Little Pretty Things

by Lori Rader-Day

  “Did Shelly bring all this?” I was already calculating how ashamed I needed to feel at the state of our home and lives. I couldn’t believe I’d been roped into helping with that reunion, but I still had no plans to attend. What could I say to anyone I saw there? And now half the town had been inside our home-sweet-hovel.

  Except that the place seemed tidy, even clean, especially after the ransacking Courtney’s fellows had given it the day before.

  I glanced over at a section of baseboard trim peeking from behind the couch. Clean.

  My mother seemed to be handling all this fine. Better than fine. Nothing in the kitchen was billowing smoke or beeping incessantly. And this plate on my leg: it was a marvel, and the fork sitting on the edge of it gleamed.

  “I got the food,” my mother said. “I remembered there was a place out there where they’d trade you doughnuts for dollars.”

  I felt a strange smile on my face. Where had the dollars come from? I put the plate aside. “I need to take a shower.”

  “But your ankle—why don’t you just relax for a while? Did you want coffee?”

  She disappeared into the kitchen to cater to my next whim.

  The change was too immediate, too startling. I didn’t like it. She moved too fast, too much. She’d been out while I slept, and invited people into our house without even mentioning it. Spending money from mysterious sources. If it turned out that someone like Fitz or Coach had palmed her some cash, I would be obligated to die of embarrassment.

  I picked at a fat strawberry on the plate and popped it into my mouth. Delicious. What was she up to?

  The worst part: I had nowhere else to go. The Mid-Night remained closed. The high school, too stuffed with memory. Lu’s door, closed to me. I shoved a forkful of Danish into my mouth, and chewed on it and on everything that had happened that morning.

  A strawberry seed had got stuck between my teeth. I used the tip of my tongue to worry at it distractedly. Across the room, the photo of me in my track uniform had been turned at a new angle.

  What had Courtney said? Murder victims usually know their killers.

  And the murder had happened here.

  That was simple math, one-plus-one stuff, surely. Someone Maddy knew in town had killed her. Well, everyone Maddy knew in town, I knew.

  I sat up. How simple could the math be?

  I counted them off on my fingers. Beck. Gretchen. Me. Coach. Fitz. My mother.

  My mother chose that moment to bring me a mug of steaming coffee, made with cream—real cream, even—and a little sugar. Just the way I liked, but I hadn’t realized she knew that.

  She went back to the kitchen, where I could hear her puttering and humming under her breath.

  Shelly, I continued. Courtney. Girls from our track team and from other track teams—none I could put a name to. Yvonne, but just that night with the too-big tip. And Vincent, who couldn’t be left out.

  But that list was unrealistic—too short, too close to home. Who else did Maddy know?

  Are you Juliet? Or are you Kristina?

  I nearly spilled my mug.

  I knew who Kristina was now. Kristina Switzer, the name etched into that state-tournament trophy in the Midway High brag case like a slap in the face. What I didn’t know: how had Vincent known who Kristina was, and how had Maddy?

  Kristina had just made the short list of suspects. Only Vincent could tell me how she’d gotten there.

  I had no way to find Vincent, except to ask Gretchen. I decided to drive out, just to get out from under my mother’s newfound energy. I showered, stuffed my swollen ankle into some jeans and my boots, and let myself out without mentioning I was going anywhere. We had secrets now.

  The car gagged and coughed. When at last my engine turned over, I drove not out to Gretchen’s—I wasn’t sure my car had enough gas to get there and back, actually—but to the other side of town where Yvonne lived. She owed me my tips from that night at the Mid-Night, and I needed the money.

  I needed the money.

  I swept wet hair off my neck and shook my head. Always. Always, this is who I would have to be.

  At Yvonne’s, the door was propped open. “Von?”

  “Hey, Julie Bean,” her voice called back. “You’re out and about early today.” She came and unlocked the screen, held it wide for me. A wad of pink gum rolled around in her mouth. Her feet were bare, with nails the color of some exotic bird. A small, shaggy dog came running from the back of the house, panting and dancing. “Never mind him,” she said, scooting the dog back from me with her foot.

  Inside, it smelled of cigarettes and bacon. A large TV lit up one corner of the dark living room. The sound had been set so low, it was nearly muted. For some reason I thought of all I’d missed by leaving college when I did, of never living with another woman my age or having any roommates other than my mother. I stood looking down at the dog, not knowing how to start. Always, the girl gone begging. I chickened out. “Have you heard anything about the Mid-Night opening again?”

  “I think we’ve got the bar cracked open in a day or so,” she said. “But that business with Billy—I don’t know when they’ll open the motel. I mean, surely they will, right?”

  None of us had met the owners. They lived on the East Coast and only dealt with Billy. He threw in their existence whenever it supported a point he wanted to make, but he normally liked to forget anyone else had a say in what went on there. They’d have to have a say now.

  “Maybe you or Lu can be the new manager,” Yvonne said. “That would be wild.”

  “Not me,” I said. “Maybe Lu wants to run it, but I don’t.”

  “And then you’d work for Lu? Can’t think of a way for that to ruin things.”

  “Things are pretty much ruined, Von.”

  “Yeah.” She waved me toward a lumpy couch. I sat, and the little dog hopped up on my lap. I’d never been around a dog, any dog. I patted the top of its head, hoping it would leave me alone. The dog seemed to enjoy the patting and settled in for more. “Buster,” Yvonne said. “Down.”

  Buster’s tail thumped, but he didn’t get down. He curled up in a ball, his warm little body snuggled against my thigh.

  “Never should have taken on someone else’s dog,” Yvonne muttered.

  “I thought people adopted strays all the time.”

  “He’s not a stray. His owner comes over most weekends—whatever, right?—except now I have a full-time dog and his owner’s only part-time.”

  This conversation seemed so far afield of where I needed to go, I didn’t know how to get back. My palms hadn’t itched in days, but now they were sweating. I rubbed them against my jeans. That money was mine. We had a deal—and yet I couldn’t bring myself to say the words. I didn’t like owing people money, or having someone pay my way, even for a moment. But I couldn’t seem to form the words to ask for what was mine. It was still asking.

  I hadn’t minded stealing as much as I did asking for what was coming to me.

  But I cared that everyone would know about the stealing more than anything else. Courtney knew. My mother. All those cops. It would be around town in no time. I didn’t have a reputation to keep sacred, but I’d killed any chance of finding another job in town.

  I finally thought of something to say. “Do you know someone named Kristina Switzer? She went to Midway.”

  “The runner. Would have figured you two knew each other.”

  “Missed her by a year,” I said. “Were you friends?”

  “Those girls were never friends with anyone but each other,” she said.

  I reached for Buster and ran my fingers through his fur. I wished I could have said she was wrong. “But you know her?”

  “Everybody knew—” She looked up, frowning. “Why do you want to know about her?”

  “Maddy might have been in town to see her.”

  The pink gob of gum made another appearance as her eyes shifted back and forth across me a few times. “I doubt it. She’s dead.”


  I must have squeezed Buster. He yipped and leapt away from me, resettling at the other end of the couch with a disappointed look in my direction.

  “Sorry, I—what? How did she die?” Maddy’s gray face rose from memory, but now her skin had the sheen of silver plating.

  “Suicide. Went crazy, swallowed some kind of poison. That’s what I heard, anyway, just gossip from the bar—oh, dang! I owe you your tips. Hang on.” She hopped up, disappeared, her bare feet slapping the floor. I fell back, shuddering with relief.

  I turned to the TV in time to see what looked like the Mid-Night on a news promo and then a weather map and a paunchy white guy swinging his arm this way and that.

  Then Yvonne’s heel-heavy steps came back. She placed a fat roll of bills, rubber-banded, in my hand. It was heavy. I clutched the money, then realized how wild-eyed I must have looked. I stuffed the bills into my jeans pocket and held a hand on the bulge to reassure myself it stayed there.

  “It’s about three hundred,” she said, too kindly. She’d noticed that starved, fearful look of the mouse scrambling for crumbs. “Maybe the motel will open up this weekend and we can do it again. Maybe after the funeral.”

  My stomach gave a lurch. Now that I had my money, I couldn’t think of anything to say, or how to get myself to the door. Then Yvonne’s phone, lying on the floor next to her chair, starting buzzing and singing.

  “I’ll let you—”

  “Just a second.” She raised a finger to hold me where I sat. But the conversation didn’t end in a second, or a minute. After a few minutes of listening to Yvonne getting digs in at her part-time boyfriend, I pantomimed an escape and stood. My ankle stung, tight in its boot.

  “I’m in the middle of something,” Yvonne said into the phone, following me up and toward the door. Buster leapt up and clattered after us, yipping at top volume. “I’m not always in the middle of something, but right now I am. Buster. Well, it’s none of your business who’s here.”

  I thought I knew why the part-time guy had left a full-time watchdog. “I’ll just—” More hand signals passed between us, with Yvonne’s still insisting I stay, traffic-cop style. Yvonne turned her back to me and hissed into the phone. “I guess you’ll just need to hang out here more often yourself if that’s a concern of yours.”

  On the TV, I thought I saw the Mid-Night again. Had something happened? I leaned in to take in the screen, and my ankle announced itself. Teetering, I grabbed for the nearest surface, and put my hand down on a nearby bookshelf. My fingers grazed a set of keys.

  I grasped them. No itch. Not even a tickle in my hands.

  And yet the keys found the inside of my pocket before I knew what I’d done, and why. When Yvonne finally waved me out the door, without even noticing what was happening on the TV behind her, I was eager to leave. I held the keys and the roll of cash to my hip, giddy and afraid of each, of both, of everything.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The keys bulged in one pocket, the money in the other.

  I drove to a gas station, putting a few bucks in the tank while I fretted over how I could replace the keys without admitting that I’d stolen them.

  At home, my mother’s door was shut tight. She must have gone back in for a nap after so much company that morning. I slipped by as quietly as possible, then prowled back and forth in my room, not sure what I would do next. I didn’t want the keys. I could just throw them out.

  She’d have to replace them. Her car key. Her house key. She’d have to change locks. She would drive herself crazy wondering what she’d done with them.

  I could drop them outside the bar, as though she’d done it the last time she’d been there.

  Maybe. I paced some more. The idea had flaws.

  My pacing slowed. I didn’t like the plan, but something inside me wanted to go with it anyway. The Mid-Night. As much as I never wanted to see that place again, I wanted to see that place again. Von’s keys would open the bar, maybe even the office. But not the rooms.

  And I wanted to see that room.

  What had I done with the extra key card? I thought back to that night, the next morning. I hadn’t put it with the perfume or with the things Courtney’s team had found. I’d put it somewhere special, not knowing that I’d been saving it for myself.

  I knelt by the bed and pried up the edge of the loose wallpaper. The card was there, of course, tucked into the baseboard. There was a possibility it wouldn’t work, that the magnetic strip would have been damaged in its hiding place, or that the system would have checked Maddy out automatically after a day or so. Or—so many things.

  I heard a noise. At the front of the house, the door opened, then closed.

  A raw fear gripped me. So many people had been inside this house in the last two days and, with the math I’d done, one of them was likely a killer.

  What had Maddy heard in her last minutes? She wouldn’t have known—she couldn’t have—that each noise she heard was the last. The last knock on the door, the last footfall, the lamp crashing off the bedside table, the last chance to draw attention and rescue. She wouldn’t have known that the simple click of a door closing could be the end of her life.

  My eyes swept the room for a weapon. I grabbed the largest of my trophies from the dresser and crept into the hallway, wielding it over my head.

  At the end of the hall, I paused and listened. My blood was pounding in my ears so that I couldn’t locate a footstep or a breath.

  Pressed against the wall, I wasn’t sure I could do what I needed to do. Maddy. I had to keep reminding myself how hard she fought.

  I took a step and leaned around the corner into view and pivoted directly into my mother.

  We both recoiled, screaming.

  “Juliet, what on earth?”

  “I thought—” I didn’t know what I’d thought. That Maddy’s killer had come for me? How likely was that? I lowered the trophy. But then I’d thought she was still asleep, in her room. The parameters we’d been living by were breached. “I guess I’m a little punchy,” I said.

  “No one blames you.” She took in the trophy. “Your life changed this week.”

  This conversation alone provided the evidence. Not to mention that my mother had just arrived from some sort of errand. She wore an old jacket. A raincoat, but thankfully with no belt.

  “Where were you?”

  She slipped out of the coat and opened the closet door. “My expertise as a widow has finally been put to use.”

  The trophy slid from my fingers to the floor with a thump. “What?”

  “Arrangements for Maddy.” She hung up the coat and closed the door. “Gretchen isn’t any help, and that young man … well, he’s paying for everything, but he shouldn’t be bothered with decisions. And Fitz didn’t show up. With how quickly this has had to come together, you’d think—but we all do what we can, I suppose. I know that better than anyone. Thank goodness for Shelly—oh, and before I forget, she sent that home for you.”

  She gestured to a thick envelope lying on the couch. I’d forgotten to tell Shelly I didn’t need the copy of our yearbook.

  “She told me to tell you—six sharp. Sharp. She made me say it back to her, just like that.”

  “Six … oh, no,” I said, fighting a rushing dread. “What day is today?”

  “Sweetheart, it’s Saturday,” she said. “Six sharp tonight.”

  Crap. I had no idea how I would be able to face Shelly and the rest of them. I didn’t have the right clothes, the right makeup. I didn’t have a date. Too late I realized they’d all be married. Paired up to dance, all of them laughing, talking about their jobs without shame. I didn’t even have a shameful job anymore. I was freelancing in shame, unpaid. They’d have kids, houses, minivans, vacation snapshots, bills paid. And I had nothing.

  I reached for the trophy at my feet. The silver runner at the top was tarnished, dusty. Second place, regionals. It had all mattered so much, once.

  I had pulled into Gretchen’s long driveway before I r
ealized I couldn’t remember why I’d come. Then I turned a corner in the drive and saw a passel of police cruisers parked all around the house. A cop held up his hand and gestured me forward and to roll down the window. It didn’t roll down, so I cracked the door.

  “Whoa,” he said, hand to his gun. “What’s your business here?”

  “I’m a … friend. What’s happened?”

  “Not at liberty. How do you know the homeowner?”

  I was grateful he hadn’t said “the deceased.”

  “Everyone knows everyone here, Gary,” Courtney said, walking up behind the other officer. It was true. I hadn’t known his name until now, but I’d seen Gary policing the parking lot of the Mid-Night before. Sometimes he policed the bar, too, with a beer in front of him.

  Gary wandered off. I got out and looked around. “Is Gretchen OK?” I asked Courtney.

  “Shaken up. He didn’t tell you? A breakin—or at least she says so. I can’t tell that anything is missing in that place.”

  “Crowded, isn’t it?”

  “You’ve been to visit recently?”

  I tried not to hear the accusation. I could feel the keys in my pocket as I nodded, the blush creeping up my cheeks. I’d finally done it. I’d stolen from a friend, a friend who was alive and would suffer the loss of what I’d taken. “After Maddy, I came to see if I could do anything.”

  “Did you? Do anything?”

  “I took a look in Maddy’s room,” I said. She would have heard this already, I decided. There was no chance Gretchen hadn’t mentioned it. “Seemed dusty, but otherwise exactly as she left it years ago.”

  Courtney nodded, and I was grateful for being able to tell the truth. Part of the truth. I suddenly remembered the running man loose from his trophy from Maddy’s room. But I’d lost track of him. Courtney and I stared up at the house while I retraced the silver man’s path from this house to my lap, then to the floor of the car, under my seat.