47

ALLISON

I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to get into Tammy’s house, but I needed to try. Clapper’s call had concerned me. He was missing something about the night she died. I still didn’t understand why Tammy would go out to the pier. How they’d lured her there. What was I overlooking?

When I arrived, the house was dark and quiet. Was it considered a crime scene? There was no police tape. I called Dolores to see what she thought, but she didn’t answer, so I left a message. I drove around the block twice, but there was no squad car. I finally parked in front. Palmed the key Tammy had given me in case I’d wanted to stay at her place the night I’d been scared. The memory made my heart hurt. It was hard to believe she was gone.

I hadn’t been at Tammy’s place much, but the smell brought her back. I half expected her to pop out around a corner and wave. Hey! Want some coffee?

Her mother, or her mother’s friends, at least, were supposed to come down this weekend to sort through her belongings. I headed to Tammy’s bedroom and flicked on the light. I’d never been in there. The bed was unmade and a pile of crumpled clothes sat in front of the closet waiting to be washed. It was horrible to see Tammy’s pillow, still crunched up like she’d woken just minutes before. A jewelry box sat open on the dresser, various necklaces and earrings spilling out. As I leaned over another pile of clothes to look inside, my leg brushed up against something hard. One of Tammy’s shirts had slid off and exposed the corner of a piece of machinery. I pulled the rest away and found a film projector buried beneath.

Tammy had said she didn’t have a projector, that she couldn’t watch Maureen’s film. I ran my hands through the other clothes on the floor, looking for the film to go with it, but it was just the projector. Then I spotted a notebook buried under the pile of clothes. On the top page, Tammy had started a note.

Dear Allison,

That was it. I stared at the words. Picked up the notebook and flipped through the rest. It was blank except for those two formidable words: Dear Allison.

Next to the notepad was a small digital recorder. I turned it on. There were four files. I pressed Play on the first, dated the day I moved to Opal Beach.

“Hello?” It was Tammy’s voice.

Then another, a woman, her voice muffled, like she wasn’t quite holding the phone up to her mouth. “How are you doing, Tammy? How’s your mom?”

Tammy talked about her mom’s health and the woman murmured in sympathy. I fast-forwarded, about to put the recorder down and get out of there, when I heard my name.

“The Simpson woman is here. Are you ready?”

Startled, I dropped the recorder and it fell. I fished it out of Tammy’s laundry, sinking to the floor. There was a pause, then Tammy’s voice, softer. “Are you sure?”

“Of course. You can’t back out now.”

“I won’t.”

“Good. Just remember what we talked about.”

“Yes.”

“Am I on speakerphone? Take me off speakerphone.”

“I’m sorry.” Tammy’s voice. A clatter and then Tammy answered from farther away. “I was making dinner.” And the tape cut off.

I stared at the recorder like it was a live snake. What was she talking about? And to whom?

I pressed the forward arrow to the next recording and hit Play. It was from November 8. Right after the Autumn Harvest dinner at the country club. It, too, started in the middle of a conversation. “—need to calm down. Everything’s still on track. This is just speeding things up.”

The woman’s voice was clearer now, and it struck me like a sharp knife.

Lorelei.

“I just didn’t know you were going to send it like that,” Tammy said. “That you had it. How do you have it?”

“I didn’t tell you on purpose, Tammy. We needed the surprise element, so your shock was genuine.”

The necklace. I closed my eyes, remembering how Tammy’s face had lost color when I’d shown it to her. So it had been Lorelei who sent it. I found something your dear brother had missed. I had been so quick to dismiss the possibility.

“I’m just—not sure about all this now. It’s just all getting too much.”

“Tammy, you can’t back out now. Remember what’s at stake. Your mother.”

There was a pause. A sniffle, like Tammy was crying.

“It’s all going to be fine. I’m handling it. Just keep doing what you’re doing. We need to get the police involved and this will move more quickly. And don’t call me back on this phone. It’s a disposable.”

The next file was my voice.

“You okay?” I asked, tinny, excited.

Tammy answered, “Yes, yes. Just trying to move in the dark.”

My call to Tammy after Thanksgiving. I sounded overexcited, raving on. And then Tammy, warning me I was in danger. Hanging up on me.

The last recording. From the night of Tammy’s death. The hair on my arms stood up as I listened:

“Tammy, I need you to meet me tonight.”

“Tonight? But the snow.”

“At the pier. It’s about Phillip. It can’t wait.”

“The pier? Phillip? What’s happened?”

“Nine o’clock.” Click.

I dropped the recorder. That’s why Tammy had been at the pier that night. But what had been so urgent?

I played the last recording again. It’s about Phillip.

“I’m sorry it had to happen this way.”

It took me a second to realize what was wrong. The voice wasn’t coming from the recorder. It came from behind me.

I turned, and the recorder fell out of my hand and under the dresser. Lorelei was standing before me. She looked tired, dark circles under her eyes, her hair pushed back into a severe bun. She was wearing a small fur coat now, cropped at the waist, and those same black gloves.

“Oh my goodness,” I said, standing. “You scared me!” I slung my purse strap around my shoulder. “I was just leaving. I had to come get something of Tammy’s...”

Lorelei stared at me, calm but resigned. “I kind of figured you wouldn’t give up,” she said, sighing. “I hoped you would. It really was a great plan.”

“Plan?” I smiled. “I don’t know about that.” I tried to shove past her. But Lorelei didn’t budge from the doorway. “I’ll just get out of your way.”

“Allison.”

Her voice made me stop.

“Please, don’t make me pull out the gun. You know I know how to use it.”

My body went cold.

Lorelei shook her head. “Tammy was a sweet girl, she was. But she could never just let it go. I really wanted her to just let it go.”

“You...killed Tammy?” I could barely get the words out. I felt the fear flood through me again. No one knew I was here. And now I was facing a killer, one much smarter than Zeke or Phillip.

“Come on, put it together. You’re a bright girl. That’s why I picked you.”

“Picked me?”

“Get over there. On the bed. Please. I can’t have you standing here.”

I went over and sat down slowly. “We can go now, to Sheriff Clapper,” I said desperately. “He’d understand, I’m sure—the way that Phillip treated you...anyone would understand.”

Lorelei laughed sharply. “Another man? Really, Allison? You think he would understand what we women have gone through? I thought you were smarter than that.”

She leaned against the doorway, and I remembered how she’d stood at the top of the driveway, that superior look in her eye as her husband, her cheating lying husband, had crumpled before her. And now, me. The final nail to be hammered down.

“Do you think the Worthingtons would really just leave some troubled nutcase in charge of their home for all that time?” She smiled. “I groomed them for you. Told them how I knew you and Duke, what a cad he was, how you needed something like this. Patty’s very susceptible to sad-sack stories like yours. Women done wrong.”

I stared at her, stunned.

“I knew you wouldn’t go for it if you knew I was involved. I couldn’t risk that you might remember me from the sailing club or make the connection through your husband’s family. I did some research—I’m very good at research—and I discovered that your sister and Dolores Gund’s sister worked together. I asked Patty to keep me out of it, given the sensitive nature of the situation. It was lovely, really. I have to tell you, I loved your outburst on-air. I have a recording of it at home. I watch it sometimes. I knew that you’d take interest in poor little Maureen.”

I flushed, thinking of how easily I’d been played. Lorelei’s reaction the first time I’d met her—a meteorologist, that’s right. On television. Her insistence that I go to Tammy’s for coffee. I’m sure you’ll find it a favorite place of yours. I’d been so focused on Clay, the scorned boyfriend, so sure he was involved. Had Duke and his lying, cheating ways blinded me to the truth?

“Why? I don’t—why not just go to the police?”

“I wanted my husband to go to jail.” She rolled her eyes. “It’s so boring to just tell you, Allison. Surely you can figure it out.”

My mind was racing. “You had me chase around clues?”

“Good, good. You’re getting better.”

“But... Tammy...?”

Lorelei’s face changed, a pitied look, like I was a child whose dead fish she’d just flushed down the toilet. As she started to speak, I realized I wasn’t going to like what I was about to hear.

“Oh, she knew the whole time. Helped me plant the clues, gave you a little nudge.”

“Why didn’t she just go to the police?”

“Because she loved Phillip, Tammy did.”

“Tammy and Phillip?” And then I remembered what Mabel had said that afternoon in the parking lot of the grocery store. Tammy always liked the older men. And Tammy—I’d felt sorry for her that night at the bar, when we’d sat out back and she’d told me she’d been in love once and been burned. She’d played me then, I now knew, but what she’d said, at its core, had been the truth. In love—with Phillip Bishop? I felt like I’d been hit by a sixteen-wheeler. I couldn’t imagine it.

Lorelei clasped her hands together, giddy now. “This is so fun. It’s just like the movies, isn’t it?”

I shifted on the bed, analyzing her. She’d threatened a gun, but did she have one? Had the police taken the one she’d used to kill Zeke and shoot Phillip? Was she bluffing?

“That’s right. Tammy had fallen in love. And when she found out Phillip was sleeping with the little carnival girl, I proposed a plan. To kill him. We’d be in it together. Two scorned women. I didn’t care that she’d slept with him, too. I knew she was vulnerable. I knew how much her mother meant to her,” she sputtered, narrowing her eyes. “All Tammy had to do was drug Phillip. I would take care of the rest. She was so angry and heartbroken she agreed. Of course, my plan was never to kill Phillip. I wanted him to suffer a long time. So I followed him and his little tramp down to the beach that night, and when he passed out, I killed her. And left them both there to be discovered by a passerby. Only his idiot brother found him first, and they decided to cover it up.”

“You killed Maureen?” My breathing was shallow now. A panic attack? Couldn’t afford to lose control. I needed to think before it all caved in on me.

Lorelei shot me a disgusted look. She was growing tired of me, and I didn’t want to think about what would happen when she lost her patience. “She wouldn’t have lasted very long, anyway. Girls like that—well, you know.”

“But Phillip—he doesn’t know. He thinks he did kill her.” I breathed in. Imagined Phillip walking around for thirty years believing he’d killed someone, and Lorelei letting him bear that burden.

“Which would’ve been perfect, of course, because Phillip was so guilt-ridden he actually kept his cock out of other women for a long time.”

I was beginning to understand. A terrible revenge plot that went wrong. “Except Tammy didn’t see it that way.”

“Oh yes. Tammy. She, of course, was appalled that her drugging Phillip had led to her friend’s death. She was about to go to the police and confess, until I pointed out that we’d both be in prison. I provided a much better alternative—money. Money to help out her sick mother and to open that coffee shop she always wanted. I was her benefactor.”

“To keep her quiet.”

“Exactly. Of course she never knew I was the one who killed Maureen. And it would’ve all been fine. Unfortunately, Phillip fell in love with a waitress down at the club months ago. Oh, and this time it was true love,” she said, her voice bubbling over with poison. “He was getting ready to leave me. I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t let him take this lifestyle away from me.”

“So you decided to remind him of Maureen.”

“That’s right. See? You are smart. I wanted to make him pay. But I couldn’t very well bring it up after all these years. I would be an accomplice. It had to be someone else. We tried Dolores Gund, but she’s...too close to everything. She didn’t bite. That’s when I knew I had to get someone from the outside to do it. And who better but an isolated divorcée with a history of being betrayed and an axe to grind?”

I closed my eyes. Her words cut into me, but I knew I had to keep her talking to stay alive. “Yes, I see. I was perfect. I fell right into it, didn’t I?”

“Well, Tammy helped with that. I laid out the plan to her. It was our chance to finally bring justice to her friend, without incriminating her or me.”

“So what went wrong?”

“Tammy got scared. She started—to like you.” Lorelei paused, lifted her nose as though she’d just caught wind of rotting garbage. “She thought Phillip and Zeke would come after you if you continued to dredge up more. They didn’t like the town talking. Then, when the police came to the house, everyone got spooked—including Tammy. I thought she was going to expose our game, just when the truth was about to come out. We were so close. So...” She smiled cheerfully. “Women are disposable, right? Isn’t that what we’ve learned?”

“Don’t twist my words,” I said, amazed at my own bravery. “You don’t care about anything. You—you just played all of us. Like a game.” The thought of Lorelei plotting. Picking me out. Watching me, all this time. With a sinking gut, I remembered Tammy’s voice on the phone, the fear real. You’re in danger, Allison. Tammy had tried to save me. And Lorelei had killed her for it. Anyone who got in Lorelei’s way was disposable.

“Get up,” she said. “You’re coming with me.”

She pulled a pistol from her coat pocket. So she hadn’t been bluffing. My heart sank. “You’re just going to shoot me? Here?”

She shrugged. “Let that police detective sort it out. It’ll be the case of his lifetime.” But I could see the uncertainty in her eyes. She hadn’t plotted this far. She thought I’d swallow the whole story like a gullible fish.

I caught a flash of something behind her. Just a slight movement. Had I been imagining it? I kept babbling. “Let’s talk this out. Please? I can keep a secret.”

She laughed coldly. “That’s a lovely sentiment, my dear, but no thank you. You’re a liability and a pressure cooker. No, you served your purpose—”

We heard a crash at the back of the house. Lorelei whirled around. “Who’s there?” she cried, then swung back to me. “Don’t move, Allison, or I’ll shoot you. You know I will.” She backed out of the room slowly, craning her neck.

There was another loud crash.

In a second, Lorelei had dropped. She was on the floor, twisting in agony, screeching through clenched teeth. There was a woman on top of her—a tattooed forearm around Lorelei’s neck like she was bringing in the win at Roller Derby.

“Dolores!” I cried in relief.

She looked up grimly. “This bitch isn’t going anywhere. Call the police, Allison. We’re done here.”