Nine Lives: A Lily Dale Mystery (23 page)

Something flickers in his eyes. “I’m sure Max is fine,” he says, but he’s lying. She can feel it. He’s trying to protect her from the truth.

And the truth is . . .

Whoever got to Leona and perhaps to Bonnie, too, could have gotten to Max.

Whoever?

She thinks of Pandora’s scrunchy lying on the floor of the closet and of the secret tunnel buried within.

Max wouldn’t consider Pandora a stranger. He met her this afternoon. She shook his hand.

If she . . .

“I know who it is,” she tells Steve in a rush.

“What are you talking about?”

“Pandora Feeney. She did it. She killed Leona.”

“How do you know that?”

Quickly, she tells him about the tunnel.

They’re not walking anymore. Steve stands listening to her, clutching his keys in his hands.

His keys with the hanging medallion that shows the drama masks.

“But why do you think Leona was murdered?” he asks.

“I . . . I just . . . Please, I have to find my son.”

It’s pouring now. The wet breeze is turning the leaves overhead, and somewhere, she can hear wind chimes.

They’re everywhere in the Dale. But this deep in the woods? There aren’t any houses nearby.

And these chimes aren’t pleasantly melodious. They’re harsh, like the ones in her dream about Leona. They seem to grow louder as she looks at the masks on Steve’s key chain.

“What’s the matter?” Steve glances down at his keychain and then up at Bella. “Why are you staring at my keys?”

“Because I was just . . . thinking we should go.” She edges away from him, one step, and then another, back toward the field.

“What about the boys?”

“I’ll look by the lake. I bet they went to the lake.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because . . . it makes sense, doesn’t it?”

No. Nothing makes sense. Nothing.

Or is it the opposite? Does everything make sense now? A terrible, frightening kind of sense?

He’s a theater buff,
she reminds herself.
That’s why he has the drama masks.

That thought, as it sinks in, only makes it worse. He’s done some stage work. Actors are adept at pretending to be someone they’re not.

“But why the lake? I heard them say they were looking for buried treasure.”

She fights to keep her voice from quavering. “I bet they said
sunken
treasure. That’s what they were—”

“Wait—did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

He stands with his head tilted, listening intently. She holds her breath, listening to the dissonant wind chimes. So he, too, hears them? They’re real and not some kind of . . . ghostly harbinger?

“I thought I heard someone shout ‘Mom.’ It sounded like a child.”

“What? I didn’t hear it!” No, she was too busy listening for things that aren’t there or reading into things that are. “Where did it come from?”

“That way.” He points ahead on the trail, using the hand that’s still holding the car keys.

Again, she looks at the keychain depicting flip sides of human nature.

Is Steve himself wearing a mask? Is he hiding a dark side?

“Come on, let’s go.” He starts to push forward.

If she stands her ground, he’ll be suspicious. Which is fine, if he’s the man he claims to be. But if he isn’t . . .

She starts walking again behind him but reaches into her back pocket, feeling around for her cell phone. Surreptitiously, she takes it out. Just in case . . .

In case you need to call for help?

If Steve Pierson is some kind of criminal, then he’s hardly going to stand by while she dials 9-1-1.

If he’s a criminal, then was he lying about having seen Max and Jiffy? Did he do something to them?

No. No, she can’t even allow herself to think that way. If she does, she’ll . . . she’ll go crazy. Right here and now.

She has to remain rational.

If Steve can be trusted, he’s trying to help her.

If he can’t, he’s trying to lure her deeper into the woods so that he can hurt her.

It’s that simple.

Is this what happened to Bonnie Barrington? And to Leona?

But they were both in the lake.

This has nothing to do with that.

If it weren’t for that keychain of his, she wouldn’t be suspicious of him in the first place, except . . .

Except that she was, she remembers. This morning. When she felt as though his story wasn’t adding up. And when he was so reluctant to call the police.

What if he’d made it all up?

Why would he do that, though?

She trips over a vine stretched across the path and topples forward. Steve turns as she cries out, just in time to see her phone flying out of her hand. It lands on the trail by his shoe. Seeing it, he narrows his eyes just slightly and starts to reach for it.

She grabs it before he can and gets to her feet.

“Are you all right?” he asks as she brushes herself off with shaking hands.

“I am. I’m fine. Sorry.”

Again, he looks at the cell phone.

She thinks quickly. “I was just getting a text. It startled me when it buzzed in my pocket.”

“From whom?”

“What?”

“The text. Who was it from?”

“Oh.” Casually holding it so that he can’t see it, she activates the screen.

There really is a text, but it’s not incoming. It’s the unsent one she’d started typing to Luther.

Sorry to bother you, but I figured out who did it. It’s—

She was going to write Pandora’s name.

“Who sent the text?” Steve asks again, more forcefully.

No actress, she attempts to feign happy surprise. “Max!” The word squeaks out of her mouth. “It says he’s back at the house.”

“He texts you? I thought he can’t even read yet.”

Is he guessing, based on Max’s age? Or does he know it for a fact?

Not wanting to be caught in a lie, she says, “Oh, he can’t. He just . . . he uses voice texting.”

As she speaks, she’s hastily typing
Steve Pierson
into the text she’d meant for Luther, followed by,
I think I’m in danger.

“What are you doing, Bella?”

“I’m just responding to him, letting him know I’m on my way back.” She resorts to shorthand, hoping Luther will be able to decipher it, praying he can even get a text in the first place:
in wds by plygrnd snd hlp pls hrry.

“Let’s see.” Steve stretches out his hand for the phone.

She presses Send and shoves it back into her pocket. “There. All set.”

“Can I see it?”

Ignoring the request, she turns and begins to backtrack along the path. “I really want to get back to the house. He’s alone, and he’s scared.”

“Bella, you didn’t just text your son.”

Trepidation prickles the back of her neck, but she forces herself to keep moving. “Why would you say that?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

Dear God. He knows that Max can’t possibly be texting her because . . . because . . .

She tries to shut out the thought, but it comes at her, smothers her.

If anything has happened to Max . . .

I’ll die.

Not “cross over,” “pass on,” “be called home,” or any of those innocuous-sounding things the locals refer to. Not merely feel as though she’s stopped breathing. No, she actually will stop. She’ll cease to exist.

She. Will.
Die.

Please let him be okay. Please.

“You just told me he can’t read, Bella. So how can you text him?”

“We voice text! I told you!”

Realizing she sounds shrill, she turns to look at him. Something has hardened in his eyes.

She whirls again to face the top of the path.

“No,” he says behind her as she takes a step in that direction. “Stop.”

It isn’t a suggestion. It’s a command.

She ignores it, breaking into a run.

“Stop!”

He’s running, too. Chasing her.

“Help!” she shrieks. “Help me! Someone help me!”

She trips over another vine but manages to stay upright. He hits the same vine but isn’t as lucky, and she hears him fall with a curse. That buys her a little time, but not enough. He’s gaining on her.

“Help me! Please help me!” She screams as though there’s someone, anyone, around to hear.

She hits a patch of moss as slick as an ice skating rink. Her feet skid and arms flail. This time, she can’t keep her balance. She sprawls face down on the path, her foot twisting at an unnatural angle.

He’s right behind her, standing over her.

“Get up.”

She tries to scramble away, clawing at the ground, ignoring the fierce pain in her ankle.

“I said get up!”

She sees it then. Sees his hand.

Sees the gun.

“My son. Did you—”

“Max is fine. Do you think I’m a monster? I have a little girl the same age. I would never hurt a child, Bella. Never.”

Panic is surging, making it difficult to form coherent thoughts, let alone words. “Why—why should I believe you?”

“Because this isn’t about Max.”

“Then what? What is it about?”

“Shut up.
Move.
”

She shuts up and moves.

“Walk.”

“I’m trying.” She tests her weight on her right foot. “My ankle . . . I think it might be broken.”

“Walk anyway.”

She limps, just like . . .

Oh, Odelia. I can’t believe there were moments when I didn’t trust you.

Please watch over Max for me. Please . . .

I wish you could be the one to raise him.

The wayward thought catches her off guard, but it’s utterly right. So right that she’s filled with a deep sense of regret that it won’t possibly happen.

He should have had his parents. It’s not right. It isn’t fair.

Prodded through the forest with a gun in her back, she feels tears mixing with the rain on her face. “Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what? You mean helping you look for your son? This was your idea,” Steve Pierson says. “Don’t you remember? You said he was at the playground looking for treasure in the woods.”

“
You
said that.”

“Did I?” he asks mildly. “I think that anyone who might have overheard our conversation would agree that you were the one who thought the boys might be in the woods. I was being helpful, driving you here and helping you search.”

“You weren’t helping.” Her words are laced with venom, and she doesn’t care. “You were plotting.”

“Oh, I don’t think so. We split up when we got here, of course, to cover more ground. And then I heard you screaming for help. I searched until I found you . . . but it was too late.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’d fallen down a steep slope and hit your head so hard that you’ll never wake up. It will be a terrible accident. Such a shame. Eleanor and I will be so sorry to hear about it, but of course we’ll probably be long gone by the time they find your body. Funny how things work out.”

His matter-of-fact tone is as chilling as the awful things he’s saying—a blow-by-blow recap of something that hasn’t happened yet. But he’s no psychic. He’s a psychopath.

“You made it up,” she says in wonder. “What happened this morning, out on the road—you made it up.”

“You can’t prove that. Nobody can.”

“But why? Why would you do it?”

Her mind is cluttered with puzzle pieces, arranging and rearranging them. As they begin to fall into place, she desperately looks from side to side along the trail, instinctively searching for a path to freedom.

It’s just like last night, on that dark road with Grant. Except this time, her instincts are dead on. And this time, she doesn’t have to worry about making a break for it with her son in tow. This time, it’s only her.

Her ankle is hurting, but it’s not broken. She’s walking on it. She can run on it if she has to.

You can do this. Just look for an opening. Keep walking, keep him talking.

“You were the one I saw in the house that night in the hoodie. You told your wife you’d gone to see
Our Town
at Chautauqua, but you didn’t.”

“Oh? I had the program. Didn’t I show you?”

“Maybe you went just long enough to get that. And then you came back, and you were prowling around the house, looking for something. What was it? Leona’s notebook?”

“Oh, please, that’s useless. I’ve had it ever since—” He breaks off, tellingly.

Since the night Leona died.

The night he killed her.

“There’s nothing of interest in that notebook,” he says. “Even if there was, who could tell? Her handwriting is chicken scratch.”

“You’re the one who’s been coming and going through the tunnel in the closet.”

“Tunnel in the closet?” he echoes, sounding as if he has no idea what she’s talking about.

He’s just playing a role, she reminds herself. She goes on: “You’re the one who went through her papers, and you’ve been looking for her laptop because . . . because . . .”

Why?

Steve stops short, puts a hard hand on her shoulder, and jerks her around to face him. “Do you have it?”

“Why do you want it so badly, Steve? And why did you tear a page from Leona’s appointment book?”

The questions are met with a staccato laugh. “You expect me to tell you that?”

“Oh, come on. What do you have to lose?”

Another laugh, humorless. “I have everything to lose. But I’m not going to. I’ve worked hard all my life to make sure that doesn’t happen. I’m going to get what I deserve. And so are you. Now let’s go.” He nudges her in the back to make her walk again.

The trail narrows ahead, growing steep. But she isn’t going to let him march her to her death. There must be a way out of this.

But there isn’t. There’s only Steve, and woods, and rain, and that gun . . .

Can she get it away from him somehow?

She’d have to catch him by surprise.

Make him think she’s given up, resigned to her fate.

As if.

“You know, I’m not afraid of dying,” she hears herself say as they continue pushing up the narrow trail, branches snapping back against her now, sharp twigs and wet leaves slapping her in the face.

“Yeah. Sure you’re not.”

“I’m not,” she insists. “I mean, it’s just crossing over. Like stepping into the next room. I’ll still be here.”

He snorts. “That’s a load of bull.”

“You really think so?”

“You don’t believe in any of that stuff. I could tell from the moment I met you.”

But something tells her he may not be as certain as he sounds. About her beliefs . . . or about his own?

Both, she realizes, hearing the slightest hint of doubt as he talks on. “No one in their right mind would buy into these parlor tricks. People around here might
know
things, but it’s not because ‘Spirit’ tells them. It’s because they snoop.”

She can’t help but thinks of Pandora Feeney. “Why do you say that?”

“I’ve seen it time and again. No matter how careful you are, they’ll find out your secrets and use them against you.”

A burst of clarity. There it is.

“That’s what happened with Leona, isn’t it? She found out your secrets. So you . . . you killed her and made it look like an accident.”

Just as he said he’s about to do to me.

“She was brushing her hair that night, and the wind was blowing.” Her voice is deceptively steady. “And you sneaked up on her and hit her in the head and made it look like she’d fallen. And then you walked out onto the fishing pier and threw her into the lake.”

“How the hell do you know any of that?”

Her gut churns. So it’s true. “Like you said, we find out your secrets. No matter how careful you are.”