The Amateurs, Book 3

by Sara Shepard

  “A-are you okay?”

  For a moment, Brett had no idea what to say. When had someone last asked him that question? Years? Decades?

  “Come on,” she said with an uncertain laugh. “Let’s try this new thing where we actually talk about our shit instead of shoving it under the rug.”

  He wasn’t sure he deserved Aerin’s kindness. He wasn’t sure he deserved anything. He thought unearthing Elizabeth would be so much easier than this. He thought by this point he was immune to feeling. It would be so much simpler that way.

  “I’m not okay,” he admitted. “Not at all.”

  AT 7:00 A.M. the next day, Maddox leaned against his Jeep in the parking lot of a roadside Motel 6 and stretched his calves. He’d run seven miles this morning, and even though he’d had to wake up at 5:00 to do so, even though he had to jog down a creepy stretch of highway with barely any shoulder, it had felt delicious, cleansing, and necessary.

  He spied Seneca across the parking lot, coming out of the lobby. She walked over to him, wordlessly handing him a cup of coffee she must have grabbed from the check-in desk. “Thanks,” he said, and took a long sip. So did Seneca. The coffee tasted tinny, just the way Seneca hated it, but she didn’t seem to notice. Her eyes were bloodshot. Her hair was wild around her face, uncombed.

  Maddox cleared his throat. “Tough time sleeping?”

  She looked at him blearily. “Didn’t you?”

  Maddox nodded. “I only got a couple of hours. Running sort of cleared my head, though.”

  Seneca opened her mouth, looking like she was going to say something snarky about his addiction to exercise, but then wilted. “I wish I had something like running.”

  “You can always come with me. I’d go slow, just for you.” He gave her a little wink, expecting her to jab back with something like, Hey, who says I’m slow? But Seneca just stared into her coffee cup.

  She looked so miserable. It was weird, not knowing the right thing to say to her anymore. He wanted to tell her he understood. He wanted to tell her how panicked he felt, too—they had mere hours left to find Aerin, and things weren’t looking good. He also wanted to say he wished she’d talk to him more, open up. But the words felt jammed in his throat. How was it that they’d felt so connected just two days ago, and now they were like strangers?

  He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Maybe you can sleep on our way to the Lords’?” he suggested, but by the look Seneca gave him, he had a feeling she was up for good.

  He went back into the room and showered, and then Madison roused from sleep, had coffee, and they were ready to go. No one said much as they climbed into the Jeep and Maddox started the motor. “What’s the Lords’ address again?” Maddox asked aloud.

  Seneca read it off. Maddox typed it into the GPS on his phone. The sun blazed in his eyes as he made a left onto the parkway. Was it crazy they were going to the same place Brett had already tried? Did they really think they’d get farther than he did? It was possible—for one thing, Brett was so much younger when he questioned the couple, and he was still emotionally scarred from all that had happened. But still, Maddox wasn’t sure.

  “Take the next exit,” Madison recited, reading the GPS app on Maddox’s phone. They were going west. In the articles about the fire involving Candace’s children, Candace’s parents were listed as living in a town called West Prune, New Jersey; twenty years later, 411.com said they were still there, though it seemed that they’d moved from a house to an apartment building called the West Prune Arms.

  The drive took them forever, through miles and miles of cow country; they went long stretches without seeing another vehicle—which felt, in Maddox’s opinion, like an eerie, dystopian nightmare. Seneca lifted the hair off her neck again and again, complaining of the humidity. Madison shifted uncomfortably in the backseat, staring at the endless empty fields and generic billboards out the window. Maddox couldn’t find a single station on the radio he liked and settled on a country station, even though he hated the singer’s twang.

  Finally, they arrived in West Prune, which looked like it had been a lovely place once, but was now filled with boarded-up storefronts and an abundance of mini-marts, Dunkin’ Donuts, and sketchy-looking people loitering on the street corners. Seneca pointed to a building in the distance. “I think that’s it.”

  The West Prune Arms apartment building was very prison chic. It had a flat brick exterior, and some of the windows were boarded, and others had dripping air conditioners dangling out. A scraggly haired woman sat on the stoop, muttering to herself. A very loud fight emanated from an open window on one of the upper floors.

  “Cheerful,” Madison said sarcastically, hugging her chest.

  Maddox wrinkled his nose. “Didn’t Brett say they lived in a nice house? I would have thought the apartment they moved to would be similar.”

  As they started up the sidewalk, Seneca faced the group. “We should tell the truth to these people—as best we can, anyway. A kid’s life is in danger. We’re running out of time.”

  Maddox’s green eyes narrowed. “Do we tell them their daughter is a kidnapper?”

  “I’m not sure. I think we need to feel out if they have any idea where Candace is and what she’s up to. Brett said they wouldn’t tell him anything about her—which means that maybe they were hiding something, or maybe they just didn’t know. I think we should start out just saying we’re following a lead on a cold case and need to talk to her.”

  “That sounds good,” Maddox said, and everyone stepped out.

  The door to the lobby wasn’t locked, so they pushed straight in, passed a bank of mailboxes, and peered at the resident list on the wall. It said that the Lords lived in apartment 4G. The elevator had a printed sign that said Broken over the doors, so they hiked up four flights of stairs, the heat rising and becoming more claustrophobic with each level. They walked down stained carpeting until they found apartment 4G. Inside, Maddox heard someone talking—a radio, or maybe TV. Next to him, Seneca drew in a breath. Maddox tried to understand what she was feeling. How weird was it that he was in the building that housed the parents of the woman who set forth a terrible chain reaction? Of course she’d tossed and turned all night. So many pieces to her personal puzzle were coming together, and little of it was good.

  He reached forward to ring the doorbell, but no sound came. It must have not been working. Madison reached out and rapped strongly on the door, then stepped back and squared her shoulders.

  Nothing happened.

  Maddox knocked next. The radio droned on. He peered out a window; it looked into an airshaft. A black cat strode lazily toward a garbage can. It was almost comical, seeing such an unlucky symbol right then.

  Finally Madison reached out with her fist. “Hello?” she said impatiently. “Is anyone here?” Midway through her third knock, they heard a cough behind them. A gray-haired woman with purplish circles under her eyes and a tangle of lines around her mouth appeared at the top of the stairs, two CVS bags slung over her wrists. Maddox jumped back, his heart in his throat.

  “Oh!” Madison squeaked, straightening up. “Are you, um, Mrs. Lord?”

  The woman blinked laboriously, as though she were a windup toy in the final stages of winding down. “Yes,” she said in a watery voice. She looked at the group with confusion, like she’d never seen quite so many people in the hallway at once.

  Seneca took a breath. “Yes, hi. We’re a group of investigators looking into cold cases, and we’re following a lead about your daughter, Candace. Do you have any idea where she is? We really need to speak with her.”

  Mrs. Lord’s lips parted. The color slowly drained from her face, revealing blue veins at her temples.

  A tall, craggy man with big hands, bushy hair, and a beer belly that folded over the waist of his postal service uniform appeared on the landing. He rushed to Mrs. Lord, and she sort of melted into him, burying her head into his chest.

  “What’s going on here?” the man—Mr. Lord, presumably—
demanded to the group. “Who are you?” He gestured to the apartment. “There’s no point in robbing us. We don’t have anything.”

  “It’s nothing like that, sir.” Seneca cleared her throat. “We have some questions about your daughter.”

  The man slowly relaxed, though he didn’t look pleased. “What kind of questions?” he asked slowly after a beat.

  “We’re investigators,” Seneca said. “We need to track Candace down.”

  Mr. Lord shrugged and started to unlock the door. “Well, we have no idea where she is. Haven’t for years.”

  He bustled inside and made a motion for his wife to follow, but she stayed put on the hall carpet. “Wait. I want to know what this is all about.”

  Mr. Lord looked annoyed, but he shrugged, rolled his eyes, and opened the door wider to let everyone inside. Maddox peeked into the room before going in. A gray cat, thankfully not black, lay on a leather couch, and a white one perched on the pass-through counter to the kitchen. There was a grand piano taking up all the room in a dining area. The Lords’ furniture was old, but some of it was made of leather or heavy wood.

  “You work for the post office?” Seneca asked Mr. Lord politely, gesturing to his uniform.

  Mr. Lord looked at her as though she had three heads. “Uh, yes,” he said sharply. “Though I have no idea what that has to do with anything.”

  “It doesn’t.” Seneca had a serene smile. “I was just curious.”

  “Please tell us about Candace,” Mrs. Lord said impatiently. She had barely crossed the threshold of the apartment and was clasping her hands so tightly her knuckles bulged. “Has she done something? Is she in trouble? Do you know where she is?”

  “Actually, we were hoping you could help with that,” Maddox said. “When did you see her last?”

  “We already told you.” Mr. Lord set down the shopping bags on the kitchen island, which was visible across the living room. “It was over ten years ago.”

  “Did something happen that made her leave?” Seneca asked.

  Mrs. Lord blinked quickly. “Well, there was…an accident. She was very upset.”

  Seneca nodded solemnly. “A house fire, was it? In her vacation home? It killed her children?”

  Mrs. Lord looked surprised. “Yes! How did you know that?”

  “Because they internet-stalked us,” Mr. Lord snapped. He glowered at the group suspiciously. “That’s what kids do these days.”

  “Can you tell us about her mental state after that fire?” Seneca directed the question at Mrs. Lord.

  The woman’s gaze fell to the carpet—which, Maddox noticed, was filled with cat hair and something gritty, maybe litter. “She lost her kids, and it broke her.”

  “I’m sure,” Seneca said sympathetically. “So she was behaving strangely? Did she do anything…alarming?”

  Mr. Lord slammed a can of soup on the counter. “That’s none of your business.”

  Mrs. Lord looked at him helplessly. “Can I just tell them the thing at the grocery store?”

  He shook his head faintly. “That’s private, Dawn.”

  Mrs. Lord’s mouth tilted downward. Maddox thought of how Brett had said he’d gotten nowhere with this couple—he was beginning to see why.

  “Please,” Seneca urged. “If you just tell us a little bit, it might link to something that’s happening now. We might be able to find her for you.”

  Candace’s mother lifted her head hopefully. A few more looks passed between the couple, and then she turned back to Seneca. Her throat rose and fell as she swallowed. “She tried to get two kids from town to come home with her from the grocery store.” The words came out in a rush. “She didn’t mean it. But for a little while, it was like she couldn’t…” She trailed off, casting a guilty look toward Mr. Lord, who now had his face covered with his hands. “It was like she didn’t understand they really weren’t her kids. Does that help? Where do you think she is now? And what’s this case you’re following?”

  “After that grocery store incident, did she leave right away?” Seneca asked, ignoring her questions.

  “Yes,” Mr. Lord answered. “And she never came back.” His voice cracked, and Maddox suddenly realized how hard this was for him, too. He just showed it differently.

  The screams from the upper floor got louder. A car alarm started to blare outside.

  Seneca hitched forward a little. “Do you have any idea where she might have gone? Do you have family in other parts of the country, maybe? Or did she have friends out of town? Or anywhere she loved to visit?”

  Mrs. Lord’s eyes flicked back and forth. “I can’t think of anything. We looked for her. We looked a long time. But she never turned up anywhere we thought she’d be.”

  The hallway was silent again. Another dead end, Maddox was beginning to think.

  He let his gaze wander into the apartment, noticing a photo in a silver frame. It showed Candace, her husband, and her children, Alex and Julia, standing on a windswept beach. The kids looked young—five and seven, maybe, with gap-toothed smiles and pudgy bellies—they had no idea what was in store for them in a few short years. The whole family was barefoot, the waves lapping at their feet. Candace grinned blissfully. Her husband had his arm around her. It was a perfectly crystallized moment of pure joy. Maddox understood why the Lords had kept it. Why not remember the good times? Why not stare at that photo and try to pretend, even for a split second, that the present was just as uncomplicated and sweet?

  Suddenly, something hit him. He pointed at the photo. “Where was that taken?”

  Mrs. Lord peered at it, a rueful smile appearing across her lips. “Lorelei Beach.”

  Madison let out a little gasp. “Isn’t that where the fire was?”

  “They went there every year. It was their tradition. Well, until the fire, obviously. She never went back—and believe me, we checked.”

  Mr. Lord blew air out of his cheeks. “Okay. You’ve asked your questions. Now you should go. Leave us be.”

  “Wait,” Seneca said. “Candace didn’t grow up here, right?”

  Mrs. Lord shook her head. “We had a house outside town.” She gave her husband a sidelong glance. “But we had to sell it.”

  “Do you have any of her things? Anything she kept from when she was young…or when the kids were still alive?”

  Mr. Lord’s nostrils twitched. Mrs. Lord looked unsure, too. Seneca took a breath. “Please. It might help. You never know. There might be a clue in there that tells us where she ran to…and where she is now.”

  The only sound was a ticking clock somewhere in the apartment. Finally, Mrs. Lord’s shoulders lowered. “Down the hall, on the left. It’s a craft room, but I have a box of her things in the closet. It’s marked with her name.”

  They could hear her husband grumbling at her as they hurried down the hall, which smelled like a mix of mustiness and cat fur. Unable to hold in his theory for any longer, Maddox grabbed Seneca’s arm. “What if it’s not just that Candace is trying to take kids that look like hers? What if she’s also trying to re-create that beach vacation where it all went wrong?”

  Seneca stared at him, her eyes wide. “Think about it,” Maddox continued. “Brett and Viola were held at a beach house—not quite in Lorelei, but pretty close. What if Damien’s also at a beach house?”

  Seneca sank into one hip. “But how is she paying for that stuff? And what, are we supposed to search every beach house in New Jersey?”

  “I don’t know, but…” Maddox suddenly felt a presence behind him and looked up. Mr. Lord lurked at the end of the hall. Maddox shot him an apologetic smile. “We’ll only be a second, I promise.”

  They found the crafts room. A twin bed was pushed against the wall, and there were bins full of girly craft accessories and a rolling cart marked Scrapbooking.

  Seneca pulled on a creaky closest door and peered inside. The place was packed with boxes emblazoned with As Seen on TV logos, though the images on the boxes were very faded. On a top shelf was indeed
a cardboard box marked with Candace’s name. Maddox reached up to pull it down.

  Inside the box were a few old T-shirts and photographs. Seneca sifted through blue ribbons for swimming competitions and an award for the Biggest Pumpkin at the West Prune Fall Festival. “It’s just crap,” she muttered. She got the whole way to the bottom, then lifted out several cloth-bound journals. The spines cracked as they opened, and the paper smelled old. Maddox felt a flutter of guilt—it felt intrusive to read someone’s old diary. On the other hand…

  But there wasn’t writing in the journals. Instead, each page was filled with drawings of haunted-looking girls. One had long bangs and a pert nose and blackness where her eyes should be. Another had a furrowed brow and angry eyes and no mouth. A third was a skeleton from the neck down, only her face whole and alive. Page after page, these girls repeated: the same darkness, the same speechlessness, the same girl trapped between the dead and the living. One of the drawings was dated almost forty years ago, when Candace was a teenager. A shiver ran down Maddox’s spine. They were so eerie.

  Seneca shuddered. “Whoa.”

  Madison turned the next page. It was a drawing, once again, of the girl without eyes. “Oh my God.” She pointed to a small scribble at the bottom corner. “Look at her name.”

  Maddox leaned in. Clear as day, Candace had written Sadie Sage.

  Seneca flipped a few pages ahead to a picture of the girl without a mouth. “I don’t believe it,” she murmured. Candace had named her Heather Peony. The skeletal girl was named Bethany Rose.

  “Did she make these characters up?” Madison whispered.

  “She at least made up the names.” Seneca sounded certain. Maddox agreed. They’d scoured Google for ways those names could link and hadn’t come up with anything.

  They flipped ahead a few more pages, but they were blank. At the back of the journal, however, a few dried rose petals fell out and fluttered to the carpet. As Seneca reached down to pick them up, Maddox flipped to the page they’d marked. There was a new drawing of a tall, thin girl with wild, flowing hair and wearing a billowing gown and high heels. Half her face looked chewed up by insects. Maddox backed up, unsettled. The girl’s empty eyes were sucking him in.