ALLISON
Tammy said Sheriff Horace Clapper usually wandered into the shop around 9 a.m., before his shift. I was there at eight, sitting at the window table with my laptop and my mocha, two scoops of vanilla gelato erupting over the edges like white lava. It had become my regular thing, without my even having to ask Tammy, though I’d switched from plain coffee to mocha because the chocolate seemed to go better with the ice cream.
The necklace and the chess piece were tucked in my pocket. I could feel the soft lump against my thigh, but that didn’t keep me from touching it every so often to make sure they hadn’t disappeared.
I spent an hour worrying that Clapper wouldn’t show up and worrying what to do if he did. My stomach felt like I’d eaten a pile of spicy sausage—it was churning, stabbing, the stress working overtime. Tammy was mopping the floors, polishing the coffeepots, rearranging the syrups. We barely spoke to one another.
Then, like clockwork, the police car pulled up in front of the store at exactly 9 a.m. Clapper did a pretty terrible parallel parking job. The familiar bell above the door clanged as he sauntered in. He took off his sunglasses, surveyed the room briefly, and headed to the counter. He was about my age, with a thick mustache that he petted as he waited, and I remembered that first day in the shop, when he’d been chatting with Mabel. What if Mabel had said something to him about who she thinks I really am? I hadn’t thought about that. Maybe I should’ve had Tammy do this on her own.
“How’s it going, Tammy? All ready for Thanksgiving?” he said. I couldn’t make out Tammy’s answer. He ordered “the usual,” and when he walked over to the bulletin board to wait, Tammy wiped her brow. She looked pained, and I had a vision of her dropping the coffeepot and running out the door, forever, leaving only her apron behind. No, there was no way Tammy would be able to do this by herself. I had to stay.
She came around the counter and handed Clapper his coffee. Her hands were shaking, and when I looked down, I noticed mine were, too.
“Ah, thanks so much.” He took a sip. The steam wetted his mustache.
“This one’s on the house,” Tammy said, “but I need to ask you something. Do you...have a minute?”
“Sounds serious.” He smirked, but then when she didn’t respond, he sobered up. “You okay, Tammy?”
Tammy led Clapper awkwardly to my table. I closed my laptop and stood up, nearly knocking over the table.
“This is my friend Allison,” Tammy said.
Clapper nodded at me cautiously. “I think we’ve seen each other around,” he said. I could tell his guard was up. This wasn’t going to be as casual as Tammy had imagined.
Tammy’s voice was shaky. “I—we have a question. We need some help, some advice, I guess.”
She sat down, and after a slight pause, Clapper followed suit. With all three of us around the table, it felt more like we were playing tea at a children’s birthday party. Clapper’s knees kept bumping the bottom of the table, sloshing our drinks. I braced it with one foot to keep it steady.
Tammy took a deep breath. “I had a friend, from a long time ago. She disappeared—we all thought she ran away.” She paused, stared down at her hands. “I was telling Allison about this recently, you know, just reminiscing, I guess. Hadn’t thought about this woman in years.” That was a lie, but I knew why Tammy had to lie. “Anyway, we may have mentioned it to a few people—”
“Because I thought it was an interesting story, you know?” I interjected. “I mean, I find it fascinating that anyone could just disappear these days, with everything being online.” I shrugged. Trying to be casual.
Clapper’s eyes narrowed. He reminded me of my high school principal with that naturally suspicious guard—why are you in the halls between classes, Ms. Simpson? I wondered if he knew the story already, pictured a tiny, winged version of Mabel hovering near his ear, whispering, She’s a fraud, sugar. Just trying to stir up trouble. I know these people when I see ’em. He turned to Tammy. “So you haven’t heard from this person in how long?”
“Thirty years.” Tammy flushed.
“Okay.” Clapper folded his hands in his lap, patient.
“Tammy filed a police report about it back then,” I added. “But they said that this woman had probably just run away. So no one ever investigated further.”
“It sounds like she was a Summer Girl,” Clapper said, rubbing that mustache again. And that term—Summer Girl. The same one Clay had used. The same dismissive tone that Mabel had used, too. As though because she worked at a carnival, she wasn’t as important. I was beginning to understand why Tammy had kept her mouth shut for so long.
“It sounds like something terrible might have happened to her,” I said, maybe a little too harshly.
Clapper took a long sip of his coffee before he answered. “And you ladies are going to fix it, right?”
“I’m not sure fix is the right term,” I said, feeling my guard go up. This had been a mistake.
“What would be the right term?” he asked coldly. “Meddle?”
He’d poked my hornet’s nest, and I felt the anger fly out, buzz around me, looking for a victim to sting. “So does that mean you don’t want to hear about the package I received?”
“A package?” His eyes flicked in annoyance, but he sat up straight again. “Well, of course. I wasn’t aware there was any evidence.”
Of course you weren’t. Because you didn’t want to listen. As I reached into my pocket to show him, a customer walked through the door, a man in a brown fleece jacket and jeans, staring at his phone. Tammy jumped up like she’d been waiting for an excuse to leave, glancing over at us nervously from behind the counter.
Clapper leaned over the table toward me. “What was in this package?”
I could feel Tammy’s stress radiating off her. I didn’t want to give him any details without her there with me. “It was a necklace,” I said low.
“Do you have it? Here?”
“I think Tammy should explain...”
Clapper made a noise in his throat. But to his credit he nodded, sat back in his chair and sipped his coffee. His radio squawked, but he ignored it. Tammy came back over to us, rubbing her palms against her apron. “Did you show him?”
“She wanted to wait for you,” Clapper said.
I put the necklace on the table between us. He examined it but didn’t touch it.
“It was her half of a best friend necklace,” Tammy said.
“Best friend what?”
Tammy explained what that meant. “So she took my half, the half with my initials, and I took hers.” She sighed, and then pulled out something from her apron. “Here’s my half. You can see, they’re the same. But the one Allison got had my initials on the back.” Tammy told him the abbreviated version of the story she’d told me that night in her apartment, plus some of the details that Dolores had uncovered. While she talked, I picked up the two charms, fit their zigzags together to form a complete heart. BEST FRIENDS.
When I looked up again, Clapper was fixated on Tammy, his jaw tight. “Maureen Haddaway, you say? I’m not familiar with that case.”
Tammy fiddled with the edge of her apron, picking at a loose thread. “Well, like I said, Horace, it was a long time ago.”
“So someone just randomly sent you jewelry from a thirty-year-old case?” His eyebrows raised. “It sounds like someone’s playing a pretty mean prank on you, Ms....”
“Simpson,” I said sharply.
“Ms. Simpson,” he said. Then, to Tammy, “And you. I thought you had better judgment than this, Tam.”
Her eyes welled up. “No, Horace. Really, this is not—”
“Tammy, think about it. You go around, talking about this woman from thirty-some years ago, acting like Cagney and Lacey, and so of course someone’s going to fool around with you. You know the folks around here...”
Clapper was watching us with an amused look on his face. So sure of himself. I felt foolish, having pushed Tammy to set this meeting up.
“The person who sent me this necklace also sent me a message,” I said evenly, trying to control my anger. I pulled out the notes, and once he read them, I slid the chess piece in front of him. “A bishop,” I said. “Maureen was dating Clay Bishop the summer she went missing.”
Tammy glared at me at the mention of Clay. Clapper’s mouth rounded in astonishment. “You’re accusing the Bishops of killing some teenage runaway?”
“No,” I stammered. “I just thought maybe you could talk to him, see if he remembers anything.”
“You want me to waltz over to the Bishops’ home and ask them about a girl who disappeared thirty years ago?” He sighed. “Clearly you aren’t from this town.”
“Clearly you aren’t taking this seriously, Sheriff,” I said, feeling my fire return. I stood up. Tammy stood up, too, motioning for me to calm down. But I was sick of being told I was stupid. Something was going on, and no one wanted to figure it out. “I have lots of friends who are television reporters who would be very interested in this story.”
“Are you threatening an officer of the law, Ms. Simpson?” Clapper’s eyes flashed, angry now.
“Absolutely not,” I said with a bright smile. “But if you need further information to investigate, I was just offering that I have a way to engage the public in inquiry—”
“That won’t be necessary, Ms. Simpson.”
“I hope not, Sheriff Clapper.” I had the urge to take back the necklace, the notes and the chess piece. But I was too afraid. “I think I’ll be going now. Thank you, Tammy, for the coffee.” And with my knees shaking and my dignity spilling all over the floor, I walked out.
After I left the coffee shop I turned off my cell phone and drove around Opal Beach for a long time. I wanted to be alone, to sort through my thoughts. No, I wanted to go back to Philly, to curl up on my sister’s couch and forget about all this. Forget about Maureen and Tammy and the Bishops. But something wouldn’t let me. No, someone. Maureen. She’d gotten under my skin. She didn’t deserve this.
But how muddy it had all become. Nothing made sense. There was no evidence—except for the mysterious packages—that any harm had come to Maureen here in Opal Beach. So the only other possibility was that she had run away—or been run out of town.
But someone was trying to make sure I kept looking into it. Who sent those things? And why? How had they gotten Maureen’s necklace? And why nudge me toward the Bishops—was it to make them seem guilty, to throw me off the track of someone else? Or was it all just an elaborate prank, like Clapper had said? One of the trolls who’d made death threats—had they followed me here to mock me? But how had they known where to find me?
I wanted to call Tammy to see what happened after I left her and Clapper in the shop, but I was feeling strange about her. She kept insisting Clay was innocent but couldn’t give me a good reason why. And then there was her lie about me being related to Maureen—and to Mabel, of all people. I had told Tammy that there were few people who could’ve had access to that necklace—Clay and Mabel, for example—but Tammy could’ve, too. What if she had been the one to leave me those packages—as a way of keeping me interested?
I pulled over to the side of the road and put my head in my hands. What was going on? I couldn’t shake the idea that I was missing something, like I was driving in circles in a heavy fog but didn’t know where because I couldn’t see past the small swath of headlights.
Look at you. You’re a mess, Duke had said to me on one occasion when he’d come home late, missing a play he’d bought tickets for as a late birthday present to me. He’d been with Maron then, had completely forgotten about our plans. He’d lied straight to my face about some work meeting, blaming me for getting so hysterical. On some level I’d known he was lying, but I’d been too afraid to dig too deep. So I’d believed him.
Gaslighting was the word for it. I’d suspected it, had known it in the farthest edges of my mind, had felt it in my fingertips and toenails, had grasped it in the moments just before sleep, but he’d done a great job of keeping it all smudged. When I’d become suspicious of his behavior, when I’d grown sullen and angry at all the dinners gone cold, he started telling me I needed to go on meds. When I refused to have sex with him, he’d tell me that I was taking out my unhappiness with myself on him. That I should find a hobby. My husband had delightfully, unabashedly, been sticking his dick into another woman for six months, had been hiding hotel and dinner receipts, and had still had the nerve to tell me I should take up gardening.
Who was lying to me now? I sat up straight, stared at the barren beach road ahead of me, the sides of the pavement encrusted with white road salt. Here in the dimming light, that salt looked like ancient crumbling rock, like the ground beneath me was going to dissolve, suck me and everything else inside. I recognized immediately what was happening. Panic attacks, my doctor had called them. I’d gotten them regularly after I’d found out about Duke. They would come on unexpectedly, before I’d learned to control them. Cardboard walls, pushing inward, boxing me inside until I couldn’t focus on anything, until I forgot where I was or what I’d been doing. I’d come to, panting, my skin cold and clammy, clawing at the air like an animal. But I’d plowed through it myself, with Annie’s help. And some Xanax.
Here in the car, though, I didn’t try to prevent it. I embraced it. The box walls came, closing in, pressing from all sides. My skin was clammy. I tried to catch my breath, but I could only gasp, shallow and fast, like all the oxygen had gone out of the car.
I was the fool. Once again. Always.
Everyone was lying to me.
“Well, screw Horace.” Tammy pushed past me into the house. “He was such a jerk to you, Allison. I’m sorry.”
I followed her into the living room where she made herself at home. I realized that this was the first time Tammy had ever come to my house. We always met at hers.
“Are you okay? I’ve been trying to call you all day,” she said from the couch. I’d forgotten to turn my cell phone back on. After I’d calmed down, I’d driven some more, enjoying the speed of the highway, the miles ticking by, nowhere to go, until I’d finally headed back, stopping only once to fill up my gas tank and buy a cherry slushy and large weekender-sized bag of tortilla chips, which I put an embarrassingly large dent in on the drive home. I took a long, warm bath, taking care to wash my face and hair. But my nerves were still frayed.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, though I wasn’t sure it was true. I’d made a mess of everything. Why hadn’t I listened to Dolores when she’d told me to drop it?
“He kept the necklace. And the bishop. All of it,” Tammy continued.
“I figured he would.” I sat tentatively across from her. “Even though he didn’t believe us.”
“Oh, he believed us. He was just pissed that we didn’t come to him earlier.” She was still spitting mad. “He has that whole manly cop shtick down. After you left, he gave me the whole lecture about not being amateur detectives. About leaving that to the ‘professionals.’”
Outside, the skies were black, even though it was only 5 p.m. I hated this time of the year, that veil of darkness that came so early, that made you want to retreat into yourself.
“You sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah.” I smiled weakly. “I just need a long nap.”
Tammy stood up, pulled out a ring of keys from her pocket. “I should let you rest. I came because I want you to have this. It’s to my place. In case—in case you ever need it.”
I frowned. “What would I need it for?”
“Just in case anything ever happens.” Her eyes were shiny. “If you feel unsafe, or...scared. If you need to. That’s all. I’d feel better if you had it.”
“Thanks, Tam. That’s really sweet.”
“Everything you’ve done for me—Allison, I want you to know I appreciate it. You’re a good friend.”
As Tammy was getting ready to leave, I noticed headlights sweeping over the driveway. “You might want to wait—looks like one of the Bishops is coming home,” I said. But as we peeked through the kitchen blinds, we saw it was a police car. As it passed and went over to the Bishops’ house, Tammy and I stared at each other.
“Oh no,” she whispered.
“It’s going to be okay,” I said. “If Clay really has nothing to do with this, then he’ll be fine. And maybe he’ll be able to help.”
After all that, I felt my excitement slowly building again—just a small stirring. It was possible, maybe, we’d get some answers now. Horace Clapper put on a good tough-guy show, making me and Tammy feel like idiots, but it seemed he acted pretty fast.