Last Girl Standing

by Lisa Jackson

  Amanda took in a sharp breath as Ellie grabbed up her phone. Amanda yanked hers from her purse as well.

  “I’ll talk to you later,” Amanda stated crisply and stalked out.

  Ellie found the news feed. She saw the mangled black Mercedes. Brian’s car. Both dead. She felt numb all over.

  “Where’s Rob? I want to talk to him.”

  “Uh . . . I don’t know. I don’t think he’s here yet. Check with Alton,” Ed suggested.

  “Alton’s never here this early.” Her years-long relationship with the man had made her aware of that.

  “Yeah, well, he is.”

  “What?” She couldn’t think. The world had tipped off its axis. “Where is he?”

  Ed waved a hand down the hall toward the business offices. She went to Rob’s door, and a man she didn’t recognize was behind his desk. No sign of Alton.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Ellie O’Brien,” the man said with a careful smile. “I’m Russ Niedermeyer, head of production.”

  “Where’s Rob?”

  “Rob’s no longer with us. And I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but we’re going to be letting you go as well.”

  Ellie stared at him. She’d had too much devastating information in too short a time. “What? I—I just did that piece . . .”

  “It was good, but Pauline is our number-one gal, and we’re going with her,” he said in that fake-bonhomie way that made Ellie want to gouge his eyes out. “I’m sure you know that the station has been sold, and that—”

  “Months ago. It was sold months ago!”

  “—we’re still making changes. Finding the proper fit, as it were, for all our employees.”

  Ellie focused on him, disbelieving. Niedermeyer was a good-looking guy, and he knew it, with a pressed white shirt and a trimmed beard and a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. She tuned back into something about severance pay, but then she couldn’t think of anything to say; she wanted to beg to have her job back, and that wouldn’t do.

  And Zora was gone . . . she and Brian were gone ...

  She walked blindly out of the office, breathing hard. She was in shock. She knew it. Couldn’t seem to do anything about it.

  Goddamnit. Goddamnit. They’d fired her . . . Fired her!

  This was Coco’s doing somehow. She was tight with Pauline, and she had Alton—that worm!—under her blood-red-nailed thumb.

  How did I ever sleep with him? How did I ever think we could be a power couple when he’s a dead battery?

  Another station would welcome her with open arms. She’d go to Channel Four herself, push Phil out. It couldn’t be that hard. She’d get that interview with Delta. Didn’t mean she had to believe in her innocence; Dee was still her number-one suspect. Maybe she could get Dr. Stahd to do another interview. Do both together, a juxtaposition. Delta innocent, or Delta guilty? Choose your own adventure.

  But Zora was dead . . .

  “Jesus,” she muttered on a half gasp.

  She was heading out, down the hall, and there in front of her were Alton and Coco, little Chihuahua Penny perched in Coco’s purse. Alton looked away from Ellie, but Coco smiled deliberately.

  “Hi, Ellie,” Coco said, while Penny bared her little teeth and growled softly behind quivering black lips.

  Ellie looked from one to the other of them.

  “Fuck you all, and your little dog too,” she told them and then pushed past them before she could break down and make a fool out of herself.

  * * *

  Delta reluctantly took Owen to preschool. She was dropping him off later than usual, the result of a sleepless night and a slow morning. “Are you sure you want to go?” she asked for about the tenth time as they neared the turn into the school. “Next year, if you go to Englewood Academy, it’s real school, and I won’t be able to take you out at every whim.”

  “I want to go.” His face was set in stubborn lines.

  “I just want to make sure . . . we’re both okay.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “All right.” She wanted him with her. Especially after the debacle of the evening before.

  “Did that man stay all night?” Owen asked carefully.

  “No. He left a couple hours after you went to bed.”

  “I don’t like him.”

  Delta looked in the rearview mirror at her son. “You hardly talked to him. He’s going to help us.”

  “He thinks you killed Daddy with the knife.”

  “That’s not what he thinks. He’s a policeman, and it’s going to be all right.”

  Owen’s eyes suddenly flooded with tears. “I’m sorry, Mama. I told him . . .”

  “It’s not your fault, Owen! It’s not your fault.”

  Delta’s throat was hot as her son blinked back tears. She tried to talk him out of pre-K some more as they pulled into a spot and parked. She felt like she’d almost convinced him when one of his friends showed up at the spot where they were stopped on the sidewalk, skipping his way ahead of his mom to the front door. Seeing him, Owen swiped the remaining tears from his face and pulled himself together. The effort broke Delta’s heart.

  He started to run on ahead of her as well, then he stopped and came back and held her hand. “I won’t talk to that man anymore.”

  “Okay . . .”

  “I won’t tell him you killed Daddy.”

  “Owen.” She sucked in a shocked breath. “I did not . . . do anything to harm your father.”

  He looked up at her.

  “Is that really what you think?”

  He shrugged his little shoulders, and this time he raced after his friend and didn’t look back. She checked him in, staring after him as he joined the other kids, wanting to scoop him up and run away somewhere, anywhere safe. But he was with his friends and seemed purposely to be avoiding looking at her.

  She left the pre-K on leaden feet. She felt both zapped of energy and yet charged with the pressure to do something. She needed her son to believe in her, even if no one else did. She’d handled Tanner’s attack and death all wrong.

  She got back in her car and fought the urge to cry. Fingers wrapped around the steering wheel, she held back the tears by sheer will. Nope. She wasn’t going to cry. She’d had enough of that. She needed to be proactive. Do something. Find out something that would take her out of this terrible limbo.

  Maybe she would go see Woody today. Ask about the fender bender and the guy who’d argued with Tanner. That would at least be something.

  She looked back at the closed door to the pre-K, aching. First, though, she was going to Smith & Jones to see her parents.

  * * *

  Every nerve in Ellie’s body was buzzing as she drove toward West Knoll. She kept bouncing from Zora and Brian to the fact that she’d been fired and back again.

  What happened to them? An accident . . . had to be a terrible accident . . . couldn’t be anything more sinister, like what happened to Tanner . . .

  No, that was an act of passion. That was Delta . . . or maybe someone else, she grudgingly allowed. But Zora and Brian were an accident.

  “McCrae’ll be on it.” she said aloud.

  It occurred to her that the Five Firsts were down to just two. She was sorry they were gone individually, but as far as their special group? She was glad it was in shreds.

  She picked up her phone. Come and get me and give me a ticket. Swiping through her favorite numbers, of which McCrae was one, she touched the screen to make a call.

  * * *

  McCrae was at work, at his desk after a short, damn-near sleepless night following hours at the crash site. He’d already fended off a number of reporters when Ellie’s call came through. He ignored it, and she called right back. “Call the station,” he answered in a growl.

  “What the hell happened?” she practically screamed at him.

  “You can get a statement if you call the station.”

  “I want you to tell me! C’mon, McCrae. These were our frien
ds!”

  He closed his eyes, her words piercing him. He’d driven like a madman to get to the crash site. Not the wisest course of action, but he’d made it, striding through the barrage of flashing red and blue lights from the West Knoll patrol cars, to arrive at the same time as the coroner’s van. The ambulance had already left, empty. The coroner’s van was picking up both bodies.

  McCrae tightened down his emotions to look at Zora’s body. There was blood, but she almost appeared to be sleeping, and Brian’s . . . he was more mangled, with broken legs at odd angles, a gash across his forehead, and dull, staring eyes. Corolla had come up to him and said there was a witness, of sorts.

  McCabe turned to the guy, who wore shorts, a short-sleeved shirt, and hiking boots, and was apparently camping along the West Knoll River. He hadn’t seen anything, but he’d heard the car crash over the cliff from about a quarter mile away; the vehicle had tumbled down the hillside to lodge upside down on the river’s shore. “No braking,” the guy said. “They just went over.”

  McCrae had spent another three hours at the scene, grimly watching as the car was winched up the hill from the rocky shore far below. Across Grimm’s Pond were the fields that separated this section of the river from the Forsythe estate.

  Déjà vu. Below was where they’d all gathered after the ill-fated run down the rapids that had resulted in Carmen’s death. He remembered how helpless he’d felt that day, and how angry, and experienced the same emotions anew.

  He’d stuck around for a while, watching the crime-scene techs gather evidence, then had gone home and expected to go right to sleep, but mostly he had just thrashed around, consumed with the fatal car accident and also bothered by the realization that Delta had lied about the knife . . . which begged the question: What else had she lied about?

  “McCrae?” Ellie’s sharp voice demanded.

  He grimaced. Zora’s parents had been informed of her death, as had Timmons’s sister, who lived in British Columbia and was making plans to come to West Knoll.

  “We don’t know yet,” he finally answered Ellie. “There was no braking. They didn’t make the corner and sailed through the guardrail.”

  “Were they drunk?”

  “Like I said, we don’t know anything yet.”

  “Passed out? Drugs?”

  This time he didn’t bother responding.

  “I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it,” she muttered. “Tanner and now Zora and Mr. Timmons?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Goddamnit, McCrae. What do you know?”

  “Nothing,” he said, meaning it. He had no answers and nothing to tell her.

  She was breathing hard, as if she’d been running. “God, what an awful day. I’m going to the crash site.”

  “I think the crime techs are finished, but—”

  “I’ll stay out of their way,” she interrupted. “McCrae . . . ?”

  The expectant pause after his name somehow reminded him of the unfinished business of their last conversation, so he answered her with, “Last time we talked, you said you had leads you were working on.”

  “A lifetime ago. Too much has happened, and I’m not . . . following them anymore. Goddamnit,” she said, sounding consumed by fury and close to tears. “I’ve gotta go. Oh . . . did you know Amanda’s decided to be Delta’s lawyer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Of course,” she sneered, then added, “We did an interview, should be on the noon news, if they run it,” and hung up.

  * * *

  Almost from the moment Delta pulled away from the pre-K, her cell phone started ringing. Eyes on the road, she pulled it from her purse, then dropped it onto the console. McCrae.

  She moaned aloud.

  She could still hear her panicked explanations about the knife from the night before. The memory was a spike to the heart. He hadn’t believed her. He’d wanted to, she could tell. But he hadn’t believed her. From that moment on, the entire rest of the evening had been awful. She’d put Owen to bed and returned downstairs. That’s when she’d tried to explain, and even to her own ears it sounded lame. The thrill she’d felt on inviting him over had died a quick but painful death.

  “How could you be so stupid?” she railed at herself again.

  The phone was still ringing, waiting for her to pick up. She seriously thought about letting it go to voice mail, but that would only put off the inevitable. A teensy part of herself wanted to know why he was calling. A bigger part worried it had something to do with another trip to the station.

  But . . . what the hell. She answered and clicked on the speaker. “Hello . . . Chris.”

  “Delta, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there’s been an accident.”

  She slammed on the brakes at a stop sign she almost blew through. Her brain was not functioning well. “No . . . I just dropped off Owen at pre-K. What accident?”

  “It’s Zora and Brian Timmons.”

  “What?”

  And then he told her. She drove blindly for a few blocks and then pulled over. McCrae described the accident—at Grimm’s Pond, no less. While she listened, she stared through the windshield at the traffic passing her by, but what she was seeing was Zora, her one-time roommate, flighty, sometimes silly, maybe a bit too seduced by the finer things, but a friend, a longtime friend, one of the Five Firsts . . .

  McCrae was still talking. She couldn’t think. Couldn’t hear.

  “Was it murder?” she cut in.

  That stopped him, and he took a moment before saying, “It looks like an accident.” But there was a dubious tone to his voice.

  “Is it connected?” she asked, almost in a whisper.

  “To . . . ?”

  “The other deaths. Our classmates?”

  “Well . . . as soon as we get some forensic evidence, we’ll know more. Maybe later today.”

  “I just spent the day with Zora,” she said, a lump forming in her throat. “She was coming over to take care of Owen today.”

  “You were with her . . . yesterday?”

  “Yes, we went to the movies.” She could feel a headache building. She wanted to cry but couldn’t seem to find the tears. “I didn’t kill Tanner, but somebody did . . . and now this. Maybe there’s a conspiracy. Maybe whoever killed Tanner killed Zora and Brian, too.”

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “Parked on the side of the road. I don’t believe in coincidences. It hasn’t been a week since Tanner was attacked. Somebody. . . not me . . . killed him and maybe Zora and Brian and Bailey and Carmen . . . and Penske.” Her voice was starting to quaver.

  “Tell me where you are, and I’ll come get you.”

  “I’m fine, McCrae.” She got control of her voice. “I’m fine. Just fine. Thank you for telling me.”

  “Don’t hang up.”

  “It’s not right. Something is going on. Don’t you feel it? And who’s going to be next? Me? You?”

  “I’m going to find out what this is all about,” he promised.

  “Good.”

  She clicked off and stuck her phone in the side pocket of her purse. She dropped her head into her hands. She was too raw where McCrae was concerned. She needed to think. To figure things out.

  Maybe Zora’s and Brian’s deaths were an accident. Maybe. But it sure didn’t feel that way.

  Who killed Tanner? And Brian and Zora . . .

  “Why?” she asked aloud.

  After several minutes, she pulled herself together and headed carefully the rest of the way to her parents’ grocery store.

  Chapter 24

  Amanda was back at her house, in her bedroom, staring across the fields toward the chasm where the West Knoll River ran—a barely visible, jagged, dark gap, from her point of view, that cut off her land from the property beyond.

  Zora.

  She hadn’t gone back to the office. The momentum of the day had faded as soon as she’d heard the news, a punch to the gut. The interview she expected to play on the Chann
el Seven noon news had lost the power to make her smile. Her game with Hal hardly seemed worth it.

  She’d left her phone downstairs, but she still had Zora’s message, a puzzler. She’d blamed Amanda for Carmen’s death, if she could read between the lines. From something that had taken place at the barbeque. Was she the only one who truly remembered what had happened that night? It was all so steeped in mystery and suspicion, when in truth they were just a bunch of drunk, stoned idiots doing exactly what drunk, stoned idiots did.

  Still . . . Zora’s message had been fairly specific.

  Did it even matter anymore?

  She shifted her gaze to the general direction of Grimm’s Pond—the site of the crash, she’d learned from a news feed on her phone. What had happened that sent Zora and Brian plunging over the cliff to their deaths?

  She shivered and rubbed her arms. Hearing Zora’s slightly accusatory voice on the phone over and over again had spooked her. Normally, she was immune to atmosphere and innuendo, but not today.

  She heard her cell phone ringing downstairs, but it was too difficult to work her way down the spiral staircase and catch it in time, so she let it go.

  She didn’t want to talk to anyone anyway.

  . . . saw you with Tanner, what you were doing in the woods the night of the barbeque. He said Carmen saw, too . . .

  Why had Brian been talking about the barbeque? Did it have anything to do with what happened to them?

  What she remembered of the barbeque was how good Delta had looked, how cute and gorgeous her figure was. Ellie had looked good in her swimsuit, too, and Amanda had felt ugly and forgettable. Her talent agency had just dropped her. Nobody wanted her, except Tanner, but then he was indiscriminate. So she’d flirted outrageously with him in front of Delta, had really thought she wanted him. Funny how things turned out.

  She sighed. It was unfathomable that Zora was gone.

  Stripping off her clothes, Amanda put on her running gear and headed out to the path that ran along the river. She could go all the way to Grimm’s Pond if she felt like it, the last half mile across an unfenced field and then down to the river and swimming hole.

  * * *

  The crash site offered up little and less, and the information that was available was being broadcast by every channel. Ellie felt a bit heartsick that she wasn’t part of the news team, and she turned a cold shoulder to Pauline and her favorite cameraman, Darrell, when they appeared. Pauline stared her down. She could tell Pauline wanted to ask her what the hell she was doing, but Ellie wasn’t going to give her the chance. She was pissed, too. She’d been let go through no fault of her own. It just wasn’t fair.