Where secrets live, p.20
Where Secrets Live, page 20
“Everything okay?” I asked when I heard his voice.
“Rough day. Got called in last night for a doozy of a case and have been going nonstop since then. How was your day?”
“Fred and I took a drive up the North Shore and had lunch in Two Harbors.” All of which was true, I rationalized.
“Sounds nice. You home now?”
“Just dropped Fred off. I’m on my way.”
“Sleep well. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
I made it home, undressed, put on a T-shirt and lay down on my bed. On the nightstand was the photo album I’d taken from Meredith’s the day after her murder, the one I had tucked under my arm when Tom caught me coming out of her house that morning. I laid it on the bed, thumbing through the pages, feeling my heart break all over again every time I looked into her face.
I fell asleep hugging it to my chest, with the photo album open to the pictures of Meredith, Fred, and me at Valley Fair.
* * *
I picked Fred up at eight the next morning, and we headed out to Meredith’s, hoping Dana would be there with Scott. I’d hesitated calling and telling her we were coming—she always seemed so skittish, and I didn’t want to give her a chance to run again.
Fred knocked on the door to the guesthouse, and Scott opened it immediately.
“Is Dana here?” I asked Scott.
He moved to one side. “Yeah, come on in.”
Scott had on a faded pair of jeans and a white T-shirt, but no shoes. Dana was sitting at the small kitchen table, wearing a long blue T-shirt that hit about mid-thigh, her legs bare, hair still tousled from the night before.
She looked at us, her expression unreadable.
Scott went to get us coffee, and I moved toward Dana. “We need your help,” I said.
She looked suspicious. “What kind of help?”
“We need you to be Meredith for a little while.”
The suspicion turned to curiosity. Fred sat down next to her and explained what we needed and what our plan was.
“Oh my God. I would so do that.”
She was a little too eager to help, and I wondered why. “You do understand that we could all end up in jail if we get caught.” I didn’t know if that was true, but she needed to know the worst that could happen.
She shrugged and smiled. “No prob.”
Scott was more cautious. “You sure, Dane?”
“I want to help,” she said. “I’ve done enough to screw up people’s lives. If I could do something to help, then I really want to try.”
Scott turned to me. “Don’t you have to sign for those things?”
Fred looked at him. “Yeah, I have a couple of things with Meredith’s signature, and maybe Dana could practice on them.”
She laughed. “My specialty. I knew my life of crime would pay off someday.” She reached out her hand, and Fred gave her the papers. “Oh, this should be easy.”
She grabbed a pen and some paper from the kitchen counter and got to work trying to duplicate Meredith’s signature. Half an hour later, she handed me her practice sheet, pleased with her accomplishment. I have to say, she was good. I knew my sister’s handwriting intimately, and even I would have sworn that the signatures I was looking at came from Meredith. Which made me wonder: Was this the first time Dana had copied my sister’s signature?
“What now?” she asked.
“You and I need to go next door and find something of Meredith’s for you to wear to the bank, and I’ll help you with your makeup so you do it the same way she did.”
An hour later, I walked back into Scott’s cottage with a striking younger version of my sister trailing behind me.
“Holy shit,” Fred said when he saw her.
I’d found Meredith’s driver’s license and a picture ID from work, so Dana had verification of her identity. And we decided to have her wear sunglasses and a baseball cap. The makeup helped to hide some of her youthfulness, but anything that drew attention away from her face was an added bonus.
Dana went back to the kitchen table and practiced the signature a few more times.
“Do you really think this is going to work?” Scott asked.
“It’s the only chance we have,” Fred said.
What he didn’t say was that we could also be on a wild goose chase, risking jail time for a safety deposit box that had nothing of importance in it.
Now we had to decide where to start. Meredith’s accounts were at U.S. Bank in St. Paul, a small credit union in West St. Paul not far from Edman’s office, and a local bank in the town of Lake Elmo. U.S. Bank, as Fred had said, probably had more security measures in place, so we decided to leave them for last—hopefully, we wouldn’t have to go that route at all. The bank in Lake Elmo was small and might even have known Meredith on sight if she was a regular, so that was a gamble.
We decided to start with the credit union, hoping no one there knew my sister, and if they did, they wouldn’t connect her with the recent images of her on the news.
Fred drove, with me in the front seat and Scott and Dana in the back. Dana and Fred were psyched, like we were pulling off the biggest bank heist since John Dillinger. Scott was apprehensive as to where we might all end up spending the night if we got caught.
Fred pulled into the small parking lot off South Robert Street and turned off the ignition. Suddenly there was silence in the car when we realized this was it.
“What’s our plan?” Dana asked.
I turned around in the seat to face her. “You and I will go in together. After you sign in, I’ll go with you to the room where you’ll open the box.”
She seemed a little deflated that it sounded so mundane.
“What if this isn’t the right place?” Scott asked. “Isn’t it going to look suspicious that someone doesn’t even know where their safety deposit box is?”
I looked at him. “This is a gamble no matter where we start.”
There were only about six or seven other customers in the credit union. I followed Dana as she walked over to the desk of one of the personal bankers, a young man named Josh Carlson, according to his nameplate.
Dana flashed a smile. Good move. It got Josh’s attention, and from the look on his face, I’m pretty sure he would have handed her the keys to the vault, had she asked.
“I need to get into my safety deposit box,” she said, still smiling.
“Oh.” He sounded disappointed. “You’ll have to talk to Laura, over there at the last desk.”
“Thanks.” The smile never wavered; unfortunately, Josh’s hopes had.
We walked over to Laura’s desk in the far corner of the large open room. She was about fifty and matronly. Again, Dana turned on the charm.
“Hi. I need to get into my safety deposit box, but—well I can’t believe I did this—but I can’t remember the box number,” she told Laura. “My boyfriend filed all our important papers somewhere, and I can’t find them. He’s out of town and I can’t reach him right now.”
Laura smiled back, some motherly instinct kicking in. “I’d be happy to help you. I need to see some ID, and you’ll need to sign in.”
Dana pulled out Meredith’s driver’s license. I wanted to walk away or pretend I didn’t know her. I tried to keep my face expressionless, but my stomach was doing back flips. Drinking and sex were my forte—I wasn’t meant for a life of crime.
Laura put her glasses on and read the name, then looked at Dana, who was still smiling her million-dollar smile. I was waiting for Laura to say, “This isn’t you.”
“Don’t you just hate driver’s license photos?” Dana asked and giggled.
“They’re the worst,” Laura agreed.
Oh fuck! I wanted to get this over with, but Dana was playing it to the hilt.
Laura took the license and typed the name into the computer. This is it, I thought. The jig is up. She furrowed her brow. I was sure Meredith didn’t have a safety deposit box here, and Laura would soon be on the phone with security.
Then she smiled. “Oh yes, here it is. Box one-three-four-four-two. Do you have your key with you?” she asked as she turned and rifled through a small index card file box behind her.
I don’t know if Laura heard the breath whoosh out of me.
Dana handed her the key, and Laura handed Dana a signature card. Dana didn’t even bat an eye as she forged her mother’s name and handed it back to Laura for comparison to the signature they had on file.
Then we were on our way, straight through the middle of the bank and down the wide central staircase to the basement and a locked room. We followed Laura into the room, which had safety deposit boxes covering three walls, where she used Dana’s key and the bank key to open the box. She slid it out of its slot, carried it to the room next door, and placed it on a high table, then stepped out of the room.
“This is fun,” Dana whispered when we were alone.
“Uh-huh. Don’t get any ideas. Once we walk out of here, you’re on the straight and narrow.”
There wasn’t even time to register what I was doing—going through Meredith’s treasured things—as I opened the top of the box to look inside. Right on top was a manila envelope the size of copy paper. I took it and put it in my bag, along with Meredith’s passport and birth certificate. There was a matching manila envelope under the first, with my name on it. I put it in my bag too, wondering why Meredith had marked it specifically for me.
At the bottom of the metal box were our mother’s engagement and wedding rings and a small necklace case. Dana looked at the rings, then opened the case. There was an emerald and pearl necklace with matching earrings that had also belonged to my mother—exquisite, expensive jewelry, but not my taste. A little too gaudy for me, but I remembered my mother sitting at her dressing table, wearing them, looking stunning as she got ready to go out for the night.
Dana picked up one of the earrings and held it in her hand. “These are beautiful.” She touched it gently as if it might dissolve before her eyes.
“Do you want them?” I asked.
She looked at me, her eyes wide and disbelieving. “Are you serious?”
“Yes. You should have them. They belonged to your grandmother, and I think Meredith would want you to have them.”
Tears filled her eyes as she looked down at her hand. “I’ve never had anything like this.” She put the sparkling earring back in its case. “No, you keep them.”
I closed the case and handed it to her. “Dana, I want you to have them. Meredith was the oldest daughter and inherited them when our mother died. You are now the oldest daughter of the next generation, and they should be yours.”
She moved so quickly I didn’t see it coming—her arms went around my neck in a death-grip hug. “Thank you,” she said into my shoulder, then stepped away and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
There was a stack of loose papers in the bottom of the box, secured with a paper clip. I put those in my bag. The box was empty and we closed it up. Dana carried it out to Laura, who locked it securely back in the wall with the others that held the secrets of other people’s lives.
It wasn’t until we were back in the car that I let the tension slide out of my neck and shoulders.
Fred looked at me. “Jackpot,” I said, and he smiled.
We dropped Scott and Dana back at the lake. Dana leaned in through the passenger window and kissed me on the cheek. “Thank you,” she said. “Not just for the necklace and earrings, but for letting me help.”
* * *
Fred and I sat at my kitchen table. I took everything out of my bag that I’d confiscated from Meredith’s safety deposit box, except for the envelope with my name on it.
“You think there’s anything here?” he asked.
“We’ll soon find out.”
I put her passport and birth certificate to the side and removed the paper clip from the stack of papers, handing half to Fred. Then I started looking through the ones I had in my hand. Five slips of paper with only a name, address, and phone number, and what I assumed were the date of birth for these people—hardly worth storing in a safety deposit box.
“What have you got?” I asked Fred. We traded papers. They were the same as mine, just different names, dates, and numbers.
“What’s that all about?” he asked.
“I don’t know. It’s weird.”
“You know any of these people?” he asked.
“Some of the last names look familiar, but not really. What about you?”
He shook his head, and went through each slip of paper again, then handed them to me. “Notice anything similar about them?”
I looked. “No. What do you see?”
“They’re all female.”
“So?”
He shrugged. “Just looking for a pattern, but that’s all I’ve got.”
“I don’t know why she’d lock these up at the bank. I wonder if they were clients of hers.”
“Why keep it in such an inconvenient place? She’d have all that information at work.”
True. So, what was it about these names that was important to Meredith?
I went through the slips of paper again. “I know some Cochrans from church. Meredith went to school with Jane Cochran—she was Jane Goodhue back then—but I don’t know an Amanda.”
Fred took the paper from me. “Maybe their daughter? None of these girls are very old.”
Fred reached for the unmarked manila envelope and started to undo the clasp, when Tom said from the doorway, “Do you know the penalty for tampering with police evidence?”
Fred looked at Tom, then at me, and put the envelope back down on the table. “Hi, Tom. I didn’t hear you come in.”
Tom looked at me. “I just made a trip to the credit union where your sister has an account, with a court order for all the contents of her safety deposit box. And guess what? It was empty.” His look was dark. “Elizabeth, do you want to tell me what the hell is going on?”
“What makes you think I was involved?”
“Well, for starters, the security footage was pretty clear.” He looked at the table, “Is that everything that was in the box?”
“There was some jewelry that belonged to my mother. I gave some of it to Dana.”
He walked over to the table, scooped up the loose pieces of paper and the manila envelope Fred had just put down, along with Meredith’s birth certificate and passport. “And this is all you have?” he asked, looking at me.
I nodded.
He stared at me for a long time, then turned and walked through the living room and out the front door.
Fred finally exhaled. “Is that really everything that was in the box, Lizzie?”
“Most of it.”
“He’s gonna be so pissed when he finds out you lied.”
“Won’t be the first time.”
* * *
Half an hour later, Charlie pulled in next to the curb in front of my building in a big black GMC Envoy. Fred saw him from the living room window and left.
I watched as my cousin climbed into the passenger seat of the SUV and put his hand on the back of the Charlie’s neck. Whatever they had going on between them, I hoped it would go on forever. I wanted Fred to be happy. I wanted someone to be happy, and Fred deserved it as much as anyone.
They were barely halfway down the block when I had an idea. I looked at the clock, grabbed my keys and purse, and stepped out into the heat.
Meredith and I had both attended St. Bartholomew’s High School: nuns, uniforms, corporal punishment, and guilt—the whole nine yards. One of the drudgeries of parochial education was that we started school three weeks before our friends who went to public school. St. Bart’s should just be getting out for the day. I had a hunch and was hoping it would pay off better than my past hunches that seemed to lead nowhere.
The stay-at-home moms queued up in their hybrids down the street for a block and a half. I went around the back, parked behind the school, and loped across the soccer field as the final bell rang. I made it to the front of the building just as a gaggle of adolescents burst through the door. It seemed like the stream of teenagers would never end.
Finally, I spotted a girl lagging behind the others, her backpack clutched to her chest, her head down, straight brown hair hiding her face. She walked down the steps and moved slowly toward the street.
“Amanda,” I called when she was about fifteen feet away from me.
Her head snapped up, and she looked around.
I moved toward her, smiling. She looked so timid I didn’t want to spook her.
Her body tensed as I moved closer. “Who are you?”
I stopped a few feet away, giving her a wide circle of personal space. “I’m Liz McCallister. I think you knew my sister, Meredith.”
She didn’t say a word. She was probably about fifteen, a potentially pretty girl with nice features and big blue eyes, but she was all closed in. Another moody teenager? Or a kid with serious psychological problems? I didn’t know enough about children to even guess.
I took another step toward her. “You knew Meredith, didn’t you?”
She nodded. “Sorry about what happened,” she said and ducked her head again.
I took another step. “Thank you.”
She glanced at me sideways, her eyes scanning the street. “What are you doing here? My mother’s picking me up soon.”
“I know your mother. She went to school with Meredith.”
“I know.”
I looked out at the street, watching for Jane Cochran to drive up. I wanted a few minutes alone with Amanda before her mother appeared, and I had to talk fast. “The reason I’m here”—I moved closer so that I didn’t have to talk above the commotion that surrounded us—“is that I found your name in some of Meredith’s things.”
There was a sharp intake of breath. “What did she say about me?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all. It was just your name, and I recognized it from church, and I wondered why she would have kept it in such a secret place.”
The girl was scanning the street again, probably the first time in the history of the world that a teenager ever wanted her parents to show up. I saw a familiar car. David was behind the wheel, looking at me, his forehead scrunched, wondering what on earth I was doing at the high school. I waved and turned away. If he asked—if anyone asked—what would I say?
“Rough day. Got called in last night for a doozy of a case and have been going nonstop since then. How was your day?”
“Fred and I took a drive up the North Shore and had lunch in Two Harbors.” All of which was true, I rationalized.
“Sounds nice. You home now?”
“Just dropped Fred off. I’m on my way.”
“Sleep well. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
I made it home, undressed, put on a T-shirt and lay down on my bed. On the nightstand was the photo album I’d taken from Meredith’s the day after her murder, the one I had tucked under my arm when Tom caught me coming out of her house that morning. I laid it on the bed, thumbing through the pages, feeling my heart break all over again every time I looked into her face.
I fell asleep hugging it to my chest, with the photo album open to the pictures of Meredith, Fred, and me at Valley Fair.
* * *
I picked Fred up at eight the next morning, and we headed out to Meredith’s, hoping Dana would be there with Scott. I’d hesitated calling and telling her we were coming—she always seemed so skittish, and I didn’t want to give her a chance to run again.
Fred knocked on the door to the guesthouse, and Scott opened it immediately.
“Is Dana here?” I asked Scott.
He moved to one side. “Yeah, come on in.”
Scott had on a faded pair of jeans and a white T-shirt, but no shoes. Dana was sitting at the small kitchen table, wearing a long blue T-shirt that hit about mid-thigh, her legs bare, hair still tousled from the night before.
She looked at us, her expression unreadable.
Scott went to get us coffee, and I moved toward Dana. “We need your help,” I said.
She looked suspicious. “What kind of help?”
“We need you to be Meredith for a little while.”
The suspicion turned to curiosity. Fred sat down next to her and explained what we needed and what our plan was.
“Oh my God. I would so do that.”
She was a little too eager to help, and I wondered why. “You do understand that we could all end up in jail if we get caught.” I didn’t know if that was true, but she needed to know the worst that could happen.
She shrugged and smiled. “No prob.”
Scott was more cautious. “You sure, Dane?”
“I want to help,” she said. “I’ve done enough to screw up people’s lives. If I could do something to help, then I really want to try.”
Scott turned to me. “Don’t you have to sign for those things?”
Fred looked at him. “Yeah, I have a couple of things with Meredith’s signature, and maybe Dana could practice on them.”
She laughed. “My specialty. I knew my life of crime would pay off someday.” She reached out her hand, and Fred gave her the papers. “Oh, this should be easy.”
She grabbed a pen and some paper from the kitchen counter and got to work trying to duplicate Meredith’s signature. Half an hour later, she handed me her practice sheet, pleased with her accomplishment. I have to say, she was good. I knew my sister’s handwriting intimately, and even I would have sworn that the signatures I was looking at came from Meredith. Which made me wonder: Was this the first time Dana had copied my sister’s signature?
“What now?” she asked.
“You and I need to go next door and find something of Meredith’s for you to wear to the bank, and I’ll help you with your makeup so you do it the same way she did.”
An hour later, I walked back into Scott’s cottage with a striking younger version of my sister trailing behind me.
“Holy shit,” Fred said when he saw her.
I’d found Meredith’s driver’s license and a picture ID from work, so Dana had verification of her identity. And we decided to have her wear sunglasses and a baseball cap. The makeup helped to hide some of her youthfulness, but anything that drew attention away from her face was an added bonus.
Dana went back to the kitchen table and practiced the signature a few more times.
“Do you really think this is going to work?” Scott asked.
“It’s the only chance we have,” Fred said.
What he didn’t say was that we could also be on a wild goose chase, risking jail time for a safety deposit box that had nothing of importance in it.
Now we had to decide where to start. Meredith’s accounts were at U.S. Bank in St. Paul, a small credit union in West St. Paul not far from Edman’s office, and a local bank in the town of Lake Elmo. U.S. Bank, as Fred had said, probably had more security measures in place, so we decided to leave them for last—hopefully, we wouldn’t have to go that route at all. The bank in Lake Elmo was small and might even have known Meredith on sight if she was a regular, so that was a gamble.
We decided to start with the credit union, hoping no one there knew my sister, and if they did, they wouldn’t connect her with the recent images of her on the news.
Fred drove, with me in the front seat and Scott and Dana in the back. Dana and Fred were psyched, like we were pulling off the biggest bank heist since John Dillinger. Scott was apprehensive as to where we might all end up spending the night if we got caught.
Fred pulled into the small parking lot off South Robert Street and turned off the ignition. Suddenly there was silence in the car when we realized this was it.
“What’s our plan?” Dana asked.
I turned around in the seat to face her. “You and I will go in together. After you sign in, I’ll go with you to the room where you’ll open the box.”
She seemed a little deflated that it sounded so mundane.
“What if this isn’t the right place?” Scott asked. “Isn’t it going to look suspicious that someone doesn’t even know where their safety deposit box is?”
I looked at him. “This is a gamble no matter where we start.”
There were only about six or seven other customers in the credit union. I followed Dana as she walked over to the desk of one of the personal bankers, a young man named Josh Carlson, according to his nameplate.
Dana flashed a smile. Good move. It got Josh’s attention, and from the look on his face, I’m pretty sure he would have handed her the keys to the vault, had she asked.
“I need to get into my safety deposit box,” she said, still smiling.
“Oh.” He sounded disappointed. “You’ll have to talk to Laura, over there at the last desk.”
“Thanks.” The smile never wavered; unfortunately, Josh’s hopes had.
We walked over to Laura’s desk in the far corner of the large open room. She was about fifty and matronly. Again, Dana turned on the charm.
“Hi. I need to get into my safety deposit box, but—well I can’t believe I did this—but I can’t remember the box number,” she told Laura. “My boyfriend filed all our important papers somewhere, and I can’t find them. He’s out of town and I can’t reach him right now.”
Laura smiled back, some motherly instinct kicking in. “I’d be happy to help you. I need to see some ID, and you’ll need to sign in.”
Dana pulled out Meredith’s driver’s license. I wanted to walk away or pretend I didn’t know her. I tried to keep my face expressionless, but my stomach was doing back flips. Drinking and sex were my forte—I wasn’t meant for a life of crime.
Laura put her glasses on and read the name, then looked at Dana, who was still smiling her million-dollar smile. I was waiting for Laura to say, “This isn’t you.”
“Don’t you just hate driver’s license photos?” Dana asked and giggled.
“They’re the worst,” Laura agreed.
Oh fuck! I wanted to get this over with, but Dana was playing it to the hilt.
Laura took the license and typed the name into the computer. This is it, I thought. The jig is up. She furrowed her brow. I was sure Meredith didn’t have a safety deposit box here, and Laura would soon be on the phone with security.
Then she smiled. “Oh yes, here it is. Box one-three-four-four-two. Do you have your key with you?” she asked as she turned and rifled through a small index card file box behind her.
I don’t know if Laura heard the breath whoosh out of me.
Dana handed her the key, and Laura handed Dana a signature card. Dana didn’t even bat an eye as she forged her mother’s name and handed it back to Laura for comparison to the signature they had on file.
Then we were on our way, straight through the middle of the bank and down the wide central staircase to the basement and a locked room. We followed Laura into the room, which had safety deposit boxes covering three walls, where she used Dana’s key and the bank key to open the box. She slid it out of its slot, carried it to the room next door, and placed it on a high table, then stepped out of the room.
“This is fun,” Dana whispered when we were alone.
“Uh-huh. Don’t get any ideas. Once we walk out of here, you’re on the straight and narrow.”
There wasn’t even time to register what I was doing—going through Meredith’s treasured things—as I opened the top of the box to look inside. Right on top was a manila envelope the size of copy paper. I took it and put it in my bag, along with Meredith’s passport and birth certificate. There was a matching manila envelope under the first, with my name on it. I put it in my bag too, wondering why Meredith had marked it specifically for me.
At the bottom of the metal box were our mother’s engagement and wedding rings and a small necklace case. Dana looked at the rings, then opened the case. There was an emerald and pearl necklace with matching earrings that had also belonged to my mother—exquisite, expensive jewelry, but not my taste. A little too gaudy for me, but I remembered my mother sitting at her dressing table, wearing them, looking stunning as she got ready to go out for the night.
Dana picked up one of the earrings and held it in her hand. “These are beautiful.” She touched it gently as if it might dissolve before her eyes.
“Do you want them?” I asked.
She looked at me, her eyes wide and disbelieving. “Are you serious?”
“Yes. You should have them. They belonged to your grandmother, and I think Meredith would want you to have them.”
Tears filled her eyes as she looked down at her hand. “I’ve never had anything like this.” She put the sparkling earring back in its case. “No, you keep them.”
I closed the case and handed it to her. “Dana, I want you to have them. Meredith was the oldest daughter and inherited them when our mother died. You are now the oldest daughter of the next generation, and they should be yours.”
She moved so quickly I didn’t see it coming—her arms went around my neck in a death-grip hug. “Thank you,” she said into my shoulder, then stepped away and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
There was a stack of loose papers in the bottom of the box, secured with a paper clip. I put those in my bag. The box was empty and we closed it up. Dana carried it out to Laura, who locked it securely back in the wall with the others that held the secrets of other people’s lives.
It wasn’t until we were back in the car that I let the tension slide out of my neck and shoulders.
Fred looked at me. “Jackpot,” I said, and he smiled.
We dropped Scott and Dana back at the lake. Dana leaned in through the passenger window and kissed me on the cheek. “Thank you,” she said. “Not just for the necklace and earrings, but for letting me help.”
* * *
Fred and I sat at my kitchen table. I took everything out of my bag that I’d confiscated from Meredith’s safety deposit box, except for the envelope with my name on it.
“You think there’s anything here?” he asked.
“We’ll soon find out.”
I put her passport and birth certificate to the side and removed the paper clip from the stack of papers, handing half to Fred. Then I started looking through the ones I had in my hand. Five slips of paper with only a name, address, and phone number, and what I assumed were the date of birth for these people—hardly worth storing in a safety deposit box.
“What have you got?” I asked Fred. We traded papers. They were the same as mine, just different names, dates, and numbers.
“What’s that all about?” he asked.
“I don’t know. It’s weird.”
“You know any of these people?” he asked.
“Some of the last names look familiar, but not really. What about you?”
He shook his head, and went through each slip of paper again, then handed them to me. “Notice anything similar about them?”
I looked. “No. What do you see?”
“They’re all female.”
“So?”
He shrugged. “Just looking for a pattern, but that’s all I’ve got.”
“I don’t know why she’d lock these up at the bank. I wonder if they were clients of hers.”
“Why keep it in such an inconvenient place? She’d have all that information at work.”
True. So, what was it about these names that was important to Meredith?
I went through the slips of paper again. “I know some Cochrans from church. Meredith went to school with Jane Cochran—she was Jane Goodhue back then—but I don’t know an Amanda.”
Fred took the paper from me. “Maybe their daughter? None of these girls are very old.”
Fred reached for the unmarked manila envelope and started to undo the clasp, when Tom said from the doorway, “Do you know the penalty for tampering with police evidence?”
Fred looked at Tom, then at me, and put the envelope back down on the table. “Hi, Tom. I didn’t hear you come in.”
Tom looked at me. “I just made a trip to the credit union where your sister has an account, with a court order for all the contents of her safety deposit box. And guess what? It was empty.” His look was dark. “Elizabeth, do you want to tell me what the hell is going on?”
“What makes you think I was involved?”
“Well, for starters, the security footage was pretty clear.” He looked at the table, “Is that everything that was in the box?”
“There was some jewelry that belonged to my mother. I gave some of it to Dana.”
He walked over to the table, scooped up the loose pieces of paper and the manila envelope Fred had just put down, along with Meredith’s birth certificate and passport. “And this is all you have?” he asked, looking at me.
I nodded.
He stared at me for a long time, then turned and walked through the living room and out the front door.
Fred finally exhaled. “Is that really everything that was in the box, Lizzie?”
“Most of it.”
“He’s gonna be so pissed when he finds out you lied.”
“Won’t be the first time.”
* * *
Half an hour later, Charlie pulled in next to the curb in front of my building in a big black GMC Envoy. Fred saw him from the living room window and left.
I watched as my cousin climbed into the passenger seat of the SUV and put his hand on the back of the Charlie’s neck. Whatever they had going on between them, I hoped it would go on forever. I wanted Fred to be happy. I wanted someone to be happy, and Fred deserved it as much as anyone.
They were barely halfway down the block when I had an idea. I looked at the clock, grabbed my keys and purse, and stepped out into the heat.
Meredith and I had both attended St. Bartholomew’s High School: nuns, uniforms, corporal punishment, and guilt—the whole nine yards. One of the drudgeries of parochial education was that we started school three weeks before our friends who went to public school. St. Bart’s should just be getting out for the day. I had a hunch and was hoping it would pay off better than my past hunches that seemed to lead nowhere.
The stay-at-home moms queued up in their hybrids down the street for a block and a half. I went around the back, parked behind the school, and loped across the soccer field as the final bell rang. I made it to the front of the building just as a gaggle of adolescents burst through the door. It seemed like the stream of teenagers would never end.
Finally, I spotted a girl lagging behind the others, her backpack clutched to her chest, her head down, straight brown hair hiding her face. She walked down the steps and moved slowly toward the street.
“Amanda,” I called when she was about fifteen feet away from me.
Her head snapped up, and she looked around.
I moved toward her, smiling. She looked so timid I didn’t want to spook her.
Her body tensed as I moved closer. “Who are you?”
I stopped a few feet away, giving her a wide circle of personal space. “I’m Liz McCallister. I think you knew my sister, Meredith.”
She didn’t say a word. She was probably about fifteen, a potentially pretty girl with nice features and big blue eyes, but she was all closed in. Another moody teenager? Or a kid with serious psychological problems? I didn’t know enough about children to even guess.
I took another step toward her. “You knew Meredith, didn’t you?”
She nodded. “Sorry about what happened,” she said and ducked her head again.
I took another step. “Thank you.”
She glanced at me sideways, her eyes scanning the street. “What are you doing here? My mother’s picking me up soon.”
“I know your mother. She went to school with Meredith.”
“I know.”
I looked out at the street, watching for Jane Cochran to drive up. I wanted a few minutes alone with Amanda before her mother appeared, and I had to talk fast. “The reason I’m here”—I moved closer so that I didn’t have to talk above the commotion that surrounded us—“is that I found your name in some of Meredith’s things.”
There was a sharp intake of breath. “What did she say about me?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all. It was just your name, and I recognized it from church, and I wondered why she would have kept it in such a secret place.”
The girl was scanning the street again, probably the first time in the history of the world that a teenager ever wanted her parents to show up. I saw a familiar car. David was behind the wheel, looking at me, his forehead scrunched, wondering what on earth I was doing at the high school. I waved and turned away. If he asked—if anyone asked—what would I say?
