The Three Beths

by Jeff Abbott

  She hadn’t been with a man since her mother vanished. She hadn’t wanted to date. And she hadn’t wanted to find a guy just for physical release.

  Jake was asleep, curled in the sheets. Lightly snoring. She watched him for a moment and wondered, Is this a good idea? It was done. Move forward, whatever forward meant. She touched his arm and he stopped, immediately, still breathing heavily, deep in his dreams. She wanted to kiss him again, but she didn’t want to wake him.

  She felt a sick twinge of guilt, and then it went away, like cold rain blown by wind. It was there, and it was gone. Maybe he was a widower. She couldn’t wish that to be true, but it might be. She got up and found her T-shirt and panties and slipped them on and walked quietly down the hall to the kitchen. She poured herself a tall glass of water, drank it down. She felt a little better. Not that she felt bad. She felt good. She wondered if he’d think she was easy. Maybe he wouldn’t care. Maybe she wouldn’t care if he cared. He might be the one who was easy. The first time had been awkward, perhaps ending a long drought for them both and each unsure, but the second time had been great and the third time…she smiled in the darkness.

  I hope he didn’t kill Bethany. I don’t think he did.

  She put the glass in the sink and tiptoed back to the bedroom. Jake was still asleep. He had his back to her and she curled into him, her forehead pressing against his back, and soon she slept.

  38

  T​HE MORNING AFTER didn’t have to be awkward, but this one was likely to be. Probably, she thought, because of the assorted and heavy baggage they both had. She’d opened her eyes to hear the sound of the shower. It was six thirty according to his clock. She could smell coffee brewing.

  He had laid out a yellow silk robe for her, across the bedspread by her feet. No doubt it was Bethany’s. She was sure he was being practical, but she still felt a bit odd as she shrugged into his missing wife’s robe. She wondered how she would have reacted if she’d ever seen some new woman wearing her mom’s clothes. Probably would have torn the fabric off her back. And yet, she told herself, it was just a robe.

  “Good morning,” she said to the shower curtain. She made her voice strong, not wanting to sound weird or nervous. They were grown-ups.

  “Hey, good morning. Coffee’s brewing.” He didn’t peer out. His voice sounded a little hoarse.

  “Do you want me to bring you a cup?” Well, she thought, that took three minutes to turn into little hausfrau, which was decidedly not her style.

  “No, thank you, I’ll get mine. You help yourself, though. I’ll only be a minute.”

  She couldn’t decide if it was a bad sign he didn’t invite her to join him or at least stick his head around the shower curtain to speak to her. Or maybe he just had to get to work and another round of sex was what happened in a novel, not in real life. He was a techie, and they could be a bit distant. Or maybe he was having second thoughts. You might have been the first since she vanished. You don’t have to analyze everything, she told herself. She went into the kitchen and poured coffee—he had set out half-and-half and sugar and packets of artificial sweetener, thoughtfully, so she took that as a good sign. He appeared in a few minutes, dressed for work, hair damp.

  “Hi,” he said, his smile broad.

  “Hi. Look, I don’t want this to be awkward…”

  “I don’t either.” He kissed her, not the kind of lure you back to bed kiss but not a peck either, and she kissed back. When the kiss broke, their foreheads stayed pressed together. “I’m glad this happened. I don’t have any regrets,” he said.

  “Me neither.” She put her hand on his chest. “I mean, we’re both dealing with a lot…”

  “We’re both surviving a lot,” he said. “We’re alive. We get to live.”

  “What a pair we make. Worst online dating profiles ever.” And he laughed, and she laughed, and she thought It’s OK to laugh. It is. She kissed him, and he kissed back.

  “Breakfast is the only meal I’m good at cooking,” he said. “What would you like?”

  He made eggs with chives, bacon, and toasted English muffins. His coffee was strong, the way she liked it. They ate and she offered to clean, but he said no so she turned on her phone. Five text messages from Dad erupted on her screen. All variations of where are you? Are you OK? Please answer, Mariah, I’m a nervous wreck. Do I need to call the police? And then, finally, texting late last night: Someone tried to kill me and I need to know you’re OK.

  “Excuse me,” she said. She hurried out onto the patio, the yellow robe fluttering around her. But looking out over the hills, like she had yesterday, a wave of nausea and blackness swept over her, and she stumbled back into the house. What was wrong with her?

  Dad answered on the first ring. “Mariah.”

  “Dad, I’m so sorry…I had my phone turned off. What happened?” Her voice was hoarse.

  He didn’t even ask where she had spent the night. “Someone dropped a rock onto my car from the loop bridge.”

  She had to sit. “Oh, no. Are you all right?”

  “Yes. I was driving Mom’s car. It’s wrecked.”

  “Oh, Dad, I am so sorry I wasn’t there for you.” Now Jake was watching her as he finished loading the dishwasher. “What do the police say? Who did this?”

  “They don’t know.”

  “Could it have been random?”

  “I don’t think so,” he said, his voice quiet and thin. “Why didn’t you come home?”

  “I spent the night with a friend. And I’m coming home right now.”

  “Please do,” he said.

  She hung up, nearly bent over with shock.

  “Is everything OK?” Jake asked. “Did something happen with your dad?”

  “I have to go.”

  “What is it?”

  “My dad…he needs me. I have to go.” She hurried back toward the bedroom, in search of her clothes. The one night you try to go back to normal, escape the cocoon of grief, and this happens…this happens…you will never have a life.

  “OK. So we should talk again about the case, depending on what you find?” Jake asked, following her, concern in his voice. “I’m working from home today, so call me on my cell.”

  She started to analyze what the words meant, if he was glad or relieved or sad, and then she thought, It doesn’t matter what he thinks. It happened, it might not happen again, it might. I can’t deal with this on top of everything else.

  “Sure. I’ll call you later,” she said. She yanked on her jeans and her top, didn’t bother with combing her hair.

  “If I can help you, Mariah, I want to.”

  She nodded. She couldn’t talk about this with him. She would lose it.

  “Hey. Hey.” He leaned close to her and hugged her, softly. “You’re shivering.” She let him hold her. It felt good.

  “I hope your dad is OK,” he said, into her hair.

  “Thanks,” she said. She broke away from him and nearly ran to the front door. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  39

  M​ARIAH HURRIED INTO her house. Her father sat in his recliner, in his blue jeans and a rumpled dress shirt. He had shaved badly, missing patches. He was drinking coffee. He looked at her with exhaustion.

  “I didn’t know where to look for you,” he said in a monotone. “I didn’t know where you had gone. You pick last night, of all nights, to turn off your phone.” Now his voice shook.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “Are you all right?”

  “It missed me by about a foot,” he said. “And when I got home, someone had been inside the house. Left a burner phone, to call me and tell me to sell the house fast and get out.”

  She put her hands over her face in dismay. “How…”

  “I want you to leave town,” he said. “Go see your cousins in Dallas.”

  “I won’t.”

  “You will. If I have to drag you onto a plane, you are leaving. I will not risk you, Mariah.”

  Now she looked at him. “Dad…I get why
you’re upset…”

  “They can come for me. But you have to be safe. I should have taken you away from here long ago. But I didn’t.”

  “Did you tell the police there was an intruder? Why don’t they have someone here to guard the house?”

  He laughed. “It could be Broussard. But I don’t want them here around me. I have to be able…to do what I need to do. Take care of this problem.”

  That frightened her. “I am not leaving you.”

  “Go pack your bag. Now.”

  She knelt by him. “I am close to finding out what happened to Mom,” she said, in a soft whisper. He shoved her away from him.

  “Stop playing at detective. It’s humiliating!”

  “No, it’s not!”

  He stormed past her and marched up the stairs to her room. The room where she had grown up, the room where she had returned and cocooned herself against the world.

  He went to her closet, yanked open the door.

  “Dad…”

  He pulled out the suitcase she kept on the top shelf. “Get packed.” He grabbed an armful of clothes off the hangers, tossed them onto her bed. Then he stopped. He stared.

  She stepped forward, took the suitcase from him. Saw what he saw.

  He pulled the corkboard out from behind her clothes. With its pushpins and photos and maps, and colored yarn connecting the elements of her mother’s case.

  “I told you to get rid of this,” he whispered.

  “It’s just a representation of Mom’s case. Timelines. And pictures. And theories.” Her voice trailed off.

  “My name is on here. On an index card.” He jabbed at it with his finger.

  “You were a witness,” she said. “Not…not as a suspect, Dad.”

  “This isn’t healthy. This is something a detective assigned to the case has, not you.”

  “I’ve found out so much in the past couple of days…about her life, about her connections to Bethany Curtis.”

  “Paper and string and photos. It’s all meaningless. And what are you going to do, Mariah? Write it up and give it to your gossipy friend who writes the true crime blog? The one who treated your mother’s case like gossip for his listeners?” And Craig smashed his fist through the corkboard, through the map she’d printed of the streets and lots where Mom had vanished. He threw the corkboard to the floor, stepped on it, yanked the metal edge of it upward, ripping it. Pins and string fell to the floor. He tore it again as she screamed at him to stop.

  A picture of her mother fluttered free.

  “This stops right now,” he said. “This obsession. Let her go. Say goodbye and let her go. She’s gone. Gone.”

  Mariah was so upset the tears wouldn’t come. “You can’t do that…”

  “Where were you last night? Who were you with?”

  “That’s not your business.”

  “Your sick friend again?”

  “No,” and now she felt defiant, fire blossoming in her chest. “I spent the night with Bethany Curtis’s husband.” Something shifted in his face, and she wished she could take the words back. He seemed almost staggered by her announcement. “Dad…”

  His face had gone red; he fought to steady his breathing.

  “I saw what Reveal wrote about the cases. The husband. He might have killed his wife and you…slept…with…him.”

  “Dad…”

  His laughter was broken. “Did you get the clues you wanted? Did you interrogate him in the sheets?”

  He had never spoken to her like this before. Or destroyed her property. He’d cheated on her mother. What was he truly capable of? She realized she didn’t know her father, not this side of him. “Don’t talk to me that way.”

  “Don’t talk to me that way,” he said back, mocking her, his voice nasal, but she was staring at him, and his lips and mouth hadn’t moved. But she had heard it. In her mind. He opened his mouth to speak, saying her name, and she hit him. A hard slap, a shove and he sprawled back into the wall.

  Then she hit him again as his hands came up to defend himself.

  “You don’t care, you don’t care…” she began to scream.

  “Mariah—”

  “You don’t care that we don’t know. How can you not care? How…”

  Because he knew. He knew. He knew what happened to Mom.

  She stood and staggered away from him, the realization sharp and awful and life-changing.

  He saw it in her face.

  “Mariah!” he called to her.

  She ran. She ran down and outside, past the for sale sign, leaned against the car, and then she got in and drove off.

  He followed her out to the driveway. He was shaking. He realized his mouth was bleeding.

  She’ll come back, he told himself. She’ll come back when she calms down.

  He had to end this. Now.

  40

  M​ARIAH DROVE TO a nearby café. She took steadying breaths after she parked, feeling dizzy, the words echoing in her head.

  It couldn’t be that her father knew with certainty. Unless he had…There had been no confession made, this was all in her head. The solution involved Bethany Curtis and her secrets. That would explain the following, the messages, the attack on her father. She had stirred the nest of a murderer who’d gotten away with it. She was close to the pattern. She had to follow it.

  Did you see your father kill her? Did you block it out? Is that why you’re protecting him? Broussard’s words rang harshly in her head.

  How badly had she hurt her father? Shame welled up in her. She hadn’t meant to shove him, but when he mocked her like that…she couldn’t help it. It just happened. The girl she’d gotten into a fight with at a college party, which had so upset Mom, the man whose finger she’d broken at the restaurant. The rage could rise like a storm in her body. After what he’d already gone through, the shame burned like a fever. She had to get ahold of herself. Find the pattern, bring peace to their lives.

  Mariah’s phone pinged. It wasn’t Dad calling, but an Austin number. “Hello?”

  “Is this Mariah Dunning?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hi, Ms. Dunning. This is Yvette Suarez. From the Pushy Pens writing group. You emailed me?” Her voice was soft, musical. “Sorry to be late getting back to you.”

  Mariah wiped her eyes, steadied her voice. “Thanks so much for returning my call.”

  “You were asking about Bethany Curtis?”

  “Yes. I’m interested in what she was writing with your group.”

  “Um, well, I think that would be private. Are you some kind of reporter?”

  “No, my mom was friends with Bethany. They’ve both gone missing—my mom six months after Bethany vanished. I’m trying to see if there’s a connection. I’ve met with Bethany’s mom and her friends.”

  “Have you talked to her husband?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I got the impression she didn’t show him her writing. Can you at least tell me what she wrote about?”

  “Why would that matter?” Yvette sounded impatient.

  “I think her writing could have had clues in it to why she ran.”

  “It doesn’t. She wrote a number of short stories about suburban life, and they were good, full of detail, but lacking in drama. She told us she had an interest in true crime. We all told her she needed to maybe combine her two interests. She said she took our advice and was writing a crime novel.”

  “What was it about?”

  “She said it was about a suburban family dealing with the aftermath of a crime. A drunk driving accident, and how the various family members deal or don’t deal with the loss.”

  A drunk. Like Bethany’s father. “You read her manuscript?”

  “Only the first twenty pages. It was very rough but had a lot of promise.”

  Mariah considered. “In this story, was there a suicide?” Penny had said that was Bethany’s topic in their brief phone call—a family affected by suicide.

  “It was hinted at,” Yvette said slowly. “
How did you know that?”

  “Was the suicide a father figure?”

  “Yes. The man who causes the accident. The manuscript opens with him considering suicide years later, and then goes back in time to the accident. She wanted to know what we thought of him as a character. He was compelling…but loathsome. We all said so.”

  Mariah found her voice. “Who gets killed?”

  “A small child…that was where the sample ended.”

  Mariah closed her eyes. “Thank you. How did your critique group operate?”

  “Everyone brings around ten pages each week, then we pass pages around and read them and mark up the manuscript with comments or questions. Then it goes back to the author. The author gets to ask three questions.”

  “Do you have any of the pages she wrote?”

  “No, they all would have gone back to her so she’d have our comments right on the manuscript as she rewrote.”

  And where had those pages gone? Had she taken them with her? Or destroyed them like she had her computer files?

  “Do you remember her three questions?”

  “Um…usually they’re about tone or character. I think she asked what we thought of the driver. We all hated him. We talked about that a lot, how hard it would be to make him likeable after what he’d done.”

  “Bethany’s friend Julie told me about your group. She said Bethany had another friend there, Lizbeth Gonzales.”

  “Yes.” Her voice was suddenly hesitant.

  “Do you know how I’d find her? I have a phone number, but I’m not sure it’s current or if she’ll call back.”

  The pause became one of those awkward ones. “Sorry, I don’t. Lizbeth wouldn’t consistently bring pages to read. She was mostly talking about writing rather than producing pages. Always starting a new project, never sticking with one long. And then…well, she just didn’t work out.” A lingering tone on the last few words, as if a secret was being kept.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t want to say,” although Yvette clearly did.

  “I won’t repeat it. I really need to find Lizbeth, and I don’t know what kind of person I’m dealing with. Neither Bethany’s other friends nor her mom seems to have known Lizbeth well.”