The Last of the Moon Girls(39)
“Fine.” Evvie pushed the doll back into Lizzy’s hands. “But get rid of it. Like my mama used to say, we don’t need no bad juju hangin’ around. And say what you want, but that right there is some bad juju.”
Lizzy breathed a sigh of relief as she carried the doll to the mudroom, where she wouldn’t have to look at it again until she decided what to do with it. For now, she was grateful that she’d managed to buy herself some time with Evvie. It was entirely possible that the thing had been intended as a prank. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time. But she wasn’t ready to rule out the possibility that someone—Fred Gilman, perhaps—was behind the hideous straw effigy.
Lizzy squinted at the power bar on her cell phone. Sixteen percent remaining. She reached for her charger, plugged it in, scrubbed at her eyes, and kept scrolling. Researching old newspaper articles on a three-by-five screen was far from optimal, but given Althea’s distrust of technology—including the internet—she hadn’t seen much point in bringing her laptop.
She’d hoped something might jump out at her, something everyone had missed eight years ago, that might point her in a new direction, including where Susan Gilman might have gone when she left Salem Creek. But three hours of exhaustive searching had turned up nothing. There’d been no shortage of material, articles sourced from the local paper as well as out-of-state publications, each headline more gruesome than the last: Parents Beg for Safe Return of Missing Daughters. Grisly Scene at Moon Girl Farm. Bodies of Missing Girls Recovered from Local Pond. Double Homicide Rocks Quiet New England Town. Still No Arrest as Gilman Girls Are Laid to Rest.
But harder to take than the headlines was the endless barrage of photos, grainy black-and-white images carefully placed to tug at readers’ emotions. There was the idyllic family portrait—mother and father in back, daughters in front, dressed in what appeared to be Easter outfits—as well as several shots of the girls when they were older.
The sisters were strikingly similar in appearance, pretty in the way most girls are pretty in their teens, fresh-faced and free of concern. But there were differences too. Darcy had wide eyes and a winning set of dimples. Heather had the same eyes, but the dimples were missing. Probably because she wasn’t smiling in any of the photos. And there was something else about Heather that was different: a flinty sort of defiance peering back at the camera, in stark contrast to her younger sister’s wide-open gaze.
There were photos of the parents as well, most of them taken during press conferences or interviews. Susan Gilman looked virtually catatonic in all of them, as if sleepwalking through a nightmare, which she had been. And there was Fred, the grieving father, glaring straight at the camera. He looked washed-out and gaunt, but with the same hard edges she’d seen in him yesterday.
She studied his face, the pinched lips and flared nostrils, the almost palpable anger staring back at her from the photo. Was it the face of a grieving father, or a man capable of harming his own daughters? Was it possible to be both? And if so, how could she prove it?
The question continued to nag as Lizzy closed the browser and set her phone aside. She’d spent the entire morning online, with zero to show for her efforts, when she should have been calling Realtors or going through the attic. But both options left her cold. She needed to move her body, to clear her head and work off some energy. Perhaps she’d go back to the wildflower garden for an hour, and do some weeding.
She was halfway down the stairs when she heard Andrew’s voice, along with Evvie’s, coming from the kitchen. After her abrupt departure last night, she would have preferred to keep some distance between them, but there was no way to get to the mudroom door without passing through the kitchen.
They stopped talking the minute she entered the room. Not a good sign. Andrew turned to face her, the straw doll clutched in his fist. “Were you planning to mention this?”
Lizzy’s head swiveled in Evvie’s direction, but she was already holding up her hands, absolving herself before Lizzy could get a word out. “Don’t go laying this at my door. I told you to get rid of it. It’s not my fault he saw it when he came in.”
“I found it this morning,” Lizzy explained wearily. “In the tree out front. I know it looks bad, but we don’t really know what it means.”
“Yesterday you paid Fred Gilman a visit. Today you find this. You don’t think the two are related?”
“I get how it looks, and that the timing is suspicious, but if Fred Gilman wanted to hurt me, he had the perfect opportunity last night when I was standing on his front porch. Can you honestly see him climbing a tree and hanging that thing up in the dark?”
Andrew blew out a long breath. “You can’t ignore this, Lizzy. It isn’t like having your car keyed. You need to report it.”
“I’m not ignoring it. And I will report it—eventually. Though, after what Roger told me about Summers the other day, I don’t trust the police to lift a finger when it comes to the Moons. All I want right now is time to do what I need to do without the police muddying the water. Now, can we please drop it? If anyone needs me, I’ll be in the wildflower garden, pulling weeds.”
She turned and walked out, leaving Andrew and Evvie to stare after her, knowing full well they’d have plenty to say once she was out of earshot. She didn’t care. Bad juju or not, it was going to take more than a straw doll to scare her off.