Femme Fatale and other stories

suicide that way. There didn’t seem to be any reason to explain that Eddie was the one who wanted to break up. Unnecessary information.
    I crossed the hillside to the highway, a distance of about a mile, then jogged the rest of the way. After all, as my mother would be the first to tell you, I went for a run that afternoon, while Molly was off shopping, according to her mom. I assumed the police would tie Antone’s dead body to Molly’s murder and figure it for a revenge killing, but I was giving the cops too much credit. Antone rated a paragraph in the morning paper. Molly, who turned out to be pregnant, although not even she knew it—probably didn’t even know who the father was, for sure—is still on the front page all these weeks later. (The fact that they didn’t find her for three days heightened the interest, I guess. I mean, she was just an overweight dental hygienist from the suburbs—and a bit of a slut, as I told you. But the media got all excited about it.) The general consensus seems to be that Keith did it, and I don’t see any reason to let him off the hook, not yet. He’s an asshole. Plus, almost no one in this state gets the death penalty.
    Meanwhile, he’s telling people just how many men Molly had sex with in the past month, including Brandon, and police are still trying to figure out who had sex with her right before she died. (That’s why you’re supposed to get the condom on as early as possible, girls. Penises drip. Just FYI.) I pretended to be shocked, but I already knew about Brandon, having seen Molly’s car outside his apartment when I cruised his place at 2 A.M. a few nights after Brandon told me he wanted to see other people. My ex-boyfriend and my best friend, running around behind my back. Everyone feels so bad for me, but I’m being brave, although I eat so little that I’m down to a size 2. I just bought a Versace dress and Manolos for a date this weekend with my new boyfriend, Robert. I’ve never spent so much money on an outfit before, but then, I’ve never had $2,000 in cash to spend as I please.

Read on for an exclusive extract from Laura Lippman’s forthcoming novel
The Innocents
.

Autumn 1977–Spring 1978
C HAPTER F OUR
    It was Mickey who decided we should be a group, that the duo of Mickey
and Gwen should be joined to the trio of the Halloran brothers. Before, we were two and three. Five together was stronger than two and three. Our country’s own Department of Defense, Sean later pointed out, was contained within the Pentagon, so it must be the strongest thing possible.
    But our coalition began as a dispute, an argument over territory. Although the Hallorans lived on Sekots, at the far end of the neighborhood, they often used a vacant lot at the end of Gwen’s street as their makeshift kickball field. The squarish mound of grass was just large enough to approximate an infield, but the lack of an outfield was problematic, dangerous even. A strong kick—and all the Halloran boys were powerful—inevitably sent the ball into the street or skittering across the foundation of a long-abandoned springhouse on the other side. And while Wetheredsville Road—oh, how Gwen complained about having to learn to spell her street name—was not heavily trafficked even then, the mill was still open and enormous trucks rumbled past several times a day.
    Mickey, who cared nothing for the field but liked to cut through it to reach the stream, decided the Halloran boys were presumptuous. The lot was not theirs to annex, she argued.
Not yours, either,
Tim argued back.
You don’t even live in the village
. Mickey countered that Gwen, as the resident of the last house on Wetheredsville Road, should have the right to use the lot, or not use the lot, as she saw fit. The boys should have to pay Gwen to use the field, Mickey insisted.
    “Or”—and this was clearly where she had been heading all along—“let us play, too.”
    It was fall. The promise, the glow of back-to-school had already faded. Gwen’s denim binder was full of torn papers, and she could never find her little box of reinforcements. At St. Lawrence, Go-Go had already been given multiple detentions, and Sean was bored by the writing assignments, which never allowed him to show his range. Tim was getting by at Cardinal Gibbons, but getting by was Tim’s particular genius. A letter had already been sent home to Mickey’s mother, noting that she was not working up to her potential. That is, the letter was