“I say that’s a great idea.”
19
Carlie
The next morning, after Cole insisted on driving me back to my mother’s, I found her in her usual place in the family room eating her bowl of oatmeal and watching the morning news.
“Hello, honey.” She didn’t look away from the television.
“Mom, I need to talk to you.” This was a conversation I didn’t want to have, but she needed to know everything I knew. However, having experienced the crushing blow of the truth myself, I knew how much it was going to hurt.
She clicked the television off and set aside her oatmeal. “I already saw it on the news. That poor girl. I remember her from cheerleading. Beth never liked her much. She said she was always bragging about herself. I’ve just been sitting here thinking how strange that they were both murdered.” My mother sounded almost manic. “It’s just a coincidence, right? Thirty years is a long time. Surely they’re not connected.”
“Mom, hang on. I have something to tell you that’s going to be hard to hear, so I need you to be brave, okay?”
Her eyes widened. “You’re scaring me.”
Not wanting to torture her, I didn’t hesitate. “We think the two murders might be connected. I need you to listen carefully, all right?”
Mom tented her hands under her chin. “I will. Please tell me.”
“I found a journal of Beth’s when I was cleaning out her closet. A hidden journal under the bookshelf. It’s written the spring and summer before she died.”
Her eyes widened as she brought a shaking hand to her mouth and spoke with her knuckles pressed into her upper lip. “Does it tell us anything?”
“Quite a bit. She was seeing someone other than Luke. She was sleeping with him.” I blushed, mortified to have to tell her that her teenage daughter had been having sex.
“Sleeping?”
“Sex.”
“No. Can’t be.” She shook her head so violently that I was afraid she’d give herself whiplash.
“The journal’s full of entries about him. She thought she was in love with him.”
“Who? Who is it?”
“She never said his name—just called him Z.”
“You’re thinking he could be her killer?” She reached for my hand. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“It’s a possibility.”
“But why would he do such a thing?” She made a guttural noise in the back of her throat. “Do you think he was one of those controlling types who couldn’t bear her to be with someone else and killed her because she wanted to break up? I’ve seen those on the news.”
“I don’t think that was it.” I let out a long breath before telling her the next part. “She was pregnant.”
She froze and stared at me. “What?”
“The last entry says she’s going to tell Z first and then you and Dad. She wanted to go to Aunt Sally’s and have the baby, then give it up for adoption.”
“Pregnant?” A sob like a wounded animal rose from my mother’s chest. She covered her mouth with her hands as if to keep from screaming. “Wait, no. That’s impossible. The autopsy would have shown that.”
I flinched as if she’d smacked me across the face. That had never occurred to me. “You’re right. Why didn’t Dr. Lancaster find that?”
Cole said Moonstone thought there was a possible cover-up. No newspaper articles about the case at the library archives. The town doctor, newspaper, and sheriff. Brothers? In on it together. But they’d been in their forties and fifties back then. Surely Beth hadn’t been sleeping with one of them? I thought I might be sick, but I pushed through.
“Mom, think about it for a second. The Lancaster brothers ran this town back then.”
“Are you saying they were in it together?” Mom asked. “But why?”
“We think the man she referred to in the journal as Z was older and probably married.”
“No, Carlie. No. They were like old men back then. She couldn’t have possibly been involved with one of them.”
“There’s evidence that she’s involved with a married man in the journal,” I said. “We could be wrong, but I don’t think so. But Moonstone thinks the man was in his twenties.”
“Who’s Moonstone?”
“A psychic.” Just then, as if I’d conjured her, my phone rang. I glanced down to see that it was Moonstone. “I’m sorry, Mom, but I have to get this.”
She waved a hand in my direction as she continued to stare out the window with a faraway look in her eyes.
I went out to the patio to talk without my mother being able to hear. “What’s up?” I asked.
“I had another vision. From what I can tell, the man was a prominent citizen and I kept getting the words: ‘There were others.’”
“Others? What does that mean?”
“I’m assuming that whoever this guy was, he was sleeping with more than just Beth.”
“Thea, for one.”
“Right. Be brave,” Moonstone said. “You’re going to figure this out and finally get you and your mother some closure.”
I returned to my mother. She was sitting in the same spot I’d left her. “Carlie, I think I know who Z is.”
“You do?”
“Z is Thom Richards. The three men were his uncles. That’s what they have in common. A man in his twenties. Thom Richards was in his early twenties back then. Handsome and muscular. Someone Beth would have fallen for if he’d seduced her.”
I went hot, then cold, before I stumbled over to the couch. I tried the theory out by saying it out loud. “Thom Richards killed Beth when she told him she was pregnant. Then his uncles covered it up.” A prominent citizen.
“It makes sense,” Mom said, sounding remarkably calm suddenly. “Town hero sleeping with a high school student. He was a teacher. If anyone had found out, he would have lost everything. All hopes for a political future, perhaps even been cut off from his family.”
I sank onto the couch. My stomach and head churned as I thought through this idea. Most of the girls
