“But you and Brandon have always been close. Did you ever suspect anything at the time? That he might’ve been involved somehow?”
Lindsey put her gardening gloves back on. “No, Natalie. That’s absurd.”
“What about Ethan Hathaway? Did you know Daisy was having an affair with him?”
“Really?” She shrugged. “Well, as you know, I suspected something was up, but I figured it was none of my business. I didn’t realize it was him.” She glanced over at the forklift, which was making a loud, annoying beeping sound. “I run my own business, okay? I love my job, Natalie. And I’m too busy to worry about other people’s shady romances, okay?”
“But you suspected as much. Why didn’t you mention it to Brandon?”
She shrugged it off. “Like I said, none of my business. Anyway, I’ve got a long list of things to do. Have I answered all your questions? Please, sweetie? I’m swamped.” Her phone chimed. “Can I take this?”
“Almost done. You never told me where you were between four and six P.M. last Wednesday.”
Lindsey took a sharp breath, then reorganized her face into an expression of wounded dignity. “Are you kidding me?”
“Nothing personal.”
“Not personal?” Lindsey balled her fists. “God, this is ridiculously upsetting.”
“You told me you’d look it up.”
Lindsey clasped her hands in front of her. “I’m always working, Natalie. How many times have I pitched you about cleaning up your yard?” She smiled tensely. “Seriously, your crabgrass is out of control. I could give you a discount. Heck, I’d do it for free, just to beautify the neighborhood.” She laughed. “I hate to brag, but I can work wonders.”
“Would you mind checking your schedule for last Wednesday?”
“God, you’re persistent. Four to six?” She glanced at the horizon, where the setting sun had turned the sky pink. “Probably at home, going over my accounts.”
“Did you take any calls that afternoon? Have any visitors?”
She squirmed a little. “Why does it feel like I’m being accused of something?”
“I’m trying to pin down your timeline.”
“My timeline? Am I a suspect? I told you, Natalie, I take advantage of any quiet moment I can get.” She crossed her arms. “When I was growing up, I didn’t think I’d end up here, you know? In my old hometown. I had big plans for myself. But such is life. It can be humiliating, living in the same place where everybody remembers your bad-hair days, your mistakes, and your most embarrassing moments…”
Natalie made a helpless gesture with her hands. “Do you think Brandon found out about Daisy and Hathaway? Do you think he might’ve killed her?”
Lindsey’s face flushed. Her nostrils flared. “God, no. He was so excited about becoming a father. A little apprehensive, maybe. But I’ve never seen him happier. Why would he kill his own baby? Anyway, listen.” She tucked her hands in her pockets. “About last Wednesday? I was probably on the phone with a hundred people, as usual. I’ll dig up my phone records, and then maybe you can stop with the third degree.”
“Can you do it now, please?”
“No, I have to finish here. But I’ll email you later on, okay?” She walked away.
51
It was eight o’clock by the time Natalie pulled into Grace’s driveway again and parked behind the Mini Cooper. The air smelled earthy sweet. The stars were out. She felt a chill as she took the flagstone walkway up to the front door and rang the bell.
The door popped open with a familiar ker-plunk. Grace stood in a golden light, looking sleepy-eyed and fuzzy-headed. “Hey, Nat.”
“Can I come in?”
“Sure.” She stepped aside.
Natalie followed her sister into the living room, where Grace crawled underneath an old patchwork quilt on the sofa. She’d been drinking. There was a near-empty wine bottle and a long-stemmed wineglass on the coffee table. Natalie took a seat. “Grace, are you okay? Talk to me.”
“I’ve been looking through our old high school yearbooks,” she said, smoothing her hands over the pages. “Most likely to succeed, most likely to end up in jail. God, what idiots we were.” She closed the yearbook and sighed. “Just having a lot of regrets.”
“Where’s Ellie?” Natalie asked.
“Upstairs. I told her I’ve had it with her. God, that phrase just rolled off my lips, and I thought, dear Lord, I’m becoming my mother. The dreaded Deborah. Remember how angry she used to get? She’d blow a fuse, and her face would turn all shades of purple. Then she’d kick us out of the house. We could’ve been kidnapped. Now I find myself muttering the same obscene phrase. And it sucks, because I’ve always wanted to be the cool mom.”
“News flash. You are the cool mom.”
She shook her bleary head. “When it comes to Ellie, I can’t do anything right. If I bake brownies, she’s on a diet. If I’m too busy working, she’ll complain that I’m never around. If I take a week off, she gets bored with my company. I told her, ‘Go ahead. Slam your door. Insult me. Just remember, the more you push me away, the more I’ll stick like glue.’” Grace smiled. “Boy, she hated that.”
“She’s confined to her room?”
“Yeah, that’s her so-called punishment, right? I send her up there with all her toys and gadgets and devices … ha. Some punishment.”
“That’s okay,” Natalie said. “I wanted to talk to you alone.”
She nodded nervously. “Look, Natalie … I’m beat. This week has been so hard on me, I can’t do anything involving mental effort right now.”
“It’s about Willow,” Natalie said. “We’re considering reopening her case.”
The tense lines around Grace’s mouth showed that she was both repulsed and fascinated by this idea. She rummaged around in her large leather bag for her cigarettes and moved the ashtray closer on the coffee table. “What the hell for?”
“A couple of new things have come to light. What can you tell me about the day Willow died? Think about it. Take your time.”
She drew her legs to her chest and rested her chin on her knees, like a child, like the pensive older sister Natalie remembered. “It was a normal school day. We heard the news that evening, and I just … fell apart. It was raining, and I was sitting in my room, watching the rain outside. The police pulled up out front, Dad answered the door, and they told him what happened, and he just … collapsed. Mom began wailing like an animal. I felt so drained, I hardly had any feelings left in my body. It was as if a razor had cut me in half, dividing today from yesterday.” She rubbed her forehead. “God, it still hurts.”
“You were in a coven with Daisy, Lindsey, and Bunny at the time. They were your closest friends. Can you think of anything they might’ve said or done around the time Willow was killed? Anything unusual?”
“No. We were all upset. It was a difficult time.”
“Any gossip or rumors you might’ve overheard?”
“I can’t think of anything.” Grace shook her head, confused.
“Did anybody say anything to you after Willow died? Did the four of you ever talk about what might’ve happened to her?”
Grace rolled her eyes. “No. After Willow died, I completely fell apart. I was so messed up, I left the coven. You know, dark magic. It didn’t sit right with me anymore.” She rubbed her nose. “Well, I mean, Lindsey was … I mean, she always came across as quiet and reserved, but there was a hidden side to her that could be very domineering. She wanted us to keep it going, but I couldn’t stand it anymore. Neither could Bunny.”
“So, in the coven … you were doing dark magic? Black magic?”
Grace tamped out her cigarette and rubbed the base of her throat. “Okay, look. Lindsey’s the one who wanted to try it. I’ve blocked some of it out because, frankly … look at my life now. I’ve got a terrific kid, and I love my teaching gig. But truthfully? Back then? We might’ve done a few things in a group that we’d never do on our own. I don’t know. All the charms and
fortune-telling games were fun. Keeping secrets. Testing our loyalty. Truth or dare. We pushed and pulled. It was exciting for a while. But then, eventually, it began to take on a life of its own and … How can I say this? Lindsey wanted to go darker. She encouraged the rest of us to cast negative spells on some of the girls at school. You know, just the ones who deserved it. There was a group of popular kids who used to pick on Lindsey a lot, and she wanted revenge. You know, make-our-enemies-cower-before-us type of thing. She was pretty persuasive, and she convinced the rest of us to try black magic, and at first it felt powerful. We were going through such intense emotions at that time, it felt like a rush … as if we were superhuman. But it was all playacting, Natalie. Because, after Willow died, it all fell apart. What happened was a horror. A hole. I can’t even talk about it. Life goes on, but there’s a big part of me that’s still frozen in time.”
“And so it ended?”
Grace nodded. “For me it did.”
“What kind of black magic?”
“Oh, come on. We were into some heavy shit back then. Things got pretty negative, but it wasn’t the end of the world.”
“How negative?” Natalie asked.
Grace eyed her skeptically. “Didn’t you test those waters yourself?”
“Not really. It scared the hell out of me.”
“Secret rituals, invocations, sleeping naked in a graveyard. Willow was into black magic herself once, but she disavowed it pretty quick, especially after Mom got to her. But, hey, none of us stayed witches forever, right? We didn’t become Wiccan priestesses. It was just a blip on our radar. We all went on to do other things. We outgrew it. We grew up. I’m not the same person I was six months ago, Natalie. Are you? We wanted to be in control of our lives, that’s all. Or maybe we wanted freaky powers, because the world can be pretty overwhelming at times. But, come on, Natalie … you get that, don’t you?”
“I get it. Definitely.”
“Anyway. That’s why I’m so upset about Ellie. The same thing just happened to her. I didn’t expect her to go down the same rabbit hole.” Grace looked at her hands. “When I signed the divorce papers, Burke told me he never understood what I wanted. How the hell could he not know? I wanted romance, I wanted flowers, I wanted to travel to Tibet and parachute out of an airplane … anything but this boring, repetitive life with its worries and domestic issues to be resolved, and him commuting to Manhattan every week doing God knows what.” Grace made a sour face. “I don’t know why I married him in the first place. But I fell for the whole crummy package. He can be charming when he wants to be. He’s a good bullshitter, and he had me convinced … this was the one. But it was all fakery. He hid Asshole Burke really well.” Grace smoothed the loose hair off her neck and said, “Anyway, my daughter is all I care about now. We had a fight. I feel bad about it, but it’s for her own good.” She worriedly rubbed her forehead. “Sorry. Do you mind? I have to go check on Ellie.”
“Go ahead.”
“I hope she isn’t listening to any of this.” Grace stood up. “Be right back.”
Wiccans were not Satanists or Goths, although there could be plenty of overlap. Wicca was a crazy brew. You could shape it any way you liked—there weren’t very many specific rules. Invoke the devil. Tattoos and piercings. An obsession with death rites, coffins, and hearses. Magical words repeated for protection. It drew misfits, socially awkward kids, shy types, loners—but also it attracted plenty of unsuspecting, naïve, well-rounded teenage girls.
Natalie could hear Grace’s footsteps in the upstairs hallway, then she knocked on Ellie’s door. “Sweetie? You awake?” There was a pause. “Honey? You in there?”
No response.
The door creaked open.
Silence.
And then, Grace called out, “Ellie?”
Natalie went to stand at the bottom of the stairs. “What’s wrong?”
Grace leaned over the banister. “She’s not in her room.” She disappeared again, and Natalie could hear all the bedroom and bathroom doors swinging open and shut. “Ellie? Where are you? This isn’t funny.”
Moments later, Grace hurried down the stairs, looking deeply shaken. “Her wallet and phone are gone. Ellie?” she called out.
“Try her number,” Natalie suggested.
Grace picked up the landline and dialed Ellie’s number. She shook her head. “No answer.” She left a frantic message. “Where are you? It’s Mom. Call me!”
Then Grace put on her jacket and scooped up her leather bag.
Natalie stopped her. “Whoa. Where are you going?”
“To look for my daughter.”
“No way. You’ve been drinking,” Natalie told her. “You can’t drive now. You need to sober up first.”
“What am I supposed to do? Sit here and hope for the best?”
“Call everyone you can think of. Friends, classmates, parents, teachers. In the meantime, I’ll go looking for her. If she’s on foot, she can’t have gotten very far.”
“She’s never done this before,” Grace said, breathless and scared.
“Give me your keys.”
Grace clutched them in her hand.
“Grace, what if Ellie comes back? She’ll need you to be here, waiting for her.”
She bit her lip and nodded.
“Start dialing,” Natalie told her. “I’ll put out a BOLO. All the guys in the department will be looking for her, okay? Don’t worry. We’ll find her. This is what I do.”
52
Momentarily overwhelmed, Natalie sat in the car and could feel her face throbbing with exhaustion. The neighborhood was ghostly at night. The wind howled cinematically, as if piped in through speakers hanging in the trees. Grace’s front yard sloped down toward the street, where the garbage cans were lined up for tomorrow morning’s pickup.
Okay. What was the best strategy? If Natalie searched Twitter or Instagram or Facebook long enough, she’d eventually find out where Ellie had gone tonight. Most teenagers wanted to be famous and posted pictures of themselves on their social media sites, especially at parties or events. If you combed through the comments section long enough, you might discover a secret social media account where teens posted pictures they didn’t want their mothers to see. But that would take time.
She decided to try a more direct route. Natalie had previously stored the girls’ numbers on her contact list, and now she tapped one of the names.
Sadie Myers picked up. “Hello?”
“This is Detective Lockhart, Ellie’s aunt. Please don’t hang up.”
“Aunt Natalie?” she whispered nervously.
“Where’s Ellie?”
“I don’t know.”
“Listen, Sadie, you aren’t in any trouble, okay? Do you understand?”
“Uh-huh,” she whispered.
Natalie could hear party noises in the background. “Where are you?”
“Um, with some friends.”
“Where?”
“At an old farm.”
“Have you heard from Ellie tonight?” she asked.
“No, I mean … yes, she was here. But she’s not anymore.”
Natalie’s heart rate spiked. “Where did she go?”
“They took off, the three of them … Ellie, India, and Berkley.”
“Where are you right now? What’s the address?”
Sadie gave her the information.
“Okay. Now listen very carefully. Don’t tell a soul that I’m coming,” Natalie said sternly. “Understand?”
Sadie was compliant. “I won’t. I promise.”
“Wait for me there,” she said and hung up.
Natalie sped across town and took a series of back roads through the woods until she came to a run-down farmstead on the west side of town, where dozens of cars were parked out front. Several rusty signs warned PRIVATE PROPERTY—KEEP OUT.
She got out of her car and scanned the abandoned farm. Nothing had changed in years. The weathered Gothic sat at the end of a weedy driveway. The ba
rbed-wire fence was choked with nettles. The azaleas were in bloom. A tattered American flag waved in the damp breeze.
Natalie could hear booming music coming from behind the old Dutch barn. There weren’t any nearby neighbors to get alarmed at the noise, which made it the perfect place for an underage party. She headed across the field, while moonlight fell on the decrepit outbuildings and boarded-up sheds. The orchard had reverted to its natural state—wild fruit trees draped with climbing vines. By midsummer, the crab apples would ripen and fall to the ground, making a pulpy feast for the bees.
Natalie waded through the knee-high ryegrass while the moon disappeared behind the slate-gray clouds. She aimed her flashlight at the salvage cars in the yard, pieces of rust-eaten machinery and miscellaneous farm equipment. The party was in full swing out back. She could see the glow of the bonfire before she turned the corner of the barn.
The area was clogged with at least fifty kids. Earsplitting music throbbed in the air. Beer bottles and crumpled bags of leftovers from the Cheesecake Factory and Taco Bell were scattered around the bonfire.
Underage parties could be dangerous. Overdoses were common. When Natalie was a rookie on the night shift, she had been occasionally called to scenes like this one, where teenagers were “skittling,” taking random pills and falling unconscious. A girl had died while participating in the Strangulation Game—said to increase euphoria.
Now a bra winged through the air. There were puke stains in the grass. A group of girls were holding hands and swaying to the pounding bass line, lost in a trance of mesmerizing repetition. A group of boys tossed their beer bottles into the woods, shouting as the glass shattered.
Natalie didn’t want to cause a panic. If she flashed her badge, there could be a stampede, and someone might get hurt. She’d been trained to use discretion. Tonight, she would have to find Ellie first, and then she’d call Dispatch.
She passed a group of teenagers who were wandering around in the meadow, thumbing through their phones. Natalie scrutinized a dozen wasted faces, but couldn’t find Ellie’s face among them. A leggy girl in a black denim outfit was standing over by the sprawling Japanese maples, staring down at her phone with a disturbed look on her face.
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