Dutch Me Deadly

The Dicks hadn’t seen Paula being pushed into the canal that night. But what if someone else had? Oh, my God. Could I have ascribed the wrong motive to Pete’s death? Was all the information I’d learned about him irrelevant? Did his classmates actually give a hoot that he’d dragged them into IRS hell? Could he have been targeted not because of something he’d done, but because of something he’d seen? Was it Pete who’d witnessed Paula’s death and been killed because of it?

I ranged a look around the room, my gaze lingering on my list of prime suspects.

“We were so offended by the entertainment, we sat through the show a second time just to make sure it was as bad as we thought,” Gary Bouchard told Chip.

“We did the same thing,” crowed the Hennessys.

“The shock wore off for me by the third go around,” confessed Peewee.

How could they have killed Paula when they’d been nowhere near her? How could they have pushed her into a canal at the same time they were clamoring to catch scarves and pasties with their bare teeth? They couldn’t have been in two places at once, could they?

But I soon realized that not everyone was joining in the banter. Mike, Mary Lou, and Laura, while seated together, were having little to say to each other or anyone else. Mike was clasping Mary Lou’s hand, but she was wearing a pinched expression that indicated he might be squeezing too tightly. Laura stared at the ceiling, looking as if she could hardly wait for the convocation to end. Had the three of them resolved their differences over the miscommunication problems they’d had the other night? Or were the ladies’ ears still ringing from the lecture Mike had probably served up about losing him in the crowd and making him wait on the bridge so many hours?

It was that thought that caused a puzzle piece to quietly shift into place.

That’s right. Mike hadn’t explored the erotica scene because he’d been on the bridge with the JESUS SAVES people, frantically scouring the crowd for Mary Lou and Laura. Mary Lou and Laura—who’d both been victimized and verbally abused by Paula in high school, and now seemed connected at the hip, acting like proverbial best friends forever. And then there was Mike, smothering Mary Lou’s hand as if it were a lifeline. Hadn’t he confessed as much on the bridge? Hadn’t he questioned what he would do without Mary Lou because she was, in essence, his whole life?

A shiver feathered down my spine as I studied the three of them, sitting a few seats away from me in the front row, their name badges flaunting their once youthful faces. Mary Lou O’Leary, currently Mary Lou McManus, and Laura LaPierre, currently—

I zoomed in on the name that appeared in larger print beneath her high school graduation picture, my eyes suddenly widening with recognition. Why hadn’t I noticed it before? Was that her real name, or had she made this particular change as a cruel ironic twist?

Oh, my God. There wasn’t one killer.

There were three.

Twenty

“It was you,” I accused, leaping up to stand before them. “The three of you! You killed Pete and Paula.”

“I beg your pardon?” said Mary Lou.

“Are you crazy?” said Mike.

“Look,” I said, pointing to Laura’s name badge. “Her last name is Battles. Battles!” I made an appeal to the room. “Don’t any of you get it?”

“Show of hands,” announced Osmond. “How many of you get it?”

“Battles is the English translation of Guerrette!” I choked out. “Guerre. The French word for war, or battle, or—”

Feeling a presence behind me, I turned to find Officer Vanden Boogard observing with keen interest. “You’ve solved der crime, have you, Ms. Andrew?”

I thrust my finger at the guilty trio. “They did it! Mary Lou and Laura stalked Paula through the Red Light District and pushed her into the canal on their way back to the hotel. But Pete Finnegan saw the whole thing, and Mary Lou and Laura knew it, so the next day at the Anne Frank house, Mike pushed Pete down the stairs to keep him quiet. It was like a Gift of the Magi kind of thing, only more warped. The women killed Paula to avenge her cruelty, and Mike killed Pete to protect his wife.”

“That’s kind of romantic,” said Margi.

“No it’s not romantic!” I cried. “They’ve committed a double murder!”

Laura regarded me in bemusement. “Exactly what does my name have to do with your version of the facts?”

“Bobby Guerrette was your protector. You idolized him. So not only were you bent on getting even with Paula for her mistreatment of you, you wanted to stick it to her for the role she might have played in Bobby’s disappearance on Senior Skip Day.” I shot an accusatory look at the abashed faces of the reunion crowd. “Something unlawful took place that day, and a lot of you know what it is, but you’ve kept it secret for five decades. Pete told me you were good at keeping secrets, and he was right. Haven’t you already agreed to keep your sex theater adventures a secret for the next five decades?”

Whispers of shock from the Iowa contingent. “S’cuse me, dear,” interrupted Nana, “but if them folks are gonna be around for the next fifty years, you might wanna suggest they speak to their financial planners about bulkin’ up their investment portfolios, on account a Social Security probably won’t be around no more.”

Laura smiled, her eyes flinty. “I killed Paula to avenge Bobby Guerrette? Why would I do that? I didn’t need to kill anyone to avenge Bobby Guerrette. I married Bobby Guerrette.”

What?

The room exploded with a single, ear-popping gasp.

“Come again?” barked Mike, coming straight out of his chair.

“I married him,” she repeated. “He applied to Berkeley after completing his military service, and that’s where we ran into each other again. He didn’t look exactly like the Bobby I’d known in high school.” She raised her hand to her face, touching her forehead and cheek. “He was involved in a pretty serious vehicle accident during his tour of duty, but I would have known him anywhere, even with his new name.”

“You married him?” Mike’s voice echoed off the ceiling lights. “He’s been alive all these years, and he never bothered to contact anyone back home to let us know?”

“He didn’t want anyone to know,” Laura fired back. “Why do you think he left in the first place? He wanted to start over again, away from Bangor, away from the small town social elite, away from the idea that he’d never make anything of himself because he was an orphan.”

Mike sank back into his chair. “But how? I don’t understand. How did he pull it off ? Hennessy said—”

“The SOB is alive?” snarled Ricky. “That dirty jeezer. All these years thinking I’d killed him, and he turns up alive?”

“What do you mean you thought you killed him?” Mindy’s face turned ashen. “You said he got into a car. Remember? A car that was something other than white and a station wagon?”

“So I lied. Big deal. Everyone lied after he went missing.”

“You intimidated us into lying,” accused Mike. “You told us your lame story, and you swore it was the truth. And you threatened to rat us out to the police about our drinking if we didn’t regurgitate the story back to them. All to save your guilty butt.”

“Hey, Guerrette got on my case about Laura, so I called him out,” defended Ricky. “That’s what guys in high school do. They get bombed, and they call each other out. If you’d walked down to the river with us, you might have saved me fifty years of nightmares, but nooo, the rest of you were either hurling or passed out, so you missed the big showdown. Bunch of wusses.”

“Would you get to the part about where you thought you killed him?” asked Peewee.

“Yeah, dumbass,” yelled Gary. “We’d all like to hear that part.”

Ricky boosted himself to his feet. “When we got beyond the railroad tracks, Bobby said he was gonna teach me the lesson of my life. But the idiot just stood there, smiling at me, so I slugged him but good. I hit him so hard I