Where secrets live, p.1
Where Secrets Live, page 1
WHERE
SECRETS
LIVE
A NOVEL
S. C. RICHARDS
To Rod and Tim
For their endless supply of love and support, and always for the laughter.
I love you tons.
“The human heart dares not stay away too long from that which hurt it most. There is a return journey to anguish that few of us are released from making.”
—Lillian Smith
CHAPTER
1
SOMETIMES YOU JUST know, long before you’re ready to accept it, that things aren’t going to end well. You just know. I wanted to pretend that nothing was wrong. But even pretending didn’t change what I already knew.
Twenty minutes ago, my cousin, Fred, showed up at my apartment and shook me awake with, “Lizzie, get your ass out of bed. We need to get out to Meredith’s. Something’s wrong.”
And that’s how it started.
Before I could even ask, he was gone, heading down the stairs. His final words before the front door slammed shut were “I’m parked out front.”
Now, sitting in his maroon Jag as he wove in and out of traffic, heading toward the freeway from my apartment in St. Paul, I finally asked, “What’s going on?”
A quick glance at me over the top of his Gucci sunglasses and then his eyes were back on the road. “Did you get any messages from Meredith last night?”
“I don’t know.” I fished my phone out of my purse. There was one call from my sister, I pulled it up and put it on speaker. “Ellie, call me back. It’s important.” Meredith was the only one who called me Ellie. There was a long pause, then, “I need to tell you what’s been going on. I’ve gotten myself in the middle of something and … you need to know. Whatever happens, please don’t hate me. Please.”
Every part of Meredith’s life was ordered—grounded—which made the message particularly disturbing. She was the one stable person in my life, the one I went to when everything was falling apart. So, if she thought she was in the middle of some catastrophe, then she was in the middle of some catastrophe, but I couldn’t even guess what that might be.
Too much alcohol from the night before, my head throbbed in rhythm with the tires on the pavement. “I don’t get it. What’s going on?”
“I don’t know. I got one too. Must have been after she called you.” Fred’s phone was hooked up to Bluetooth. He gave the command to retrieve his voicemail.
Her voice was strained, maybe she’d been crying. “Fred, I need you. Call me back. I can’t reach Ellie. I need you guys. I’m … I need you guys.” There was another long pause. She started to speak, then her voice became quiet. “I’ve got to go.” Before she clicked off, almost as if she was moving the phone away from her face, it sounded like she said, “What are you …” so softly I almost missed it.
“Did you call her back?”
“I didn’t get the message until this morning, but I must have called her ten times since then. Couldn’t get her. Couldn’t get you.”
“What did she say at the end?”
He played it again. This time it was clear. Someone was there with her, but who?
My chest felt tight. A quiet terror settled in the pit of my stomach. Sometimes you just know.
The thirty-minute drive from my apartment to Meredith’s house, east of Lake Elmo, Minnesota, felt like twice that, even though we probably made it in half the time.
I hit Meredith’s number on my phone, willing her to answer. When she didn’t pick up, I hit it again. And again. And again.
Fred finally put his hand on top of mine. “That’s not going to change anything.”
“Should I call the cops?”
“I don’t know.” He nodded his head toward the rural mailbox with the name “McCallister” printed on it. “We’re here now. I guess we should find out first if”—he cleared his throat—“she’s even home.”
A graveled driveway led from the county highway to Meredith’s stretch of land. Fred guided the car through the overgrowth until her three bedroom, one-story, brick house rolled into view.
Her Saab sat protected under the carport. Fred’s Jag came to an abrupt stop behind it. He was the first one to the porch, twisting the doorknob, then pounding on the door when it wouldn’t open. He banged his fist against the green painted wood, yelling for Meredith while I fumbled to find her house key on my key ring. I handed it to him and he stuck it in the lock.
An unearthly stillness wafted toward us and made my skin prickle, Fred reached for my arm. I pushed him away and ran down the long dark hallway, screaming Meredith’s name.
She was facedown on the living room floor, her cell phone inches from her right hand, a cranberry-colored stain soaking the carpet around her. Sometimes you just know.
Fred was two steps behind me. “Oh God!”
When I knelt beside her, he tried to pull me back. “Don’t.”
“Let go! I have to see if she’s all right. I have to help her.”
“Lizzie, don’t. You can’t help her now.”
I looked up at him and we stared at each other. Seconds ticked by. No. He was wrong.
I crumpled on top of her body and put my lips against the side of her face. “Be okay, Meredith. Please. Be okay.” Her skin was cold, a sticky wetness caked against my arms.
Fred put a hand briefly on my shoulder, then moved away. From a great distance it seemed, I could hear him moving around the room, talking, giving directions. But I felt as if I were drowning. I couldn’t breathe.
He came back and grasped my shoulders, pulling me up. It was a dream—no a nightmare—and someone had come to rescue me. He was going to save me. He was going to save my sister. It would be all right.
“We have to go outside,” Fred said.
Okay. I would go outside and then I would wake up.
He took my hand and started to draw me away from her.
I looked into his eyes, and I knew it wasn’t a dream. He was fighting back tears, and there was so little color in his face.
“No. I have to take care of her …”
“Lizzie please don’t make this harder than it already is. You need to come with me.” He took my arm and pulled me toward the glass door that opened onto the patio.
We stepped outside onto the flagstones and waited. Waited for the police to arrive. For the ambulance to come. For the world to stop spinning.
Fred walked over to the low stone wall that separated the patio from the backyard. He sat down and started to cry, his face buried in his hands, his shoulders heaving. That was more than I could do. If I let go now, everything inside me would unravel. I paced the flagstones, tried to breathe—and waited.
I started at a movement at the edge of the woods that bordered Meredith’s property. As I turned, someone took off running into the trees.
“Hey!”
Fred looked up. “What?”
“Did you see someone over there?”
He glanced toward the woods, but the figure was gone. “No.”
Now I wondered if I’d imagined it.
Sirens blared into the front yard just then. Car doors slammed, someone yelled instructions. Fred stood up, wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “Are you coming?”
I shook my head and he went around the side of the house.
Muffled voices filtered through the glass door. I turned and walked down to the lake, thinking of the last time I’d been here, Memorial Day weekend. We’d all come out to the lake for a barbecue, the whole family—a typical American celebration, only without the typical American family. We tried so hard to look the part, but we couldn’t even get that right.
We were the McCallisters. Deep roots. Old money. It had taken generations to perfect our dysfunction, but we’d done it well. Fred, Meredith, and I had been the last of the leaves on the family tree.
And now Meredith was gone, and I didn’t know what I’d do without her. Not that I’d seen much of her lately. It had been two and a half months since I’d been out here. Two and a half months of sidestepping every invitation.
Memorial Day weekend it had been obvious that something was very wrong—something about her was seriously off. I didn’t have a clue what it was, but it scared me. It frightened me to see her like that, but the thought of being pulled in, terrified me even more, because if I found out what was wrong—I just knew I would somehow be involved in something I wasn’t prepared to handle. Whatever it might be.
So, instead of trying to help her, to find out what was going on in my sister’s life, I simply ran away. I didn’t want to know. Once you know a thing, you can never unknow it, and whatever her angst had been, I didn’t think I had it in me to deal with it.
Strange men and drunken blackouts had become my anesthesia over the summer. And now I was just plain tired.
The guilt settled over me like a black shroud, and I couldn’t hold back the tears any longer—but I honestly couldn’t tell if I was crying for Meredith or for me.
CHAPTER
2
“LIZ?”
Tom.
The voice came from behind me and from fifteen years out of my past, but I would recognize it anywhere. Maybe because I was already focused on Meredith.
Tom had been my sister’s first serious boyfriend. He and Meredith, both five years older than me, had dated in high school, broken up, and reconnected in college. They were one of those adorable couples—the kind you see and you hope with everything in you that they’re the ones who make it. That they can beat the odds and st ay together. Unless you’re a jealous little sister. The crush I’d had on him had been intense. And now here I was, sitting at the end of Meredith’s dock, with my feet in the cool water, trying to be anywhere other than where I was at that moment. And he was speaking to me.
I turned. Those steel-blue eyes met mine. “What are you doing here, Tom? I didn’t know you and Meredith still saw each other.”
His look softened. “I’m an agent for the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. I’m here to find out … what happened.”
I don’t know which seemed more out of place—Tom Martens being a detective or the oblique reference to my sister’s death.
I rose slowly. “Then I guess you want to talk to me.”
“I’m so sorry, Liz.” He moved in to hug me.
He wasn’t quite six feet, maybe about four inches taller than I am. Years ago, when he and Meredith were dating, he’d seemed so much taller. But then, I’d been seeing him with my petite sister. Next to her five feet two inches, everyone seemed tall.
After a few seconds, I pulled away from him. I didn’t want the tears to start again.
Tom shook his head. “Who would want to hurt Meredith? She was so …”
“Perfect?” I said, surprised by the sudden resurrection of that old adolescent jealousy.
He smiled. “Yeah. Just about.”
Yes, she was. Perfect and beautiful and kind. This time I couldn’t hold back the tears. Meredith was the best person I’d ever known. She was the best part of me. And now she was gone.
Tom held me while I cried, my head buried in his shoulder. He smelled of Calvin Klein’s Eternity and cinnamon rolls, and I wanted to stay there in his arms forever. I wanted to feel safe.
I finally pulled away from him again. “Are you gonna be okay?” he asked.
I dried my eyes. “I guess. For a while anyway.”
He nodded toward the picnic table in the middle of the grassy lawn, and I followed him over and sat down.
He sat next to me, so close that our knees were touching. “It’s good to see you again, Liz. It’s a damn shame it had to be like this.”
I took a breath. “Look, if you’ve got anything you want to ask me, do it now. I don’t know how long it’s going to be before the waterworks start again.”
He managed a crooked smile. “Sorry. I forgot. The McCallisters have super powers and don’t cry in public like the rest of us.”
I sort of smiled back. My life. The reference, we both knew, was to my stepmother, Ruth, who believed well-bred people didn’t parade their emotions in public. What she had yet to realize was that money did not equate breeding. We had money; breeding was a matter of opinion.
Tom rubbed his hand along his thigh. With the sun on his face, I could see the sporadic strands of gray in his wavy brown hair, the creases at the corners of his eyes. Undeniable reminders of the fifteen years that had slid away.
“So, did you and Meredith still see each other?” That wasn’t the kind of news my sister would have kept to herself.
He shifted his weight on the hard, wooden bench. “Meredith called me out of the blue last spring and wanted to get together for coffee. I hadn’t seen her since college. We met a few times, but that was it.”
“Not a date?”
He smiled. “Not a date. I don’t know why she called. It was good to see her, but …”
“But what?”
“I think maybe she wanted something from me, but it wasn’t clear what she was looking for.”
“And that was it?”
He nodded, then a subtle shift of his eyes told me nostalgia-time was over, and he was now in cop mode. “Did she mention someone she might be having trouble with lately? Boyfriends? Neighbors? Someone from work?”
The question was disturbing. “You think someone she knew did this?”
“There was no forced entry on any of the doors or windows.”
Meredith knew. The phone calls—she knew something was going to happen. But Meredith wasn’t stupid. If she’d known it would turn out like this, she would have left. She would have called the police. Still … she knew something was going to happen. I tried to process that.
Tom repeated his question, “Did she mention anyone she was having trouble with?”
I searched my memory of the past few months. “No. But I don’t think she’d tell me if she was. I don’t know who she’d talk to if she was having trouble like that. Maybe Fred. Maybe no one. You know Meredith; she never really talked about her problems.”
“Oh yeah, right. McCallisters. Super powers. I forgot.” There was the slightest hint of a smile in his eyes. “Was she expecting you out here today?”
“No. She called both Fred and me last night, but neither one of us picked up at the time. She left voicemails for both of us.”
“I’ll need to hear those.”
I went to voicemail, put my phone on speaker, laid it on the picnic table, and walked away. I couldn’t listen to it again. I couldn’t hear her voice. I didn’t want to be reminded that the one time in my life—the one damn time she’d asked for my help—I hadn’t been there for her. And now she was dead.
I walked out to the edge of the dock again, looking out over the water. The lake was small, a dozen acres or so, with maybe eight cottages on it. Just big enough for swimming, fishing for panfish, and canoeing. Across the water, a girl stood watching us, her face half hidden by a baseball cap. I’m sure by now everyone on the lake was well aware that there were squad cars and a commotion at the McCallister house. The girl and I stared at each other.
A few minutes later, Tom moved in behind me. I turned to see my phone in an evidence bag in his hand.
I nodded toward the baggie, “Do I get that back?”
“Eventually. But first it goes to the lab geeks.” An outboard motor revved up across the lake, and he moved in closer. “When did you get her message?”
“This morning, when Fred came to get me.”
“What was going on last night that was so important you couldn’t take your sister’s call?”
For some reason, I felt like he already knew the answer to that. “I was busy.”
He waited.
I looked him in the eye. “Getting drunk. Getting laid. Although, I have no idea in what order.”
He raised an eyebrow but made no comment. “So, you have an alibi?”
“I guess.” Although at the moment, I’d be hard-pressed to come up with a name.
“And Fred? Do you know where he was last night?”
I shrugged. “You’d have to ask him.”
“I did. Just seeing if you could corroborate for him.”
“So that’s how we’re playing this, Tom? Fred’s a suspect? I’m a suspect?”
“To tell you the truth, Liz, right now everyone in the Twin Cities metro area and surrounding counties is a suspect.”
“Okay. I don’t know where Fred was last night. And I’m not too sure about where I was.”
Again, the look with no comment.
Fifty feet from the main house was a small white bungalow. Tom jutted his chin toward the structure. “What’s that?”
“The guest cottage.”
“Anyone live there?”
“I’m not sure. I haven’t been out here all summer.”
He seemed to be getting the hang of this; he didn’t even bother with the unspoken judgment, just nodded.
“Different people stay there.” I looked him in the eye, trying to convince him that I wasn’t totally removed from the details of my sister’s life. “Whoever Meredith thought needed help and a place to stay. I know someone was living there at the end of May, but I never met him.”
Uniformed officers were already heading toward the small boathouse behind the guest cottage.
“How did … how did it happen?” I asked.
He looked at me. “How did she die?”
I nodded.
His eyes met mine. “She was shot at close range.”
I didn’t want to ask the next question. “Was it quick?”
He gazed out across the lake, then back at me. “We won’t know for sure until we get the coroner’s report, but yeah, I think so.”
“Lizzie?” I turned to see Fred standing there. “How much longer are you going to be? There are reporters out front. Someone should tell Ruth what happened before she hears it on the news.”
