The Three Beths

by Jeff Abbott

  Reveal held up a hand. “Y’all. Mrs. Blevins, thank you for coming tonight. All are welcome. Mr. Curtis, I’m glad you’re both here. Obviously, disappearances can bring families closer in their grief, but they can also tear families apart.”

  Mariah thought it sounded like a lead-in to a panel discussion. This was starting to go wrong.

  “Where is she, Jake?” Sharon said.

  “If I knew, I’d get her back here,” Jake said.

  “You hid her real good when you got rid of her,” she said. She looked around the room and then she seemed to freeze for a moment, looking past Jake and Mariah, blinking, and then suddenly going quiet.

  “I didn’t do anything to her,” Jake said. “I came here to try to come to peace with this, not be accused.” He stood.

  “Mariah got you to come here, didn’t she? I warned you about him, Mariah, but I can see that was useless. Is she peddling this theory to you, that her mom’s and my girl’s vanishing are related? I’m sure you loved that. Anything to get you off the hook.”

  “They knew each other,” Jake said. “Mariah has the proof. Yell at me all you want.” He looked at the group. “My wife and her mom were friends. We didn’t know, and they both went missing and yet she”—he pointed at Sharon—“still insists the bad guy must be me.”

  “That’s huge news,” Reveal said into the shocked quiet. “I would have loved to have known this earlier.” He glared at Mariah. “Thank you for sharing, Jake.”

  “Chad…” Mariah started to explain but he held up a hand.

  Reveal said, “I did a podcast on Mariah’s mom’s case. Episode 89. The podcast for the case of Mrs. Curtis is Episode 75.” She thought he added that for the group’s benefit, in case any of them wanted to download them. He knew the number, off the top of his head. Mariah closed her eyes.

  Sharon shook her head at Reveal. “You encouraged this theory. This is your fault.”

  “Mrs. Blevins, I only am trying to get to the truth.”

  “Truth? You picked up on a coincidence of names, and now you’re giving the main suspect in my daughter’s case a way to muddle the truth. So what if they knew each other? It doesn’t prove a single thing. No. No. I thought this was going to help me tonight”—her voice broke—“and I thought this girl was on my side, and she’s just a user like you.” Sharon stood up, shaking. She looked again, over to the left, and Mariah saw she was looking at one of the men—an elderly man with a beard who wouldn’t meet her gaze. “I can’t do this. I hope you all find your loved ones. And I hope you never have anyone like these two in your lives.”

  “Mrs. Blevins, please wait. I want to talk to you…” Reveal said. “Please don’t go.”

  “Talk to me about what? I have nothing to say.”

  Reveal seemed to realize he was making this plea in front of a crowd. “I would like to call you later. Please. It’s pertinent to your daughter’s case.”

  Sharon saw it. She almost laughed. “What? Why? To be on your television show? Oh, no. No. Not in a million years.”

  “They knew each other,” he said. “It wasn’t Jake.”

  “It still could have been him. Maybe he took your mother, too, Mariah.” Her voice had turned into a hiss of darkness.

  “I can’t listen to her ravings,” Jake said. “Excuse me.” He got up and walked out of the parish hall.

  “Sharon…” Mariah said. “All I am trying to do is to help you. Your daughter…this wasn’t about her marriage.”

  “You can’t let him fool you. He’s smart. But you have to be smarter.”

  “The show,” Reveal said, trying to get the conversation back in line, “it’s going to be called American Unsolved. Each week another new unsolved case will be highlighted. I fly out next week to shoot the pilot.”

  The group applauded. Mariah kept her hands in her lap.

  Reveal held out his hand. “Sharon, go out there with me. Please. Tell your story to the world. Help bring your daughter home.”

  She looked again at Mariah, at the bearded man, at Reveal, and she turned around and left without a word.

  “So who wants to share next? Catherine?” Reveal asked, trying to sound calm, and a woman began to talk about the agony of her missing grown son, vanished in Holland, another soul trapped in the black void.

  * * *

  Mariah got to the parking lot in time to see Sharon bolting past Jake, who stood near his car, looking at his phone. Sharon stopped next to him. She slowly turned to Jake, as if she had gathered her courage.

  “Where is she? Where is my girl?”

  “I don’t know. I wish I did.”

  Sharon slapped him. A hard blow across the face, then made her hand into a fist and drove it into his shoulder. He didn’t move.

  “Sharon, stop.” Mariah caught her hand. “Bethany asked my mom to keep something for her before she left. I think it had to do with your husband’s suicide,” Mariah said, her voice low. She didn’t want Reveal following them out in the lot and hearing this.

  “What?” It was like the life went out of Sharon. She nearly sagged in Mariah’s grip.

  “What happened to your husband? Who is Penny? Did you come from Chicago or Houston?”

  Sharon stared at her. Under the perfect makeup, the perfect hair, Mariah could see something break in her. Sharon, with great dignity, pulled herself free. “I don’t know what delusion you have spun for yourself. But I called and talked to someone in Lakehaven, and they’d heard from a cop there you hallucinated seeing your mother. Hallucinated. At a mall. And you chased her and caused a car wreck. You’re a menace. You’ve been covering for your father. You have to invent this story about my daughter so you can stand to live with your dad. I tried to help you. I felt sorry for you. I thought you understood. But you’re like everyone else, wiping their feet on my daughter’s memory. That she was a drunk or a thief or a bad wife when she wasn’t.”

  “Sharon…”

  “Don’t ever come around again. I let you sleep in her bed.”

  Sharon walked to her car and got in and drove off. Jake stood beside her in silence. Mariah stepped away from him, her face in her hands.

  * * *

  The meeting broke up a few minutes later—the drama had ruined it. Mariah wanted to bolt, yet she wanted to talk to Reveal, to tell him she would update him tomorrow. Jake walked over to talk to Buddy (Mariah hoped it was to apologize), and Reveal hurried toward her as the group dispersed in the lot, shaking hands, giving pats on the back.

  She looked for the bearded man. He was gone.

  “That guy…the older guy, with the beard,” she said to Reveal. “Where did he go?”

  “He left by the other door, shortly after you did.”

  She hadn’t seen his car leave, so he must have parked on the other side. “Who was he?”

  “Don’t know, had not seen him here before.”

  “Sharon seemed to have a reaction to him.”

  “Thanks for the Sharon warning,” he said, anger in his voice. “I really needed to make the pitch to her and Jake separately. You ruined that.”

  “What’s the matter with you?” She saw several of the attendees glance at them, uncomfortable.

  “You made me a promise,” he said. “To share what you found. And you didn’t.”

  “I didn’t have enough to share,” she said and he laughed.

  “Oh, please. That they knew each other? An actual link between the cases? What else haven’t you told me?”

  “I don’t want a bunch of speculation…I just want the truth.”

  “Could be you don’t like what you found. Maybe, until you share, I just have to start banging the drum that your dad’s looking better for this crime.” He said it like a threat.

  “Mariah, let’s go, please,” Jake said, now standing next to her.

  “Chad, you can’t go after my dad,” she said.

  He turned and walked away.

  “Let’s go,” Jake said again, easing her toward his car, Mariah aware o
f the gazes on her.

  * * *

  Jake and Mariah walked out to his Porsche and got in. He started the car but didn’t shift gears.

  “I want you to know I went and apologized to Buddy. I was thoughtless.” Jake stared straight ahead. “I got a little engineer-ish on him.”

  “Well, a little, and I see your point. But I also see his. What is the harm?”

  “Hope is the harm,” he said. Now he looked at her.

  “I think we’re all beyond hope,” she said.

  “No, we’re not,” he said. “Hope just changes. You hope for answers because you know you’re not getting your mom or your wife back.” He cleared his throat. “When Reveal first approached me, I listened to a few of his podcasts. I heard him talk about unsolved disappearances from ten, twenty years ago…the parents died, the spouse died, without knowing what happened to their loved one. I don’t think I could bear that. I need to know what happened to Bethany.”

  “I do, too,” she said. “But I don’t have a scapegoat like you do. I have no one to point a finger at.” Except my dad. What if Chad decided to come after him, write about him? She felt sick.

  “What if I’m wrong and Bethany’s family is wrong?” he said. “What if we’re all wrong? All that hate, for nothing.”

  “I dragged you to this, and I shouldn’t have brought you. She told me she might come—at the restaurant. I should have warned you.”

  Jake studied her. “You’re right, you should have, but it’s all right. I’m not mad. I’m glad I’ve gotten to meet you.”

  She met his gaze and realized she didn’t want to go home, to her father’s thousand questions.

  “Can we go back to your place and have a drink?” she asked.

  36

  T​HE RIDESHARE DRIVER brought Craig home, and thankfully there was no stone with another message in his driveway. But there was no sign of Mariah, either.

  He went inside. In the kitchen he poured a glass of bourbon. He went into the den and sat in the dark in his recliner. He drank it, slowly, steadily, letting the smoky taste fill his mouth, thinking how good it was to be alive.

  And then he heard a phone buzzing. A ringtone he didn’t recognize. He saw the glow of a screen on the coffee table.

  He had never seen this phone before. He got up and stood over it. Its small screen lit up with the word BLOCKED.

  Someone had left a phone for him in his house.

  He stared at it. It kept buzzing. He didn’t move. Finally, he reached for it and answered it.

  “Hello,” he croaked.

  The voice sounded masked, electronic in some way. “Craig. You made it home. That’s nice.”

  “Who is this?”

  “You put a sign out, yet you don’t return calls from interested buyers. I think that sign is a fake. I think it shouldn’t be. I think you are going to sell, cheaply and quickly. Take the hit. It’s better than taking the rock.”

  “You…You cannot do this to me!” He didn’t expect to say those words, but there they were. “You attack me, you come into my home…how did you leave this phone here?”

  “Craig. You have bigger concerns. You want to move out quickly. For your sake. And your daughter’s.”

  “You stay away from Mariah.”

  “Fast. Cheap. Then leave.” The line went dead.

  He set the phone down. What about fingerprints? He could call Broussard. The person smart enough to break into his house or to get a key…

  A key. Only he and Mariah had house keys.

  The other house key had been with…Beth. In her purse. Vanished, with her.

  A cold terror touched his spine, his chest. No. No. No.

  He got up and checked all the doors. The back was unlocked. He snatched back his hand like the doorknob was hot.

  They were in my house.

  Why wouldn’t Mariah answer her phone? Terror gripped him. He couldn’t lose her, too.

  37

  M​ARIAH AND JAKE sat on his leather couch, the TV on, muted, playing TCM, which had on a Hitchcock film, North by Northwest. It was toward the end, Cary Grant dropping a note from the second floor of James Mason’s totally cool house to Eva Marie Saint, trying to warn her from boarding a plane that she would be thrown out of during flight. Glasses of white wine were in front of both of them. Mariah thought she might be a little drunk. Her head no longer hurt. She shouldn’t have drunk alcohol after fainting, but fainting seemed like such a dumb thing to do, something out of an old, problematic novel, a sign of weakness she didn’t normally feel.

  You’ve never fainted before, she thought, but then she saw her mother’s face, shocked, surprised, swimming in fog, and then gone. She closed her eyes, opened them again, took another sip of wine.

  Jake watched the movie, Cary Grant hurrying Eva Marie Saint toward Mount Rushmore. “So your dad was a suspect.”

  “Only because they always suspect the spouse.” She thought his expression would change, but he only looked sad and aware. “No blood in his car, no sign of violence on him. No sign that he had done anything to her. No proof. But no proof doesn’t mean innocence.” Her voice went low.

  His gaze widened. “You must have suspected your dad at some point. Even for a moment.”

  Mariah took a sip of the wine. Who else could she tell this to? No one. “I didn’t think he could kill her. But there are accidents.” The word felt funny in her mouth. “The marriage was kind of a mess in the past, and I didn’t know that then, but now I do.” She took another sip and let the wine soak her tongue, trying to think of how to say this and wondering what had made her say this to this man. “I thought maybe if they had a fight…if there was an accident…” She put down the wineglass, hand shaking, heart pounding. “But I know my dad. If he’d killed her, it would have been an accident, and he would have just laid down next to her. He would not have the coldness or the…” She searched for an appropriate word.

  “Nerve.”

  “Yes. The nerve to dump the body, to lie to the police, to lie to me. I mean, this is a magnitude of lie I can hardly imagine. There would have to be a certain calculation and coolness. It’s not a pretense Dad could manage.”

  Jake studied her. “It’s hard to say that aloud.”

  “It’s weird to have thought so much about murder while never having committed one,” she said. She finished her wine and poured another glass. Why not? “I might be a little drunk. I’ve said too much. I should call a rideshare.” She watched Cary Grant save Eva Marie Saint from falling off a president’s sculpted face. She didn’t reach for her phone. She didn’t even feel like turning it on.

  He stood to refill his own wineglass, and then he sat down next to her on the couch. A little closer this time. She thought, Oh, OK, not really up for fending off a pass, but then she decided she didn’t mind. Why should I mind? she thought. When was the last time she’d gone on a date? This was one pathetic idea of a date and laughter, unexpected, nearly bubbled up in her chest. A few weeks after Mom vanished, a well-intentioned friend set her up with a coworker of hers, a perfectly nice guy. Completely ill at ease, she had felt like a drunk stumbling through a long evening. The guy had the decency to see how badly it was going and took her home early, at her request. He’d wished her luck. Luck. Like luck was how you got back on your feet, like that was how you lived with the sudden emptiness. Luck. Good fortune. Those were in decidedly short supply among the families of the missing.

  But she decided it was fine if Jake sat close. He understood.

  “I’m going to try and talk to Sharon tomorrow,” she said.

  “I’d leave that alone,” he said.

  “I know. But I won’t. And I better make peace with Chad, too, or he’ll write whatever he wants about my parents.”

  “He’ll do that anyway,” Jake said quietly. “I think Chad is a little blinded by ambition right now. He means well.”

  “It sucks not to be able to trust someone who’s normally a friend,” she said. “I mean, we’re not close, but
I don’t talk about the case with anyone. He was the first. Then Sharon, then you…”

  “People who have never experienced this think talking about it makes them understand it. Only living it makes you understand.”

  She surprised herself by putting her hand on the back of his neck. He looked at her, and she kissed him, gently, softly. He froze in surprise, for just a moment, as if he had forgotten what a kiss was, then he kissed her back. Her fingers tangled in his hair, she felt his palm lay along her jawline, gentle, a whispery touch.

  The kiss broke. What am I doing? she thought.

  “This isn’t…” he started and she thought, What’s he going to say: Right? A good idea? She didn’t care. The loneliness swelled up in her, like a living thing fighting to breathe, and she kissed him again. He returned the kiss with equal fervor.

  They broke apart. “I’m sorry,” he said, like she was delicate china. Or didn’t know her own mind.

  “Don’t be. Don’t be sorry,” she said, nearly in tears.

  “I don’t think…”

  “So much thinking. Stop.” She kissed him again, and he did stop saying the words she didn’t want to hear, and shortly they stumbled down to the bedroom in the dark.

  * * *

  Mariah awoke in the night, and the first thought she had was wondering if this bed was Bethany’s. She had slept in Bethany’s old bed at Sharon’s and now her marriage bed. Maybe Jake bought a new one when he moved here? The idea that she had slept in the missing woman’s bed with the missing woman’s husband should have bothered her. He had slid off the wedding ring when they reached the bed, like it was a chain he was slipping, just taking a moment to do that behind her head when he thought she couldn’t see, and she had said nothing, then kissed him again. Was it better or worse that he’d taken it off?

  She had never once wanted to sleep with a married man. She was sure that Jake had taken the side of the bed he was used to, and that must have been the side of the bed he slept on when Bethany was here. Couples had habits. She told herself to stop dwelling on this.