The Underdogs (6 page)

So where was Evie? I scanned the pool area and finally found her. She was sitting on the long cedar bench along the back wall to the right of the pool entrance; the wide bench doubled as storage for the lifesaving equipment and pool cleaning stuff. Nearest the revolving door, the bench was bathed in light from the pool area's overhead lamps. The far end remained in the shadows, and Evie was sitting there alone. Lucky happened to be sitting six feet or so away from his daughter, chatting with an aerobics instructor.

Evie was sitting on her hands, staring out at nothing, swinging her legs. I was going to go over and say hi, but Celia called to me then, coaxing me over to the grass with the rest of them. The crowd greeted me, and Patrick gave me a squeeze. Yeah, I got along with the cool kids, but it bothered me that Evie felt so excluded. It's not like I didn't have to work at it, though. I mean, my mom didn't exactly trumpet my life story around here, but people knew what had happened to me. The basics, anyway. Sometimes new people would try to press my mom about my case, because exactly what had happened to me was still a mystery that had shocked St. Claire and surrounding towns, and remained unsolved. But my mom would always say,
We've moved on. Next question
.

Anyway, when my pals started debating who had the best serve at the club, I wandered over to Evie. I was about to greet my best friend, but that was the moment Lucky finally noticed his daughter.

“Hey, kid. What are you doing in the dark all by yourself?” he asked.

Evie looked at her dad and shrugged. Lucky sprang from his seat and walked over to her. He held out his hand, and she looked at him, her eyes shining as he pulled her up. “Come on. Let's go over and hang out with the gang.”

He put his arm around her and sort of pulled her with him, and Evie nestled against him, and I saw her inhale her father's smell and then exhale a long breath of contentment. I went along, and Lucky easily broke into the circle on the lawn.

“Hey, Lucky,” Patrick said, and grinned.

Lucky looked down and nudged one of the girls sitting on the cooler. “Move over and make room for my daughter.”

The girl shifted a few inches and Evie barely fit in the space the girl left her, but she managed to get one butt cheek on. It didn't look very comfortable, and yet my friend appeared so happy to be included I think she would've sat on a rusty nail if they'd asked her to. I found a spot on the grass next to the cooler. Everyone greeted Evie like they were old friends.

“Well, well. Look who it is,” Patrick exclaimed, giving Evie his best Patrick de Stafford dimple.

“Hey there,” Celia said.

They were all drinking from those big red cups, and Lucky raised his, chugged, belched, and amid the groans of protest announced, “This, my friends, is going to be the summer of our lives. Chug if you
belieevveeeee!
”

Everyone yelled “I believe!” in unison, then whooped and chugged, and Evie was giggling as she drank her Sprite. She crinkled her nose at me. It was a great start to the summer, and things were looking up for my friend. Alas, it wasn't to stay that way for long.

 

After

Detective Ashlock came for Patrick on a steamy August morning three days after Annabel's body was found. Thanks to Harmony Goldenblatt, we thought Patrick might be one of the St. Claire PD's prime suspects.

Patrick was a sitting duck teaching on Court 1, but he kept his cool. Ashlock, in his usual outfit, stood a foot away from the glass watching intently as Patrick yelled and did torture drills, which basically entailed throwing ball after ball in quick succession all over the court while the kids scrambled and worked on their reaction times, speed, and footwork.

Evie and I were in a prime location on one of the love seats facing the courts, thanks to her mad crush on Goran, who was playing on Court 3. Lucky, teaching on Court 2, soon called time for morning snack, and Patrick waved his kids toward the exit. He met Ashlock in the café as he headed for the stairs to the lobby.

“Patrick de Stafford?”

“Yeah,” Patrick answered, wiping his brow with his T-shirt sleeve. He knew exactly who this guy was.

“Is there somewhere we can talk?”

They settled in the tennis coaches' office, which had a window overlooking Court 1. Detective Ashlock was sizing up Patrick, who said nothing for a solid minute or so while he studied the top of his Gatorade bottle as if it held the answers to many secrets, then smoothly loosened the cap, threw back his head, and took a long, loud gulp of the fluorescent liquid.

Then Ashlock went in for the kill.

“Where were you Monday night, Patrick?”

They had the office to themselves, with Patrick in his favorite soft swivel chair and Ashlock relegated to a stiff wooden chair. Evie and I had gotten lucky—they'd left the door cracked open, so we'd sidled up and sat down with our backs to the wall outside the door as if we were just chilling out. When we swiveled our necks as far as they could go, we could just see Patrick through the crack, and Ashlock's shins. I knew our luck would run out at some point. But for now, we were eavesdropping with impunity. Patrick set down the half-empty bottle on the hideous gray linoleum desktop, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and leveled his gaze at the detective. “I was asleep. In my bed at my parents' house in Natick.”

We heard Ashlock let out an
mmmhmm
, which actually came out as a half grunt, half sigh. “And what time was that?”

“I don't know. About eleven until eight in the morning, when I dragged my butt out of bed to come here.” Patrick stared at the tennis courts, which were empty during snack time.

“Uh-huh,” the detective said, and I pictured him writing everything down in his notebook. “What were you doing
before
eleven p.m.?”

Talk about pulling teeth. I was starting to think Ashlock's strategy was to bore his subjects into confessing. Like, just for something to do, they'd give it all up:
Okay, okay. I did it, man. I killed Annabel
.
Now, like, stop annoying me, please.
It was, interestingly, the same way Patrick beat his opponents on the New England tennis circuit. He had no distinctive serve, no killer forehand; he didn't have Goran's natural gift. He'd just keep hitting back, over and over, until his foe made an error or grew exhausted. Until he beat them down.

“I was at the movies.”
Pause.
“By myself.” Patrick leaned forward. “Let me ask you, Mr. Detective: Why are you hassling a guy who's never had so much as a parking ticket? I mean, give me a break, I'm not a
murderer
. I'm a
tennis player.
”

He was holding his own. Patrick definitely had some suburban-style street smarts. He'd been around here most of his life, and we all knew his story. Patrick came from a family with something like six kids. Rumor had it his dad spent what savings they had on Patrick's tennis training before he turned ten. So, as soon as Patrick was old enough to work off his tennis fees at the club by teaching at various camps and clinics, Gene put him on the payroll.

Patrick shook his head angrily and continued, “I'm not the person you should be worrying about. There's a murderer running around St. Claire and you're not doing a thing about it. When are we going to know what happened to her? The cops are a joke.”

The detective stayed silent, but Evie and I had now confirmed something we'd been led to believe by Harmony: Patrick had some sort of passion for Annabel, though I didn't think either of us knew exactly what it involved or how it had played out.

“Here's the thing,” the detective said when Patrick finished his rant. “I never said anything about murder. I am investigating every angle—and that includes you. Are you aware that the majority of females in these cases are killed by someone they know?”
Pause.
“No? You didn't know that? Well, believe it.”

Patrick shrugged as if to say,
You don't scare me.

“I've been told by a reliable source that you and Annabel had an unpleasant encounter back in June. In the women's locker room. In fact, I was told it was more than just unpleasant. Did things get physical that night in June, Patrick?”

Evie and I gasped as quietly as we could. Luckily, Patrick gasped louder so no one heard us (we hoped). “So, Mr. de Stafford,” the detective continued coolly, “before we start talking about serial killers on the loose in St. Claire, why don't you tell me what happened in the locker room between you and Annabel that night?”

 

Before

The pool party was in full swing. My mom was shouting something to Lucky about a bet going on across the pool over what burns more calories, eight hours on the tennis court or one hour of running. Lucky agreed to go over there to settle the bet, leaving Evie with one butt cheek on the cooler.

The older kids started talking around Evie and basically ignoring her, and eventually the other girl slid off the cooler and closed the circle on the lawn, leaving Evie alone and excluded. Again. It wasn't a calculated move, aggressive as it felt. It just
was
. As I got up to go to her, I watched Evie's face collapse. But then she seemed to make some sort of decision. She stood up, held her head high, and said, “Come on, Chels.” She walked with her chin up back to the bench. Celia, I saw, noticed this a little too late; her mouth was open as if to say something, but Evie was already gone. That was the night the temperature turned brutal enough to peel paint off the walls, as my mom put it, and stayed that way for weeks. I loved the heat. It was as if summer temperatures brought out all the scents around us, from the grass to the hydrangea bushes planted along the fence, to the people, to the aroma of hot chlorine. I had to admit I didn't love when the air got too damp, though. The power of New England humidity is hard to understand unless you've felt it envelop you like a warm cloak—a heavy, claustrophobic cloak you can't take off until Mother Nature herself sees fit to lift it.

Evie and I sat silently together on the dark side of the bench, checking out the pockets of people around the party.

Lucky was back on the bench now, too. He drained his red cup and picked up his guitar, hunching over it, studying the strings, his fingers going berserk up and down the neck. No one gave him any notice until he'd finished warming up and turned the iPod off, and then the opening chords of Girl Gang's “Summer Cool” pierced the night. There was a hush as Lucky told us, “They say this is the song of the summer. Here's my acoustic take on it.”

Lucky's gravelly voice, staying beautifully in tune, sang the upbeat lyrics with a haunting slowness:
The sun got hotter, and you showed your face / I saw you there, in that same place
 … And then, when he got to the chorus, Harmony started singing, then Lisa, then my mom, off-key and louder than anyone, then pretty much everyone.

Summer, summer, summer, yeah yeah yeah

I saw you by the pool and fell in love at first sight

In the summer, summer, summer, cool cool cool.

I was watching Evie as Lucky sang, and I saw a tear roll down her cheek. As her dad made faces of longing and feeling, his daughter was sitting just feet from him, weeping. Lucky finished his song and smacked his guitar, closing his eyes and biting his bottom lip as he did. He raised his head to absorb the whistles and applause, while Harmony fiddled with his iPod and joked, “Let's cleanse our palate with the
real
singers, shall we?” On came the actual “Summer Cool” and a few of the guys groaned, but I hoped Evie's favorite song would cheer her up. She had tears pouring down her face, and her eyes and mouth were twisted in pain. I didn't know how to help her, so I touched her leg and stayed with her. She was stifling sobs, crying as silently as she could while everyone else laughed and chatted.

“I just want to go home,” she said. “Lucky doesn't get it. No one wants me around.”

I looked over to see Lucky, in Levi's 501s and a purple tie-dyed shirt with his dirty-blond hair flopping around under his blue bandanna, gyrating to the music.

Evie said to me, “Your mom's always telling me I have to
be friendly to make friends
. But if no one wants to be my friend, how can I be outgoing?”

I couldn't argue with that. I mean, the girl wasn't whining—she truly didn't understand why she was invisible. I sat and listened to her, and I totally got why she was so sad. Bullied by day, ignored by night. It wasn't easy. She seemed to feel better the more she talked, and in the end she hugged me. “At least I have you,” she said, “the best friend I ever had.” My heart swelled with happiness.

Will was first in the pool that night. After Patrick dared him, he ripped his shirt off and ran to the water in his shorts, forgetting to take off his shoes. After two weeks on the outdoor tennis courts, Will had a pinkish-brown tennis tan, which meant he was darkening on the arms and neck but maintained a pasty chest and back. As Will trudged up the concrete steps out of the water, his soaked shoes making hilarious gurgling noises as he walked along the deck, Lucky was shouting for Patrick. But no response came.

“Where the heck is de Stafford?” Lucky yelled to the guys still hanging on the lawn.

Harmony shouted back, “Dunno! He said he was going to the men's room and never came back.” I watched Harmony slip through the revolving doors as Lisa was busy showing the group how many cartwheels she could do in a row.

A minute later, Lucky said, “Now where's Harmony? Where's everyone going?”

Celia piped up from across the pool, “Hey, Lucky! Harmony went to look for Patrick. He'll be back.”

Lucky nodded back to her. “Okay. Throw me a Bud, will ya?”

Celia did. And then everything went ballistic.