Dying Echo: A Grim Reaper Mystery (Grim Reaper Series)

by Clemens, Judy

  Chapter Thirty-three

  The room went still.

  “You saw Lizzie?” Betsy whispered. “My Lizzie?”

  He nodded miserably.

  “Where? When?” She shook him, and her voice rose. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Scott came from the kitchen and gently pried her away. “It’s all right, Bets, come on, now.”

  “It’s not all right! He saw her! He saw Lizzie!”

  “I’m sorry, Mom. I’m sorry.” Billy was crying openly now. “I should have told you, but she said not to. She said I should just leave things like they were, and it would be better for everybody. Better for you. I didn’t know she was going to die!”

  “Where did you see her?” Anger flashed from Betsy’s eyes. “She came here? She approached you, and not…not me?”

  “I don’t think she meant for me to see her.”

  “Oh, that’s even better.”

  “Betsy…” Scott spoke quietly, but firmly. There was no hint of his inner child now. Betsy opened her mouth to say something else, and then her face crumpled, and she leaned forward, burying herself in Scott’s shoulder.

  Eric had found a tissue box somewhere, and held it out to Billy. The boy grabbed one, and rubbed his face and nose.

  “Can you tell us about it?” Eric asked.

  Billy sniffed and backed up against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest. Scott was rocking Betsy, and Junie stood in the doorway, her eyes even wider than they had been at the dinner table.

  “I was at school,” Billy finally said. “It was the end of the day, like a couple weeks ago, and I was walking out. I thought I saw you, Mom, and I wondered what you were doing there. But you turned and walked away, and you were wearing this dark trench coat kind of thing that I know you don’t have, and that was really weird, and I wondered—” He made a face. “I wondered if you were spying on me, or something, so I followed you.”

  “I wasn’t spying on you—”

  “Well, I know that now, don’t I?” He shoved his hands farther into his armpits and stared at the floor. “I followed her down the sidewalk toward our house, and there were a lot of us around, you know, since school just let out, so I don’t think she saw me at first, but she kept looking back, and when it was pretty much just us left, after most everybody else went to their cars or down their streets or whatever, I couldn’t really hide. She stopped a little bit, then turned and walked faster. I tried to keep up, but she went around a corner, there by the pharmacy, so I ran, but when I got there, she was gone. I was going to ask you about it, but I don’t know, I felt strange about it, so I didn’t.”

  “Oh, Billy, I wish—”

  “I wish, too, Mom, okay?”

  “No, I mean—”

  He held up his hand. “Let me finish. So I come home and we have dinner and whatever, and I have soccer practice, and I come back and shower and do homework and you go to bed and it sort of became this thing that I was probably just imagining, so I sort of, well, forgot about it.” He licked his lips. “But then the next day I was on my way to school and it was like I knew someone was watching me. When I got to town I went around the corner at the bank and went into the little entryway there, you know how it juts back? They weren’t open yet, so nobody was in there to ask me what I was doing, so I waited, and next thing I knew she was coming around the corner. She was wearing that same black trench coat, and she looked just like you, Mom. I stepped out in front of her. I thought she was going to take off, but she just stood there, staring at me.”

  He swallowed, and looked past us all, out through the dining room door to the front room.

  “What happened then?” Eric asked.

  “I knew who it was. I mean, it had to be her, right? I’ve heard about her my whole life, not just from family, but from other people, too. Even at school, sometimes, our own town’s unsolved mystery, you know? Plus, I’ve seen that photo on the refrigerator. Who else looks that much like Mom? But before I could say anything, she goes, ‘You look just like him.’ I’m like, ‘Who?’, and she says, ‘My dad. Your Uncle Cyrus.’ I’m starting to say, ‘I don’t have an Uncle Cyrus,’ but then I stop, because I know who she’s talking about, and I say, ‘I do?’ She looks around, like she’s worried about somebody seeing us, you know? And she pulls me farther back, sort of behind one of the pillar things, and she looks at me like she can’t believe I’m standing there. I ask her why she’s here, and where she’s been, but she shakes her head and says it doesn’t matter and all that matters is that I’m safe and my mom is safe, and do I know who Wayne Greer is and if he’s happy.”

  “Wayne?” Scott sounded surprised. “Why was she asking about him?”

  Betsy gave him a sweet, sad smile and patted his cheek. “She was in love with him, honey.”

  “But I thought…”

  “She wasn’t sure yet, but Wayne had it bad for her—”

  “Well, I knew that.”

  “—and she was afraid.”

  “Of Wayne?”

  “Of losing their friendship.”

  Scott rolled his eyes. “I hate it when girls say that.”

  “Anyway,” Casey said. “What then?”

  Billy blinked rapidly, like his brain was clicking back to that spot in the story. “I told her what I knew about Wayne. I’m friends with, I mean, I know Robbie, so I know who his parents are—and about Mom and Scott, and how they got married young because of me and how we have Junie, too.” He glanced at her in the doorway and gave her the sweetest smile that about broke Casey’s heart. “I asked her what she was doing back home, and why didn’t she come over, and said that in a few minutes Mom would be just across the street in the pharmacy and she could say hi. But she said she couldn’t, it wouldn’t be safe, that it wasn’t safe for her to be talking to me, and that I shouldn’t tell anybody, not Mom, not Wayne, not anybody, that it would have to be a secret, but she had to come home and see it for herself one more time. I asked her why it wasn’t safe, and she got all sad and said she was sorry, and that she loved me, and that I should be happy and be kind and…” He shrugged. “She got all choked up. I asked again where she’d been, and she just said, ‘Around.’ I asked her where she was living now and she said it was beautiful, and the sky was bluer than blue, and there were mountains that would take my breath away, and she wished she could take me skiing, but she couldn’t afford it, and it wouldn’t be safe, even if she could. Somewhere…somewhere in Colorado.” He stopped suddenly, like he’d run out of breath, or words, or both.

  “She told you where she was?” Casey was surprised. So either she was planning to move on soon, so the information wouldn’t be relevant anymore, or she really was going to stay and make a life there. One way she had lied to Ricky, and the other way she was ready to give up the fear.

  “What else did she say?” Betsy asked. “Did she give you a message for me?”

  He looked at his mother. “She said I couldn’t tell you that she’d been here or where she was living. She said she never should have told me that. That if I told anybody it would put us all in danger; her, too. She hadn’t meant to talk to me, at all, but maybe it was meant to be, for her to have contact with at least one person in her family. She made me swear I wouldn’t tell, and she looked so scared I promised.”

  “You’re not supposed to keep secrets from us.” Betsy broke away from Scott. “We’re supposed to be the ones you tell everything to.”

  Casey held in a laugh. What teenager told his parents everything? She certainly hadn’t. “Was that it, Billy?”

  He turned toward her quickly, glad for the reprieve. “She grabbed me, gave me a big hug, told me again to be happy and love my family, and then she left. I mean, she looked around some more, like she was all worried about somebody seeing us, then practically ran away.” His lips trembled again. “And now she’s dead, and it’s all my fault.” He curled over, like he was trying to protect himself.

  “Come here, Billy.” Eric pulled out one of the chairs
at the table. “Sit down, bud, before you keel over.” He led the boy to a chair, where Billy sat down and put his hands on the side of his face, hiding himself from the rest of the room.

  Eric sat next to him, a hand on his back. “It’s not your fault. She’s the one who came here. You didn’t ask her to.”

  He shook his head, still looking at the floor. “No, it’s not because she came here. It’s because of me. If it hadn’t been for me she’d be fine.”

  “Billy,” Eric said. “Tell us what happened.”

  Billy shuddered, but didn’t take his hands away from his face. “It was last week sometime. This guy found me at school. They called me to the office and said he wanted to talk to me.”

  “At school?” For the first time, Scott sounded alarmed. “Who was he?”

  “He said he was a cop and he was there about Aunt Lizzie. That he had some information that there were people after her, and he was wondering if I could help by telling him where she might have kept her things before she died. I told him that anything she had was my mom’s now, but he said there must have been somewhere else.”

  “What day was this?” Casey regretted the sharpness of her voice, but this was a whole new ballgame.

  “I don’t know. Monday, maybe. Yeah, just this past Monday, because it was the start of the week and I was tired.”

  So he had come after Elizabeth was already dead.

  “Did he give you his name?”

  “I guess. He showed me a badge, but I don’t remember. I didn’t want to tell him about her being here, so I said Aunt Lizzie had disappeared before I was born, so why would he come to me for information, but he didn’t go for it. He said he knew I’d had contact with her just the week before, and that she was in danger, and he wanted to help her. The only way he could was by finding something she’d lost. I asked him what it was, but he said I didn’t need to know. I’m not sure how I was supposed to help him find it if he wouldn’t tell me.”

  All of the adults started to speak, but Eric held up his hand and leaned toward Billy, speaking calmly. “How did they know you’d seen her?”

  “I don’t know.” He shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe they saw us?”

  “Did you tell anybody?”

  “She told me not to—”

  “Billy, it’s important. Really important. We’re not going to be angry. It’s not your fault, okay? Elizabeth’s death is not your fault.” He paused, then asked again. “You didn’t tell him about seeing her? Or anything she said?”

  His whole body shook with his response. “I didn’t tell him anything. I said I didn’t know her. That I’d never known her. He said he’d be back to talk to me if he couldn’t find out from someone else. That maybe I’d know something, even if I thought I didn’t.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us?” Betsy demanded. “If cops come talk to you, you need to tell us!” She turned to Scott. “Why didn’t the school at least call us? They should inform parents if cops pull our children out of class!”

  “The guy told me not to tell anyone,” Billy said. “He said it would just worry you, and if I hadn’t really seen Aunt Lizzie, then there was nothing to worry about. Maybe he told the people at school, too.”

  “How did he know to talk to you?” Eric asked him. “Why did he think you’d seen her?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he saw us? Maybe somebody else did?”

  Or…“I know you didn’t tell him,” Casey said. “And you didn’t tell your parents. Did you tell anybody about your meeting with your aunt?”

  Billy dropped his face into his hands, and his body shook with sobs. “I didn’t mean to. I wasn’t planning on it. But he was talking about it, and I just wanted…I just wanted to…”

  “Who did you tell, Billy?”

  He gulped, and wiped his nose with his arm. “It was just one person. Just one. And he swore he wouldn’t tell.”

  “Billy, who was it?”

  “It was Robbie. Robbie Greer. I told him.”

  Chapter Thirty-four

  “You’re sure it was this man?” Casey held out the photo of Cyrus and the two men.

  She hadn’t believed the story Billy had been given about the guy being a cop, and thought she’d take a chance that it was Cyrus’ old cronies who had been back in Marshland, on the hunt for Elizabeth. Billy couldn’t say for sure that the man was the same as one of the guys on the photo with Cyrus, but he thought it might have been. He was so upset, however, she wasn’t sure he was seeing anything clearly, and a lot of years had passed since the picture had been taken.

  Now, she was showing the photo to a different teenager. Robbie Greer studied the photo for the tenth time. They were in the dingy motel office, so the lighting wasn’t great, but it was good enough if Casey tilted the photo to the right, to catch both lamps in the room. Robbie himself looked different from the evening before. Tonight he was nervous, biting his fingernails and tapping his knuckles on the counter. His eyes jumped around from thing to thing, and he didn’t call Casey “ma’am.”

  “I think it’s the same guy,” he said. “I mean, like I said, he’s older now. His hair had gray in it.”

  “And what exactly did he ask you?”

  “I already told—”

  “Again, Robbie. Tell me.”

  He sighed, like Casey was asking for him to recite all the presidents. In order. “He wanted to know if I’d heard anything new about Elizabeth Mann. I like that kind of stuff, I mean, mysteries, or whatever. There’s her, and then there’s that guy from down the road, who took off one night in his truck and never came home, and that ranch where they think the ghosts of cowboys are coming back to haunt them.” He chewed on his thumbnail.

  “And? What did you tell him?”

  “He didn’t actually want to know about all the history. I guess he knew that. He just wondered if I had any idea where she was.”

  “And did you?”

  He shifted his feet. “Not for sure.”

  “Robbie, Billy told you something. He admitted that. Did the guy ask you what he said?”

  Robbie paled. “Why would he?”

  “Because you’re one of Billy’s friends, and because, according to you, you’re the town expert on Elizabeth’s disappearance.”

  “But no strange men have ever asked me before.”

  “Then something must have happened. Something to tip them off that new information had come to light.”

  Robbie’s tapping became more frantic. “I didn’t mean anything. I didn’t want to get her in trouble. I thought it was good. Billy was so happy, you know, but also freaked out, because he’d seen his aunt, and he wasn’t supposed to tell his mom, but he wanted to tell somebody, so…so he told me. He knew I would be interested, wouldn’t think he was weird.” He squeezed his eyes shut.

  “Robbie, what did you do?”

  He scratched at his forehead.

  “Robbie.”

  “I had a web site, okay? I talked about the unsolved crimes around here, in all of Texas, really, but this case—Billy’s aunt—she’s special, you know? Because she’s from here, and Billy’s my—” He choked, and cleared his throat. “—my friend.”

  “So when Billy told you about Elizabeth, and that she’d been here, you put it on the Internet? Even though he told you it was a secret?”

  “I didn’t know it was going to get her killed! It seemed like no big deal, I mean, Colorado’s a big state! She could’ve been anywhere! I didn’t think…” He slumped. “I just didn’t think.”

  Casey wanted to reach across the counter and shake him, but it wouldn’t change what he’d done, and really, what had he done that every other teenager on the planet wasn’t doing? Tweeting and blogging and…whatever else they did that had a weird name. Well, every other kid except for Billy, who had a personal stake in it all.

  “Okay,” Eric said. “So he found you because of Billy, and your web site. Did you tell him anything new, that you hadn’t already posted?”

  “I didn’
t know anything new. Only what Billy told me.”

  “But you did report Elizabeth’s description of where she was living.”

  If anything, he looked more miserable. “Word for word.”

  “Does Billy know this?”

  He shuddered. “Yes. He knows.”

  So much for that friendship. Casey couldn’t imagine how betrayed Billy was feeling. “Did the man tell you who he was?”

  “I told you—he said he was a cop. I don’t remember his name. He called me to the office at school, so I figured he was for real.”

  Apparently the school administration thought so, too. They’d called both boys down to the office that same day, except they’d called them separately. Too bad the boys hadn’t confided in each other that time.

  “Why didn’t you tell Billy the guy was here asking questions?”

  “Seriously? Because I didn’t want him to rip my head off for posting what he’d said. And because the guy told me not to tell anyone.”

  So now he can keep a secret?

  “But he found out, anyway.”

  Robbie nodded miserably. “He saw the blog and figured that’s why the guy came asking for us.”

  Casey was confused. “Did you use Elizabeth’s name on your blog? And the name of this town?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then why didn’t we find it when we were doing Internet searches for Elizabeth Manns from Texas?”

  Robbie hunched over. “When were you searching?”

  “Couple days ago.”

  “Yeah. You wouldn’t have found it anymore. I deleted it.”

  “You deleted her name?”

  “No. The entire web site. Billy was so mad. It was the only thing I could think of that might make him not hate me anymore.” He sniffed, and wiped his nose with his arm.

  Eric shrugged. “You had to do something, man. That was a start. Now, anything you can remember that could help us find this man?”

  Robbie plopped down on the chair behind the counter. “You think he did it, don’t you? You think I gave her away on my web site, and this guy saw it, and then he went and killed Billy’s aunt.”