The applause is deafening. She can see, among a celestial burst of brightness, the whites of their watching eyes. Somehow, she steps toward the microphone at the center of the stage. As she nears it, she reaches out for it. The seams of her dress are digging in at the base of her neck. The bow is too tight. She pictures neat, red indentations in her skin.
She’d wanted to help—that’s all—to try to stop there being more victims. That is why she had said yes. That is why she is here. But she is finding it almost impossible to remember how to speak.
Someone clears their throat.
She gulps. “Good evening.” The microphone shrieks. She recoils, glances to the side of the stage and sees Cornwell watching her intently.
She steps to the microphone again, not too close this time. Lowering her eyelids against the light, she takes a deep, audible breath.
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Beverley…Lightfoot. I was the wife of Henry James Lightfoot, who, between 1957 and 1961, killed seven women in the Bay Area of California. This is my story.”
—
The applause isa roar as she leaves the stage. She is not quite sure how she has done it, but she has, and were she not so numb from the effort, she might consider that it has gone well.
Cornwell nods reluctantly as she moves past. Then he turns his head as an officer calls out from the bottom of the steps.
“We’re headed back to the precinct, Chief,” the man says, eyes lingering on the lipstick stain on Beverley’s dress. “There’s been an incident.” He assesses her as if weighing whether she should hear what he is about to say. “We’ve got a body. You’re not going to want to miss this one. It’s…unusual.”
Three
“Have you triedbleach?” Margot calls from her reclined position atop a pool float. Her head is pounding, the sun casting bright cobweb patterns through her eyelids. She flops an arm to the side and allows her fingers to graze the water’s cool surface, quivering blue and gold. She really shouldn’t have drunk so much last night, but she didn’t know that Tony Curtis would show, and he’s always a devil with the Gibsons.
She paddles her way to the ladder, pulls herself out of the water and stands for a while, allowing the day’s molten heat to dry her limbs. By her toes, a tiny salamander idles, licks its eye. The air is replete with heat-woozy honeysuckle and a chemical whiff of chlorine. The kitchen doors have been pulled wide, and the tinny sounds of the Beatles leak out from the radio. “Paperback Writer.” She hates that cutesy song. She wraps a towel around her waist, sits, wonders if someone might fetch her some Tylenol if she looks pathetic enough.
“She’s right,” says Elsie. “Lipstick should shift with bleach. Just soak it, hang it on the line. It’ll dry in no time.”
“Kids, stay where I can see you!” Beverley hollers suddenly. Margot’s head snaps up with a crick. Benjamin and Audrey, who have been chasing each other relentlessly around the lawn, freeze and nod dumbly at their mother. “Ireallydon’t think I should be airing my dirty laundry for the neighbors.” Bev turns back to them, adjusting the straps of her polka-dot one-piece. “It’s not a good look for me.”
“Honey, I’d be more worried about that creep at number forty-four ogling your underwear.” Margot pulls a copy of theLA Timesfrom her purse and rests her sunglasses on the top of her head.
“That’s not nice.” Elsie’s British accent barbs the admonishment. “We don’t judge people like that.”
“We do if they are creeps,” Margot replies, overly loudly, turning the pages of the newspaper. “That’s when we do judge, Elsie.”
Margot glances at Beverley, hoping for a laugh, but her friend seems distracted, probably thinking about what happened at the gala last night. She was so nervous in the run-up to it. In fact, Bev’s been nervous about everything of late. She wasn’t jittery like this when they met, four years ago. When Margot first laid eyes on Beverley, she’d felt a stab of jealousy. Bev was younger than her, but that wasn’t really the issue. She was also beautiful, with that maddening sort of beauty that just seems to happen. Beverley didn’t even need to try. Her whole family looked like something from the pages ofLadies’ Home Journal; it was all too easy to picture them gathered at a bowling alley or slurping through straws at a malt shop. Margot worked hard on her own appearance—getting her hair set, wearing makeup, investing in the expensive face creams she’d heard Liz Taylor used. It was a cultivation, a tending to a garden that could so very easily turn. Bev had baggage, sure, and it extended way beyond the fact that her husband was a killer. Margot had clocked it a mile off: daddy issues, the need for a man to control her. That was why, Margot knew, Bev was most rattledby her husband’s being put behind bars. Never mind what he did to that girl with a fire poker. There was now no one left to tell her what to do.
When Margot and Elsie arrived at her house a couple of hours ago, Bev had told them that things had wound down early at the gala; a bunch of officers had been called back to their precinct because a body had been discovered nearby.
Margot should ask more questions, but she’s keen not to dwell on corpses today—not with this hangover.
“Jesus, I’m melting.” She pours more mint julep from the jug, pokes at it with the swizzle stick and then downs it in three open-throated gulps. She glances at Bev again, sighs.
“You still thinking about last night?” She’ll indulge her. “It sounds like you did a great job.”
“I should never have done it.” Bev shakes her head, lips tight. “All that attention. All that gossip. The neighbors have all been talking about it, about us—I know it.”
“Well, if we did what everyone thought we should do, Bev, we’d be spending the rest of our days prostrate in church.”
Margot has never felt guilty about what her husband did. What was guilt but a useless artifact from the past? She reaches for the cocktail jug and pours herself another large measure. “I will not go gentle into that good night!” she cries as she pours.
The radio announcer signals the lunchtime news bulletin, and Margot notices Beverley shift to hear it better.
“And screw the neighbors. Who cares if people gossip?” Margot continues over the headlines. “I’ve got nothing to hide.”
“Do they know who we are?” Elsie asks, pulling her shawl around her shoulders. “The neighbors?”
“They probably think we’re some sort offabulousdivorcées club.” Margot reaches for the sun lotion and squirts it across her chest.
