Little Pretty Things

by Lori Rader-Day

  “Thought so.”

  Tags for my junk heap were cheap, but I didn’t have even that. Forget the fine or a renewal for the insurance policy. I checked the date on the card again. It was so out of date, I’d be lucky if they agreed to insure me at all after this.

  Courtney ripped the ticket out of her book and held it out. It waved dramatically in the sharp wind. “I’ll make you a deal. Everything you know in exchange for this ticket never touching your hand. I can’t do anything about the insurance, but I can make this go away. No fine. You can probably get your tags renewed before the end of the work day if you hurry.”

  I calculated the damage. “What is it you think I know, Courtney?”

  “Where’s the ring?”

  “It’s … in the bank,” I said. “At least that’s what Shelly said.”

  “When did Shelly tell you this?”

  I tilted my head back and let drops of rain hit my face. It had only been three days since Maddy had been killed. “The day the fiancé showed up,” I said. “Was that yesterday? Two days ago.”

  “Well, there’s a problem with that ring. It’s a fake.”

  My arms were cold. I folded them around me. “I don’t understand.”

  “We don’t either. Explain it for us. Where’s the real ring?”

  I glanced back at the students at the door. A few had gotten bored and left, but some of the girls, duffle bags against their legs, remained. “You think I have the ring? Would I still be scrounging babysitting fees from Midway High if I had a giant diamond ring to pawn?”

  “Is that what you did?” she barked. “We can find it, so it’s better for you to tell the truth.”

  “If you can find it, then find it, hot shot.” I didn’t feel desperate anymore. I felt flayed. What could she do to me? I didn’t have the ring. I hadn’t killed Maddy. “She had it on her finger that night she showed up at the Mid-Night, and then—you were there when it was sitting on the dresser, remember? I got you the key and—”

  “Your prints are all over that room.”

  “I cleaned that room the day before she checked in,” I said. “My prints are all over every room there. Except Billy’s.”

  “Billy, who has lots to say now that he’s facing a few felonies,” she said. “He said he might have seen you heading up to that room later that night. A room that is strangely missing a piece of evidence.”

  I swallowed. “You guys took the ring that day. Maybe you’re the one who swapped it for a fake.”

  “Nice try.” She went to the patrol car and grabbed something through the window. “Is this the ring Maddy was wearing the night she arrived at the motel?”

  Even inside the plastic evidence bag, the ring sparkled like a star brought to earth. “I thought you said—is it not the same ring? It looks the same to me.” I’d never owned a decent piece of jewelry in my life. I studied the ring in the bag. There was something obscene about it, now that I knew it wasn’t real.

  “What did you do with the stolen evidence?”

  Stolen. My hands burned at the word, and yet I couldn’t exactly disavow it. “She left that photo for me. No one else would have ever found it—”

  “Photo? What photo?” Courtney glanced over her shoulder at her partner. Loughton, I finally remembered. He got out of the car and came toward me.

  “I was talking about the perfume,” Courtney said. “The perfume bottle I found in your bathroom, the same one missing from the crime scene. We have photos of our own, you know. But a photo left behind by the deceased is even more interesting.”

  “Did you take a photo of the bathmat?” I said.

  Courtney’s eyes shifted to Loughton and back to me, coolly, but I’d already seen the hunger there. “Of course we did. Stop telling us how to do our jobs.”

  Loughton held up handcuffs. “Miss?”

  “What?” My voice cracked. “Do we really have to do this?”

  Time stretched out as Loughton opened the cuffs. This was happening, and at the same time couldn’t be. Ten years I’d been lifting and swiping, hoarding bits and bobs that didn’t matter to anyone else. What I took wasn’t treasure; I only made it so in the taking. And so I’d forgotten that what I was doing was still stealing.

  Loughton waggled his finger at me to turn around. I was sick, shaking. I took a step to turn and nearly fell. Loughton grabbed me and shook me back to my feet, then pulled my wrists together behind my back. Back at the open door to the school, a few gawkers were holding out to watch. Faces might have been pressed to each window in the side of the school. Rain pelted my bare arms. This was happening.

  “Do we have to do this?” Courtney said, opening the back door for me. “No, but we’re going to. Take me to that photo. Oh, and you have the right to remain silent, by the way.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Riding in the cruiser was much less comfortable this time. That burned-in stench of fear and anger wasn’t as evident, maybe because I was adding to it. I slid down in the seat and ducked my head. When we passed Mrs. Schneider’s pulled-back curtain, though, I peered around Courtney’s head. Patrol cars filled our driveway and the street out front, alongside a gathering of neighbors and onlookers who’d come to watch.

  My mother stood on the porch, rubbing her arms. Outside our home for probably the first time in more than a year. I couldn’t stand how thin and scared she looked.

  Loughton pulled me from the car. I let my hair hang down, hiding my face. Loughton led me to her, but I looked at my feet.

  “They had a warrant,” she said.

  “It’s OK, Mom.”

  She hugged me, awkwardly. Loughton gestured her inside and pushed me ahead of him through the door.

  Inside was chaos. Drawers and couch cushions were pulled out. The bookcase was empty, the contents rifled through and set aside. While we stood in the doorway, something in the kitchen crashed to the floor. “My bad,” a voice called out.

  Everywhere I looked, someone in a blue uniform was taking a closer look at another corner of our lives. My mother seemed to be taking the invasion stoically, but I shook with rage.

  Additional officers emerged from the hallway, carrying a handful of my things in a series of plastic bags. They offered them to Loughton, who nodded in Courtney’s direction.

  She took them, held them to the light so that I could see my old friends: the lipstick in the color I could never wear, the barrette, the spiral paper clip, the baby sock. The old lady’s empty atomizer. Maddy’s perfume. They’d put each item in its own bag. This was museum-quality care and presentation.

  Courtney studied each offering as the room grew still around us. I saw the barrette through her eyes: confusing. The baby sock: inexplicable. “Tell me about this,” she said.

  I wavered on remaining silent. “Which one?”

  “Not any one thing,” she said. Her voice was quiet and more respectful than it had ever been. “All of it. Explain it to me.”

  “I don’t know if I can,” I said. “I don’t understand it myself. It’s out of my control, or at least it feels that way.”

  “And these were things you took from the rooms?”

  My mother gasped.

  “Absolutely not,” I said, looking first at my mother. “Well, not exactly. Most of it was left behind. Maybe I could have worked harder to get some of it back to the rightful owners, but I never took anything until—”

  “Until the perfume bottle. When were you in her room?”

  I returned my attention to the floor. “The night after I found her. I didn’t touch anything. The bottle, but not—I wanted to understand what happened to her. I don’t know, I thought I might be the only one who’d be able to figure out what happened.”

  “And the perfume just happened to be a crucial clue to your investigation,” Courtney said.

  “Well, no,” I said. “I just wanted it. It’s vanilla. The scent she wore, and the same one I wore that night in your patrol car. Vanilla, like cookies. I just—wanted it.”
/>   Courtney looked around the room at Loughton and the others. “Where’s the photo?”

  “Inside the pillow on my bed,” I said. “There’s a cover, with a zipper.” Someone marched off to collect it.

  “Grab her shoes,” she called after him. Courtney’s eyes found mine. “Were you lovers?”

  “What? No. Friends.”

  She shrugged. “Had to ask.”

  The cop who’d gone back to the room returned and held out the photo, sealed in its own baggie. Courtney took it, spent a long, silent moment studying it. “Surprised this didn’t make Tracks,” she said, handing it off and waving it away.

  That she knew it hadn’t caught me by surprise. “You got a yearbook?”

  “You didn’t?”

  “Maddy told me not to.”

  “Maddy told you not to buy your own senior yearbook.” Courtney clucked her tongue. “Now I’m starting to wonder if you weren’t master and pet.”

  “Friends,” I said.

  Another officer came up the hallway with my old running shoes, a pair of scuffed high heels, a pair of boots, and some slippers. We could hear others tramping around the back of the house, then the door to the other bedroom open. Next to me, my mom stiffened.

  “What does that photo mean to you? What do you see?”

  How to explain my conflicted feelings, to explain that every time I looked at the photo now, it was like a prism, showing a different view of my life and everything I’d done right or wrong? One day I am forgiven. One day I am forgotten. One morning I see nothing but my triumphant smile. Another morning I see the dark pall over Maddy’s face, and I remember all over again what was taken from her, and then from me. “I was jealous of her,” I said. “In that photo, I’m happy, though. Do you see? I only remember how petty I was when our season ended short. I only remember the envy. But that photo shows that I wasn’t only jealous. I wasn’t only petty. I was other things, too. Look at everything going on around me. All that Southtown business and the jeering, people calling us terrible names, and then Coach and Fitz picking their favorite again and again, right in front of my face. Look at them—they’re already planning her celebration party, her ascension. And I’m still happy.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about all this when I said I wanted to know everything?” Courtney said.

  “Everything about her death,” I said. “I don’t know anything about her death that you don’t.” My hands were growing numb behind my back. “Everything I know is about her life.”

  Courtney brought out her phone and thumbed at it a bit. Then she held her hand out toward the guy with the shoes. “Those,” she said, pointing at the running shoes. “Turn them over.”

  We all studied the worn down treads. “That’s it? That’s what you run in?”

  “I don’t run anymore,” I said.

  She eyed the black canvas sneakers with white toes I wore. “Kick one of those up for me.”

  My heart rose in my throat. They were matching the print mashed into the bathmat, I was sure of it, and I’d worn these shoes into the room. I turned my heel up, and we all studied that worn pattern.

  I put my foot down. Courtney and I stared at each other for a long moment, then she nodded to Loughton, and he moved to take off the cuffs. I rubbed at my wrists. Courtney’s gleaming badge raised no tingle of desire in my hands whatsoever.

  “The killer has better shoes than you,” she said.

  Not surprised. I hung my head, waiting.

  “You might not know this,” she said. “But a death like this is always about the life that preceded it.”

  She sounded as though she’d found this out the hard way.

  “OK,” she said. “We’re not going to arrest you—yet—on the evidence tampering. Tell me there’s nothing else back there I need to worry about.”

  “No, nothing. No giant diamond ring, either, you noticed.”

  “Point taken. No charges, no ticket,” she said. She seemed to notice the officer still holding my shoes. “But I have one demand.”

  I braced myself.

  “We go running tomorrow.”

  Everyone in the room turned to look at her.

  “I told you I don’t run anymore,” I said.

  “Great, then maybe I can keep up. One run, tomorrow, and I’ll do what I can to keep all this tamped down.”

  My mother and I both turned to look out the window. The neighbors had umbrellas.

  “A misunderstanding,” Loughton said. He waved the officers from the hallway out the door. Within minutes they’d decamped the group inside and dispersed the onlookers outside. One by one, the patrol cars shut down their lights and rolled away, the last idling with Loughton in the passenger seat.

  “I’ll meet you here,” Courtney said. “Six too early?”

  Not for someone who might keep me from jail. I shook my head.

  “Great,” she said.

  I found that I couldn’t let it go. “‘A death like this’?”

  “The unquiet kind,” she said. “I’ll have one of the guys bring your car back to you.” She nodded toward my mother. “Ma’am, sorry for the disruption.”

  When the door closed behind Courtney, neither of us moved. Behind me, the house was in shambles. My mother had taken so many years to crawl out of her waking coma. What would this do to her? Finally I looked her way.

  “Now I know,” she said, thoughtfully, “why you never invited that little bitch over.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The next morning, I waited on the front step in old, faded running pants and a baggy T-shirt I’d pulled from my dad’s dresser.

  I missed the photo already, yearned for the pile of stolen trash they’d removed from my vanity. It was all gone, something I’d recently wished for. But not actually gone. It was out there, tagged with my name. Every time I thought of Courtney holding up each bag, in turn, I felt sick again. I was sick—that was the only explanation, and why Courtney’s voice had gone soft and gentle. I was sick and now everyone would know it.

  When the car pulled into our drive, I sighed and stood, then realized the car wasn’t Courtney’s.

  Vincent unfolded himself from the driver’s seat and closed the door. “Good morning,” he said, crossing the yard. “You heard about the ring?”

  “I was accused of taking it,” I said. I wondered how much longer I could say something like that and have people believe me.

  “You didn’t, though.”

  I remembered his panic at having it stowed at the bank. The bank, where jewelry appraisers could probably be called upon at a moment’s notice. Had he given her a fake diamond engagement ring to begin with? “How do you know?”

  He stopped a few feet away and glanced up and down the street. “I’ve been thinking about it,” he said. “A few weeks ago, Maddy wasn’t wearing her ring. It’s hard not to notice when it’s gone, you know? She said she was having it cleaned. When I noticed her wearing it again, it was—different. It was shiny and—too shiny. The stone. It wasn’t right. I thought it was from a good polishing, but now—now, I don’t know.”

  “You think she had the stone replaced with a fake? Why would she do that?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said.

  For a moment, I caught that feeling again, that Maddy was really gone, that everything she had been would never be reconciled with the girl I’d known. Or thought I’d known. None of it would ever match up. All that was left of her were her trophies. Trophies and questions.

  “If she replaced the diamond, where is it?” I said.

  “Or the money from selling it.” Vincent’s eyes had gone glassy and far away. “God, didn’t she know that I would have given her anything she needed or wanted? No questions.”

  “Is there unexplained extra money in her bank account? Stocks?” I didn’t know how any of this worked. My bank account was flat, but I supposed rich people had more than a passbook savings that scraped bottom every month.

  “She didn’t have any extra, ever,”
he said. “She didn’t work, remember?”

  “Wait, no money at all?”

  “I supported us,” he said. “Our apartment, the bills, whatever she wanted for clothes and entertainment. My finance guy takes care of it all.”

  I couldn’t imagine how such a thing worked. “So how did she go to the grocery or go shopping? You gave her an allowance?”

  He gave me a sharp look. “She wanted for nothing, I promise you.”

  “But it was all yours,” I said. “Oh, God. She was a trophy.”

  “What? She was not—she was never a trophy.”

  I stood back and glared. “Don’t you see? She would have hated that. She needed something of her own.”

  “Maddy had plenty of her own. Her charities, her good works, her—” His shoulders dropped. “I never meant to … it never was supposed to be that way. She wanted to go to law school. She wanted to work for reproductive rights and for abused girls. She wanted to prosecute rapists. These news stories—last year there was a little girl abducted and drowned in the Chicago River—” He made a terrible sound in his throat. “Any one of those stories could set her off. She had such … fire.”

  His face was lit up with her memory. I looked away. My hands had begun to itch, and I was afraid of what it was they wanted me to steal. There was nothing of Maddy’s that I hadn’t wanted for my own.

  But I didn’t envy what her life had become. That ring, sure, that coat. But the fire, as Vincent called it. I didn’t envy that, and he had no idea where the spark had come from.

  A car door slammed. Courtney approached, strangely feminine in form-fitting running pants and a windbreaker. She had good shoes—better shoes than I’d ever had.

  She wore a prim little pack at her hip.

  “You don’t have a gun in there, do you?” I said.

  “Funny.” She narrowed her eyes at Vincent. “You’re not ready to run,” she said.