She focused on him, seeking verification. Reluctantly, he nodded. “I couldn’t stand the sight of her for one second longer. I wheeled my motorcycle around and was about to ride off. That’s when I spotted you crouching there in the bushes. I knew you must have overheard what she’d said, and my gut sank. She always treated you like dirt. And you were—”
“Pathetic.”
“I wasn’t going to say that, but you were an easy target for her ridicule. It was an awful thing for her to say, in any case. But it was especially mean because she knew you were there and would overhear it.”
“Yes, I’m sure she got double pleasure out of taunting you and humiliating me.”
He watched her eyes, noting the shifting emotions they revealed. One second she looked abject and lost, like the awkward and insecure pre-adolescent who had been so cruelly insulted. Next, her eyes reflected the bewilderment she felt over that cruelty and the heartless nature of a sister who could inflict it. Finally, her blue eyes began to shimmer with tears of fury.
He’d watched from astride his motorcycle as the same transformation had taken place in the eyes of the twelve-year-old Bellamy.
Quietly, he said, “You had every right to hate her.”
“Oh, I did.” Her voice vibrated with the intensity of her hatred. Her hands closed into tight fists. “Knowing that I had a hopeless crush on you, she deliberately said the most hurtful thing possible. It was evil of her. I despised her. I wanted to claw her eyes out. I wanted to—”
He knew the instant the thought struck her, because she looked stricken by it. “I wanted to kill her.” Moments ticked by while she gaped at him, breathing through slightly parted lips. “I wanted to kill her, and you thought I had. Didn’t you? That’s why you didn’t tell the police that I’d seen you leaving the state park. You would have had to recount what was said between you and Susan in the boathouse, which the police would have seen as a motive for me to murder my sister. But you didn’t tell. You protected me.”
“Like hell. I was no hero, Bellamy. If it had come down to ratting you out or saving my own skin, I would have told. But when Moody came to my house the next morning and started questioning me, he never mentioned the quarrel at the boathouse, only the one Susan and I had had at your house that morning.
“It became clear to me that he didn’t know about that second argument, didn’t know I’d been with her at the boathouse, and that definitely worked in my favor. So I kept quiet about it.” He took a step closer, but she took a corresponding step back, so he stayed where he was. “I couldn’t figure why you didn’t tell Moody about it.”
“My memory of it was blocked.”
“But I didn’t know that. I thought you were holding back because—”
“Because I had killed her.”
He hesitated, then reluctantly mumbled, “It crossed my mind.”
“And now?”
“Now?”
“Do you still think I did?”
“I’ve got better sense. You were a scrawny kid. Susan outweighed you fifteen, twenty pounds.”
She folded her arms and hugged her elbows. “She was clouted over the back of her head, remember? In a fit of rage, I could have hit her with something hard enough to dull her senses.”
“I don’t see that happening, do you? Seriously?”
“With a surge of adrenaline, people can perform physical feats that would be impossible for them at other times.”
“Only in the movies and Ripley’s Believe It or Not.”
Furious over the quip, she cried, “This isn’t funny!”
“You’re right, it’s not. It is, however, ridiculous to think that you—”
“Answer my question, Dent.”
“What was the question?”
“You know the question!”
“Do I think you killed your sister?
“How do you know? I was at the scene. I saw her before her purse was sucked into the tornado. How do you know I didn’t kill her?”
“Why would you have taken her underwear?”
“Maybe I didn’t. Maybe by the time I caught up with her in the woods, she wasn’t wearing any. She could have given her panties to you.”
“She didn’t.”
“To Steven. To Allen Strickland.” Squeezing her eyes closed, she asked in a frightened whisper, “Did I see her do that?”
“Stop it, Bellamy. This is crazy. You can’t force yourself to remember things that didn’t happen.”
She pulled her lower lip through her teeth, but now it didn’t look sexy. It was the gesture of someone in torment. “Rupe Collier thought it possible.”
“He was only trying to get a rise out of you. You know that.”
“I think Daddy suspects.”
“
“It’s occurred to him. I know it has.”
“What in God’s name are you talking about?”
As she recounted their conversation of the day before, Dent became increasingly agitated. “Be reasonable. If he thought you’d done it, he sure as hell wouldn’t have asked you to grant his dying wish and expose the murderer.”
Past listening, she threaded the fingers of both hands through her hair and held it off her face. He could practically see her mind wildly spinning. “When we were with Moody and I described the crime scene, you got nervous. You were biting the inside of your cheek. You looked tense, tightly wound, like you were about to spring off the bed.” He tried to keep his expression neutral, but she was too perceptive.
“You thought that if I told too much I would incriminate myself. That’s why you got anxious, isn’t it?”
“Bellamy, listen—”
“You think I killed her and couldn’t live with what I’d done, so I blocked my memory of it. That’s what you think.”
“It makes no difference what I think.”
“Of course it does!”
“To who?”
“To me!” she shouted. “It matters to me that you think I’m a murderer.”
“I
“You did.”
“I said that it had crossed my mind.”
“Which is as good as.”
“No it isn’t.”
“Thinking that, why would you want to go to bed with me?”
“What does one have to do with the other?”
She looked at him, aghast, speechless, and horrified.
He took a breath, blew it out, then said, “Look, after what Susan said about you, I wouldn’t have blamed you for driving a stake through her heart. I don’t believe you choked her, but if you did, so what? I don’t care.”
She hugged herself even more tightly. “You’ve said that repeatedly. You didn’t care about your dad’s indifference. You don’t care what my parents think about you. You left the airline uncaring of people’s opinion. You don’t care if Moody blows his brains out. You don’t care if I took my sister’s life. You. Don’t. Care. About anything. Do you?”
He remained stonily, angrily silent.
“Well, your not caring is a big problem for me.” She held his gaze for several beats, then went to the staircase and started up. “I want you to go now, and I don’t want you ever to come back.”
Inside the master bedroom closet, Ray Strickland was beside himself. He’d overheard everything.
That bitch Bellamy had killed Susan and had got off scot-free! Allen had paid with his life for her crime, while
