CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE

Dolores lolled beneath the sheets for a moment or two before she realized that the bed was empty. Vinnie must have left for work hours ago.

She stretched and rolled over to look at the clock. It was almost three-thirty in the afternoon. She’d spent most of the day in bed, alternating between sleeping and weeping. She knew she had to get herself together, but it was so damned hard. Besides, it hadn’t even been a full week since the murder. She missed Connie terribly. Every time she thought about never seeing her friend again, Dolores burst into tears.

She swung her legs over the side of the bed as soon as she felt her eyes begin to well up again. She knew Vinnie was getting tired of her weeping and moping, but jeez, she and Connie went way back. Back to the days when they were both newly divorced and working for that scumbag Richard who owned that shop down on Adams. Man, he had been one mean son of a bitch.

She shook her head, remembering. She and Connie had bonded over their bad hours and bad pay, and had become real close. Together they’d left Richard and gone with another shop, where they both did better, but still not well enough.

“Dee, we need our own place,” Connie would say. “If you save, and I save, and we get enough socked away, we can get a loan to cover the rest of what we’ll need to start our own business. All we need is the right place to come along at the right time. We gotta start now to save for it, so we’ll be ready.”

And eventually the right place did come along, and thanks to Connie’s goading, they were ready. The Cut N Curl had been well established before either of the two women had moved to Carleton. While its clientele was aging, the facilities were still solid and the location was good. The fact that zoning had just given the green light to a new apartment village to be built right across the road had been the deciding factor. They’d inherit the clients from the retiring owner and would be conveniently located to attract the hip young singles targeted by the apartment complex.

“Opportunity is knocking loud and clear, Dolores,” Connie had told her over Chinese takeout in her apartment after they’d gone to see the shop for the first time. “We gonna open up that door and let ’er in or not?”

“We’ll do it!” Dolores had boldly thrown in with Connie and the two of them made an offer on the Cut N Curl the next morning.

It had been a hectic nine months, but they were doing just fine. Business was booming even before the apartments were completed.

“You believe how lucky we are?” Connie had said to Dee just the week before. “I mean, are we lucky or what?”

Yeah, Connie. Real lucky . . .

Dolores wandered downstairs, thinking that while Connie’s luck may have run out, hers was holding strong. After all, she did have Vinnie to hold on to, Vinnie to help her through these dark days and nights. She couldn’t even begin to think of how she would have made it without him.

She went into the kitchen, still in her nightgown, wondering what to do with her day. She still wasn’t ready to face going into the shop. She went to the front door and looked out and saw the morning newspaper still out on the lawn.

Kid can never seem to get it past the first few squares of walkway. What is it with him?

She opened the door to go out for the paper, but a chilly gust of wind pulled her back. She grabbed the first thing she could find to wrap around her, the sport jacket that Vinnie had worn earlier in the week and had left over the back of the chair nearest the front door.

She slipped into the jacket and pulled it snug around her and walked outside. The sun was brighter than she’d expected, and she squinted as her bare feet crunched through the dry leaves that were already falling from the oak on her neighbor’s lawn. She picked up the newspaper and tucked it under her arm, remembering how Connie had loved the change of the seasons.

And Halloween. Damn, how Connie loved Halloween. Every year they’d worked together, Connie would make up little goodie bags and bring them into the shop for the customers.

She jammed her hands into the pockets of the jacket as she turned back toward the house. The fingers of her right hand felt something in the lining, something small and round. Almost without thinking, she explored the tiny hole in the bottom of the pocket. She worked the object out of the hole, taking it out as she walked up the steps. She looked down at her hand and blinked several times, certain she was not seeing what she was seeing.

Connie’s ring. There was no mistaking it.

With trembling hands she turned it toward the light, her eyes searching the inside of the ring. There it was. CNP. Connie Noelle Paschall.

But how could Connie’s ring have gotten into—

Her legs began to shake and went out from under her as she sat down on the top step.

Connie’s ring.

Connie’s ring in Vinnie’s jacket.

The chief of police had said that it was likely that whoever had killed Connie had taken her ring as a souvenir.

Dolores’s mind raced back to the night Connie was killed, remembering how Vinnie had disappeared for ten or fifteen minutes and came back in a sweat that she’d excused as the result of the mussels.

It wasn’t possible. Not Vinnie. Oh, not Vinnie.

Oh, please, God, not Vinnie . . .

Turning the ring over and over in her hand, she pulled herself up by the stair rail and went back into the house in a daze. She dropped the jacket onto the chair where she’d found it and went upstairs to change. Connie’s ring on her finger, she pulled on a sweatshirt and a pair of jeans. When she could locate only one sneaker, she slipped on a pair of orange rubber flip-flops and grabbed her purse. Back downstairs, she paused at the chair where she’d draped Vinnie’s jacket. Should she return the ring to the pocket or not?

She left it on her finger and tore out the back door, needing to be gone. Needing to find a place away from here where she could think. Without planning on it, she found herself parked behind the Cut N Curl.

Yellow crime scene tape still floated from the back door, and the light just inside still burned. Dolores unlocked the back door and stepped into the quiet of the shop.

There was the smallest spot of red-brown on the floor inside the outline that marked where Connie’s body had lain. Dolores stood staring at it, unable to look away, rubbing the ring between her fingers as if trying to conjure up her lost friend. When her fingers were all but raw, she went to the receptionist desk and sat down, staring into space.

She spun around and around in the chair mindlessly, trying not to think. Trying to push it all away. Trying to pretend that it was all a bad dream. On one of her spins around she saw a newspaper folded up on the shelf near the hair care products, where Connie must have left it. Funny place to leave the paper . . .

Dolores got up and went to the display and pulled the paper out from between the rows of hair spray and gel and conditioners and took it back to the desk. She opened the paper and spread it out flat, skimmed the stories on the page.

In the lower left corner was a drawing of a necklace that looked an awful lot like hers. She sat down and read the accompanying article.

Stunned, she put a hand on her chest. Her heart was pounding so badly she thought she was going to pass out.

Taking the paper, she grabbed her purse and left the shop.

As she locked the back doors, she could see their faces in her mind’s eye.

Connie, her best friend.

Vinnie, her lover.

How could it be that one might have murdered the other?

And just what was she going to do about it?

Dolores drove around the block three times before pulling into her driveway, just to make sure that Vinnie’s car was not parked out back or along the side yard. Convinced that he was not there, she parked as close to the back door as she could. Once inside, she ran up the steps to her room, threw open the closet door, and pulled out the suitcase. She tried not to pack haphazardly, but the thought that he might come through that door any minute now had her totally unnerved. The hell with it. She’d take just a few things, her jewelry, one pair of shoes, some underwear, and the box containing the pendant. She snapped the lid closed and dragged it down the steps and out the door. She opened the trunk and slid it inside, then went back into the house.

“Cujo?” she called as she ran down the basement steps, looking for the cat carrier.

Hearing his name, Cujo sauntered out from under the dining room table and rubbed up against her legs.

“No time, sugar,” she whispered as if afraid to be overheard.

She picked up the cat, tucked him inside the crate and lugged it outside, where she slid it across the backseat. One more thing, and she’d be gone. Cat food, cat dish, cat toys, cat treats, all into a grocery bag.

“What the hell am I doing?” She laughed nervously. “Packing more for the cat than I did for myself . . .”

Back out to the car with the cat bag.

What else? she demanded of herself. What else . . . ?

Nothing else. You’re fine. Leave. Get out of here.

She dug in her pocket for her keys, then realized she’d left them and her purse on the dining room table. She ran, tripping up the steps and over her own two feet.

Calm down, she laughed crazily. Calm down. Done. It’s done. Just go.

Go . . .

She got her balance and went into the dining room. She had just swung her purse over her shoulder when she heard the back door close. She froze where she stood.

“Dolores?” Vinnie called from the kitchen. “Dee? You there?”

“In the dining room.” She ran her dry tongue over her suddenly dry lips.

“Hey, you’re up, you’re dressed. You must be feeling a little better today.” He dropped his keys into a dish on the sideboard, a habit he’d developed the first night he’d spent there.

“A little.” She nodded her head. “Like you said, I have to move on.”

He drew her into his arms, and it was all she could do not to scream when he kissed her. And she knew right then that if she was going to walk out of this house alive, Dolores Marie Muldowny Hall was going to have to pull off an Academy Award winning performance.

“Say, you going someplace?” he asked as he nuzzled her neck.

“I was going to pick up Chinese for dinner from that place you like over on Fourth Street.”

“You order me the Three Phoenix?”

“Just like you like it.” She nodded, molding her mouth into a smile. “Extra scallops.”

I can do this. I can do this. . . .

“You call the order in?”

“Ten minutes ago. I figured I’d have enough time to get down there and back before you got home. I know you like surprises. I didn’t think you’d be home this soon.”

“I closed up a little early today. I was worried about you.” He kissed her mouth, and she held her breath and hoped he didn’t notice.

“Why don’t you run upstairs and take a nice hot shower while I pick up dinner? And maybe after dinner, we can go out for a while. Maybe to the Dew, or someplace.” She backed away from him slowly, trying to make it appear natural, not giving any sign, however small, of the revulsion she felt. She picked up her keys and headed for the door. It took every ounce of her willpower to not run.

“That’s my girl. Gotta get back into the world again. Can’t keep yourself locked up and crying for the rest of your life.” Vinnie gave her a pat on the behind as she walked past him.

But with luck, that’s where you’ll be. Locked up for the rest of your life. You betcha, Vinnie.

You bastard.

She held her breath as she walked out the back door and down the steps slowly, as if she had all the time in the world, just in case he was watching. She opened the car door and slid behind the wheel, then locked the doors. She put the key in the ignition and turned it, forcing herself not to turn frantically to look behind her. With nonchalance and total cool, she put the car into reverse and backed leisurely out of the driveway, somehow resisting the urge to floor it.

“Yup,” she said aloud as she rubbed the ring in her pocket between her fingers. “Locked up for the rest of your natural life. And me and Connie are gonna put you there.”