“I’m really sorry about Pam,” Joanna said, plucking a strawberry from the tray. “I know she was your friend.”
“Yours, too, right?”
“Never met her.”
“But she was a member of the club.”
“Was she?” A pause as Joanna ate the strawberry and her mouth moved to one side of her face, as if she was really concentrating. “I . . . I don’t think so. I mean, I never saw her there.”
“I didn’t play tennis with her?”
“No . . . well, not that I knew of, but it’s been a while, you know. You were gone for a while . . . on a trip to Mexico, I think, and then you got pregnant, so . . . well, I never played tennis with her and you were in our league . . . To tell you the truth, I don’t remember you ever mentioning her. I just heard that you were her friend after the accident . . .” She turned a palm toward the ceiling. “Well, it’s a big club. Lots of members. I don’t know everybody, but no one in our group had ever met her.”
Marla felt a trickle of dread. She was certain Alex or the police officer or someone said she’d played tennis with Pam Delacroix . . . or had she just thought so? Maybe her mind was playing tricks on her. It was all so damned frustrating and fuzzy. But there was one way to find out. “I don’t suppose you happen to have an address book for the club?”
“Mmm. I do.” Joanna licked her fingers and nodded frantically, as if eager to be of help. “In here.” She set her glass on the table and dug through an oversized purse that was large enough to double as an athletic bag. “Now, if I can just find it.” After searching through several compartments, she opened a zippered pocket and withdrew the address book. “Voilà!” she said, slapping the book onto the table between them. “Sometimes it’s a miracle that I find anything in this mess.”
Marla, feeling a sense of uneasiness, flipped through the pages, found the Ds and ran her finger down the names. Not one was familiar. None rang any distant bells. Delacroix wasn’t listed. No name. No phone number. As if she never existed. “Damn.” Somehow Marla had expected this—sensed it. She read through the roster again, and again, each time more slowly. It didn’t help.
“Nothing, right?” Joanna lifted her shoulders as she cut off a piece of cheese and placed it on a water biscuit. “I’m telling you, I didn’t think I’d ever heard her name before. We talked about it, Robin, Nancy and I—but none of us had ever heard you mention Pam.” She popped the piece of Brie and cracker into her mouth. “You know, we used to play doubles together a couple of times a week. You’d have thought one of us would have remembered you talking about her.”
“But she was with me that night and now . . . now she’s dead. Along with the trucker.”
“He died?” Joanna asked, cringing a little, her petite nose wrinkling in distaste. “Probably a blessing, considering.”
Tell that to his family, Marla thought, sick at the thought. “It’s just so . . . hard.”
“I know.”
Do you? How can you possibly? Two people are dead, dead, because of me and I don’t remember a damned thing about it! Marla gripped her glass so hard she was afraid she might snap the stem, but managed to hold her tongue. After all, Joanna was her friend, here to offer support, a link to the outside world.
Joanna’s neatly plucked eyebrows drew together as she bit into the cracker again. “So, really, how do you feel?”
“Pretty damned bad.” Marla, despite everyone’s warnings, took a drink of cool wine. So it didn’t mix with the medication—so what? Was it going to fry her brain or something? So she couldn’t remember? So what if she was a little fuzzier? Big deal? Hoping some of the names in the club’s roster would mean something to her, she slowly turned the pages again, her eyes sliding down the names, addresses and phone numbers, but though some of the names seemed familiar, she conjured no faces with Smith, Johnson and Walters . . . all common names. No faces. “But, as I said, it’s supposed to get better.”
“Let’s hope.” Joanna lifted her glass in a mock toast and she used her index finger to point to Marla’s hand.
“What happened to your ring?”
“I’m wearing it.”
“No, not your wedding ring, the other one, the ruby ring. You got it from your father, I think, and you never took it off, called it your ‘lucky’ ring.”
“I don’t know . . .” She rubbed her finger, looked for an indentation in her skin to see if there was an impression where a ring she’d worn for years had been . . . there was none.
“They didn’t steal it, did they? At the hospital? It happens sometimes.”
“I don’t know . . . I was wearing this one.” She was perplexed.
“Well, you check into it; that ring’s an antique. Worth a fortune and with your dad being so sick and all . . . well, I know you’ll want it as a memento.” She touched Marla on the arm. “How’s he doing?”
“I haven’t seen him,” she admitted, feeling a little guilty.
“I know you’ve been worried about him,” Joanna said. “We talked on the phone and you said you were afraid he might not last to see James’s birth.”
“He’s . . . he’s that ill?” Marla asked, surprised Alex hadn’t said as much.
“You told me he was only given a few weeks . . . and that was over a month ago.”