by Jeff Abbott
She turned. Two women, both in workout clothes, a bit back in the line, looking right at her, and then as she met their gaze one looked away in shame (hopefully). The other still stared at her, as if it was her right to challenge Mariah.
Mariah felt the rage, the devil she couldn’t shake, rise in her.
“Do you have something to say to me?” Mariah said. The older man between them looked up from his phone, surprised, glanced around the café.
The first woman kept her glare on her. Mariah thought, I’d bet you were a bully in school, and you still are one.
“You’d think a daughter would want justice for her mother,” the woman said.
“What do you know about anything?” Mariah said, her voice raising, the man between them getting a wide-eyed expression on his face. Mariah put her hand on his shoulder and eased him out of the way. He went.
“Celia, don’t,” the second woman said.
“You know what I mean,” the first woman said, for a moment looking uncomfortable but unwilling suddenly to back down.
“Say it to my face,” Mariah said, stepping closer to the woman.
One of the baristas had come down to where they stood at the counter, saying, “Hey folks, everything all right?” in a jovial voice.
“Say it to my face!” Mariah yelled. “Accuse my dad of murder while you’re waiting on your latte. Do it!”
She felt a hand on her arm. She glanced.
Julie Santos.
“Let’s go. Let’s go,” Julie said. Mariah felt Julie—who was smaller than her but strong—pulling her out of the line, past the two women, past the now-silent tables, out into the sunshine.
“Let go of me,” Mariah said, hurrying past the outdoor tables, toward the other businesses in the shopping center.
Julie did. “Mariah.”
“What the hell are you doing in there?” She’d now run into Andy and then Julie in an hour. Coincidence?
Or maybe they’re watching you.
“I have a private workout client in Lakehaven. I’d just finished a session and was getting a chai,” Julie said. “Never mind that. Are you OK?”
“Yes. Yes.” She steadied her breathing. “I saw your boyfriend today at Jake Curtis’s company. Are you two following me?”
“We have jobs. You think I take off from work to follow you around?”
“I told Sharon where I was going…”
“I haven’t talked to Sharon today. I…I promise you we’re not trying to follow you around.” She lowered her voice, as if embarrassed to have to say the words.
Mariah bent over, hands on her knees, trying to calm herself. Like at the mall when she saw Mom. When she thought she saw Mom. She could not lose control.
But…was Julie already in the café when Mariah got there? Or maybe she had followed her…from Sharon’s to home to Jake’s office.
She thought of last night of the three of them, watching her, as if she had interrupted something secret and terrible between them all.
“Thank you for getting me out of there,” Mariah said. “I just…when they talk about my dad that way…it’s because he has no alibi for two hours when Mom vanished. I mean, other than me, and if he’d just been at his office, everyone would know he was innocent. But he wasn’t. He wasn’t. So…people think the most awful thing…” Panic clawed at her throat, her chest, her eyes.
Julie knelt by her, put an arm around her shoulder. “Do you want me to take you home?”
“No…no. Thank you. I’ll be OK.”
“Here. Let’s walk.” They strolled past the stores, down toward a park on the edge of the shopping center. Julie guided her to a bench and they sat.
“I don’t want to leave you until I’m sure you’re OK,” Julie said.
“I’m fine.” She was trying not to be suspicious; Julie was acting nicer than she had during their first meeting. “Can I ask you a couple of questions?”
“Sure,” Julie said, but her voice was more neutral.
“Who is Penny?”
“Penny.”
“I found pictures in a journal of Bethany’s. Old photos of a little girl. From a newspaper, and one that was a personal photo. On the back of one the name Penny was written.”
“I don’t know a Penny.”
“Maybe Bethany had a sister?”
“The Blevins moved here when Bethany was in preschool. That was where we met. She was an only child.”
“Where did they move from?”
“Chicago.”
“Not Houston?” She thought of the yellowing sales slip inside the self-help book, from a store in Houston.
“No. Did you ask Sharon any of this?”
“No. I didn’t want her to know I’d gone through her daughter’s books. But I wasn’t snooping, I was looking for anything tied to my mom. They knew each other.” She explained about the emails, watching Julie for a reaction. But Julie just frowned.
“Have you told this to Sharon?”
“No. Not yet.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t.”
“Why not? She’ll want to know.”
Julie was silent for a moment, watching a pair of moms walk by, pushing strollers. “I think Sharon might know more about Bethany’s disappearance than she says.”
Stunned silence. “Why?”
“I got an email three days after Bethany went to Houston. From an account I didn’t know. I didn’t see it for a week until I was checking my spam folder for another email that had been put there.” Julie leaned forward. “It just said, I got to straighten out my life and make some amends. Don’t tell my mom where I am, I’ll call you tomorrow or next day. She’ll go after my friend. You can’t email me back and I don’t want you to try. Not signed. It came from an anonymous remailer service, and there wasn’t a way to email her back.”
“She must have known she’d already been traced to Houston.”
“I don’t know what she was thinking. And I thought her friend she meant was this Lizbeth person she was hanging with…what if the friend she meant was your mom?”
She’ll go after my friend. Mariah tried not to let the words bounce around her head, to take on a darker meaning. “Did you tell this to the police? Or to anyone?”
“I went to Jake, and then we went to the police. But…they couldn’t trace it because it was from an anonymous remailer, and anyway, they thought it might have been a fake. Jake and Sharon were getting prank emails and phone calls. Apparently that’s common in a case like this. So they thought the email was sent by a prankster, or someone wanting attention, or…sent by Jake, to take the heat off him. To put suspicion on Sharon. They kept it quiet because…well, I guess they couldn’t prove it was Bethany who sent it; remember, her disappearance wasn’t considered a crime at that point. No one thought she’d been kidnapped. And if she’s dead, she could have been killed any time after she left for Houston.”
“Why would anyone suspect that Sharon hurt her daughter?”
Julie took in a long breath. “Jake always believed he was going to launch a successful company. He demanded a prenuptial agreement. I told her not to sign it, but she did, to make him happy. The prenup Bethany signed said if she and Jake divorced or she deserted him before his company went public, she got nothing. If after, she only got a quarter of his shares. And Bethany—she told me she’d promised her mom half her shares. For working so hard, doing so much for her after her dad died. Sharon stood to lose out on a few million dollars if Bethany couldn’t stick out the marriage.”
Whoa, Mariah thought. “And Bethany left him, even knowing it would mean millions to her mom.” That felt like a punch. Mariah frowned.
“Sharon was so furious with her, until it became clear that Bethany had truly gone missing.”
“But Sharon is her mother. She loves her.”
“I know. You sound like Andy. But…I was her friend for a long time, and she was afraid of her mom. She…she once said, ‘What if my dad didn’t kill himself?’ She whispered it. We were at her house. This was
nearly a year after Hal Blevins died.”
“She thought her mom killed her dad?”
“She never said it that specifically. I said to her, ‘What do you mean?’ And she said, ‘There’s just a terrible secret in that house, and I don’t know what it is.’” Julie shivered in the sunlight. “Then she swore me to secrecy. What if she found out? If it was Bethany sending the email, why would she contact me and not her mom?”
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because she was once my friend. She and I, OK, we weren’t as close as we had been. And I wonder, if Bethany came back but not to her husband, but to her mother…I think Sharon might have been really angry with her.”
“You think she hurt her?”
“Maybe in a moment of rage. We’ve all been there. So much hurt, so much pain between them. I hate to say it of Mrs. B, but it’s a possibility.”
29
JULIE HAD GONE back to the gym. Mariah got in her car, her mind spinning with Julie’s claims. Either Julie was telling the truth and was finally coming forward with information, or she was lying about Sharon Blevins.
But why would she lie? How would she gain? She couldn’t, in any way Mariah could see.
She thought, You are getting to them. You are upsetting them and they are talking. Keep at it.
Mariah drove to Jake Curtis’s address, a house off Old Travis Road, in an exclusive neighborhood. Lots of software execs lived in this area. Jake Curtis’s home looked like a multimillion-dollar number. She drove up the cobblestone paved driveway to the Tuscan-style house. Stone exterior, tiled roof. It was lovely and huge.
He hadn’t called her, but maybe he hadn’t gotten her note. If what Julie said was true, then she had to speak to him. Find out what he knew about her mother’s friendship with Bethany.
So. She’d wait here. He had to come home at some point.
She sat on the expansive front step. She opened up a browser on her phone and found Jake’s Faceplace page. She remembered when she’d looked before at his social media presence she had a “friend” who had liked the page—a high school classmate who worked there. Rob Radlon. She called him.
“Rob Radlon.”
“Rob, it’s Mariah Dunning. Do you remember me?”
A pause. Everyone remembers me, she thought. “Hey, Mariah, of course.”
“Great. Because I’m one of those people who only call when they need a favor.”
He laughed, but then because it was Mariah, he stopped. She had noticed this, that people didn’t like to laugh around her for long. Like it was an unkindness to remind her there was joy in the world. “How are you? How’s your dad?”
Him asking the second question meant the world to her. Rob had been a choir friend, not a boy she knew well, but he had always seemed really decent. “He’s okay. This never gets easier.” She told herself it was acceptable to play on every sympathy he might have.
“I can’t imagine. So, what’s the favor?”
“I need you to get Jake Curtis to take my phone call.”
“Um, why?”
“I can’t go into details. Would you tell him it has to do with his wife’s disappearance?”
Now the laugh was nervous. “Mariah, I can’t talk to him about his vanished wife. He’s my boss’s boss’s boss.”
“Please.”
“Why would you bother him?”
“Listen. His wife vanished. My mom vanished. They knew each other. I don’t think this was widely known.” She lowered her voice. “If I’m right, then you’re the bright young software designer who brought me to his attention.”
“His wife took off. She doesn’t want to be found.”
“OK, I left a note for him. Just tell him or his assistant that you knew me from school. That I’m not crazy. Please. Maybe that will be enough.”
“I just don’t think he wants to talk about his wife. To anyone.”
“Tell him,” she said, with a flash, “that I know what it’s like. That I know what he’s going through. Five minutes. That’s all I ask.”
“I’ll try, Mariah.” But she thought he would risk nothing. She couldn’t blame him.
“Thanks, Rob. Let’s have lunch soon. Regardless.”
“Sounds good.” He sounded a bit suspicious. He hung up.
She sat. She waited. She noticed the streets here, in the highest hills overlooking Lakehaven, were mostly cul-de-sacs, designed to give more privacy. She thought for a moment that if Andy or Julie were following her, it would be hard for them to not be noticed.
She wished she hadn’t skipped lunch. She felt a little dizzy and dehydrated. After twenty minutes her phone pinged. It was a text from Rob Radlon: Try calling Jake Curtis now. I vouched for you, please don’t mess up. You know I hope your mom is found.
She called DataMarvel and she asked for Jake.
Four rings. “Jake Curtis’s office.” A young man’s voice, brisk.
“This is Mariah Dunning. Mr. Curtis is expecting my call.”
“One moment.”
Wow, the assistant didn’t ask what this was about.
“Ms. Dunning. This is Jake Curtis.” He sounded sterner than he had at trivia night. “I resent you intruding into my life. First the bar, now this? I am not interested in any pet theory of yours, and you are not to come around me again, or I’ll get a restraining order.”
“I am not any kind of danger to you,” she said. “Your wife and my mother, Beth Dunning, knew each other socially, and they both disappeared within six months of each other. I think what happened to my mom is tied to what happened to your wife. This may be nothing, or it could be the key to everything.”
“If you would like to contact the police, or my lawyers, with any information I’m sure they’d appreciate it.”
She wondered how many crank calls he got, asking for money in exchange for hope. “I will do that, of course,” she said. “But if we could talk face-to-face…”
“I’m sorry, I can’t.”
“I spent last night at your mother-in-law’s. I slept in Bethany’s old room.”
“Oh,” he said. Now, she supposed, she didn’t sound like a typical information peddler.
“Sharon had a fainting spell while I was there, so I ended up staying the night as she refused an ambulance. She thinks you killed Bethany, but I think she’s hiding something. And I’ve spoken, more than once, with Andy Candolet and Julie Santos about your wife’s case. I’m not sure they’ve been completely honest with me.” Make him think you’re on his side. She decided not to mention she’d seen Andy at his office. “I don’t want to talk about Sharon to the police or your lawyers. Not yet. I’m not throwing her under the bus because I don’t know what to think. I’ll talk, but only to you. I’m sitting on your front step. But if I’m being weird we can meet somewhere else. Or after work. Or at your favorite bar, even though it’s not trivia night.” She stopped, breathless.
Ten seconds ticked by. She thought, He’s going to call the police on me. But he said, “Wait for me, Ms. Dunning. I’ll be home soon.”
He hung up. She sat and waited and wondered what she had unleashed.
She stood up, stretched. The other three houses on the cul-de-sac—the lots were so large, there were only three—had black metal fences enclosing them, but Jake’s did not. The house was huge—she guessed it was six thousand square feet. For a man living alone, as far as she knew. He had done very, very well. Brick driveway, a stone mansion built in the Tuscan style, tiled roof. She wandered, trying not to look in the windows. She went around to the backyard: there was a large patio with a built-in outdoor kitchen, and an infinity pool. The site had a great view of the hills of Lakehaven stretching away in the distance, the mansions built in the past several years, the new school, a scattering of empty lots in smaller neighborhoods, the curve of Old Travis Road…the hills. A curve of road by an empty lot. Her gaze locked.
On the empty stretch of land, where once her mother’s car had been found…
“We’re not doing this now. You’re not doing this.” A voice behind her, clear and sharp, and before she could turn there was only blackness, nothingness swallowing her whole, and she fell into it.
30
GRASS, COOL AGAINST her face.
A hand on her shoulder.
“Are you all right?” A man’s voice.
“Yes,” she said, by default, but her voice sounded thick. She opened her eyes. Colors, coming into focus. “Where…where am I?”
“You’re in my backyard. I’m calling for an ambulance.”
“Am I hurt?” she said.
“I don’t see any blood,” he said. His face swam into focus. Jake Curtis. “What happened?”
“I was looking at your view…I heard a voice…then nothing. I don’t remember. I don’t want a doctor. Just…please…help me sit up.”
He did. Details became clearer. His face, concerned but also a little wary.
“Are you drunk?” he asked.
“No. I guess I forgot to eat. I…I don’t know what happened. Did I faint? Where’s my phone?” She patted her jeans pocket.
“Here,” he said, and went and picked up her phone, lying a short distance away on the grass.
“I don’t…I don’t remember if I put it back in my pocket after we talked. I walked around.” Did someone take her phone from her and search it? Why? For her texts, her emails, her internet searches. All of it synced to her main computer. If they wanted it, why not steal it? Because a phone could be tracked.
“Here. It’s here.” He handed it back to her and she slipped it in her pocket. She could have dropped it, then staggered, blacked out. She couldn’t remember.
Did someone attack me? She heard a voice. Someone following me, she thought. She let her gaze scan the hills again, and the dizziness came back in a rush.
“I am so sorry,” she said. “Could I get a glass of water? The view is making me dizzy.”
“Of course. I think you ought to get checked out.”
She studied the grass. Maybe, if she had an arm flung out as she fell, the phone could have landed there. If not…someone had left it there.
Jake? He looked concerned, not guilty.