The Secrets of Lily Graves (12 page)

Or so Sara had led me to believe.

After ringing the doorbell twice and finally giving
it a good hard pounding, Sara's seven-year-old brother, Brandon, came to my rescue.

“Thanks, little dude,” I said, shaking off the water. “It's wet out there.”

Brandon pointed to the pentagram swinging from my neck, his eyes wide.

I swung it around so the symbol was hidden on my back. “It's okay. It's only a special type of star.”

Brandon hardly talked. Speech therapists were puzzled, since his IQ tested off the charts.

I ruffled his soft fro. “You're a tiny Einstein, you know.”

He smiled. That, he did. A lot.

Dr. Ken bounded into the foyer, his big feet in thick white socks. He was a large, bearded man with twinkly eyes and an easy-going personality that probably came in handy as a pediatrician. I'd never see him even slightly peeved.

“Hey there, kiddo. Wet enough for you? Don't forget those boots.”

That was another McMartin rule: no footwear in the house. Sara once explained it was a habit her parents picked up when they were missionaries in Indonesia, where poor sanitation meant deadly germs stuck to the bottom of shoes. I sat on the bench and untied my laces while Dr. Ken sent Brandon upstairs
to watch a Pokémon video.

“We're trying not to let him hear what's on the news,” he whispered, watching his son toddle off. “What happened to Erin is too upsetting. Even for us grownups.”

“It's on the news?” I asked, removing my left boot.

“A press conference just started.” He rubbed his face with both hands. “What Carol and I can't get over is that Erin was raised the way we've tried to raise Sara and Brandon. God was at the center of her life and she was making all the right choices. And still this happened.”

All the right choices
. I slipped off my right boot and thought about that. It seemed wrong that teenage girls had to make all the right choices in order not to be murdered. Did that mean girls who made wrong choices were fair game?

“Let's hope they find whoever did this soon,” I said.

Dr. Ken said, “Amen.”

I followed Sara's father to the great room, where Sara and her mother were hunkered on the couch, riveted to the television. Perfect Bob was at a podium, flanked by Henderson, Zabriskie, and another man in a gray suit who was saying something about no suspects at this time, though he was “confident” of an arrest. So Bob had come clean with the truth. At last.

“How'd it go?” Sara whispered.

“We have to talk.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Bad?”

“I need your criminal expertise.”

“Shh.” Carol put a finger to her lips. “They just asked if she was murdered by someone she knew.”

Perfect Bob stepped forward and gripped the podium. “I can't make that speculation. However, I will say that my department is doing everything in its power to insure that the children of our community are safe and that this will be an isolated, albeit incredibly tragic, incident.”

Sara slid off the couch and we went to the foyer. “What's up?”

“I need you to drive me to Matt's house.”

“Now?”

“I have to ask him about something the cops told me. In person. Come on. I'll explain in the car.”

She opened the closet and got her raincoat. “I'm going to drive Lily home, okay?” she shouted.

“Be back in time for dinner,” Carol called back. “Don't forget, it's Tuesday. Family night.”

Sara rolled her eyes. “Everything is always family this and family that. I'm so sick of it,” she grumbled, yanking open the side door to their heated garage.

There might have been disadvantages to growing up in the McMartin household; not being able to
watch R-rated movies being one such example, the whole shoe paranoia being another. But there were advantages, too, like the sparkling-clean baby-blue late-model Mercedes Carol McMartin let Sara borrow without asking.

“It turns out Matt never had to be tutored in US History,” I said, as we negotiated the serpentine roads of Pinewoods. “He got a B last year.”

Sara gasped. “I knew something was up with that. It didn't make any sense, being able to take a so-called makeup exam three months after he flunked. Sports might rule the school, but not that much.”

How had I been so naïve?

We stopped at the gate and Sara punched in the code: 110505, Brandon's birthday. It had been that for as long as I could remember.

“There's something else,” I said, after the ornate wrought iron gate closed behind us. “Remember my Persephone necklace?”

Sara cranked the windshield wipers on high as we entered the main drag. “The one you lost at the quarry last summer?”

“It's not lost. It's currently in the possession of the Potsdam PD. The cops found it dangling from a branch in the woods behind Erin's house.”

Sara turned to me, her shock highlighted by the
glow of traffic. “How?”

“I don't know. I can't even think.”

“The murderer intentionally put it there, I bet. How sick is that?”

A blinding light crossed the dashboard. “Holy shit!” I cried, reaching over and righting the wheel, narrowly avoiding a head-on collision.

Panicked, Sara slammed on the brakes so hard the guy behind us came to a screeching halt and laid on the horn before passing us with his window down.

“Learn how to drive your daddy's car, you ditz!” he yelled.

I thought Sara was about to burst into tears, she was so shaken. “Pull off up at the McDonald's,” I said, directing her with my hands to the next driveway.

She managed to glide into the parking lot and switch off the car, resting her head against the steering wheel.

“I nearly got us both killed.”

“No, you didn't,” I said, rubbing her back in comforting circles.

“I was just so . . .” She lifted her head. Under the light of the yellow arches there was a red indentation on her brow. “That's got to be it, Lily. It was Matt. He placed the necklace on the branch so the cops would find it and finger you.”

I sank into the leather seat feeling overwhelmed. “It
couldn't have been. You don't know him like I do. He wouldn't hurt a fly.”

“That's what they said about Susan Schmaltz!”

“Who was Susan Schmaltz?”

“Only one of the most notorious black widows in history. She was a nurse who ended up marrying this superwealthy old dude, only she couldn't stand him, just wanted his money. So she found this loser. Um, not that you're a loser . . .”

“Thanks.” I cut to the chase. “And she got him to kill the old man.”

“No! That was the thing.” Sara blew aside a strand of blond hair and swiveled in her seat, the story of Susan Schmaltz having apparently distracted her from our near-death experience. “
She
killed her husband, but she made it look like her lover did by planting tons of bogus circumstantial evidence.”

“How does this relate to Matt?”

“Because what if the cops decide Matt had been planning this since last summer? He calls you up with a BS excuse about needing tutoring. He makes you fall for him. He plants a seed in your mind that Erin was capable of harming herself. He might even have told her that you were working in the graveyard last Saturday so that you two would have a public confrontation.” Sara peered at me earnestly. “Do you see where this is
leading? The detectives might be working on a theory that you went over to Erin's and, with your expertise, made a murder look like a suicide.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Any number of reasons. Revenge, jealousy, maybe wanting to get in Matt's pants.”

I felt myself go hot again. “Oh, come on. That is so out there. Not even the Potsdam PD is stupid enough to buy that story.”

“Maybe yes, maybe no, but I bet that's what Matt wants the cops to believe. It's
Fatal Attraction
comes to Potsdam High.”

My stomach had flared up again. Not enough food and too much of Sara's warped brain. “I could see someone else setting me up, but not Matt. He's not devious.”

“Oh, right. I forgot. The guy who paid you two hundred bucks to study for a makeup exam he never had to take isn't devious.” She made the OK sign with her thumb and forefinger. “Gotcha.”

“He didn't stand to inherit millions of dollars like Susan Smith.”

“Schmaltz. Yeah, but you said yourself that more than anything he wanted to be free, and that would have been impossible with Erin plotting his future every step of the way.” Sara let out a dismissive snort.

I shook my head. “Nope, still doesn't fit. Whoever killed Erin had expertise, like you said. You should have seen the crime scene photos. Those cuts followed both the radial and ulnar arteries so perfectly, a surgeon couldn't have done better. Also, considering the lack of blood, I'm almost certain she was dead before she was cut. That's a lot of complicated steps for a jock like Matt to think through and pull off without a trace.”

Sara stared at the rainwater running down the windshield. “What's your theory, then?”

“I keep going back to the party on the night of the murder. According to the fax I found in Mom's office, a group of girls had been over at Erin's house. Obviously, that was Kate, Allie, and Cheyenne.”

“Obviously,” Sara agreed. “They're inseparable.”

“Kate claimed that I had scratched Erin's face Saturday. I didn't remember doing that and when I prepped her body there weren't any scratches. I even checked the photos and her skin was flawless.”

“Which means?” Sara asked.

“I don't know exactly. That Kate is lying, but why? Also, after Kate, Allie, and Cheyenne left the party, the next-door neighbor walking her dog told police she saw a boy arguing with Erin in her living room.”

Sara slapped the seat. “Again all evidence circles back to Matt.”

“Not necessarily. What about Alex Bone?”

“That guy is way too creepy to hang out with Erin.”

“Really? I saw them hug and kiss in front of the library. They looked pretty darn close to me.”

“Still, Stone Bone hasn't taken a shower in a year. I heard he did acid and literally fried parts of his brain.”

“Opposites do attract.”

“Or, like you said, there's a bigger issue. Something more that we don't know about.” She started up the car. “At least not yet.”

“At least not yet,” I repeated. “Though we'll find out.”

Sara was extra cautious exiting the McDonald's. “If you think I'm going to let the lazy doofuses down at the Potsdam PD railroad you into a murder charge, you have another think coming.”

“And Matt?” I asked, wishing she could give him an inch.

“Him I don't care about. Never have. Never will.” She flashed me an apologetic grin. “I'm sorry, Lil. You might as well stop trying, 'cause it ain't going to happen.”

Matt's house was a modest brick Cape on a postage-stamp yard, but it might as well have been a mobster compound surrounded by armed guards ready to blow me away.

“I can't do this,” I said, gazing at the warm light
streaming from their bay window. “What if his father answers and reads me the riot act?”

“Then ask him why his son lied about the makeup exam. Lily, you deserve an explanation,” Sara said, leaning over and opening the door. “If Matt can't tell the truth then you'll know he's got something to hide.”

Logically, this made sense. That didn't mean I wasn't scared, especially when I summoned the courage to go to the door and a woman who must have been Mrs. Houser answered.

“May I help you?” she asked sweetly. A dishrag was over one shoulder and her graying blond hair was pulled into a ponytail. Otherwise, she was the spitting image of Matt, with his deep brown eyes and wide mouth.

“I'm sorry to disturb you at this hour.” It was dinnertime, and I could smell pot roast and potatoes, probably a daily staple in the home of two football fanatics. “But I wonder if I could talk to Matt?”

Her smile flatlined. “And you are . . . ?”

“Lily Graves. I'm in his class.” I felt my cred withering with each passing moment. “I tutored him last summer?”

“Hold on. I'll see if he's available,” she said, closing the door slightly and leaving me to stand in the pouring rain on the concrete stoop.

Murmuring erupted on the other side of the door, a man's voice low and harsh in an exchange with Mrs. Houser's softer tones. A second later the door swung open and I was staring up the nostrils of one of the largest men I'd ever seen.

“Coach Houser?” I asked. Not one to hang around the athletic department, I couldn't discern one of these middle-aged athletic types from another. “I'm Lily Graves. I came to speak to Matt.”

“I'm afraid I can't let you.”

The arrogance of that statement immediately trumped my apprehension. “You can't
let
me?”

“If what my wife said is correct, you're the girl he was hanging out with this summer. Am I mistaken?”

“Your son hangs out with a lot of girls.”

“Including you.”

“Including me.”

“Then I will politely ask you to leave my premises. My son wants nothing to do with you, and neither do my wife and I.”

My hands balled into fists. It was all I could do not to kick open the door and find Matt myself. “Excuse me, but I have done nothing wrong, Coach Houser. It's your son who owes me an explanation.”

He gestured toward Sara's idling car. “Please go, before I have to call the authorities.”

Seriously? This dude was twice my weight and he needed to call the cops?

I stepped off the front stoop. Sara's words of advice echoed in my ears. “Then you'll have to ask the question for me.”

Coach Houser filled doorway with his block of a body and crossed his giant arms.