They were all sitting in the Jeep, huddled under blankets to keep warm. They had been parked there all night, waiting for daybreak and hoping that the bulldozers they heard in the distance would finally break through the rock slide.
Lexie tapped Jennifer on the shoulder. “I’ve been thinking about it, Jen. You were meshuga to wait so long. I thought you’d never climb out that window!”
“Neither did I.” Jennifer sighed. “I just kept thinking about how far down it was and telling myself, vey iz mir, vey iz mir. And through it all I was worrying about whether the tape would fool Dale, but he was an even bigger schnook than I thought.”
“At least you finally showed some chutzpah! I’m proud of you, Jen!”
“Me, too.” Tommy grinned at Jennifer and then he turned to Lexie. “Those words were Yiddish, right?”
Lexie nodded and Tommy started to smile. “I know one Yiddish word. It’s tuchus!”
“What?“ Lexie’s face turned bright red. “Where did you hear that?”
“We were fixing the roof on a guy’s house last summer, and I heard him tell his wife that he was crazy about her tuchus. Is it some kind of food?”
Lexie couldn’t keep a straight face. She laughed so hard, tears of mirth ran down her cheeks. “I’m not going to tell you. But I think they had a very good marriage!”
They were all laughing, imagining the worst, when Tim held up his hand. “I think the bulldozer’s about to break through. It sounds much closer now.”
“Then it’s time to make a decision.” Jennifer turned to face the group. “People are going to ask questions about what happened up at the lodge. What do you think we should say?”
There was another silence, while they all considered it carefully. They’d talked about it after they’d heard the explosion and seen the giant fireball light up the sky. The lodge had blown up and Dale was dead. Should they tell the authorities exactly what had happened? Or would it be kinder to all the families if they thought their loved ones had died in the explosion?
Brian had raised another point. If they told everyone that Dale was a serial killer, his father’s political career could be ruined. Dalton Prescott was a good man and he made an excellent senator. If people knew the truth about his son, they might not vote for him.
“We’ve had all night to think about it.” Tim took a deep breath. “Let’s make our decision. Brian? You go first.”
Brian cleared his throat. “I think we should say it was an accident and we don’t know how it happened. There was a big explosion and we were lucky to be outside at the time.”
“Sounds good to me,” Tommy agreed. “It’s clean, it’s simple, and there’s no evidence left to prove us wrong. I keep thinking about Kelly’s family. They’re finally beginning to get over her death. If we tell them that she was murdered, it’s going to cause them even more grief.“
“I agree with Tommy,” Lexie said. “And don’t forget that we’re not actually lying. The lodge did blow up with everyone else inside.”
“Jen?”
“I agree. If we tell everything that happened, no one will believe us anyway. It’s so weird, it sounds like we made it up.”
“Okay. It’s unanimous.” Tim smiled at Jennifer. “But we have to make a pact. It’ll be our secret, just the five of us. And if we need to talk about it, we’ll be there for each other.”
“Agreed.” Jennifer reached out to put her hand on Tim’s. And then Tommy put his hand on hers, and Lexie put her hand on Tommy’s, and Brian reached out to touch Lexie’s hand to seal their pact.
“I’m really glad we decided to say it was accidental.” Brian gave a big sigh of relief. “I sure wouldn’t want to try to explain that audio!”
Lexie turned to look at Brian in surprise. “What’s to explain? You told us how you made it. Miss Voelker videoed the spring play and you just pieced Kelly’s words together.”
“That’s true, but it’s not what I mean. Do you remember the last thing Kelly said as we drove away?”
“I’ll never forget it.” Jennifer shivered. “It was really chilling. Kelly said, Now I’m going to take my revenge. You murdered me, Dale!”
“That’s right. And the minute I heard her, I started to believe that your crazy séances really worked. It practically proves that Kelly was protecting us from the other side.”
Jennifer frowned. Brian had teased them about their séances before, but this time he sounded totally serious. “I don’t understand, Brian. I was in the spring play. And I know that Kelly used all of those words in her lines.”
“You’re wrong, Jen. Kelly used every word except one. On the tape she said, You murdered me, Dale. And there was no character in the spring play named Dale!”