Thursday, August 19
Woodstock, New York
Is he dead?” I asked, looking at Jack, lying beneath us, disarray all around him.
“I don’t think so,” Cassandra said. “Just out.”
She helped me to my feet, and as she did, Jack stirred, let out a light groan.
She lifted the shovel and popped him again.
“Oh my god,” I said. “Don’t kill him.”
“He’d deserve it. I saw what he did to you. But don’t worry. I didn’t.”
She tugged at me and I followed, only stopping to slip on my sandals, then out through the doorway, onto the porch. She tossed the shovel into a corner, and it clattered against the railing. We rushed down the street, my hand in hers, rain pelting us now, to an old Honda on the corner. Cassandra tugged at the handle, and I ran around the side. “My phone,” I said. “My things.”
“There will be time for that later,” Cassandra said. “We have to get out of here. Now.”
Inside the car, I took her in properly. She was wearing all black, her hair pulled back into a messy ponytail, and there were scratches up and down both arms. She shifted gears and stepped on the gas, the car jerking forward.
“I need to talk to the detective,” I said. “It wasn’t Willa. I think she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was him. I need to go to the police station. I have to tell them.”
“Don’t worry,” Cassandra said. “I’ll take you there. But I can’t stay.”
I nodded, told her the way, and it was only as we approached Tinker Street that I saw it there, looped around her left hand, the velvet bag, drawstring cinched.
“The jewelry,” I said.
“My jewelry,” Cassandra clarified, making the turn.
“You came here to get it?”
“Yeah,” Cassandra said. “Willa used her phone call to talk to me. She told me where she hid it, right behind a prickly-ass rosebush. I was in Pennsylvania. I drove as fast as I could. I’m sorry, I know I freaked you out making noise back there. But I had to get it—without it, I have no money. And lucky I did come when I did. Christ. That man would have killed you.”
“The police told me you were behind the break-ins, the graffiti. That they saw you on one of the camera’s footage. I was worried you and Willa somehow worked together . . .”
Cassandra sighed. “We did work together, to get back my jewelry. But nothing else. I hate Henry, and yeah, I hated George, too—I’m sorry—and for a while I even hated you, but I wouldn’t have killed anyone. And if I would have, it would have been Henry,” she said with a scoff. “Not George.”
I looked at my old friend, and for a moment, it felt like we were two girls at the gala again. There had always been that underlying sense that neither of us quite fit in, even if Cassandra played the part better than I did, and now, here we were, outside it all—both of us. “Ruth said that you slapped Henry once, that she saw you.”
Cassandra pulled onto the road, her eyes locked straight ahead. “I did, once. I was drunk, and he said something so cruel to me . . . it just happened. I know that’s what abusers say, that it’s not an excuse, but—” She shrugged. “It never happened again. Though I guess that’s what abusers say, too.”
It was a shock to hear her admit it, and yet there was something, too, a fairness in it, knowing who Henry had become.
“But why all the break-ins?” I prodded.
“Because at first I didn’t think of Henry going to George. My first guess was that he hid the jewelry in one of the properties. I mainly knew where the security cameras were, and I was careful to plan my entrances and exits around them, but I guess not quite careful enough, if something turned up. Although I don’t know quite what they’re going to do about that. I was still technically married to Henry when they all happened. I had every right to go into one of my own houses. And there’s no way a camera saw the vandalism.”
“That part was you, too, then?” I asked. “The detective asked me if I thought you could have been responsible for the break-ins, a couple of days ago, but I didn’t believe it, not until she said she had you on video. I couldn’t see you writing that.”
Cassandra turned to me, smirked, and for a moment, it felt like we’d picked up our friendship exactly where we left off. “I knew it would totally piss him off.”
“But you don’t really believe all that stuff, right? I mean, when you were wearing Cartier every day?”
Cassandra raised an eyebrow. “Total hypocrite, right? Like, who the hell am I to talk? But, you know, I didn’t always want all of this, not at first. So much of it was Henry. The perfect hair, face, clothing, jewelry. And yeah, I did embrace it. And there were years when I know I was just as insufferable as I looked. But—” She took a deep breath, and tears came to her eyes, running down her cheeks like the water rushing down the windshield. She wiped the tears away and turned the wipers up higher. “I really saw, being on the other side of them, that no one should have that much money. Because when you have so much, so much that no one else can ever, ever match you, then you have power, too. Power to hurt people, just because you want to. Just because you think it’s some game. I mean, do you think Henry needed my jewelry? Of course not. He only wanted it to deprive me of the gifts he’d given, of the money he knew I needed. So—” She shrugged. “Maybe it’s not all that crazy to say the things I scrawled against their perfect walls. Maybe it actually, I don’t know, makes sense.”
I took a deep breath, taking all of this in. She was right, wasn’t she? The Haywoods had tried to do the same thing to me, and if George hadn’t been murdered, maybe they would have won, taken everything from me, Alex included. The thought was chilling.
The police station came into view, and I pointed it out, but Cassandra drove past the turnoff. “I can’t go inside with you,” she said. “Not when I finally have what’s mine.”
She veered off the road, slowly, onto the shoulder, put the car in park. Then she turned to me. “Charlotte Anne isn’t a bad person, you know. She was just trying to help me, through all of this.”
I shook my head, not ready to just brush it all way. “She conned me,” I said, tears once again in my eyes. “She slept with George, she let Alex see her and George together. Do you know how confusing that must be for him? All the while she was pretending to be my friend.”
“I know,” Cassandra said, and she reached a hand across the console, taking mine in hers. “But girl, I loved you, but you chose him. You chose them. And when I asked for your help, you said no. Charlotte Anne said yes.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry I was too scared to help.”
“Charlotte is actually a really caring person, you know. She was the only one who had the guts to tell me what she really thought of Henry. Because she loved me, she really did. And I bet, in some way, she loved you, too, even while she was doing things that hurt you. Because that’s what she feels for her friends. That she would do anything for them.”
“Still,” I said. “She could have found another way.”
“Maybe, but this was her way. And I know, deep down, she wanted to do the right thing. And anyway, she certainly doesn’t deserve to go down for a murder she didn’t even commit. I know there’s the evidence you found, but Charlotte told me it was just from her trying to cover her tracks, once she unexpectedly found him dead. And I believe her.”
I hesitated only a moment. “After tonight, I believe her, too. And don’t worry. I’m going to tell them everything.”
Cassandra nodded. “Tell the police what happened. Tell them about that horrible man. Protect yourself. But please, I’m begging you. Leave me out of it—leave the jewelry out of it. I could have left, you know? I had what I came for. I didn’t have to help you. But I couldn’t let you fight him alone. I love you, I still do, even with all the shit that’s gone down between us.”
Tears ran down my cheeks, and I struggled to brush them away. “I love you, too.”
“Then do this for me,” Cassandra said. “Please.”
I hesitated only a moment.
“Of course,” I said. “I would do anything to help you now. I hope you know that.”
It was still pouring by the time my wet sandals tracked across the hard linoleum of the police station.
In the fluorescent lights, my shirt was practically see-through, my hair hanging, dripping, at my sides.
“Oh my god,” the officer behind the desk said. She stood up, rushing around the desk and over to me. “What’s happened? Are you okay?”
“No, I’m not,” I said. “I was attacked.”
I took a deep breath, and the weight of everything seemed to fall off me then, like raindrops cascading onto the floor.
“I was attacked by the man who killed my husband.”