Lies Like Poison

by Chelsea Pitcher

  Assault or be assaulted.

  Kill or be killed.

  There had to be another way. There had to be another choice, Belle thought, lifting the grate from the floor. Then she was lying on the ground, sliding her arm into the vent. Her fingers met with dirt and dust bunnies. There was no evidence here. No hidden secret. No proof.

  She pulled her arm out of the darkness, frowning at the layer of filth coating her skin. In her pocket, her phone was chiming, warning her that Edwin would be heading back from his engagement soon. And out in the driveway, she heard a car pulling up.

  She needed to run.

  Still, she hesitated. If she left now, both Raven and Lily would be at the mercy of Evelyn’s cruelty. She had to find something. She had to try. And so, in spite of the dread unfolding in her stomach, she lay back on the hardwood floor, lowering her phone into the vent.

  Light cut through the darkness.

  She saw the things she’d felt before: grime and dirt and dust. A long, narrow channel, which would eventually lead to Raven’s bedroom. But there in the distance, farther than her fingers had been able to reach, she saw a little rectangle, coated in gray and nearly hidden in the dark. It could’ve been a piece of garbage that had fallen into the vent years ago.

  Or it could be the answer to all her questions.

  Belle pushed to her feet, her eyes scanning the space. Through the crack in Evelyn’s closet, she could see a hint of white, cascading fabric. She darted across the room. It took a couple of seconds to hurl open the closet doors, and a couple more to yank a white satin dress from its hanger. The dress billowed to the floor as the front door opened.

  Belle froze, the wire hanger in her hand. She could hear someone closing the front door, and a moment later, she heard heels clacking on the stairs. Evelyn was home. Evelyn was coming upstairs. Frantically, Belle unwound the hanger, creeping across the room. She knelt in front of the vent. Guided the hanger inside.

  Evelyn’s heels hit the second-floor landing.

  It took a moment to hook the end of the hanger around the rectangular object, and then Belle was guiding it toward the opening in the vent. She almost had it. But Evelyn had reached the third floor now, and when Belle’s head jerked toward the sound, the hanger clattered into the vent.

  She cursed under her breath. The smart thing to do would be to get the hell out of there and come back another time. She and Raven could investigate together. They could solve the mystery of Evelyn’s deception without incurring her wrath.

  Belle placed the lid over the vent. There wasn’t time to replace the screws, so she nudged them under the bed. Just as Evelyn’s hand twisted the doorknob, she bolted toward the window, knocking into a bedside table in the process. A bottle of pills toppled to the ground. There wasn’t time to retrieve them. Belle climbed over the windowsill, channeling her old friend Jack, and used the vines to guide her body toward the ground.

  “Later that night, Evelyn was dead,” Belle whispered now, in the quiet of Raven’s living room. “And the police never mentioned the vent, so I figured they didn’t find anything down there.”

  “Or they were saving it for the trial,” Jack muttered.

  Lily shook her head. “That isn’t what happened,” she said, her eyes finding Raven’s. “I searched your room after my dad’s file went missing. I searched your dad’s room too. In his bedside table, next to his bottle of sleeping pills, I found a tiny tape recorder. But it was empty, so I didn’t think anything of it.”

  “That doesn’t prove that he…” Raven swallowed, pushing to his feet. “The police could’ve found the tape recorder in Evelyn’s bedside table. Everything got shuffled around while they were here. They could’ve put it back in the wrong one.”

  “There’s more.” Belle dug around in her purse. When she revealed the stack of letters she’d stolen, Jack reached for them first, knocking half the pile to the ground. Belle crouched down, pulling out the letter she’d shown to Lily earlier that night. “Tonight, I snuck over to your orchard,” she quoted, looking at Jack. “I thought I caught a glimpse of your curls and it startled me so badly, I almost fell out of the branches. But it wasn’t you. It was—”

  “Your dad.” Jack’s mouth dropped open, and he glared at Belle. “You stole the letters.”

  “Yes, and you can hate me for that tomorrow. But tonight you have to think about what you saw in Raven’s orchard. Dr. Holloway was up in the trees, and he was wearing gloves. He was pruning the branches. If he found the Recipe for the Perfect Murder in a tree hollow—”

  “No,” Raven broke in, voice shaking. Hands shaking too.

  “He would’ve already known how to poison Evelyn. He just wouldn’t have known why, until he found the loose vent the day I snuck over to your house.” Belle reached for Raven’s hands, but he jerked away from her.

  “No. He would never—”

  “He must’ve found the tape recorder,” Jack said, “and recognized your mom’s voice. He must’ve realized you’d been telling the truth about hearing her in the middle of the night.”

  “Do you realize how ridiculous this sounds?” Raven clutched his head in his hands, taking a step backward. He looked like a fawn that had been cornered in the forest. Shaky limbs. Glittering eyes. “Lily’s dad killed my mom in cold blood, and then he came back here to keep Evelyn from taking Lily away. We know he’s a killer.”

  “My dad was home that entire night,” Lily said. “And he never knew anything about the recipe I’d hidden in the orchard. I didn’t tell anyone where it was, not even Belle. The only person who could’ve found it was your dad. Then, three days ago, it was sitting on your kitchen table, and my mother was lying on the floor beside it. Whoever killed her had to have planted it there.”

  “This isn’t true. This isn’t real.” Raven leaned against the wall, taking long, slow breaths. “I lost my mom. I lost all of you for three years. Please don’t take away my dad.”

  “He let me get arrested,” Belle snarled. “He would’ve let me rot for years—”

  Jack held up a hand. Cautiously, he stepped forward, cupping Raven’s face. At first Raven flinched, but then he leaned into Jack’s touch, letting himself be cradled. Letting himself be held. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want,” Jack whispered, forehead touching Raven’s. “We won’t take your family away from you. Whatever happens, you get to choose—”

  “You’re my family.” Raven’s head snapped up. His voice was calmer than before, though his legs still trembled. “You’ve always been my family. And I think… I need to know the truth.”

  Jack nodded, wrapping an arm around Raven’s shoulders. “We’ll confront him together. Maybe we’re wrong, and there’s an explanation for—”

  “No.” Raven strode toward the door, and the others followed. The hallway was dark, but there was a hint of shuffling coming from the study next door. Raven’s father was awake. As Raven turned to face the three of them, a terrible feeling blossomed in Belle’s stomach. A feeling of warning. A feeling of loss. “I have to do this alone,” Raven said.

  Then he was gone.

  27

  The King of the Castle

  Raven’s father was sitting in the study, drinking whiskey in the dark. Three fingers, no fat. Raven smiled at the thought, remembering the first time he’d heard his father order whiskey at a party. Raven had spent the rest of the evening joking about sipping giggle juice and feeling three sheets to the wind.

  He’d been five.

  He was seventeen now, and that meant, in the eyes of the state, he was almost a man. When he entered the study, his father rose from his desk and walked over to the bottle of whiskey on a corner table. Poured Raven a drink. A moment later, Raven was holding the glass in his hand, swirling the liquid around nervously.

  When his father sat, he did the same. They stared at each other across the wide expanse of the desk. Dr. Holloway’s office had been stolen from an era where assistants were called secretaries and sexual harassment la
w hadn’t been invented. The chairs were leather. The desk, a dark mahogany wood. As Raven leaned forward, his elbows resting on the edge of the desk, he asked himself how well he really knew the man in front of him.

  His mother had made him omelets. His mother had taught him how to swim. But his father had always been there, hovering in the background, offering encouragement when he wasn’t working at the hospital. He’d supported his family, and he’d helped plant a garden in Jack’s backyard. He couldn’t have done what Raven suspected.

  “How’s the sleepover?” Dr. Holloway asked, taking a sip of his drink. Raven did the same. Even now, he couldn’t help but want his father’s approval. His love. “I don’t think I’ve had a good night’s sleep in the past four years.”

  Sleep deprivation, Raven thought, taking another sip. That could explain some things. It could explain a lot. Prisoners of war were kept awake for days on end because their captors believed the lack of sleep would break them.

  More often than not, it did.

  “I couldn’t sleep after Mom died.” The whiskey burned in Raven’s throat. His eyes stung, and he told himself it was because he wasn’t used to drinking alcohol. He wasn’t about to break down. “I couldn’t sleep and I couldn’t eat, and you sent me away instead of helping me.”

  “I didn’t know how to help you,” his father said quickly. His throat sounded like it was constricting too. “I thought I was doing the right thing.”

  “Do you feel that way now?”

  A pause, as Dr. Holloway swirled his drink around. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes. But everything’s going to be different now.” He reached out, clutching Raven’s arm across the desk. His grip was fierce, his gaze desperate.

  Raven’s heart cracked. “I don’t want to be mad at you,” he confessed, sliding his arm out of his father’s grip. “I know what losing Mom did to you. You lost yourself, and every time you heard me laugh—”

  “I will never leave you again. You and I are family, and no one’s going to take you away from me.”

  “No one’s trying to take me away from you,” Raven answered, and it was the truth. At least for the moment. But maybe his father knew what was coming, because he downed the rest of his drink in one gulp. “Why don’t we go and visit your mother tonight?”

  “What?” The room swayed a little. Raven thought it was the oddness of his father’s suggestion, but something was rising in his stomach. He set his drink down. “I can’t leave. I have friends over.” Those friends were waiting for him in the living room. He’d needed them to wait there, because he’d had to do this alone.

  And he’d known his father wouldn’t hurt him.

  “Your friends will understand.” Dr. Holloway swept around the side of the desk, his black slacks brushing against the edge of the wood. He was wearing a matching jacket and a shirt that hadn’t been properly buttoned underneath. Shoes but no socks. Raven’s stomach clenched at the sight of him. “Just get into the car with me—”

  “No.” Raven jerked out of his chair as his dad lurched toward him. His shoes slid across the heating vent on the floor, and he wondered if his father had heard him talking in the living room. Blood rushed through his ears. “I’m not abandoning my friends. That’s the difference between us.”

  Dr. Holloway sucked in a breath as if Raven had punched him. “My son was sick. I wanted to help him.”

  “Don’t talk about me like I’m not here! You always do that. You decide things without asking me. You married that woman and you never even talked to me about it.”

  “That was a mistake.” Dr. Holloway slid an arm around Raven’s shoulders, guiding him toward the study door. “I told you, I wasn’t seeing clearly before, but I know the truth now.”

  “Because of what you found in the heating vent the day Evelyn died.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dr. Holloway said calmly, and Raven told himself he might be wrong. He must be wrong. The past four years of his life had been a waking nightmare, and his mind had become a mess of paranoia, giving life to monsters where only shadows should live. Andrew Kane was guilty.

  His father was innocent.

  Still, Raven glanced back at his drink. The closer he’d gotten to the bottom of it, the more the world around him had started to sway. Had his father put something in his whiskey? “Dad? I don’t feel so good.”

  “You need to see your mother.” His father opened the study door, then ushered Raven outside. “We both need to get out of this house, and then we can—”

  “I’m not going anywhere.” Again, Raven jerked away from him, but the carpet was bunched up in the hallway. He stumbled, landing on his knees on the floor. According to the police, Evelyn had been found sprawled out on the kitchen floor, her limbs at odd angles and her hair falling out of its curlers. Raven was glad he hadn’t found her like that. Finding his mom had been traumatizing enough.

  “After Mom died, I started hearing her voice at night.” Raven pushed to his feet, using the banister to pull himself up. “The police told you that, right? Before you sent me away?”

  “You were suffering delusions.” Dr. Holloway yanked open the front door, and Raven’s eyes traveled back to the living room. He was certain those double doors would open at any second. No one burst into the hallway. No concerned faces stared back at him, and no arms reached out to clasp his fingers.

  I could call out to them, he thought, his heart slamming against his ribs. I could race out to the orchard and hide there like a kid. But if he ran from his father now, he’d never be able to ask the questions he needed to ask.

  He’d never learn the truth.

  “I wasn’t delusional,” Raven insisted, striding out the front door. He plodded down the porch steps beside his father. “Evelyn had a recording from when I was little. Mom was teaching me how to swim.”

  “You loved swimming together.” Dr. Holloway smiled softly, pulling his car keys out of his pocket. A few seconds later, he was opening the passenger-side door and guiding Raven inside. He was so gentle. So loving. Raven wanted to cry. Why had his father waited until this moment to be tender with him? Why couldn’t he have been this person all along?

  They were both in the car within seconds, the doors closed and locked. No one could see them. No one could hear them, and maybe that was why his father started to talk. “She took you every summer. You’d stay in the pool until your fingers were shriveled. I had to beg you to get out. And even after you did, you’d cling to her.” He lowered his head, and Raven reached out, touching his father’s arm. “When Evelyn asked me to bring old videos into the office, I’d completely forgotten about that first day at the pool. I got choked up, watching it. Evelyn listened without judgment.” Dr. Holloway shook his head, sliding the key into the ignition. “Then I lost your mom, and Evelyn was the only one who kept calling when the weeks turned into months. She was the only person who’d look at me without tears filling her eyes. I got so sick of everyone’s pity.”

  “Me too,” Raven said, subtly reaching for his door’s handle. He just needed to know that he could bolt out of there if necessary. But the door wouldn’t budge, and it took him a second to realize his dad had enabled the childproof locks. He’d done it quietly, without Raven noticing. “I lived in that same place, Dad. We could’ve gotten through it together. But you chose her.”

  “I didn’t know who she was! How could I have known that she’d…” Dr. Holloway swallowed audibly, steering the car down the long, twisting driveway. Raven turned around, peering back at the house. No one was watching him from the windows. No one was coming for him. “The week before you came home from boarding school, I couldn’t sleep. You were so thin when you left. Half-starved, like something was eating you from the inside out. You’d looked like… her,” he whispered, “after she was found in the snow. Cold and lifeless, and I didn’t know what you’d be like when you came home. I didn’t know if you’d hate—”

  Dr. Holloway broke off, pressing his hand against his mout
h. He didn’t cry. He didn’t sob. But his eyes were closed for an instant, and Raven inched his phone out of his pocket, pulling up his latest text. The one asking Jack to come over. He hit the call button just as his father looked up, veering the car toward the front gate. “I was exhausted the day you were scheduled to return. I wanted to get some rest before picking you up at the airport, so I came home in the evening. I found Evelyn in our bedroom getting ready to have dinner with some friends. She left soon after.”

  “And you went to get your trusty sleeping pills,” Raven muttered, his stomach tightening in anger. His chest tightening in fear. No one was answering the phone. “But they weren’t on the table where you’d left them, so you went looking for them under the bed. Right? And you found the loose screws to the vent.”

  A slow, careful nod. “I retrieved the bottle of pills, but the unscrewed vent bothered me. I didn’t understand why someone would go tinkering around in there. So I lifted the vent, and that’s when I found—”

  “The tape recorder,” Raven said, his mouth so dry, he thought he was going to be sick. He realized something in that moment. His father hadn’t drugged his whiskey. Raven felt ill because he was terrified of learning the truth about the night Evelyn died. His vision was blurry because he was trying so hard not to cry.

  “I must’ve listened to that recording a hundred times in the span of an hour,” Dr. Holloway said, his voice thick with anguish. “Your mother’s voice haunted me. And it brought me to life. I hadn’t heard her speak in years, and in that moment, I realized I’d been living in a fog. I’d kept myself in a fog so I couldn’t see what was right in front of me.”

  They were nearing the gate now. Beyond it, the world spread out, wide and infinite, and if the car reached the road, Raven wouldn’t be able to escape. He inched the phone out of his pocket again. This time his father caught the movement. He reached out, snatching the phone from Raven’s hand.