas thread or anything on the floor?

“Here!” sang out Rachel, jingling Eleanor's huge key ring with the black, shiny leather handbag in her other hand. “You wouldn't believe how much this purse cost . . . almost a thousand dollars at Bendel's!”

That's more than my father makes in a month
, I thought, but didn't say. I stayed with the plan.

“OK,” I said. “Go into the garage and open up the trunk of the Caddy. And tie Max up someplace. We have to go through there.”

“Where should I tie her up?” Rachel asked.

“I don't know. It's your house. Find someplace!” I raised my voice a little, for the first time, I think. I saw the cold look on her face.

“You don't have to shout,” she said and turned, walking back out of the room after dropping the thousand-dollar handbag on the floor.

“Sorry!” I said as she left, but really, I couldn't care too much about the tone of my voice at that very moment. Of course I cared about Rachel and how she was going to get through this, but for now I had to decide how to deal with Nanci.

I walked over to her body, lying against the fireplace stone. I tried not to look directly at her. She was still in her bra and panties. She was so big and smooth and pale. There looked to be some blood still under her head, but Rachel had cleaned up a lot. We'd have to do more when we got back, but it was a start.

I unfolded the other cover next to Nanci. She was about twice as wide as Eleanor. She'd fit in the canvas, easy, but carrying her might be another thing altogether.

“OK, what's next?” asked Rachel, coming back into the room with a determined spring in her step.

“Let's move Nanci into this,” I said, standing by the canvas. “Then we'll take both of 'em out to the garage. OK?”

“Whatever you say,” she said earnestly. “OK, baby?” I could see that she felt bad about yelling at me before, when she left the room, and wanted to make amends.

“Yeah . . . OK, ” I nodded as I walked around to Nanci's head. “You take her feet.”

Rachel took her place at Nanci's feet, splayed wide on the floor. Her body was wide and very still. I could see that Rachel froze when she started to bend down. She blinked, tried again, and still couldn't bend down.

“Wait,” I said. “Let me do that.”

I stepped down to Nanci's feet, and Rachel moved out of the way.

“Thanks,” she murmured softly. “I can help, but I don't want to touch her. Is that all right?”

“Yeah,” I said. She suddenly looked a little weak and lost. I didn't want her to come apart.

“Stand back a little,” I said.