Where She Went

by Kelly Simmons

  Also by Kelly Simmons

  One More Day

  The Fifth of July

  The Bird House

  Standing Still

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  Books. Change. Lives.

  Copyright © 2019 by Kelly Simmons

  Cover and internal design © 2019 by Sourcebooks

  Cover design by Kathleen Lynch/BlackKatDesign.com

  Cover image © Ayal Ardon/Arcangel Images

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.

  Published by Sourcebooks Landmark, an imprint of Sourcebooks

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567–4410

  (630) 961-3900

  sourcebooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Simmons, Kelly, author.

  Title: Where she went / Kelly Simmons.

  Description: Naperville, Illinois : Sourcebooks Landmark, [2019]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019000964 | (trade pbk. : alk. paper)

  Subjects: | GSAFD: Suspense fiction. | Mystery fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3619.I5598 W48 2019 | DDC 813/.6--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019000964

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Reading Group Guide

  A Conversation with the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Read on for an excerpt from One More Day

  One

  Two

  Three

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  For my daughters and all their squads.

  One

  Maggie

  As the woman approached the glass door of Maggie O’Farrell’s salon at quarter to six on a humid Saturday night in early November, all Maggie saw was hair. Not her dark clothes, not the rain gloom of her face. No, Maggie saw chestnut curls, so voluminous they appeared to grow sideways out of the woman’s head, the kind of hair you needed to buy a separate seat for on the trolley. Hair like that traumatized women. They were celebrated as infants—“look at those curls!”—then mocked in middle school for not knowing how to straighten them, control them.

  Sometimes Maggie believed she could understand all women’s thoughts and experiences as she massaged shampoo into their scalps. They sat in her chair hour after hour confessing their wrongdoings, spilling their sad histories, but she was seldom surprised. The overarching story Maggie had almost always guessed.

  But on that weekend, her bone-deep exhaustion got in the way. Instead of motive, secret, narrative rising from the stranger, there were coiled, springy strands that would take over an hour to smooth, precisely when she was ready to go home and put her feet up.

  Why hadn’t she turned off her neon Bubbles & Blowouts sign? Maggie had chosen this location on the edge of the Philadelphia suburbs because of its visibility—all glass, set on an extended curve so people could see it, pink and glowing, in every direction. She wanted women to come in off the street and feel welcome. But not ten minutes before closing at the end of the week.

  Maggie’s assistant, Chloe, was putting the last of the empty mini champagne bottles in the recycling. Her blunt bob had been blond last week but was currently strawberry red, and her large, blue eyes scanned the salon constantly, taking in every little thing that needed to be done. A few pink-striped paper straws were scattered on the whitewashed wood floor, bent at unfortunate angles. Chloe picked those up almost the second Maggie noticed them. They reminded Maggie of her daughter Emma’s Barbie dolls, still stored in a box in her crawl space for when she graduated college and had a daughter of her own.

  There was no more chilled champagne for this woman approaching the door. Maggie looked back down at the till, counting twenties, planning to announce this as soon as she stepped inside.

  The door opened with its wind-chimey jingle, but then Maggie heard something equally familiar. A sound she’d heard late at night, ear tipped toward the door, for years. Holster slapping against hip. Nightstick swinging from a chain, squeaky rubber-soled shoes. Not the tip tap of high-heeled girls at all.

  Maggie looked up. Great, she thought, surveying the dark shirt and shiny badge. Huge-haired cop? She’d probably expect a discount, too. Maggie knew the drill. Before her husband, Frank, was killed, he took every advantage being a lieutenant afforded him. They’d laughed about these things, the small flirtations and badge flashing that had resulted in saving the family money. Now? Payback, she thought. Payback.

  “Mrs. O’Farrell?” the cop said.

  Maggie froze. Every hair on her arms stood at attention at the sound of her name. The formality of the Mrs. The gentleness of the punctuation. What a question sounded like when you damn well knew the answer.

  She closed the till slowly, as if she could make time stop. She knew how this would go. When a cop came to your door and said your name, there were only a few seconds before everything changed. And here it was again—the last precious moment, the unknowing.

  Maggie knew the next question was not going to be How much for a blowout? but Are you the mother of Emma O’Farrell?

  She met the woman’s eyes, which were large and long-lashed and might be expressive under other circumstances. Circumstances that didn’t require you to
keep your cool.

  “Ma’am?”

  “Yes.”

  “Detective Carla Frazier. Is your daughter’s name Emma?”

  Behind her, the soft swishing of Chloe’s broom stopped. The clock ticked louder. The last shampoo bubbles popped in the sinks. And Maggie’s heart beat against the cage of her chest like a small, desperate bird.

  “Yes,” she choked out. “Yes.”

  “We were contacted by an officer in the second district, following up on a wellness check?”

  Maggie knew from all the years married to Frank that the second district was the farthest reaches of North Philadelphia. Where Semper University was. Where Emma was, on what the city called a blue scholarship, for the children of officers killed or gravely injured in the line of duty. Not a full ride, because so many officers were killed or hurt nowadays, Maggie supposed they couldn’t afford it, but full tuition and half room and board, and that had been enough to make her grateful. Emma had always planned to go there—a state school was all they could even think about, and Maggie couldn’t bear her being far away in Pittsburgh—but she was facing work-study and loans or possibly a gap year to work and bank some money. And then, suddenly, it all melted away. Semper meant always in Latin. And Emma had pointed out that meant their school slogan—“Once a Semper, always a Semper”—made no sense. Her smart girl. Her witty girl. A child who was wholly deserving of a scholarship.

  The day the mayor announced Emma’s scholarship, on a podium in front of half the police force of Philadelphia, Maggie sat in the front row and wondered if the reporters there would ever print the real story, the reason for this generosity. That Frank had been gunned down in front of his mistress, who was also his newly assigned police partner. So two of Maggie’s deepest fears had come true at once.

  She had found out about his affair not by going through his pockets or finding texts on his phone but by being ambushed in an interrogation room. Could Maggie tell Captain Moriarty about her own whereabouts that day? Had she known where her husband was and what he was doing with a female detective in that car parked in an alley? Had that bullet missed its intended target, the woman next to him?

  She’d had to admit, with tears streaming down her cheeks, that she hadn’t known Frank was having an affair. That she’d had no idea. She had to confess not to being a murderer but to being a goddamned fool. And then the look on Moriarty’s face. That he’d spilled a secret about another cop. That he’d broken the goddamned code. Did he think she wouldn’t notice his guilt?

  That woman, her husband’s partner, would never be called by her actual name in their house. Maggie referred to her as Salt. As in salt in wound.

  “Is she dead?”

  The officer looked around the salon.

  “Is there somewhere we can sit?”

  “Is she dead?”

  “No, but—”

  “Is this your first time?”

  “My first time?”

  “Delivering bad news?”

  “I never said it was bad news.”

  “You asked me to sit down.”

  The woman took a pen and notebook out of her pocket, scribbled something. Maggie wanted to hit her over the head. Taking notes, like that was important right now. How would she feel if Maggie started sweeping?

  “Look, my husband was on the force, so just spit it out. Now.”

  “Your daughter’s friend Sarah—you know her?”

  “Yes, Sarah Franco.”

  Sarah was the only person from Lower Merion High School who also went to Semper University. The girls were good friends but thought it might be a bad idea to room together—after all, college was about meeting other people, expanding your horizons. But that decision had cost them—their dorms were far apart, anchoring the ends of the sprawling campus. Sarah in Graystone, Emma in Hoden House. How they’d groaned when they had gotten their housing assignments. A big campus was always so exciting until you were hungry, late for class, or in need of a friend. But the girls had vowed to meet midquad in their pajamas if they had to, to keep in touch. Emma’s dorm was near Bairstow Stadium, and given the school’s fanaticism over the football team, the Semper Sabres, Sarah said she’d be over there all the time anyway. Maggie had been happy, thinking of the two girls dancing with the sabre-toothed tiger mascot, faces painted yellow. In Maggie’s mind, they looked like something lifted from the college brochure. Still, Maggie was a pragmatist, and yes, a worrier; the sheer number of students, the ring of frat houses, the jogging paths obscured by trees—were there enough blue emergency lights in the world to make up for all that? She had loaded Sarah’s number into her phone, just in case. If she couldn’t reach her daughter; if she didn’t respond to repeated texts or calls, she could call Sarah, and she could run and check on her. Wouldn’t Sarah’s mother want the same safety net? She still remembered the set of Emma’s lips when she’d asked Sarah for her contact info. She was embarrassing her daughter. She was being ridiculous.

  But now this.

  “This afternoon, Sarah contacted Emma’s RA, said she hadn’t answered her texts last night, hadn’t shown up for any of her classes, and her phone went to voicemail all day. She said this was completely out of character.”

  “She had perfect attendance in high school,” Maggie said dumbly. But she was thinking why the hell hadn’t Sarah Franco called her, in addition to the RA?

  “So the RA opened the room and called 911.”

  “What…was in the room?” Maggie said slowly.

  “Ma’am, I really think we should sit down.”

  “What. Was. In. The. Room?”

  The detective’s mouth hung open, like she needed an infusion of air, more breath, to form the words.

  Maggie ripped her apron off, told Chloe to lock up, and ran to the door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to Semper, and you’re driving me there.”

  “Ma’am, this isn’t my jurisdiction. I’m simply—”

  “Don’t ‘ma’am’ me. The first hours are critical, and we’re now a whole day behind.”

  In the car, Maggie clicked on her seat belt. The detective radioed ahead to the second district, asking for campus escort, then pulled out of the parking space and headed east on Montgomery Avenue.

  “Put on your lights. It’ll be faster,” Maggie said, and after a few seconds, the detective reached down and flicked the flashing light bar switch.

  The streets were still wet from the morning’s rain, and the traffic lights and neon signs looked like blurred watercolors as they picked up speed. That, or maybe Maggie’s head was about to explode, and this was what the world looked like right before. A colorful, swirling send-off.

  “I guess you’ve picked up a lot being a cop’s wife,” the detective said as she crossed City Line Avenue, touching the far edge of Philadelphia.

  “No,” Maggie replied, rubbing her temples. “I picked up a lot watching Dateline while my husband slept with his partner.”

  Two

  Emma

  Years before Frank O’Farrell was killed, someone had already taken him away. Even Emma could see her father had been performing a slow vanishing, a marital sleight of hand for years. Once when they’d all gone to the Jersey shore for the day—a rare Saturday that Frank didn’t have paperwork to do or a case to work—Emma and Maggie had sat on a dune, watching Frank walk up and down the beach, and her mother had told her that she thought of marriage as driftwood: constantly reshaped by time, water, wind. But Emma knew driftwood didn’t stay put. It ended up in the bottom of your backpack with a pile of sand. It floated away for someone else to pick up the pieces.

  The morning after her high school graduation party, Emma couldn’t sleep, woke early. In the kitchen, small gifts and envelopes still sat on the island, and balloons waved their bouncy congratulations in the corner. Half of a yellow-and-gray she
et cake—her college colors, but was there anything grosser than gray frosting?—waited on the counter, her name sliced in two. Ma, it said.

  She stopped, surprised to see her father bent over, crouching, rooting in the dishwasher for the silver cake server. Cake and coffee for breakfast, his favorite. But why was he home? He stood up from his crouch, then stared out the window, oblivious to her or even to the coffee maker, singing its last gasp of steam. His eyes were fixed on something—a pattern in the lawn her mother had neatly mowed for the party, a bird settling into the weeping cherry tree. Beauty out there, past the patio with the last of the Solo cups and dewy crepe paper, all the stuff she’d have to clean up, something bright that held his attention. She’d always thought her father’s job kept him separate. A lie to help her believe it wasn’t her fault he stayed away. But that day, two weeks before his death, she saw that it was something else. Even when he was home, his mind and heart were elsewhere.

  And then, just like that, he was actually gone. Her mom started watching crime shows while pretending it wasn’t because she missed him and wanted to stay close to his world. But there was no way for Emma to do the same. What was she going to do—play cops and robbers? Sign up for a criminal justice class?

  She didn’t like thinking about the way he’d died. Didn’t like picturing the crime scene photos or imagining how the witness looked—the female detective with a blood-spattered blue shirt half torn off her body by something that wasn’t a bullet. Blood, sex, guts, drama, blended together with teddy bears and rocking chairs, and all of it, the total, made her father loom larger than ever, like those monuments in Philadelphia parks that were twice life-size. She’d looked at them as a kid, those Yankee soldiers on horseback, and wondered where there were stallions that big, huge as dinosaurs.

  The day before he died, Emma had fallen ill with stomach cramps and vomiting and was taken by ambulance to the hospital. Maggie called Frank three times, five, ten, from behind the thin curtain of the ER. No answer. Finally, she begged Emma to call him from her phone.

  “Maybe he’s not picking up because it’s me,” she’d said. “Maybe he’ll pick up for you?”