MISSING RIVER OAKS DEBUTANTE WANTED FOR QUESTIONING IN EAST SIDE DRIVE-IN SLAYING
And then, in smaller print, Police Plead with Girls Involved to Come Forward.
There’s a picture of Preston Fowler, too, smirking and handsome. I slide my eyes right over it, trying to ignore his face and the way it knots up my stomach, choosing to focus on the words instead.
Diane and I race through the article while Connie sits cross-legged next to us, bouncing and smoking, careful to stay out of view of the windows. The paper says the police claim to have received ‘new information’ that makes Diane a suspect in the death of Preston Fowler, but it doesn’t mention the letter Diane and I wrote or Betty Howell or what Preston did to me. One part of the article talks about Diane’s parents being big, important, rich people, listing all the organizations and guilds and councils they’re a part of.
‘When’s Johnny getting released?’ Diane asks, biting her bottom lip, her eyes skimming over the columns of text at lightning speed, trying to take in everything at once.
‘Tomorrow,’ Connie answers. ‘That’s what the paper says. The evening news, too.’
Relief washes over Diane’s face.
‘It worked,’ she whispers.
Connie stabs out her cigarette in the empty jar Diane and I are using for butts and looks at Diane. I can tell she’s thinking carefully about what she wants to say, something unusual for her.
‘Diane,’ she says, frowning slightly, ‘I …’ She stops, leans back on her arms, tips her head up at the ceiling. She blinks once, twice, then keeps her eyes shut as she half whispers, ‘Thanks for my brother. Thanks for getting him out.’
Diane lowers the part of the paper she’s holding, resting it in her lap. Her face softens. ‘Oh, Connie, of course. I told you. I loved him. I know you love him, too.’
The silence is broken by our signal at the back door. Three knocks, a pause, and three knocks more. Connie looks up at us, confused. ‘I didn’t even take the time to tell the other girls I was coming here,’ she says.
But it is the other girls, Juanita and Sunny, Sunny clutching a paper sack. Diane and I greet them eagerly.
‘Shhh!’ Connie says, holding a finger up to her lips. ‘No one saw you come in, did they?’
‘No,’ answers Juanita. ‘We waited until it was all clear. We just heard about Johnny on the evening news.’
‘I stole whiskey from my crummy stepfather so we could celebrate,’ says Sunny gleefully, sneaking a bottle of Old Crow out of the sack. Then her face grows serious. ‘And I have information.’
‘What?’ Connie asks, her momentary softness transformed into toughness and irritation at not being the first to know something important. ‘Spill the beans.’
‘Well,’ says Sunny, taking a sip of Old Crow and wincing before passing it toward Connie, ‘Betty Howell called my house.’
‘What did she say?’ Diane asks almost as soon as the words are out of Sunny’s mouth.
‘That girl’s voice sure is posh,’ says Sunny, pausing to press her lips together to make sure her red lipstick is perfectly applied before continuing. ‘She actually asked if she was calling the Wilcox residence when I answered the phone.’ At this Sunny affects a bad English accent. ‘Excuse me, m’lady, but is this the Wilcox residence?’
‘So what’d she want?’ Connie asks impatiently. She takes a big sip of Old Crow and starts bouncing away.
‘She wants Diane to stay hidden for just a little bit longer,’ says Sunny.
Diane frowns, furrowing her brow. ‘Why?’ she protests. ‘I want to see Johnny.’
‘You read the papers,’ I say. ‘The police want us both in for questioning.’ For a moment I imagine Grandma and Mama reading that article, and my heart quickens. How crushed my mother must be. My grandmother is probably praying for my redemption right now. I try to ignore the images in my mind.
‘Yeah,’ says Sunny, ‘it’s that. Betty says she wants more time to explain to her father what happened. More time to convince him of Diane’s innocence, because I guess she’s worried he isn’t buying it. You know, that it was all because Diane was defending Evie.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘She said she was even gonna try to get a bunch of girls who’d had bad dates with Preston explain to her father what he could be like, so he would be more inclined to believe Diane and Evie. She didn’t seem to think she could get any of them to say anything, but she said she was going to try.’
‘Really?’ Diane says, her eyes bugging out of her head. ‘Goodness. I didn’t think Betty would do that much for us.’ She pauses, recalculates. ‘No, that’s not true. I guess I did know. That’s something Betty would have done back when we were best friends.’ She pauses, her gaze drifting off, away from the rest of us.
‘And there’s more,’ says Juanita. ‘It’s about Johnny’s guys.’ She hesitates and fumbles with a cigarette. I can tell the news isn’t good.
‘What about them?’ I mutter, thinking of Ray and Butch and Dwight and the other boys we run with, some of them all right but lots of them as rough as they come, always itching for a fight.
‘They’re mad,’ Juanita explains. ‘We just ran into a bunch of them at the park.’
‘And Ray was griping to me, too, earlier,’ Sunny chimes in.
‘Mad about what?’ I ask, confused. I would think they’d be thrilled the leader of their pack is about to be released.
‘C’mon, Evie,’ Connie mutters, her fingers gesturing for the bottle of Old Crow to come back around to her. I hand it over. ‘They’re mad that one of their own took the fall for something he didn’t do, when it was a tea sipper who done it.’ At this she shakes her head in disagreement with herself. ‘I didn’t mean that, Diane. About the tea-sipper part. But … that’s how they see it.’
‘They were champing at the bit for Diane,’ Juanita says, nodding in agreement. ‘They blame her for Johnny having to spend time locked up for nothing and probably getting kicked around by the fuzz, too. You know how brutal the cops can be with kids like us.’
‘Ray started after me, asking me how much I knew, since Diane had been hanging around with us,’ adds Sunny, crossing her arms tight across her chest and scowling. ‘He got real mad when I said I didn’t know anything. I told him to drop dead.’ She smirks at this. ‘It sorta felt good, to be honest.’
Diane motions for the whiskey, then takes a small, ladylike sip. ‘They have no idea,’ she says. ‘No idea at all that Johnny and I love each other.’
We all murmur our agreement. None of us has spilled anything about that to anyone.
‘We have to come forward eventually,’ I say, but the idea of the world outside the walls of this stinky, abandoned house suddenly seems terrifying, even though I’ve been dying to feel the sun on my face since we got here. Having to see Mama and Grandma, having to deal with Johnny’s angry friends. And the police, to top it all off. What if the cops don’t believe that Preston was trying to hurt me? What if they think Diane and I were just making it up? Or worse, that I asked for Preston to mess with me? I could see people believing that easy, given what they’d think of a girl like me.