Snow Creek(70)

Not yet.

“I knew you’d be the best detective I’d ever hired,” he says, unsuccessfully motioning for a second Scotch.

“I don’t know. You sure took a chance on me.”

He knows some of the baggage I carry with me, but not the worst of it. I doubt he’d have hired me if he knew.

I know I wouldn’t.

It feels uncomfortable just then. It’s me, of course. Compliments are hard to accept. I think that it’s because, deep down, I feel like a fraud. Dr. Albright warned me that it would be a lifelong battle and I might never fully believe that I am a good person, that the sins of my past don’t define me.

I immediately segue to the case. I resist the urge to write on the cocktail napkin. It’s complicated, but Sheriff knows all the pieces.

Just not how they all fit.

“It was through Sarah that Ellie met Josh,” I say.

“Through the hate-my-parents’ social site.”

“Correct.”

The bartender looks our way, finally, and Sheriff indicates one more. I shake my head. I’m fine with my beer.

“Sarah had logged on to the site first, then introduced her brother to Ellie. Ellie, in turn, played Joshua in the same way his sister did. She wasn’t in love with him. She only needed a place to stay until everyone moved on.”

“Yeah, she lived in the mobile home with the sweet potato vines.”

“That’s what she said. She didn’t move on to the property with Joshua until after it was all done.”

“Let’s run down your theory,” he says.

“Okay, Ellie claims she was only a sounding board to Josh. She didn’t make anything happen. I’m not so sure about that.”

I sip my beer.

Sheriff speaks up. “It doesn’t matter anyway. She cut a deal and is off to face charges for murdering her parents.”

“Right. So, here’s what I think happened—backed up by the evidence: Sarah was looking for the right moment and she found it when she and Ida were planting the roses. She swung the shovel, striking the back of her mother’s head. The autopsy indicated multiple blows. The back of Ida’s heels indicated that she’d been dragged.”

“Back into the workshop,” he says.

“So, she was the first to die.”

I nod. “Merritt was lured into the workshop by Sarah. Josh, who believed her rape story, was lying in wait. He used the hammer and beat his father to death, while Sarah egged him on. During or right after the bludgeoning, Ida stirred.”

“She wasn’t dead. That’s what you think?”

“Her blood was on the hammer. No real castoff. Just a couple of blows to finish her off.” We stay quiet and watch the brunette wrangle a free drink.

“Cold. Calculating,” he says.

Though I know he’s talking about the Wheaton kids and Ellie, I resist adding that a free drink’s a free drink.

“There were three sources of DNA on the hammer. Mr. and Mrs. Wheaton and a third. Sarah’s?”

“Lab will let us know. But I suspect so.”

“How would it get there?’

“Not sure. Maybe she put it there.”

“To throw us off?”

I look at the foam in the bottom of my beer glass. “Maybe so. Maybe she’s smarter than we think.”

It’s what I would have done.

Sheriff shifts the conversation to Sarah’s purported defense.

“Do you think Wheaton was molesting his daughter?” he asks.

I shrug. “I honestly don’t know. My guess is that will be her defense. Her brother’s too. It might work. However, there isn’t a shred of evidence. No school counselor. No doctor’s visits. No friends to say she confided in them.”

My own story passes through my thoughts.

I’d never told another person about what happened to me until I met Karen Albright.





Forty-Eight





I idle in the drive-thru at our local burger place and order the works. Even a chocolate milkshake. When I get home, I go for the tapes right away. It’s like there’s a poltergeist in my house putting those little cassettes in my face and telling me to PLAY them.

So that’s just what I do.

I can’t resist.

I’m a moth to the flame.

I eat slowly and listen to every word. I also see every single thing that my younger self is describing. I am reliving it all. I want to stop the player, but I can’t; I’m an addict. I’m someone without the good sense to throw the damn thing into the trash.

The garbage disposal. That is if I had one.

Run over it in my car.

“Go on, dear,” Dr. Albright says in her sweet, yet urgent voice. “You’re doing fine. You’re revisiting a time and place that made you… but doesn’t have an iron grip on you. You can be free. Acceptance is what we’re going for here.”

It’s almost laughable how those words spoken a decade ago still ring false.

I finish my milkshake, making that sucking noise that kids do when they want to get every last drop.

I close my eyes and allow a memory to fill my head.





Hayden was asleep in the bedroom across the hall from mine. The house was quiet; I could actually hear the clock in the foyer ticking away the time. My thoughts had been racing, looping, spinning, since we’d arrived in Idaho. I padded downstairs and found Aunt Ginger in the darkened living room, the curtains still drawn. The TV was still on mute. The light flickering over her face altered her appearance a little. She didn’t look like my mother at all. Her eyes were darker; her hair was long and lifeless, without even the faintest trace of a shimmer. By the time I took a seat next to her, I had already learned everything I could about her by studying the photographs in the hallway, and yes, digging through every drawer that I could when she was getting our rooms ready. I knew that she was single. She loved the scent of lavender. I knew that she was estranged from her son and daughter. I didn’t know exactly why, and when it got right down to it, I really didn’t care. What I did care about was the truth. What I cared about was finding my mother.