All the Little Liars

  All the adults shook their heads. “But we hardly have as much money as the Harrisons,” George said. “No sane person would take our kids and expect to be paid any big sum.”

  Jessamyn looked from face to face, terrified, and began to cry out loud. The sound was almost unendurable.

  Beth said, “Jessamyn, do not say anything about this, either in person or on social media. Not to your best friend. Not to anyone.” She hugged her daughter to take the sting out of her words.

  “Okay,” Jessamyn said. “But all the people who are looking for my brother and sister … shouldn’t they know about this?”

  Beth thought hard. “I don’t see that it’ll make any difference,” she said finally. “The kids are still missing. But … it would make more sense, wouldn’t it, if all of us had gotten demands? I know the Harrisons are rich, but the rest of us have at least some money, too.”

  None of us knew what to make of Karina’s news. It seemed Lawrenceton had one more missing kid.

  Was this a kidnapping? Or was this a voluntary disappearance? Though I didn’t believe it for a minute, Karina ostensibly thought it possible that Joss, Josh, and Phillip had conspired to kidnap Clayton and hold him for ransom. If I swallowed that, and I really couldn’t, what about Liza? How could she possibly be a part of all this?

  On the other hand, how could three vigorous and active teenagers (possibly four, with Clayton’s being included) and an eleven-year-old girl be abducted? Wouldn’t it take a lot of people to coerce them or force them?

  Phillip was not a brawler, but he was also not one to stand down from a challenge. I might not know Phillip as well as if we’d grown up together, but I knew my brother well enough to be sure I was right about that.

  I left the Finstermeyer house both baffled and depressed. I felt like I’d been in Joss and Jessamyn’s room for a whole day, but in fact it had been only an hour and a half.

  And I felt very queasy.

  On the way home, I had to open the driver’s door at a stop sign and lean out so I could throw up. I was glad no one was behind me, but by that time, it was not a major consideration.

  My father had parked my car right in the middle of the carport, so I had to park on the driveway. I walked to the front door, feeling as though I were a hundred years old.

  Robin, looking unhappy, was sitting at the kitchen counter with my dad. A row of casserole dishes cluttered the table. Friends had brought food. That proved we were in a crisis.

  Dad was writing in a little notebook. Robin looked up as I closed the front door. He said instantly, “Roe, you’re going to lie down.” I didn’t protest, but went to stretch out on the couch. Robin brought me some peanut butter crackers and water. I ate slowly, and drank the water sip by sip. Gradually, I felt better.

  “What did the police tell you?” I asked my father. “You sure were there a long time.”

  “Turned out they wanted to ask me some questions about Phillip,” Dad said. “About him running away. About his mother.” He snorted.

  My father looked angry and uneasy. That wasn’t good. There was something he wasn’t telling us, but at the moment I hardly cared. I wondered if he’d expected the police would give him a rundown on all the information they’d gathered. I felt too despondent to respond to his indignation or to figure out what he was hiding. Robin sat on the floor beside me and took my hand. Poor Robin. I was willing to bet that few couples had so much drama so early in their marriage. He was weathering it well.

  When my father went back to the guest bedroom, Robin said, “What happened at Beth’s?”

  I told him what Jessamyn had said, but I had to hold back a few things. With Dad within eavesdropping distance, I couldn’t tell Robin about the ransom demand for Clayton Harrison. My father would go straight to the police with it, and I wasn’t convinced that was the right thing to do. Karina had seemed so desperate. In my opinion, she genuinely believed Clayton’s life was in peril.

  “And now I have to think about supper,” I said. Drearily.

  “We can go out.”

  “No, we’ve got so much food in the refrigerator. It will be easier to heat it up.”

  After asking if I needed help, Robin told me that he was going into his office for a while to answer e-mails. He’d had enough real drama for a while, I suspected, and needed to refresh himself with some fictional drama. I didn’t blame him.

  I loaded the dishwasher and checked the refrigerator for an evening meal. It seemed ridiculous to think of such a thing when we were all so anxious, but it had to be done. To my huge relief, I found a pan of lasagna crowding the second shelf. And I had lettuce and tomatoes for a salad. And some garlic bread in the freezer? Yes. There, supper was determined. I turned on the oven to preheat.

  Collapsing onto the couch, I felt as if I were a million years old. I dragged myself to my feet after a few minutes to feed Moosie, who rubbed against my legs in a way that said, Notice me! Poor cat. She hadn’t gotten her quota of attention in days.

  My dad popped out of the guest bedroom after ten minutes of peace. He threw himself in the chair across from me. He said, “The police have no idea at all what they’re doing.”

  “Surely you don’t think they’re dragging their feet,” I said, perversely determined to defend the local law enforcement contingent. “You know they want to find Phillip and Josh and Joss and Liza as much as we want to.”

  “No one wants to find Phillip as much as me.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  “You doubt that?” He was incredulous.

  If I hadn’t been so tired, I would have said, “You love Phillip so much you let him walk in on you cheating. You love him so much that you made his mom crazy enough to run away.”

  But I was too tired to say all this, though I thought it. Probably I wasn’t being fair to my father in some way. Dad hadn’t planned Phillip’s unexpected arrival during Dad’s little sex party, I suppose, and Dad hadn’t actually forced his wife to leave.

  “Have you heard from Betty Jo?” I asked, instead. “Can you get in touch with her? Can you tell her about Phillip?”

  “You know she ran off with some man. We don’t exactly talk.”

  “I wonder why she hasn’t let Phillip know where she was, before this?”

  “She just told me to tell him she’d call. She didn’t tell me where she was going,” my father pointed out. “Just like when Phillip lit off. We didn’t know where he was until I heard from you. And now I don’t know where he is, again.”

  I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I didn’t. Instead, I got up to put dinner on the table, and I called Robin to eat. My father washed his hands and took his place at one end. After a long silence, my father decided to make conversation. “So you’re going to have a baby, you and Robin.”

  “Yep,” Robin said.

  “When is it due?”

  We talked about that, and Dad said he’d like to come for the baptism. I gave that the weight it was due. He hadn’t even come to my first wedding.

  I found I was actually hungry. The lasagna was warm and bubbling from the oven, and the salad balanced out the heaviness of the noodles and cheese. My father told us he’d never had lasagna like that. He thought the meat sauce tasted “funny.” Neither Robin nor I responded to this.

  As a long and unpleasant day drew to a close, I felt something close to despair. And I admit there was a little resentment mixed in. The week had started out so happy, with the confirmation of my pregnancy and the excitement of telling my family and Robin’s. We should be discussing bottle vs. breast, and debating whether the nursery would be themed Winnie the Pooh or Jungle Creatures. We should be thinking of where we were going to register—Babies R Us? Target?—since we needed everything. I had a vision of soft baby blankets and diaper bags, plastic rattles and pacifiers.

  I knew how selfish my resentment was, and I didn’t think it meant I loved my brother the less. I was just clinging to my hope, instead of to my despair.

  At least I
got to be alone with Robin after dinner, though it was already late. Dad retired to the guest bedroom without offering to help with the dishes or clearing the table, and in about thirty seconds I heard the little television come on.

  The day had been so emotionally exhausting that I climbed into bed with profound relief, and I was asleep within a few seconds. I didn’t dream about anything more frightening than a bake sale.

  Chapter Nine

  In the morning, Dad reemerged from his room to ask directions to the alley behind Shear Delight where Tammy’s body had been found. I told him the route. I don’t know what he hoped to find, since the police had searched it very thoroughly, but I would love having him out of the house. Besides, he was too fidgety to sit still for long. He borrowed my car again. I reminded him to check the gas level.

  When he’d left, I told Robin everything I hadn’t been able to tell him the day before about Clayton’s abduction. Robin was as baffled as everyone else. How could anyone take so many people hostage?

  It was a puzzle we couldn’t solve. We talked about it while we ate and showered and dressed.

  Every theory we came up with had a snag. The Harrisons said they’d sent Marlea off to her grandmother. But if Clayton had stopped by the field, and Marlea had been there, surely she would have something interesting to tell the investigators? If Clayton had been snatched, his car was missing, too. And what about Connie Bell? What had she seen? Where were the two cars? Why hadn’t they been found? Clayton’s red Trans Am was hardly anonymous.

  “If Connie Bell is gone, too, why haven’t her parents said anything?” Robin said. “They surely wouldn’t let Karina Harrison persuade them to keep it quiet. Not if their child was missing.”

  “I don’t know, and I can’t think of a reason in the world to call her house. I don’t know the Bells at all.”

  “Well, let’s settle that.” Robin looked in the Lawrenceton phone book and tapped a number on his cell phone. It rang. When someone answered, he said, “Hello. This is Robin. May I speak to Connie?”

  In a few seconds he said, “Sorry, I just realized I called the wrong Connie,” and hung up.

  “That was Connie’s mother,” he said. “She called Connie to the phone. Evidently, the girlfriend is fine. But if she was with Clayton, how come she hasn’t told anyone what she knows?”

  “Maybe the Harrisons asked her not to?”

  “If they did, she must know something. Why didn’t they take her to the police? Or even … would the FBI be involved? In a kidnapping?”

  “I think it depends on the age of the child,” I said. “And I’m pretty sure Clayton is almost eighteen, since he’s a senior. Could Phillip be considered kidnapped, rather than vanished? Because we don’t know what happened?”

  “I have no idea. I wish we could kidnap Connie and make her talk,” Robin said morosely. “I wonder what she’s told her family.”

  “If no one knows that Clayton is gone, she wouldn’t have to tell them anything.”

  “True.”

  “She can just sit on her hands and hope everything will be all right.”

  “Would she?” Robin asked incredulously.

  “I don’t know Connie personally, but maybe so. All the kids seem to think that where Clayton went, Connie was with him. She must know something. But as long as she stays silent, it didn’t happen. No one is asking her questions, or angry at her.”

  I brooded over ethics and morality. I balanced Connie’s rights against my desire to see my brother again. And I decided, To hell with her rights. I would have interrogated the girl if I could have thought of a way to do it without getting accused of terrorizing her. I wondered if the Harrisons had paid the ransom yet, and I wondered how much the kidnappers had asked for.

  Late in the morning, the phone rang, and Robin reached out to answer it. “Hello? Oh, hi, Perry.”

  Then he said, “Where?” At the tension in his voice, I sat up, and my heart thumped.

  “We’ll be there.” He hung up. “Perry Allison was listening to his mom’s police scanner. They’ve found Josh’s car.”

  “Where?”

  “Not too far from your last house.”

  Robin meant the Julius house, where I’d lived during my marriage to Martin Bartell. It would never be called the Bartell house; the Julius family had greater claim. They had been killed while they lived there.

  “Let me go to the bathroom, and then we’ll leave,” I said. “Would you call my dad and tell him? He should know.”

  Robin nodded without enthusiasm.

  “I know you’re doing all the heavy lifting with Dad,” I said. “I’m grateful. I realize he’s a pain in the butt. And he seems to be getting worse.”

  “He is,” Robin said, smiling just a little. “At least he lives all the way across the country. I have that to be thankful for.”

  In a few minutes I was bundling up again, and we were on our way in Robin’s car.

  As we took a familiar route, I tried not to think of all the times I’d driven from work to the Julius house during my first marriage. Memories flickered, no longer vivid. I’d loved Martin, I had no doubt about that. And I was sure he’d loved me. I’d sunk into a miasma of grief when he’d died.

  But it was also true that we hadn’t had a trouble-free relationship. Martin had been a man with a lot of secrets.

  I sighed, and put that behind me. The present was painful enough.

  After we passed my former home and went another half mile, we saw all the police cars. We pulled over at a discreet distance, and got out to walk the remaining yards in the bright clear light. The wind blew across the open fields, which stretched over the rolling hills around us. There was a grove of trees in the middle of a field, around a tiny old cemetery; and in that grove I caught a flash of light, glinting off something shiny. Josh’s car. The black Camaro.

  I felt as if I could hear a bell tolling in my head. Robin put his arm around me as my steps faltered.

  We got up to a highway patrol officer, a woman I didn’t know. She said, “You have to stop here. No farther, please.”

  “My brother Phillip is missing,” I said, forcing the words out of my throat, which felt constricted. My eyes burned with unshed tears. “Is there … anyone … in the car?”

  She hesitated. Finally, she said, “There’s no one in the front or back seats. They’re opening the trunk now. Why don’t you go home and let someone call you?”

  There was no way I was going to leave this spot. I glanced up at my husband.

  “Who found it?” Robin asked, taking my cue to stall. We were going to stay until the trunk was opened. I had to know.

  “I did.” Trooper Allen didn’t mind telling us that. “I was returning from an accident site at an intersection two miles north, and I caught the sun bouncing off the hood. When I went to investigate, I recognized the license number. We’ve been looking for it.”

  “Was there anything inside?” I held my breath before she answered.

  She hesitated. Then, out of mercy, Trooper Allen said, “There were just a few spots of blood in the car, if that’s what you’re asking. Nothing significant.”

  I sagged against Robin. I closed my eyes and said a silent prayer. This was beyond terrible. We stepped to the right of Allen so we could see more clearly, though with the car in the grove, and the weeds that had been allowed to choke up the ground, it was hard to tell what was happening.

  “The trunk is opening,” Robin said quietly. “No one’s jumping back or … anything. I think we’re okay.”

  There were both Lawrenceton deputies and highway patrol clustered around the car. “It’s empty,” called one of the uniforms.

  I deflated with relief. “Whose land is this?” I asked Allen, who had turned to look.

  “I don’t know that,” she said, turning back. She looked almost as relieved as I felt.

  Aubrey and Emily ran from their car to join us.

  “It’s empty,” Robin told them instantly.

  Emi
ly collapsed, sobbing, and Aubrey was crying, too. I expected the Finstermeyers to show up any second. But the Harrisons could hardly show an interest, since they were harboring such a great secret. I thought about Tammy’s parents, whom I only knew by sight. They knew where their child was: lying on a cold metal table. Uncertainty was better than that.

  I called my father myself, and told him not to come out to the site. There was nothing to see or discover, at least nothing we’d have access to.

  “Did you see the front of the car?” he demanded.

  “No, it was facing the other way,” I said.

  “See if you can have a look at it.”

  “Why?”

  “To check if there’s anything that indicates that was the car that hit the girl.”

  I felt the cold to my bones. Robin and I began walking back to his car. When we were out of earshot, I told Robin what my father had suggested. Robin was disparaging. “We’re not standing out there in the cold to see if there’s any damage to the front of the car,” he said firmly. “We don’t know how long it’ll take for them to be ready to move it. How would we know what any damage came from? For all we know, the car hit a tree in the grove, or an old headstone.”

  “True.” I was relieved to be talked out of that chore.

  “Home?” he asked, as he maneuvered the car into a U-turn.

  “I want to stop at Shear Delight on the way.”

  “Again? Why?”

  “I need to go inside,” I said. “And I think I’d better go alone.”

  The parking lot of Shear Delight was not crowded. Robin pulled out an Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine to while away his wait in the car. I went in through the front door, and a bell chimed to announce my arrival. A quick glance around told me the place was like almost all the other hair salons in Lawrenceton. Walk-ins were welcome, a sign told me. There was a rack of hair products and one of bright flowered handbags for sale. A little Christmas tree was up in one corner. Carols were playing on the sound system.

  I had almost forgotten about Christmas.

  A middle-aged woman was getting highlights put in her hair by a slim, pretty girl in a smock decorated with poinsettia appliqués. Another hairdresser was sweeping the floor around her station. A woman in her sixties was sitting at the reception desk filing her nails. She looked up inquiringly. “Did you need to make an appointment?” she asked. “With Laurel or Debra?”