Skeleton Key(114)

“Maybe they wouldn’t let me leave,” Annabel said. “Maybe I’m a suspect.”

“Oh, surely not, sweetie. You couldn’t be a suspect. What an absurd idea. Nobody would think that for a minute.”

“That Mr. Demarkian thought it.”

“What?”

“Mr. Demarkian. The detective. He thinks I’m a suspect. I talked to him today. I don’t see how you can blame him. I was Kayla’s friend. I was right there where Margaret Anson was—was—” Annabel took a deep breath. “Dead,” she finished.

“I don’t see what your being Kayla’s friend has to do with it. And as for Margaret Anson, well, let’s face it. If that Mr. Demarkian is making a list of people who hated her enough to kill her, it would look like the Manhattan phone directory.”

“I want a cup of tea,” Annabel said.

What Annabel really wanted was a cup of tea with another shot of that Johnny Walker Black in it, but she wasn’t going to ask for it. For all her fake IDs and raids on bars for St. Pauli Girl Light, she really neither liked nor approved of alcohol. She didn’t really like the way people got when they drank, and she especially didn’t like the way so many of the people she knew seemed to be unable to go a day without drinking. Even people her own age. There had been girls at boarding school who had kept flasks in their underwear, so that they’d be able to take nips off them every once in a while during the day. Annabel knew everything there was to know about buying liquor in secret in small towns near fancy schools, about getting the liquor back into the dorm without being seen, about drinking without getting caught at drinking. It came with the territory.

Jennifer came bustling over with a cup of tea. Annabel hadn’t even heard the kettle whistle.

“Listen,” Jennifer said. “Even if they do have to think of you as a suspect, because police procedure is police procedure, you know. I understand how it is. Even if they have to do that, you could still come in and spend the fall in the city with me. You could go shopping. You could go to the theater. There would be something for you to do there. Unlike here. Where you’re stuck. So to speak.”

“I wanted to call Tommy about the car,” Annabel said.

“The car?”

“The night Kayla died. I was out with Tommy Haggerty. He got drunk as a skunk and I left him in the bar and drove his car back here so that I could get home. It was parked in our driveway all that morning, Mother, for God’s sake. It was fire engine red.”

“Well,” Jennifer said, “as long as you don’t drive with anybody who’s drunk. That’s all I ask. Just stay sober yourself or have a designated driver.”

“Yes, I know. But the thing is, I don’t drive all that well in any case, and I clipped a mailbox. So the paint got scraped on the front near the headlights on the passenger’s side. And I’ve been wondering if I should offer to pay for the repairs, you know, or if the fact that he made a mess of himself and forced me to find my own way home should be enough in the way of payment. And I still don’t know what to do. But I’ve got to do it.”

“Now?”

“No,” Annabel said, feeling confused again. “No, I guess not. I don’t know. I was just thinking about it.”

“I think you’re in shock,” Jennifer said firmly. “You should put something serious in that tea. Enough honey to make it thick, that would work. Let me get you some honey.”

“I don’t like honey.”

“I know you like to watch your weight, Annabel, but this is no time for it, trust me. This is a time to take care of yourself. I wish I had some chocolate in the house.”

“What were you like, when you were my age?” Annabel asked. “Were you like you are now? Were you different?”

Jennifer stopped in the doorway. It was a dramatic pause, but it was in character. The rest of the Litchfield County ladies would pause like this, too. We look a lot alike, Annabel thought, and then wondered why she’d thought it. Most of the time she believed that she looked nothing like her mother at all.

“What an odd question,” Jennifer said. “Of course I must have been different. I was much younger then. Let me get you that honey.”

When people died, their faces froze in place. They stared into the future and saw nothing. You could see it in their eyes. Someday, her own eyes would stare into the future like that and it would all be over.

Annabel Crawford had a terrible, gnawing feeling that she ought to do something about this, now, that she ought to change herself in some way so that this wouldn’t happen. If she wasn’t careful, she would turn into her mother. If she wasn’t even more careful than that, she would end up dead. The need to act was so intense and so immediate, she nearly leapt to her feet and ran around the room. Then she thought that that was not what was wanted of her, that there was something else out there that was up to her and needed to be done.