The Book of Cold Cases(46)

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Beth wasn’t downstairs. She wasn’t in the living room. Her empty glass with its melting ice was sitting on the table.

“Beth!” I shouted.

Upstairs, I heard footsteps in the hallway, heading for the stairs.

I grabbed my bag from the sofa and put it under my arm. The curtains in the living room were drawn, but I could see a shadow of something beyond them, out there on the grass.

In my hand, my phone lit up again. The recorder played, and this time it sounded like an old recording, or maybe an old answering machine.

“What do you think?” a woman said through my cracked screen. “Is she bitter, or is she sweet? I could never decide. Sometimes she was so sweet, but other times . . . Well, I don’t like to think about it.”

I wanted to run, but something drew me to the window instead. I stepped forward and yanked the curtain open.

There was the dead expanse of lawn outside, the empty ocean. A girl stood at the edge of the drop, her back to me. She was blond, slender, and young—a teenager, wearing jeans and a flowered blouse. Her feet were bare. Her hair lifted in the wind. She stood for a moment, and then she tipped forward and vanished over the edge in a whisper of fabric.

I shouted and pounded the glass.

“She can get so angry,” the voice on my dead phone said. “She loses control. But I think you should look behind you. She’s coming down the stairs.”

There were footsteps behind me. I turned from the window and bolted from the house, down the front steps to the driveway. The cool, damp air hit my face like a slap. I was almost at the sidewalk when I sank to the ground, frozen in panic, my breath heaving and my stomach turning. I stared at the grass as the moisture soaked through the knees of my jeans and a bird called overhead. In the distance, a car went by. The world going about its business.

Footsteps came toward me on the sidewalk. It was Beth. She had put on ballet flats and a trench coat—not the old coat from the seventies, but a newer one, dark blue, expensive Burberry. It was belted at the waist, and the hem fell past her knees. In the cloudy light, she looked like the woman in the YouTube videos and the photographs, and also like the woman I knew. Her eyes were unreadable.

When she came to my side, she lowered herself down to a crouch. She touched my cheek with her fingertip, dragging it lightly across my skin, tucking a loose strand of hair behind my ear.

“For someone so paranoid, you should choose your friends more carefully,” she said.

I was starting to breathe again. The fear was still there, but my stomach had slowed its nauseated turning. “Who is she?” I asked Beth.

“You’re so close,” Beth said. “You have so many questions, so many things you want to know. You’ve come closer than anyone else ever has. You’ve almost finished the game, Shea. You’ve almost won. Just use your brain and figure out the last part.”

Then she stood and walked to the Greer mansion. When she got to the steps, the front door swung open.

Then Beth went inside, and the door closed behind her with a click. And she was gone.





PART II





CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE


December 1977





BETH


She tried going out at night. She crept out of her own house like a criminal, getting in her car and driving around Claire Lake as it slept. But even at night she was noticeable, her big Cadillac gliding through the silent streets. Ever since the night with Detective Black, the police had almost always been on her tail, and even during her night drives, she’d see headlights behind her. So she gave up and went home.

She’d gone last night, not getting home until almost four. The tension was going to kill her; alcohol was the only thing that killed it. She was lying on the sofa, halfway through a bottle of wine and blearily watching TV with all of the curtains closed at two in the afternoon when the phone rang. She reached a hand to the end table and picked it up. “Hello?”

There was the sound of breathing on the other end of the line. In the background, wind and traffic, as if the call was coming from a roadside phone booth.

And just like that, she knew who it was. She knew what voice would be on the other end, even though she hadn’t heard it in two years. The voice she’d been searching for. The voice she hated. The haziness of the wine started to drain away.

“Lily,” Beth said.

The voice on the other end was beloved and terrifying, strange and also as familiar as her own. “They’re coming for you,” Lily said.

The police. She was talking about the police. “They’re coming now?”

“Yes, they are.”

“How do you know?”

“They think they’re so discreet.” The voice was disgusted. “Honestly. I could see them from the road.”

Beth sat up. If Lily was talking about the road, then she was near the house.

No, she couldn’t be. But she’d driven past. While Beth had been sitting on this sofa, drinking and waiting, Lily had driven past before finding a phone booth. How many times had she done that, when Beth had been looking for her for so many days?

“You bitch,” Beth said.

“Maybe, but I’m sitting here while you’re about to be arrested. This is all your fault, Beth. You could have stopped it.”