In the living room, Bev has kicked off her shoes, leaving them abandoned on the tufted turquoise carpet. Margot is fanning herself dramatically with theTV Guide.
“So, what the hell’s going on, Margot?” Bev asks as Elsie sets the jug down.
Margot bites her lip, widens her eyes, always one to drag out the drama. “I think we might have another victim,” she says, eyes ricocheting between them.
“What?”
“It could be another murder!”
“Oh God.”
“I was at a party last night.” Margot’s words streak along. “Someone told me a model had gone missing from Golden Point. Diane Howard Murray—that’s her name.”
Elsie reaches for her notebook, pulls a pen from the ring binding at the top. “A model? Did you get any other details? How old?”
“Well, the girl who told me wasn’t really sure,” says Margot, “but she thinks early twenties. So she could fit, right? With the other two women, Cheryl Herrera and this Emily Roswell you told us about, Bev.”
“Hmm.” Bev ponders. “If we don’t know any details about the crime, or if there evenhasbeen a crime, it’s hard. Where’s Golden Point?” She reaches behind her for something and eventually pulls open a map, then spreads it across her knees.
“Golden Point…Golden Point,” she murmurs, before locating it with a finger. “It’s quite far away from the other crime scenes.”
“Apparently she worked in Calabasas a lot,” Margot offers.
Beverley’s finger hovers above the map. Elsie can see she has already ringed the locations of the two other murders in red ink. Eventually Beverley taps it.
“Calabasas. That would make more sense. Look.” She turns the map, holds it up and indicates three different spots. “That would be three locations, each less than an hour from Berryview, each accessed”—she runs a finger horizontally—“via the interstate, here.”
“And where are we? Where’s Berryview?” Elsie asks.
Beverley leans across the map and taps a central point.
“Right there, in the middle of it all.”
“Bingo!” Margot yelps. “That’s three bodies in, what—just over three and a half weeks?” She is enjoying this a bit too much for Elsie’s liking.
They often butted heads, Margot and Elsie—not because Elsie disagreed with Margot about what she wore, or about the men she slept with, or about the way she was so comfortable with her body that it scared Elsie a little, but because Elsie thought Margot was dramaticand Margot thought Elsie was uptight. If anyone asked Margot about her husband—and they did; his case had been in the papers for months when everything happened—she batted it away with a joke.Now, why would I want to talk about a sad little guy like that?But people couldn’t get enough of the story, a killer politician shopped to the police by his young, glamorous wife. Margot took up a lot of the news coverage. Pictures of her in tight skirts and claret lipstick splashed across the front pages. While Elsie was used to a quiet existence—James Joyce and drab roast beef sandwiches in Saran Wrap on a Monday—Margot lived her life like a comet. She was a woman who knew important people at Warner Brothers, who had been hit on by Elvis. The newspapers called Margot a “free spirit” when they reported on Stephen’s crimes—their way of sayinga woman who likes a drink, Elsie supposes. And it was as if Margot saw people’s perceptions of her as a challenge, a reason to jut out her chin and dig in her heels. Elsie knows that, underneath it all, Margot is as damaged by what her husband did as she and Beverley are by the acts of theirs. She knows that Margot sleeps around because she won’t allow herself to forge any sort of deeper connection with anyone, will never trust another man. But the fact that Margot won’t accept that, won’t let it show, even for just a second, seems to Elsie like betrayal.
“That’s three girls, all very beautiful. Bit of a cliché, but whatever,” Margot says. “Cheryl Herrera was a track athlete. Emily Roswell, pulled from the lake, was a cheerleader. And this Diane is a model. All killed by some freak who leaves weird calling cards on his victims?”
“ ‘Calling cards’?” Elsie asks, confused. As far as she knows, Albert didn’t leave anything at his crime scenes except bodies.
“The arrow, the tattooed knuckles. This can’t be some guy going crazy with a knife or a rope. It’s too intentional. He’s doing these things as a taunt, a way of saying something. What if this next murder—”
“We don’t know that yet, Margot,” Beverley interjects, always ready to add a layer of calmness. “We don’t know there’s been another murder. Diane might have just skipped town.”
Elsie nods. They are getting carried away. They need to be careful. She knows what desperation does, how it twists the brain into locating causalities.
“Do you really believe that?” Margot asks Bev. “You think she’s just on vacation?”
Beverley’s reply is cut off by the sound of the six o’clock news on the television. Their heads turn in unison as the mustachioed figure of Tom Cornwell, grasping the sides of a lectern emblazoned with the LAPD logo, fills the screen.
“I’d like to thank the press for cooperating with us in our investigation into the murder of Cheryl Herrera.” He doesn’t smile, his eyes fixed firmly on his notes.
“Well, look who it is,” Margot drawls. “Mr. Charisma.”
“We’d like to talk to anyone from the Mexican community who might know anything about Cheryl or who might have links to prolific street gang the Kings.”
“Oh, he’s really going for it?” Margot cries. “Straight in on the Kings?”
