Nine Lives (Lily Dale Mystery #1)(88)

And these chimes aren’t pleasantly melodious. They’re harsh, like the ones in her dream about Leona. They seem to grow louder as she looks at the masks on Steve’s key chain.





Chapter Nineteen


“What’s the matter?” Steve glances down at his keychain and then up at Bella. “Why are you staring at my keys?”

“Because I was just . . . thinking we should go.” She edges away from him, one step, and then another, back toward the field.

“What about the boys?”

“I’ll look by the lake. I bet they went to the lake.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because . . . it makes sense, doesn’t it?”

No. Nothing makes sense. Nothing.

Or is it the opposite? Does everything make sense now? A terrible, frightening kind of sense?

He’s a theater buff, she reminds herself. That’s why he has the drama masks.

That thought, as it sinks in, only makes it worse. He’s done some stage work. Actors are adept at pretending to be someone they’re not.

“But why the lake? I heard them say they were looking for buried treasure.”

She fights to keep her voice from quavering. “I bet they said sunken treasure. That’s what they were—”

“Wait—did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

He stands with his head tilted, listening intently. She holds her breath, listening to the dissonant wind chimes. So he, too, hears them? They’re real and not some kind of . . . ghostly harbinger?

“I thought I heard someone shout ‘Mom.’ It sounded like a child.”

“What? I didn’t hear it!” No, she was too busy listening for things that aren’t there or reading into things that are. “Where did it come from?”

“That way.” He points ahead on the trail, using the hand that’s still holding the car keys.

Again, she looks at the keychain depicting flip sides of human nature.

Is Steve himself wearing a mask? Is he hiding a dark side?

“Come on, let’s go.” He starts to push forward.

If she stands her ground, he’ll be suspicious. Which is fine, if he’s the man he claims to be. But if he isn’t . . .

She starts walking again behind him but reaches into her back pocket, feeling around for her cell phone. Surreptitiously, she takes it out. Just in case . . .

In case you need to call for help?

If Steve Pierson is some kind of criminal, then he’s hardly going to stand by while she dials 9-1-1.

If he’s a criminal, then was he lying about having seen Max and Jiffy? Did he do something to them?

No. No, she can’t even allow herself to think that way. If she does, she’ll . . . she’ll go crazy. Right here and now.

She has to remain rational.

If Steve can be trusted, he’s trying to help her.

If he can’t, he’s trying to lure her deeper into the woods so that he can hurt her.

It’s that simple.

Is this what happened to Bonnie Barrington? And to Leona?

But they were both in the lake.

This has nothing to do with that.

If it weren’t for that keychain of his, she wouldn’t be suspicious of him in the first place, except . . .

Except that she was, she remembers. This morning. When she felt as though his story wasn’t adding up. And when he was so reluctant to call the police.

What if he’d made it all up?

Why would he do that, though?

She trips over a vine stretched across the path and topples forward. Steve turns as she cries out, just in time to see her phone flying out of her hand. It lands on the trail by his shoe. Seeing it, he narrows his eyes just slightly and starts to reach for it.

She grabs it before he can and gets to her feet.

“Are you all right?” he asks as she brushes herself off with shaking hands.

“I am. I’m fine. Sorry.”

Again, he looks at the cell phone.

She thinks quickly. “I was just getting a text. It startled me when it buzzed in my pocket.”

“From whom?”

“What?”

“The text. Who was it from?”

“Oh.” Casually holding it so that he can’t see it, she activates the screen.

There really is a text, but it’s not incoming. It’s the unsent one she’d started typing to Luther.

Sorry to bother you, but I figured out who did it. It’s— She was going to write Pandora’s name.

“Who sent the text?” Steve asks again, more forcefully.

No actress, she attempts to feign happy surprise. “Max!” The word squeaks out of her mouth. “It says he’s back at the house.”

“He texts you? I thought he can’t even read yet.”

Is he guessing, based on Max’s age? Or does he know it for a fact?

Not wanting to be caught in a lie, she says, “Oh, he can’t. He just . . . he uses voice texting.”

As she speaks, she’s hastily typing Steve Pierson into the text she’d meant for Luther, followed by, I think I’m in danger.

“What are you doing, Bella?”

“I’m just responding to him, letting him know I’m on my way back.” She resorts to shorthand, hoping Luther will be able to decipher it, praying he can even get a text in the first place: in wds by plygrnd snd hlp pls hrry.