A Place of Hiding (Inspector Lynley, #12)(222)

“There’s an explanation for everything. I know that. There is. Isn’t there. China.”

She listened hard as she felt for the fissure that gave way to the small side chamber. She told herself there was nothing to fear, for this was her friend, the woman who’d seen her through a bad time that was the worst time ever, one of love and loss, of indecision, action, and action’s aftermath. She’d held her and promised, “Debs, it’ll pass. It will pass, believe me.”

In the darkness, Deborah said China’s name again. She added, “Let me walk you out of here. I want to help you. I want to see you through this. I’m your friend.”

She gained the inner chamber, her jacket brushing against the stone wall. She heard the rustle of its material and so, apparently, did China River. She finally spoke.

“Friend,” she said. “Oh yes, Debs. Aren’t you ever my friend.” She flicked on the torch that she’d used to illuminate the lock on the dolmen’s door. The resulting light struck Deborah squarely in the face. It came low from the camp bed, where China was sitting. Behind its bright glow, her face was as white as a marble death mask hovering above the light. “You,” China said to her simply, “don’t know shit about friendship. You never have. So don’t talk to me about what you can do to help me out.”

“I didn’t bring the police here. I didn’t know...” Except Deborah couldn’t quite lie, not in this final moment. For she’d been on Smith Street earlier, hadn’t she? She’d returned there, and she’d seen no shop to buy the sweets that China had claimed to have secured for her brother. Cherokee himself had opened her shoulder bag in a search for money and had brought forth nothing, especially not the chocolate bars he supposedly loved. Deborah said more to herself than to China, “Was it that travel agent? Is that where you’d gone? Yes, that had to be it. You were laying your plans, where you’d go first when you got off the island because you knew they’d release you. After all, they had him. That must have been what you wanted from the first, what you planned, even. But why?”

“You’d want to know that, wouldn’t you.” China played the light up and down Deborah’s body. She said, “Perfect in every way. Good at everything you set out to do. Always the apple of some man’s eye. I can see you’d want to understand how it feels to be good for nothing and have someone oh-too-happy to prove it for you.”

“You can’t say you killed him because of...Chi na, what did you do?

Why did you do it?”

“Fifty dollars,” she said flatly. “That and a surfboard. Think about it, Deborah. Fifty dollars and a banged-up surfboard.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“I’m talking about what he paid. The price tag. He thought it would be only once. They both thought that. But I was good—a whole lot better than he expected and a whole lot better than I expected—so he came back for more. The original plan was just to get his cherry taken care of, and my brother assured him that I’d go for it if he treated me right and acted like a real nice guy, if he pretended he wasn’t interested in that. So that’s what he did and that’s what I did. Only it went on for thirteen years. Which, when you think of it, is pretty much a bargain since he shelled out only fifty dollars and a surfboard to my own brother. To my own brother. ” The torchlight trembled, but she steadied it and forced out a laugh. “Imagine. One person thinking it’s love eternal and the other showing up for the best f*ck he’s ever going to have while all the time—all the time, Deborah—there’s an attorney in LA and a gallery owner in New York and a surgeon in Chicago and God knows who else in the rest of the country but none of them—are you getting this, Deborah—can f*ck him like I do, which is why he keeps coming back for more. And I’m so stupid as to think that in a matter of time, we’ll finally be together because it’s so good, my God it’s so good and he’s got to see that, right? And he does, he does, but there’re others and there have always been others which is what he finally tells me when I confront him after my God damn brother admits he sold me to his best friend for fifty dollars and a surfboard when I was seventeen years old.”

Deborah didn’t move and hardly dared to breathe, knowing that to do either might be the one false move that encouraged her friend to leap over the edge she was balanced on. She said the only thing she believed. “That can’t be true.”

“Which part?” China asked. “The part about you, or the part about me? Because I can tell you, the part about me is fact-o amaze-o. So you must be talking about the part about you. You must be saying your life hasn’t just clicked along, day one to day one hundred f*cking thousand, and all of it going according to plan.”

“Of course it hasn’t. It doesn’t. No one’s does.”

“Dad who adores you. Rich boyfriend willing to do anything for you. Follow up with equally well-heeled husband. Everything you ever want. Not a worry in the world. Oh you go through a bad time when you come to Santa Barbara but it all works out and isn’t that always the case with you. Everything always works out.”

“China, nothing’s that easy for anyone. You know that.”

It was as if Deborah hadn’t spoken. “And you just fade away. Like everyone else. As if I haven’t put my heart and soul into being your friend when you needed a friend. You end up like Matt, don’t you. You end up just like everyone. You take what you want and you forget what you owe.”