Envy (11 page)

It had finally sunk in that the owner, a hard-bitten, humorless woman with blue-black hair named Nicola Cardamom, was never going to let her buy into the business, despite their agreement to the contrary. When Nicola wooed Mindee from a salon in Bremerton, promises had been made.

“A woman with your talent,” Nicola had said, “should be front and center.”

Mindee fell for it and packed her scissors, clippers, and color kit. Things weren’t great with her husband and she needed something to build upon. Just in case.

In time, Mindee finally understood how empty a promise could be. She’d been stuck in neutral for too long, and if things at home hadn’t been as complicated as they were, she simply would have quit. Doing head after head, day after day, for a lying boss like Nicola was exasperating and demoralizing. She found herself angry at everyone.

A few times she purposely let the tips of her sharp scissors nick a customer’s ear.

“You shouldn’t have moved!” she scolded.

The customer, ear bleeding, knew she hadn’t and decided never to return.

In the past year, Mindee had seen her client base drop. That’s when Nicola moved her to second chair, and took the number-one spot for herself.

Mindee imagined taking her scissors to Nicola’s lipo-sucked stomach, but she didn’t, of course. Instead, she continued styling hair, doing colors, and quietly and oh-so-discreetly bad-mouthing Nicola.

“I’m not sure where she is,” she told one longtime customer, a devoutly religious woman from Poulsbo. It was a lie. She knew Nicola had a dental appointment that morning. “Don’t make me tell you what I think she’s doing. I don’t even want to go there.”

Just a drop of poison. Nothing more. Mindee never said anything specific. She didn’t have to. She knew the power of suggestion, the impact of a hint dropped at the right time. The customer was a member of Living Christ, a mega-church. She was also an incorrigible gossip. A woman with a big mouth and a ready-made audience was a terrific and useful weapon.

The Larsens—Mindee and her two children, fifteen-year-old Starla and thirteen-year-old Teagan—lived in house number 21, right next door to the Berkleys. The two families had been friends for years. Close and trusted friends. After her husband Adam disappeared, Mindee increasingly relied on Harper Berkley to help with whatever heavy lifting she needed. Though nothing ever happened between them, there was talk. Small towns need barely a whisper to get things moving in the wrong direction.

Starla and Katelyn had been best friends forever back then. They’d grown up side by side, from Barbie to bras, and no one doubted that when one or the other got married, the maid of honor duties had already been secured.

That was never going to happen. Not now.

On the morning after Katelyn’s sudden death, Starla refused to get out of bed. She was racked with hurt, guilt, even some shame. She and Katelyn had had a falling-out several months back over, of all things, making the cheer team at Kingston High School. They’d tried out together as freshmen, and Katelyn again the year after when she didn’t make it, working on routines in the fenceless backyard that the two families shared as if it were their own private park.

Most people in Port Gamble seldom used their front yards anyway. If they did, they’d end up having to give a nosy tourist a mini history lesson on their house, the mill, the school, or whatever it was the interloper wanted to know. While it certainly wasn’t Colonial Williamsburg, with its phony blacksmiths and chambermaids running around with beeswax candles and a request for “all ye gather ’round,” it was annoying residing in a living museum like Port Gamble.

The only Port Gamble residents who could escape incessant scrutiny were the 115 people in Buena Vista Cemetery. And, of course, they were dead.

Starla was a hot blonde. Not model pretty, but more like reality-TV beautiful. Most everyone knew that her mother was a colorist and assumed that Starla’s shimmering golden hair had a lot of help. There was more to be coveted than just her pretty face. In fact, in the world of teens at Kingston High, a pretty face was only as good as the boobs that went under it. At least, most girls knew that’s where the boys’ eyes seemed to always land.

Like a fly on a slice of cherry pie.

Starla had hit puberty earlier than her best friend, and by the time they got to Kingston Middle School it was clear that Katelyn was never going to quite measure up. Although she was pretty, she was just a shadow of Starla’s beauty. Nobody had the power that Starla commanded by the mere virtue of just breathing and being. When Starla didn’t have time to have her 7 for All Mankind jeans altered, she rolled up the hems—and all the other girls in her class did the same thing.

Almost all of them. Katelyn resisted.

When Mindee cut Starla’s bangs for the last time,
ever
, the other girls followed suit. Even the older ones thought Starla Larsen was the real deal. No one could say for sure what direction Starla would go. Music? Acting?
America’s Got Talent
? There was a reason why they called her Superstarla—and she allowed it.

She was, no doubt, going to put Port Gamble on the map.

It was funny, some would later say, how it was her decidedly lessglamorous former BFF who actually put the place on the map. Yet it would never be funny how she did it.

NOT FAR FROM PORT GAMBLE
, Moira Windsor pecked the headline of her story onto her faded keyboard:

DEATH OF A SURVIVOR

It was absolutely perfect. Sensitive. Moving. Even a little shocking. Everything she thought her story would be. If she could just get the interviews. She wasn’t asking for all that much. She needed the story. Why was Kevin Ryan being so damned difficult?

Moira looked at her headline once more. She loved the idea of plucking the heartstrings of her readers—while giving them a story that only she could tell. Plus, she needed to find out more about these girls. The Katelyn story was an entrée into something a lot bigger, a toehold into a tale so fantastic that she was surely going to get Ann Curry off that TV couch with a single flick of her finger. She had been leaked a tip—and if it was true, it would blow Katelyn’s death story out of the water. These stupid twins were all that separated her from her coveted success in uncovering the truth. That job would be hers. She deserved it. She wanted it bad. And Moira always got what she wanted.
Always
.

She dialed Kevin Ryan’s number. He answered the phone on the second ring.

“Hi, Mr. Ryan,” she said. “Moira Windsor here.”

There was silence for a beat, before Kevin said anything. “Moira,” he said coolly, “I thought I was clear the other day.”

Moira drummed her chipped nails on her out-of-town aunt’s kitchen table, where she’d set up her office.

“You were, but I was hoping you’d change your mind. I really want to do a good job. You were young once. You know the importance of a good story, how it can help you.”

Kevin hesitated again as he contemplated an answer that would shut her down and get her to go away. “I don’t want you writing about something so personal and tragic,” he finally said.

Wrong answer.

“Look who’s calling the kettle black,” Moira retorted. “You’ve made big bucks off writing about crime victims and their families. Always there with the personal detail.”

“This is supposed to win me over? You really need to work on your technique, Moira.”

“How about your wife? Maybe I could talk to her?”

“Maybe you should just go away.”

“Your girls? They’re fifteen, almost adults. They can decide if they want to talk,” she said.

“Stay away from them,” he warned, his voice louder than necessary. “Stay away from my family.”

Moira fired back. “That sounded like a threat.”

“Not a threat. Just a request.”

Kevin hung up. He wondered how many times he’d made someone else feel like Moira Windsor had just made him feel: defensive, angry, and worried.

chapter 16

WHEN STARLA WAS CALLED OUT OF Washington State history class last fall, she had no inkling Katelyn Berkley, her soon-to-be former BFF, was responsible for the bomb that would be dropped over her perfectly highlighted head.

After Starla was confronted by the principal, her boyfriend, Cameron Corelli, drove her home and screeched his rebuilt Bimmer to the curb. Starla mashed Cam’s face and jumped out of the car. She strode angrily past Katelyn, who had lingered in the front yard waiting for her return. Starla had no idea Katelyn had wanted to say so many things but couldn’t.

Sorry.

Didn’t mean it.

Forgive me.

Or …
You deserve it, bitch.

Starla didn’t even return Katelyn’s gaze. If she had, she might have seen a trace of sadness, remorse. It was as if Katelyn were a sheet of glass and Starla Larsen looked right through her.

Katelyn was nothing.

Starla had no clue when she stomped past her friend that Katelyn would sequester herself in her upstairs bedroom. That she wanted to cry, but no tears came. That she knew her betrayal was so great, Starla would never forgive her. That she loved Starla and hated her.

Starla would never know that Katelyn kept an online journal in which she admitted to giving the principal the incriminating photo out of spite. Because she wanted to be just like Starla, but couldn’t—and was losing her.

Starla would never know any of this because in a few short weeks, Katelyn would be dead.

“SHE DID WHAT?”

Mindee Larsen had just come home from work, smelling of hair product, toxic chemicals, and her pack-a-day menthol cigarette habit. She threw her oversize purse onto the kitchen table and looked directly into Starla’s eyes.

“You heard me, Mom. She reported me to the school cheer coach. It was total crap, and it’s all Katie’s fault.”

“Yes, I heard that. I needed to hear it again because my brain isn’t knitting the information together. Why would she do that? You’re her best friend. Start from the beginning.”

Starla wanted to say something about her mother’s inappropriate knee-high boots and shimmering top, but she thought better of it. She wanted her mother to know what she was up against, and as far as advocates went, her mom was basically all Starla had.

“The beginning of what? When we were best friends?”

“
Today.
What happened today?” Mindee went to the refrigerator and filled a glass of wine from the boxed sangria that always commanded most of the top-shelf real estate.

“Okay, you don’t have to be so bossy,” Starla said, sliding into a dining chair while her mother took a seat across from her.

“I’m a mom,” Mindee said, adding without a scintilla of sarcasm in her voice, “bossy is what I do.”

“Can I have a sip?” Starla asked, mostly to needle her mother. She hated any wine that could stain her teeth. Sangria was right in the middle with a rosé, her buzz wine of choice.

Mindee shook her head. “No. You
can’t
. Now, tell me what happened.”

“All right,” Starla said. “From the beginning …”

IT WAS 1:30 P.M. ON AN EARLY FALL DAY the week before homecoming in the very middle of state history class, a requirement that brought most students to the brink of the abyss called boredom. Teacher Relta Cox liked to “celebrate” the lives of people who had made their mark on Washington, but the reality of it was that students sitting in front of her didn’t care one bit about early explorers, native people, or pioneers who settled the region back in the days when it was called Oregon Territory. They might have been more engaged if the discussion veered toward the ritzy house that Bill Gates owned near Bellevue, or how much dope Jimi Hendrix smoked on any given day, or some tidbit about Starbucks when it was cool and not just a Denny’s that served only coffee drinks and pricey pastries.

The rest of the stuff, forget about it.

A boy from the principal’s office, who no doubt asked to be the bearer of the message since it was going to Starla Larsen, entered the classroom, spoke with the teacher, and then handed a paper to Starla. She looked down, shook her head, and got up to leave. The girl knew how to own the room. She wore a leopard-print tank, black Capri pants, and a gold choker that looked very, very expensive. Her purse was a black Michael Kors that her fans knew was her go-to bag. Starla’s outfits made her the best-dressed girl in school. Starla scanned the classroom as her long legs moved toward the door to the hall. Her eyes lingered only a second, and on only one person.