Apparently, only a few people had shown up for Kate Gustafson’s funeral. Even her mother hadn’t gone, although maybe she was too heartbroken to watch her only child being put in the ground. Kate and Caroline were seven years apart in age, but had had a lot in common. They were pretty, smart, and from single-parent homes where there was never enough supervision.
Kate had always wanted to be on the stage, ever since her first beauty pageant at age six. She hadn’t won, but she’d stayed on the local pageant circuit until her late teens, when being named Miss Atwell Air Filter was about as much fun as being named Miss Jiffy Lube. Some people just didn’t respect the beauty pageant community. To hell with them. The Atwell prize paid for six months of tuition and they couldn’t laugh at that. In contrast to what her lawyer tried to claim at the trial, she did well in school and finished college in three and a half years because she had calculated exactly when her financial aid would run out.
Originally, she had hoped to be a teacher, but there were no jobs available since residents were leaving Newtonville and insisted on taking their kids with them. One of the public schools had even shut down and the overflow of teachers were subbing and waiting for their colleagues to either retire or die.
Kate had had a succession of part-time jobs including tending bar. She was reading the obituaries, looking for job openings one night when Eddie Donnelly came in.
She went back to bartending after her release and was found dead in the bar’s basement after a fire caused by faulty, nonlicensed wiring on a neon sign. Arson investigators were suspicious but found nothing.
“Kate was a good person,” Caroline said. “People thought it was odd that we became friends, but she was like an older sister to me. There was no jealousy over Eddie. We were all friends.”
Friends who were all criminals, or two friends who set up the third one? Caroline knew what I was thinking.
“You don’t understand. Kate tried to protect me.” Caroline fiddled with her tissues and looked longingly at the bottle on the table. Clearly she was deciding how much to tell me and I wondered how much more there was to tell.
“Three months into my freshman year, I sensed something was going on. I didn’t know what it was. I thought Kate had started seeing Eddie again. There had been a lot of big parties after the games. Sometimes they’d get lost in the crowd and leave me to fend for myself. We weren’t the Three Musketeers anymore, the way it had been the previous year. I confronted her and she denied it, but I knew they were hiding something.”
One night, Caroline overheard the two of them arguing. Kate said she was tired of sneaking around and hiding things from Caroline and the coach. That confirmed Caroline’s worst suspicions. Her mother was gone, she had no other female friends to confide in; by then Kate and Eddie had become her surrogate family. She was devastated.
“I went to Kate again. This time she swore to me that she and Eddie had no romantic connections anymore. She even laughed at the suggestion. She told me they were working for someone, and the less I knew the better.”
Kate had told her once football season ended, she was getting out and would make sure that Caroline was no longer involved either, but for the time being she should just keep going to classes and to the games and try not to think about it. That’s what she did until the day Kate and Eddie were arrested. Hours later, Caroline was arrested, too.
“I thought it might have to do with betting on the games. I wasn’t much of a football fan, but there were a few games we lost that everyone thought we should have won. Kate would never do anything to hurt me.”
“She would never do anything to hurt you? And you know that how?”
Caroline reached for the vodka and this time I let her. She poured us each a stiff one. I took a tiny sip and stared out at the woods through the shade, wondering what to do next.
“Let me ask you something else,” I said. “Do you get a lot of deer around here?”
“No. The reservoir and the dirt road are privately owned by a water company. They use some sort of organic deer repellent. I don’t know what kind. I had to sign an approval form, but it was so long ago I don’t remember what it was. Why?”
Now my eyes were glued to the shades. “Because if you don’t have a deer problem, there’s another large mammal prowling around outside that just ducked into those hemlocks.”