Though I'd uncovered a couple of insignificant lies during the course of the week, the only consistent liar, so far, had been J. Ross Nelson herself. From her golden adolescence, to her mysterious disappearance, to her bashfully triumphant return, to the astounding revelations of the past two days, she had fooled us all with a bravura lifelong performance that probably contained as many untruths as otherwise.
I'm convinced, now, of the reality of her teenage pregnancy. I also believe that Doug Fischbach was not the biological father of that child, though I think he just as sincerely believed that he was. I believe Janelle was desperate to see Delphi in the rearview mirror, and I believe she would have let Butchie Pendergast drown, if that had served her purpose.
As to the truth of the rest of her enthralling performance, I have no idea. But I had a glimmer as to who could shed a little light on my confusion.
Benny Nelson, while he was bemoaning our closed-mouth small town, probably did not realize how much he'd given away. He would have to have heard the truth about Butchie Pendergast's drowning long ago, for that to have been "old shit." For it to supplant the "new shit" about Janelle's daughter, he must have been reminded. Recently. And that told me who, of all the Delphi rubes, had talked to him.
It wasn't me. Ditto Rhonda and Del. Aphrodite wouldn't talk to anyone. Neil would not have let Benny through the library door, and not just because he had Janelle safely ensconced on the second floor. Hugh let him in, but his news gave Benny no satisfaction. I'll admit to a little hesitation when it came to Ron, but a quick phone call eliminated him. A more painfully awkward phone call to Stu provided me with the same answer.
There was only one other person, one that Benny would surely have contacted. One who knew a lot more than she had told so far.
"What were you trying to do, get that poor man all upset?" I asked Debbie Fischbach in her immaculate living room. "He's used to Hollywood-style chicanery. He wouldn't recognize South Dakota passive-aggressive manipulation if it bit him on the nose."
Debbie shrugged, a tiny smirk playing at the edges of her mouth. "I was trying to smoke Janelle out. I imagine she thought that all the old secrets died with Doug."
"Surprise," Lisa sing-songed from an armchair. "No matter what her doofus ex-husband thinks, or the press, or the police, she's still around. I can smell her."
Debbie, drinking some sort of clear liquid in a tall glass, seconded that notion. "She's holed up somewhere. Got some man to take care of her. Poor man."
"He's in for a surprise," Lisa agreed. "Better watch his back."
"He'd better watch his front." Debbie chuckled.
They were sure a jolly pair of girls, those two.
"What would forcing Janelle out into the open have accomplished?" I asked. Butchie's death happened too long ago to open up an investigation now. Besides, with two of the principals dead, who would dispute Janelle's version? And who, besides the good folk of Delphi, would even be interested?
"It would have made her squirm," Lisa said, "and watching Janelle Ross squirm has been a passion of mine."
Debbie nodded.
"You hate her, don't you?" I asked, realization dawning.
"Yup, always have. Always will," they said.
"But why?"
"I should think you'd have a clue. She stayed with your boyfriend."
I didn't want to get into a discussion about Stu and Janelle, either now or in the past.
"That's an awful long time to hold a grudge," I said. Besides, I thought, not a single person in this room can afford to throw stones.
"I know exactly how long it's been," Debbie hissed. "I've had to live with her ghost every minute of every single day since she left. And when Doug suggested that we invite her back for that goddamn reunion, I knew fate was calling me, that I could finally expose her."
Lisa had been watching me closely. "You know what she's talking about, don't you?"
"About Doug and Debbie not running away together in 1969? About all of them being together when Pendergast drowned?" I said. "Yes, I know."
"Damn," Lisa said. "I was so looking forward to knocking the shit out of you with our revelations."
Debbie and Lisa were both disappointed. Delphi natives to the core, they knew a tantalizing secret and couldn't wait to tell everyone. But they didn't know everything.
Debbie had worn Aunt Juanita's pin to his funeral, flaunting it. I realized that she must have known how it came into Doug's possession. By then, she also knew that it wasn't Janelle's, or she would not have made a special point of letting everyone at the service get a good look at it. At her own husband's funeral, she went fishing.
"Who told you?" Lisa asked me accusingly.
"Everything pointed in that direction. It took a while for me to see it all, but I figured it out by myself." Which almost wasn't a lie. As I'd told Janelle, I'd have gotten there eventually.
"I'm not as fast at figuring things out as you, I guess," Debbie said, then handed her glass to Lisa for a refill. As she did, the loose sleeve of her blouse slid up to reveal a string of old bruises running up her arm. "It took me years to figure it all out."
It was a safe bet that Janelle had not told Debbie, or Lisa, the details of that awful night in 1969. "You got it from Doug?" I asked.
"Not in so many words." Debbie laughed. "Our Doug was a man with a big mouth and a drinking habit. When he was drunk, he talked. A lot. Not that he ever gave me a definitive statement, or a neatly typed chronology. But here and there, over time, I was able to piece together a reasonable facsimile of that evening."
"Can I get you anything, Tory?" Lisa called from the kitchen. I would have loved a beer. But this pair would probably have laced it with strychnine. "No thanks," I said.
"At first, like everyone else, I thought Doug and Janelle had run away together, just to humiliate Stuart McKee and me," Debbie said, picking lint from her pants. "Doug called from some motel in North Dakota, three days after he'd disappeared, frantic and wanting to come home. He needed bus fare—he was broke and lonely. And sorry. He told me he'd been with Janelle, and that she'd abandoned him. I forgave him, and, for a time, I believed him. I would have believed anything about that bitch."
She took the glass from Lisa and sipped. "But it didn't take long to figure out that his story didn't jibe. The details came out differently with every repeat. He was at the river with Butch. He never saw Butch at all. He didn't know Butch had died until after coming back home. He and Janelle discussed Butch's drowning at their motel. He kicked Janelle out. She left him in the middle of the night, taking all of his money with her. On and on. The only thing I ever knew for sure is that he'd been drunk and ended up in North Dakota."
"You never confronted him with the discrepancies?" I asked.
"I didn't confront Doug about anything," Debbie said, seriously. "He may have been stupid. But he was a stupid man with a temper. Why do you think we moved back to Delphi in the first place? Doug lost every teaching job he ever had—it was either his drinking, or his temper, or both. And he took it out on us each time. He had to beg the school board to give him a chance here. We all hoped against hope that it would work."
Lisa, the family facilitator, snorted into her glass.
"You'd seen that pin before Doug died," I said, prodding.
"Of course," Debbie said, disgusted. "It was the only piece of jewelry that Doug had. It didn't take long for me to figure out that he thought it belonged to his precious Janelle."
"Then he really loved her?" I asked.
Debbie shrugged. "Whatever love meant to Doug. I think he thought love was possession and obedience and instant gratification."
"Not a textbook definition," Lisa added.
"And you realized that it hadn't belonged to Janelle, since it was still with the rest of his stuff at the river the next day, right?"
"I knew Doug had it with him on Friday night. I assumed he would give it back to her sometime that night. That's why he was so insistent on going to the river to begin with—he wanted to stage some kind of romantic scene with Janelle. I knew that my opportunity for exposing her had come finally. That's why I stopped fighting the idea.
"I thought the pin was Janelle's too. And I fully expected to see it pinned to her breast at the reunion." She chuckled weakly. "But nothing about that next day came out the way I expected."
"Ain't that the truth," Lisa, the ever-faithful second banana, echoed.
"Doug had plenty of time to return the pin to Janelle Friday night at the river. And for most of Saturday, I almost hoped they had run off together—just Dougie, Janelle, and a piece of cheap jewelry. For a short time, I actually thought I was free. That I'd never again be confronted with old mysteries and heartbreaks."
I ventured into uncharted territory. "Did you know about Janelle's baby?"
Debbie exchanged glances with Lisa. They nodded, agreeing silently on something. "Now that was a surprise, a secret that Doug managed to keep entirely to himself. He'd been smirking a lot lately, but he never even dropped a hint about what had him so pumped up, except to say that everyone was going to be surprised."
"I can't believe he kept something that juicy bottled up all those years," marveled Debbie.
"Well, if it's any consolation, I think he only found out about her recently," I said.
"I knew something big was brewing," Lisa said. "Those beady little eyes of his lit up just like a kid who can't wait to tell everyone that there is no Santa Claus."
"You heard about her from Benny, right?" I asked.
"The oily little creep stopped here on Saturday afternoon, looking for Doug. He said he had something important to discuss, and left. And then today he came by again and dropped his little bombshell on us. He wanted to buy information—anything we could do to help him trace down the girl's father." Debbie blinked a couple of times and inhaled. "When we heard the rest of his story, it took our breath away."
"Not the news that Doug was blackmailing him, mind you," Lisa interrupted, with a significant glance at Debbie. "That wouldn't have surprised anyone. Doug liked to play games. And he loved to have the advantage. But the fact that the child even existed, that for a short time Doug thought he was her father—that he was planning to use that information to hurt everyone around him..."
Debbie laughed. "Old Benny thought that we'd be shocked beyond rational thought. But we took the wind out of his sails knowing about Janelle and Doug and Butchie."
"And he was horrified when we said we were going public with what could turn out to be a very nasty scandal that could severely affect the career of Ms. Nelson," Lisa added.
"But Benny wasn't her manager anymore. Or her husband," I said, confused. If Janelle was publicly disgraced, what difference could it make to him?"
"That's the hold she has on men," Debbie said bitterly. "No one involved with her ever came away unscathed. Not Doug, not Benny. Not even Stu McKee. They loved her, they hated her, they used her. She betrayed them, and they betrayed her. And after all that, and a divorce, and a protection order, Benny still wanted to own her."
"That's when he showed us the picture," Debbie finished. "He thought that finding the girl's father would give him some sort of hold over Janelle."
"He showed you a picture of the girl? Of Janelle's daughter?" I was surprised.
"Yup." Debbie grinned. "And we both knew immediately that Doug couldn't have been the father."
"How?"
They looked at each other and grinned.
"This girl is tall, fair, and beautiful. You've seen my boys, each one of them is short and dark and powerful. The result of those dominant Fischbach genes."
"Is the resemblance between Doug and his sons just physical?" I asked. That was the real question that had brought me to Debbie's living room. Revealing as it was, the Benny discussion was just a diversion, an excuse for broaching the really important subject.
"My boys may look like their father, but the similarity ends there," Debbie said sharply. "You saw how Cameron defended me at the river on Friday night. He was, and has always been, horrified by the way his father treated me. But interference usually meant an even worse pounding for himself.
"Maybe it was because Cameron had been drinking, and was not totally in control. But on Friday night, he simply could not watch his father hit me again without reacting. He snapped and charged his father. But immediately after, he was filled with remorse. I am so glad that Cameron and I had the whole of Friday night to talk through his feelings of anger and frustration and inadequacy, or Doug's death would have been even more devastating for him." Debbie lifted her chin in defiance.
I remembered Cameron's small speech in the trailer. He hadn't seemed very remorseful. Or devastated.
"And I'm glad that I was here to help them through that crisis," the family facilitator said. "They were so lucky to have had that whole night to begin the healing process."
"So Cameron was here when you got home from the river?" I asked, carefully specific. "And he was here that whole night?"
That had been their story. In fact, they all told it with exactly the same words. Debbie had repeated it to me after Doug's funeral. Cameron had repeated it to Presley at the trailer. Lisa had just parroted it again.
"Of course he was here," Debbie said, indignant. "That's what I just said."
"That's what all of you have said. There's a problem, though. Almost everyone agrees that Cameron left the river early, still wearing Doug's old jersey. But the jersey was on the ground, at the river, when Doug's body was found."
Debbie and Lisa sat silent. The color drained from Debbie's face.
"And Cameron himself told me that he'd taken great pleasure in throwing that shirt back in his father's face."
That had been the subject of Del's cryptic question—whether Cameron had flung the jersey literally or figuratively.
I favored the literal interpretation, since it was still at ground zero the next evening, when Presley and John Adler discovered the body.
"That's nonsense. Cameron wore that ridiculous jersey home!" Debbie stood shakily for emphasis. "I took it back to the river myself. That night."
"You what?" Lisa and I asked together, shocked.
Debbie looked from Lisa to me and back, raised her chin, and announced, "I took that shirt back to throw in Doug's face. I went to confront him, to defend myself and my child. To stand up to Doug, for once in my life.
"But instead, I killed him."