Ring of Truth (2 page)

“One inch. Like, just over the fence. Watch this.”

“Jenny, no!”

But Jenny was already scrambling over, and suddenly there she was on the other side, grinning at her friend. “See? I'm just standing here. Come on.”

Well, that looked possible to Nikki, as long as they didn't go further.

She followed Jenny over, more awkwardly, because she isn't as nimble and athletic as her buddy is, but still she made it to the other side. Quick as a snake, Jenny grabbed one of Nikki's wrists and started dragging her deeper into the property, with Nikki fighting and screaming all the way. But Jenny is by far the stronger of the two, and before Nikki could stop her, she had them both into the shadows, already out of sight of the highway.

“I hate you!” Nikki screamed at her best friend.

They were bleeding a bit from scratches from tree limbs, and Jenny was trying not to look too victorious.

“It's cool in here!”

Cool it was, at least with regard to the temperature. But a sunny glade beckoned a few steps beyond, and it looked safe and cheerful to Nikki, so of her own volition she ran into it. And suddenly, as happened often with the two friends, it really did begin to seem like a grand adventure to her. She hated to confess it, because she
hated
it when Jenny fooled her, and trapped her into something scary, but . . .

“It's pretty,” she admitted, looking up and around.

It didn't look so spooky in here, in this bit of sunshine.

They walked on, deeper, but only after Jenny
promised
she wouldn't make any sudden movements or the boogabooga sounds that Nikki hates. Jenny kept her promise pretty well, except for when she couldn't resist picking up a leaf and throwing it in Nikki's face and making her scream. Or faking a scream herself and shuffling the leaves at their feet, and yelling at the top of her lungs, “Oh, my god, it's an anaconda snake!”

Nikki screamed and screamed at that one.

Jenny could laugh pretty hard, herself.

When they finally settled down, some of the fear seemed to have seeped out of Nikki, after she had screamed bloody murder at the phantom snake. She quieted down enough to follow Jenny deeper along a path that opened up between the huge trees with their greenery hanging down like enormous spiderwebs. And her eyes opened as wide as Jenny's when they spied the great big house at the heart of the property.

It was two floors high, though a tower at one end made it three stories at that point. Like the houses that the girls lived in, it looked “Mediterranean,” complete with arched doorways and a red tile roof. But the similarity between this house and their own cozy little homes ended there. Where theirs were freshly painted in sunny colors, the paint on this one had chipped away and discolored so much that the whole house looked a dirty gray. On the roof, only a few concave orange tiles remained intact. All along the front of the porch, there were spiraling columns—Nikki counted six, out loud—that looked as if they were barely still attached to the porch ceiling. It was clearly in what Jenny's dad would call “falling-down condition.”

“Wow,” Jenny breathed. “Oh, wow.”

“It's beautiful,” Nikki said, and it was, in a creepy way.

“Let's see if we can get in!”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“We could fall through the floor.”

“We won't go upstairs.”

“There's probably glass, and snakes, and spiders.”

“You are
such
a wimp. How can you not want to go inside? I want to!”

“Then just go ahead. I'll wait outside. Okay? You go ahead.”

Jenny had a feeling that this time she couldn't talk her friend into it, and Nikki was being careful to stay out of her grasp. “Okay,” she said in a brave, strong voice. “Watch me.”

Nikki did. She watched Jenny stride up the wide front steps and cross the big porch toward where a front door used to be. Now there was only an open space. Inside, Nikki saw a huge winding stairway going to the second floor. When she looked up at the windows, she could see white fabric hanging down in shreds. She stared as Jenny stepped across the threshold and then disappeared from view. Then Nikki heard Jenny's voice call from inside, “Oh, Nikki, you have to see this! I bet a princess used to live here. It's so cool—”

Then Nikki could hear her, but couldn't understand the words.

And then she didn't hear Jenny saying anything.

Nikki waited. And waited. And her heart began to beat faster.

“Jenny?” she tried calling out, but her voice sounded weak. She took one tiny step forward, and whispered, “Jenny?”

What if there was a monster man inside and he had snatched Jenny and killed her? What if there was a crocodile that came up into the house and got her? What should she do? Run away and get help? Oh, she wanted to run away! More than anything she wanted to. But Jenny was still inside, and what if she was hurt and needed—

And then Nikki heard a sound from inside of the house. A little sound, thin and wobbly. It took her a breathless moment to realize it was Jenny.

Jenny was screaming, inside the house.

Nikki began to cry for real, but also to run toward the house. She didn't go in the terrible front door where her friend had vanished, but she ran around the side, toward where the sound of Jenny's voice was coming from. It was such a brave thing for her to do. If there were an award for children who do brave things for their friends in spite of the fact that they are scared to death, Nikki Modesto would surely win one. She spied a rickety lawn chair, and dragged it over to a window, scraping her shins, and sobbing.

She climbed up on it, hiccuping in terror.

Nikki put her trembling fingers on the dark, rotting wood of the windowsill.

She stared in, and she was so afraid of what she'd see.

But what she saw right away was that Jenny was okay, except she looked green as puke. But then Nikki saw there was somebody else there who wasn't fine. And there was a terrible smell. And there were flies. Nikki started to scream, too, and when Jenny saw her, she ran toward the window.

“It's a dead lady!” Jenny yelled in her face. “She's dead, she's dead!”

Nikki suddenly saw that she was going to have to take charge this once. “I want to go home!” she said with great and passionate conviction, in a voice that brooked absolutely no argument. “Right now!”

The two little girls screamed all the way back to the highway.

As they fled, the body—hiding its grisly secrets—lay on the floor of the dining room of the deserted mansion. She was large-breasted, slim-legged, dark-haired. Above her
unseeing eyes, wooden beams intersected a ceiling where a mural of flowers and fronds was barely discernible on the crumbling plaster. Once, parties metaphorically raised these roof-beams; liquor flowed and waiters served dolphin on silver trays to rich Floridians. But that was decades gone, along with all but hints of original elegance. Half of a black wrought-iron drapery rod hung down from the one remaining hook, caught on one of its fleurs-de-lis. Outside that window, there was a patio where weeds had broken all the bricks. The centerpiece of the patio was a dry fountain with a statue of a naked cherub, now broken and shattered, in the basin.

Forever beyond the reach of the dead woman's outstretched and shattered arms, elegant catamarans cruised the Intracoastal Waterway, where she would never again go boating, trailing her manicured fingers in the water. Tourists strolled the beaches where she would never again raise her slim arms in lazy strokes through warm Atlantic waves. She had been pretty, but you couldn't tell that now. There were people who thought the world of her, who knew she would not have wanted children to find her like that, that she would have been horrified for them to see her. Worst of all, she was a minister's wife; to be found naked and exposed was a shame and a brutal embarrassment to her memory. But she had no say over any of that. Inside the hidden acre of property, her flesh and the house and the land were sliding back past civilization, back to dust and water and silence.

Susanna
2

“THE END,” I type, and lean back in my chair, feeling breathless with relief.

What started with two girls stumbling across a body in a spooky mansion is finished. The guilty convicted, sentenced to die. The supposedly innocent set free. As of this moment, even my book about the crime is done. I've written all about it, beginning with the discovery of the body, and moving on through the investigation, the trial and startling mixed verdicts, and the incredible irony of it all. I hadn't intended to write another “Florida book” so soon after my last one, but what can you do when you're a true crime book writer and you live in a state that hands you sensational crime on a platter?

True crime in Florida resembles what fishermen up in the panhandle call a “jubilee.” That's when sea creatures and fish of various kinds come swarming—for no reason anybody has ever figured out—into the shallows and get stranded there. I've heard of jubilees so thick with fish you could walk across them.

It's kind of like that with Florida and criminals.

I could write nothing but Florida books for the rest of my life, and never run out of bizarre and original crime. You could almost accuse me of
liking
our felons. I wouldn't want to meet any of them in a dark alley, you understand, but I do appreciate
how they help me earn my living. If I sound flippant about a serious subject, blame it on finishing my book. Other writers will understand. Now in the spirit of one of the many clichés of my trade, “it's left to the survivors to try to carry on as best they can.” And all that's left for me to do is to print this out, pack it up, and call FedEx to pick up this manuscript.

Without giving myself too much time to think about it— sometimes it's hard to let go of a book—I start that process by switching on my laser printer. Then, with nobody there to see me in my office at home, I smile as I squint out my windows. Well, I'll be damned, will you look at that? It's a beautiful day in Florida! Is it March already? I do believe it is. Still winter up north. But here, the sun is shining like summer, boats are bobbing, and the Bahia Boulevard Bridge is sparkling as if it's made of tinsel instead of steel. How long has this been going on? Must be ninety degrees out there in that world beyond my air conditioning. Why, there's a whole universe out there, people are moving about their lives, going to jobs, making love, eating swearing laughing crying killing swimming running playing.

Who knew?

Not I; I've been shut up in this house for three weeks racing toward THE END. The research for this book started a year ago, the actual writing began six months after that, with the title,
Anything to Be Together,
and my pen name, Marie Lightfoot.

It is five hundred and fifty-six pages later.

Those pages are starting to roll out of my printer now.

Whenever I've been deep in the writer's trance and I come up for air again, it's as if all of my senses have been shut off and now they come flooding back in on me. Like now, as the sun coming through my wraparound windows hurts my eyes. I hear boats on the Intracoastal Waterway as if they had only this minute all started their motors. And what's that cherry-almond smell? Did I rub on lotion this morning? I don't recall. Suddenly, I'm hungry. Thirsty. Stiff. My left hip feels sore, as if I haven't moved in this chair for hours.

“Robot writer woman,” I say, testing my voice.

There's a buzzing sensation behind my forehead, as if my frontal lobe is quivering from so much sustained concentration.

“Done at last, thank God, I'm done at last.”

It's finished, this sixth of my true crime books. Will it be a bestseller, like all the rest? One hopes. One does, indeed, hope. Will my track record be enough to attract that many readers again, or will this crime do the trick all by its violent self? “ Gruesome murder. Superb detection. Brilliant lawyers. Lives shattered,” as the book jacket will probably say, “families torn asunder.” The flap copy on true crime books tends to revel in clichés, and I should know, because I've written my share.

I think I'll just sit here and savor the moment.

I should call someone, and let them congratulate me, but I wonder if I have any friends left. Wait a minute, it's really March? Well, damn. March brings the dreaded, desired Spring Break. At this very minute high school seniors and college freshmen all over America are climbing the wave that will crest in our high tide, our tsunami of tourism. Well, shoot! I've surfaced just in time for the one period of the year when ten percent of the population leaves town, the retirees bitch about the traffic, everybody else works too hard, and it's impossible for anybody to go anywhere.

Not that I don't have anything to do at home.

So many phone calls left unanswered. So many letters unopened, bills unpaid, so much E-mail ignored. I wonder if I missed any appointments. Probably. I think I paid the mortgage for this month, but I'm not sure. Books are ravenous gods that eat the rest of life. All goes into their greedy maw, while the writer sacrifices her friends, her credit, her lover, her sanity.

“Congratulations,” I tell myself.

“Thank you,” I reply.

“Writers can get pretty strange by the end of a book,” I observe.

“You're telling me?” I retort.

A lonely business, it is said of writing, but I don't feel alone. After all, I've just spent weeks with my “characters”—killer, victim, police, survivors.

“Yeah, but they're only in your computer. You've hardly spoken to a
living
soul in weeks,” I remind myself. “And look at you, look at your house. It's a mess. You're a mess. Maybe now you can become a human being again.”

I have a writer friend, a novelist, whose husband once said to her, “No offense, but I can tell where you are in a book by your appearance.” I laughed when I heard that, as did she; it's so painfully true. If I were to glance in a mirror right now I'd see a woman who hasn't changed her clothes in three days, whose hair is pulled back by a barrette but not combed, and who has barely been able to remember to slip on sandals to go to the grocery store for essentials.