The Last of the Moon Girls

by Barbara Davis

  She scrambled to her feet, careful to avoid Andrew’s eyes, and headed for the front door. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it was so late. I need to get home before Evvie starts worrying.”

  Andrew stood and followed her to the door. “Lizzy . . .”

  She turned, her hand already on the knob.

  “You could never be invisible to me. Not then, and not now.”

  Lizzy nodded, cool and careful as she registered what he was trying to say without actually saying it. “It isn’t about me liking you, Andrew. It never was. But the stakes are higher now. For both of us.”

  TWELVE

  Andrew watched, cursing himself as Lizzy moved down the front walk. What was he thinking? She’d come to him for help, and instead of offering advice, he’d babbled on like some lovesick teenager and run her off.

  Again.

  She’d always been skittish around him. Around everyone, really. Why should things be different now? Could he blame her for keeping her guard up? Eight years might seem like a long time to most, but not in a town like Salem Creek, where minds changed slowly—if at all. Though he supposed she knew that better than he.

  It had taken less than twenty-four hours for things to get ugly after the Amber Alert went out for Heather and Darcy Gilman. By the next morning the town’s whisper mill had sputtered to life, grinding out a series of ridiculous and baseless speculations. In small New England towns where nothing much ever happened, gossip was a favorite pastime, like high school hockey or cornhole contests at the Sunday barbecue. And like good barbecue, the locals lapped it up.

  By the time the girls’ bodies were recovered from the Moons’ pond, the torch-and-pitchfork brigade had begun to clamor for their own brand of justice. After Rhanna’s coffee shop escapade, several churches banded together to organize a midnight vigil—to pray away the evil dwelling in our midst, and see the Lord’s will done.

  Flyers had gone up all over town the day before, in shopwindows and on telephone poles, inviting the faithful to gather and pray for the soul of their God-fearing town. The name Moon wasn’t mentioned that night. There was no need. Everyone understood.

  All three local news channels had covered the event, complete with plenty of B-roll capturing a sea of righteous faces lit by flickering white candles. When the story was picked up by the larger news outlets, a feeding frenzy ensued, and Randall Summers had been forced to issue a statement urging patience while law enforcement did its job—a hedge against the possibility that such talk might be seen as a call to action by those looking to take matters into their own hands.

  Even now, the thought of it made Andrew sick. He’d had every intention of attending that night, prepared to tell every last one of them what they could do with their so-called prayers, but his father had urged him to stay away, explaining that the surest way to fan the flames was to point fingers and pit neighbor against neighbor. He promised that right would win out in the end, that the truth would come to light and the Moons would be left alone. His father hadn’t been wrong about much in his life, but he’d been wrong about that. Salem Creek had never forgiven the Moons. Not for the murders of two young girls, but for the sin of being different.

  The day after the vigil, Rhanna had skipped town—proof of the power of prayer, the candle wavers had claimed. Althea had done the only thing she could: keep her head down and fight to hold the tattered remains of her business together. And Lizzy had retreated to the barn, out of the reach of customers and curiosity seekers. And him.

  He’d hung around after undergrad at UNH, taking postbacc classes and helping his father with the store, inventing one lame excuse after another to put off applying to grad school. Not that he’d actually fooled anyone. Still, he rarely saw her. Unless he manufactured a reason to walk over to the farm, which he’d done with embarrassing regularity. She’d been a riddle he needed to solve back then, the answer to some question he’d yet to fully form. He’d never walked in her shoes—the other in a world that rewarded sameness and conformity. Instead, he’d been president of the student council, a high school all-American, the son of a respected businessman, who graduated with a fistful of scholarships to his name. It was the kind of white-bread existence guys like him tended to take for granted. But Lizzy had lived a very different reality.

  Her family’s history, their choice of livelihood, even the way she looked, was so far from conforming to the norm that she was punished for it. But instead of lashing out, or embracing what made her different, she had withdrawn. And when that didn’t work, she left.

  It was Althea who had broken the news. He’d gone over to the farm on some made-up errand for his father, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. Her car, a battered blue Honda Civic, was gone. It should have been his first clue. She’d stopped going into town by then. He was pretending to check the flue in the parlor fireplace, trying to think of a way to bring Lizzy into the conversation, when Althea finally volunteered the truth. She was gone, off to New York to study fragrance.

  After that, it didn’t take his father long to convince him that it was time to quit moping over a girl who didn’t know he was alive and get himself to graduate school. Eight weeks, maybe ten, and he’d left town, bound for Chicago and the Illinois School of Architecture, vowing that his days of pining for the illusive Lizzy Moon were over.

  Now he was back—and so was she.

  THIRTEEN

  July 23

  Evvie was pulling a pan of lemon–poppy seed muffins from the oven when Lizzy came down the stairs. She straightened, the fragrant steam fogging her glasses. “You’re up early.”

  Lizzy checked the clock above the sink. It was just after six, early even for her, but after a night of jumbled dreams in which Fred Gilman’s face kept morphing into Andrew’s, she was more than ready to be up and moving. “I had a rough night.”

  “That’s what happens when you skip supper. Sit, and I’ll fix you some breakfast.”

  “I didn’t skip supper. I ate with Andrew—sort of. I wanted to talk to him about Fred Gilman.”

  “I wondered where you’d got to, then I dozed off. Next thing I knew it was nearly midnight. How’d the meeting go?”

  Lizzy put the kettle on to heat, then fetched the tea canister from the cupboard. She really did need to get some coffee in the house. “It went just like everyone said it would. I didn’t get past the front door.”

  “And how was supper?”

  Lizzy willed her face to remain blank. She didn’t want to think about last night’s conversation with Andrew. “Supper?”

  “You said you ate with Andrew.”

  “Oh, right. It was just a spur-of-the-moment thing. We had a kind of picnic on the floor. Did you know he’s remodeling? He’s put a new deck on, replaced all the windows, and is redoing the entire kitchen. I actually helped him pick the granite last time I was there.”

  Evvie’s gaze slid to Lizzy’s. “That right?”

  Lizzy was spared a response when the kettle began to shriek. Evvie snapped off the burner. “I’ll do the tea. You go get my paper off the stoop.”

  Lizzy did as she was told and headed for the foyer. A draft of morning air greeted her as she stepped out onto the front steps. The birds were up, warbling in the treetops. She stood there, in the shade of the sprawling ash boughs, relishing the chorus of bright, sweet notes. Chickadees, siskins, pine warblers. Althea had taught her to pick out their songs.

  She was about to bend down for the paper when she spotted something hanging from one of the lower branches. Curious, she left the Chronicle on the step and padded barefoot across the grass to peer up into the tree. Her stomach dropped when she realized what she was looking at—a crude straw doll wearing a black dress and pointy hat, dangling from a length of filthy rope.

  She gave the rope a tug. It came free more easily than she expected, tumbling limply into her arms. She stared at the note pinned to the doll’s throat.

  Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.

  She knew the quote—all
the Moons did—from the book of Exodus.

  A shiver crawled up Lizzy’s spine as she stared at the scrap of white paper. It was heavy and slightly slick, the kind of paper that came on large rolls and was sometimes used by restaurants to cover tables, or by preschool teachers for finger painting. The verse was scrawled in rough red letters, in what looked to be crayon. She peered over her shoulder, scanning the yard, the street, but there was no sign of the culprit. Not that there was likely to be.

  Halloween—Samhain—had been a particular favorite for the local children. Althea had always taken it in stride, even managing to chuckle at some of the more imaginative pranks. She’d found the toilet paper pentagram in the front yard particularly amusing. But that was years ago. Was it starting again? Or was this something else? Something more sinister?

  “I wondered where you’d gotten to.” Evvie stood in the doorway, untying her apron and tossing it over her shoulder. “What’s that you’ve got there?”

  “Nothing,” Lizzy said, shoving the hideous straw doll behind her back. “A prank, probably.”

  Evvie’s eyes narrowed. “Let me see that.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Well then, there’s no need to hide it. Give it here.”

  Lizzy stared at Evvie’s outstretched hand. There’d be no slipping past her, that much was clear. “It’s probably nothing,” she said again, wanting to believe her own words as she handed the doll over. “It used to happen all the time after the murders. One time someone carved a pentagram into the hood of Althea’s car. Another time we found a dead cat on the back stoop. But nothing ever came of it. This was just somebody trying to be cute.”

  Evvie’s jaw hardened as she held up the doll, giving it a shake for emphasis. “This doll is not cute, little girl. This note is not cute.”

  She turned then and headed back into the house, leaving Lizzy on the steps.

  Lizzy sighed, following her inside. “Please don’t make this a bigger deal than it is.”

  “A bigger deal?” Evvie jabbed a finger at the scrawled note. “What do you think this means? Coming the day after you paid that man a visit? I’ll tell you what it means. It means someone isn’t happy about you coming back here and dredging up the past. This wasn’t some young’un from down the street. This was someone grown. Someone dangerous.”

  “Or maybe it’s just someone who wants us to think they’re dangerous.” Lizzy paused for a deep breath, groping for some way to talk Evvie off the ledge—and maybe herself too. “Look, I know how scary this must look—”

  “Do you?” Evvie parked her hands on her hips, eyes flashing. “Because where I come from, we take nooses pretty seriously.”

  Lizzy dropped her head, properly chastened. “Yes, of course you do. But this isn’t that, Evvie. No one’s planning a lynching.”

  “We don’t know what anyone’s planning, and we’re not going to find out. You need to call the police.”

  “Evvie, the last thing I need right now is the police involved in this. At the moment only a handful of people even know I’m back. The minute I pick up the phone and tell them about that note, it’ll be all over town. And there goes any chance I have of getting anyone to talk to me. Please don’t say anything. At least not yet.” She reached for Evvie’s hand, giving it a squeeze. “Please?”

  “Fine.” Evvie pushed the doll back into Lizzy’s hands. “But get rid of it. Like my mama used to say, we don’t need no bad juju hangin’ around. And say what you want, but that right there is some bad juju.”

  Lizzy breathed a sigh of relief as she carried the doll to the mudroom, where she wouldn’t have to look at it again until she decided what to do with it. For now, she was grateful that she’d managed to buy herself some time with Evvie. It was entirely possible that the thing had been intended as a prank. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time. But she wasn’t ready to rule out the possibility that someone—Fred Gilman, perhaps—was behind the hideous straw effigy.

  Lizzy squinted at the power bar on her cell phone. Sixteen percent remaining. She reached for her charger, plugged it in, scrubbed at her eyes, and kept scrolling. Researching old newspaper articles on a three-by-five screen was far from optimal, but given Althea’s distrust of technology—including the internet—she hadn’t seen much point in bringing her laptop.

  She’d hoped something might jump out at her, something everyone had missed eight years ago, that might point her in a new direction, including where Susan Gilman might have gone when she left Salem Creek. But three hours of exhaustive searching had turned up nothing. There’d been no shortage of material, articles sourced from the local paper as well as out-of-state publications, each headline more gruesome than the last: Parents Beg for Safe Return of Missing Daughters. Grisly Scene at Moon Girl Farm. Bodies of Missing Girls Recovered from Local Pond. Double Homicide Rocks Quiet New England Town. Still No Arrest as Gilman Girls Are Laid to Rest.

  But harder to take than the headlines was the endless barrage of photos, grainy black-and-white images carefully placed to tug at readers’ emotions. There was the idyllic family portrait—mother and father in back, daughters in front, dressed in what appeared to be Easter outfits—as well as several shots of the girls when they were older.

  The sisters were strikingly similar in appearance, pretty in the way most girls are pretty in their teens, fresh-faced and free of concern. But there were differences too. Darcy had wide eyes and a winning set of dimples. Heather had the same eyes, but the dimples were missing. Probably because she wasn’t smiling in any of the photos. And there was something else about Heather that was different: a flinty sort of defiance peering back at the camera, in stark contrast to her younger sister’s wide-open gaze.

  There were photos of the parents as well, most of them taken during press conferences or interviews. Susan Gilman looked virtually catatonic in all of them, as if sleepwalking through a nightmare, which she had been. And there was Fred, the grieving father, glaring straight at the camera. He looked washed-out and gaunt, but with the same hard edges she’d seen in him yesterday.

  She studied his face, the pinched lips and flared nostrils, the almost palpable anger staring back at her from the photo. Was it the face of a grieving father, or a man capable of harming his own daughters? Was it possible to be both? And if so, how could she prove it?

  The question continued to nag as Lizzy closed the browser and set her phone aside. She’d spent the entire morning online, with zero to show for her efforts, when she should have been calling Realtors or going through the attic. But both options left her cold. She needed to move her body, to clear her head and work off some energy. Perhaps she’d go back to the wildflower garden for an hour, and do some weeding.

  She was halfway down the stairs when she heard Andrew’s voice, along with Evvie’s, coming from the kitchen. After her abrupt departure last night, she would have preferred to keep some distance between them, but there was no way to get to the mudroom door without passing through the kitchen.

  They stopped talking the minute she entered the room. Not a good sign. Andrew turned to face her, the straw doll clutched in his fist. “Were you planning to mention this?”

  Lizzy’s head swiveled in Evvie’s direction, but she was already holding up her hands, absolving herself before Lizzy could get a word out. “Don’t go laying this at my door. I told you to get rid of it. It’s not my fault he saw it when he came in.”

  “I found it this morning,” Lizzy explained wearily. “In the tree out front. I know it looks bad, but we don’t really know what it means.”

  “Yesterday you paid Fred Gilman a visit. Today you find this. You don’t think the two are related?”

  “I get how it looks, and that the timing is suspicious, but if Fred Gilman wanted to hurt me, he had the perfect opportunity last night when I was standing on his front porch. Can you honestly see him climbing a tree and hanging that thing up in the dark?”

  Andrew blew out a long breath. “You can’t ignore this, Li
zzy. It isn’t like having your car keyed. You need to report it.”

  “I’m not ignoring it. And I will report it—eventually. Though, after what Roger told me about Summers the other day, I don’t trust the police to lift a finger when it comes to the Moons. All I want right now is time to do what I need to do without the police muddying the water. Now, can we please drop it? If anyone needs me, I’ll be in the wildflower garden, pulling weeds.”

  She turned and walked out, leaving Andrew and Evvie to stare after her, knowing full well they’d have plenty to say once she was out of earshot. She didn’t care. Bad juju or not, it was going to take more than a straw doll to scare her off.

  FOURTEEN

  July 26

  Lizzy had to circle the block three times before she finally located a parking space near the ReadiMaxx office. She was far from eager to sit down with “Southern New Hampshire’s Premier Residential Specialist,” but she’d already wasted an entire week. It was time to talk to someone, to get some idea about what to expect given the farm’s run-down condition. Not to mention the stigma of two dead girls turning up in the pond.

  The news wouldn’t be good—she was prepared for that—but at least she’d have some idea about what her options might be. She had some money in savings, but nowhere near enough to pay for the laundry list of repairs Andrew had rattled off. Maybe she could take out a small mortgage. Nothing huge, just enough to pay for the most urgent repairs, and swing the property taxes until the place sold. But what if it didn’t? What if finding a buyer took years rather than months? She’d be risking foreclosure.

  The thought made Lizzy’s stomach churn as she dug in her wallet for coins to feed the meter. A nickel and two pennies were all she came up with. She scanned the businesses along Center Street, looking for somewhere to change a ten-dollar bill. Her choices were slim: the post office, a chiropractic clinic, a flower shop that was apparently closed on Mondays—and the coffee shop.