Andrea thought of the restraining order. “Ricky can be a very vindictive person.”
“Understatement of the year. The only thing Ricky Blakely has ever cared about is Nardo Fontaine. She’s obsessed with him, and he never misses an opportunity to screw with her.” Melody’s hands had gone to her hips again. “At least once a week Nardo shows up late at that stupid diner. He drags along Star so she can play his audience. It’s all disgusting, really, but like I said—they must be getting something out of it. There’s comfort in the familiar.”
For the first time, Andrea questioned Melody’s veracity. “Ricky has a permanent restraining order against her. She can’t go within twenty feet of Nardo.”
“I’m legally barred from the farm and I was there this morning,” Melody pointed out. “The law doesn’t matter if no one is going to enforce it.”
Andrea could not say that she was wrong. “Can I ask your opinion on something else Ricky told me?”
“I’m clearly on a tear,” Melody acknowledged. “Go ahead.”
“She said that whatever is happening at the farm today is the same shit that happened to Emily forty years ago.”
“Huh,” Melody said.
Not No way, or Ricky’s full of shit or another For fucksakes.
And then Melody added, “Well, maybe?”
Andrea felt her heart start to shake in her chest. Melody had known Emily. She knew the group. She knew exactly what was happening at the farm.
“Okay—” Melody paused to gather her thoughts. “My mother told me some stuff before she died. I’m not supposed to know because there was a medical confidentiality, but surely that doesn’t matter anymore.”
Andrea held her breath.
“This is a little from Mom and a little from what I heard at school and a little from what Emily told me herself,” Melody prefaced. “Emily was drugged and raped at a party. She literally had no memory of what happened. I don’t think she ever found out who raped her. And it wasn’t a party like what you’re thinking. It was only ever her and the clique. That’s Nardo, Blake, Ricky and Clay.”
“The clique?” Andrea remembered Ricky using the same phrase.
“Oh, yes, the clique. Everyone thought they were so mysterious.” Melody rolled her eyes. “The hilarious part was, they were all kind of pathetic—and I say this as a person who was pathetic myself. Emily and I were both band geeks. We wore Mork & Mindy rainbow suspenders and head gear for our braces.”
Andrea almost laughed. She had assumed the exact opposite. “From her photos, Emily was very pretty.”
“It doesn’t matter how pretty you are if you don’t know it,” Melody said. “Ricky was wildly unpopular. She was volatile and dramatic, even for a teenage girl. And Blake was always calculating. Every conversation, he was looking for a way to exploit you. Then there’s Nardo. Kids would literally take a different route to class so that they wouldn’t run into him. He was and still is unbelievably cruel.”
Andrea had never before heard anyone describe them all so clearly. “And Clay?”
“Well, he brought them together, didn’t he? He made them feel special, part of the clique. They would’ve been nothing without him. All he demanded in return was their unquestioning devotion. And that extended to breaking into cars, taking drugs—whatever Clay wanted them to do.” Her shrug belied everything the group had given up in return. “Clay was the only one of them who was genuinely popular. Everyone loved him. He had an uncanny ability to find out what you were missing and fill the void. He was a chameleon, even back then.”
Andrea knew that he was still a chameleon now. “What about Dean Wexler?”
“He was the creepy gym teacher who kept accidentally walking into the girls’ locker room when we were changing. And now, you could say that he’s nothing but a cheap imitation of Clay Morrow. You’d think it was the opposite since Dean was older, but it’s hard to convey how malicious Clay’s influence was. Dean studied at the altar.” Melody’s tone changed at the mention of her daughter’s tormentor. “At least Clay had charm. Dean is so primitive. He only cares about control. He is a wraith from the bowels of hell.”
“Can we go back to something you said earlier?” Andrea gently steered her away from Wexler. “What was Emily’s reaction when she realized she’d been raped? She must’ve been devastated.”
“She was,” Melody said. “My mother was there when Emily found out she was pregnant. She said it was one of the most painful moments of her life. Emily was in shock. Mother said it wasn’t the pregnancy at that point so much as the betrayal that cut Emily to the bone. The clique was her life. To have one of them do such an unthinkable thing to her was unimaginable. She was obsessed with trying to find out who did it. She called it her Columbo Investigation.”
“After the TV detective?”
“Peter Falk. Amazing actor,” Melody said. “Emily approached the investigation very seriously. I told you she was a nerd. She did proper interviews with people. She wrote everything down. I would see her in class or in the hall poring over her notes, trying to see if she had missed anything. I suppose it was like a diary. She was never without it. I felt so sorry for her. Asking so many questions was probably what got her killed.”
Andrea wondered if pieces of Emily’s Columbo Investigation had made it into teenage Judith’s collage. The stray lines felt like the sort of affirmations a geeky young girl might write to bolster herself—
Keep working it out! You will find the truth!!!
She asked Melody, “Which people did Emily investigate?”
Melody shrugged. “I’m assuming the same people Jack’s dad investigated.”
Clayton Morrow. Jack Stilton. Bernard Fontaine. Eric Blakely. Dean Wexler.
Andrea asked, “How does what happened to Emily at the party tie into what’s happening at the farm? Is Dean drugging the girls?”
“They don’t have to be drugged. Obviously, the girls will do whatever Dean wants.” Melody shrugged again. “It’s cunning, isn’t it? The way they instinctively choose the girls who will be vulnerable to their manipulations. Nardo screens them. I remember Star being very excited about her interviews. I blame myself for not noticing that she was losing too much weight. I mean, you never say that to a woman, do you—you’re too thin?”
Andrea shook her head, though she knew that Melody wasn’t looking for validation.
“I stopped seeing her after she moved to the farm. That’s part of the pattern. Dean isolates them from their families. First, there are no in-person visits, then only phone calls, then all you get is the occasional email, then nothing. Every parent I speak with tells the exact same story. And looking back, it’s the same thing Clay did with the clique. They were completely isolated. All but Emily, but her life was incredibly narrow because of him.”
Andrea had to ask, “Do you know about the ankle bracelets the girls wear at the farm?”
“Yes.” Melody took a quick breath. The bracelet was clearly difficult for her to talk about. “I saw it a few days after Star stopped communicating with me. I drove over there and pounded on the door and demanded that they let me see her. She was so proud of the anklet, as if she’d been initiated into something special. You have to earn one, apparently. As if Dean’s still a teacher handing out ‘A’s to his favorite students. I don’t understand it.”