And then she stopped.
Star hadn’t needed the phone to be unlocked. There were two apps on the iPhone’s lock screen that could be accessed without the password. One was for the flashlight. The other was for the camera.
Andrea zoomed in on the photograph that Star had taken with the phone. The woman had sprinkled white flour onto the black countertop and used her finger to carve out a single word—
Help.
OCTOBER 20, 1981
Emily had looked up orchitis in one of the Encyclopedia Britannicas that took up an entire section in the school library. Inflammation of one or both testicles, usually caused by a virus or bacteria; often resulting in sterility.
And then she had looked at the notes she had recorded after leaving Dean Wexler’s classroom—
Says that he’s “not the fucking father.” Admitted he picked me up at The Party. Said Nardo called him to take me home. Said I was fighting with Clay by the pool when he got there. He promised he would hurt me if I ever publicly accused him. He grabbed my wrist. It really hurt.
Emily had sat in the library staring at the lines, trying to divine a meaning. Her normally good handwriting was almost illegible in parts because her entire body had been trembling when she transcribed the conversation. One thing had become immediately clear. Cheese had been right. She had missed an important detail.
She had written a question at the bottom—
He could be telling the truth about not being the father but that doesn’t mean he didn’t do something, right?
For the rest of the school day, Emily had been haunted not only by the conversation with Dean, but by what Dr. Schroeder had called a looseness that he would expect to find in a married woman. Mrs. Brickel had said he was lying, but she was only a nurse. Surely, a doctor would know better. Surely, there were rules against lying.
Emily closed her notebook and slipped it back into her purse. She looked up at the sky as she walked down a lonely stretch of road. She had no idea what time it was or how long she’d been outside. Since yesterday morning, she had been losing time. The rest of the school day had passed in a fog. Art, band, chemistry, English. She’d talked to Ricky at PE and learned the important thing Ricky was going to share was that she was over Nardo. Which had lasted until the end of PE when Ricky saw Nardo in the hallway and completely forgot that Emily was standing beside her.
Could she tell Ricky what had happened?
Did she even want to?
Emily was fairly certain that Mr. Wexler would keep his mouth shut. She imagined he assumed that she would do the same. Her hand went to her neck where he had grabbed her. Choked her, really, because she hadn’t been able to breathe. She still winced when she swallowed, though hours had passed since the confrontation.
Confrontation?
Had it really been that bad?
Before Emily had left school, a quick look in her locker mirror had shown a thin red mark on the side of her neck, not the handprint she had been expecting to see. What lingered more was the memory of his anger. Not angry like when he talked about Reagan exploiting his assassination attempt to help him gut the social safety net. Angry like his life was on the line.
Dean Wexler acted like his world travels had turned him into an iconoclast but, progressive politics aside, he was still the same hateful type as her father. He catalogued women as either attractive or fat, intelligent or stupid, worth his time or completely useless. It was easy to see the world in black and white when you controlled everything. Emily should’ve known better than to believe Wexler was something that he was not.
She retrieved her impromptu detective’s journal in her purse. Emily selected the correct page for what she had titled her COLUMBO INVESTIGATION. She reviewed the summaries of her interviews for the hundredth time.
Nardo had called Mr. Wexler to pick her up. That sort of made sense as Nardo was the captain of the running team, so he had Mr. Wexler’s phone number. Everyone at The Party had all been high. Mr. Wexler wouldn’t penalize them, let alone report them. He had a car. He could get Emily out of there, especially if she was arguing with Clay.
The alleged argument with Clay was another lost memory.
While there were constant spats among the clique, Emily was seldom at the center of them. She was generally the peacemaker, the one who smoothed things over. Especially where Clay was involved. Emily could count on one hand the number of times she’d challenged him, and only about something very important. Her refusal to continue stealing from out-of-state cars. Her insistence that they treat Cheese better or at least ignore him. The time she got furious at Clay for pushing her into the swimming pool.
Emily tried to force memories of The Party into her consciousness. Had Clay pushed her into the pool again? Emily was a good swimmer, but she hated feeling as if she had no control over her own body. The sensation of walking along the coping one moment, then flying through the air the next, had been terrifying.
Her head started to shake back and forth, because Ricky’s green dress had not been wet. But maybe Emily had stuck it in the dryer? And maybe, possibly, she had taken it out of the dryer and been in such a rush that she’d accidentally put the dress on inside out?
And forgotten to put her underwear back on?
It was her panties that were missing, not her bra.
And her thighs had felt sticky. If she thought about it long enough, she could feel the same chafing sensation as she walked.
Emily’s stomach stirred. She looked down at her notebook again. The first word she’d written was at the top of the page.
Clay.
Columbo would be heading to the Morrow house at this very moment, but even at school that day, Emily had found herself incapable of talking to Clay about anything, let alone something this crucial. If her plan was to trick someone into confessing, she would be better served doing what Cheese had advised: talk to the people who were there. If their stories didn’t match up, someone was lying, and if someone was lying, that meant they were hiding something.
Ricky was the obvious starting point. Blake was always teasing her about having no filter. Whatever came into her mind came out of her mouth. This time last week, Emily would’ve said that Ricky was her best friend in the world. Now, she knew instinctively that Ricky would do everything in her power to protect her brother and Nardo, but maybe not in that order.
A car horn beeped behind her. Emily was surprised to see Big Al behind the wheel. Her watch told her it was nearly five o’clock. Al was late for the dinner rush. And Emily had been so distracted by her own thoughts that she had walked right past the Blakely house.
She turned around and headed back up the street. Her feet felt heavier as she got closer to the dark brown split-level that had belonged to Ricky and Blake’s parents. Big Al had moved in after the boating accident that had killed his son and daughter-in-law. He hadn’t been close to either, and the transition had been difficult. Emily was always struck by the fact that they acted more like reluctant roommates than a family.
Not that her own family was a shining example.
The Blakely house was at the top of a steep hill. The climb had never bothered Emily before, but now she found herself winded when she got to the garage. Then she made the turn and started the climb up the crazy steep stairs and had to stop on the second landing. She realized her hand was pressed to her back like an old woman. Or like a young pregnant woman. She hadn’t yet felt a connection to what was going on inside her body. Before Dr. Schroeder’s diagnosis, Emily had thought she’d had a stomach bug or eaten something that was off. She had made up all kinds of excuses.