It is always a short-lived thrill for a Delphi native to know something that the rest of the town doesn't. Very few secrets actually stay secret around here, and possession of one is jealously guarded for as long as possible.
Of course, Neil's locked door would suggest to any Delphi rationalist that something was going on in the library, though everyone would automatically assume that the "something" was sexual in nature.
No one would ever guess that Neil Pascoe currently harbored one of the most fascinating secrets in town, who, herself a Delphi native, let us not forget, harbored some of the longest-kept secrets in our memory.
"First things first," Neil said, rubbing his hands together. "Would you like a glass of wine, Tory?"
"Uh, sure," I said, still nonplussed by the whole situation.
"The Simi all right with you?" he asked, reaching up to slide another stem from the rack suspended over the countertop. "Or should I open a bottle of Riesling?"
"Chardonnay is fine," I said, watching Neil pour a glass from the half-empty bottle sitting on the table.
I raised an eyebrow at him, asking a hundred questions. He answered with a shrug.
"I imagine you're wondering what I'm doing here," J. Ross Nelson said, in the throaty voice that made her the darling of slasher-movie fans.
"That, among other things," I said, sipping the wine.
A couple of hours ago, I would have been thrilled to sit with an impeccably groomed, casually dressed, obviously alive and well J. Ross Nelson, and drink from Neil's private reserve cellar.
But so soon after the fight with Stu, with his indictment of her still ringing in my ears, and a million unanswered questions of my own, the best I could manage was a closely guarded curiosity.
"Well, to start with," Janelle said, hands cupped around her wineglass, "I feel terrible about Doug. I didn't know anything about it until I heard on the news that he was dead. You can imagine how surprised I was to find that everyone thought that we had run away together, and that I was now either dead myself, or some sort of drowning-murderess."
She laughed softly, eyes sad and sincere. I've seen that expression before, on the big screen.
"So, if it isn't too personal to ask, where the hell have you been? People are wondering," I said. The only way to keep from being sucked in by her charm was to be brusque.
"So I hear." She grinned, stretched, and scratched her head. "Late Friday night, I got a message from my agent about a Saturday audition for a serious breakthrough role—the kind I've been waiting 20 years to get. So I took the first flight to California that I could, intending to return in time for the reunion. But something went wrong with the casting director's schedule, and the audition was delayed a couple of days. As sorry as I was to miss the reunion, I decided this role was just too important to jeopardize." She stood up, reached for the wine bottle, and refilled her glass. "I'd already ridden in the parade, so I didn't think anyone would notice if I didn't show up on Saturday."
That statement was too ridiculous for comment. Neil and I sat silently.
"I like to go into isolation to prepare for an audition," she continued, "so that was the perfect opportunity. By the time I turned on a TV, the shit, as they say, had already hit the fan."
Her explanation was almost reasonable and borderline logical, which was why I mistrusted every word.
"How did you get back into town from the river on Friday night? I had your car," I said, pulling the keys from my pocket and dangling them in the air. "And how did you get to the airport?"
"We were all upset and confused—what with Doug's kid starting that brawl, and Ronnie Adler's little wife crying off to the side, and everyone else shouting and angry. There didn't seem to be much point in sticking around. Debbie wouldn't let me help her, even if I could. You"—she pointed at me—"were already gone and Stu was occupied with trying to settle things down. I just walked back into town."
Neil and I exchanged looks. A movie star had walked four miles, in the dark, with rain threatening?
She interpreted the look correctly. "Hey, I run five miles a day to keep in shape. Exercise is exercise. Besides, Delphi hasn't changed that much. I still remember the way."
"And then?" Neil prompted, peeling the foil from the neck of another bottle of wine. His cats, Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, circled his legs.
"Stu wasn't home when I got there. I called my service for messages, found out about the audition, and tried to find a cab to take me into Aberdeen."
All three of us laughed at that one. Taxis are pretty well nonexistent in these here parts.
"So how'd you get to the airport?" Neil asked from inside his refrigerator, where he was rummaging. He emerged with a slab of Colby, grabbed a box of crackers from the pantry, and set them on the table with a cheese slicer and a stack of paper napkins. The cats followed expectantly. "Sorry, I didn't know I was going to entertain."
"This is great, thanks." Janelle flashed a thousand-watt smile at Neil, who looked inordinately pleased.
Since Neil appeared to be falling for Janelle's story, hook, line, and sinker, I vowed to maintain an aloof impartiality. As a reminder, I kept Stu's hurt and angry face in my mind's eye.
"The airport?" I prodded.
"Oh, yeah," Janelle said with her mouth full. She managed to look beautiful even then. "I hitched a ride in a semi."
"You hitchhiked all the way to Aberdeen with a slime-ball trucker?" Neil was aghast.
"No, I hitchhiked all the way to St. Paul with a very nice trucker, and flew out from there." She paused, seeing our expressions. "Don't look that way. It's not like I haven't done it before. Besides, the character I auditioned for was a drifter—I thought of it as research."
"Why didn't you just get your car from me at the trailer, instead of taking that kind of chance?" I demanded. Even in sparsely populated, rural South Dakota, hitchhiking is stupid. "And why didn't you tell anyone where you were going?"
"Well, first of all..." She poured another glass of wine. Her fourth or fifth. "I figured I'd be back the next afternoon. Second, Stu had been kind enough to offer his spare room for me to use, and he and everyone else had been so good about giving me my privacy that I didn't think anyone would even notice I was gone. Third, and most important, I didn't want that asshole Benny to know I'd left Delphi. The pisser followed me here, and he would probably have followed me right back to California."
"Why didn't you call the police when he showed up?" Neil asked. "You do have a restraining order against him."
"Listen, if the cops in L.A. can't keep away him from me," Janelle said, something hard and sharp and undeniably real in her voice, "what are the boondock cops going to do? I've learned to live with it—I just go about my life and avoid my psycho ex-husband as much as possible.
"Which is why I'm lying low for a while. And why I am going to ask you the huge favor of not telling anyone that I'm staying with Neil for the next couple of days. It would never occur to Benny to look for me here."
She broke a piece of cheese in half and delicately fed it to the cats.
I shot a look at Neil, which he avoided returning.
Janelle wiped her hands and continued, "My agent advises me to let the fuss die down a little. He's worried that all this adverse publicity will affect my chance of getting that role."
"You forget what life is like in a small town," I said, helping myself to some cheese and crackers. The cats watched avidly. "The fuss might die down nationally. But you've provided Delphi's most fascinating diversion in a long time. People are obsessed with you and your life. And they're already beginning to connect this drowning and disappearance with 1969 and Butchie Pendergast."
I didn't add that I was one of those people.
She shook her head ruefully. "I had no idea there was anything for people to remember about 1969. I didn't even know that Butchie had died, for almost a decade.
"Doug and I were eighteen, for chrissakes, when we decided to embark on our little fling after that homecoming kegger. It seemed so romantic and dangerously grown up to sneak away from the river together, on the spur of the moment like that. I learned too late that infidelity, even the high school variety, has a very long half-life," she said sincerely, elbow on table, chin in hand. "But we were in love, or, at least we thought we were. By the time we realized that neither of us was thinking with our heads, it was too late for me to go back to Delphi. Doug decided that he wanted to make a go of it with Debbie." She shrugged. "I never saw, or heard from him again, until last week."
"Were you and Stu a hot item in school?" I asked, trying to sort out exactly whom Janelle had been unfaithful to.
"We dated a couple times, but it was nothing serious," she said lightly. "We were friends then. And we're friends now."
Not according to Stu, I thought.
"That still leaves a lot unaccounted for," Neil said calmly. Maybe he wasn't as taken in as I had thought. "A month before the reunion, Doug bragged that he was responsible for bringing you back to Delphi."
"That's nonsense," Janelle said, with thoroughly convincing indignation. "Debbie and Gina Adler wrote to my agent, who forwarded their letter to me. I'm in between projects right now, and luckily had enough free time to make it back. I thought it'd be a hoot to see the old stomping grounds."
"Some hoot," I said with a raised eyebrow.
"No kidding," she agreed.
"You probably have no idea how wild the speculation is. Maybe if we work out some sort of itinerary of where everyone was on Friday night, we can slow down the rumor machine without giving away anything about your present whereabouts," Neil said to Janelle, pushing his glasses up on his nose. He pulled a pad and pencil from a drawer and prepared to take notes.
He wrote his own name at the top of a page, and then transcribed his testimony underneath. "Rhonda had asked me for a ride, and we arrived at the river in the '61 convertible. You came." He pointed at Janelle. "We talked about cars, etc. Cameron charged out of the bushes and tackled his father at the fire. Stu McKee and Ron Adler tried to separate them. Tory disappeared right about then, though everyone was so agitated, I don't think they even noticed the Corvette was gone. I didn't see Cameron after that. I assume he went home."
"Cameron wore his dad's old football shirt," I interrupted. Presley and John Adler said that they found the dirty number 69 Oracle jersey at the river, a little distance away from Doug's clothes. "Did you see him take it off?"
Neil focused on the middle distance, concentrating, "No, but that doesn't mean anything." He continued writing. "Things calmed down, and I took Rhonda home."
He turned the page and wrote my name. He knew my story already and wrote it down with a minimum of additions from me.
We looked at Janelle.
She exhaled. "I got to the river a little bit late. While I was still in my car, Doug made a nasty suggestion about getting rid of Debbie so he and I could go skinny-dipping later. I told you about that at the river, right, Tory?"
I nodded.
"We all stood around the fire. I talked to Mr. Kincaid for a while, which was nice since we didn't get to talk much when I saw him the day before." She stared at the ceiling. "Delphine and Ronnie Adler were whispering a little ways from the fire, and his wife didn't like it."
"That's par for the course," I said.
"Then Doug cornered me again and said a strange thing about having something of mine that I'd probably want back."
This was new to me. Neil too, by the look on his face.
"Did he tell you what it was?" I asked.
"He showed it to me. It was one of those circle pins that girls wore a long time ago. He had it in his pants pocket."
Neil and I looked at each other. "Was it gold, with rhinestones around the outer edge?"
"Yeah," Janelle said. "Did he show it to you too?"
"No. We saw it at the river," I said, "on Saturday. It was stomped into the ground not far from Doug's other stuff."
Janelle cocked her head to the side, the tilt she'd perfected in high school. "That's weird, I mean, I don't think it was valuable or anything."
"Looked like costume jewelry to me," I said. "The kind my mother and aunt wore when they were young."
Janelle continued, "Anyway, it wasn't mine. And I have no idea why Doug thought that it was." She shook her head, then returned to the timeline. "Soon after that, Tory and I went to get beer from Ronnie Adler's cooler, and the fight started. And then I left. I never saw or talked to Doug Fischbach again. The rest you already know." She drained her glass and yawned. "It's been a long day. I know it's early, but do you mind if I turn in?" she asked Neil.
"I have to go home anyway. I work in the morning," I said, standing and stretching. "I'll keep checking the Friday itineraries. It's all anyone wants to talk about at the cafe, anyway."
"Great idea," Neil said heartily. "I'll walk you down."
I said good night to Janelle, amazed, again, to find myself in the position of J. Ross Nelson's friend and protector. "So what do you think?" Neil asked quietly outside his front door.
"I don't know," I said, truthfully. "Everything she says sounds logical, but something about her story doesn't jibe. It just doesn't feel right."
"I know what you mean," he said, standing in the dark on the porch with me. "She showed up tonight after supper and somehow or other hornswoggled me into inviting her to stay here." He grinned, glasses and teeth gleaming.
"Like you mind," I said. "How often do you get to serve wine to a Hollywood star anyway?"
"Well, I'm glad that she asked me to find you—it wouldn't have been any fun at all if you weren't in on," Neil said softly.
"I don't know that I am in on it," I said, thinking through everything that had happened in the past few days. "Why is she so buddy-buddy with me? I wasn't her friend in high school. I didn't even know her."
"Ah, but you gave her the magic nickel," Neil reminded me. "And maybe that was enough to garner her eternal gratitude."
"All it garnered me was a dislike of cheerleaders, and a distrust of skinny, beautiful actresses," I said, laughing.
Which was why I decided it would be a good idea to talk to everyone about Friday night. Not just the crowd, but Debbie Fischbach and Lisa too. Even Cameron, if I could manage it. I'd mention that pin and watch their reactions.
Janelle wasn't the only one I didn't trust.