And that’s the point. There is just no reason for this to be here.
Part of me wonders what might be on it, but that part of me is fleeting and insignificant. The overwhelming majority of my brain is consumed with all the things I can just about confirm are on it.
I wonder how long it’s been in the closet, but in the end, it doesn’t matter. All that really matters is that I’ve found this relic from the past.
When I am convinced my legs will hold me, I stand up and shuffle cautiously back to the living room, where mom’s entertainment center is still adorned with photos. Not a single one of them comes from a time after the discovery of Everett Coughlin’s body, so it’s yet another reminder of how slow time moves in this house.
There are photos of me in cheer. On the softball team. Playing junior high volleyball.
There are even a few of me and my dad, but none of my parents.
What is missing are photos of me from senior prom—I didn’t go. Wasn’t able to. Just like I wasn’t invited to graduation, because I was incarcerated. So, no pics in my gown and cap. I’ve never had any serious boyfriends or meaningful relationships, so it is kind of like I stopped living my life back in the late 90s.
How can I blame my mom for the very thing I myself am guilty of?
Shrugging off the guilt and the blame for a few moments, I open the cabinet where mom’s seldom-used DVD player and rickety stereo are housed. But it’s the VCR I’m after, and when I get everything set up and turned to the right input, I gently press the cassette into the machine and hit play.
In the intervening darkness, before the appearance of moving images, I can hear my own heart in my ears. I’m convinced I’m about to see something big.
And then it all kicks in, and I see the past brought to life. The camera spins once, and a flash, as Gillian’s face appears on-screen.
“Oh my God, I think it’s recording,” she says.
Then, a series of cuts.
Gillian and Audrey and Madeline dancing to a mid-90s rap song.
Cut.
Madeline chugging a glass of wine, one eye turned toward the camera.
Cut.
Audrey and Gillian throwing eggs at the statue of Anne Dallas Dudley.
Cut.
Darkness.
Then, a whisper. Madeline’s voice. “It’s recording,” she says.
This is it. Everything starts to come into focus for me.
It’s the night. This is the secret, committed to video. Audrey and Madeline, surreptitiously recording at the residence of one Everett Coughlin.
“I hope we’re not too late,” Audrey says, her voice full of a kind of fevered excitement. Like the last person in line for a busted roller coaster.
“Yeah,” Madeline responds, ever the cool cat. Somehow, she doesn’t sound quite as thrilled about this prospect as her underling does.
Ahead of them, just now coming into focus, are the lights in the garage. Three perfect squares of illumination begging to be peered into.
“Do you think he’s started yet?” Audrey asks.
“I dunno,” Madeline says uncertainly.
And then she steps into frame. She kind of hovers there for a moment, her blonde hair a bright contrast to her leather jacket and the surrounding darkness. She blends into the light from the garage for a moment, and for a split second, they become one.
I desperately want there to be a chemical reaction that blows this into another timeline, so that maybe I can have another shot at my last two decades.
But of course she moves ahead, inching ever closer to the house, and their awed dialogue continues, though a little more stilted than before.
Audrey clears her throat. “There’s, um, something I need to tell you,” she says, just as the camera begins to zoom in on the back of Madeline’s head. It’s like a slow-motion bullet, headed for her pretty blond brain.
“Yeah?” Madeline responds, though the words barely make it back to the camera. Something’s going on with the Queen Bitch of Belle Meade, and it’s a little off-putting to see. She’s not in her element, and though it should be comforting to find that she’s not kicking down the door to see a dead body, it does give me this strange sense of pause about the whole video.
Like Madeline has been body snatched or something.
The video skips once, dragging for a moment, and then gets back up to speed. Most of what Audrey’s just said is garbled and unintelligible, but it elicits a reaction from Madeline, who stops and turns just to stare at the camera.
“The fuck’d you just say?”
It skips again. This cassette is not faring well. It’s had all of the George W. Bush and Barack Obama presidencies to sit and rot, so I should be happy that it works at all.
But the sinking feeling in my gut has begun. I think I might lose my coffee and honey bun from earlier that day. As the camera draws nearer to the garage, the lights at the end of the driveway growing bigger with each passing moment, the possibility of seeing Everett Coughlin’s last few moments on Earth become increasingly definite.
It’s a lie, I think. Audrey lied to me. They didn’t stop at the driveway.
What else are they hiding?
Whoever brought this to my house, they placed it in my bedroom closet for a reason. The idea that this is all some major scheme is ridiculous—who could orchestrate me fleeing Nashville proper for my childhood home?—but this video is definitely here for a reason. I just need to figure out what it is.
Maybe I was always meant to find it. Maybe I was supposed to find it twenty years ago, I just never did. There’s a possibility this was meant to grind salt in an open wound.
I use the remote on the stand next to the couch to pause the video. I hit rewind—this part is the whole reason this VHS is in the house, right?—and hope for the best.
It is a mistake I come to regret almost instantly. That high-pitched whine related to electrical equipment from the 90s precedes a few moments in which I think I might actually get to see the end game here. What Madeline and Audrey have been hiding all this time.
The video slows down. I hit play, and for a moment it seems like it is going to just resume without the horror movie effect of the previous attempt.
Madeline is back where she was before she stepped toward the house, and she is looking at the camera, her face as beautiful and unlined as it’s ever going to get.
She opens her mouth to speak, and my guts cinch tight with a greasy pull.
But just as things start to get interesting—and move toward their inevitable end—the image on-screen jerks. Audrey’s face expands, and then the screen blinks, turns blue. The VCR emits a high-pitched wail, the death rattle of a mythic beast, as something very terrible goes wrong inside the machine.
“No no no no no!” I scream, leaping from my seat. My first instinct is to repeatedly press the eject button, but that only seems to expedite this poorly-timed self-destruct mechanism. There is no magnificent unspooling of tape, but there might as well be. The machine whirs, then something catches, and then it grinds to a vicious halt.
I press and mash and beat the fucking thing, and finally—finally!—it ejects the cassette. I think, if I can just get the goddamned thing out, maybe I can get it to another VCR—surely there has to be one in Metro Nashville somewhere—everything will be all right. I need to see where Audrey was taking their conversation, what she intended on saying to Madeline in their brief, little exchange.
My heart skips a beat as I pull the black rectangle from the housing. I expect brown tape to dangle from underneath like viscera, but it seems to be intact upon first glance.
And then I see it.
It is busted. The tape—the actual stuff on the inside—has been stretched and ripped.
Even if I can get someone to splice it together—or do it myself—this specific part is probably ruined and unplayable. It’s absolutely worthless. Might as well be a forgery filmed in front of a green screen. An imagined event on my part.
Thi
s thing doesn’t even exist anymore, as far as I’m concerned.
In one feverish fit, all of my anger and frustration comes out, and I beat the ground with this home video until it’s a thousand plastic shards on my mom’s hardwood floors.
There is no time for reflection, no way to make it right. This thing is absolutely worthless to me, this definitive evidence proving Madeline and Audrey (and maybe even Gillian) to be the masterminds behind Everett’s death.
But what’s a little rage-induced destruction among friends?
I remain knelt there for far longer than is probably healthy, and it is dark, pitch black outside when I get back to my feet.
My first instinct is the most uncertain, but I simply cannot help myself.
I drag my feet over to my purse and retrieve my phone from within. Once the damned thing is on and functioning, I pull up Audrey in my contacts and dial her number.
The call goes immediately to voicemail.
Thinking maybe there are some crossed wires or multiple calls trying to go through, I try her one more time.
This time she picks up.
Immediately, I hear strained breathing on the other end.
“Help,” she says, her voice high and thin and indicative of a definite, palpable fear.
“Aud?”
I'm frantic. “Where are you?”
Moments later, her voice returns. “Help me, please,” she says, and then she hangs up, leaving me to feel the gooseflesh prickle every single cell in my body.
Before I’m fully aware of my actions, I’m back in the rental car and barking tires as I pull out of Mom’s driveway.
THEN
The officers, clad in dingy suits and threadbare ties, appear a few weeks after Everett Coughlin’s funeral. They are long, haggard men, with neck skin that dangles under their chins like old blankets on used furniture. Their mouths smile when she opens the front door, but the gesture never quite reaches their eyes.
“Miss Hanneford? May we come in?”
It doesn’t take long for them to get to the point. After the usual pleasantries about weather and high school and so forth, they dive right into the reason they’ve decided to perch on the Hanneford couch.
“I’m sure you’ve heard of the death of Everett Coughlin,” one says from under his graying mustache. He could be played by Sam Elliott in the movie version of this whole southern spectacle.
“Yes, oh my God,” Mary Ellen’s mother says. “So tragic. Such a young boy. I’ll never understand...”
And so on. It’s kind of an amazing display, up until the cops—or detectives—stop her. Let her save some face when they reveal their true motives.
“I think your daughter might have something to tell you about it,” the more country of the two says.
“What does he mean by that?”
“I don’t know,” Mary Ellen replies, trying to mimic the criminals she’s seen on TV, thinking maybe if she says it forcefully enough, they’ll just leave her be.
“I think you do,” says Sam Elliott. “I think you have plenty to say.”
“I don’t,” she begins. Her voice is reaching that quavering, I’m-about-to-cry register, but she continues. “I don’t know anything at all.”
Sam Elliott frowns. “Mary Ellen, do you happen to know what an IP Address is?”
She shakes her head, but the panic sets in more deeply, as she wonders if they somehow sent letters to the Coughlin residence. Why else would they be mentioning an address?
“It’s, um, like a computer fingerprint,” the official says, trying his best to sound like a regular dude and not a detective with a stick up his ass. “Whenever you log onto the internet, the IP Address creates this digital number, and it can be tracked just like hair or blood or clothing fibers from a crime scene.”
And it’s then she sees exactly what’s happening. Her whole body begins to shiver, as she sees the bloody writing on the wall.
“I don’t mean to be rude, detectives,” Mary Ellen’s mother says, “but could you please get to your point? I don’t see what any of this has to do with my daughter.”
“Oh, we are getting to that,” the other detective says, “but I think Mary Ellen knows exactly where we’re going with this. Don’t you, young lady?”
She doesn’t want to, but she can’t help but nod. If they have tracked the computer back to Gillian’s house, then they no doubt know what’s going on.
And then Sam Elliott goes in for the kill.
“We spoke to each and every one of your friends,” he says, “starting with the one who has the fancy computer—”
“Gillian,” Mary Ellen says, hoping somehow—desperately—that it will be helpful and thus get her out of this nightmare of a predicament.
“Yes, her. And then we moved on to the Winstead girl before finishing up with Madeline St. Clair.”
“Oh.” It is Mary Ellen’s turn to be her mother, incapable of finding the right words for the moment. She provides a kind of gobsmacked fish mouth but offers up no real comment of substance.
The officers do her a solid and fill in the silence.
“And I am here to tell you, young lady, they had plenty to say about you. I don’t like to throw around the word ring leader, except when it comes to racketeering cases, but this whole scenario feels like something straight out of a mob movie.”
“I don’t—”
“It is imperative that you are careful with the statements you make next, because they very well could seal your fate.”
She glances forcefully at her mother, imploring the woman to do something, anything, to stop this from happening. It’s all going too fast, and she can’t apply the brakes, no matter how fast her mind goes.
Finally, the woman inside her mother’s skin sucks in a breath and declares, “Why, I think we’ll need to consult with a lawyer over this.”
Mary Ellen’s mother sounds like she’s been submerged in ice cold water.
It is effective in that it moves this scenario along.
Sam Elliott looks at his partner. “Well, I think that just about does it for this interview,” he says. “Once you invoke the evil of jurisprudence, we have to get on our merry way.”
The two cops, moving like living corpses, get up and shuffle out of the room, assuring the Hannefords they’ll be in touch before the week is out. (In truth, it will be a matter of hours before the wheels of justice spin toward her.)
When the door closes, Mary Ellen fears what will come next. She’s never seen her mother so frazzled, so distant, and she wants to reach out and touch her, but she doesn’t dare. She has never done anything quite so horrifying to her mother—has anybody, other than those involved?—but instead of wrapping her hands around her daughter’s throat, Mary Ellen’s mother sighs, her eyes filling to the brim with tears.
“I think I’m dying,” she says.
And that’s just about it.
Two days later, Mary Ellen is in a juvenile holding facility, and her mother is sitting in a doctor’s office, complaining of a lump in her throat she thinks is a tumor.
18
NOW
While speeding down Charlotte, veering around cars in an attempt to turn onto White Bridge Road, I dial Audrey’s cell number twice, only to be sent to voicemail both times. Each time I hear her saccharine greeting, I hang up, cursing myself.
Maybe she knows, I think. Maybe she knows I know, and she’s actively avoiding me.
Beating on Madeline’s front door didn’t work for me, but for some reason, I think doing the same to Audrey will somehow do the trick. She and her husband, Jenkins Finnell, live in an estate off Belle Meade Boulevard.
I have to figure out what happened that night. It’s just something I need to know, and I need to know it now. If he has gotten to Audrey before me, then I may never find out. I’ll die with the uncertainty of their actions spinning around in my head.
When I pull into the Finnell residence, I can see that there isn’t a single light on in the house. It’
s like someone’s cut the power, which gets my heart going.
I turn the car off and sit in the darkness for a moment, trying to convince myself to call the cops and wait it out.
This internal struggle lasts...maybe twenty seconds.
The next moment, I’m out of the car, taking measured steps toward the house. It’s eerily reminiscent of the video I just watched, and I can’t help but notice the parallels.
Maybe it’s planned, I think, before I scoff at the idea.
How the fuck could someone have planned this?
But, as if on cue, my phone dings.
A text from Gillian.
> Have you talked to Audrey today? I texted her a few times, and she hasn’t hit me back. Just wondering.
Odd timing. I stop and look around, checking the distance for any hint of a glowing blue cell phone screen. If Gillian wants in on this action, she’s more than welcome to step on up.
Seeing no light—not even a flicker—I move stealthily along the edge of the driveway, where a fountain blocks both BMWs parked just on the other side.
It’s so dark, I can’t see a thing. I don’t believe there’s someone stalking me, but if there were, I wouldn’t be able to see it anyway.
After digging my phone from my back pocket, I flick the control panel up with my thumb and turn on my light. My path inside becomes instantly more manageable, and I hurry along, stepping lightly but quickly in the grass next to the house.
It’s then that I notice.
Not all of the lights in the house are off. A single, bare bulb has turned the single square on the garage door a bright yellow, like a highlighter made of sunshine.
There is not enough money in the world to bet on this being a coincidence, so I back away and struggle to keep from toppling over on my already shaking legs.
I could guess what is in the garage, but I think I already know. It is my intention to get as far from here as humanly possible before the same fate befalls me.
Suicide Blondes Page 17
