Shamus In The Green Room (33 page)

was a real artist.

“And her imagination is undimmed! I love it!” Will stamped

his feet for emphasis. “I’m telling you, Cece, you’re in the

wrong business. You should be writing scripts. I’m dying to

know what happened next. Don’t keep me in suspense here.”

Asshole. “I’m sure you didn’t expect Dr. Madden to kill

himself. You were just four kids having fun, right? But you

miscalculated. That’s why Maren freaked out that day, at the

funeral. It wasn’t a game anymore. You agreed to forget about

it, all of you. Pretend it never happened. Go about your busi-

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ness, lead good lives, blah, blah, blah. But you felt guilty. God,

at least you felt guilty. That’s why you and Rafe donated a

quarter of a million dollars to the Oceans Conservancy. Blood

money.”

“Nice rhetorical flourish, but we don’t have time for that

shit in showbiz.” Will looked at his watch. “Time is money.

And I’m dying to get home. Put up my feet. Crack open a

beer. It’s cold out here.” He shivered. “Why don’t you get to

the point?”

“Owen Madden saved that picture: that’s the point. He

should’ve torn it up. Anybody in his right mind would have

torn it up. But some strange compulsion must have come over

him. It was as if he wanted somebody to find it. His daughter,

May, was the one. She was cleaning out her house after her aunt

died. And there it was. And she wanted an explanation.”

“I remember May,” Will said, closing his eyes for a minute.

“Sweet little kid. Cute. Blond hair. She had one of those bowl

cuts. A real dreamer.” His eyes blinked open. “Maren used to

baby-sit for her. She liked the kid, but Dr. Madden, I gotta say,

he was one cheap son of a bitch. I mean, four-fifty an hour and

no rounding up, come on. What the fuck is that?”

“May would’ve talked,” I said. “You knew that. She would’ve

ruined everything you worked so hard for.”

I was swimming against the current now, and I had to keep

pushing. Harder and faster, or I’d drown—like May. “She

would have destroyed Rafe’s whole career,” I said. “You had to

stop her. You had to take care of things. That’s what you do.

You take care of things. Keep the wheels turning. What’s that

look, Will?” I asked. “Those were your words, not mine.”

He’d started to say something but stopped himself.

“Your sister, Maren,” I pressed on, “your beloved sister,

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Maren—her reputation, well, that was already shot. But she was

in trouble again. Maybe it was more serious this time. So you

figured you’d kill two birds with one stone. You’d get rid of

May and make everybody think it was Maren who had died.”

I’d received a call earlier in the morning from the people at

Woods Hole. May Madden had never arrived. That confirmed

any lingering doubts I’d had. Diana Muldaur—her neighbor,

her friend, her father’s friend, her aunt’s—was the last person

who’d seen her alive.

No, Will Levander was.

A smile made its way across his face, but I saw his eyes. The

light had gone out. They were dead. “You’re on a roll, Cece.

Please. Don’t stop for my benefit.”

Oh, I wasn’t doing anything for his benefit. “You couldn’t

identify the body yourself, because then there’d be nobody to

corroborate the story. So what did you do? You dug up an old

picture of the four of you from high school. Maren, Rafe,

Will, and Lisa. The four of you were unstoppable, remember?

You tore the picture down the middle, and after you pushed

May off the cliff, you planted the half showing Rafe and

Maren on May’s dead body. You knew it would lead the police

straight to Rafe.”

Rafe, who never saw Maren for who she was. Who saw her

forever as the girl he’d met on his first day of high school, the

girl with the devil-may-care attitude, the girl who’d whispered

in his ear.

“Rafe was always such a sucker for your sister. You knew

he’d be in a panic after receiving that note from her. The per-

fect state of mind. For half his life, he’d played the sap for her,

and he was hardly going to stop now. You knew that he’d

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identify the body as hers. You knew he’d do just about any-

thing to save her.”

But Will hadn’t planned on Rafe’s asking me to come along

to the coroner’s office. I was an unseen complication. No won-

der he wanted to get rid of me. The bullet through my win-

dow. The car running me off the road.

“It was a great plan, Will. The beauty of it was, Rafe would

never have to know any more. Okay, maybe he and the rest of

you were the reason Owen Madden had died, but at least Rafe

would think he’d done the right thing by Maren. You handed

him his redemption. You were a true friend. You gave him

everything he needed to get back to the business of making

money. Not just for him, of course. For the both of you.”

Will shifted his weight from one foot to the other, then

stated the obvious: “It’s a good story. But that’s all it is.”

And there was the hitch.

I had nothing.

Not a single shred of evidence.

I’d had the Polaroid of Dr. Madden with one of the hour-

glass blondes, but, like a fool, I’d let Lisa tear it up.

A car went over the bridge behind us. Its lights were on.

I looked up at the sky. The sun was going down. It would be

dark soon.

“Of course, if you’d been able to find the supposed missing

half of the supposed picture,” Will said suddenly, “the one you

mentioned earlier, of Maren and Rafe and me and Lisa, I sup-

pose that would be something else entirely.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked slowly. I brought my

hand up to the cut on my forehead. It had formed a scab, but

I could still feel a bump under the skin. I was starting to feel

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dizzy. All that running. I needed to sit down. Lie down. I was

supposed to be taking it easy.

Will put down his things, opened up his surf bag, and

pulled something out. “I’ve got half of a picture here,” he said,

straightening up.

It was black and white.

It had a ragged edge.

“This isn’t the picture you mentioned earlier, of course,” he

said. “This picture right here”—he was waving it in front of my

face now—“man, it’s something special. It got torn somewhere

along the way, but I still have what’s left, all these years later.

I really loved it.” He looked at it and smiled. “It was a picture of

Rafe and his high school gal pals, Maren and Lisa. All three of

them so young and beautiful. It was taken, oh, I don’t know,

I guess it would be senior year. We were out surfing, the four of

us. Having the time of our lives. My old, beat-up camera was in

my surf bag. I wanted to be in the picture, but somebody had to

take it, right?” He grinned. “Good old Will. I never minded be-

ing invisible. Anyway, I could really fill a frame.”

I closed my eyes for a minute and saw rainbow colors shim-

mering behind my eyelids, spinning in circles.

“But like I said,” Will continued, “this picture isn’t the pic-

ture you were talking about. This isn’t a picture anybody wants

anymore. All that’s left is Lisa. Rafe and Maren are long gone.”

Then white started to crowd out the colors. I grabbed on to

a post at the water’s edge to steady myself. “Will, stop—”

He brushed past me, and—like a flash, pop, pow—he

threw the picture into the canal. I saw Lisa’s pretty face hover

on the surface of the water for a second, then disappear.

“Sorry, it’s not bread, dudes,” Will said to the quacking

ducks, “but feeding you violates a local ordinance.”

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I blinked a few times, let the white recede to the edges of

my vision, let the world come back into focus. Then I let go of

the post and skidded down the embankment, nearly losing my

balance in the process, but I was too late.

It was gone.

Two pictures gone.

“You okay, Cece?” Will asked. “You look pale. You should

sit down. You shouldn’t take chances with head injuries.”

“You’re not in your right mind,” I shouted. “Why’d you

show that picture to me if you were just going to destroy it?”

“Aha. That’s where you’re wrong. Unlike the esteemed Dr.

Madden, I’m completely in my right mind. Anyway,” he said,

“I have another story for you.”

He was staring out at the water. It was dark now. The little

Christmas lights were lit. There were people coming home

from work. Home to their husbands and wives and children.

But not May. She wasn’t going home to anyone.

“I think my story works a little better than yours,” he said.

“You tell me. Start with May Madden—you were right about

her, at least in part. That was her body you saw at the coroner’s

office. But May wasn’t a dreamy little girl anymore. She was a

dangerous young lady.”

“You’re lying.”

“You don’t know shit, I’m sorry to say. Why don’t you lis-

ten to me before you decide what is and isn’t true? May Mad-

den was after Rafe. She was a stalker.”

“Liar,” I said, massaging my temples.

“Well, at least that’s what I thought at the time. Like I was

saying before, someone as famous as Rafe is, people get ob-

sessed. I blame the media. They throw this celebrity shit in

people’s faces, it makes sense that some of them are going to

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blow. This May was one of those people—at least that’s what

I assumed. And I wasn’t so off base to assume it. I mean, she was

walking around with this half-ripped picture in her pocket, of

Rafe and his first love, Maren. It’s creepy, right? She must’ve

taken it from our house or Maren’s purse or whatever, all

those years ago, thinking she resembled Maren or something.

The blond hair, the brown eyes. She was obsessed, I guess.”

No, he was the one who was obsessed. Obsessed with Rafe.

Obsessed with Maren. And where was Maren? Was she alive or

dead? I’d thought she’d be the one to lead me to May, but I’d

found May, and still, Maren eluded me. Maybe, like the Mal-

tese falcon, Maren wasn’t real. Maybe she was a dream Will

and Rafe and Lisa and whoever else had once shared.

Not a dream.

A nightmare.

“Crazy, huh, my stalker theory? Well, now I see it was,”

Will went on. “May was harmless, of course. Blameless. She

thought she was catching up with old friends. But at the time

I was scared. Crazy May—that’s what I thought. Stupid, right?

But she wasn’t helping any. She called time and time again. She

insisted on seeing Rafe, on seeing me, hell, I even thought that

the people Maren was involved with, these no-good criminals,

had sent her to come after us. I was at my wit’s end, composing

responses to May on Post-its.”

You will get what you deserve.

Don’t take things that don’t belong to you.

Stop interfering with other people’s lives.

What you are doing, young lady, is very, very wrong.

I’m talking to you.

“I had so lost my mind over this chick,” he said with im-

pressive conviction, “that I thought I had to give Rafe my gun.

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For protection. Thank god he didn’t use it. But I probably

should have loaned it to you.”

“To me?”

“Look what happened to you! Somebody tried to kill you

that day in your car, somebody shot a gun at your house.”

“That was you, Will, not May.” Not the bad guys. Not Julio

Gonzalez.

“I know it wasn’t May. I told you, May was a victim. Un-

fortunately, I didn’t see that until it was too late. But this is

bigger than May. This is about the culture we live in. This af-

fects even you now. You’re Rafe’s girlfriend, babe—well, at

least everybody thinks you are. And thanks to those piece-of-

shit tabloids people buy for whatever the hell reason, you’ve

become one more target.”

“Stop it. You can’t turn this around, Will.”

“I’m not turning anything around. Don’t you want to hear

the rest?”

He knew I wanted to hear the rest. He could tell a story

better than anyone I’d ever known.

“One day, when May called, I agreed to meet her. I thought

I’d get it over with. We met out on the cliffs over Lunada. I see

now that I wasn’t thinking straight. I misinterpreted her. Any-

way, I thought she was getting belligerent, threatening Rafe

again, threatening me, so I lost it. I pushed her.” He shrugged

his shoulders. “I thought I was doing my job. That’s the long

and the short of it. I shouldn’t have done it. It was my fault en-

tirely. A tragedy. May died for nothing.”

“What about Rafe?” I asked. “Rafe identified the body.

Rafe has to take some responsibility.”

“He made a mistake.” Will tapped at his temple. “He

doesn’t have much upstairs, Cece. Everybody knows that.”

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A man whose head was as empty as his desk.

Yes, Will had covered all the bases.

“Who’s going to believe what you’re saying, Will?”

“Detective Smarinsky is,” he said, reaching into his pocket

for his cell phone.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m turning myself in. I committed a crime. I’ll take what-