“What time did she leave?”
“Eleven-thirty.” She wrung suds out of the sponge onto the driveway. Her hands were pudgy, like the rest of her. “She was going to…I know you know she always met Ned at midnight.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“He was so peeved at you for not giving Izzy that message that he couldn’t come. Even though he could. Although he actually couldn’t.” She laughed, then sobered, remembering the seriousness of the conversation.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “What do you mean that he could, but then he couldn’t?”
“He called her here at my house to tell her he might be able to meet her after all,” Mitzi said. “That’s when he found out you hadn’t told her he couldn’t. Izzy was peeved at you, too. Anyway, he said he might be able to, but he wasn’t sure, but he’d try. He couldn’t get away, though. Isn’t it unreal? The one night he couldn’t get out that colored boy was there? What crappy luck. You must just be—” She shook her head. “I bet you could just kill that guy if you could get your hands on him.”
“Right,” I said. It was easiest to agree with her, but my head was spinning. I had to think through all of this new information.
“They caught him, though,” she said. “Well, I guess you know that.”
“Caught who? George?”
“The colored boy. Right. I heard it on the radio before I came outside.”
“What did they say?” I asked.
“Just that they found him and he says he’s not guilty,” Mitzi said.
“Maybe he’s not,” I said.
“Who else could have done it?” She tried to smooth her frizzy dark hair away from her face, but it sprang back again into a curly mess. I felt sorry for her having to deal with hair like that. “What I can’t get over is that I was the third to the last person to see Izzy alive,” she said, as though she had practiced the statement.
“What do you mean, the third to the last?” I asked.
“The…you know, the person who did it was number one,” she said. “And Pam. Pam left here with her, like she always did, so she was number two.”
Pam’s house was between Mitzi’s and the beach. That made sense.
“Ned’ll probably start going with Pam now,” Mitzi said.
It was years before I realized how tactless Mitzi Caruso had been with that statement. The boorishness of her words went right over my head. At that moment, I was only thinking about their content.
I left Mitzi’s and continued walking to the beach, cataloging the clues I had so far in my mind. First, Ned’s alibi appeared to be a lie, since I had not seen him with his father in their backyard. Second, Ned had told Isabel he might be able to meet her after all—something he had not mentioned to the police, as far as I knew. Third, his motive might have had something to do with his interest in Pam, but murdering Izzy to get her out of the way seemed extreme.
I walked past Pam Durant’s house on the lagoon, thinking I would talk with her after I explored the beach. She would be less suspicious of me than she would be the police, so maybe she would open up to me more than she would to them.
The beach was completely empty. I thought there might still be policemen in the area, but maybe they had finished searching for clues. Most likely, they thought they had their killer now. I was growing more certain by the minute that they were wrong.
I headed for the patch of sea grass where my sister had been found. I looked for things washed onto the shore by the small, gentle waves. I found a Popsicle stick and a plastic cup, but I seemed to have lost interest in collecting any old thing I came across, and I didn’t bother to pick them up.
Tears welled up in my eyes as I walked through the creepy tangles of seaweed. I sat down in the place where Isabel had been found, letting the water wash over my legs. I ran my hands through the tendrils of eel grass. There was nothing here. What had I been expecting?
I left the beach empty-handed and empty hearted and walked along the road leading to Pam’s house. A dog barked when I knocked on the Durants’ door. I could see through their house to the lagoon behind, just as I could see through my house to the canal.
Pam herself answered the door, her Doberman pinscher, the only dog I’ve ever been afraid of, at her side.
“Oh, Julie!” she said, pushing open the door. “I’m so sorry. Come in.” She hugged me, but I felt stiff inside and I kept one eye on her dog.
“I just wanted to talk to you,” I said. The dog sniffed at the back of my hand.
Pam drew away from me, studying my face, but I studied hers harder. The whites of her eyes had the bluish tint of skim milk. No trace of red. No trace of tears.
“Let’s go out back,” she said.
“Are your parents here?” I asked, as we walked through the small living room.
“No one’s here except me,” she said.
She stopped at the door to the kitchen. “Can I get you some soda?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“I almost died myself when I heard,” she said, pushing open the screen door and stepping into her yard, which was covered with smooth, blond stones. I was glad she left the dog in the house. “I was the last person to see her alive,” she said. At least Mitzi had been modest enough to say she was third to the last. Pam put herself right at the top.
