Heart-Shaped Box (Claire Montrose Series) (12 page)

“
All right. When you left, did you see anyone outside?”

“
Yeah. There were a couple of people out there smoking. Jim Prentiss. And that Logan West. And I think maybe there was one other person who was leaving just as I was walking by.” She hesitated. “But I don’t remember who it was. I didn’t look in Logan’s direction very long. You know what they say about crazy people and animals - you don’t want to look into their eyes for too long, ‘cause it makes them mad. So we just kind of nodded at each other.”

“
Were they talking to each other?”
“Logan and Jim? No, I don’t think so.”

Tyler made a note. “And how did they seem to you?”

“
What do you mean?” Belinda seemed puzzled.

“
Did they seem upset to you? Or out of breath? Did you maybe notice scratch marks on their faces or hands, for example?”

She was shaking her head before he even finished. “I didn’t see anything like that. They just looked - normal. I’m sure I would have noticed if they didn’t. I just said hello and kept on walking. I was tired and wanted to be back in my room.”

“
And then you began to walk through the parking lot. Did you hear anything or see anything out of the ordinary before you saw the body? See anybody running or hear any shouts or?”

“
No.” Her voice stretched the word out until it trailed off. “No.”

“
Are you sure? You sound like you remembered something.”

“
It seemed like I thought of something for a moment, but now it’s gone. It’s probably nothing. I was so tired when I went out there. I was mostly just wishing I was already in bed.” She grabbed another tissue, her voice arcing higher. “But now I don’t see how I can sleep! If I close my eyes I just see her the way she was when I found her. Her eyes half-open and looking at me but also looking
through
me. Like she didn’t care what she saw.”

“
And where was her purse when you found her? Was she holding it?”

Belinda shook her head. “No. It was lying a few feet away. I think there was some stuff spilling out of it.”

“
Do you remember seeing anything in Cindy’s hands?”

“
What do you mean? Like she grabbed a hunk of the guy’s hair or something? No, I didn’t see anything. But I hope she did. I hope she hurt this guy something good.”

“
I do, too.” Tyler tapped the pen against his teeth. “You know what I might do? I think I’m gonna call in a hypnotist from Portland. See if they can walk you through what happened tonight. Get you to remember in more detail.”

Belinda shook her head. “I don’t know if I can do this all over again, Tyler. I don’t want to keep thinking about it and thinking about it. I want to remember Cindy the way she was. She was so beautiful. So, so beautiful. I know. People were always saying that to her when we were together.”

Chapter Ten

A strange, nervous energy infected the Hoe-Down Room. The harried bartender couldn’t keep up with the fresh onslaught of demands as people crowded four deep around the bar, offering to buy each other rounds. All around them conversations grew louder, as some people cried at the thought Cindy’s being gone and others shuddered at the horrible manner of her death. Fueling everything was people’s giddy relief at simply being alive. Even though the police had only asked those who had found the body in the parking lot to stay, no one wanted to miss out on the excitement.

It wasn’t real to most of them, Claire realized as she looked around the room. Only the dozen or so people who had found Cindy’s body looked truly shaken. Richard was chewing his nails, pausing every few seconds to search for another sliver he could nibble away. He looked like some sort of industrious animal, a squirrel or a woodpecker or a beaver. Martha sat slumped next to him, but the two of them weren’t talking. At another table, Sawyer rested his head in his hands, his palms hiding his eyes, while his wife rubbed his shoulders. Even Jessica unusually somber as she dug through her sleek Coach purse.

The two people who had been closest to Cindy in high school seemed the most affected. Until one of the cops had escorted her out to be interviewed by Tyler, Belinda had wept brokenly in the back of the room. And Wade was leaning against a wall, his arms crossed, his face shadowed by the moose head mounted above him. On the way back to the casino, he had wiped his shirtsleeve across his face, erasing all traces of vomit and tears.

But, Claire noticed, two of little group who had found Cindy’s body in the parking lot were missing. Logan West and Jim Prentiss. She was particularly worried about Logan. Had the sight of Cindy’s violated body sent him back over the edge of insanity? And what about Jim? Just as she was wondering where he could be, he slipped in the room and joined the crowd around the bar.

At the next table, Rebecca was talking to Nina. Her next words fell into an unexpected pool of silence. “Poor Belinda.” The silence rippled out, like a stone thrown into a pool. “Poor Belinda,” Rebecca repeated. People turned to her, and she flushed to her hairline, but continued on. “I can’t imagine what it would be like to find the body of your best friend. How horrible.” Around the room, people shook their heads, murmuring in agreement.

“
Who could have done it?” a woman asked.

Jim shrugged. “Some sad sack probably saw Cindy walking along, not paying any attention to where she was going, and holding this big purse. Maybe he’d lost everything at the tables, and he was just looking to score a little cash. And then one thing lead to another.”
“Or maybe it was a Tequamish,” Nina ventured. “Everyone knows Indians can’t hold their liquor.” She shrieked as the waitress stumbled and spilled the remains of a bottle of beer down the back of her neck. With a false smile that didn’t reach her flat dark eyes, the waitress apologized.

“
Why are you talking about whoever did it as if they were a stranger?” Martha asked. “Occam’s Razor would say that the most likely person to have a motive to kill her would be one of us.”

Someone in the back of the room started to laugh, but then stopped abruptly when people turned their heads.

“
Occa- what?” Jessica asked.

“
Occam’s Razor. It says the simplest explanation that accounts for all the facts is probably the right one. Why would a stranger want to kill Cindy? If they wanted her money, all they had to do was take it. It’s more likely that it was someone who had known her for a long time.”

Wade stepped forward, his face hardening. “Just what are you saying?”

It was Maria who answered him. “Oh, just look around the room, Wade. Martha is right.”

“
What you mean?”

“
You can start with me, if you want. Who was head cheerleader senior year? It should have been me, but instead it was Cindy. She sweet-talked that faculty adviser into recounting the votes, and somehow it ended up that Cindy won by three. Now, wasn’t that convenient.” Maria drew the last word out sarcastically. “And she didn’t care if that meant the end of our friendship.”

As Maria spoke, a hush fell over the room. Even the bartender had stopped to listen, a half-filled glass forgotten in his hand. Claire didn’t know if everyone was stunned by Maria’s venom, or by the fact that someone was finally speaking the truth about Cindy.

Maria continued you on. “Take you, Wade. She knew you were interested in me right at the beginning of the school year, so it was like a challenge to her to get you. And after she got tired of you, she broke it off.” Wade shook his head and turned away, his back rigid. “She thought that being beautiful and rich and head cheerleader gave her a license to look down on everyone. Even Tyler - do you think he really feels that bad about her being dead? Remember how he used to stutter when he was a kid and she would make fun of him?”

There was a long silence, then other voices began to chime in.

“
She slept with my boyfriend and then as soon as he broke up with me she dropped him.”

“
She had all the male teachers snowed.”

“
I heard she gave Mr. Berkman a blow job to get an A in social studies.”

A voice cut through the babble. A trained voice, used to projecting itself even to the two-for-one seats in the nosebleed section. Jessica.

“
I think you’re looking at this all wrong. You’re all talking about Cindy’s death as if whoever did this was just out to get Cindy. But remember what Martha said - it’s the simplest explanation that fits the facts.
All
the facts. And you’re leaving out the most important one. I think that the person who killed Cindy may be after me as well.”

Jim’s skeptical voice cut through the babble that began to return. “What makes you think that, Jessica?”

“
Because when we found Cindy out on that cold ground” - well, it hadn’t been cold, Claire thought, but she guessed an actor was allowed a bit of poetic license - “you saw what she had
clutched
” - Jessica gave the word
clutched
dramatic emphasis - “in her hand.” She had everyone’s attention now. “A heart-shaped box. Hand-carved out of wood. And inside, there was a photo of Cindy cut out from the annual.” With a flourish, she pulled something from her purse and held it up so everyone could see. There was a murmur as people craned their necks. “Well, look at what I got when I checked in to the hotel. An identical box! Only this one has
my
picture in it! Which means that somewhere - perhaps in this very room - a killer is watching me. Waiting for his chance to - .”

Claire only had a second for started recognition before another woman’s voice cut Jessica off.

“
You mean Cindy got one of these, too?” Sunny asked. She reached into her own purse and then held up what looked like an identical box. “The desk clerk gave me this when I checked in. No note or anything else. Just this box in a little manila envelope. And inside there was a picture of me when I was in riding club. I thought it was from my old boyfriend until I saw that Maria got one, too.” Maria nodded.

The center of attention had slipped away from Jessica and now swung from woman to woman as one after another they confessed to having received a box identical to the ones Jessica, Claire - and poor dead Cindy - had received.

“
Rebecca got one too,” Rebecca said, instantly transporting Claire back to her high school days, when she had found Rebecca’s habit of talking about herself in the third person incredibly annoying.

“
I got one,” Claire added, although she didn’t know if anyone but Richard heard her in the hubbub. For a few seconds his frightened gaze met hers.

Nina reached into her pocket and then waved a box over her head. “I didn’t know what it meant - just that someone picked the worst picture to remember me by.”

“
All of you got boxes?” Jessica asked, looking deflated. Claire watched as she slipped her box back in her purse, no longer the center of hushed attention.

While Jessica sat slumped and silent, the four other women who had received boxes began to compare them. The rest of the room crowded around. Claire thought about going back to her hotel room to get hers, but then realized the cop had told them they couldn’t leave until Tyler had finished his questioning. She joined the crowd clustered around Sunny, Rebecca, Maria and Nina.

The boxes were roughly similar. Each was slightly smaller than a woman’s palm, hand-carved out of some dark reddish wood, with a single silver hinge. The top of each box was decorated with curlicues and flowers. As far as Claire could tell, they were close duplicates of the box she had received.

In the commotion, Jim pulled her aside. They stood beside an empty coat rack made out of upturned deer hooves. The hooves looked plastic. She hoped they were.

“
So you got one of the boxes, huh?” He shifted from one foot to another. “What do you think it means?”

“
I honestly don’t know.”

“
Say, I need you to do me a favor, Claire.”

“
What’s that?”

His smile was private and somehow sad. “You’re not the old Claire, any more, are you? The old Claire would have just said yes.”

The old Claire never found someone strangled in a parking lot, either, Claire thought. “Why don’t you tell me what it is.”

“
I need you to say we walked back here together, okay? If anyone asks, say we walked back to the Hoe-Down Room together, that you stayed outside with me for a second while I had a quick smoke. There was so much going on that nobody will remember exactly what happened. But I don’t need anyone asking questions about where I was for five minutes.”

“
Since we both know that didn’t really happen, what were you doing instead?”

He looked away from her, running his index finger around the cup of a hoof. “Don’t ask me that, okay? Because I can’t tell you.”

Claire looked at him without speaking. Had she really opened her body to him all those years ago? Now Jim was a stranger to her, with his tanned, lined, tired face. He reached out and caught one of her hands in his. They were rough as sandpaper, despite the lotion he had told her about. Had he squeezed these same hands around Cindy’s neck?

Claire felt as if the world were falling away beneath her feet. She didn’t know what was true and what wasn’t. With an effort, she drew a deep breath and steadied herself, Jim’s fingers still gripping hers tightly. He had always been honest with her. He had been gentle and sensitive and kept their lovemaking private, when so many boys would have boasted to each other.