Skeleton Key(58)

“Martin?” Henry called from inside the house.

Martin turned away from the sight of Jake Sturmer plodding through the thick underbrush at the start of the trees and went back into the house.





3


Out at the Swamp Tree Country Club, Annabel Crawford was sitting at a large round table near the bar, sipping neatly from what was supposed to be a Virgin Mary. A Virgin Mary was what the bartender had served her. She’d bloodied it up on her own with a couple of little airline bottles of vodka. On the other side of the room, at another table, Tommy Haggerty was sitting with a big groups of boys, ignoring her. He was still furious at her for taking the car and leaving him stranded at the Lucky Eight. By now, Annabel had come to the decision that everything that had happened had been his fault, and that she didn’t want to see him again anyway, never mind sleep with him. She could do much better if all she was looking for was somebody to sleep with. She could do much better just by standing up in the middle of this room and announcing that she wanted to get laid.

The bloodied Virgin Mary tasted raw. Annabel wished that everybody wasn’t so wrapped up in the press conference that was supposed to happen any minute now, that people could talk about anything—anything—that wasn’t the murder of Kayla Anson. She also wished that she were someplace else besides this table, anchored unmercifully to the low droning voice of Mallory Martindale. Annabel Crawford had never had any use for Mallory Martindale. Fat girls made her furious. They were only taking their neuroses out on themselves.

“… so you see,” Mallory was saying, “I’ve decided not to come out, and I’ve got that magnificent dress, the Carolina dress, that you were saying you liked so much. And of course she doesn’t do copies. So you couldn’t have it. But since I’m not coming out, I’m not going to need it. If you see what I mean.”

“Why aren’t you coming out?” Annabel asked. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I never wanted to come out,” Mallory said. “It was my mother’s idea. I’m going to nursing school. I just finally made her see reason.”

“I can’t imagine not coming out,” Annabel said. “You won’t get invited to any of the parties.”

Mallory Martindale was drinking a vanilla Coke. It looked thick and syrupy, even in the glass.

“I thought you might like to buy the dress,” she said. “The Carolina dress. You’d have to take it in. But you said you liked it. And it’s never been worn. And I’d charge a lot less for it than Carolina would if you got if from her.”

“I don’t really think you’ve got your mother’s permission to do this,” Annabel said. “I think you’re trying to put something over on her and then when the finds out all hell is going to break loose. And I’m in enough trouble already.”

“All right. I’ll ask Bronwyn Kidd. She liked it, too.”

Bronwyn Kidd was one of the Goody Girls, as Annabel thought of them. She had gone through four perfect years at Choate-Rosemary Hall and was now at Vassar, where she was intending to major in something esoteric and intellectual, like philosophy. Annabel’s mother was always pointing to Bronwyn Kidd and her two best friends whenever Annabel said that it really, really hadn’t been her fault that all the trouble had started.

“So,” Mallory Martindale said.

“Wait a minute.” Annabel got up and brought her glass back to the bar. The bartender made her another Virgin Mary and handed it over. Annabel came back to the table and took two more airline bottles of vodka out of her bag.

“Excuse me,” she said. “Right now, I have every intention of getting thoroughly drunk.”

“Is there a reason for that?”

“Yes,” Annabel said. “Because I want to.”

“They know you’re doing it, you know. Or at least, the bartender does. What are you going to do if he throws you out?”

“He won’t throw me out. He just won’t let me drive home. Which is beside the point anyway, since I don’t have a car. My mother will have to drive me home.”

“Won’t she be upset? At the drinking?”

“No more upset than she ever has been before. We were talking about the dress.”

Mallory Martindale looked down into her vanilla Coke and then looked up again. “Do you have any more of—whatever that is? What you’re drinking?”

“Vodka?”

“Whatever. Could I have some to put in my Coke?”

“I think it’s rum you usually put in Coke.”

“Do you have any rum?”