The Book of Cold Cases, page 12
And four, when I’d mentioned Mariana’s possible mental illness, Beth had been angry. That was what that cold expression of hers was, the dead voice that gave me the chills. Beth hadn’t been bemused or dismissive at the suggestion that her mother had been crazy. She’d been suddenly, icily angry.
When Beth was that angry, she was terrifying.
I was on the right track, which meant the answers were there. I just had to figure out where they were.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
October 2017
SHEA
My sister was the executive assistant to a bank CEO, which was where she met her husband, one of the bank’s lawyers. She and Will lived in one of the new low-rise condo buildings downtown, not far from the waterfront, in a neighborhood that had been built for well-to-do people like them. When I arrived for dinner, Esther answered the door in linen pants and a blouse that would have cost a month of our father’s salary growing up. By contrast, I was wearing dark jeans, a black tee, sneakers, and a stretched-out black hoodie, my hair in a ponytail. I looked like I’d just finished prowling the neighborhood, staring into everyone’s windows, but Esther made no comment.
We probably shouldn’t have liked each other, Esther and me. We were so different, even though we had the same black hair and dark eyes. Esther wore her hair in a fashionable layered cut that ended at her chin and looked amazing on her, and I left mine long and usually tied back. We probably should have hated each other, but we’d never quite managed it. We’d been through too much together.
Will gave me a hug in greeting. He smelled like aftershave and men’s deodorant, scents I wasn’t familiar with anymore. “It’s so good to see you,” he said.
I handed him the bottle of wine I’d brought, warm from my lap, where I’d held it on the bus. “It’s good to see you, too.”
In her early twenties, before Will, Esther had dated a man who hit her. I’d helped her leave him, packing a U-Haul in the middle of the day while her boyfriend was at work, shoving garbage bags of her belongings into the trailer as fast as we could. We may be very different now, years later—Esther successful and put-together, me a divorced wreck—but we still had the experience of the garbage bags in the U-Haul, of me sleeping with her those first nights in her rented apartment, eating Pringles out of a tube for dinner. When you share something like that with your sister, it never leaves you, for better or for worse.
Will went to the dining room to set the table, and I followed Esther into the kitchen, where she put my bottle of wine in her fridge and pulled an already-chilled bottle from an ice bucket. “Thank you for actually coming,” she said.
“Thank you for not setting me up with Will’s coworker.”
She gave me a tight smile. “You scared me off that one,” she said. “Well done. How was your day?”
I had gone to lunch with an infamous possible serial killer, but I looked at my sister and I couldn’t bring that up. For once, I didn’t want to talk about murder. “It was fine,” I said. “Same old, really.”
She wrinkled her nose. “You should get a promotion in that job. You’ve been there long enough. Supervisor or manager of the office. Or better yet, get out of there entirely. It’s a dead end. You don’t need some high-powered career, but you could definitely do better than that place.”
Extra money would be nice, I agreed, but the thought of moving up and managing other people gave me hives. “If something promising comes up, I’ll let you know.”
“You’re humoring me.” Esther scooped tetrazzini into bowls and chopped a garnish to put on top of it. “You don’t want to argue, so you’re saying what I want to hear.”
I was doing exactly that, but I didn’t want to fight. “Have you heard from Mom and Dad?”
“I talked to them yesterday. You should visit them. It’s nice in Florida this time of year.”
“Esther, it’s literally hurricane season.”
I got another tight smile, because despite her lecturing, my sister had a sense of humor. “Okay, then, you could call them more often. Or ever.”
I took a deep sip of wine. She was exactly right—I could call my parents more often. The Incident, when I was nine, had affected my relationship with my parents, even though none of us wanted it to. My parents had felt guilty that they hadn’t somehow protected me from my abductor, though logically they had done nothing wrong. Their guilt, in turn, made nine-year-old me feel guilty for causing trouble and making my parents feel bad. Esther felt both guilty for not being there to protect me and resentful that for a long time I got more attention than she did, followed by guilt about the resentment. And the cycle went round and round, among four loving, well-meaning people who had no idea what else to do, and it was still going round twenty years later.
Sometimes, I thought I might like the cycle to stop. But my parents were in Florida now, and things were bumbling along well enough. There was no reason to dig up old bodies.
I watched Esther sprinkle garnish on our dinners with her beautiful, manicured hands as we stood in her beautiful kitchen. I shouldn’t be here, in my circle of darkness, making things harder for her. She should probably have a better sister. But she was stuck with me.
Will appeared in the kitchen doorway and leaned on the doorframe. “I waited long enough,” he said to Esther. “Did you tell her?”
I went still, my glass in my hand. “Tell me what?”
“I’m working up to it,” Esther said, still looking at her garnishes and not at me.
“You said you’d tell her,” Will said.
I looked at my sister, at the tense lines at the corners of her eyes, and my stomach turned. Was something wrong? “Tell me what?” I said again.
“It isn’t a big deal,” Esther said.
“It’s a big deal,” Will replied, his voice calm. “It’s been a big deal for two years.”
“Tell me,” I said, trying not to panic. “Please tell me.”
Esther sighed, the breath coming out of her from so deep that it changed the shape of her shoulders. Emotions flitted across her expression one by one: fear, stress, tense excitement, a hollow sort of sadness. She stopped fidgeting with the garnishes and turned to look at me. “We’re starting IVF next week,” she said.
I tried to compute this. “IVF? As in having a baby?”
“Yes.”
I looked back and forth from Esther to Will, trying to read their expressions. “Okay,” I said slowly. “Why IVF? Is there some kind of complication?”
“We don’t know,” Will said. He looked tense, too, though he didn’t look as tense as my sister, who was practically vibrating like a piano wire. “We just know we haven’t been able to get pregnant. We’ve been trying for two years.”
I put my wineglass down on the counter. “Two years?” I looked at Esther. She was leaning against the counter, staring down at her hands. I noticed for the first time that she hadn’t poured herself any wine. “You’ve been trying to have a baby for two years, and you didn’t tell me?” I said.
“She wanted to tell you,” Will explained. “I’ve been begging her to do it. It’s just been difficult for us. We actually conceived twice but lost the baby very early.”
I rubbed my cheek, feeling my numb skin. Pregnant? Esther had been pregnant twice, and she hadn’t told me anything? “Esther?” I said.
My sister stared at her palms. “You’ve been going through a tough time,” she said. “Your marriage wasn’t working, and then you were going through the divorce. I didn’t feel like I could burden you with it. And I didn’t think I could talk to you about it. All of this murder stuff . . .” She shook her head. “You’re so far away.”
If she had shoved a knife in my gut, I couldn’t have been more hurt. Or more surprised. I’d always thought I was close to Esther. No, I was close to Esther. We lived in the same town, and we talked every other day. We saw each other at Christmas. We did Sunday breakfast every other month. I’d had dinner here at least a dozen times in the last two years.
We had shoved garbage bags into that U-Haul together, stayed awake until it felt like our eyes were filled with sand. When Esther had called me and asked me to pack that truck, I’d dropped everything. And before that . . . before that, she’d been my big sister when I’d been through the worst thing that had ever happened to me.
You’re so far away.
Will stepped into our pained silence, as he was so good at doing. “We’ve told you now,” he said gently to me. “It’s gone on long enough. Now you know. Let’s have dinner, okay?”
“Sure,” I said stupidly. “Sure.” I looked at Esther. “I hope it works for you.”
“Thanks,” she said, and we took our bowls and went into the dining room.
* * *
—
“I think that went pretty well,” Will said. The awkward night was over, and he was walking me to the bus stop in the dark. He would have gladly driven me home, but he knew better than to offer, because there was no way I would say yes.
I knew the stats—bus stops weren’t any safer than cars. But I rarely took the bus at night, and I kept to populated, well-lit areas. Walking through a dark parking lot or parking garage wouldn’t have been any safer. And besides, I’d never claimed that my hang-ups made any sense.
I huddled deeper into my hoodie in the cool, damp air. Esther’s neighborhood was quiet, all of the families curled into sleep. There was no one on the street but us. “Sure,” I said.
Will sighed as he walked beside me. “I’m sorry she didn’t tell you, but you know how Esther is. She has to be handling everything, and she has to be the best at it. If she isn’t pulling something off, she’s so damn hard on herself. And part of her feels like she should be taking care of you, too.”
“She doesn’t have to take care of me.” The protest was automatic.
“Well, she kind of does,” he said bluntly. “And that isn’t an insult, Shea. It isn’t shameful to need someone to take care of you. You take care of her, too.”
“She has you for that,” I said. “At least, now she does.”
“And you’d like to hate me for it, but you don’t,” he replied. “Besides, she still needs you. You know she does. And if we have a baby, she’ll need you even more.”
It would have been nice to hate Will—it really would have. But the truth was, he honestly was the best of men. Esther had won the marriage lottery, and she deserved it.
But tonight I felt the gulf between us as a large black hole. I’d been meeting for weeks with an acquitted murderer, and I hadn’t told my sister about it. She thought I was already too far into the darkness, and she had no idea how much further I’d gone. How far I was willing to go. Just as I’d had no idea when she’d lost a baby, twice.
She had hurt, really hurt, when that happened. I knew my sister. She put on a competent show, but underneath she could hurt, and deeply. This had hurt most of all, which was why she hadn’t told me about it.
You’re so far away.
“I’ll take care of my own life,” I said to Will. “I promise.”
“Shea, that isn’t what this is about.”
But it was. It was about the fact that my brother-in-law had to walk me to the bus stop because I couldn’t accept a ride. It was about the fact that when I got home, I would yet again check my locks and my security before turning on my laptop and delving into the Book of Cold Cases. Same as ever. The only difference was that tonight I would have the company of Winston Purrchill.
Will waited with me as I got on the bus. Just in case. And I knew he was standing there for a long moment as it pulled away, disappearing down the street and into the darkness.
When I had turned the corner and could no longer see him, I pulled out my phone and called Michael.
“Where are you right now?” I asked when he answered.
“At home, going through property records until my eyes cross,” he said. “Why?”
I looked out the window at the city going by. “Are you really divorced?”
“Considering how bad my marriage was, I sure as hell hope so. What is this about, Shea?”
I read the street signs as they passed. I could see the ocean from here, inky black in the darkness beyond the lights of Claire Lake.
“I’m on the bus,” I said. “I just passed Sixth Avenue and Harbor Street. If I get off at the next stop, will you come and have a drink with me?”
There was a brief pause of surprise.
“Give me fifteen minutes,” Michael said. “Yes, I’ll have a drink with you. I’m on my way.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
October 1977
BETH
The bar was called Watertown’s, a big, high-ceilinged room with dim lighting and loud music coming from a jukebox. It was twenty-five miles outside the Claire Lake city limits, which was why Beth went there to drink.
They hadn’t arrested her yet. It was going to happen; she could feel it the way you can feel electricity in the air when a thunderstorm is coming, when you see the lowering clouds on the horizon and feel the wind kick up. She didn’t sleep much. Her life as she knew it would be over soon.
The Claire Lake papers had already convicted her: local heiress suspected of murders and did she kill them? No one came forward to say they didn’t believe it, that Beth would never do something like that. Except for Ransom—who was paid to defend her. Other than maybe her father, who was dead, Beth couldn’t think of anyone else who would say that.
Instead there was a long line of people—the neighbors, girls Beth had gone to school with, grocery clerks, a few of the people who had gotten drunk at Beth’s parties—who wanted to tell the press that Beth was strange, that she was frightening, that she had fits of anger. Stories were surfacing about noises at the Greer mansion while her parents were alive—shouting, furniture overturned, china broken. And of course they all said that Beth lived alone now, that she had no friends or husband, that she spent most of her time as a hermit except when she was partying. “She doesn’t seem to like people,” a girl who had known Beth briefly in seventh grade told the press. “I think she hates everyone.”
Hating people in seventh grade made her a killer. Living alone because both of her parents were dead made her a killer. The pieces fit so nicely together. Beth had gone driving a few more times, but when she noticed a car following her, she turned around and went home. Was it the press? The police? It didn’t matter.
Now Beth stayed home like Ransom had told her to, the curtains on the floor-to-ceiling windows closed, the TV on. She lay on her sofa and drank and thought about what had happened to her and why. About how neat it all was.
About how angry she was. People were right about that, at least.
She was sick of drinking alone on the sofa, so tonight she broke Ransom’s commandment. She got dressed, got in her car—a Cadillac, because the police had impounded the Buick—and drove to a bar to drink.
It was second nature. Both of her parents had drunk from morning to night, and Beth had snuck her first drink at eleven. Now she sat at the dim bar, wearing a ringer T-shirt and high-waisted jeans, her hair twisted back. She started with vodka and stuck with it. Men came on to her, which she’d expected. She turned them down. All she cared about was that no one recognized her, or at least that none of them would let on.
She wanted to get blind drunk, but three-quarters of the way there an alarm went off deep in her belly, warning her to stop. She couldn’t afford to lose control around strangers, couldn’t afford to end up crawling all over a man in the back seat of his car and telling him everything. No mistakes, at least not big ones. At one o’clock, she paid her tab and walked outside to the parking lot, trying to keep her steps in a convincingly steady line.
There was a figure leaning against her car, waiting for her.
Beth stopped, her heart hammering in her chest. Some of the drunkenness drained away, absorbed by adrenaline. Then she recognized him.
“You have got to be kidding me,” she said.
“You’re not driving home,” Detective Black said.
Beth closed her fingers around the keys in her hand. “What’s it to you?”
“I’m the police,” he said. “I’m not letting you get in an accident.”
Incredibly, he was wearing a suit, or parts of one. He had no jacket, and his tie was loosened past his clavicle, his shirt unbuttoned at the top. But his dress pants were barely wrinkled and his shoes were shiny. His face was tired and his hair was slightly mussed, but he watched her with cop’s eyes.
“Fuck off,” Beth said, because she was tired and drunk and couldn’t think of anything else to say. “Go away and leave me alone.”
“I’m not going to do that,” he said stoically. “My car is just over there. I’ll drive you home.”
“How did you know I was here?”
He didn’t answer, but she knew. With the suspicious instincts of the drunk, she knew.
“You were following me,” she said.
Black didn’t answer. He looked away, unable to meet her gaze. Even in a parking lot at one in the morning, he was handsome.
“Well, screw it,” Beth said. He was leaning against the driver’s door, blocking her way, so she walked around the car to the passenger side. She’d climb over the gearshift and drive off, leaving his nice-looking ass to fall to the concrete. But Black rounded the car the other way and blocked her again, putting his hand over hers as she reached out with her key.
“Nice Cadillac,” he said.
It was. It was big and black. It was a nice car if you were a man, a big stupid man who cared about idiotic cars. It had been her father’s—he had bought it because a man as rich as he was, as high up in the world as he was, should own a Cadillac. But he’d never loved this car, just like he never loved his expensive house or his expensive wife. His expensive daughter, even. This big, shiny car hadn’t prevented her father from ending up dead on the kitchen floor.
