AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Zeke’s hitting!” Kelsey announced, obviously affronted.
“I’ll be right there.”
“It hurts! He’s being mean.”
“He’s just acting out.”
“He’s not supposed to hit!”
“I know.” In a louder voice, Ashley reprimanded, “Zeke, you be nice!” Then back to her daughter, “I said I’ll be there in a second!” before adding in a lower voice, “Geez! I could use a drink.” She glanced up at Nikki. “A double margarita, ASAP!”
The girl whined, cast Nikki a dark look, then stomped back into the hallway.
“This isn’t a good time,” Ashley admitted, having lost some of her irritation. “But, really, there isn’t a good time. What you’re talking about happened a long, long time ago. I’m sorry, really sorry that those girls were found . . . you know,” she whispered sadly, “dead. How awful! But there’s nothing, not one single thing I can do about it. I’ve told the police what I know and I’ve suffered through Margaret Duval’s . . . persecution.”
“Persecution?”
“I know what she’s said about me and it really doesn’t make any sense as I gave her son his alibi, right? Why should she be mad at me? As if I could have stopped what happened.” She opened up a little. “I wish I could have, but . . . sometimes things happen. It’s all been a nightmare. A horrible, unending nightmare.” She gazed out the bank of windows to the deck with its bright umbrella over a shaded table and a chaise lounge angled toward the ocean, visible in the distance, darkening as the sun lowered behind the house. A cigarette had been left burning in the ashtray on a small glass-topped table, a pair of strappy gold sandals tucked beneath the chais
e. Ashley had been occupying that spot, near the pool, when Nikki had arrived. Now, she seemed lost in thought, miles or more probably years away.
Nikki brought her back to the here and now. “So, to be clear, you were with Owen Duval from the second he dropped off the girls until he went back to the theater and found them missing.”
“Yes! I told the police, over and over again, about the time when he showed up and when he left. That hasn’t changed in twenty years.” She fingered the small gold cross that hung from a gold chain around her neck. “I’m sorry for the Duval girls and their family, really, but I can’t let what happened to them define me, now can I?”
“You were dating Owen Duval?”
“What? No, he was just a friend.”
“He said you were his girlfriend.”
“Well, he was wrong.” She rubbed her temples as if she were developing a headache. “We were friends, sorta, I guess, but we didn’t have a thing going, not even a secret one. Sorry to disappoint. He was kind of an outcast and I liked that about him. He was different. Smart. And he had a dark, almost sick sense of humor. That was it, I guess, he wasn’t Goth, but he was . . . deep? Really into Edgar Allan Poe and watched, like, old black and white movies. Like Psycho. The original one.” She paused, biting her lip. “He was just too out there, you know. One time he asked me if I ever listened to the voices in my head. I thought he was joking, but maybe he wasn’t.”
“What did you say?”
“ ‘What voices?’ And he kind of laughed, but he was serious, I think. Anyway, he didn’t have a lot of friends, so I was nice to him. I guess he thought because of it we were an item.” She shook her head. “We weren’t.”
“Who did you date?”
“What does that have to do with anything?” she asked crossly. “A lot of guys, I guess? No one special.”
“Beaumont?”
“What? Yeah.” Her lips tightened. “It wasn’t a big deal. Tyson dated . . . so many. I was just one in the crowd.”
And obviously she didn’t like it.
“What about Jacob Channing?”
She stopped cold. Just stared at Nikki. “Old news,” she said. “Who cares who I dated in high school?”
“But you and he were involved?”
“Not involved.” She looked away, then squared her shoulders. “It was nothing. Not a big deal at all. Okay? Again, he dated a lot of girls and I dated a lot of boys. It was high school. That’s what you do!”
Nikki pressed on. “He’s still around, right?”
“I guess . . . I don’t really keep up with him. Or with any of them. No one from high school.”
