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“Rainbow hair?” A frown creased Stempy’s face as he flipped a few more pages before pausing and reading. Then he said. “You mentioned a rainbow-headed girl somewhere else. In the initial investigation when the police questioned you, they asked if any other witness had been present. You said, ‘Yeah, the girl with the rainbow-colored hair. After it was over, I opened my eyes and there she was in the room with us, creeping through as if she didn’t want to get caught. When she saw me looking at her, she put her finger to her lips, asking me to keep quiet. She wasn’t a hallucination.”
Clicking his pen as he paused from reading the account, quoting me word for word, Stempy frowned. “Why did you say she wasn’t a hallucination?”
I shrugged. “Well, she couldn’t have been. I saw her. I talked to her. I spilled beer on her shirt and tried to help her pat it dry. I felt, you know, a live, corporeal person. She couldn’t have been a mirage. But then I followed her into that room, and suddenly she was gone, like, I don’t know, she disappeared into thin air. When Melody showed up, I asked her if she’d seen the rainbow-haired girl, but she seemed to think I was hallucinating things. But I wasn’t. Rainbow-hair girl was real. I saw her before, and then again after it was over, leaving the room. So she must’ve been hiding or something, behind the shower curtain, I don’t know. But she was there.”
I snapped my fingers. “And Melody very clearly locked the door when she came in, but her boyfriend opened it afterward, so someone—the rainbow-haired girl—had to have unlocked it when she left.”
“And what did this corporeal girl look like?”
“I just said, she had rainbow-hair.” Why would a person need any more information that that? But it got me a short frown, so I squinted my eyes, trying to remember more, except I only came up with a vague outline of her. “Short,” I added. “Full figured.”
“So she was fat?”
I frowned at Stempy, not liking that word because he made her sound bad. I hadn’t remembered anything bad about the way rainbow-hair had been shaped, so I settled for saying, “Not boney.”
“Chubby, then,” the lawyer decided, writing that down.
He didn’t notice the glare I sent him, which was probably for the best. I didn’t especially want to get on the bad side of the only guy willing to defend me. And yet I couldn’t handl
e him focusing on her weight when there had been so much more about her that seemed tons more prominent.
“She was very dynamic,” I said. “Energetic. Like a spunky little spitfire that could either be the life of a party and have you rolling with laughter, or your worst nightmare if you ever pissed her off.”
I’d only spent two minutes in her company, yet I knew what I said was true without a doubt. And also completely irreverent. The blank glance Stempy sent me told me personality was not going to help him physically pick her out of a line-up. But sadly, that was basically all I remembered about her.
Rubbing a spot on the center of his forehead as if a headache were growing, Stempy sighed. “How much did you say you had to drink that night?”
I narrowed my eyes. “I was fucked up. I know that. But I remember everything, and I didn’t hallucinate anyone.”
I felt as if I was being too adamant, which probably came across as really fake, but I couldn’t help it. My freaking attorney was looking at me like I was a total liar. My hopes sank and I found myself rubbing my own head as it began to pound miserably. Then I winced when I hit a sore spot, so I dropped my hand lamely back to the mattress.
No one was going to believe me, were they? I suddenly understood how Harrison Ford had felt on The Fugitive when he’d tried to convince everyone a one-armed man had killed his wife.
I kind of wanted to stand up and shout, “You find this man, er, rainbow-haired girl. You find this girl.”
She was obviously the key to everything.
“So, this girl,” Stempy was saying, shaking his head as if my answers were too complicated for him to comprehend. “You followed this girl—with the rainbow-colored hair—into the room, but you didn’t know her?”
“Right.” I nodded. See my answers weren’t confusing at all.
Stempy sighed. “If you didn’t know her, then why did you follow her into someone-else-you-didn’t -know’s bedroom?”
“I told you.” I stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. “I spilled beer on her. I was trying to apologize and offer to buy her a new shirt, but she veered off into that room, running away from me. I don’t know why it was so important to me; I just wanted to make everything right with her.”
Stempy lifted his hand to stop me. Then he said, “Okay, obviously we need to start further back than the beginning. When did you spill beer on the rainbow-colored hair girl?”
Oh, right. Maybe I did need to explain more. I could suddenly see why he was so lost. “Okay, yeah.” I nodded. “So my fraternity threw a party that night. Obviously I attended and drank alcohol there. I was really drunk, and at one point I needed to take a piss. I went to the bathroom, but when I came out, holding my beer, she was right there.”
“The rainbow-haired girl, not Melody?”
I nodded. “Right. And I mean, she was, like, right there. So we both jerked to a halt to keep from running into each other, but I lost hold of my cup and spilled my beer all down the front of her shirt. Cool shirt, too. It said This is my Day Drinking Shirt.”
When Stempy blinked at me blankly, not impressed, I added, “You know from the song ‘Day Drinking’ by the band Little Big Town?” I nodded respectfully. I totally meshed with Rainbow-Hair’s taste in music.
But Stempy obviously wasn’t a country music fan. I cleared my throat. “Anyway, I offered to buy her a new shirt.” And maybe get my own while I was at it. I really had liked that shirt.
“You offered to buy her a new shirt?” My attorney seemed dubious.
