The Winter Sister(19)
“What?” I asked. “That’s crazy. The necklace was gold, yeah, but it couldn’t have been worth that much. You know my mom’s a waitress, right?”
Falley shrugged. “Sometimes things look more expensive than they actually are,” she said. She paused then, flipping open her folder and jotting something down on the inside cover. “Please be assured that we will look into this. It’s a good lead. We can contact pawnshops, and—”
“Pawnshops? It won’t be in a pawnshop. It’ll be with Ben. I know it.”
She paused—for only a moment, but I felt something cryptic in the lag time of her response. “We’ll look into that, too,” she said.
“In the meantime,” Parker piped in, “it would be helpful to us if you could check Persephone’s things when you get home. See if she took it off that day for some reason. See if it fell off and slipped under the bed or a pillow or something. Maybe it’s in a drawer in the bathroom. You’d be surprised where missing things turn up.”
I imagined Persephone then—how the sleeve of her red coat must have looked like a slash of blood in the snow, how the runner who first discovered her must have jogged in place, squinting at what he saw, unsure in the dull morning light if the sleeve belonged to a body, or if it was just some lost, discarded thing.
Even though I knew I wouldn’t find it, I scoured our bedroom as soon as Jill brought me home. I banged drawers open and shut, I put my hands between Persephone’s mattress and bed frame, I got onto the floor with a flashlight and searched between the clumps of dust under her bed, and I even picked through our trash can, wincing at the paint-smudged tissues. After searching, I felt a strange sense of satisfaction. The necklace wasn’t there, so there was only one other place it could be—with Persephone’s murderer. With Ben.
But the police never found it—not with Ben, or at a pawnshop, or on the ground that spring, when all the snow was melted and the detectives, in a last-ditch effort, returned to the place where my sister’s body had been found. In fact, I had very little contact with Falley or Parker after that day in the interview room. They came over one morning, a week or so after Persephone’s funeral, to ask for samples of Persephone’s handwriting, but even as I handed them old birthday cards she’d written in for me, they wouldn’t tell me why they needed them. After a while, I grew weary of calling them. I grew weary of Falley’s voice on the phone, telling me kindly, but firmly, that although the investigation was ongoing, she had no new information she could share.
I was sure that Ben’s father was protecting him. For as long as I could remember, Will Emory had been our mayor, and his pockets ran deep. He had inherited ownership of Emory Builders, which had been around since the turn of the century, and it was nearly impossible to throw a rock in Spring Hill without it flying over land that was either owned or developed by the Emorys. As mayor, he was able to use his wealth to an even greater advantage, keeping his hands in every aspect of town government, from planning and zoning to the police force. There were rumors that he would summon individual members of departments into his office, close the door, and use whatever tactics necessary to get what he wanted. No one in town ever seemed fazed by this, though; when it came to Will Emory, “any means necessary” was not a sign of corruption, but just another reason to revere him. Look how resourceful he is, residents said.
I’d only seen him on a handful of occasions. He was tall, with irises as dark as his pupils, giving him an unsettling shark-eyed gaze, and his sandy hair had streaks of gray in it. At Persephone’s wake, which nearly every Spring Hill resident attended, regardless of how they may have treated us in the past, Will stood with his head bowed somberly, playing the part of the compassionate town leader. When he reached Mom in the receiving line, ready to offer his rehearsed condolences, her knees buckled suddenly, and Will caught her as she fell against him. He had a moment of uncertain stillness, and then he stroked her hair, looking around the room to be sure that everyone saw how comforting he was, how tender. Even then, cloaked in a practiced, artificial sadness, he came off as an intimidating man.
Over the years since then, election after election, town council members had come and gone, but Will Emory remained a constant as the mayor of Spring Hill. Even living in Providence, I’d kept up with him online. I wanted to read that he’d planned an early retirement, or that he’d finally lost the voting public’s support—anything that would mean Ben no longer benefited from his father’s immunity, his backdoor threats—but all I ever saw were stories about council meetings and ribbon cuttings.
It wasn’t just Will Emory’s position that gave Ben power; he had a long line of respected Spring Hill ancestors to stand behind him like an army of ghosts. The statue of George Emory on the town green was only part of his family’s legacy. Emory Lane was named after Jackson Emory, one of the original colonists who settled Spring Hill in 1674, and Nathaniel Emory had built Emory Bridge back in the 1800s. Even Will’s own father, Richard Emory, had been a popular congressman for several terms. Before that, he had expanded Emory Builders’ niche from constructing modest houses in local towns to erecting million-dollar homes in vast subdivisions and leasing commercial spaces in strip malls throughout the state. The success of the company transformed the Emorys from a highly regarded, prominent family to town royalty presiding over a business empire. To convict Ben Emory of such a vicious crime would have been to cast a shadow on the entire town’s history.