Jex Malone (21 page)

“We're going to make this fast, so just listen and don't talk, Billy,” I say, removing any nervous tension from my voice by speaking extra slowly and clearly and pronouncing every syllable. A quick glance at Nat bolsters me because she nods assuredly.

“We know what happened to your girlfriend Patricia Matthews. I can't tell you how we know, I can only tell you that we know,” I add. “I'll give you this much information so that you know we're not kidding around. You gave her scrunchies for her birthday present.”

Billy looks at me wide-eyed in amazement.

“Ick—scrunchies!” Deva adds disdain for emphasis, as if next to being responsible for Patty's disappearance, his greatest shame is giving scrunchies as a gift.

For some reason, Billy doesn't look mean or scared for a minute. He looks a little bit sad, which shocks me. Then Billy folds his arms across his wide chest, but not in defiance. Even more startling is when he drops his head like it's just too heavy and is about to roll off his stump of a neck.

“This makes no sense,” he mumbles, his plastic athletic pants rustling on the seat and his plain black T-shirt molding to him.

“Listen up,” Nat says, leaning in and talking low. “We found Patty's diary. We aren't lying about it. You remember? The notebook. I'm guessing she talked about it because the girl poured her heart out in it. You must have known she kept a diary.”

Billy sits stone-faced. He's not about to give it up.

Nat persists, “The notebook where she wrote all about you and your big love affair and how her dad knocked her around a little bit because he hated your guts.”

No response from Billy.

“Okay, you want to play this out?” Nat tests Billy. In one swift move, she reaches into her backpack, and for a minute I hope that she just plans to pepper spray him so we can race out of here. Instead, she grabs her cell phone. For a quick second, I wonder if Nat is going to call the real cops, which could mean big trouble for me.

“Does this look familiar?” Nat says, slow and low.

Even I stifle a gasp when the cover of Patty's notebook comes up. Nat has obviously logged the evidence. For safe keeping. She swipes her finger across the screen and the first pages of the notebook, each neatly represented in a photo, fly past Billy's increasingly bugged-out eyes.

When he makes a quick grab for the phone, Nat jets her hand just out of his reach.

“Does this prove you're a killer? Maybe yes. Maybe no. One thing is for sure: Your dead little girlfriend Patty wrote it … she wrote about all of it,” Nat says. “And most interesting of all is what she wrote about you, Billy.”

What happens next surprises all of us. Billy allows his giant head to fall into his big saucer-like hands.

“I don't want to get into all this again. Why doesn't this ever go away? Why?” he says to no one in particular.

“I didn't do it, okay. I just didn't do it. I swear, I don't know what happened the night Patty died,” he says in a voice that's ragged and hovering on pure torment.

“Died? How do you know she died?” I ask in a quieter voice.

Suddenly, I remember my dad lecturing some other cop on the phone about pushing a suspect over the edge until he tells you what you need to know.

“Because her father was a psycho,” Billy starts to explain. “Because she had the worst family in history. Because her father was a big violent drunk. Because he almost killed her about half a dozen times—and that's what she told me. Imagine what she never told me.

“Isn't that enough?” he asks.

When I shake my head to push, he goes on.

“Any idiot could figure out that her dad had way too much to drink that night and tossed her down the stairs again,” Billy rants. “You know, he'd pushed her into the door before, got a giant bruise on her leg. She said it was a bike accident. She told that gym teacher that she fell off her bike. Except Patty didn't have a bike.”

We sit in a sort of stunned silence.

“I know better because she told me. She was my girl. I tried to protect her, but she wouldn't let me,” Billy says. “I could have hurt him. Look at me. He had half my size. I could have killed the guy.

“I kept showing up at the house at weird times like at night. I'd stand on the lawn just so she would have to come out. To see if she was okay,” Billy says.

“If I was going to kill anyone, I should have killed her father,” he adds in an exhausted voice.

My heart feels as heavy as Billy's head, but I can't give in to my emotions at this point. We just need to keep him talking.

“Look, I'm not saying that everything was rosy with me and Pats all the time. We were kids. There were issues,” Billy says, now beginning to talk to us unprompted.

“What issues do you have at that age except where to go and make out?” Deva interrupts.

“There were things,” Billy stammers. “But like I told the cops, I didn't do it. I didn't do anything. I was busy the night of that block party. Real busy. I didn't even see Patty except for a minute. I just saw her for a minute and then she was gone.”

“What time did you see her?” I demand.

“It was almost dark. And I only saw her for a second,” Billy says.

“And you want us to believe this because … well, we're waiting,” Cissy demands in a voice she has never used this summer or at least around me. She actually sounds commanding.

Billy avoids her gaze. Wait, did Cissy just hit on something?

He starts to open his mouth as if he wants to get something off his chest and then closes it without uttering a word. A split second later, he starts to speak again. Hesitantly.

“Okay, let me tell you something that few people really know,” he says. He opens his mouth to start speaking again when he's interrupted by a reed-thin voice shouting: “Billy!”

We all look up and he turns to see the blonde woman coming up behind him. She's dressed in cutoff shorts and sandals that slap on the mall tile floor and a faded blue halter-shirt.

Draping herself over Billy for a quick hug, her face isn't warm or glad to see him, and then she looks at us with a mixture of confusion and hostility.

“Baby,” she announces in a cold voice. “What exactly is going on? The guys at the shop told me I could find you here.”

“Oh, hi baby,” Billy says in a nervous voice. “I was just … ”

“You were just what?” the woman demands. “You were just pretending you were sixteen again and about to ask one of these cute girls to the prom?”

“Who,” Deva injects, “are you? And for your information, I would never go to the prom with someone like him.”

“Oh Deva,” Cissy whispers, elbowing her friend in the ribs. “This is no time to discuss who is an acceptable prom date.”

“What's that supposed to mean, little girl?” the woman sneers at Deva.

“And as for who I am, I'm his wife. I'm Mel Guffman. What I need to know is why you're not after someone your own age. Don't play with the big boys. You'll get hurt.”

Alarms suddenly go off in my head.
Mel … ?

Not Mel … issa.

It's worth a shot.

“Wow, Melissa,” I toss out. “How nice to meet the best friend of the poor sad girl—the one with the horrible family life who went missing. Or should I say the girl who turned up dead?

“Let's see here,” I go on. “You ended up with her boyfriend—isn't that convenient?”

It's a shot in the dark that hits the mark. Melissa actually sways backward, almost falling, and Billy reaches up a giant hand to steady her. She swears under her breath and then looks like she might pass out.

“Baby,” Billy reaches up to steady Melissa. “These girls have found something that belongs to Patty. Something that no one has seen in a very long time. They found her diary. You remember she kept a diary, right?”

Melissa looks like she wants to reach out and strangle us and alternately ask us a million questions. Unfortunately, I think she wants to do a little more strangling than asking.

Billy senses this situation is about to spin out of control if we start asking Melissa questions.

“Leave her alone!” he commands. “We didn't mean to do it. We just fell in love. We were kids. We didn't want to hurt Patty. That's what almost no one knows. We started dating each other when Patty was still alive.”

Tears fill Melissa's eyes. “Why are we even talking about this again?” she says, gazing at us in horror. Then she lets it rip. “Honestly, we just fell in love. We were so young. But Patty … she would have never forgiven us.

“It would have killed her,” Melissa stammers.

“Bad choice of words,” I tell her.

That was an awkward moment—the four of us and the two of them standing there in a mall food court staring each other down, not knowing what to say. Bottom line: Billy and Melissa, you've been found out.

So there was one teeny flaw in Nat's plan. After we confronted Billy, we didn't exactly know what to do with the information dumped in our laps even though, weirdly, I think we kind of got them to confess
something
.

“I feel like a much younger, more attractive Dr. Phil!” Deva whispered to me.

One humiliating bus ride back home and we decided to do a post-op session at Deva's mansion, where we could spend the afternoon dissecting our findings and perhaps do a home beauty DIY recipe because when on Deva's turf, expect to exfoliate.

“All this concentrating on crime causes us to scrunch our faces, which is not good for wrinkle prevention. And yes, we do need to worry about that now—not later,” Deva informs us as she ushers us into the gigantic foyer with miles of white marble and ceilings that seem to hit the sky.

Every piece of furniture in the house is white, from the plush leather couches to the white rugs in the living room. A gigantic white sculpture of a naked woman is plopped in a hallway that leads us to a kitchen that seems like it belongs in a restaurant. Without knowing why, I begin to imagine myself spilling something or causing some sort of million-dollar breakage.

I also find out that the parental units known as “Mummy” and “Daddy” are (as usual) away on a business trip again where they are opening up a new chain of walk-in health clinics.

Living solo in luxury suits our friend, who ushers us outside to the “pool complex,” which is an Olympic-size pool, an ocean-size hot tub, and a widescreen TV hanging from invisible cables. The lawn furniture is softer to sit on than my bed at either of my parents' houses. The cushions are spotless white. A friendly housekeeper brings us organic mango ice tea, some hummus chips, and a veggie crudités tray with yogurt dip.

I tried not to let my eyes bug out when we walked into this dream palace complete with a circular driveway and White House–type white pillars. My new pal is just one cabana boy short of having her own resort.

It's oddly relaxing just eating veggies and sitting by the sparkling blue waters of the pool. Allowing my body to sink into these deep cushions seems natural. Cissy flicks on the flat-screen TV so the sound will drown out our conversations just in case the housekeeper thinks it might be part of her job description to eavesdrop.

Curling up on what's obviously her personal chaise, Deva pulls out the latest issue of
Elle
just so we look normal. We're just four normal girls living the lifestyle of the rich and famous.

“So let me get this straight,” she begins. “Patty not only had the suckiest home life in the world. She had this doormat of a mother and an abusive father. But she also had a boyfriend who looks like King Kong's younger brother and who cheated on her with her best friend, the woman who needs a good bath and a stylist.”

“I'm never complaining about anything again. For the rest of my life,” Cissy blurts out.

Frowning, I mention that my brain is turning cartwheels, whatever that expression means. Gingerly, I place my tea glass on a coaster made from African grass reeds that Mummy brought back from a health clinic tour of Africa she took with Angelina Jolie.