Golden in Death(77)

“It is.” And now she showed Eve a damn good poker face.

“You were a teenager, true, but previous bad acts often get unearthed and used, politically.”

“Tell me about it. I told Merritt the works when we got serious. And we sat down with his parents. Patience is a great woman, and she’ll be an amazing president if she chooses to run. She knows it all, or all I could remember. She said she saw me as a case study in early redemption. That’s who she is. I turned my life around. I’ll hate if what I did at fifteen, sixteen, seventeen hurts Merritt or Patience in any way. But I turned it around. I can’t change what I did, only what I do.”

“Do you remember Marshall Cosner?”

“Marsh?” On an exhale, Kendel shook her head. “Now, that’s a ghost from the past. He was one of our gang—because a gang’s what we were for a while. He got pulled out—or kicked out, I can’t remember. I might not have known which. If I was a shaky student, Marsh was worse.”

She smiled when she said it. “He was fun—the kind of fun I was looking for back then. Always good for a laugh. And a score. He could always come up with illegals, booze, an empty house to play in. What did we call him?” She closed her eyes a minute. “The Facilitator. God, we thought we were so clever.”

“When’s the last time you saw him, spoke to him?”

“Years. Ah, I remember a party at his place—his parents were out of town—right after Dr. Rufty came on as headmaster. We were all celebrating, all planning how we were going to slay him and his idiot rules. All drunk or stoned,” she added. “I’m not sure I saw him after that. I must have, but I know it wasn’t more than a couple days after the party, he was gone. That was right before my parents came in to talk to Rufty after I got suspended.”

“Stephen Whitt.”

“Steve? God, God, sexy Steve, another ghost. He was my guy back then. I was madly in love with him, the way you are in high school. He got pulled, too—maybe the same day as Marsh. I think it might’ve been. Before the hammer came down on me, we talked about taking off together. He would come into some of his trust fund when he turned eighteen, and he was nearly there. We’d just blow.”

She closed her eyes. “So careless. So thoughtless, both of us. I might’ve done it, too, just run off with him, because teenage love, and it sounded exciting. But he got shipped off—I think to some school down south. I’m not sure. Everything was jumbled because, you know, my life was simply over. And I couldn’t reach him because no ’link, no communications. I pined for a few weeks. And that was that.”

“So you haven’t communicated with him, either?”

“Not since the hammer dropped. Well—God, I’d forgotten—he tried to reach me once. Right after it all came down. Tagged a mutual friend, wanted me to use her ’link to talk, to make plans for that taking off.”

“And?”

“I had to decide, then and there. If I got caught, boarding school. I wanted to talk to him, but … I told the friend—I can’t remember her name—to tell him I couldn’t. He called me—according to the friend … Annie, Allie? Doesn’t matter.”

She waved it away, took a sip of lemonade. Breathed out. “He called me a stupid, spineless cunt. Steve had a temper when denied. I cried myself to sleep over that.”

“Did he ever contact you again?”

“Once Steve wrote you off, you were off. The end.” She took a cookie, smiled a little before she nibbled at it. “Those days are long over, you know? For all of us. I mean, any of the people I hung with back then could’ve contacted me in the last few years. But none of them have.”

“And you haven’t contacted or tried to contact any of them.”

“No. I put that whole era, you could say, behind me. I’m sure as hell not interested in a reunion. I’m going to get married in the fall to a man I love, a really good man. My parents are proud of me. I’m proud of myself. Why go back there?”

Eve tried a few more names, prodding at Kendel’s memory. Some she remembered, some she didn’t, or not well enough to add anything.

“We appreciate your time, Ms. Hayward, and your candor.”

“Lie, and you have to keep lying. I’m living proof that you’ll eventually get caught, and the lies make it worse. We were bad kids, Lieutenant Dallas, but we were kids. I honestly can’t think of anyone who’d do something like this, not even back then when we looked for trouble. I don’t know anyone who’d commit murder over something from high school.”

I think you do, Eve mused as Kendel walked them back to the car. You just don’t realize it.



* * *



Eve took a big gulp of New York after the shuttle landed. Once behind the wheel in a city that made sense, everything smoothed out.

“Let’s jump into the big, fancy nest of lawyers,” she decided, “and talk to Marshall Cosner.”

“He sounds like he’s still kind of a dick,” Peabody commented as she programmed the address. “Hayward seems like she’s gotten her life together, professionally, personally. But all the reports on Cosner point to him still cruising on his family name and money.”

“Cruising isn’t a motive for murder. Neither is being a dick,” Eve added as she enthusiastically joined the traffic wars. “But you add those to possible continued illegals use, a simmering grudge over being yanked away from his gang of friends, a failure to reach family expectations, and maybe.”