The Lighthouse

It must have been immediately afterward that the girl had called the lighthouse, probably from the phone booth at the rest area down the road. By then she’d realized she had mixed herself up in something she couldn’t handle. She’d been afraid to talk to her parents about what she’d done; she couldn’t call the police because it would have meant confessing to blackmail. So in her panic she’d called the one person she thought might help her, might perhaps give her the extra money she felt she needed to leave Hilliard-the woman who hadn’t turned her in for attempted extortion, Alix Ryerson.

“You didn’t go after her right away?”

“I didn’t go after her at all,” Cassie said. “No, I just wanted to get out for a while, go for a drive, try to think. But there she was, pedaling along the cape road; I could see the reflector lights on her bicycle. Even then I didn’t follow her, not for a while. Then I thought, why not go out there and talk to her, try to reason with her again about the extra thousand dollars. So I did. I didn’t intend to hurt her. It just happened, that’s all, like it did with Miranda.”

The woman’s expression was distracted now, her gaze jumpy. But the pistol was still steady in her two hands. Alix desperately wondered how far she could push her. And yet she had to keep trying, had to find some way to either make her surrender the weapon or try to take it away from her. Jan’s life as well as her own might depend on it.

“Did Miranda want money too?” she asked. “Is that why you killed her?”

The question seemed to surprise Cassie. “Money? Oh, I suppose it would have come to that. What she claimed she wanted when she showed up here was advice. Advice, help, succor, sympathy. She wanted to keep the baby, she wanted Ron to pay child support. She thought I might be able to give her some… what did she call it? Insight. Some insight into how to get him to acknowledge her-that was the word she used, acknowledge her and the baby.”

Now Alix remembered two more seemingly unrelated facts. Miranda Collins had been four months pregnant when she died. And Cassie’s ex-husband, the anthropology professor who had a weakness for coeds, was named Ron.

“She’d been sleeping with Ron for two years, the little bitch,” Cassie said. “All very secret, of course, because he was such a fine, upstanding faculty member. Very secret from everybody except me. The wife always knows.”

“But why did she come to you?”

“Who knows? I don’t understand these young people; their morals aren’t like ours. Maybe she thought that since I was another woman Ron had treated badly, I’d understand her plight and we’d form a united front against him. But how could I do that, after what she’d done to me? She was the one who put an end to my marriage; she was the one who’d conceived the child I could never have with Ron.”

Cassie was breathing raggedly now. Alix clenched her fists, watching the woman’s jumpy, frightening eyes. Cassie wasn’t going to relinquish that pistol without a fight, that was clear now; and in her worked-up state, she might decide to pull the trigger at any moment. If Alix hoped to survive, she would have to make some kind of move against her and would have to do it very soon. Maybe she could drop down, throw herself at Cassie’s feet… but not from where she stood now, there was too much distance between them. Move away from the car, then, one slow step at a time. And keep Cassie talking while she did it…

“But you didn’t mean to kill Miranda,” she said, and eased one foot out in front of her. “Isn’t that what you said?”

“Oh no. It just happened. I don’t even remember doing it. Funny, though-afterward, the next day, I knew Ron would realize I’d done it, even though he didn’t know she’d come down here to see me. Because of where her body was found, so close to here. I should have taken her a long way from Hilliard, a long, long way, but I was so scared that night, I just wanted to get rid of her. But Ron never said a thing to the police. I kept waiting for him to call and accuse me and he didn’t do that, either.”

Alix had moved one full step away from the car and was about to take another. But when Cassie paused, she stood very still. She would need at least two more steps before she was close enough to hurl herself at the woman’s feet “Well, now I know the reason,” Cassie said. “I should have known it right from the first. He couldn’t risk his affair being found out. Oh, I can picture him mouthing platitudes to his colleagues: ‘How could such a terrible thing happen to such a lovely girl?’ He didn’t care about Miranda any more than he cared about any of the others. Or me. But he should have cared about that baby. He-”