As usual, she was too close to the mark. “We decided not to talk about the investigation until you two got here,” Lacy explained. “Mel wasn’t ready.”
“I’m still not,” she muttered, intent on her nearly empty mug as if it were a crystal ball containing all the right answers.
“Have you been interviewed by the police?” Cassidy demanded, ignoring Melinda’s comment and cutting right to the chase. “Do you have an attorney yet? You’re going to need a good one just to show the D.A.’s office you don’t intend to take any unnecessary grief.”
“I did that already. Got my attorney I mean. But Chief Summers didn’t really question me,” Mel said thoughtfully. “He came by the house this morning and told me that an investigation was in progress and that he would keep me informed.”
“That’s all?” Cassidy prodded, clearly suspect.
Melinda nodded. “He was actually the one who suggested that I contact my attorney to find out the legal ramifications of—” she swallowed tightly “—of this new development. He said it would be in my best interest.”
“Summers?” Lacy stiffened. “Do you mean Rick Summers?”
“You remember him, don’t you?” Melinda massaged her left temple as if an ache had started there. “I think he had a crush on you back in high school.”
Lacy wasn’t sure a crush was an adequate description of what she and Rick had shared. She had never been able to put that night completely out of her mind. Rick Summers wasn’t the kind of guy a girl could forget that easily.
“He’s the one who came by the hospital when…” It was Kira’s turn to falter this time. “Oh, Jesus.” Kira closed her eyes and let go a heavy breath. “We’re screwed.”
A chill sank clear through to Lacy’s bones.
Charles Ashland, Junior, was dead. Murdered. It was no longer their secret.
Kira was right. They were screwed.
Tense silence cocooned the group for a long, awkward moment as if they were on a deserted island instead of in the middle of a crowded pub.
How could this have happened? Lacy shuddered inside. They were all good girls. Happy kids, excellent students. Never once had they ever been in trouble. They’d grown up carefree and with life served up to them on a silver platter. Except Melinda. Her parents had lost everything when she was just starting her junior year. Then, after graduation, when Lacy and the others had gone off to their preppy private universities, Melinda had stayed home and married the town’s golden boy because she’d gotten pregnant.
Nothing had been right since.
The waitress paused at their table long enough to plop down two more frosty mugs of beer. No one made any effort to thank her or even to sip their drinks.
Nothing would ever be right again.
Between their hectic schedules at college and Melinda’s two pregnancies, the four hadn’t seen much of one another those four or five years immediately following high school until the reunion. And even the reunion hadn’t been on time. The committee had decided a Christmas reunion would insure higher attendance. Most of the alumni returned home during the Christmas holiday.
Maybe it was fate…or the devil himself. That reunion had brought them back together in more ways than one. They had done what had to be done and then they had been united in their vow of silence.
Lacy had come home several times since then. She’d made it a point to stop by and see Melinda, but everything was different after that long-ago night. Too many secrets…too much pain.
“They’re going to charge me with murder, I know it.” Melinda’s hand shook, and she immediately tucked it beneath the table and visibly grappled for control.
“They can’t.”
All gazes flew to Cassidy.
“They’ll use the money, the property, his drinking and the other women.” Cassidy morphed into hotshot attorney right before their eyes. “They’ll use the physical and mental abuse if they get wind of it. Anything they can dig up, they will. And they’ll have enough motivation for a dozen murders.” She drew in a calming breath, released it slowly. “But they don’t have a murder weapon, and they don’t have a single shred of evidence against you.”
“Will that keep us in the clear?” Kira said slowly.
Cassidy smiled, one of those sly, barely a cut above sinister, lawyerly kind of smiles. “They can’t even arraign anyone without sufficient evidence, no matter how strong the motive. Any judge would throw it out. Hell,” she added, “any district attorney worth his salt wouldn’t even pursue it under the circumstances.”
“Thank God,” Melinda said softly, her relief palpable.
“So what do we do?” Lacy feared that things would never be quite that simple. Nothing ever was—at least not where Charles Ashland, Junior, was concerned.
“We lay low.” Cassidy looked from one to the other. “We provide moral support for each other as we always have, but our primary objective is to insure that no one lets down their guard and makes a mistake.”
“A mistake?” Kira’s eyebrows drew together in question. “What kind of mistake?”
“No one knows our secret.” Cassidy studied each of them in turn. “Only the four of us know what really happened. The water and other elements have long since destroyed any fingerprints or trace evidence we might have left on or in the car. There’s nothing to find in the house.” She turned to Lacy. “The suitcase was taken care of?”
She nodded quickly. A frame of memory—her digging relentlessly into the cold, hard earth as the snow fell around her—flashed through her mind. “There’s no way anyone would ever find it.” Not where she’d buried it.
Again Cassidy looked from one to the other, her pointed gaze settling lastly on Lacy. “I also assume that any other evidence was handled as carefully.”
For the space of two beats, Lacy had the distinct impression that everyone at the table was waiting for her to confess having knowledge of some other pertinent detail or item.
“Can I get you ladies anything else?”
The tension shrank to a more tolerable level with the intrusion. “I’m fine,” Lacy muttered. She had to get past this silly paranoia.
“No more for me.” Melinda shook her head, her face as pale with worry now as it had been earlier when Lacy had first seen her at her door.
“We’re fine,” Cassidy assured the waitress, who quickly left in search of thirsty patrons.
“So you’re saying that all we have to do is stay calm and this will blow over,” Lacy suggested.
“That’s right. We keep our mouths shut and this investigation will die a natural death.”
“But it could drag on for weeks,” Kira said abruptly, her words echoing Lacy’s precise thought.
Cassidy leveled a firm glare on her. “We’ll do whatever we have to do for however long it takes.”
“But—”
“We’re in this together,” she said, ruthlessly cutting Kira off. “Equally guilty. We stick together until it’s over. Like we always have in the past. No buts. If we do anything differently, then people will get suspicious. Call your respective offices, let them know it could be days or weeks. Agreed?”
The hesitation was gone. Kira nodded. “I can work from here to some extent. So I guess I’m agreed.”
Cassidy turned to Melinda and waited for her to voice her understanding, as well.
“Agreed.”
“Lacy?”