The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2021

by The Mysterious Bookshop Presents the Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2021

  Fidelity’s pink laptop. Her fuzzy diary. The police have taken both of them, and Lyla may not ever get them back. Her daughter. Her only child . . . Why do you feel so guilty, Lyla?

  She hears herself say, “Please let her be alive.”

  Carl clutches the shirt in his gnarled hands. His eyes are shut. He starts to hum softly, his head swaying back and forth. Lyla plucks a pink crystal from the table and cups it in her hands. It’s very heavy, with sharp, dagger-like edges, and lovely to look at. They’re supposed to soothe fears, the pink ones. Rose quartz, she recalls Nolan saying, is a calming stone. She listens to Carl hum and cups the rose quartz, its surface grainy with dust.

  Finally, Carl says, “She’s alive.”

  Nolan puts a hand over Lyla’s, and her breath catches, the tiniest spark of hope . . .

  “Where is she?” Nolan says. “How can we find her?”

  Carl opens his eyes. They make Lyla think of spotlights. “She’s screaming,” he says. “She’s screaming for her mama.”

  Nolan says, “Is she in pain?”

  “It’s fuzzy,” Carl says. “All I can hear are the screams. And I see something. A train.”

  “A train?”

  “With eyes. A train with eyes.”

  Lyla’s mouth goes dry.

  “Does that mean anything to you?” Carl says. “A train with eyes?” He’s staring straight at her.

  She clutches the crystal. Its edges bite into her palms. “No,” she says.

  “Are you sure? It’s getting clearer. A blue train. With—”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Who’s Leslie?”

  “What?”

  “Leslie? No, wait. Lisa.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Lisa. Lisa. Leeeesaaa . . .” Carl’s voice pitches up an octave. He sounds like a girl. “Leeeeeessaaaa . . .” A tear slips down his cheek.

  Nolan grips Lyla’s hand. She can’t breathe.

  “The blue train has big black eyes.”

  Lyla says, “I want to leave.”

  “She needs her mother. She’s screaming for her.”

  “Stop!”

  “She’s so young. So small and helpless. She doesn’t like being taken away from her mother.”

  “Stop now!”

  Nolan says, “Are you all right, Lyla?”

  Lyla tastes copper in her mouth, the warm, sick slickness of it. “I’m fine.” She’s bitten her lip so hard it’s bleeding. She puts the crystal down, her palms scratched, bleeding too.

  Carl opens his eyes.

  Lyla feels her husband’s hand on her shoulder.

  “You’re—”

  “I’m fine, Nolan. We need to go now.”

  She wipes her palms on her sweats and stands up. Nolan says a few words to Carl. He replies. Lyla hears none of it. She makes a point of not listening to Carl. She’ll never listen to him again.

  Lisa, what are you doing?

  Lyla heads for the door and waits there for Nolan, Carl’s blue gaze burning through her back.

  “I don’t like him.” Lyla says it to the windshield, the peachy-pink sunrise.

  “I don’t know. I thought he was . . . I don’t know . . .”

  “What, Nolan? You thought he was what?”

  “Real.”

  “Well, he’s not. He’s a rip-off artist. A con man. I’ll give him one thing, though. He’s a terrific actor. That performance in there . . . That was, like . . . goals.” She forces out a laugh. It sounds natural.

  “You don’t know anyone named Lisa? Maybe one of the other moms from the school. Or a nanny, or—”

  “I don’t know any Lisas.”

  Nolan lets out a long, wounded sigh. “I don’t either,” he says. “And a train with eyes. What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  Lyla stares out the window and shakes her head. Acting may not be her purpose in life, but it is a gift, she knows. For years, acting has provided her with a generous livelihood. But more important, it enables her to keep secrets. In her mind, the memory resurfaces. The train’s round, staring eyes, the heat tearing through her . . . Why, Lisa, why? Her muscles tense with it. The heat. The rage. In her throat, behind her eyeballs, tears start to well. But thanks to her gift, Lyla’s expression remains serene. What is acting, she wonders, other than lying? And what is lying other than a way to survive? “I have no idea what it means,” she says.

  Everyone’s awake by the time Nolan and Lyla arrive home—the gardeners and the housekeepers and the security detail, the feds and state detectives, checking on nonexistent leads. Even in Fidelity’s absence, the house feels noisy and alive—a contrast to the dead quiet of the psychic’s lair.

  Their personal chef, Sydney, is preparing breakfast smoothies in the kitchen, and Lyla chokes one down for the sole purpose of being able to stand upright. She’s hardly eaten or slept since Fidelity disappeared. Courtney is sitting at the kitchen table, the same spot she was in four days ago, staring at her hands like a kid in detention. Lyla wants to ask her: Why are you still here? In my kitchen, in my house, in my life? Her gaze shoots from the spindly, dull-eyed girl to the rack over the stove. The heavy copper pots they’d imported from Germany. How easy it would be to grab the skillet by the handcrafted handle, to raise it high over Courtney’s useless head and bring it down . . .

  Lyla takes several calming breaths, the cuts on her palms stinging. She makes small talk with Sydney and waits for Nolan to finish his smoothie and head off for the home gym. And only then, once this feeling has subsided, her skin no longer prickling with it, is she able to look at Courtney again. “You’re fired,” she says. “Pack your things and get out.”

  Courtney says something, but Lyla doesn’t care enough to listen. She leaves the kitchen and sets out from the house in search of Aziz.

  She circles the house a few times before finally finding Aziz on the running track, completing what must have been the latest of many laps. Aziz is very disciplined. While other members of their bodyguard detail spend their breaks playing video games or in the home cinema watching movies, he’s always lifting, running, cross-training. Building his strength. He’s always seemed so practical minded to Lyla, which is why it strikes her as odd that he recommended a psychic to Nolan.

  Lyla waves to Aziz as he crosses the finish line, and he slows his pace to a trot. Before heading over to her, he swipes a towel off the bench and mops his forehead, though once he’s closer, she sees that he’s barely broken a sweat. “Ma’am?”

  “What can you tell me about Carl?”

  He stares at her for several seconds. Then he says it again, in the same flat tone, like a rewound tape. “Ma’am?”

  “The psychic? In Woodstock. Nolan said you recommended him, and I’m just wondering what you know about him.”

  For several seconds, Aziz says nothing. His expression doesn’t change. The sun gleams off his bald head, and Lyla imagines wheels spinning beneath his skull. Does not compute. Does not compute . . . “Oh, wait,” he says. “You mean Mr. Budowitz.”

  “I don’t know his last name.”

  “He said he could help find Fidelity. He wanted to speak to Mr. Carnes, but I didn’t recommend him.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “No, ma’am,” he says. “I don’t mean to offend, but I don’t believe in psychics.”

  “Then why did Nolan say you told him about Mr. Budowitz?”

  “All I did was relay a message,” he says. “Mr. Budowitz approached me.”

  Lyla’s eyes widen, but only for the tiniest instant.

  “Did you go to see him?” Aziz asks. “Was he helpful?”

  Lyla gives him a slight smile and shakes her head slowly. “You should trust in your belief system,” she says. “He wasn’t helpful at all.”

  Lisa. Lisa. Leeeesaaa . . .

  Lyla grips the steering wheel, the psychic’s voice looping through her mind, the shrill, familiar punch of it. She’s alone in the parked SUV, staring at
that cheap sign. She’s told no one that she’s left the house, so she needs to do this fast. In less than an hour, Nolan will be done with his workout, and she doesn’t want him looking for her.

  She opens the car door, then stands next to it, steadying herself. Mr. Budowitz approached me. That’s what Aziz had told her. Carl Budowitz, itinerant psychic, had spotted a big, bald, terrifying-looking man standing in the checkout line at the health food store the previous afternoon and clocked him as Lylan’s bodyguard. He strode up to Aziz without hesitation or fear. I know who you work for, he had told him, pressing a purple business card into his hands. I need to speak to them. I’ve been getting visions. They relate to their daughter. “He walked as though he had purpose,” Aziz had said to Lyla. It was why he hadn’t figured him for just another crisis opportunist and told Nolan about him instead. It was that driven, determined step.

  He was determined all right, Lyla had told him. He was determined to rip us off.

  Good thing you saw through him, ma’am.

  “Good thing.” Lyla slams the door to the SUV and hurries across the empty street. By the time she gets to the door, it’s open, Carl Budowitz standing in it, as though he’s been expecting her. Apparently, he has no need for a doorbell.

  She pushes him inside. Shuts the door behind her. She had planned on staying calm, as though she has nothing to hide, but she can no longer control herself. The gift has failed her. Lyla’s fingers grasp Carl’s thin T-shirt. She grabs him by the shoulder, her nails digging into his skin. “Where is Fidelity?”

  Carl gapes at her, like someone watching a movie.

  She shoves him to the ground. The fall is almost graceful. When he hits the cement floor, a grim smile plays at his lips.

  “What do you want?” Lyla rasps. “Money? How much?”

  “What?”

  “You want a book deal? Your own TV series? I know people. I can make it happen.”

  “I don’t want any of those things.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Spirits speak to me. They tell me truths. I have to—”

  “Where is Fidelity? Where are you keeping her?”

  He says nothing.

  “Tell me!” Lyla’s throat is raw. Her muscles are clenched and coiled, her hands balled into fists. She closes her eyes and takes a long, shuddering breath. Calm, calm, calm . . . When she opens them, Carl hasn’t moved.

  “Look,” she says. “I don’t know who you are or what your deal is.” She crouches on the floor. She speaks quietly. “The one thing I do know is that you’re trying to scare me.”

  Lyla kneels next to Carl. Moves in close enough for him to feel her breath on his skin. Through the beaded curtain, the sunlight warms the back of her neck. She uses it to get into character. I’m in control. I have the power. She makes herself stare into those laser-blue eyes, and she gives him the look, the Lyla Look. “I don’t scare, Carl.”

  He stares back at her. “I can’t help the fact that I can see what you are.”

  “Where is she?”

  “I told that bodyguard the truth. I had a vision.”

  “Where is Fidelity?”

  “I keep having visions. They’re getting clearer, every day. But they’re not telling me where Fidelity is. They’re telling me who she is. Who you are.”

  “Who the fuck are you? What do you want?”

  “It’s a gift I didn’t ask for,” he says. “You have to believe me. I don’t want to know the truth. I never want to know the truth. But the truth finds me. And it won’t leave me alone until I . . . reveal it.”

  Lyla lifts herself from the floor, her gaze darting around the dusty space. She sees a door in the back corner of the room and hurls herself at it, throwing it open. “Fidelity?” she shouts. “Are you in there?”

  The room is small and dark. She finds a light switch and flicks it on, but all she sees are a few cardboard boxes, a sleeping bag on the floor next to a faded rug with a Mexican print, a paperback Carlos Castaneda book lying on top of it. The only other things in the room are the huge crystals, placed around the sleeping bag like sentries. The largest one is close to a foot tall, jagged as an iceberg, and pink. Rose quartz.

  There’s nothing in this room that would belong to Fidelity or to any little girl. She whirls around, looking for more doors, a staircase leading up or down. She throws herself against the walls, pressing against them, shouting Fidelity’s name. But this isn’t a movie, and she isn’t a heroine. She presses her forehead against the wall, wanting to cry, to collapse. The words scrape at her throat. “Where is my daughter?”

  She feels warmth at her back. Carl is standing now, and when he speaks, it is in a voice that’s quiet and calm enough to be a guide for meditation. “She’s not your daughter,” he says. “You know that, Lisa.”

  He had to have been a con artist. A blackmailer. A bad guy with a plan. How else would he have known the name that Lyla had used during her lost year spent homeless on the streets of Toronto? How else would he have been able to imitate a voice she hasn’t heard in nine years?

  Lisa! Leeesaaaaa, what are you doing?

  Carl sounded exactly like her, a girl whose name Lyla had once known. A girl with short, spiky hair and rough hands and a bad temper. A homeless, hysterical girl with a beautiful baby who was suffering because of her . . . You seem stressed, Lyla had said back then. Please don’t take it out on the baby. I can help you take care of her. Let’s travel together.

  You look so familiar. Do I know you?

  I have one of those faces. My name is Lisa.

  “Were you there too, Carl? Did you follow the three of us? Were you hiding in the public bathroom? Has it taken you all these years to track me down?”

  Lyla is in her car now. Speaking to no one. Asking questions no one can answer, not anymore. She’s on her way home, but she’s taking the long way, following the body of water that runs through these western Hudson Valley towns. The Esopus River the locals call it, though it’s always struck Lyla as strange, calling it a river when it’s so slim and weak in parts—a creek, really. Calling the Esopus a river is like calling Carl a psychic, or that girl a mother. They’re frauds. All of them.

  She never deserved that baby. What mother dresses a daughter like that? A T-shirt at least three sizes too big, Thomas the Tank Engine on the front. Everyone knows that Thomas the Tank Engine is for boys.

  The blue train has big black eyes . . .

  “You can’t scare me anymore, Carl.”

  There is one section of the Esopus Lyla knows about. It’s deep and heavily shaded, and Lyla often comes here to meditate when she’s preparing for certain roles. It’s on no one’s private property, and there’s a narrow road that leads down to it, presumably for swimmers, though the shade makes it an unpopular swimming hole, even in the peak of summer, far away as that feels.

  Lyla heads down the narrow road in her SUV. The water glistens in the morning sunlight—yes, it’s still morning. Seven forty-five, according to the clock on the dashboard. Lyla finds that hard to believe.

  She parks the car and hauls the sleeping bag out of the trunk. When it falls to the ground, she rolls it until it reaches the water. It’s slow work, not so much because of Carl’s body as the heavy crystals she’s used to weigh it down. But Lyla is smart and Pilates strong, and, as Carl might have said if he were still alive, she’s been here before. She gives the bag a final push and watches it sink into the water.

  Strange how the world works. How people and memories can disappear, only to resurface at the oddest moments. Lyla thinks of the crystal she’d zipped into the sleeping bag. The pink calming one she’d placed by Carl’s head. Carl, who had no friends or family. No one to miss him or mourn him or ask after him . . . Hopefully that heavy crystal will bring him some peace. Rose quartz, she thinks. And then, Rose. That was her name. Rose. Fidelity’s mother. Nine years, and she’s just remembering that now.

  It’s eight thirty by the time Lyla pulls up her long driveway, a string of excuses ru
nning through her mind. I went for a drive to clear my head / took a walk in the mountains / went looking for Fidelity / needed to be alone . . . Any of these will work. Lyla has a gift, after all. And that gift makes people believe in her. Besides, there’s no one in her life these days who questions her actions.

  Leaving her car, Lyla is so deeply in character that she doesn’t notice the extra police cars in her driveway, though when she opens the front door, she’s aware of their voices. “She’s here,” one of the officers says. And before she can come up with a plan, or even open her mouth to speak, Nolan is rushing at her, tears on his face.

  Lyla’s stomach drops. He pulls her to him. She hears the crackle of police radios and feels his strong arms around her, squeezing her so tightly she can barely breathe.

  “What ha—”

  “They found her.” Nolan says it again and again and again. “They found Fidelity.” And then, finally, “She’s alive.”

  DAY FIVE

  “Are we going home now, Mommy?” Fidelity says. Her voice sounds like music, and her cheeks are pink again. She’s no longer dehydrated, and she’s already gained back a couple of pounds. Four days spent lost in the woods . . . Incredible how resilient children are.

  “Yes, honey,” Lyla says. She gently hugs Fidelity. She’s followed by Nolan, the People magazine photographer capturing the moment, the nurses applauding.

  “Fidelity,” the People reporter says, “are you glad to see your mommy and daddy again?”

  And Fidelity’s face goes serious. “Yes,” she says. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry I made them worry.”

  It’s the latest of many times Fidelity has apologized since they were first reunited, and it troubles Lyla a little bit. When you apologize that much, there’s something you aren’t saying.

  Once the hospital staff have left and Nolan has gone to the waiting room for a follow-up interview with the reporters, Lyla brings it up with Fidelity as she helps her get dressed. “Honey,” she says. “I just want to know. Why did you wander off in the first place?”