Seven Minutes in Heaven tlg-6

by Sara Shepard

  The sight of Mrs. Mercer and Laurel crying together was the final straw. She couldn’t do it anymore. It wasn’t fair. The Mercers had a right to know that it was their baby down in the canyon. They had the right to be able to grieve Sutton.

  “I have to tell you something,” she said, her voice sounding flat and distant in her ears.

  “No!” I screamed, trying to somehow get Emma’s attention, make her hear my voice just once. I appreciated her motives, but she wasn’t going to accomplish anything by coming clean now. How did she plan on solving my murder from behind bars?

  “I—” Emma stared out over the parking lot as she spoke, unable to meet their eyes. The sun bounced off the windshields of the cars. From where she sat she could see Sutton’s vintage Volvo, which her sister had restored with Mr. Mercer’s help.

  “What is it, honey?” Mrs. Mercer asked gently. But Emma didn’t answer. She’d just seen something.

  A note was tucked under the Volvo’s windshield wiper.

  A cold calm descended on Emma. She stood up, moving robotically. Her mind was eerily still as she walked to the car and carefully pulled back the wiper to grab the piece of paper. She held it in her hand for a moment, feeling the Mercers’ eyes on her. She knew without looking where it had come from, but if she didn’t open it, if she didn’t see the familiar, blocky handwriting, she could still pretend to herself that the note could be anything. From anyone. A parking ticket, a flyer for a party, a love note. Anything but what it really was.

  But she had to open it. Because the person who had left it was probably still watching.

  She unfolded the note. It was on the same lined notebook paper as the other notes she’d gotten. The handwriting was rigid, the letters carved so deeply into the paper they almost tore through it in a few spots.

  Sutton didn’t do what I told her, and she paid for it. Don’t make the same mistake. Keep up the game, or Nisha won’t be the only person you care about who dies for your sake.

  Her gaze shot up. She looked frantically up and down the rows of cars, trying to see who might have left it. How long had it been there? How had the murderer known so quickly that the body had been found? The parking lot glittered serenely around her. Several rows away, two girls in aviator shades got out of a silver Miata, one sipping a Frappuccino. Then Emma glanced toward the school, and her blood ran cold.

  A boy sat staring out a window, a notebook open on the desk in front of him. His lips were twisted into an ugly, knowing smirk, a look of delighted malice lighting up his eyes. He watched her hungrily, almost eagerly, like he couldn’t wait to see what she’d do next.

  It was Garrett.

  Emma refused to look away. Adrenaline surged through her body, and she held Garrett’s gaze, determined not to reveal how terrified she was.

  “Sutton?”

  Back on the lawn, Mr. Mercer had taken a few uncertain steps toward her. Mrs. Mercer and Laurel watched her with wide eyes from the picnic table. Emma propped herself up against the side of the car.

  “What is that? Are you okay?” Laurel asked, frowning. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  If only, I thought grimly.

  “Flyer. For a car wash,” Emma muttered, shaking her head. “Sorry. I . . . I guess I’m kind of in shock.” She glanced again at Garrett. He had turned back to his notebook and was scribbling something frantically. Then, without glancing at her, he lifted the notebook so she could read what he’d scrawled there.

  Bitch.

  Lined paper, block letters. Scrawled with a savage intensity. Her knees started to tremble. Still staring straight ahead, Garrett put the notebook back down. He didn’t look at her again—but he didn’t have to. She knew he’d already seen everything he needed to see.

  “Let’s get you all home,” Mr. Mercer said, shuffling them into his SUV. As they pulled away from the school, Emma risked a glance back toward the window, but the glare from the late-afternoon sun hid Garrett from view.

  It didn’t matter. I could picture him just as clearly as if he’d been in front of me. Garrett—sweet and affectionate Garrett, my over-eager boyfriend—had another side. An angry side. A temperamental side. And that night in the canyon, a violent side.

  9

  BAD COP, BAD COP

  “I’ll get it,” Emma called into the kitchen, grabbing the money that Mr. Mercer had left on the entryway table. The doorbell rang again. No one had been in the mood to cook dinner, so they had decided to order gourmet pizza from a place called Flying Pie.

  All afternoon she’d been folding and unfolding that note, staring down at the angry scrawl, thinking of the look on Garrett’s face from that window as he watched her. Nisha won’t be the only person you care about who dies for your sake. She read the words over and over. The thought paralyzed her. Everyone, everyone was at risk now—and the killer was a step ahead of her at every turn. She couldn’t make a move without endangering someone she loved.

  Since she got home her phone had been chiming with texts, but she turned it off without even checking it. Mads and Char, Thayer, Ethan—the thought of talking to any of them made her stomach squirm. Especially Ethan. What if the text was intercepted somehow? What if the murderer found out that Ethan knew her secret? Her very first threatening note had said Tell no one.

  “Coming,” she yelled, as the deliveryman knocked. She opened the door. “Thanks for wait—” But the words died in her throat. It wasn’t the pizza guy.

  It was Detective Quinlan.

  He wore a badly fitting brown suit, immaculately clean and pressed, and his shoes shone like he’d just pulled them out of the box. His expression was unreadable behind the soup-strainer mustache that hung over his upper lip. His eyes were the cold gray of granite.

  “Good evening, Miss Mercer,” he said. “I’m very sorry for your loss.”

  Emma gave a jerky nod, fighting to stay calm. She should have expected this—the cops would have questions, and the Mercers were Emma Paxton’s next of kin.

  My sister had to be on her guard. I’d spent the better part of my life trying to outsmart that man, and he wasn’t as dumb as he looked.

  Behind her, footsteps sounded as Mr. Mercer entered the room. “Detective,” he said, coming forward to shake the man’s hand. “I expected you tomorrow.”

  “You folks are on my way home. I thought I’d swing by and see how you’re doing.”

  Mr. Mercer gave a wan smile. “A little shell-shocked, mostly. Come on in.”

  Quinlan’s mustache twitched almost imperceptibly. “Thanks so much.”

  Mr. Mercer led the detective into the kitchen, Emma trailing behind them with her heart pounding in her ears. Mrs. Mercer and Laurel were at the kitchen island laying out plates and napkins for the pizza. They both stopped in their tracks when they saw Quinlan. He gave an apologetic smile. “Sorry to interrupt right at dinnertime. I know it’s been a long day.”

  “Not at all,” Mrs. Mercer said. She put down the pile of plates. “Can I get you something to drink, Detective? I can put on a pot of coffee.”

  “Don’t trouble yourself, Mrs. Mercer.” He glanced around the room, picking up a pineapple-shaped serving dish from the counter and examining it in his hands.

  Emma walked over to stand by Laurel, who gave her a wide-eyed, furtive look. Mrs. Mercer gestured for Quinlan to sit in one of the dining chairs, then took a seat across from him, her husband standing behind her with a hand on her shoulder.

  The detective took a tiny notebook out of his breast pocket and flipped it open. “I’ve been talking to Las Vegas, and here’s what I’ve got so far. Emma Paxton went missing on September first after an argument with her foster family. No one’s heard from her since. Her foster mother reported her missing, but because there were no signs of abduction or foul play, she was assumed to be a runaway. Foster kids take off all the time. Emma was just a few weeks away from turning eighteen, so LVPD figured she’d just gotten a head start on setting out on her own.” He clicked his pen a few tim
es and glanced up at Emma. “What we’re trying to figure out is how she ended up here. Is there anything you can tell me about that, Sutton?”

  Emma took a deep, controlled breath, trying to quell the rising panic in her chest. If they were investigating Emma Paxton, it wouldn’t be long before they checked Sutton’s Facebook account and found out the twins had been in contact. She had to tell them as much truth as she could without giving herself away—or else she’d get caught in a much bigger lie.

  She licked her lips. “Y-yes,” she stammered. “She messaged me on Facebook the night before she disappeared. We made plans to meet in the canyon the next day.”

  Mr. and Mrs. Mercer’s heads both shot around to stare at her. “What?” Mr. Mercer asked, his eyebrows arched up as high as they could go. The color had drained from Mrs. Mercer’s face. Next to her, Laurel gaped soundlessly.

  Emma stared down at her feet—she didn’t trust herself to meet anyone’s eyes. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier,” she said, inventing rapidly. “I wasn’t sure if it was real or not. She never showed up where we agreed to meet, and I assumed it was all some sort of prank.” She thought back to that night—how eager and hopeful she’d been, how excited to finally meet her family. Grief twisted in her chest.

  Laurel snaked her arm reassuringly through Emma’s. “Was that what you were trying to tell us earlier this afternoon, back at school?”

  “Yes,” Emma agreed quickly, grateful for Laurel’s explanation. “I waited for her for hours.”

  Quinlan’s pen scratched quickly across the page, the only sound in the thick silence. Emma looked up at the Mercers, their faces full of sadness and confusion. The gray streak in Mrs. Mercer’s hair seemed to stand out more starkly than usual, her face lined. She looked strangely old.

  “And you didn’t tell anyone about this? Didn’t worry about your sister?” Quinlan said skeptically.

  Emma met Quinlan’s eyes. Inside, her heart was racing, her nerves on fire. But she gazed steadily at the detective for a long moment. “This all happened right after I met my birth mom, Detective Quinlan. Do you know anything about my birth mom?”

  Quinlan glanced at Mr. Mercer. During Becky’s most recent stay in town, she’d been arrested for pulling a knife on a stranger during a psychotic break. Emma was willing to bet it wasn’t her first run-in with the law.

  “Yes,” he said finally. “I know about your mother.”

  Emma could feel her lip trembling, but she held her head steady. Mr. Mercer took a step toward her as if to comfort her, but she didn’t turn her gaze from Quinlan.

  “Becky has problems,” she said. “She skips town any time she gets a little upset. How was I supposed to know Emma wasn’t just like her?” The bitterness in her voice—anger directed at Becky—was genuine. A single tear streaked down her cheek. “And like I said, I wasn’t totally convinced it wasn’t a prank. I didn’t want everyone to see me acting . . . desperate.”

  Mrs. Mercer gave a strangled groan and buried her face in her hands. Mr. Mercer looked torn between comforting his wife and going to his daughter. But before he could move, Laurel spoke.

  “In case you haven’t noticed,” she said curtly, “we’re grieving.”

  A rush of gratitude for my sister filled me.

  Quinlan pursed his lips slightly, jotting something down in his notebook, then flipped back a few pages to look something up. “All right,” he said. “Miss Paxton’s time of death is estimated to be between August thirtieth and September first. Were you in Sabino Canyon between those dates?”

  Laurel gave a little jump, and Emma knew what she was thinking. The thirty-first was the night Thayer and Sutton had been out in the canyon on a date; when Thayer was hit by someone driving Sutton’s car, and Laurel had to come take him to the hospital. But it was Mr. Mercer who answered.

  “Sutton and I were both at Sabino Canyon on August thirty-first.” He glanced at Mrs. Mercer. “We met Becky there. It was a pretty emotional night. Sutton didn’t know about Becky until then.”

  Quinlan turned his steely gaze back on Emma. “Was this before or after you’d found Emma on Facebook?”

  “Just before,” she said. “Becky told me about Emma, and a few hours later I got the message from Emma herself.”

  Quinlan’s hairy eyebrows arched high on his forehead. “That’s quite the coincidence.”

  Emma shrugged, though a thin sheen of sweat had broken out at her temples. “I assumed Becky had gotten in touch with Emma right before she came to see me. After all, Emma is the twin that Becky raised. I’m the one she gave away. The one she didn’t want.” She let her voice waver, then hoped she wasn’t overdoing it. “If she wanted us to finally meet after all these years, it stands to reason that she would go to Emma first.”

  A long and awkward silence followed this speech. Mrs. Mercer was still hiding her face in her hands, weeping silently. Laurel seemed to be examining the brown mosaic tile on the floor. Emma swallowed hard.

  “Okay,” Quinlan said, drawing out the second syllable skeptically. “So can you explain why you walked into the station two days later calling yourself Emma Paxton?”

  The question dropped like a bomb. Mrs. Mercer’s hand flew away from her face as she whipped around to stare at Emma. Next to her, Laurel went rigid. Mr. Mercer blinked at Quinlan.

  “She did what?” he asked, his face sheet-white.

  “Yup. First day of school, Sutton came into the station insisting that she wasn’t Sutton but Emma, and that something terrible had happened to her twin. I blew it off as another prank. Now, though . . .” He shook his head. “Now I’m not so sure.”

  Emma’s collar suddenly felt like it was choking her. She swallowed hard, forcing herself to hold Quinlan’s gaze.

  “Well, yeah,” she said softly. “It was a prank. I’d just found out I had a twin. It wasn’t like I knew anything had happened to her. Like I said, she didn’t show up when we were supposed to meet.” She held his gaze, trying to channel a little of Sutton’s attitude, trying to imagine how Sutton would handle being interrogated when her long-lost sister had just died. “I was mad. Mad at my parents, mad at Becky, mad at Emma for standing me up. I was hoping you’d call me on it. That you’d tell my parents, and then I’d find out if Emma was even real.”

  She looked away from Quinlan to her grandparents. Mrs. Mercer stared miserably at her, her eyes glassy with tears. Mr. Mercer looked stern for a moment, like he might chastise her, but then he looked away as though ashamed.

  “I’m sorry,” Mr. Mercer said, blowing air heavily out through his mouth. “You’re right, Sutton. We should have told you the truth much sooner.”

  Not bad, I thought, oddly proud of Emma’s performance. She did a good angry Sutton Mercer. I must have been rubbing off on her after all.

  A stab of shame shot through Emma’s chest. Now Mr. Mercer thought he was in the wrong, when none of this was his fault. I hope someday you can forgive me, she thought. But all she said was, “It’s not important anymore.”

  Quinlan sat very still in the chair, watching her evenly. He let the silence stretch out a heartbeat too long before speaking again. “I have one more question, and then I’ll get out of your hair for the evening. Sutton, we’ve been looking at Nisha Banerjee’s phone records to try to figure out what may have happened in the hours leading up to her death. It looks like she called you and texted you . . .”—he glanced at his notes—“. . . eight times all together.”

  Emma nodded. She’d been expecting this ever since the funeral. “I was busy and didn’t answer. I tried to call her back later, after tennis, but by the time I called her . . .” She trailed off helplessly.

  The detective raised an eyebrow. “So you have no idea what she was messaging you about?”

  “No. I wish I did.” Emma’s voice broke. “Maybe I could have helped her.” Laurel gave Emma a stricken look and squeezed her arm. “I asked Dr. Banerjee about it, but he didn’t know either.”

  “What does that ha
ve to do with Sutton?” Mr. Mercer asked, frowning at Quinlan. The detective shook his head.

  “Probably nothing,” he said. “But it seemed unusual. Nisha didn’t make a habit of calling anyone that frantically. I’m just trying to make sure we have all the facts.” The detective stood up, closing his notebook and sliding it back into his breast pocket. “Sutton, I really need to see those Facebook messages. We’re trying to come up with a timeline of what happened to Emma, and they’ll help. Can you come by the station on Friday?”

  Emma wanted to ask Quinlan some questions, too—about the state of the body, whether there was any evidence of murder or footprints nearby or anything—but he was already looking at her strangely, and she didn’t want to set off any more alarms in his head. Instead, she just nodded. “Sure. I’ll come after school.”

  Quinlan paused where he stood, looking around at each of them. His gaze lingered longest on Emma. “I should warn you, this is going public tomorrow.”

  “Public?” Emma asked, frowning.

  “There’s a press conference scheduled for eight A.M. I’m guessing the media are going to have a field day with it. You should be prepared for that.”

  Mrs. Mercer rose from her seat. “Can’t we keep this quiet?” she asked pleadingly. “We haven’t even had time to take this in.”

  Quinlan looked sympathetic, but he shook his head. “There’s already a half dozen news helicopters circling over the spot where we found her. I’m afraid the story’s going to hit pretty hard.” He pulled his wallet from his back pocket and removed a business card. “I’ll leave this here. Give me a call if you remember anything else that you think might be of use.”

  “Of course,” Mr. Mercer murmured. “I’ll see you out, Detective Quinlan.”

  The detective followed Emma’s grandfather back to the front door. As they passed her, Quinlan flashed her a sharp look, his eyes glittering brightly. Then he was gone.

  Emma braced herself against the kitchen island, the strength flooding out of her all at once. She’d managed to dodge the truth one more time. But she had a feeling Quinlan wasn’t done with her yet. How much longer would she be able to conceal her identity, now that the cops had found Sutton’s body?