Best Friends Forever (27 page)

paintings

and

photographs

from

museums in Italy and Paris, places I’d never been and would probably never visit. And I’d eat, ferrying the sweets from the box to my mouth in an unbroken chain, chewing and swal owing and chewing and swal owing, feeling the pil ow cool against my cheek, the chocolate coating my mouth and my tongue, the syrupy caramel melting deep in the back of my throat, my left hand dipping and rising into the bags and boxes as my right hand turned the pages.

The Saturday after Valentine’s Day al of those heart-shaped boxes of candy that hadn’t been bought were 75 percent off. I’d buy half a dozen boxes and stack them in my closet. At night, I’d start off with cookies, move on to something salty, like cheese curls or potato chips, and finish my evening with

nougats

and

caramel

chews,

buttercreams and cherry cordials. I would flip the pages, looking at the pictures with my fingers scrabbling through the fluted brown paper cups in a box with the words To My Sweetheart twining across the cover in gold script, and I’d fal asleep without brushing my teeth, with al of that sweetness gilding my mouth. I would dream about love, about being magical y lifted out of my house, out of my town, even out of my body, and deposited someplace better, where I’d be a thin beautiful laughing girl in a two-piece swimsuit or a short cheerleader’s skirt. Sometimes I would let my mind wander to Dan Swansea, how he’d looked at the swimming pool in the summer, beads of water flashing on his smooth brown back, more water slicking the dark hairs against his calves. Hey, pretty, I’d imagine him saying as we passed in the hal . In my dreams, he reached for my hands, he tugged me into the secret vestibule outside the gym teacher’s office to steal a kiss before class. None of this would ever happen, but

my

dreams,

careful y

embroidered and unfolded each night, were as sweet as candy.

“I don’t understand it,” my mother said after my checkup. My pediatrician had shaken his head, frowning, while I stood on the scale, and then, bald head gleaming, he’d bent over his prescription pad and written the words “Weight Watchers” and

“exercise,” before tearing it off and ceremoniously handing it to me. She’d add another lap to our evening walk, or subtract half a sweet potato from my dinner, and I’d promise myself that I was going to stop with the chips and the cookies and the To My Sweetheart candy. I’d wake up ful of resolve, thinking that this would be the day that things would change: I’d stick to my diet, I’d smile, I’d be friendly, I’d do whatever Val told me, because clearly she’d figured out the secret to being liked by everyone.

“Just don’t worry so much,” Val lectured one spring morning. She wore a pink tank top that left her arms and the top of her chest bare, and a khaki skirt—since she’d started with the cheerleaders, she wore skirts almost al the time. A few she’d bought herself, over her California summer, and a few I recognized as Mrs. Adler’s, the long, lacy cotton ones that swept the ground like a bridal train. Val’s braces had come off, her teeth were white and straight and shiny, and her figure had fil ed out—she wasn’t very big on top, but her smal breasts looked right with her tight hips and long legs. To look at her you’d never believe that she’d once been geeky or gawky, that her clothes had been weird, that she and I had once belonged together.

The balance had shifted. In high school the things that I was (smart, neat, polite, artistic) mattered far less than the things Valerie was (blond, cheerleader).

“You smel fine.”

“I know,” I said, and pul ed at the hem of my sweater. It was too hot for sweaters, but mine came from Benetton and was exactly the same as the ones the other, thinner girls wore, only bigger. I had the same designer jeans, too, special-ordered from Marshal Field’s, where they didn’t normal y stock my size. My mother had bought them for me, and I didn’t have the heart to tel her that I could wear exactly the same things as the other girls and they would stil look wrong, because I was wrong, and nothing I wore could change that.

“You’re too self-conscious,” Val scolded, shading her eyes and peering down the street.

“It’s like you’re already thinking of every bad thing someone could think about you before they even think it. If people know they’re getting to you, they’re just going to keep doing it.”

I ducked my head. She was right.

“You’re fine,” she said as a white Civic zipped around the corner and squealed to a stop in front of us. Mindy Gibbons, one of Val’s fel ow cheerleaders, was in the driver’s seat.

“Hey, Val!” she singsonged. There was a momentary pause. “Hi, Addie.” Another pause.

“Hi, Jon.”

I raised my hand as Jon raised his head from his word search, looked at me before raising his own hand in a wave. Val picked up her backpack and put her hand on the car door.

“Do you want to ride with us?” she asked.

My throat felt dry. Mindy was a senior and a cheerleader, and I was sure she didn’t want me in her car. “That’s okay,” I said.

“What?” Val asked impatiently. “I can’t hear you.”

“Go ahead,” I said.

“Come on,” Mindy said over the blare of Mariah Carey. “We’re gonna be late.”

Val gave me a look I couldn’t read before climbing in next to Mindy and slamming the door. I watched them drive off, feeling door. I watched them drive off, feeling furious and be-wildered and sad. When had Val and Mindy made this arrangement? When had they gone from being squadmates to being friends? I picked up my own backpack as the school bus lumbered around the corner and, bracing for the stares and the whispers, pushed Jon onto the bus and climbed on board behind him.

THIRTY-FIVE

Pleasant Ridge town manager Sasha Devine was a handsome, dark-eyed woman five years older than Jordan, who did not look happy to see him on her doorstep late Saturday night.

“I assume this isn’t a social cal ,” she said, leaning against her door. Blue light from the television flickered behind her, making her short, curvy body glow like she was radioactive.

Jordan kept quiet. Sleeping with the town manager, technical y his boss, had been a huge mistake. Sleeping with his boss and then not cal ing her afterward had been an even worse one. “Can I come in?” he asked. Sasha tilted her face up and looked at Jordan like he was going to try to sel her something she didn’t want. “How about you just say what you need to say?”

“Okay.” He should have cal ed her. He’d meant to cal her. He’d had every intention of cal ing her, but by the next night, the task of lifting his telephone, punching in her numbers, actual y speaking to her, had seemed

insurmountable. I’l cal her

tomorrow, he’d told himself, but on Sunday he’d just…what? Gotten busy. There was a Sports Il ustrated he hadn’t read, and when he’d turned on the water to make coffee, the faucet was dripping. He’d set about fixing it, only his socket wrenches were under the sink, with the cleaning supplies, and the cabinet was shut with one of the childproof locks he couldn’t remember how to open, and rather than try to figure it out, he’d made a trip to Home Depot to buy more. Home Depot was right by the movie theater, and there was a showing of that movie he’d wanted to see, and by the time he got home, it was seven o’clock and he’d figured that Sasha was giving her kids dinner. She had two daughters, eight and ten, and a husband who’d done a runner for reasons she hadn’t divulged. Back in his camouflage camp chair Jordan drank one beer while watching a TiVo’ed episode of SportsCenter, and another beer watching the news. Beers three, four, and five had fol owed, and then the Nighty-Night Lady came on and he’d gotten involved in the episode, and afterward, zipping his pants and disposing of the Kleenex, he was too embarrassed to speak to anyone. Then it was Monday, but he had Mondays off, and on Tuesday he’d figured he’d see her at some point during the week, and he had, but it had been awkward, and the week after that, when he’d final y decided to ask if she wanted to have dinner, she’d snarled, “Don’t do me any favors,” and that had been the end of their romance. He’d never gotten to apologize. Certainly, he’d never gotten to tel her the truth, which was that after they’d had sex (and that part had gone wel , al things considered—out of her suit and hose and heels, with her thick hair loosed from its pins, Sasha was an old-fashioned beauty), he’d gone to her bathroom and seen, amid the cosmet-ics on the countertop, a tube of Dora the Explorer toothpaste, bright-red gel in a red-and-white container sized for little kids’ hands. And real y, what could he say? I can’t see you again because I’m afraid of

your toothpaste? I can’t see you again

because you have kids and I don’t and I

kind of hate you for that? I can’t see you

again because, before things fel apart, my

wife used to get tipsy on white wine and sing

“I Loves You Porgy” to me, and she never

wil again, and it hurts so much I can’t even

think about it?

He stared down at Sasha, thinking that he was supposed to have his life by now: his wife, his family, the house they would live in together. Instead, he had nothing. Nothing at al .

“Dan Swansea,” he began. His breath formed white clouds with every word. “We think the belt and the blood belong to a man named Dan Swansea.”

Sasha sighed and nudged the door open with her hip. “C’mon.” She kept an office on the first floor, just off the kitchen, with a tiny antique desk

and

two

upholstered

armchairs, and it was there that she led him, sweeping a half-dozen stuffed bears and bunnies off one chair and sitting down in another.

Jordan took a seat and made his case.

“Fifteen years ago, when Dan Swansea was a senior at Pleasant Ridge High, he was accused of raping one of his classmates, a woman named Valerie Adler. He and some of his friends got in trouble for harassing the woman who’d accused them. Valerie denied anything had happened. The woman who accused Dan was Valerie’s best friend, Adelaide Downs.”

“Go on,” said Sasha, pul ing out a pen and a piece of paper.

“Three of the boys who got in trouble were at the reunion last night. Swansea’s missing.

He’s not answering his phone. Nobody’s seen or heard from him since the reunion.”

Sasha regarded him with her fine brown eyes. “So what happened?”

“We’re looking at the woman who made the accusation. Adelaide Downs.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Not the victim? The one he al egedly raped?”

“We think that Ms. Adler and Ms. Downs are together,” Jordan said. “We think maybe whatever happened to Dan, the two of them are responsible.”

The wheels of Sasha’s chair squeaked against the floor. “So what happened? The two of them waited fifteen years, then snuck up on Dan in the parking lot, took off his belt, and did what, exactly?”

Stiffly Jordan said, “We’re working on that.

”

“Have you questioned them?”

“I was at Ms. Downs’s house this morning,”

he said. Never mind that he’d been there to ask about her brother. “She’s missing now.

Her neighbor reported her missing. Her house is locked. Valerie Adler’s car is in the garage, and Ms. Adler has a permit to carry a weapon, concealed. I want permission to get a warrant to search their houses,” he said, leaving out the fact that he’d been through Addie’s house already, that he’d found a coat with blood that he thought would match what they’d found in the parking lot.

But

even

before

he’d

finished

pronouncing the word “warrant,” Sasha was shaking her head. “No can do, Chief. There’s no physical evidence connecting them to the crime, right?”

“Right.” They looked at each other for a moment, Sasha with her eyes narrowed, Jordan with his hands on his thighs. He guessed that he could get her to authorize his request for a warrant if he could get her into bed again, but given his past behavior, that probably wouldn’t be happening.

“I can’t let you go after a warrant based on circumstantial evidence,” Sasha final y said.

Jordan nodded and got to his feet. This was the answer he’d expected, even though it had been worth a shot. Sasha’s expression softened. “You look awful. Go home. Get some sleep,”

she said.

Back in the car, Jordan cal ed his team and sent them home, tel ing Hol y and Gary to be back at the station at seven a.m. sharp (“I’l bring you coffee,” Hol y told him, and Jordan didn’t have the heart to tel her no). At home, there was a new episode of The Nighty-Night Show.

Jordan showered, stuffed his clothes in the hamper, and pul ed on pajama bottoms and a Tshirt. He cracked open a beer, shoved a frozen pizza in the toaster oven (he had to fold it in half to get it to fit), and settled into his camp chair. But he couldn’t relax. He kept thinking about Adelaide Downs, whom no one had believed, and Valerie Adler, the best friend who’d betrayed her and then come back. The ladies, he thought…and by the time the Nighty-Night Lady came on, with her V-neck exposing a wedge of creamy cleavage, Jordan was asleep.

THIRTY-SIX

The next morning, Jordan huddled with Hol y and Gary as the two of them led him through the intricacies of Wikipedia and explained, in painstaking detail, what Twitter was. When he was up to speed on everything the Internet could tel him about Valerie Adler, Girl Reporter, from her feuds to her Facebook fan page, he took a pocketful of Hol y’s frosted Christmas sugar cookies, cut in the shapes of bel s and stars and candy canes and decorated with seasonal sprinkles, and drove to Chicago.

There was no answer when he buzzed Val’s high-rise condo on Lakeshore Drive. The doorman out front was resplendent in a uniform of red wool and gold braid, like he was planning on marching off to fight for the British as soon as his shift ended. His name was Carl, and he hadn’t seen Ms. Adler since Thanksgiving Day. “Her mother was in town,” he said, and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial murmur. “You know the term

‘cougar’?”

Jordan nodded. The other man’s teeth gleamed as he grinned. “Man, I’da hit that with stuffing!”

“So you haven’t seen Valerie Adler?”