SUCH A GOOD GIRL: An urgently timely gripping mystery with a heartbreaking twist (Eva Rae Thomas Mystery Book 9)

by Willow Rose

  “Olivia!” I cut through. “I’m gonna stop you right there before you say something I don’t approve of and get yourself grounded. Christine is right. You know the rules.”

  She sighed and put the phone down. I smiled and finished my food. “What’s so important anyway that it can’t wait?”

  “Nothing,” Olivia said and shook her head. “Can I be excused?”

  I narrowed my eyes. Something was going on with her. I nodded and let her get up. The other kids followed immediately after like they couldn’t get away from me fast enough. I cleaned up the kitchen while Angel sat in her pen, holding a small cup I had given her like it was the Holy Grail.

  I was putting the dishes in the washer when Olivia came back down.

  “Hi, sweetie.” I gave her a curious look. “What’s going on?”

  She shook her head, then approached me and started to help me put silverware in the washer. I sensed she wanted to talk but let her get ready on her own.

  “Say…”

  I stopped, a plate still clutched in my hand. “Yes?”

  “I thought you said that Tristan was staying with his grandmother? Doesn’t she live in Texas or something?”

  I nodded. “Yes, that’s what I’ve been told. Why?”

  She looked pensive. “Hm.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “Why do you ask?”

  She shook her head. “No, it’s just that…well, he…maybe it’s nothing.”

  “No, Olivia, it’s not nothing. Or you wouldn’t be here asking me about it.”

  She exhaled. “It’s just that someone tagged him in a photo on Instagram just a few hours ago. And he is definitely not in Texas since it’s snowing where he is. I know it snows in Texas but not at this time of year.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe the grandmother took him skiing?”

  “Maybe. But he’s with some girl.”

  “He could have met her at the place they’re staying,” I said.

  “They’re not on a slope; they’re sitting in a yard,” she said. “There doesn’t seem to be mountains around them, look.”

  She showed me the picture, and I took the phone from between her hands, then studied it closer. It didn’t look at all like a skiing area. It was snowing, yes, but just a light dusting was on the ground. It wasn’t cold enough for it to stay, which meant it wasn’t a skiing area.

  “Maybe they’re visiting some people they know,” I said.

  She shrugged again. “Yeah, you’re probably right. I’m just worried about him, you know?”

  “I can’t blame you.”

  Olivia left, and I finished cleaning up. I then sat down at my laptop and opened Facebook. I went to Kimmie’s page, where hundreds of people had written their condolences to her family and wrote how much they would miss her and how wonderful a person she was. I then found her mother’s profile and clicked it. There she was, Kimmie’s mother, who was from Texas, just as Olivia had said. Kimmie’s mother had many pictures of herself on her profile and photos of her with a man she seemed very fond of, but who clearly wasn’t Kimmie’s father as he was very dark. Kimmie’s mother, who had recently moved, according to her updates.

  Kimmie’s mother, who now lived in…Morocco?

  Chapter 38

  I stared at the screen for a long time, my fingers tapping on the table while thinking this through, going through all the possible explanations. But each and every one came to the same conclusion.

  I picked up my phone and called Isabella.

  “You lied to me.”

  “Excuse me?” she said.

  “You told me that Tristan would go live with his grandmother.”

  She paused. “And?”

  “And he’s very obviously not living with her since she’s in Morocco, of all places. I know he only has one grandmother since he doesn’t know who his father is. No matter how I turn this and look at it from different sides, I can only conclude that you lied to me. My question is, why? You know I worry about the kid. He’s my daughter’s friend.”

  Isabella cleared her throat. “I’m afraid I can’t discuss this with you. You’re not on the case anymore, and this is confidential information.”

  “Ah, don’t give me that,” I groaned.

  She exhaled. “You know I can’t say anything else.”

  “At least tell me he’s with family.”

  “Okay, he’s with family. I can tell you that much.” She went quiet, then continued. “Was there anything else, Eva Rae? I’m busy here.”

  I paused. “It’s just that…he doesn’t really have much family. All Kimmie had was her mother. She had no siblings. So, who is he with then? Is he all right being with them? Because he’s always welcome here…”

  Isabella interrupted me with a deep groan. “Eva Rae Thomas! Tristan is fine. Trust me. He’s with a close relative.”

  “Where? Where is he? Is he safe? Do these people know how to protect him? Do they care for him?”

  “God, you’re annoying. Yes, they’ve got it under control. We sent him to Texas with some relatives. There, you have it. It’s all I can say. Now, please, leave it alone, okay? I know you feel guilty and responsible for the boy, and that’s very honorable of you. You have a big heart. And we’re grateful for all your help with Kimmie and the case, but let us take it from here.”

  “But…I’m just not…”

  “Bye, Eva Rae.”

  Then, she hung up. I stared at the phone’s display, my pulse quickening. Isabella was acting very strange about this, and I didn’t like it.

  And what was worse, she had just lied to me again.

  If there was one thing I had learned, it was that Tristan wasn’t in Texas. He was nowhere near the South.

  The question was, where was he then, and who was he with? Was he really with family, as Isabella said? Why would she continue to lie to me?

  What was Isabella hiding?

  Chapter 39

  “It’s really hard for me to talk about, so I wrote it all down.”

  Rachel sat with the papers between her hands, two pages she had written on the computer in the dead of night while everyone else in the house was asleep. She had been lying awake, thinking about what Crystal had told her the day before at the restaurant. How Rachel wasn’t the only one it had happened to, that she had a handful of other girls who had already told her their stories, and they were collecting them to start a case against Wanton.

  A sexual harassment case.

  Just hearing the words leave Crystal’s lips had made Rachel’s hands begin to shake. She was terrified of having another panic attack and had to excuse herself and go to the bathroom to splash water on her face to cool herself down. It felt like she was going to burn up.

  Later, at home, while lying in bed, she couldn’t sleep. It felt like someone had ripped her mind open. She had this picture in her mind of a dam, keeping the water in, and now, there was a crack in it. Water had started to pour out, but soon the crack would open wider, and the water would start flooding out. Once that happened, there was no way back, and the flood would take over.

  That’s how it felt.

  Rachel knew that she had opened up for this. Seeing Wanton on TV had somehow ripped something open inside her, and now it was beginning to leak. She wondered if she would be able to stop the flood from happening. Would she be able to put it all back in her mind and close the lid again? Or was it too late? Would she survive it if she let the crack get deeper? If she let out more?

  She had closed her eyes, trying to force sleep to come, but it didn’t. On the contrary, she felt more awake than ever, and now these images were beginning to flash by. She saw him, and she saw his hand on top of her mouth. She felt the powerlessness as he put his weight into it, and she was pushed down.

  Then she gasped for air and opened her eyes.

  I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I can’t think about it. I just can’t.

  But the images wouldn’t go away; they kept coming at her like the flood from the dam, getting more a
nd more violent, the bigger the crack got, and soon, she had to get out of bed in order to sustain it. She was gasping for air, holding her throat as she staggered into the kitchen, then into her office, and sat down at the computer. She had stared at the dark screen for a long time, trying hard simply to breathe and make sense of things.

  Then she had begun to write. She had no idea what she was writing but just let it flow—word for word onto the paper, telling the story of what had happened, saying the words she had never dared to utter to anyone else, not even her loved ones.

  Now, she was handing the pieces of paper to Crystal, who had come to her house after Rachel had called her and told her she was ready to talk.

  Crystal stared at the papers, then up at Rachel.

  “This is my story. It is something I have never told anyone, so please keep it to yourself for now.” Rachel took in a deep breath before continuing:

  “But as you will see when reading it…I…I was raped by Richard Wanton.”

  Chapter 40

  I couldn’t sleep. Angel woke up every hour and wanted her bottle, so I sat with her most of the night while staring out the window, a million thoughts rushing through my mind. When I wasn’t staring out the window, I was on my phone, scrolling through Tristan’s Instagram account, looking especially long at the picture that Olivia had shown me. The one where he was with the girl in the snow. Her name was Haley. The caption read:

  Hanging in the snow with my new friend.

  “Texas, pfft,” I snorted. “This is April. They had seventy-seven degrees in Houston today.”

  Even the trees in the background were too bare to belong to that part of the country. There was no way it was taken in Texas. I then Googled a few things and found out where it had been snowing around the date that the picture was posted. There had been a cold front moving through the east coast, dropping snow from Washington to Boston. That’s where he had to be—not down south, as Isabella said.

  Liar!

  “But where are you, Tristan, and who are you with then?” I mumbled like a madman at my phone while Angel fell back to sleep in her crib. I felt so angry with Isabella. I could tolerate many things but not being lied to.

  Why did she feel the need to lie to me?

  I tried to go back to bed but couldn’t sleep. How could I? All I worried about was the boy, Tristan. I sat back up, grabbed my phone again, then did something I knew I would regret later on, yet did it anyway.

  I asked to follow Haley and waited for her to accept. Even though it was late, she did, and I wrote a private message to her, asking her about Tristan. I told her I was an old friend, and I was worried about him since he had been through a lot. I just wanted to know that he was okay and that he was with people who cared for him.

  Feeling good about my decision, I put the phone down, then went to sleep, finally dozing off. When I woke up the following day, I had received a message from her, and I opened it.

  Hello, Mrs. Thomas. I am sad to say that I don’t think Tristan is doing very well. He just moved in next door, so I don’t know much about his situation. But something isn’t right if you ask me. It seems like they’re keeping him like a prisoner inside of their house, and he has to sneak out to see me. He’s not even allowed to go outside, but he does it anyway, crawling out the window in the back. He seems really sad and won’t talk to me about his past or why he’s staying in that house and not allowed to leave. He’s not even allowed to have a phone, and he doesn’t go to school. It’s sad because I really like him. I’ll tell him you wrote to me when I meet him tonight.

  I stared at the words on my screen, barely blinking. They were keeping him like a prisoner? Not allowing him to have a phone? What the heck was this? Who were these people? Family? Why were they doing this to him? Hadn’t he been through enough?

  I wrote her back:

  Thank you for letting me know this. Please, don’t tell him anything. I will come for a surprise visit and talk to him myself. Could you tell me where you live?

  I sat back while waiting for the response. It came right away.

  I am sorry. I can’t do that. You’ll have to excuse me, but I don’t know you very well. I’m sorry.

  I grumbled, annoyed at this. Of course, teenagers today were so careful, growing up in the age of social media.

  But I wasn’t giving up just yet. Instead, I scrolled through Haley’s profile until I found a picture of her in front of what I assumed had to be her school. Then I Googled the school's name, which, to my luck, wasn’t a common one, and it turned up with the full address. I plotted it down and got it pinned on a map, then realized it was located in a small town north of Baltimore. I nodded, thinking it wasn’t uncommon for small flurries of snowflakes to fall there in the month of April, even though they would melt quickly.

  “Thank you, Haley,” I said, then went online to book a ticket to Baltimore.

  Chapter 41

  THEN:

  “It’s been forever. How are you doing?”

  Natasha placed a pot of herbal tea in front of Samantha. They were sitting in the kitchen of Nat’s one-bedroom apartment. It had been so long since Samantha had been there; she had forgotten how small the place was. Nat was a terrible messy head, and there were stacks of books on the table, along with clothing on the backs of all the chairs. A wet towel was on the floor, and Natasha saw Samantha look at it, then picked it up. Natasha found some cookies, put them in front of her, and then sat down by the small wooden table, pushing away a book.

  Natasha had just started working for a publishing house and hoped to become an editor one day. Her heart belonged in books, even though she couldn’t write one if her life depended on it. She knew what could be done to make them better.

  “I’m great,” Samantha said.

  “What have you been up to?” Natasha asked as she sat down and poured them both some tea. “And don’t say just working because I don’t buy that. No one works that much. There must be something else involved. A guy, maybe? Did you meet someone?” she paused and scrutinized Samantha’s face, then nodded.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  Sam shook her head. “No, no. It’s not what you think at all. I’ve just been really into the work. I want to get good at it and get interesting stories, you know? But that requires a lot of me, like me being there all the time. If you want a big career in journalism, you have to go all in.”

  Natasha nodded and blew on her cup. “I guess I can understand that. It just worries me a little, you know? All work and no play and all that.”

  Samantha laughed. It didn’t sound sincere, and she got lost for a second in her own thoughts while sipping her cup. Natasha always had the best teas. She’d go to these small Asian shops and buy them. She could spend hours talking to the owners about something as simple as tea, which was basically just a bunch of leaves. Sam had always admired her friend’s ability to get a lot out of almost nothing. Natasha enjoyed life. And when she found something she liked, she’d go all in till she knew everything there was to know about it, not leaving one little detail to go undiscovered.

  “You’re sure you’re okay?” Natasha asked.

  Samantha sipped her cup, then nodded. “Yes. I’m really great, as a matter of fact.”

  She added a smile that soon became stiff, and she looked into the liquid in the cup between her hands.

  “Do you want to order Thai food tonight like we used to?” Nat asked, lifting a couple of books from the table, looking for the menu from their favorite place. She found it and pulled it out from beneath a stack of books.

  “I could really go for some pad Thai; how about you?”

  Samantha hadn’t been listening and looked up. “What’s that?”

  “Here. Pick yours,” she said and handed her the menu. “I know what I want.”

  Sam looked at the menu. “Oh, yeah, of course.”

  She stared at the meals, unable to choose when her phone started to vibrate on the table in front of her. Nat looked at it, and Sam
grabbed it before she could see the display. Sam stared at it, her heart sinking.

  It was him.

  Chapter 42

  I sighed, exhausted at the lady behind the counter at the AVIS rental car place. She had just told me she wanted more money from me—some sort of extra insurance because of the weather.

  “The roads are slippery due to the snowfall we just had. It’s a little crazy with snow in April. It’s like spring won’t come this year.”

  I shook my head. This was getting to be a costly case for me with all the flying back and forth. I was alone now in paying my mortgage, and Matt hadn’t paid alimony for Angel yet. And with all these last-minute tickets flying up north, I was soon running out of money.

  “I’ll take my chances,” I said and took the car keys.

  “Okay. Just know it’ll be expensive in case something happens to the car.”

  I nodded, annoyed, then left and ran to my car. I threw my bag in the back, then got in and found my phone, where I had plotted in the address for the school. It was located in a town twenty-seven miles west of Baltimore, almost thirty miles from the airport. It wouldn’t take me long to get there. It was early in the afternoon, so I had time to get there and start looking for Tristan before it got dark. I checked my phone and messages one last time before taking off from the airport parking lot—nothing from my mom, who was taking care of all the kids, even Angel. I was a little nervous about that part, but she had done it before, and Olivia was there to help her if she needed it. Olivia could easily get up with Angel at night. She was really good at taking care of her.

  It’s gonna be okay.

  I drove onto the highway, sped up the car, and reached the town by two o’clock. I stopped at a gas station and grabbed a sandwich and a soda along with some coffee before driving past the city limit sign:

  Sykesville. Population 4,197. Named ‘Coolest Small Town in America’ by BudgetTravel.com in 2016.