Reunion (11 page)

Everyone—from Father Dom to Carrie Whitman—blinked at me in the firelight.

“Excuse me?” Josh said. Only his tone was more impatient than polite.

“Michael's sister,” I said. “The one who's in the coma.”

Don't ask me what made me think of it. Maybe it was Josh's reference to parties—how no party began until he and the other Angels got there. That started me thinking of the last party I'd heard about—the one where Michael's sister had fallen into the pool and nearly drowned. Some party that must have been. Had the police broken it up after the ambulance arrived?

Father Dominic's shaggy white eyebrows went up. “You mean Lila Meducci? Yes, of course. How could I have forgotten about her? It's tragic—very tragic—what happened to her.”

Jesse piped up for the first time in some minutes. “What happened to her?” he asked, lifting his chin from the knee he'd been resting it on, his foot propped up against the boulder he was sitting on.

“An accident,” Father Dom said, shaking his head. “A terrible accident. She tripped and fell into a swimming pool and very nearly drowned. Her parents are losing hope that she'll ever regain consciousness.”

I grunted. “That's one version of the story, anyway,” I said. Michael's parents had obviously cleaned it up for the principal of their daughter's school. “You left out the part,” I went on, “about how she was at a party in the Valley when it happened. And that she was completely blotto when she went under.” I narrowed my eyes at the four ghosts seated on the opposite side of the fire. “So was everybody else at this particular party, apparently, since nobody noticed what happened to her until she'd been under long enough to curdle her brain.” I looked at Jesse. “Did I mention the fact that she's only fourteen years old?”

Jesse, still sitting on the boulder, his hands around the propped up knee, looked at the Angels. “I don't suppose any of you,” he said, “would know something about this.”

Mark looked disgusted. “How would any of us know about some geek's sister getting wasted at a party?” he demanded.

“Perhaps because one—or all—of you happened to be at the party at the time?” I suggested sweetly.

Father Dominic looked startled. “Is this true?” He blinked down at the Angels. “Do any of you know anything about this?”

“Of course not,” Josh said—too quickly, I thought. Felicia's “As if” was not very convincing, either.

It was Carrie who gave it away, though.

“Even if we did,” she demanded with un-feigned indignation, “what would it matter? Just because some stupid wannabe drank herself into a coma at one of our parties, how does that make
us
responsible?”

I stared at her. Felicia, I remembered, was the National Merit Scholar. Carrie Whitman had only been homecoming queen. Twice.

“How about, just for starters,” I said, “making alcohol available to an eighth grader?”

“How were we supposed to know how old she was?” Felicia asked, not very nicely. “I mean, she had enough makeup slathered on, I could have sworn she was forty.”

“Yeah,” Carrie said. “And that particular party was by invitation only. I certainly never issued an invitation to any
eighth grader.
”

“If you want to hold someone responsible,” Felicia said, “how about the idiot who brought her in the first place?”

“Yeah,” Carrie said angrily.

“I don't think Susannah is the one holding you responsible for what happened to Michael's sister.” Jesse's voice, after the shrillness of the girls, sounded like distant thunder. It shut the others up quite effectively. “Michael, I believe, is the one who killed you for it.”

Father Dominic made a soft noise as if Jesse's words had sunk, like a fist, into his stomach.

“Oh, no,” he said. “No, surely you can't think—”

“It makes more sense,” Jesse said, “than this one's argument”—he nodded briefly at Josh—“that Michael did it out of jealousy because he has no…what is it? Oh, yes. Dates on Saturday night.”

Josh looked uncomfortable. “Well,” he said, tugging on his evening jacket's lapels. “I didn't
know the skank they fished out of Carrie's pool was Meducci's sister.”

“This,” Father Dominic said, “is too much. Simply too much. I am…I am
appalled
by all of this.”

I glanced at him, surprised by what I heard in his voice. It was—if I wasn't mistaken—pain. Father Dominic was actually hurt by what he'd just heard.

“A young girl is in a coma,” he said, his blue-eyed gaze very bright as it bored into Josh, “and you call her names?”

Josh had the grace to look ashamed of himself. “Well,” he said, “it's just a figure of speech.”

“And you two.” Father Dominic pointed at Felicia and Carrie. “You break the law by serving alcohol to minors, and dare to suggest that it is the girl's own fault she was harmed by it?”

Carrie and Felicia exchanged glances.

“But,” Felicia said, “nobody else got hurt, and they were all drinking, too.”

“Yeah,” Carrie said. “Everybody was doing it.”

“That doesn't matter.” Father Dominic's voice was shaking with emotion now. “If everyone else jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge, would that make it right?”

Whoa
, I thought. Father D. obviously needed a
little refresher course in student discipline if he thought that old line still had any punch.

And then my eyes widened as I noticed that Father Dominic was now pointing at me.
Me?
What had
I
done?

I soon found out.

“And you,” Father Dominic said. “You still insist that what happened to these young people was not an accident, but deliberate murder!”

My jaw sagged. “Father D.,” I managed to say when I'd levered it back into place. “Excuse me, but it's pretty obvious—”

“It isn't.” Father Dominic dropped his arm. “It isn't obvious to me. So the boy had a motive? That doesn't make him a killer.”

I glanced at Jesse for help, but it was apparent from his startled expression that he was as baffled by Father Dominic's outburst as I was.

“But the guardrail,” I tried. “The loosened bolts—”

“Yes, yes,” Father Dominic said, quite testily for him. “But you're missing the most important point, Susannah. Supposing Michael did lie in wait for them. Perhaps he did intend, when they turned that corner, to ram them. How was he able to tell, in the dark, that he had the right car? Tell me that, Susannah. Anyone could have come
around that corner. How could Michael have known he had the right car?
How?
”

He had me there. And he knew it. I stood there, the wind from the sea whipping hair into my face, and looked at Jesse. He looked back at me, and gave a little shrug. He was at as much of a loss as I was. Father Dom was right. It didn't make any sense.

At least until Josh said, “The Macarena.”

We all looked at him.

“I beg your pardon?” Father Dominic said. Even in anger, he was unerringly polite.

“Of course!” Felicia scrambled to her feet, tripping over her evening gown's long skirt. “Of course!”

Jesse and I exchanged yet another confused look. “The what?” I asked Josh.

“The Macarena,” Josh said. He was smiling. Smiling, he didn't look anything like the guy who'd tried to drown me earlier that day. Smiling, he looked like what he was—a smart, athletic eighteen-year-old in the prime of his life.

Except that his life was over.

“I was driving my brother's car,” he explained, still grinning. “He's away at college. He said I could use it while he was gone. It's bigger than my car. The only thing is, he had this stupid thing
put in so that when you honk the horn it plays the Macarena.”

“It's
so
embarrassing,” Carrie informed us.

“And the night we were killed,” Josh went on, “I laid on the horn as we were turning that corner—the one Michael was waiting behind.”

“You're supposed to honk when you go around those hairpin curves,” Felicia said, excitedly.

“And it played the Macarena.” Josh's smile vanished as if wiped away by the wind. “And that's when he hit us.”

“No other car horn on the peninsula,” Felicia said, her expression no longer excited, “plays the Macarena. Not anymore. The Macarena was only hot for about the first two weeks after it came out. Then it became totally lame. Now they only play it at weddings and stuff.”

“That's how he knew.” Josh's voice was no longer filled with indignation. Now he merely sounded sad. His gaze was locked on the sea—a sea that was too dark to be distinguishable from the cloudy night sky. “That's how he knew it was us.”

Frantically, I thought back to what Michael had told me, a few hours earlier, in his mother's minivan.
They came barreling around that corner.
That's what he'd said.
Didn't honk. Nothing.

Only now Josh was saying they
had
honked. That not only had they honked, but that they had honked in a particular way, a way that distinguished Josh's car horn from all others….

“Oh,” Father Dominic said, sounding as if he weren't feeling well. “Dear.”

I totally agreed with him. Except…

“It still doesn't prove anything,” I said.

“Are you kidding?” Josh looked at me as if
I
were the crazy one—like he wasn't wearing a tuxedo on the beach. “Of course it does.”

“No, she's right.” Jesse pushed himself off the boulder and came to stand beside Josh. “He has been very clever, Michael has. There is no way to prove—in a court of law, anyway—that he has committed a crime here.”

Josh's jaw dropped. “What do you mean? He killed us! I'm standing here telling you so! We honked the horn, and he purposefully rammed us and pushed us over the cliff.”

“Yes,” Jesse said. “But your testimony will not hold up in a court of law, my friend.”

Josh looked close to tears. “Why not?”

“Because it is the testimony,” Jesse said evenly, “of a dead man.”

Stung, Josh stabbed a finger in my direction.
“She'
s not dead.
She
can tell them.”

“She can't,” Jesse said. “What is she supposed to say? That she knows the truth about what happened that night because the ghosts of the victims told her? Do you think a jury will believe that?”

Josh glared at him. Then, his gaze falling to his feet, he muttered, “Well, fine then. We're right back to where we started. We'll just take the matter into our own hands, right, guys?”

“Oh, no, you don't,” I said. “No way. Two wrongs do not make a right—and three most definitely don't.”

Carrie glanced from me to Josh and back again. “What's she talking about?” she wanted to know.

“You are not,” I said, “going to avenge your deaths by killing Michael Meducci. I am sorry. But that is just not going to happen.”

Mark, for the first time all evening, rose to his feet. He looked at me, then at Jesse, and then at Father Dom. Then he went, “This is
bogus,
man,” and started stalking off down the beach.

“So the geek's just going to get away with it?” Josh, his jaw set, glared menacingly at me. “He kills four people, and he gets off scot-free?”

“Nobody said that.” Jesse, in the firelight, looked more grim-faced than I'd ever seen him.
“But what happens to the boy isn't up to you.”

“Oh, yeah?” Josh was back to sneering. “Who's it up to, then?”

Jesse nodded at Father Dominic and me. “Them,” he said quietly.

“Them?”
Felicia's voice rose on a disgusted note. “Why
them
?”

“Because they are the mediators,” Jesse said. In the orange glow from the fire, his eyes looked black. “It's what they do.”

The only problem was that the mediators couldn't figure out just how, exactly, to handle the situation.

“Look,” I whispered as Father Dominic dropped a white candle into the box I was holding, and dug out a purple one. “Let me just call the police with an anonymous tip. I'll tell them I was driving along Big Sur that night, and that I saw the whole thing, and that it was no accident.”

Father Dominic screwed the purple candle into the place where the white one had been.

“And do you think the police follow up on every anonymous tip they receive?” He didn't bother whispering because there was no one to overhear us. The only reason I'd lowered my
voice was because the basilica, with all its gold leaf and majestic stained glass, made me really nervous.

“Well, at least maybe they'll get suspicious.” I followed Father Dominic as he climbed down from the stepladder, folded it up, and moved to the next Station of the Cross. “I mean, maybe they'll start looking into it a little more, bring Michael in for questioning, or something. I swear he'd crack if they'd just ask the right questions.”

Father Dominic lifted the skirt of his black robe as he climbed back onto the ladder.

“And what,” he asked, swapping another white candle for one of the purple ones in the box I was holding, “would the right questions be?”

“I don't know.” My arms were getting tired. The box I was carrying was really heavy. Normally the novices would have been the ones changing the candles. Father Dominic, however, had been unable to keep still since our little field trip the night before, and had volunteered his services to the monsignor.
Our
services, I should say, since he'd dragged me out of religion class to help. Not that I minded. Being a devout agnostic, I wasn't getting all that much out of religion class, anyway—something Sister Ernestine hoped to rectify before I graduated.

“I think that the police,” Father Dom said as he gave the candle a determined twist since it didn't seem to be fitting too easily into the holder, “can get along fine without our help. If what your mother said was true, the police seem suspicious enough of Michael already that it shouldn't be much longer before they bring him in for questioning.”

“But what if my mom's just overreacting?” I noticed a tourist nearby, in madras and an Izod, admiring the stained glass windows, and lowered my voice even more. “I mean, she's a mom. She does that. Supposing the police don't really suspect anything at all?”

“Susannah.” The candle successfully in place, Father Dominic climbed back down the ladder, and looked at me with an expression that appeared to be a mingling of exasperation and affection. There were, I noticed, purple shadows under Father Dom's eyes. We had both been pretty wiped after our long hike down to the beach and then back up again—not to mention the emotional wear and tear we'd experienced while we'd been down there.

Still, Father Dominic seemed to have sprung back with more vigor than you might expect for a guy in his sixties.
I
could barely walk, my shins ached so badly, and I couldn't stop yawning since
our little tête-à-tête with the Angels had lasted until well past midnight. Father Dom, except for the shadows beneath his eyes, seemed almost sprightly, bubbling over with energy.

“Susannah,” he said again, less exasperatedly, and more affectionately this time. “Promise me you will do nothing of the kind. You will not call the police with any anonymous tips.”

I shifted the box of candles in my arms. It had certainly seemed like a good idea when I'd come up with it around four that morning. I'd lain awake almost all night wondering what on earth we were going to do about the RLS Angels and Michael Meducci.

“But—”

“And you will not, under any circumstances”—Father Dominic, apparently noticing my problem with the box, lifted it easily from my arms and set it down on the stepladder's top rung—“attempt to speak with Michael yourself about any of this.”

That, of course, had been Plan B. If the whole anonymous tip thing to the cops didn't pan out, I'd planned on cornering Michael and sweet-talking—or beating, whichever proved most effective—a confession out of him.

“You will let me handle this,” Father Dominic said loudly enough so that the tourist in the
madras, who'd been about to take a picture of the altar, hastily lowered his camera and moved away. “I intend to speak to the young man, and I can assure you that if he is indeed guilty of this heinous crime—” I sucked in my breath, but Father Dominic held up a warning finger.

“You heard me,” he said, a bit more quietly, but only because he'd noticed that one of the novices had slipped into the church carrying more black material to drape over the basilica's many statues of the Virgin Mary. They would remain cloaked in that manner, I had gathered, until Easter. Religion. That is some wacky stuff, let me tell you.

“If Michael is guilty of what those young people say he is, then I will convince him to confess.” Father Dominic looked like he meant it, too. In fact, I hadn't even done anything, but somehow, looking at his stern expression, I wanted to confess. Once I had taken five dollars from my mother's wallet to buy a jumbo bag of Skittles. Maybe I could confess that.

“Now,” Father Dominic said, pulling back the sleeve of his black robe and looking at his Timex. They don't pay priests enough for them to be able to get cool watches. “I am expecting Mr. Meducci to join me here momentarily, so you need to
move along. It would be best for him not to see us together, I think.”

“Why not? He has no idea we spent most of last night in conversation with his victims.”

Father Dominic put a hand in the center of my back and pushed. “Run along now, Susannah,” he said in a fatherly sort of voice.

I went, but not very far. As soon as Father D.'s back was turned, I ducked down into a pew and crouched there, waiting. Waiting for what, I couldn't say. Well, all right, I could say: I was waiting for Michael. I wanted to see if Father D. really would be able to get him to confess.

I didn't have to wait long. About five minutes later, I heard Michael's voice say, not too far from where I was hiding, “Father Dominic? Sister Ernestine said you wanted to speak to me.”

“Ah, Michael.” Father Dominic's voice conveyed none of the horror that I knew he felt over the prospect of one of his students being a possible murderer. He sounded relaxed and even jovial.

I heard the box of candles rattle.

“Here,” Father Dominic said. “Hold those, will you?”

He had, I realized, just handed Michael the box I'd been holding.

“Uh,” Michael said. “Sure, Father Dominic.”

I heard the scrape of the stepladder being folded again. Father Dom was picking it up and moving to the next Station of the Cross. I could still hear him, however…barely.

“I've been worried about you, Michael,” Father Dominic said. “I understand that your sister isn't showing many signs of improvement.”

“No, Father,” Michael said. His voice was so soft, I could hardly hear it.

“I'm very sorry to hear that. Lila is a very sweet girl. I know you must love her very much.”

“Yes, Father,” Michael said.

“You know, Michael,” Father Dominic said. “When bad things happen to the people we love, we often…well, sometimes we turn our backs on God.”

Aw, geez
, I thought, from my pew. That wasn't the way. Not with
Michael.

“Sometimes we become so resentful that this terrible thing has happened to someone who doesn't deserve it that we not only turn our backs on God, but we might even begin contemplating…well, things we wouldn't ordinarily contemplate if the tragedy hadn't occurred. Like, for instance, revenge.”

All right
, I thought. Getting better, Father D.

“Miss Simon.”

Startled, I looked around. The novice who had come in to finish draping the statues was staring at me from the end of my pew.

“Oh,” I said. I slithered up off of my knees and into the seat. Father Dominic and Michael, I saw, had moved so that their backs were to me. They were too far away to overhear us.

“Hi,” I said to the novice. “I was just, um, looking for an earring.”

The novice didn't appear to believe me.

“Don't you have religion with Sister Ernestine right now?” she asked.

“Yes, Sister,” I said. “I do.”

“Well, hadn't you better get to class, then?”

Slowly, I rose to my feet. It wouldn't have mattered, even if I hadn't gotten caught. Father Dominic and Michael had moved too far away for me to have heard anything anyway.

I walked, with what dignity I could, toward the end of the pew, pausing when I reached the novice before moving on.

“Sorry, Sister,” I said. Then, striving to break the awkward silence that ensued, during which the novice stared at me in mute disapproval, I added, “I like your, um…”

But since I couldn't remember what they call that dress they all wear, the compliment fell a little
flat, even though I thought I'd sort of saved it at the end by gesturing toward her and going, “You know, your thing. It's very figure flattering.”

But I guess that's the wrong thing to say to somebody who is in training to be a nun, since the novice got very red in the face and said, “Don't make me have to report you again, Miss Simon.”

Which I thought was sort of harsh, considering I'd been trying, anyway, to be nice. But whatever. I left the church and headed back to class, taking the long way, through the brightly sunlit courtyard, so I could soothe my frazzled nerves by listening to the sound of the burbling fountain.

My nerves soon shot back up to frazzled, however, when I spotted another one of the novices standing by the statue of Father Serra, delivering a little lecture to a group of tourists about the missionary's good works. In order to avoid being spotted out of class without a hall pass (why hadn't I thought to ask Father D. for one? I'd been thrown by the whole candle thing), I ducked into the girls' room, where I was met by a cloud of gray smoke.

Which meant only one thing, of course.

“Gina,” I said, stooping over so I could figure out which stall she was in by looking under the doors. “Are you insane?”

Gina's voice came floating out from one of the stalls on the end, near the window, which she'd strategically opened.

“I do not,” she said, throwing open the stall door, and then hanging onto it while she puffed, “believe so.”

“I thought you quit smoking.”

“I did.” Gina joined me on the window sill, onto which I'd hauled myself. The Mission, having been built in like the year 1600 or something, was made of this really thick adobe, so all the windows were set back two feet into the stone. This supplied built-in window seats that, if they were a little high, were at least very cool and comfortable.

“I only smoke now in emergencies,” Gina explained. “Like during religion class. You know I am philosophically opposed to organized religion. How about you?”

I raised my eyebrows. “I don't know,” I said. “Buddhism has always struck me as kind of cool. That whole reincarnation thing is very appealing.”

“That's Hinduism, you dink,” Gina said. “And I was talking about smoking.”

“Oh. Okay. No, I never got the hang of it. Why?” I grinned at her. “Didn't Sleepy tell you about the time he caught me trying to smoke?”

She frowned prettily. “He did not. And I wish
you wouldn't call him that.”

I made a face. “Jake, then. He was pretty peeved about it. You better not let him catch you at it, or he'll dump you like a hot potato.”

“I highly doubt that,” Gina said with a mysterious smile.

She was probably right. I wondered what it would be like to be Gina, and have every boy you met fall madly in love with you. The only boys who fell madly in love with me were boys like Michael Meducci. And he wasn't even technically in love with me. He was in love with the idea that I was in love with him. Something I still couldn't think about, by the way, without shuddering.

I heaved a dejected sigh and looked out the window. About a mile of sloping, cypress-tree-dotted landscape stretched to the sea, teal blue and sparkling in the bright afternoon sunlight.

“I don't see how you can stand it.” Gina exhaled a plume of gray smoke. She was back to talking about religion class, I could tell from her tone. “I mean, it must all
really
seem bogus to you, considering the whole mediator thing.”

I shrugged. I had gotten home too late the night before for Gina and I to have our “talk.” She'd been sound asleep when I snuck back into the house. Which was just as well, since I'd been exhausted.

Not exhausted enough, however, to fall asleep.

“I don't know,” I said. “I mean, I haven't got the slightest idea where the ghosts go after I send them packing. They just…go. Maybe to heaven. Maybe on to their next life. I doubt I'll ever know until I die myself.”

Gina aimed her next plume of smoke out the window. “You make it,” she said, “sound like a trip. Like when we die, we're just moving to a new address.”

“Well,” I said. “Personally, I think that's how it works. Just don't ask me to tell you what that address is. Because that I don't know.”

“So.” Her cigarette finished, Gina stamped it out on the adobe beneath us, then flung the butt expertly over the closest stall door, and into the toilet. I heard the plop, and then the sizzle. “What was that all about last night, anyway?”

I told her. About the RLS Angels, and how they thought Michael had killed them. I told her about Michael's sister, and the accident out on the Pacific Coast Highway. I told her about how Josh and his friends were looking to avenge their deaths, and about how Father Dominic and I had argued with them, long into the night, until we'd finally convinced them to let us try to bring Michael to justice the old-fashioned way—you
know, utilizing the appropriate law enforcement agencies, and not a paranormal contract killing.