She Didn't Have a Chance

Previously: The team meets at the Holy Heart library for a chat.

Need to catch up on The Spring? Visit the chapter index here:

4:46 PM - Monday, November 10, 2014

Holy Heart School, Flood Mansion, Pacific Heights, San Francisco

Paco swiped open the inert iPad that was on the table in front of him, but paused before he opened the app he meant to open.

“I — I was just wondering, Tally, if you had any idea of what happened to Alexa on Halloween?” Paco watched Tally’s inscrutable face recoil just a whisper.

“Of course not. Why would you ask me that?”

“Because, you know,” he paused, thinking, “you know this whole week I’ve been thinking of you and what you said last Sunday when the Headmaster at Academy told the group that Alexa had died.” Tally looked puzzled.

“I — I don’t remember what I said.” The girl said cagily.

“You said: “It was a prank.”” Paco rolled his lips and looked at her intently. “That was your first instinct.” He leaned back in his chair, “so this whole week I’ve been wondering why. I’ve been wondering what the prank was?”

Tally’s lips parted slightly as though she had a quick response, but said nothing, as though she’d thought better of saying it. Her eyes narrowed a fraction and she took in a slow breath.

“Nothing? You don’t remember what the prank was? You don’t remember who was pulling the prank or what they did?”

“It — it was those boys from Xavier, you know — Tripp Hartman had those wolf masks. They were all running around being stupid.” Tally huffed.

“Okay.” Paco paused taking this in. “Where were you when they were running around being stupid?”

“Wh-what do you mean?”

“I mean, where were you?”

“I was there, I was at the party. I saw them do it.”

“Did you?” Tally didn’t like that. Her face got pinched and flushed with color slightly.

“What do you mean, exactly?” She demanded. “Who’s been telling you —”

“No one’s been telling us anything other than what we already knew, Tally.” Jeannie answered her calmly. She looked to Paco who raised his eyebrows at her encouragingly. Mark leaned back and watched them double-team the girl. “The fact is, we have plenty of evidence that shows that you basically weren’t at the party at Inspiration Point at all.”

Tally glared at her in response, mouth tight. “What are you talking about?” Tally growled.

Jeannie drew in a deep breath and opened her own iPad, moving to a file of photos. Opening the first one, she tilted the iPad to show it to Tally and her mother.

“Okay, here you are at Tripp Hartman’s Gatsby party. It’s you, Carolina, Zizi, MJ, Alexa — “

“I can see who it is.” The girl snapped. Jeannie looked up at her slowly, taking her time before going back to the iPad.

“There’s a few more of these photos of you at the party — group photos, costume shots. It’s all very cute, and you look fabulous — the Lanvin dress, using a bracelet as a headband — that was a really inspired touch. You said Alexa did that for you?” Tally’s nostrils flared.

“Yes.” She whispered.

“So, the party goes on until about 9:45 or so, which is when Charlie Dagonet shut down the DJ stand and took his gear home, meanwhile everyone else went to Inspiration Point. But after 9:45 Tally…” Jeannie scrolled through a multitude of party photos showing crazy drunken selfies, stumbling group pictures, kids trading costumes, kids standing on top of the big party rock, kids being crazy, kids making out, kids jumping on each other, kids holding up fistfuls of mini Tito’s bottles. “…after 9:45 or so, we don’t see you in any photos at all. Not a single one. And we received pictures from over 50 people who were there, plus pulled plenty more from social media.” Jeannie looked up at the girl. “There weren’t any on your own phone, either. In fact…” she scrolled through more photos, “the next photo we see with you in it is at the end of the night. You took this selfie with Carolina at around 11:30 PM, before, supposedly, the two of you walked back to Tripp Hartman’s house to call an Uber. You took it, but it was on Carolina’s phone.” Jeannie left the selfie on the screen. “Clearly Carolina’s a bit drunk here, but you look pretty fabulous — like you haven’t been partying at all. Or at least not partaking of the Trick-or-Tito’s?” Jeannie felt her mouth twitch at the corner as she considered Tally. “Carolina even said she didn’t remember seeing you at Inspiration Point at all that night, but that you appeared out of nowhere around 11 and you two went back to Tripp’s.” Jeannie raised her eyebrows at Tally in a silent question.

“What?” Tally shrugged.

“You can’t account for your whereabouts from about 9:45 to 11PM, that’s all.” Jeannie tilted her head. “It’s fine for now.” She looked to Paco. “But I’m leaving this photo open — there’s a few other interesting things about it, but we’ll come back to that.” Jeannie let the iPad go flat on the table, the selfie filling the screen.

Tally’s eyes were suspicious now as she rolled her lips over her teeth, jaw tight.

Paco opened his own iPad again, opening up a map he’d created.

“Since you don’t seem to know, or at least, you don’t seem to have any theories —” Paco flipped the iPad to show Tally a map, “why don’t I tell you what happened to Alexa?” Tally’s eyes went huge. “So, obviously, this is a map of the part of the Presidio where the party happened on Halloween. The red star is Tripp’s house, but over here, the green star is your house and the orange star is Charlie’s house. This red line here from Tripp’s house shows the basic route everyone at the party took to get to Inspiration Point.”

“What’s - what’s the black star?” Tally asked quietly.

“Oh yeah, the black star is where Alexa’s body was found.” Paco watched the girl’s face as he said it but she gave away nothing. In silence, Paco changed the map again. “Now in this one, I’ve added Alexa’s route from the party to where she died at El Polin spring — do you see those orange dots?” Tally gave a brief nod. “Those are Alexa’s butterflies. I mean, we have a much more precise map that has the actual locations, but this will do for our chat here. So, you know how Alexa wore that killer butterfly dress with the monarch butterflies?”

“The McQueen she made…from Hunger Games.” Tally whispered.

“Yeah, so Ryan and Carolina told us that she got so crunched for time that she had to glue a lot of the butterflies on, but by the end of the night, the butterflies were kind of falling off the dress, you know?” Tally looked at him suspiciously. “So, we found all these butterflies all over the ground around Inspiration Point, but they weren’t real — they were the feather butterflies she’d used. So that way we can see where she went. She left the party rock at Inspiration Point with Jen Tyson,” Paco saw Tally’s eyes contract slightly at this, “and made her way over to the Redwood Grove.” Paco traced the path with his finger. “Now, we don’t know why she’d do this, but it’s what happened. And there, someone scared her pretty good. We found the wolf masks the boys wore in the Redwood Grove, so we thought that was who’d scared her, but something REALLY scared her. Scared her enough that she took off running.” Tally seemed to shrink back in her chair, watching Paco. “She started running, and then tripped on one of the erosion wattles that was there on the trail path — you know, so the hill doesn’t wash away? She tripped and since she was moving pretty fast she flew forward and landed on one of the fence posts that mark the trail.” Paco’s eyes never left Tally’s face. “She hit it so hard it punctured her lung.”

“Oh my.” Mrs. Briggs whispered. Tally flinched slightly at hearing her mother’s voice.

“Yeah. But whatever scared her was still behind her right? So she kind of had to keep going, you know? So she keeps moving down the path but when she gets to the bottom she gets confused, right? It’s super dark, she scared, she’s not breathing very well, oh…and I forgot to mention that she’d had one of the Trick-or-Tito’s, well maybe more than one. But the ones Alexa had had been dosed with GHB and opiates.” Tally’s eyes finally met Paco’s. “So, Alexa’s in a bad way. She’s freaked out on a dark trail, can’t catch her breath, and is totally disoriented by drugs and alcohol, so she ends up going off-trail. We don’t know why this happened either, except that maybe whatever scared her was coming after her? Maybe she saw the lights in the houses on the hill and thought she could get there? We don’t know. But Alexa ran or walked or stumbled straight into the blackberry patch that grows on the side of this hill.” Paco indicated the area. “It would have felt like trying to walk through sharp quicksand. In fact, the coroner said they pulled 62 blackberry thorns out of her legs.” Tally’s shoulders shook slightly. “But the hill got the better of her — she likely tripped and fell again in the blackberry vines and landed right in El Polin Spring at the bottom of the hill. She struggled though. She tried to push herself up, but either didn’t have the strength or couldn’t get leverage — we don’t know. But Alexa Thomas drowned in El Polin Spring. If someone had seen where she’d gone, or found her or something, she may have survived. But with all the drugs in her system and the punctured lung…she didn’t have a chance.”

The room was entirely silent, Mrs Briggs holding a palm to her sternum as though to keep her own breath from leaving her.

“So, Tally. I’ll ask you again.” Paco began. “What prank were you talking about last Sunday?”

Tally rolled her eyes. “We all play pranks on each other. We all do it all the time.”

“I doubt many people play pranks on you, Tally.” Jeannie drawled slowly. Tally glared at her again, lips parted.

“Tripp Hartman loved the idea of the wolf pack thing. He had his mother order those ugly rubber masks and the boys turned into total animals. It was for Halloween. It was meant to be a scare at the party. They were all running around wearing them — that’s probably what scared Alexa.”

“It could be.” Paco agreed. “But all the boys are accounted for.”

“What do you mean?”

“Dash Reilly was Wolverine, Tripp Hartman was a flasher, Tyler Shea and Vin Parisi were 70s gangsters.” Tally’s face went contorted with confusion.

“So? What does that matter?”

“Well, none of their outfits fit with whoever scared Alexa.” Paco went back to the iPad and opened a photo. “This is the last photo Alexa took on her phone.” Paco explained, flipping the screen to show Tally the photo of the figure in the trench coat with the wolf mask. “We’ve already lined up where this was taken on the trail and it was further down than the Redwood Grove where the boys ditched their masks. Plus, none of those boys wore a trench coat like this.” Tally looked like she was about to choke.

“But you did.” Jeannie added, pointing to Tally in the selfie with Carolina. “You’re wearing that trench coat right here in this picture with Carolina.”

Tally took a sharp inhale. “That’s Carolina’s coat.”

“We know that. And we know that you borrowed it from her for Halloween. We also know that once you got back to Tripp’s house, you folded it up into a grocery bag and gave it back to Carolina to take home.” Jeannie raised her eyebrows at the girl for a long pause. “Lucky for us, Carolina never unpacked it. She handed us the entire bag — the trench coat and everything with it.”

“What do you mean, everything with it?” Tally demanded angrily. “What are you getting at?”

“We’re getting at what you were doing between 9:45 and 11 PM that night.” Paco answered calmly.

Jeannie went back to Tally’s selfie with Carolina. “There’s something else about this photo that’s interesting. Well, it’s what’s missing that’s really interesting.” Tally rolled her eyes again. “Your bracelet headband is gone.” Tally went very still. “Did you lose it?”

“I — I — I think so.” Tally stammered. Her cheeks were forming pink blotches here and there. “I — I put it in my pocket on the way home and — “

“Talbot told me the bracelet was missing.” Mrs. Briggs interrupted. “I’ve already phoned our insurance company.”

“I know that Mrs. Briggs.” Jeannie told her. “I’ve spoken with the insurance company about it myself. They won’t be issuing you a check.” Linda Briggs own eyes narrowed angrily at this. “They won’t be paying you because the bracelet hasn’t been lost. We found it.”

“What on earth do you mean?” Like her daughter, the woman had a flair for the dramatic.

Jeannie tapped away on the iPad to reveal side-by-side evidence photos of another rubber wolf mask, as well as the glittering platinum and diamond bracelet she’d taken to Gigi to assess.

“Grandmother’s bracelet —” Mrs. Briggs hissed, glaring sideways at her daughter. “I told you NOT to wear it on Halloween.” Tally set her jaw and pretended to ignore her mother.

“Yes, it is a spectacular piece, especially considering how cavalierly your daughter wore it as a part of her costume. I had a professional jeweler tell me a bit about the design and it’s quite interesting. Jeannie tapped the screen again to open up her notes. “Apparently it is one of the rare designs that Giles de Blanc made while he was at Shreve & Co from about 1921 to 1923. Shreve had hired him from France to bring a bit of continental style to their assortment, and the delicate platinum sort of “ribbon” that moves through the design is one of his signatures. That and the way he grouped the baguettes around the larger stones, anyways, one of my good friends is a jeweler and she was very excited about it. Actually she made my ring…” Jeannie smiled at both Tally and her mother, who offered her blank stares. “Also the quality of the stones is really something. The first jeweler I spoke with assessed it at around $45 thousand, but the second one I spoke with placed it much higher, around $55-70 thousand. The Giles de Blanc angle plus the stones makes it especially collectible for people that love Art Deco jewelry, so they thought it would do very well at auction.” Linda Briggs’ face was completely blank.

“I dug a little deeper though, and found this blurb from the Chronicle, it’s dated December 22, 1979:

“The Cotillion Club debutantes danced under the dome of the Palace Hotel last night — a room that had been transformed into a Grecian garden for the occasion. The space was flanked with a set of stately columns, and tall urns overflowing with pink and white roses finished the effect. Twenty three girls made their bows, their escorts in white tie and tails. Miss Belinda Crocker Talbot led the debs into the Grand Ballroom for a turn of the traditional cotillion marches — a reminder of San Francisco’s Champagne Days. Miss Talbot’s mother, Consuelo Theresa de Haro Crocker Talbot made her own debut at the first Cotillion Club in 1941. Mrs. Talbot wore Yves Saint Laurent for her daughter’s presentation, while proud grandmother Maria-Louisa de Haro Crocker, who was also in attendance, wore Valentino and her famous Art Deco diamond bracelet commissioned by Shreve in 1920 as a wedding present.”

Jeannie looked up at Linda Briggs. “That is your full name, correct? Belinda Crocker Talbot?” Linda Briggs nodded at her, tears in her eyes. “Shame that such a family heirloom would go missing, especially considering Talbot’s Cotillion coming up next month.” She looked to Tally, whose chin was shaking. “I would imagine you’d want to wear it, Mrs. Briggs, to keep up with the tradition.”

“I would.” She said quietly, glancing at her daughter.

“And will your husband be there for the father-daughter dance? We haven’t yet met Mr. Briggs.”

“My - my husband is traveling. He does plan to be here in December though.”

“He’s on a yacht in Fiji with his mistress.” Tally offered in a flat voice.

“Talbot, please.”

“Please, nothing, mother. She’s barely older than I am. Not that she’s really a mistress any more. Girlfriend is more apt — the divorce went through this summer, didn’t it? Only after about eight years.” Tally turned to Jeannie. “So many financial considerations to work through.” She said wryly.

“Or not enough?” Jeannie countered.

Linda Briggs’ eyes flared. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean that you didn’t waste any time filing an insurance claim against your grandmother’s bracelet. You’d get a handsome pay out that you seem to need, Mrs. Briggs.”

“How dare you.” The woman muttered at Jeannie, fury pouring off of her.

“Call it an observation. Your home, while beautiful, is shabby and in disrepair. Most women who are newly-divorced with a generous settlement are eager to redecorate, or even sell their home. Following that logic, if your divorce was final a few months ago, your house should be under renovation by now or on the real estate market. But instead, you’re keeping it as-is, frankly, trapped in the early 90s, because your daughter needs to make her debut and then go off to an Ivy League college.” Jeannie paused. “But surely your husband is paying for that?”

Tally’s head snapped to her mother.

“My husband is delaying any settlement and my lawyer has advised that we play along.”

“Then get another fucking lawyer.” Her daughter growled. “We will not be poor. Not while that little tramp gets everything —”

“TALBOT. Stop.” Her mother finally raised her voice. “That is enough. This investigation isn’t about our family, is it?” She said it definitively.

“Well, you’re correct, for now. But it does lend itself to motive in a way.” Jeannie told her. “But let’s stay with the bracelet shall we?” Jeannie went back to the image with the bracelet and mask together. “See, Carolina Parker gave us the trench coat just as you’d given it to her, Tally — folded up in a grocery bag — a Whole Foods bag, to be exact — one that you found somewhere at Tripp Hartman’s house. I handed it off to our forensic team, and they found this rubber wolf mask in the pocket of the coat…and inside the wolf mask was your bracelet.” Tally took in a sharp, shaking breath and pressed her lips together. “It’s human nature: you yank off a hot, rubbery mask and you don’t notice if anything else goes with it. You didn’t even notice your bracelet-headband had been caught in the mask, you just shoved it in the coat pocket. Back at Tripp’s I’m sure you felt so victorious at pulling a prank on Alexa Thomas that you didn’t even notice you’d left the mask and the bracelet in the trench when you took it off, folded it up, put it in the bag, and gave it back to Carolina.” Jeannie considered the girl whose face was getting more pinched by the second. “That was sloppy, Tally.”

“What do you mean?” The girl choked out through clenched teeth.

“I mean your play was sloppy. You forgot that we’d find out about the four wolf masks that Marilyn Hartman ordered for her son and his friends, and that none of those boys wore trench coats on Halloween. You forgot that we’d realize there was a fifth wolf mask, and you forgot to get rid of the mask appropriately. You also completely overlooked your own valuable piece of jewelry in the mix. You thought you’d do a little quick-change at the party, scare Alexa, and then gloat about it on Pr3pSF.” Tally’s eyes flared. “Yes, we know which account was yours on Pr3pSF too, and we know it was you who posted the sex video on Friday, but we’ll come to that.”

“Sex video?” Linda Briggs gasped. “Tally you didn’t —”

“It wasn’t me, mother, Jesus.” Tally sighed.

Jeannie felt a small smirk on her own face as Tally looked up at her.

“Alright —” the girl said, “did you ever think that I could have just shown up for that photo with Carolina? Or that someone else could have worn that mask and just handed it to me and I forgot about it? You can’t prove anything.”

“Right, your great-grandmother’s diamond bracelet isn’t proof of anything at all.” Jeannie said sarcastically. Tally rolled her eyes again.

“It isn’t really. I mean, if I’m so sloppy, how could I possibly have been the one to scare Alexa if no one even saw me at Inspiration Point?” Jeannie smiled at her and looked to Paco.

“Actually, I’m so glad you asked that, Tally.”