Things We Do in the Dark(94)
“She doesn’t get along with her father,” Ruby told her. “That’s what happens when you spoil kids rotten.”
Being spoiled didn’t sound so bad to Joey. Lexi Baxter had more stuff than Joey could have ever imagined one girl having. There was a stereo, a CD collection, a small TV. She had an entire wall of bookshelves that didn’t contain a single book, and were instead filled with trophies, plaques, ribbons, and medals. 1990 Skate Canada International, second place. 1986 Autumn Classic International, third place. 1987 US International Figure Skating Classic, seventh place. Lexi Baxter had been a competitive figure skater, and if these trophies were any indication, a pretty good one.
Joey trailed her fingers along the bed as she headed toward Lexi’s closet, which was so big it needed its own lighting. Picking through the clothes, she saw that everything was brand name. Benetton. Polo. Tommy Hilfiger. Ralph Lauren. Clean-cut preppy designer clothing, for the girl who had everything.
And on display, right in the middle, hung Lexi’s ice skates. Charles’s daughter owned three pairs, two white and one beige, in various states of wear. Joey picked up one of the white ones and slid off the skate guard. The blade was extremely thin at the edge, sharpened almost to a V. Joey recalled what one of the commentators had said during the Albertville Winter Olympics, when the women’s free skate event was on.
The better a skater you were, the sharper the blade would be.
She put the skate back as she found it and went to check out the photos. All around the room—on the pin board, on the headboard, taped to the dresser mirror—were pictures of Lexi, blond and trim, at all different stages of her life. Half the photos showed her skating, and the other half showed her with family and friends. Lexi was popular. And she was close to her mom and brother, it seemed. There were lots of pictures of the three of them, smiling, laughing, doing things together. She looked like her mother, but she had her father’s eyes.
What would it be like to be Lexi Baxter? Lexi had a mother who loved her, and a father who provided for her. She had a brother to play with or fight with, depending on the day. She had friends. Skating. University. No worries about money. Lexi had been born into a dream life. She had won the family lottery.
It was so unfair.
Joey left Lexi’s room and made her way down the hall to the guest bedroom, which was beautifully decorated and completely impersonal. She found a toothbrush in the ensuite bathroom like Charles said she would—even the Baxters’ guests had a better life than she and Ruby did. She could understand why her mother would want to live here and be Charles’s wife. Under any other circumstances, Joey might have wanted to be Charles’s stepdaughter.
Except there was already one monster in the family.
She left Charles’s T-shirt in the bathroom, climbed into bed, and, still wearing all her own clothes, fell asleep.
* * *
The courtroom was so quiet that Joey could hear the rumbling of the bailiff’s stomach from six feet away.
“Did you stay asleep the entire night?” Duffy asked.
“No. I woke up when I heard a noise.”
“What time was that?”
“A little after one, maybe.”
“Walk us through what you did then.”
“I sat up,” Joey said. “The room was dark, so I turned a lamp on because I was a bit freaked out. And then I realized my mom and Charles were arguing. It went on for a little while, maybe ten minutes. And then my mom came into the guest room. She was upset.”
Joey paused, as Duffy had coached her to do. She had specific instructions to not rush this part. She counted to two, and then continued.
“She was holding a knife, the same one I saw Charles use to cut up the cheese from before. It was covered in blood. And so was she.”
She took a breath and held it. It felt like everyone in the courtroom was doing the same.
“What did your mother say to you?” Duffy prompted, just as they’d rehearsed.
“She said, ‘You have to help me. I killed him. Charles is dead.’”
There was a rustling in the courtroom. It came from the jury box, and Joey glanced over to see that most of the jurors were looking at Ruby. But there was one member who was still looking at Joey, and it was the same woman who’d smiled at her when she was first brought in. The woman wasn’t smiling now. Her face was full of sympathy, her eyes sad and moist.
“What happened then?” Duffy asked.
“She was hysterical and panicking. She wanted to leave. I told her we should stay and call the police, say it was accident, that she didn’t mean to hurt him. She said she didn’t want anyone to know what she had done. She said if we left right away, they might think someone broke in, like a robber or something. She kept pulling my arm, but I told her that if she didn’t want to call 911, then we had to make sure she wasn’t leaving anything behind. I mean, I know the police can check for fingerprints and all that, but I also knew my mom had been to his house at least a few times before. We just had to make sure nobody knew she had been there that night.”
Joey took another breath.
“I found a garbage bag under the bathroom sink. I told her to drop the knife in and said she should take off her dress and put that in the bag, too. She put on Charles’s old T-shirt, and I found a pair of sweatpants in one of Lexi’s drawers. And then I told her to go out the back entrance and get the car.”