head-locks on her… make her cry out for mercy… stuff like that.”
Kimberly smirked and shook her head. “She would’ve liked that.”
“You didn’t wrestle with her?”
“She’s five years older than me. She always outweighed me. And she had a cruel streak. There’s no way I ever would’ve wrestled with Thelma. The one time we actually had a fight, I pulled her hair and she stabbed me in the arm with a pencil. It went in. I had to go to the doctor and get shots.”
“She said you used to wrestle with her all the time.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe in some alternate universe.”
I was tempted to go on and explain that they’d been naked and their father had joined in—that the matches were supposed to be some sort of sadistic sexual romp.
Already, though, I figured Thelma must’ve made up the whole wrestling business.
“So you two were over here last night talking about make-believe wrestling matches between me and Thelma?”
“Yeah.”
“Why did she tell you that stuff?”
“I don’t know. We were just talking.”
I felt sort of cornered, and wished I hadn’t brought up the subject. It was a relief, though, to discover that Thelma’d been lying. If she’d lied about the wrestling, it stood to reason that the torture and incest stuff probably hadn’t really happened, either.
I felt a little cheated, a little disappointed. Part of me had gotten sort of excited, picturing Kimberly mixed up in that sort of thing. Mostly, though, I was relieved.
“She must’ve had a motive,” Kimberly said.
“Not that I…”
“I know,” Connie said. She gave me one of her snotty looks. “I bet Thelma was trying to get him to wrestle with her.”
I almost denied it. But the idea seemed to have some merit. I sure didn’t want the truth coming out. “Well… That’s sort of… She did want me to have a wrestling match with her.”
“What on earth for?” Billie asked, half of her mouth rising in a crooked smile as if she were amused but baffled.
“She made it a challenge,” I explained. “If she won, I’d have to let her get away. If I won, she’d let me tie her hands back up. See, she’d pulled them away when I tried to loosen the rope for her.”
“That’s when you should’ve called for help,” Kimberly said.
“Sure, and have everyone think I was some kind of a worthless jerk for being dumb enough to untie her.”
Kimberly grimaced a bit. She lowered her eyes and looked ashamed. She didn’t actually apologize, but she regretted being so sharp with me last night. You could tell.
“Boy,” Connie said, “that Thelma read you like a book.”
I looked at her and didn’t make the mistake of asking, “What do you mean by that?” I kept my mouth shut, but it didn’t help.
Billie asked, “What do you mean?”
“She knew just which buttons to push. Amazing. Rupert’s got sex on the brain. There’s no way in the world he’s gonna miss out on the chance to wrestle with a woman.”
I felt like my face might go up in flames. I said, “That’s bull. We’re talking about Thelma. God almighty, she’s the last woman I’d ever want to wrestle with.”
“Yeah, right.”
“She’s disgusting.”
“As if you’d let a little thing like that get in your way.”
“Yeah,” I said, “look at you.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
Kimberly raised a hand. “Let’s not get sidetracked here, kiddies.”
Connie sneered at her and gave her the finger.
Kimberly ignored it. To me, she said, “So, did you agree to have this wrestling match?”
I frowned and tried to decide on the best way to answer. After a while, I said, “Well… she pushed me into it. She called me a chicken, and said I was too much of a wimp and a loser to beat her in a fair fight.”
“So you went for it?” Kimberly asked.
“I had to.”
Billie sighed. “You didn’t have to prove anything to Thelma. She was just manipulating you.”
“I guess… Well, not all the way. I mean, at first I agreed to wrestle her. But then she started to take off her clothes. She wanted us doing it naked.”
“You figured you’d died and gone to Heaven,” Connie said.
“I did not! I told her no. I said the deal was off, there wouldn’t be any wrestling match, and I wanted her to hold out her hands so I could tie them. She wouldn’t listen, though. She didn’t pay any attention, and started taking off her clothes. It was like we were going to wrestle, no matter what I said. Before I knew what was happening, she had her blouse wide open and her shorts down. I didn’t know what to do.”
“Probably had a boner on you the size of the Washington Monument.” Connie said that. Who else?
“I did not.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Leave him alone,” Billie told her.
“The thing is, that’s when I knew it had all gone too far. I started backing away from her. I was planning to go for the ax, and make her quit messing around, but all of a sudden she attacked me with a straight razor. She almost killed me.” I met Connie’s narrow eyes. “If you don’t believe me, we can probably find the razor. I knocked it out of her hand. It’s probably in the sand around here someplace.”
Kimberly, who was wearing Keith’s Hawaiian shirt this morning, slipped her hand into its left breast pocket and pulled out the razor. She flipped the blade open.
Billie pursed her lips and made a “Whuuu” sound.
I grimaced, myself, getting a good look at it in daylight and realizing how close it had come to slicing me up the middle.
“Has anyone ever seen this before?” Kimberly asked. She held it between her thumb and forefinger so that we could see the handle—which looked like mother-of-pearl.
Connie shook her head.
Billie said, “Wicked-looking thing.”
“Do you recognize it?”
“Me? No. I haven’t seen a razor like that in years. My father had one that folded like that, but his had a green handle.”
“How about you, Rupert?”
“I saw it last night. When she came at me with it.”
“It’s probably Wesley’s,” Connie said.
Kimberly nodded. “Maybe. It might even be Thelma’s, for that matter.”
“She didn’t have it when I frisked her,” Billie said. “I couldn’t have missed a thing like that.”
“Well,” Kimberly said, “she sure got hold of it somewhere.”
“Why didn’t she just use it?” Connie asked.
“She tried,” I pointed out.
“No, I mean to cut herself loose?”
“Maybe she couldn’t get to it while her hands were tied,” I suggested.
“But she must’ve gotten her hands undone before she came over to you,” Billie said. “If we’re right that she’d retied the rope to make it too tight, she would’ve probably had to untie it first.”
Connie scowled. “This is getting too complicated.”
