Page 154 of Sunset Beach
“Piece of shit dirtbag,” Zee put in. “You know what our big mistake was? We should have taken him out and dumped him in Lake Maggiore that first night at the Dreamland. Let the gators take care of him.”
Brice filled his daughter in on the domestic call the two partners had responded to at the motel, the week before Christmas in 1975.
“There was nothing about that in the file,” Drue said.
The former cops exchanged a meaningful look.
“Colleen refused to press charges,” Brice said. “We never even called it in to dispatch, so there wouldn’t be any paper trail.”
“It started that night,” Brice said, looking miserable. “I thought I was being so damn clever. I told Sherri I had a study group on Thursday nights, but she eventually caught on.”
“And you knew Dad was having an affair with Colleen?” Drue asked Zee.
“It didn’t take a genius.”
“Things ramped up with her so fast, I didn’t realize, until it was too late, that Colleen had emotional problems,” Brice said.
“Total head case,” Zee agreed, swirling his finger beside his face.
“I guess it was in July when she really started talking crazy. Allen beat her up pretty bad. I kept telling her she should leave him, get a divorce. I offered to help her, but I was very clear that I was never going to leave Sherri.”
“You’d screw around on Mom, but you didn’t want a divorce?” Drue asked, her voice dripping scorn.
“Believe it or not, I loved your mom. Through everything, God help me, I loved her. When things got really crazy with Colleen, I realized, too late, that I wanted to make my marriage work. Your mom and I had a life together. We had plans. I was going to go to law school, we were gonna have kids.” He sighed and fished the olive out of his martini.
“And what did Colleen want?” Drue asked.
“She wanted to run away, assume a new identity, a new life. When I told her there was no way I’d leave, things got ugly. She got hysterical, made threats. She was stalking me, driving past the house. She even went to the office where your mom worked, to check her out! I didn’t find out ’til later that Sherri knew exactly who Colleen was.”
“What happened next?”
“She was calling me all the time, driving past the house, acting so crazy, I thought I’d lose my mind,” Brice said. “I couldn’t sleep. I got ulcers.” He looked over at his former partner.
“I told Jimmy what was going on with Colleen, all the wild threats. He told me he’d handle it.”
“And I did,” Zee said. “I made her understand that if she was going to go, she was going to go alone. We got her a fake driver’s license and a new social security card. It wasn’t that hard back then, before everything was computerized. She told me she was going to withdraw all the money from her and Allen’s savings account, hop a bus to Atlanta and start a new life.”
“Is that what she did?” Drue asked.
“As far as I knew, it was,” Brice said. “When she disappeared like she did, I thought that was a sign. That Sherri and I were getting a chance to start over. That I could make things right with her.”
Zee was staring toward the door, watching people drift into the bar.
“Jimmy?” Drue asked. “Colleen never did get on that bus, did she?”
“No,” Zee said. “She never did.”
He took a long swallow of beer and recounted the night, decades earlier, when Sherri, hysterical and already half drunk, had called him at home to say that she’d killed her husband’s lover, and was about to kill herself.
Brice stared, silent and uncomprehending, as his oldest friend told the story.
Zee sipped his beer and put the sunglasses on again.
Drue buried her head against her father’s chest and sobbed. When she finally regained her composure, Brice handed her a paper napkin from the dispenser on the table, and she blew her nose.
“You told me you could handle the truth,” Zee said apologetically.
“Because I thought, at first, Dad killed her. Then, I was sure it was you. I never dreamed Mom”—she said, sniffling—“Mom was capable of something like that.” She fixed her father with an accusing stare. “And you never suspected Colleen was dead? At all?”
