“Why are you still here?” she demanded.
“Like I said, I just wanted to clarify a few things, check if you could help me reconcile some inconsistencies about Laini’s death.”
And, of course, I wanted to provoke her into telling me what she hadn’t told anyone yet, and to get it recorded.
“What inconsistencies?” she asked, removing a clipboard from a hook on the wall, pushing down the wrist of her glove to check her Apple Watch, and writing the time on the form.
“The thing that bothers me most is how the different people I spoke to described Laini. For example, Kennick Carter, Carl Mendez, Denise who works here, even Hugo from the Hardware store — everyone described her as being happy. But you said she was moody, that she suffered from depression. You believed she committed suicide.”
“That’s because she did.”
Bethany turned her back on me and walked over to a stainless-steel vat as long as a bathtub and much deeper.
“In some way or other,” I continued, “everyone else said or implied that Laini hated being stuck in one place or occupation for long. She was too frivolous or too restless, or she just liked exploring more of life than any one place or person or line of work could offer her. Her brother called her a butterfly. Mendez said she was scared of being trapped. Jessica Armstrong —”
“What’s she got to do with anything?”
“She said Laini didn’t want more stakes in the ground.”
Bethany lifted the lid of the tank, and I saw it was filled with clear liquid — raw sap sucked down from the trees in the woods surrounding us.
“But you,” I continued, “you told me that Laini loved this job, that she’d finally found her niche, though you conceded that extra responsibilities tended to stress her out.”
Bethany said nothing, merely sniffed the liquid in the tank, tutted, and made another note on her clipboard.
“And you were the only one who never described her as beautiful.”
Bethany stilled for a moment, then she turned and went to the reverse osmosis machine and checked some readings on its display panel.
I followed her, wanting to see her face. “When you realized the cops might not be sold on suicide, you cast suspicion on other people. You said Carl Mendez’ relationship with Laini was rocky, implied there might even be abuse. But he said they were happy, that he never laid a finger on her in anger.”
“Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?” she snapped.
“You told me you’d warned Laini about Jim and made sure I knew all about Kennick’s financial woes.”
“I was trying to be helpful!”
“I didn’t see it immediately, didn’t notice that you were doing a magician’s trick, something you’d learned as a kid in those awful pageants. You were making sure I looked in one place” — I twirled my right hand in the air — “while you executed your sleight of hand somewhere else.” I hid my left hand behind my back.
“This is gibberish,” Bethany said. “I have no idea what you’re trying to say.”
“You were distracting focus from yourself by directing attention to others.”
She ignored this and marched across the factory floor to inspect a boiler and a few more tanks. I trailed behind her, tucking my hands back into my pockets. Without the boiler fires running, it was almost as cold inside the shed as it was outside.
“And I fell for it. I fell for your story and your tears and your distractions. I just assumed your version of Laini was different because you were closest to her. You saw more, or deeper, because you knew her best.”
Bethany spun around to face me. “I did!” she said fiercely. “I knew her better than she knew herself — she admitted as much in her goodbye note.”
“But then I wondered if you were the only one lying.”
“Why would I lie?”
“I know, right? It made no sense, because you didn’t stand to gain anything from her death. On the face of it, everyone looked like a better suspect than you. But murder isn’t always sensible or logical. Sometimes, people are driven more by rage and pain than by gain. And so I wondered if I’d been looking at things from the wrong viewpoint, doubting what everyone said, even doubting myself.”
“Is there a point to this rambling?”
“Because if only one specific person was lying, and that person was you, then everything slotted into place. And you’d committed murder.”
“Murder?” Bethany scoffed. “Why would I want to kill the woman who was my best friend and the most valuable asset in my business? I was going to make her a full partner.”
“Ah, yes.”
“‘Ah, yes’ — what?”
“That’s what spooked Laini, wasn’t it? Another stake in the ground. She’d been in one place too long and had been growing twitchy for a while. Mendez was getting clingy. He wanted to trap her behind a picket fence with babies and a wedding ring, pinning her down like a butterfly on a board. And you wanted to hang onto her with golden handcuffs — more money and shares in the business. She felt crowded and claustrophobic and bored. She wanted out. She wanted to be free again.”
Bethany pursed her lips and crossed her arms, holding the clipboard like a shield over her chest. “You’ve spoken to her friends for all of five minutes and you think you know her?”
“I know that she was kind and honest,” I continued. “She had integrity, so she felt bad because you were making these plans and she had no intention of being here to help you see them through. And if she was planning to leave, she might as well go immediately. That would allow Carl to find someone else, too, which was only fair since she would never give him what he truly wanted. So, she ended it with him and arrived on your doorstep, with all her bags and a head full of exciting plans.”
Bethany gripped the clipboard tightly, as though to keep herself from hitting me with it as I continued with my version of events.
“She tells you she’s off on her next great adventure — one that doesn’t involve you. She’s quitting her job and leaving cold, snowy, suffocating Vermont to start again somewhere new, preferably on the other side of the globe. She’s sorry to do this to you, so sorry she’s even brought you a massive bunch of flowers. Pink lilies, I’m guessing,” I said, recalling the pink and green background of my visions with the note, and the dying flowers in Bethany’s hall that she’d instructed her maid to toss onto the compost heap.
Bethany narrowed her eyes. “She brought me flowers because she was a houseguest. You wouldn’t know, but that’s something well-mannered people do.”
I shook my head slowly. “Nah, then she would have given you thank-you flowers when she left, not when she arrived. They were an apology, as was her note written on that pretty blue paper, telling you how sorry she was to leave you in a mess. The mess of losing a vital person in your business. The mess of trying to find someone new to take her place. Not the mess of suicide, as everyone assumed.”
“You’re delusional,” Bethany said. “I read in the newspaper that you’re a psychology student, but you should be a patient instead. I think someone should inform the university authorities that you’re unstable and not fit to help anyone.”
“Like you informed The Bugle about my assisting the police?”
She merely shrugged.
“Bitch! You were clouding the water again, so anything I came up with would be doubted.”
She marched past me, back toward the entrance of the sugar shack, saying, “I’ll be telling my contact there about this visit, too. Your wild theories and crazed accusations. Your threatening demeanor. How I didn’t feel safe until you left — which I’d like you to do right now.”
– 39 –
I had no intention of leaving until I got what I came for, so I continued to dog Bethany’s footsteps, talking as I went.
“You and Laini spent Saturday night together at your house, like you said, discussing life, love, men, work, the future. You probably tried to persuade her to stay, but Laini Carter wasn
’t a stayer — not for her brother or the man she loved in Colorado, not for Carl Mendez or any job. Not even for you.”
Bethany tried to hang the clipboard back in its place near the door, cursing as she missed the small hook several times. Her hands were unsteady; I had her rattled.
I stepped around to block the way out of the shed. “Maybe you urged her to think on it that night. You hoped she’d change her mind. But the next morning, you saw she was determined to leave. She was going to ruin everything on a selfish whim. How dare she? And thinking a bunch of flowers could compensate for ruining your business, your ‘everything’ Carl called it, and leaving you without your right hand and best friend? Maybe your only friend? It was an insult. She’d even snatched Carl out from under you, and now she was just ditching him. And you doubted he’d want you back — who wants first princess when they’ve had the pageant queen?”
At that, Bethany struck me across the face, hard enough to make my ears ring.
“Ow!” I gasped, outraged.
“You had it coming.”
“Is that your life philosophy? Giving people what they have coming, especially when they cross you?” I demanded, pressing my cold hand against my stinging cheek and ear. A muscle worked in Bethany’s pale cheek. “You were angry that morning, too. Your rage must have been building all night. Hell, you’d been seething for decades — since you were tiny tots, and she kept breaking your little girl’s heart, trampling on your dreams. Over and over, she kept winning the crown, stealing the attention, enchanting everyone. And doing it so effortlessly! While you had to work for it. You sweated and trained and tried harder. And lost.”
Bethany’s breaths were coming faster now. I pressed my advantage.
“You were so jealous of her, so deeply envious in so many ways, that you couldn’t even bear to face it consciously. She was prettier, freer, less needy and more lovable. She’d beaten you in every way that counted. The envy and the anger and all the wounds had been accumulating for years and years, collecting emotional interest, turning what you felt for her into something bitter and dangerous. Only two things mattered in your life — your business and your relationship with her, and now she was going to jeopardize the first and abandon the second. Abandon you. Her decision to flit away was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
I took a step closer to Bethany.
“Laini was going to ruin your hopes once again. And once again you were feeling like that little girl you once were — furious, jealous, inadequate, rejected. And so alone. If you could’ve, you would have caged Laini like one of your birds, kept her by your side. But you couldn’t, and if you couldn’t have her, no one would.”
I took another step closer, and Bethany backed up a few paces, her ice-blue eyes fixed on me and filled with hatred.
“That Sunday morning,” I said, “Laini didn’t volunteer to go buy you cider donuts — I’ll bet a pastry hasn’t crossed your lips since you were a little girl. No, you came up with a ruse to get her to the quarry. Maybe you told her the magnificent view would change her mind. Or maybe,” I said, thinking of the black Lycra cycling pants Ryan had said Laini was wearing when she died, “she wanted to go for a bike ride, and you volunteered to drive her out to the quarry so she could take a pretty route back through the woods.”
Bethany’s mouth was a tight white line. She said nothing.
“You suggested going in Laini’s car because hers had a bike rack, and yours didn’t. You left, with no one to see you go — you live alone, your maid doesn’t work Sundays — and you swung past the factory to collect Laini’s bike and helmet from the hallway in the office before driving out to the serpentine quarry. And when you got there, you begged her to hike to the top with you — one last time, Laini, for me, please?” I mimicked a cajoling tone.
“Nonsense! This is all nonsense,” Bethany spat.
“And at the top of the quarry, you tried one last time to convince her to stay. You argued, and she laughed, confused. She said you couldn’t be serious.”
“Wha– How do you …?”
“I saw it. I heard it.”
“That’s not possible,” Bethany cried, backing away from me until she came up against the huge tank of sap.
“She hadn’t even seen it coming. It never occurred to her carefree, gypsy mind that every time she upped sticks and moved on, she left broken hearts and damaged lives behind, and that one day it might catch up with her. But she’d hurt the wrong person one too many times. You thrust out your hands and pushed her over the edge.”
“No!”
“You hurried back down the hill, took her bike off her Jeep and put on the helmet, hiding your face. Then you cycled all the way home, put the bike in the back of your SUV and returned it to its rack at the factory before driving back home to wait. I’m guessing you didn’t expect her body to be found so soon. You’d probably planned on waiting until the next day before checking in with Carl and raising the alarm with the cops. Still, it worked out well enough anyway, didn’t it?”
“This is all wild speculation. You have absolutely no proof,” Bethany said.
“Not true. You made a mistake with the bike. Jim saw Laini bringing it to the office that Saturday morning. She was on her way to you but left it there in case anyone from the company wanted it once she left town — she wasn’t planning on taking it with her, and she knew you weren’t a cyclist. Then, when Jim came in on Sunday afternoon to clean the boilers, he saw it again, but this time it was muddy, because it had been ridden. Thing is, Bethany, you made no mention in your statement to the cops about Laini going for a ride.”
“I forgot. She went out on Saturday afternoon.”
“There’s a witness who saw someone cycling on a mountain bike — while wearing a blue helmet — near the Brookford turnoff on Sunday morning.”
“I mean Sunday,” Bethany said. “It was on Sunday morning when she went cycling. I remember now.”
“At a time when she was already dead? They know the exact time from her phone.”
“Then your witness — if there even is one — must have seen another cyclist. It could have been anyone.”
“And that hi-tech watch you always wear?”
“What about it?”
“It has a fitness tracker on it, too. And I’ll bet that when the cops check it, they’ll find an intense period of activity after eight fifty-seven on that Sunday morning that corresponds with a five-mile cycle between the quarry and your house.”
“If it does, that’s because I was exercising at home.”
“The tracker can tell the difference between yoga and cycling — your heart rate would be different. Besides, it’s got a built-in GPS tracker that will show exactly where you were.”
Bethany’s mouth fell open, then snapped shut. She stared down at the watch on her left wrist for a moment and then, quick as a flash, unfastened it and tossed it into the vat of sap behind her.
I dashed over to the tank and stuck my arm inside, trying to grab the watch as it sank through the clear liquid, but it slipped through my fingers and dropped to the bottom. Cursing, I leaned over, stretching my arm and fingers to their limit.
Then solid ground disappeared beneath me as Bethany lifted my feet into the air, tipping me face-down into the tank. Keeping my head deep in the sap.
– 40 –
The rim of the tank dug painfully into my midriff as I thrashed around in the sap, trying to wriggle my feet loose of Bethany’s tight grip. I kept my mouth clamped shut so I didn’t accidentally gasp in the thin liquid, but already I was desperate for a breath of air. Think!
Relaxing my muscles, I slid deeper into the sap, braced my hands against the base of the vat, and pumped both feet back in a vicious kick, feeling the satisfying thud of impact beneath my heels. Immediately, my feet were released. I spun around in the tank and thrust my head up toward the surface, but hands covered my face and pushed down.
My lungs were burning. I needed to breathe.
I tri
ed to peel the fingers off my face, but my short nails and the slippery liquid gave me no purchase. I flailed at the arms above me, banging at them, grabbing for her head, but her arms were longer than mine. I was running out of time. Black dots speckled my vision.
No! I was not going to drown again. I refused.
Opening my mouth wide, I bit down hard on the fingers spread across my face. And was free. I broke the surface, coughing and gasping, sucking in deep breaths of air.
Soaked through with the sap, I climbed out of the tank like a monster emerging from the deep, dripping and trying to wipe my eyes clear. There was no sign of Bethany. I fished my phone out of my pocket and switched it on. A few wavy lines appeared on the screen, then it went dark.
Shit. So much for my plan to get hard evidence. I needed to turn this over to the cops and get myself someplace warm and dry.
Knowing the main office outside was locked, I checked the sugar shed for a phone but found nothing. Jim’s office door was padlocked and didn’t budge when I gave it a hard kick that sent pain reverberating into my knee. Fine. If I couldn’t call for help, I’d go fetch it.
I trudged out of the shed, gasping as the arctic air hit the wet skin of my face and hands. I trotted over to my car and yanked on the door handle, but it didn’t budge. I tried again, then cupped a hand around my eyes to peer inside. Vermont-style, I’d left the door unlocked and the keys in the ignition. Now the door was locked, and there was no sign of the keys.
Cursing Bethany hotly through cold lips, I rotated on the spot, wondering what to do. Her huge SUV was still in the lot, but a quick check revealed it, too, was locked, as was the door of the office block when I double-checked it. Where was she?
A movement in my peripheral vision caught my attention. There! A flash of red moved between the trees just beyond the lot. I set off at a run after her, needing to get my keys. Needing to get her phone.
Racing past the trees decked out for tourists, I ducked under the brightly colored buckets hanging from their trunks and sped deeper into the woods, stumbling over protruding roots and felled logs, weaving my way under and over the obstructing tapestry of plastic tubing and supporting rebar rods.
The First Time I Fell Page 23