Only the Good Die Young

by Chris Marie Green

  I made a dive toward her, and it took all I had to only lightly touch her face, so I could read her thoughts and see—

  Gavin, silent while looking out a window toward the ocean, facing away.

  “Just what did Elizabeth do to you?” asked Farah’s voice.

  Brokenhearted words, barely existing, as he kept peering out the window.

  “She loves someone else. Not me. That’s what she did.”

  Anger, burning low and hot, because Gavin had always been there for her, and she’d never had the chance to do the same for him. She owed him everything. Her life. Her soul.

  Reaching out to touch his back, hesitating, knowing he didn’t like to be touched like that by her, even though . . .

  Even though she didn’t know how else to say thank you for all he’d done in the past with Dad.

  He’d always suspected she’d felt that way after he’d stood up for her in a manner no man had ever done before.

  A year ago, when she’d seen their father stealthily looking at eleven-year-old Wendy like he’d looked at Farah when she was the same age whenever he got home from a business trip . . .

  Then . . .

  A flash . . .

  Another memory—

  A birthday dinner for Noah, the four of them gathered around the table, thirteen candles flickering on a cake.

  Gazing at Gavin, wanting to cling to him and never let him leave on one of his own business trips, which he seemed to be taking more and more these days, ever since Dad had gone.

  Wendy and Noah, frowning as they watched her. Noah, wrinkling his brow, then blowing out the candles so the table went dark . . .

  A tumble of memories:

  Wendy, casting odd, assessing glances at Farah every once in a while, especially when they were with Gavin. Noah, trying to figure out Gavin, then reaching out to Farah and offering brotherly comfort whenever Gavin wasn’t there.

  Noah, who would do anything for her, too. . . .

  Back to the first memory—

  Gavin with his back turned to her, looking out that window, his words floating in the air—“She loves someone else. Not me. That’s what she did.”—as he walked away, his pride smashed.

  Intolerable. Unthinkable.

  Getting into the car, driving to Elizabeth’s condo, waiting outside, seething because she was a heartless bitch. Watching as her Corvette rolled out of the garage. A gift that Gavin had given her two months ago for her birthday.

  Following her up a shore-lined freeway as night pulled itself over the sky like a blanket over a corpse.

  Elizabeth, taking an off-ramp, driving into a deserted beach-access parking lot, as if she’d seen this car following her.

  Parking there, too, getting out of the car, yelling, “Who do you think you are, you cunt?”

  Elizabeth, holding up her hands in entreaty. She looked so fresh in her white dress and a scarf draped over her shoulders, her light hair like an old-time movie star’s, flirted with by the wind. Why should she look so good when she was bad to the core?

  “Calm down, Farah. Let’s talk about this.”

  Calming down. Nodding. Pretending, when all the while, hate was hissing inside like a building scream.

  No one treated Gavin like this.

  Had to fight for him just as much as he’d fought for her.

  Elizabeth, smiling sheepishly as she began walking toward a dirt path under the emerging moon.

  “Come with me. We used to take walks together,” she said. “I would hate for that to stop.”

  No answer. Couldn’t answer. Too much hate to answer.

  Elizabeth, offering excuses for betraying Gavin and betraying the whole family.

  Hatred, swelling.

  “I hope we can still be friends after all this.”

  A laugh, stabbing the quiet air.

  Noticing that no one else was around out here. Just the night and the tall grass and a pond close by.

  “Maybe in time.” Elizabeth, smiling again.

  That self-satisfied smile, full of knowing that she could get away with any damned thing she wanted to and would never suffer the consequences. Why were some people that lucky?

  How many consequences have I had to suffer? Why me and not her?

  A blast of anger. Hands reaching out to grab Elizabeth’s scarf, whipping it around her neck, pulling on both ends.

  Felt good. So good.

  The bitch, gagging, clutching at the scarf. The bitch’s eyes bulging, the bitch choking, a sound sweeter than the bitch’s fucking magical laugh that seemed to enrapture everyone who heard it.

  Especially Gavin.

  Then the bitch, on the ground, eyes as blank as the moon that loomed overhead.

  Happy that she was out of their lives and she would never hurt anyone again.

  Ecstatic.

  Then . . . reality.

  Waves rushing in from the nearby beach. Head, muddled. Murder. Dead.

  Panic.

  No one around. Adrenaline racing while dialing the phone.

  “Noah, help. I did something. I have no idea what got over me.”

  Noah, arriving, in spite of not having a license yet. Didn’t matter for people like them. People with money.

  Noah, crashing through the tall grass, dropping to his knees by the bitch. “What the fuck did you do?”

  Not sure. “Help me? God, how am I going to get out of this?”

  Noah, looking like he didn’t know the stranger who was standing in front of him.

  But . . . an idea. A morbid one, yet one that no one would ever pin on a socialite.

  “Noah, I could go to jail forever. I didn’t mean to do this. Please, if you love me, help me?”

  “You know I do.”

  “You don’t want me to suffer in jail. I’d never make it there. All for one and one for all, like I’ve been telling you since the day you came into our house. Right, Noah?”

  “Okay.” In tears. So young, so impressionable. So useful tonight.

  Noah, taking off to go home and return with a long knife from their father’s hunting collection and a saw.

  Dragging Elizabeth far off the path and into the tall grass, where no one would see her.

  Knife . . . stabs. Many stabs, like a psychopath who’d found her walking alone in the night. Then the saw.

  A cover story.

  “A random, deranged killer. That’s who did it, Noah. No one will ever know it was me, especially after we dump the knife and saw as far as we can in that pond.”

  Noah’s face, slack. Skin pale as he retched but didn’t throw up.

  Good. Can’t leave any obvious DNA behind.

  Washing off blood from skin, scrubbing blood and fingerprints off weapons in the nearby pond off the trail. Cleaning up everything as best as possible. Drag marks, evidence that might’ve fallen off their own bodies.

  One last look at the bitch with the bloody white dress covering a now-anonymous torso, then the detached head. Food for the animals.

  Throwing the bloody scarf in the pond, far enough from the shore yet near enough to still see it floating on the water under the moonlight.

  A flash:

  A sunny day, by the pool all alone, peaceful, lying out on a lounge chair, the trees winter-bare, the sun unseasonably warm. Phone ringing.

  Noah, on the other end. “You know what day this is?”

  “You always have to mention her anniversary, don’t you?”

  “I never forget. I mention it every year.”

  “That’s three years too many.” A sigh. “Elizabeth is out of our lives, and no one knows how it happened. I got away with it, so act like you don’t care, just like we talked about, and don’t blow it because you’re sorry. Do you want to see me in jail?”

  “You always say that.”

  “Well, do you?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Then get back to class. I love you, Noah. I’m the one who loves you most here. Just remember that.”

  “I kno
w.”

  Hanging up, going back to the sun, reaching for a pair of Ray-Bans with a steady hand on the nearby table.

  Seeing the blond pool guy smiling as he stood by the bushes, hands planted on his hips . . .

  I simply backed out of Farah’s thoughts, and the ease of my exit should’ve worried me. She hadn’t even fainted this time, and I had a good guess why that was.

  Because she’d known that when she arrived, her boyfriend would be coming out of the house she’d given him.

  A few lights had gone on in the neighbor’s Colonial home, and as James stood in half-darkness on the concrete stairway leading to the window-paneled second floor, one hand in the pocket of his khaki pants and the other resting on the railing, I recognized him from Farah’s empathy reading . . .

  ... and from the Edgetts’ house.

  “Hello, Pool Guy,” I whispered, already looking forward to this.

  23

  Farah held a hand to her head as she recovered and ran from me to James on the stairway.

  “She’s here!” she yelled. “Can you feel her?”

  “No, but we’re going inside so you don’t put on a show for the neighbors.”

  He took her by the upper arm and pulled her the rest of the way up the steps, toward the open sliding-glass door on the balcony. And you know I totally followed.

  He shut the door behind us, and in the lamplight, I was close enough to notice the fine blond hairs standing up on his arms.

  Cold out tonight, wasn’t it?

  Now that I got a good look at James the pool guy, he was less attractive than ever. He’d gone from coming off as the preppy baddie in a sleazy beach movie, to a Peeping Tom, to this—an obvious blackmailer, based on what I’d seen in Farah’s head.

  Scumbag. Skank. As much of an accessory to murder as Noah had been.

  I was still trying to wrap my mind around that part. The kid would have been only fourteen when Elizabeth died, and Farah had ruined him for life, just because he loved her the most in his family. I could just imagine what it might’ve been like to be adopted from another country, to probably not know the language and to have a glamorous older sister like Farah, who had probably been truly close to him . . . although I doubted it was as close as Farah wanted to get to Gavin.

  I wished Noah had been old enough and strong enough to tell her to go to hell.

  James had taken a seat on one of the sleek, skeletal metallic chairs that filled the upstairs sitting room. With the wide windows and the modern furniture, it felt like a glass coffin in here.

  I took my usual comfort spot in a ceiling corner, not liking those windows one bit, even though no one could see me.

  James was surveying Farah, looking her up and down as she stood and shivered in her coffee-stained white nightgown.

  “You’re looking a little rough,” he said.

  “I told you why. Elizabeth is after me.”

  He laughed, and her face reddened.

  “This isn’t funny, James. I saw Elizabeth in the pool house tonight, then in my car. She was sitting right in my backseat, and when I came up your driveway, she did something to me. I don’t know what it was, but it was cold and awful, just like in the pool house.”

  “Maybe you actually got probed by an alien and you just don’t remember the trip to the UFO.”

  Patronizing. I hated him already.

  “Stop it,” Farah said. “She made my head hurt.”

  “Poor little rich girl. Here.” He patted his lap. “Come and tell me all about it.”

  “You’re a jerk.”

  “Why’s that?” James crooked his finger at her, adding to his invitation. “I just want to make you forget about your bad dreams.”

  Farah bunched her fists and pressed them to her temples. “You’re not listening! These aren’t dreams. She’s real, and she’s outside.”

  As he laughed again, I wondered if it was worth listening to the rest of the conversation or if I should go ahead and make another empathy run into Farah. As usual, her fear had juiced me, and now that I’d discovered how Elizabeth had been killed, I was keen to learn more about what Gavin had done to protect Farah from her dad around four years ago, if I could judge by how many candles had been on Noah’s birthday cake.

  I had my suspicions about what’d happened. But I needed confirmation.

  I gave James and Farah a little more time, though, because I might get something interesting out of this.

  He just kept laughing, and she kept getting more unhinged.

  “Shut up!” she screamed at him. “Just shut. Up!”

  “Farah,” he said, his humor disappearing. “There’s no such thing as ghosts.”

  “God, Gavin says you’re too observant, that you’re always hanging around the pool like you’re watching and listening to us, but you sure are deaf, dumb, and blind now.”

  I doubted Gavin had any idea that James was so observant that he watched Wendy in her bedroom window. But what Farah had just said made another lightbulb go off in me.

  Gavin thought James was observant, right? So that would explain why the pool guy had shown up in Gavin’s second dream, lingering by the pool while I had climbed out of it. He’d been a natural part of the surreal dreamscape, but obviously Gavin had no idea how important the guy really was in the scheme of things. Or did he actually have a deep-seated discomfort with James, even while he had no clue about what the pool guy really knew?

  James propped one ankle over his knee, hanging his arm on the back of his chair. “If I bother Gavin so much, then why doesn’t he just fire me?”

  “Because I won’t let him.” Farah had almost hissed at him. “But you know that just as well as you know that you like to personally clean our pool because it gives you an excuse to be around me. At least, that’s why you say you don’t send any of your employees to do the work there.”

  “I do like being around you, babe.”

  Now he had the sexy voice going on. Uck.

  She shook her head, hugging herself. “You said at the beginning that you had always loved me, even if you didn’t know me, and when you heard me talking about Elizabeth on the phone a few months ago, you already knew that you were going to protect my secret. So protect me now, James. I swear to God I’m telling the truth about Elizabeth coming back.”

  He got out of his chair and went to her, putting his hands on her bare arms and rubbing up and down. “I have protected your secret, as well as you. I’ll protect you more than anyone ever will.”

  “Will you?”

  “Yeah. Even more than that lead detective you fucked so you could wrap him around your finger and persuade him that none of your family could’ve possibly murdered a woman in such cold blood.”

  She gave him a wounded look.

  He said, “I’m just pointing out how smart you were to cover your ass all over the place. You were good at it, too.”

  “Until you overheard. You were supposed to have gone home.”

  “Hey. I’m on your side.”

  She went to embrace him, pressing her cheek to his chest as he pulled her close, looking bored. But she couldn’t see what a jackass he was. And she couldn’t see me watching her, noticing the emptiness in her own gaze.

  Was she thinking about the lengths she went to in order to keep him happy? Or was she thinking about how Gavin had once protected her?

  From one protector to another. That seemed to be her MO, and it rankled me to see her being such a victim. Or was she more of a chess player, like Amanda Lee?

  James patted her back. “You don’t have anyone else who’ll understand you like I do. What other man is going to sympathize with you about what a bastard your dad is? Same with your mom, when she just stood by and let him sneak into your room at night?”

  “Why do you have to talk about them?”

  “We don’t.”

  Manipulator. But Farah had to play along, didn’t she? She didn’t have a choice about dumping him, so why not make the most of it? Maybe she really
did even have an odd, sexual connection with him, like in a Kathleen Turner movie.

  They were quiet for a blessed moment, until James set Farah away at arm’s length.

  “There’re some things we do need to talk about, though. You know that.”

  She pushed out a sigh. “What is it this time? A hang glider? Another car? A newer house? My bank account’s going to start running low, James.”

  “Secrets are expensive,” he said, tweaking her chin, acting like he was kidding.

  I’d known from the get-go that he had no love for Farah. Maybe he liked her body—what red-blooded male wouldn’t?—but he liked her money more.

  I could see Farah’s face going from the false security she’d just felt in his arms to betrayal. It was that fast. Didn’t James know what happened to people who betrayed her?

  “Would you fight a ghost for me?” she asked.

  He laughed. “Sure, Farah.”

  Her smile was bitter. “You really do think I’m out of my head, don’t you? Maybe you always have.”

  I was sure that my haunting had put everything in perspective for her, and she was desperate, scared.

  Paranoia, the destroyer . . .

  She was the one who was laughing now, softly. “When I came here for comfort, it didn’t take you but fifteen minutes to hold Elizabeth over my head. You couldn’t even do me the courtesy of pretending you believed I saw her outside.”

  A man of little patience, the idiot said, “Maybe you should just call your therapist.”

  “My therapist doesn’t know about Elizabeth. Are you insane? You wouldn’t even know about her, except you were creeping around the pool that day when I was talking on the phone.”

  He didn’t ask to whom she’d been talking, so I assumed either that she’d told him about Noah’s part in the murder or that she’d lied her way around it.

  “God,” she said. “I’ve been such a mess that I believed every promise you ever made to me. How pathetic is that?”

  James chuffed. “What’s pathetic is that you suck the life out of everyone with your neediness.” Then he got real mean. “You’ve got to be crazy to think that I was in this for anything but what you gave me, and if that dries up . . .”

  Farah’s chest was rising and falling. “What? Why don’t you finally say it? What happens if I don’t give you everything you’re always asking for, you greedy son of a bitch?”