The Book of Cold Cases(65)

My mouth was dry. I was on the knife-edge, listening to her words. “What did she beg you for?”

But Beth shook her head. “That was later—years later. I’d stopped giving her money by then. But before my father died, I was young and scared and stupid. I thought maybe Lily would just behave, be nice, if I gave her the money she wanted. I stayed home, and people died because of it. I don’t have to know who they were to know they died. I just know.”

I wondered if it was possible to find any murders that might be Lily’s. Without an exact timeline, it was nearly impossible. “And then what?” I asked.

“And then two things happened.” Beth ran a hand through her hair and turned back to me. “The first is that I finished high school. It was understood by everyone that I would marry Gray, but I had to finish high school first. After that, it was simply a matter of waiting for him to propose. That was all I was good for—marrying rich. College was out of the question; my parents would never have sent me, I didn’t have my own money, and my grades weren’t good enough for even a small scholarship. So that was that. I was going to be a wife.”

It sounded terrible. “And the second thing?”

“The second thing that happened was that Julian decided that with Lily gone so long and my future all but settled, he was done paying Lily her blackmail money. And he stopped.”

My muscles were tense, aching, my mind racing. “March 1973,” I said.

Down the hall, there was the shush of a tap being turned on in the bathroom.

“I had written to Lily about Gray over the years,” Beth said. “I told her I didn’t want to marry him, to marry anyone. She never answered me about that. Her letters were always short and to the point: how much money she needed and where I should send it. She never even signed her real name. She’d only sign her letters with ‘See you soon.’?” She glanced at me. “Before you ask, I burned every letter after I got it, so, no, you can’t see them.”

I sagged in my seat. She knew me so well.

Beth swallowed, her jaw tight. “Even though Lily never said anything, I knew she was reading my letters. I was selfish. I wouldn’t go find her, but in a way I wanted her to come back and find me. Then one Saturday, I went shopping and my mother went to her bridge club and my father got shot in the face, right in the kitchen over there.” She motioned toward the hall, toward the sound of the taps. I felt queasy, wondering if there was blood running in that sink right now. What I would see if I went in there.

“Lily,” I said.

“I got what I wanted, didn’t I? Lily came back. It changed everything,” Beth said. “Everything. My mother fell apart. Gray’s family got cold feet, because my father was the prestigious one in our family, the CEO. Without him, we were just a silly girl with nice tits and her sad, broken mother. We were an embarrassment, as if murder was contagious. It was easy for Gray and me to break it off—Mariana was so drunk she didn’t even notice. And as an added benefit, all of Julian’s money came to Mariana. And to me.”

“Beth, you don’t know,” I said. “Maybe it wasn’t Lily. Maybe—”

“It was Lily,” Beth said. “I knew she had killed my father, and I never said anything, because I was nineteen and no one would have believed me. I never said anything because I was afraid of her. I never said anything because it was my fault. I’d told Lily about the way the inheritance worked, about Gray. I’d set everything in motion.”

“This is insane,” I said. “All of this is insane.”

“But it’s true,” Beth said. “I caused everything. I knew what my sister was and I didn’t stop it. And six weeks after Julian died, Lily came home.”



* * *



—

An hour later, I stumbled out of the Greer mansion and down the front walk. I was sweaty, gasping for air, as dizzy as if I were sick. I dropped my messenger bag on the sidewalk and stood for a minute with my hands on my knees.

It was full dark now. I hadn’t intended to stay this late; I never stayed out after dark unless it was with my sister and Will. Now I was stranded in Arlen Heights in the dark, alone.

I closed my eyes and tried to catch my breath. That house. How did Beth live in that house? Something had been in the kitchen right before I left—something that thumped heavily as it moved around, something that hit the floor hard enough to feel it. I hadn’t had the guts to go look at whatever it was, whatever Beth had awakened by telling the story of Lily. Whatever she had perhaps made angry.

“Why?” I asked no one, letting the word whisper out into the dark air. Why was Beth telling me this after all these years? Why me?

It wasn’t a whim, I knew that. Beth Greer didn’t have whims. She did things according to plan.

Maybe her plan was to drive me over the edge, give me a nervous breakdown. If so, it was working.

I pulled out my phone. My pulse was pounding in my throat. I was alone at night, far from home. I could call a taxi or an Uber. I could call Michael to come get me. I could call Esther and Will. I could go to the nearest bus stop and wait in the darkness, alone.

My thumb hovered over Michael’s number. He’d come for me, I knew. If I called, he’d come.

I took another breath, and another. I didn’t dial his number.