by Jill Orr
She was talking about Flick. She’d been driving the car that had forced him to crash. My mind was racing to catch up. “But…but…I have—”
“What you have is fair warning. You’re the only person—well, the only person currently alive and conscious—who has made the connection between Shannon and who she used to be. This can all end with you, Riley. Tell your friends you were wrong. Throw them off the trail.”
The only person currently alive and conscious. My brain made the connection in an instant. “You arranged the hit on Tackett…”
“Alas, no,” she said, sounding truly disappointed. “Let’s call that a happy coincidence.”
It sounded like more than one person outside the door now. Somewhere in the back of my brain I thought I recognized Lindsey’s voice, then Ash’s. What’s going on? Who’s in there?Is she okay? The door handle rattled again.
“You can’t—you’re not going to—”
“Yes, I am.” She cut me off. “Because if you even so much as think about telling anyone about this or asking your friend the sheriff for help, I will know.” Her voice turned into a low growl. “The second I find out anyone is asking around about Shannon’s identity or my involvement in any of this, I will consider my arrangement with Albert null and void.”
She sounded like she was describing a real estate contract. “You’re truly insane…”
I don’t know if she didn’t hear me or didn’t care. Either way, her response was, “I know you’re going to need some time to think about this, so I’ll let you go.”
My shock was morphing into numbness. All my fight, my bravado from before—my I’m-going-to-find-out-who-did-this-and-make-them-pay attitude disappeared like smoke in the wind. I was as scared as I’d ever been in my life.
“I’ll be in touch soon,” she said. “Till then, you be a good girl, okay? None of this trying to be a hero. We all know how that worked out.”
I don’t know how long it was between when the line went dead and when the door burst open, but suddenly Ash was there, Lindsey and Holman behind him, along with a sea of onlookers. Their eyes swept over me for some sign of injury or trouble.
“What is it?” Holman pushed past Ash. “What happened?”
I looked up at him through blurry, tear-rimmed eyes but couldn’t make myself speak.
“Let’s get her out of there,” Lindsey said. She and Ash got on either side of me and led me out of the bathroom toward the front door. I could feel people staring, but I was too numb with confusion and fear to care. Ryan and Ridley must have seen what was going on because the next thing I knew, they were there too. As we stepped outside onto the concrete patch in front of the door, the cold night air hit me like a slap to the face. My breath felt ragged, sharp, and shallow and my shoulders shook, more from fright than cold. Ash took off his jacket and placed it around me.
“What happened?” he asked softly.
I looked to the left and then to the right. The street was filled with cars, but I didn’t see any people. Megan knew where we were. She knew Holman drove us here. She could still be here, watching us, waiting. She’d know if I said anything. She could be close enough to hear me. “N-n-nothing,” I said.
“That’s crazy—look at you—you’re terrified,” Ryan said.
My eyes searched the dark street and saw nothing, but that only meant that I couldn’t see her coming. She was out there. How else could she have known what I was wearing?
“I’m s-s-sorry,” I said, silently willing myself to calm down. “I just had too much. I’m fine. Really. I’m fine.”
“The hell you are,” Ash said.
“Give her some space.” Ridley gestured for everyone to take a step back. There was a small iron bench on the porch, and she took my elbow and led me to it. I sat, still trembling, the icy bench doing nothing to help the situation.
Holman bent down, his big buggy eyes stared directly into mine. “Riley, does this have to do with the story? With what happened today?”
I wanted desperately to tell him everything—to scream that it was Megan, that it had been her all along—but I didn’t say a word. I believed that she was nearby, and I was terrified that anyone who knew the truth about her would be in danger. After all, hadn’t she just basically threatened Ash and Holman on the phone? None of this trying to be a hero. We all know how that worked out. Flashes of past conversations came to mind—all the times Flick refused to answer my questions, refused to even acknowledge that there was anything to look into. I was trying to keep you safe. Albert made me promise to keep you safe. I started to shake again.
It was Lindsey this time who spoke up. “She’s had some sort of a shock. Let’s get her home and we can figure out what happened later. Will, can you pull the car up?”
“No!” I screamed, wild with panic, and all eyes turned to me. “Ryan, can we take your car? Please?”
“That’s silly. Holman’s car is right there,” Ash said, sounding like he was explaining something complicated to a small child. “He hasn’t had anything to drink.”
“No, please.” Tears filled my eyes as I pleaded with him, with all of them. “You have to trust me. Not that car. Please.” I looked at each of them, trying to convince them that though I couldn’t explain it, they needed to listen to me.
“Sure, we’ll take our car,” Ridley said, her voice soft and comforting, like a hug. She nodded toward Ryan.
“Yeah, right. I’ll go get it.”
Ash put a hand on my shoulder. “I’m just going to go tell Toad that we’re leaving so he doesn’t worry, okay?”
I nodded. He was in and out in under a minute, and by the time he came back, Ryan had pulled up to the base of the driveway. Ridley helped me up from the bench, and she, Lindsey, Holman, and Ash all huddled around me protectively. Ridley held one of my elbows and Ash had the other. Holman held my purse. We walked slowly toward the truck. My eyes swept from left to right for any signs of Megan’s silver Prius. All I saw was darkness in both directions. When we got to the truck, Ash helped me step onto the running board and hoisted me up into the back seat of the cab. My friends made a semicircle around me, waiting until I got safely in the truck before moving an inch. If someone had been looking at us from a distance, it would have looked like they were the Secret Service and it was their job to protect me. The irony, of course, that no one could know but me, was that it was actually quite the opposite: It was now my job to keep each of them safe.
Voicemail transcript: Jeannie Ellison to Riley Ellison. Thursday, January 6, 3:21pm
Hi honey, it’s mom. Um, I haven’t heard from you in a few days and I’m starting to get a little worried…it’s not like you not to call me back. I know it’s a busy time with work and all, but I want to hear all about the New Year’s party! Was your dress a hit? Did Ash just die when he saw you all dressed up? I’ll bet he did!
Anyway, I ran into Dr. H yesterday at the library—I was picking up the latest Louise Penny—[lowers voice] you know how I just love that Inspector Gamache. By the way, did I tell you that the girls from book club and I are thinking of making a pilgrimage to Three Pines? Anyway, like I was saying, I ran into Dr. H who said he saw you rushing through Memorial Park the other day and he tried to wave to you, but you just walked right on past like you didn’t even see him. He said it looked like you were carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders. [Sigh.] So, like I said, I’m just a little worried. Could you call me when you have a chance? Or come by the house? Just give your old Mom a little sign that you’re doing okay…
Oh, and speaking of signs, how are you liking the daily horoscopes? Aren’t they just the most fun! Confession: I got myself a subscription too [laughs]. I’ve been having the best time with them. The other day, my horoscope said that soon I would meet a stranger who would rock my—[Click]
Voicemail transcript: Jeannie Ellison to Riley Ellison. Thursday, January 6, 3:23pm
Hi honey, it’s mom again. Well, never mind about the horoscopes, just call me when
you have a minute and let me know you’re okay. I know you’re a grown woman, but I still worry. [Laughs] All right! That’s it for now. Love you, racoon. [Mumbled: What? wait—okay, okay.]
[Full voice] Dad says hi, honey…and he says he loves you too…and he says if you stop by he’ll give you some black-eyed peas for good luck in the new year. Skip, she doesn’t like black-eyed peas, you know that! [Pause] Well, she has the right to like any kind of food she wants to and you just can’t force these things on—[Click]
CHAPTER 41
It’s amazing how quickly—and slowly—time goes by when you’ve been blindsided by a homicidal lunatic. It had been just over two weeks since Megan Johanning threatened to hurt the people closest to me if I didn’t thwart the investigation into Shannon Claremore, and I’d spent every moment since then trying to do just that. It hadn’t been easy.
I managed to convince everyone that while in line for the bathroom at Toad’s party, I’d found an old voicemail from Flick that I hadn’t previously known about. I told them hearing his voice, combined with the alcohol, had upset and confused me, and that was the reason for my odd behavior. Eventually, they all accepted the explanation; I had been so emotional right after his death that it wasn’t a far leap to think I might have had a grief-induced setback. Explaining why I wouldn’t let us ride home in Holman’s car had been more difficult, but I’d just kept repeating that I’d had a lot to drink and who knows exactly what was going on in my mind at the time. This had prompted frequent lectures about the perils of binge-drinking and several emails with the times and dates of AA meetings from Holman. Fine, I told myself. It was worth it if my plan worked.
Joe Tackett succumbed to his injuries and died on January 2nd. The secret of where he’d hidden the recording—which I knew now was almost certainly that of Megan Johanning—died with him. And so ended any hope of prosecuting her for her crimes. She was going to get away with it all. After all, as she pointed out, I was the only one left alive who knew, and I wasn’t going to tell. As much as it sickened me, I would not put anyone else in the path of this madwoman. I’d seen what she was capable of, what she was willing to do to protect this secret. I simply would not put the people I loved at risk. I’d already lost too much.
Over the course of the past couple of weeks, Megan was like an evil puppet master, feeding me the lies I was to use to persuade Holman, Kay, and Lindsey that I’d been wrong about Shannon Claremore’s involvement in Flick’s and Granddaddy’s deaths. It required me to push the limits of both my theatrical and ethical boundaries. In short, I had to do a lot of lying and faking of evidence.
My first task was to dispel our assumption that Bethany Miller had stolen her cousin’s identity after getting out of the juvenile detention center. Since I’d been the one who’d done most of the legwork thus far, no one questioned it when I managed to unearth a paper trail that showed Bethany Miller was very much alive and well, though estranged from her family and living under a different name. It was all fake, with evidence supplied to me by Megan or simply made up out of thin air. But I was careful to make it look like this information came out in drips and drops, planting the slightest seed of doubt about our identity-theft theory and slowly building the case against it. I was also careful to appear crushed when it became clear we were wrong. Whenever it seemed like the lies were too much, just when I’d think maybe I could take all of this to Carl or Sheriff Clark, Megan would call and remind me why I was doing it. It’d be a shame if anything were to happen to your parents, Riley. She haunted me like a ghost.
“Twins?” Holman asked, when I walked into his office holding the fake documents Megan had given me. “Charlie Miller didn’t say anything about having twin daughters?”
“I was shocked too,” I said. “But here, look.” I showed him the two birth certificates she’d sent me. One was for Shannon Miller and one for Bethany Miller, both with the same parents, same hospital, same 1954 birth date. I didn’t know how she did it—but they looked legitimate enough to convince Holman that it was true. The story was that Bethany and Shannon were Charlie’s girls, twins. Daniel Miller also had a baby girl named Shannon (named after the matriarch of the Miller family), but she died in the plane crash.
I told Holman that I’d tracked down an old friend of the Miller family who’d given me the whole painful history. Charlie Miller fell to pieces after his wife died (which was true) and Bethany had started to get into trouble (also true). Megan told me to say that Bethany’s twin, Shannon, was a good girl and tried to help her sister. But Bethany blamed her father for her problems, and after she was released from juvenile detention, she changed her name and moved out to California. I recounted the fake details Megan fed me and told Holman they were from an interview I did with Shannon Claremore in which she admitted the existence of Bethany, her twin. She explained that the reason she hadn’t mentioned it before was that it was particularly upsetting to her father, and that his memory of Bethany was starting to fade, which was a blessing.
It had been disturbingly simple to craft a believable story and falsify documents to support that story. After all, my co-workers trusted me. They never suspected for one minute that I was lying the whole damn time—and that kept me awake, wracked with guilt, nearly every night since New Year’s Eve.
Without any evidence of identity theft, Shannon Claremore was no longer a suspect, which meant that Megan Johanning wasn’t either. After building the case brick-by-brick over the course of three weeks, Holman and Kay were on board—and just as disappointed as I was in our failed conclusions.
Of course, there’d been some collateral damage to my personal life. I’d necessarily pulled away from Ash. I could not in good conscience start out a relationship among all these lies. And I knew the only way I could keep my distance from him was to literally keep my distance from him. It had been so hard to suddenly start treating him with indifference, refusing to explain why I didn’t want to hang out anymore. I’m too tired. I can’t tonight. I don’t think so. He stopped by my house one night, mid-January, and demanded to know what was going on with me.
“Just tell me what I did wrong?” When I refused to invite him in, he’d stood outside my front door.
“Nothing. I just need some time to myself.”
“But I don’t understand. Everything seemed to be going so well with us.” To his immense credit, he seemed more confused than angry.
“Don’t make this a bigger deal than it has to be, Ash,” I’d said, coldly.
I fought back tears after he left but reminded myself that the shame and regret I felt was a small price to pay for his safety. After weeks of unreturned calls and texts, he’d sent me a message that he was going back to Texas to get his stuff, and when he came back, he’d leave it up to me whether or not to get in touch.
It’s for the best, I told myself. That had been my constant mantra over the past couple of weeks—every time I thought I’d break, that I couldn’t tell Holman one more lie, or shut Ash out one more time. I knew that at least for right now, the fewer people I was close to, the better. I’d chosen to make a deal with the devil in order to protect the people I loved, and I would accept the consequences of that deal.
But on all those nights that I laid awake unable to sleep lest the nightmares set in, I began to look at things another way. Megan had robbed me of my sense of safety, control, honesty, and optimism. Because of her, I’d not only lost two of the most important men in my life, I’d lost so much of my sense of self. Night after night in the still of the early morning hours, I perseverated over everything that woman had taken from me. And I decided I wasn’t about to walk away from her empty-handed.
CHAPTER 42
It was ten minutes past the meeting time we’d set; Megan was late. I sat on a bench facing the small man-made lake and braced myself against the icy air. I pulled my coat tighter around me as a gust of wind whipped up, sending the detritus of a long, cold winter swirling around my feet. Dead leaves, sticks, and rocks scattered on top of the
muddy ground. Redemption Lake, the newest addition to the Claremore Ministries campus, was not yet officially open. The man-made lake was filled, but the surrounding area was still under construction. A concrete path stretched from the main cathedral all the way down to the lake, where it gently sloped into the water. It would be the ultimate zero-entry baptism experience. Just behind the benches, there was a framed outbuilding that wasn’t quite finished. I guessed that would be where families could gather before the ceremonies, a place to celebrate the renewal of baptism, the beginning of a blessed life.
Everything looked gray and dirty under the winter clouds, and I closed my eyes and imagined what this place would look like with the inevitable rebirth of spring. It would be lovely, no doubt. The finished park would be perfect and beautiful, and no one would remember how ugly it had been before.
I patted Coltrane’s big, furry head as he watched a couple of birds flying high over the lake. I’d brought him with me mostly for moral support, but it didn’t hurt that he was a skilled attack dog. I knew the code word that would turn him from fuzzy companion to trained killer but didn’t expect to have to use it. Today’s meeting was to be a simple business transaction. An eye for an eye, so to speak.
Another seven minutes passed before I saw Megan coming down on the path from the main church. Her power wheelchair was almost completely silent and seemed to be traveling at high speed. Within seconds, she came into focus. Though I’d seen pictures of her online and we’d spoken on the phone more times than I cared to think about, I was startled by her appearance. She had thinning brown hair and large gray eyes the color of wet concrete. She was thinner and younger than I expected, with papery skin that clung to the bones in her face. Her left shoulder caved inward back toward her body, while her right shoulder protruded. Her legs were thin and bowed in at the knees. Despite her physical fragility, she radiated a sense of strength and intimidation. And it wasn’t just that I knew what she was capable of—there was something in her aura, for lack of a better term, that emanated a kind of fortitude that must come from singularity of purpose. Or, perhaps, criminal insanity.