Little Pretty Things (10 page)

The last of us to see Maddy alive. The first to find her dead.

Me. I was the one who should do something, and fast.

CHAPTER NINE

After a long silence, Coach finally gathered himself and stood to go. He rolled one of his shoulders with a grimace, then glanced my way. “Who knew grief was such a physical thing?” he said.

I took a quick hug from both of them. I’d always believed them to be more demonstrative with Maddy, squeezing her shoulder at practice when Coach needed her full focus or after she’d broken the finish line tape again. But then I’d had my dad there to offer finish-line hugs.

I let them out into the night, imagining a funeral, a place to put all this fumbling for sentiment and solace. I was leaning toward the lamp to turn it off when the door chimed and opened.

“What did those two old ladies want?”

Beck. I glanced down at his black boots. Of course he’d been the one watching us. Who was he to demand anything from me? “Well, they did wonder about your alibi for last night.”

“They’re a fine pair to be accusing me.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I said.

“They drove Maddy crazy in high school,” he said. “She couldn’t wait to get away from those guys.”

I’d never heard her say anything like that. Even now, even in her death, Beck couldn’t share Maddy with anyone. “Maybe she was trying to get away from someone else.”

“Me, you mean,” he said.

Actually, I’d been thinking of her father. That vomit-colored sweater. But I didn’t want to get into it right now. Beck looked like a wind-up toy twisted too hard, one turn away from breaking into pieces. What if Coach and Fitz could see him now? They wouldn’t hesitate to talk to the police about him. “Were you still in touch?” I said. “Were you ever, after she went to college?”

That heavy look landed squarely on me again. I waited it out. I knew things about him—maybe that had always been his problem with me. He took a deep breath as I braced myself to withstand whatever he would say. And then he uncoiled, and fell back against the front desk.

“That’s the thing I never—” he said. “I never understood it. That stupid race in Indy that she didn’t run—”

“
We
didn’t run,” I said.

“—and then the life seemed to go out of her. Remember?”

His clenched fists were held tight against the thighs of his jeans. I imagined that’s what I looked like when I was trying to keep from reaching for something that wasn’t mine.

“She wouldn’t let me take her to prom,” he said. “And she went up to college early to get a head start on classes. Who does that? It was like that race was everything, and when it went on without her—done. Us, high school, Midway, all of it.” His voice caught. I looked away. As much as I’d ever hated him, I also hated this new version of him, helpless and ensnared, even this many years later.

I also hated that he’d expressed exactly my own memories. The race, then the end of everything. Except I’d been so busy no longer being Maddy’s friend that I hadn’t noticed that Maddy had stopped being Maddy. I hadn’t known she’d gone off to college early. I hadn’t known how hard she’d let Beck down.

The last time I’d seen her before she walked into the Mid-Night Inn was graduation day. By then we hadn’t spoken in weeks, not since leaving that hotel room without running the championship race. We were kids—we didn’t have it in us to forgive or chuck each other on the shoulder for old time’s sake. We’d been friends competing against one another, maybe more literally than most teen girls, but we were still just kids. And then we weren’t friends. We weren’t enemies. We weren’t anything at all. After state, I kept other company, but mostly my own, and when my parents asked me where Maddy was on graduation day, I shrugged and didn’t point her out. They would have forced a picture between us. She stood alone, sallow in her Midway High–red cap and gown. Had her parents shown up, at last, to support her? I didn’t even know. We’d already gone our separate ways.

And then—there was no better way to say it—she’d lapped me.

Maddy had beaten me so many times. But seeing her last night looking professional and happy and
satisfied
had bothered me more than any second-place finish ever had.

In this contest, I wasn’t even coming in second. I wasn’t even in the field. I was a spectator.

I had a headache. I hadn’t eaten all day. My car was parked miles away in front of someone else’s snug, cozy home. I had no income until the motel re-opened, and I had no idea when that would be. My childhood best friend was gone, and the only ray of possibility I’d had all day was the moment when I realized I could turn the cops on the guy standing in front of me. This guy who couldn’t talk about his high-school sweetheart without getting choked up. No one had ever felt that way about me. Even in death, Maddy was winning.

We need to do something, Coach had said. And we did. I did. I looked at Beck.

“Tell me.” I swallowed hard. “Just tell me you didn’t kill her.”

That heavy look again. “Don’t be stupid,” he said.

“I’m about to do something ridiculously stupid,” I said. “The question is, do you want to help?”

I locked up the office, tossing Yvonne’s keys to her and ignoring the stares as Beck and I passed through the bar.

We took the middle stairs. I couldn’t bring myself to take the other way, around the alcove and past the railing from which Maddy had swung.

“Let me get this straight,” Beck said at my back. “Why are we doing this again?”

The night was stunning in its blackness. Billy needed to replace about eight light bulbs on the second floor. I felt for my notebook to jot down a reminder but only felt the square of Maddy’s room card.

“You and I are suspects,” I said. “What more reason do you need?”

“I’m in the clear,” he said. “You know why? Because I didn’t kill her.”

“Neither did I. How airtight is your alibi?”

He snorted. “You’ve been watching too much prime time.”

“You know where I was? I was home, in bed. Alone, before you ask. That’s how loser single girls nearly thirty years old who still live with their mothers
roll
.” We reached the door to two-oh-two, still crossed by two strips of crime-scene warning tape. “How about you?”

There was just enough light here to see Beck calculating his odds. “I was home in bed, too.” His eyes flicked to mine and away. “Alone. And I don’t even live with anyone who can say I came home last night.”

“Worse news for you,” I said. “Billy heard a ruckus from this room last night—a sexual ruckus, if he can be believed to know the difference. Which—anyway, you’re far more likely—”

“I got it. I’m a much better killer than you. Great.” He turned to the door. “So. How do we do this?” He reached for the handle.

“Don’t touch it,” I hissed, and slapped his hand away. “Do you not watch TV
at all
? Your job is to keep your fingerprints to yourself. And your DNA—”

“That’s awkward,” he said.

“I mean spit or, like, skin particles or whatever. There’s no reason for you to have been in there and if they can prove you were—at any point—you’re getting a lifetime change of address. Stay out here. And don’t touch the rail or—”

“I got it, OK? I appreciate your concern for my future defense team. I’ll try not to spit. How are you getting in without touching anything?”

“I go into this room every time someone checks out. They’ve probably already found my fingerprints.”

The idea chilled me, but I had to be realistic. I’d cleaned it two days ago. We wore gloves to clean the bathrooms, but I would’ve touched plenty of things before I’d put them on. The TV remote. We always had to locate it and put it back on the side table. I would have touched the side table, too, cleaning up the water-glass rings everyone left. The trash can, to shake out whatever bits of wrappers and tissues the former occupants had tossed. The door handle, for crying out loud. I would’ve touched the handle on both sides, without giving it a second thought. I’d only been doing my job.

Last to see her alive, first to find her dead, and my fingerprints decorating the entire crime scene. No wonder Courtney Howard’s pie-faced grin still shot through me like an electrical current.

“But how—”

I whipped the key card from my pocket, reached through the tape, and swiped the card at the practiced, perfect speed. The light blinked green, beep-beep, all is well. With one finger, I hooked the door handle.

We watched the door swing inward into the black room.

Why had this seemed like such a good plan?

Sometimes, when a Bargain was checking in to the motel, I caught a whiff of pity. They don’t need any evidence at all to believe that I must be stupid to be stuck in this life. I wasn’t stupid, or at least I hadn’t thought I was, until now.

“Are you going in or not?” Beck whispered.

“Give me a second, OK?” I was not this person. Creeping around in the dark—

I suddenly remembered standing inside Coach and Fitz’s dark office, hissing at Maddy to hurry up from the doorway while I watched for anyone to come along. We’d be expelled. We’d never run for Midway again. Her tennis shoes had squeaked dangerously against the floor while I chewed my nails.

Why had we been there? Pranks had been a big team activity that year, getting so out of control at one point that Fitz had to sit us all down and call a truce.

Now I stared at the threshold of this room, trying to grab more of that memory.

“Well, if you’re not going in—” Beck reached for the light switch.

I caught his arm. “You have a surprising lack of self-preservation.”

He looked at my hand on his arm. I dropped it.

“Wouldn’t that be good news for you?” he said. “If I got nailed for this?”

“Believe me, I’ve already thought of that.”

“And?” he said.

“And I really want to know who killed her, OK? Someone killed her, Beck. My best—” My voice strangled in my throat. Apparently Beck wasn’t the only one harboring feelings a decade old. When I glanced back at him, his expression was lost in the shadows. “If you get mixed up in this, and you didn’t do it—you’d better not have done it, you son of a bitch—we might never know who did.”

“Well, what if they think it was you? What if you get sent up for life?”

I wasn’t going to let that happen, but I saw his point. “Then at least the two of us will know they got it wrong.”

He took a long time to nod, and I felt it, too. We were agreeing to far more than the plan at hand. It felt like we were sweeping away everything we’d ever felt toward one another, and starting over. I turned back to the door, ducking under the yellow tape into the room and using my elbow to swipe at the light switch.

A dim circle of light appeared on the floor, where a lamp from the bedside table had been knocked over. I fumbled for the other switch. A floor lamp across the room showed us the scene.

“Oh,” Beck said.

I hadn’t gotten a good look over the shoulders of the police earlier, but now I could see the full extent. The place was torn apart. The sheets and blankets had been ripped from the bed, the window shade pulled to the ground, the bedside table ransacked. The dresser, gutted. Its surface was clean, the diamond swept away to an evidence locker.

And of course, the two garage-sale landscapes over the dresser and bed were askew. The nightmare tree and the road to nowhere, both hanging a little off balance, as always.

Disaster, my mind provided. Aftermath. I didn’t see any blood, but I watched for it as I picked my way across the room. Blood on my shoes would be tough to explain.

“I was going to ask you if anything was out of place,” he said.

In the center of the room, I turned in a full circle. The mattress had been bumped off its box springs. The mirror over the bathroom sink was cracked. The ruckus Billy had heard must have been full-on combat.

“Everything is, but also—”

“What?” Beck said.

“Stay where you are.” I couldn’t place it, but something nagged at me. Some little piece called out from a place that was more out of place than everything else.

I knelt to look under the bed, then rose and went to the bathroom. Maddy might have only stepped away. Her makeup, lotion, and perfume waited like soldiers on alert.

She’d meant to stay.

The towels were folded as I’d left them the last time I’d turned the room. Only the bathmat was out of place, having slipped off the edge of the tub. Nothing might have happened, except for the ruined mirror.

In it, my reflection was cut diagonally across the neck, folding in on itself along the crease.

I turned my attention to the bottles on the sink, leaning to sniff at them until I’d found the warm cookie scent. It was a small, slim bottle. My palms tingled, then rushed to a fierce burn.

“What are you doing in there?”

“Nothing,” I said, but I’d already reached for the bottle and slipped it into my pocket. Against my hip, the perfume was cold. It wasn’t the same as stealing from a friend.

“What’s taking so long?” Beck hissed.

“Just—be quiet for a second,” I said. I reached for the bathmat, realized what I was doing and stopped, then squatted down to take a closer look. The fibers at the tiniest corner of the mat had been crushed into a pattern. A shoe print.