The Three Beths

by Jeff Abbott

  But it was like having a bed in the den, and it was so nice to sink into the solitary hush of sleep whenever he felt tired. He didn’t like sleeping in the bed, with her empty half of the mattress barren and haunted, the sheets like an unused shroud. And he was so tired. For a man who rarely left the house, he stumbled about in a continual exhaustion. Always waiting, always watching.

  He texted his daughter.

  I’m worried, please come home, he wrote.

  Within seconds she answered him: I’m just one minute from the house. In an Uber car, don’t freak. All is fine. Just too much to drink.

  If she had too much to drink, why couldn’t Reveal have brought her home? Had she gone somewhere else?

  He put on his fake smile, to reassure her that all was okay. He had to stop her. If the caller was serious…he had to prevent his own daughter from looking for the truth.

  No matter the cost.

  7

  M​ARIAH GOT UP at seven a.m., dry-mouthed and hazy from the margarita and the lager. Her father was asleep, in his bed. He’d hardly talked to her last night when she returned, as though lost in thought, but she had been relieved to avoid conversation. Now she downed a hot cup of coffee and a croissant, then showered and dressed. She left a note on the kitchen table: “Off to retrieve your car and then try and drum up some new business since I have my car repairs to pay for…might be late. Don’t worry about me, I’m fine.” It is an excellent lie, she thought.

  She had called a ride service and was opening the front door to wait outside when Craig said behind her, “Where are you going, Mariah?”

  “I left you a note.” The lie, easy as breathing. “Is it okay if I use your car today? You weren’t going anywhere?”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Craig said, as if it were a sad realization of his life. “And I have your mother’s car if I need it.” Parked, as always, in the garage. It had barely been driven since the police had returned it to them weeks after Mom vanished. Sometimes he started it up, just to make sure the battery worked. Those times Mariah made sure the garage door was open. She didn’t want him tempted to sit behind the wheel in a closed garage, the carbon monoxide easing him out of this world.

  “I’ve got leads on some new clients and I set up meetings. I’ve got to figure out how to pay to get my car fixed, right?”

  “I’ll pay for the car damage.”

  “She was my hallucination, Dad. My responsibility.”

  He seemed stunned at her word choice. “Mariah.”

  “You’re right. She wouldn’t run from me. So, she’s gone, and I chased after someone else. I’ve had way too much time on my hands to think about Mom. I need to work. I need to…fill my days.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Craig gave her an awkward hug, which she returned. “I just want you to be safe. I couldn’t protect your mom, but I can protect you.”

  “You’ll never lose me,” she said, tears coming now, her face pressed to his shoulder.

  “I know,” he said. “We’re a team, right? Right?”

  She had told Jake she wasn’t a team player. That couldn’t be true with her and Dad. They were all they had.

  They held each other in their mutual grief, and she could sense her father holding back his tears out of a misguided sense that he shouldn’t cry in front of her. Then she went outside as the rideshare car arrived to take her back to the bar to get his car. Dad stood on the porch, sad in jeans and sweatshirt, watching her leave.

  She had looked up Sharon Blevins’s address on the property tax website for Travis County and had copied it into the notes app in her phone. She would only have one chance with this woman. The grieving had no patience with strangers, trying to pull thoughts and emotions from them. If she played this wrong, she’d get a door permanently slammed in her face.

  8

  T​HE DOG’S NAME was Leo, and Craig had told Beth, “Leo is a feline name, you know, like Leo the lion. Leonine. It’s totally a cat name.”

  “It’s perfect for this dog,” Beth answered, and she had been right: jolly, sloppy, happy Leo, a Cardigan Welsh Corgi. Craig had never much liked the dog—he disliked when Leo felt ignored and would sit at his feet and bark at him, or when Mariah was younger, he would try to herd her and her friends running and playing in the backyard, like they were sheep on a Welsh mountain—but now he could not bear the thought of not having Leo around when Beth had been so devoted to him. Sometimes, after all these months, Leo would go to the front door and lie down around the time Beth usually arrived home, patient, waiting, hopeful for her light step, for the sound of her voice. Then Craig would sit next to Leo and scratch the dog’s ears and belly and try not to cry.

  Leo still had to be walked. It was a moment of normalcy in Craig’s day, strolling along the sidewalk, Leo investigating the fallen leaves, interesting smells, and unfailingly deciding to deposit his droppings on the one yard where a neighbor knelt twenty feet away, tending to a flower bed. And as the suspicions against Craig grew and darkened, he resolved that Leo would be walked, morning and afternoon. Someone who was a killer, after all, he thought, would not walk a dog. It was a way to show his neighbors that he was just like them. A regular guy, whose wife happened to be missing and who had endured multiple interrogations by the police.

  He found his University of Texas ball cap, hooked the leash up to Leo’s collar, tied a waste bag to the leash’s handle so he wouldn’t need to dig in his pockets if Leo conducted necessary business, and set out. He saw parents with elementary school–aged kids, waiting for the Lakehaven ISD buses. One nodded at him. The others ignored him. Did their parents tell them something? Stay away from Mr. Dunning. He’s a bad man. He made his wife disappear. Surely not. Kids were just ruder these days. That was it. Leo strained at the leash, angling toward the kids—to him they were a herd that needed herding. Craig gently pulled him back.

  Leo barked once, at the bus, just to assert himself and sauntered proudly on.

  Cars passed, people who could cope going to their jobs. Seniors driving to campus. Stay-at-home parents heading to the grocery or the gym or the preschool.

  He walked past house after house of his neighbors and imagined the whispers within:

  No way Craig did it.

  Craig is absolutely guilty.

  Mariah hasn’t been right since her mother vanished.

  I feel so bad for them.

  He killed Beth, and that weirdo daughter’s covering for him.

  People found him guilty with no evidence, no trial. Totally awful.

  He did it. It’s always the husband. Always.

  Remember when Mariah was fun? And so smart. She goes around town looking like a ghost. This has destroyed them both. They wouldn’t be this way if they were guilty. I know what guilty looks like.

  Did one of them call me last night? Craig wondered.

  He turned back onto Bobtail Drive, his own house seven away from the corner. Leo completed his morning rituals, Craig tidied up after him, and they walked back down to their house.

  Later he would decide that the rock would have been less scary if thrown through the window. He had had that happen before, twice after Beth vanished and the police had said he was under suspicion.

  But now, the shape just sat at the top of his driveway, wrapped in festive paper, tied with a ribbon of green silk. For one moment he stared for several long seconds. He glanced around. No one else on the street. Leo sniffed at the package and turned away, bored.

  Take it inside or open it up here? Craig knelt by the package, probed it with his fingers. It felt like rock underneath the wrapping paper, not a box, not soft. He didn’t want it in the house. He unwrapped it. It was a gray rock. One side of the thick, heavy wrapping paper was illustrated with cartoon balloons and fireworks exploding. The other side was marked with dotted lines, in a graph, to make it easier to cut and measure for gift-wrapping.

  In block printing on the other side of the paper it said, IT’S TIME FOR YOU TO GO.

  Carefully h
e put the paper down. He picked up the rock, studied it for a few long moments. He set the rock down. He stood and glanced around, not expecting to see anyone, but how helpful it would have been to see a neighbor’s face close to a window, peering out to study his reaction to this generous gift.

  Leo sniffed at the unwrapped rock. Craig pulled out his phone and with a shaking hand, started to dial the police. Then he stopped.

  I know what happened. The caller last night, now the rock…he needed to think.

  Craig took Leo inside, along with the paper. He got Leo fresh water in his bowl and a treat. Then he went back and collected the rock and brought it inside.

  He put paper and rock on the dining room table, where he and Beth and Mariah had spent their Thanksgivings and Christmases and Easters. Now when the holidays came he and Mariah just ate in the kitchen; it was easier when it was the two of them. Like Beth, being their third, had simply filled the room with the force of her love and personality.

  The rock. He looked at it very carefully. For stains, for marks. Nothing. It was just a rock.

  But of course, it wasn’t.

  If he called the police, what would they do? Dust the rock and paper for prints? Who was dumb enough to leave prints?

  He had received two threats in twelve hours. One threat that someone knew what had happened to his wife, one to leave. Getting two like this told him some tormentor was waging a whole new war against him. Why now, after the abuse directed at him had quieted for months? He knew his neighbors wanted him gone. They wanted normalcy back, a nice family living next door, someone you could invite to the caroling party or the neighborhood barbecue or ask to pick up your mail when you were gone. He’d gotten offers before to sell, but his home had the best view on the hill of the surrounding countryside, and it was where he and Beth had made their lives, for better or for worse. He wasn’t going to leave his home. He wasn’t going to do that to Mariah. This house was, he decided, Fortress Dunning.

  The police didn’t want to help him. They never had. He thought of their patronizing smiles yesterday, the loathing they’d shown toward him, the suspect who’d supposedly evaded justice.

  How would the police view this? Suddenly he knew that they would read it to reopen an investigation, suspect him further, accuse him of planting the rock and the note. Maybe this wasn’t a coincidence in light of Mariah’s accident.

  Maybe this was the sort of stunt Broussard would pull. Maybe the enemy was right in front of him. If he couldn’t convict Craig, he could make his life miserable. He could get him out of Lakehaven, where Craig wasn’t a reminder of a failure of justice.

  He hid the rock and the paper in a cabinet above the oven, and he sat down to drink coffee and think through the problem. Leo sat at his feet, hoping for another treat.

  He felt the hate rise in him against anyone who would hurt him or his daughter.

  I need to draw you out, he thought. Get you to show yourself. Then I can deal with you. You want to play a game with me? I’ll end the game. I’ll end you. I’ll find a way.

  9

  M​ARIAH PARKED HER father’s car in front of the neat little house in an older neighborhood in north Austin. It was a ranch style from the 1960s, well maintained, the garden beds neat, the lawn trimmed, brick painted gray. She got out and approached the door, her heart high in her throat. Then she noticed the yellow ribbon tied around the oaks in the front yard, a thin, faded strip. There was another yellow ribbon tied around the front door handle.

  Hope, still here. Waiting. Waiting for Bethany to come home.

  A small wooden cross, carved with Celtic curves, was mounted on the front door. She rang the doorbell. Silence. And then the door opened, and an eye peered at her in the crack before opening more. A woman younger than she expected, a shot of gray streaking her blond hair, bright green eyes narrowed in suspicion, paired with an incongruous smile on her face. “Yes?”

  “Mrs. Blevins?” Mariah found her voice.

  “Yes?”

  “My name is Mariah Dunning. I wondered if I might talk to you about your daughter Beth’s case.”

  “I don’t talk to the press, young lady.”

  “I’m not the press, ma’am.”

  “Then I don’t talk to the idly curious, either. Good day.” Sharon Blevins started to shut the door.

  “My mother went missing about six months after your daughter did. Her name was Beth, too, and I’m wondering if there could be a connection.”

  The closing door stopped. The woman stared at her. “I’m sorry?”

  Mariah repeated herself. “Similar name. Just vanished.”

  “It must just be a coincidence.” Her voice sounded strained. Mariah could see the broken strain in her eyes, like her father’s. Maybe like her own. She forced herself to hold the woman’s gaze. “I’m sorry for your…situation.” Sharon Blevins was, Mariah thought, being careful not to say loss. “But what would one have to do with the other?”

  “Two Beths, vanished so soon near each other? Without a trace? What does it hurt to compare notes?”

  For a moment Sharon didn’t speak; her mouth just moved. She began to pray, softly. “Oh Lord, hear our prayer, hear our prayers for answers to thy mysteries…”

  Prayer made Mariah uneasy. She’d never been very religious—her family went to services at Christmas and Easter, and not otherwise. The other Episcopalians would kneel and cross themselves and go up to the priests for communion, and the Dunnings stayed seated, as if glued to the pew, Mom once saying, “I’m not really into the aerobics of all that. I just want to hear the music and the message, and hope it’s all positive.” When her mom vanished people would tell Mariah, “I’m praying for you,” and part of her wanted to say, What do you think that will accomplish? If God let this happen, do you think you praying will change his mind? Are you saying prayers to make you feel better, like “Thank you, God, for not taking my loved one”? But always she said thank you; it was the polite response, and she was too exhausted for theological discussions. And she learned quickly, no one wanted to see her anger. They only wanted her mournful.

  “I’m sorry to have intruded, ma’am,” Mariah said. She turned away.

  “Wait. Stop,” Sharon Blevins said. “All right. Come in for a minute.” Her voice wavered. “Like you said, what’s the harm?”

  10

  T​HE BLEVINS HOUSE was as tidy on the inside as the yard and trim were on the outside. Sharon led her back to a den. Multiple ornate silver crosses lined the wall, along with a framed pair of Bible verses about kindness and forgiveness written in beautiful, readable calligraphy. Sharon wore a long-sleeved cream-colored blouse and navy slacks. She wore complete makeup, and Mariah wondered if she was keeping Sharon from heading to her job. “Let me just save my work.” She vanished into a room down the hallway. Mariah could hear the clicking of a computer keyboard. Sharon returned. “Sorry. OK. You want a cup of coffee? I just made a fresh pot.”

  “Yes ma’am. Thank you.”

  “Let me get that for us both, and then we talk.” She went into a small kitchen. Mariah didn’t sit; she wandered to the fireplace, where the mantel displayed a long row of framed photos. Pictures of Bethany Blevins Curtis. Pictures of Sharon, all recent ones with her daughter. No baby pictures, no childhood photos. There was no picture of a father. The biggest picture was of Bethany in a college graduation robe. She had longer hair and a broad, warm smile. Dark hair, green eyes. She looked like her mother. No picture of Bethany with Jake.

  Mariah turned away from the pictures as Sharon came back into the den, carrying coffee cups and sugar and a carton of half-and-half on an old but colorful patchwork tray. She set it down on the coffee table.

  “Thank you, this is kind of you,” Mariah said. “What a cute tray.” She hoped this qualified as good small talk.

  “I don’t have a lot of call to use it, since I don’t have a lot of company, other than church friends. And I don’t always answer the door if I don’t know who it is. For a while the
re were reporters. Or just crackpots with theories about the case.” She poured coffee for them both. “One man showed up with an easel full of charts to try and tell me aliens had abducted my daughter.”

  “That same guy came to our door. He’s harmless,” Mariah said. “But I’m sorry you had to deal with that.”

  “Last year I got both a phone call and an email from a reporter on the anniversary. That was hard.”

  “Us, too. They knocked on the door. They emailed, they called.”

  “I’m sorry about your mama disappearing,” Sharon said as Mariah sipped at her coffee. She had a raspy voice, tinged with a Southern drawl. “But I think this really might be coincidence. Jake, my son-in-law, I think he was behind my Bethany’s disappearance.”

  “So, she went by Bethany?”

  “When she was little”—she cleared her throat—“she was Beth, but in high school and beyond she was Bethany. She liked the full name.”

  Mariah felt uncomfortable sitting on the edge of the couch. She had thought her theory would be welcomed by a woman without hope…maybe it would lead to an answer. She didn’t realize that it might compete with a theory held dear by a grieving mother: that Jake Curtis had done away with her daughter.

  Sharon sipped her coffee, slowly. “You think what links them is their name? I mean, Beth is a pretty common name.”

  “I thought maybe if we compared notes that we might find something linking your Beth and mine. If there was something to be found.”

  “But Jake…”

  “You seem very sure he is responsible for your daughter’s disappearance.”

  “I am.”

  “But he’s not in jail, right? He was never arrested?” She felt a sting of anger. The husband was always blamed. She understood why, but she didn’t like the way Lakehaven had turned against her father. It never ceased to upset her.

  “No.” Sharon Blevins set the coffee cup down. “Jake’s rich now. He’s clever. He got rid of her right before he made all his money. That’s what bothers me. He could have just divorced her if he was greedy.”