to the cause, and most of all his commitment to her. He was hers, now and forever. They’d been together all of high school, she’d had sex with only Clay, and she loved him. He owned her heart, and she his.
He kissed her back, but it wasn’t like before. It wasn’t the same as last month, before he got that damn letter.
He was already three thousand miles away.
“Maggie, we need to talk about this.”
“I don’t want to,” she pouted.
“Graduation is only four weeks away. I don’t want this hanging over us for all that time.”
“No.”
“Maggie, just listen. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime. A full scholarship to SUNY! It’s what I’ve always wanted. You need to be happy for me.”
“I’m sad for us. You can’t go.”
He touched her hair and sighed. “I’ll miss you, too.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“And not go to college?”
“I’m only going to community college.” Her grades had been borderline. Maggie was lucky to even graduate. Her entire life her teachers had told her and her parents that she was an underachiever, that her test scores showed she was very intelligent, too intelligent to be getting C’s and D’s.
“You just need to find yourself and your place,” Clay said.
“My place is with you. I’m going to Syracuse.”
She didn’t like the look on Clay’s face. It was as if he’d already known what she was going to say and had prepared a response.
“Maggie, you can’t come with me. You would be a distraction from my studies. This is important to me. Try to understand that. Everything I’ve wanted to do in environmental science, I can with a degree from SUNY. I’ll be back in four years, and if we still feel the same way-”
Her stomach turned sour. “If?”
“Four years-Maggie, people change in four years.”
“You’re dumping me.”
“We have email and I’ll call every week.”
He was telling her what he thought she wanted to hear. The only thing she wanted to hear was that Clay Baker was not dumping her.
He took her hand, kissed her neck. “We have all summer. Let’s not worry about later, okay?”
He hadn’t told her he loved her in weeks. He hadn’t made love to her in weeks.
He didn’t know that she knew Cindy Tomlinson was going to SUNY, too. Or that she’d been watching how he looked at Cindy since those college letters arrived last month. They had bonded over a damn college! It wasn’t fair. Maggie was as smart-no, smarter! — than both of them. And Clay was going three thousand miles away with Cindy Tomlinson.
Maggie let Clay kiss her, touch her breasts, push up her skirt. They had made love under this tree the first time.
And now, the last time.
He held her for a minute, then went to dispose of the condom. She told him she’d be right back, and walked naked down to the creek where they’d stored the cooler after their picnic.
Clay’s mother had made the lemonade. Mrs. Baker didn’t like Maggie, but she’d been nice today. Nice in one of those “I know something you don’t” ways, so mightier-than-thou. The bitch had sabotaged Maggie’s relationship with Clay. She had convinced Clay to dump her. His future, his life, his dreams. What about her? Margaret Love O’Dell, with hopes and dreams of her own. And they centered around Clay Baker.
At least for one more day.
She’d seen the water hemlock growing when she first put the cooler in the water. She’d seen it before, as this was their spot. Clay didn’t know what it was, or if he did he never commented on it.
She took a cloth napkin from their lunch basket and used it as a glove of sorts, wrapping her hand in it while she crushed the water hemlock leaves, breaking the membranes and releasing the poison. She didn’t want any to be absorbed through her skin. It would take a lot of leaves because the poison didn’t mix well with cold water. She stuffed the leaves into an empty water bottle, then poured lemonade into it and shook it well. She let it sit for a minute, watching the leaves. She pretended she could actually see the poison leaching from the leaves into the pale yellow liquid. It was turning a darker color. That she wasn’t imagining. It was working.
“Maggie! We only got thirty minutes before curfew,” Clay called from beyond the grove of trees.
His mother’s curfew. Six p.m. on Sundays. So they could have a family dinner. One they never invited Maggie to. She’d bet they’d invite Cindy Tomlinson.
She strained the lemonade into another water bottle. It didn’t quite look right. Would he notice? Maybe. She put everything back in the cooler, then re-packed the basket and cooler and brought everything over to the oak tree. The wet hemlock leaves were stuck in the bottle-she’d have to dispose of it later.
Clay lay on his back, watching her.
She put everything down and pretended to drink the lemonade. “Still cold, but a little tart. Want some?”
“My mother never puts in enough sugar.”
He took the water bottle and chugged half the poisoned lemonade, then grimaced. “Yeah, I think it was in the sun too long.”
He screwed on the cap and tossed it on the blanket. He patted the spot next to him, and she sat down.
“Don’t worry about tomorrow,” he told her. “Just here and now. Today, everything’s fine, right?”
Maggie smiled. “Everything’s perfect.”
With the background reports spread out on Nora’s dining room table, a glass of buttery chardonnay in front of her-her one and only for the evening-she finally hung up her phone.
In the two hours she’d been home, she’d been productive. She’d heard back from Sara Ralston that Anya Ballard was not the woman with Russ Larkin on Sunday in Starbucks, even if she had dark hair, according to Summer, the coffeehouse employee who had seen her. Then she’d talked to Rachel about running a background check on Maggie O’Dell, including all variations of the name “Maggie.”
“Make sure you get a photo from the DMV and Rose College. Get her transcripts as well-if they squawk, let me know. We’ll get a warrant. We have more than enough cause.”
She was satisfied that Rachel would hop on the assignment first thing in the morning, and they’d debrief at nine with the rest of the team, after Nora observed the autopsies of the three students. Coffey would send her the information, but she’d rather stop by and get it faster. It wasn’t too far out of her way to head up to Placer County before going to headquarters.
She made notes on Anya, Scott, and Chris. While they shared their major and college, they were born in
