“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.
“Could you ask him why he paid me twenty dollars a week to tutor him for a makeup exam he never needed? Because it seems to me like that’s a moronic way to blow two hundred bucks.”
The door slammed shut, and I marched back into the car. Sara was in her usual position these days, eyes fixated on the rearview.
“Well,” I said, getting in, “that went well.”
“Told you Matt had something to hide. And the parents know it.” Sara kept staring in the mirror. “Our stalker’s back.”
I resisted the temptation to turn around and check. “You’re kidding.”
“Same gray sedan with no front license plate, right around the corner.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Find out who he is.” She opened the door and slid out, the mace on her keychain aimed and ready. I got out my side too, but he was too savvy, shifting immediately into reverse and doing a U-turn up the side street so we couldn’t see his plates.
Sara was literally quivering in the rain. I went over to her and wrapped her in a big hug. “He’s gone. No worries.”
“I’m so scared, Lil. He keeps watching me. What if I’m next?”
“You won’t be. We will get to the bottom of this, I swear to God.”
“We’d better go,” she said, wiping away her tears with her one good hand. “You know, family night.”
While the McMartins were singing “Kumbaya” and playing Sorry!, or whatever it was they did on “family night,” I was refilling teacups for the wake of Joanne Snyder, a ninety-year-old widow from the Balmy Oaks Home for the Aged down the street. Only twenty or so people attended, most of them friends from Balmy Oaks and various nurses’ aides who generously came to pay their quiet respects. By eight it was over and I was running the sweeper over Eternity.
It would be quite a contrast to Thursday’s wake for Erin. My mother had planned for more than two hundred people, and extra space for parking had to be negotiated with Riccoli and Sons next door. Boo and Oma had been busy arranging the logistics, partly because Mom had had to devote so much energy to insuring I stayed out of jail.
That said, after the treatment I received at the Housers’, I was about ready to turn state’s evidence on Matt. Sara was right. Everything had been a setup leading to Erin’s murder, and I had been the “pathetic” pawn, as Kate had so thoughtfully implied.
Those were my final sad thoughts as I drifted off to sleep, exhausted from a day that began with a dream about Matt and ended with the sound of him rapping on my garden window.
I bolted upright and cocked an ear, listening.
A white paper was taped outside. I opened the window and stuck my head out, but all I saw were wet leaves swirling in the wind. The paper was damp and the blue ink had run, but it was legible enough.
Sorry about what happened tonight. My dad’s a dick. Will explain everything, esp. the exam, @ the Mason’s @ 12 tom. night. Best not to call/text/come to the house.
I swear I didn’t kill E.
Thinking of you. Stay safe.
M
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
ELEVEN
Halloween was traditionally a big deal in Potsdam. It started kicking into high gear right after Labor Day, when the decrepit stores downtown plastered their windows with pumpkins and witches and moonlight madness sales offering half-off decorations. By mid-September, most lawns were dotted with fake gravestones and headless bodies on folding chairs, though nothing beat the finale: the Potsdam Halloween Parade, a mile-long festival of tossed candy.
Last night, hours after the police revealed that Erin had been murdered, the town council held an emergency session and cancelled the parade. The official reason was that this was done out of respect for the Donohue family. The real reason was that parents were scared out of their wits that a killer was on the loose.
It was as if all of Potsdam had gone crazy overnight.
“This is getting out of control,” Sara said, as we arrived at school to find not only a police car with flashing lights parked at the entrance to the driveway, but every satellite TV news truck in the tricounty area.
We inched past a string of news reporters interviewing parents and other students and hooked a right into the driveway. A cop in a fluorescent green vest motioned for us to stop and lower the window.
“You guys students?” he asked, leaning in to take a not-so-surreptitious peek in the back of Sara’s Mercedes. “Can I see some ID?”
We fished out our student cards. “Did something happen?” I asked, handing him mine.
“Nah. The administration just wants to make sure only students and faculty are on campus today.” He scanned Sara’s ID and gave it back to her without comment. “If your parents are coming to pick you up, they should know they’ll have to call the school so we can put them on the list.”
“Because of the reporters?” Sara asked.
“Partly.” He scrutinized the photo of me in heavy black eye makeup. “This you, Lily Graves?”
“Yup. I’m in my Halloween costume today.” Dark-wash skinny jeans, bright-blue mock turtleneck, and a kicky black-and-white herringbone jacket—all from J.Crew, all purchased by my mother in a vain hope that I would someday come to the fashion Jesus.
“What are you supposed to be?”
“The scariest thing I can think of,” I said. “Normal.”
The Potsdam High administration did a one-eighty on Erin. The pink poster board from the day before was dwarfed by a huge banner proclaiming WE WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU, ERIN! R.I.P. And as soon as we passed through the me
tal detectors, Sara and I were accosted by social workers asking if we wanted to “process.”
“First-period classes will be cancelled so the principal can update the school body on this turn of events,” said one, handing me a pink flyer called Coping with Grief. “It’s mandatory.”
And if Erin’s death had been a suicide, what then? I wanted to ask. Would the school have gone on sweeping it under the rug?
“What I don’t get,” Sara said as we headed to the auditorium, “is why it mattered whether she killed herself or was killed. Either way, it’s disturbing.”
Hooking my pack onto my shoulder, I stood at the entrance to the auditorium and scanned for seats. Not just any seats, either.
“There are two,” Sara said, pointing to the back row, our preferred spot.
“How about there?” I nodded toward the front.
“Eww. That’s so close. We won’t be able to talk or anything.”
I eyed three perfect heads in the third row. “No, but we will be able to keep an eye on the TNs.”
“Why would we want to do that?” Sara asked, following me down the aisle.
“You’ll see.” I took the first seat, slid my backpack to the floor, and surveyed the scene. Allie, Cheyenne, and Kate were in my periphery. They owed me a huge apology for claiming I’d been responsible for Erin’s suicide, but I wasn’t holding my breath.
Kate caught sight of me and quickly pretended to text. Jackson too had to avert his gaze, while Cheyenne and Allie bent their heads together and whispered.
I sat back and bided my time.
The assembly was excruciating right from the get-go. Clearly, nothing in Principal Kemple’s training had prepared him for the daunting task of explaining to three hundred teenagers that one of them had been murdered in her own home. And not just anyone: the class star.
“I have tried to find peace over the last two days, and frankly, students, it has eluded me,” he said, reading from a prepared speech that sounded an awful lot like a eulogy. “Erin Anne Donohue, as you know, was not only a straight-A student, a champion athlete, and an active volunteer in the community, including the local hospital, where she interned this summer in the office of Dr. McMartin. She was a person of the highest moral standards.”
I cut my eyes to the TNs. Kate was biting her lower lip, her chest bobbing almost imperceptibly under her sweater. I couldn’t tell if she was stifling a laugh or a sob. Jackson had his arm around her and he too was sucking in his cheeks, trying to stay composed. Cheyenne was hiding her phone between her knees. Allie had turned the slightest shade of green.
“It takes great strength of character to stand up among your peers and defend your beliefs, especially when they’re not ‘hip’ or ‘cool.’” Kemple made exaggerated air quotes. “Erin did that and more. For three years in a row, she took to this stage, on the very spot where I am today, and urged all of you to say no to drugs and alcohol.”
Usually, that kind of line was met with a wisecrack from the peanut gallery. In this case, the auditorium was dead silent.
Kemple mopped his brow with a white hankie. “She lived as she preached. She even—and, yes, I know this is ‘radical’—proclaimed the virtues of abstinence.”
That did elicit a few snickers. I wondered how Matt, who seemed to ooze sex, had dealt with that restriction.
“So while we leave it to the police to do their jobs and arrest the person, or persons, who committed this heinous act . . . and yes, students, I have been assured an arrest is all but imminent . . .”
I kept my gaze straight ahead.
“I think the best way we can honor Erin’s memory is to follow her example and make the right choices.”
Again with the right choices. Get off it.
There was a slight commotion to our right. I didn’t even have to check to know what happened.
“Be right back. Have to go pee,” I whispered to Sara. “Look after my stuff, okay?”
Ignoring the stern gaze from my guidance counselor, I rushed up the aisle, out the door, and into the corridor, just as Allie Woo was turning the corner to the girls’ room.
I waited a beat and followed her in, locking it securely. I didn’t have to worry about Allie hearing. She was too busy barfing.
“Are you okay?” I asked, ripping off a brown paper towel.
Allie gripped the sides of the toilet, panting. Her hair seemed greasy and unkempt, definitely not TN style. Although, neither was being on her knees praying to the porcelain goddess.
She backed away and staggered upright. I flushed the toilet and handed her the paper towel. “Here,” I said, rummaging through my bag for the tiny tube of Crest I kept for emergencies. “You’ll need this.”
“Thanks.” She wiped her mouth and went to the sink. Underneath the unforgiving fluorescent lights, she looked sickly.
“It’s a lot to take,” I said, leaning against the tile wall. “I know what a good friend you were to her.”
Allie smeared the toothpaste over her teeth with her index finger and spat, turning on the water to wash it down the sink. “Not that good.”
“Oh, don’t be so hard on yourself. Listen, I’ve been around enough mourners to know that everyone feels guilty in situations like this. Even I felt responsible, for a while.”
“When you thought it was suicide, you mean.” Allie rinsed her mouth twice.
“Yeah. And thanks for that, by the way. You made me feel soooo much better.”
“Sorry. That wasn’t my idea.”
If I recalled correctly, it had been Allie who piped up that Matt broke up with Erin because of me, but I let it slide. Winning a small battle wouldn’t lead to the larger victory.
Allie unzipped her backpack and got out eyeliner and mascara. “I haven’t been sleeping well at all,” she said, bending toward the mirror. “I think it’s all the uncertainty. One minute she was alive, then it was suicide, now it’s murder.”
I got out my own favorite plum lip gloss and joined her. Our eye contact was brief, but crucial. She separated her lashes and then paused. “You know something, don’t you? I can tell. You have mortician information.”
“What’s mortician information?” I asked, holding back a laugh.
She recapped the mascara. “I don’t know. Don’t you guys get death certificates?”
“Usually.”
“Have you seen Erin’s?” she asked, spinning around so we were face-to-face. “Do you know exactly how she died?”
“Exactly? I thought her wrists were cut.”
Allie batted her heavy lashes, dotting her eyelids with tiny points of black. “Is that what it says on the death certificate?”
“Don’t know. I figured you would.”
“Why would I know?”
“Because you were there Saturday night, along with Kate and Cheyenne and”—I smacked my lips—“of all people, Alex Bone.”
Allie didn’t even balk. “Where did you hear that?”
Someone banged on the door. Sara shouted, “Open up. I’ve got all your stuff and it’s heavy.”
I wet my thumb and wiped toothpaste from the corner of Allie’s mouth. Allie recoiled slightly.
“See you at the wake tomorrow,” I said cheerfully. “I’m sure police will be crawling all over the place. Maybe they can tell you what you want to know.”
Grabbing her backpack, Allie was so flustered that she couldn’t even turn the lock. I had to do it for her.
“Watch it!” Sara barked as Allie smashed into her on the way out. “Geesh. Did you see how pale she was? Like she’d seen a ghost.”
“Almost,” I said. “Except worse.”
The hours until I was to meet Matt at the Mason’s tomb seemed interminable. Fortunately, there were tons of trick-or-treaters to keep me distracted, although they were visibly disappointed when I answered the door in my Halloween costume. I don’t know what they were expecting—a girl in a floor-length lace gown with black lips, perhaps?
“Do you like ’em stiff?” as
ked a wise guy, who was way too old to be begging for candy. There was one every year.
I responded with the usual. “I don’t know. Guess I’ll find out when you’re dead, huh?”
Then I tossed a handful of Reese’s, closed the door, and headed downstairs to see what was up with Boo, since Mom was out with Perfect Bob. Halloween was a guaranteed night off in the funeral biz. No one wants to hold a wake with the doorbell ringing every two seconds.
Boo was bent over Mrs. Dubovsky, slipping flesh-colored contacts under her eyelids so they wouldn’t appear sunken. Mrs. Dubovsky was the other first grade teacher, the one I didn’t have at Potsdam Elementary. Age had not been kind to her, I thought, assessing her apple-dumpling physique, blue hair, and a permanent frown that Boo was valiantly attempting to prop upward.
“A little help?” Boo lowered the volume on the police scanner and nodded for me to pinch the corner of the mouth while she applied an extra-thick coating of morticians’ glue. “You have any Halloween plans tonight?”
“Yeah. I’m meeting up with Matt at the cemetery.”
Boo squeezed the tube so hard, drops of glue sprayed onto Mrs. Dubovsky’s nose. “Shoot!” Fetching a paper towel, she gently wiped it off before it hardened. Then she redid it with painstaking care.
“You are not going to see Matt,” she said. “It’s not safe. Everyone was talking about Erin’s murder at the salon today, and the general consensus was that the boyfriend did it.”
Ex-boyfriend. “He didn’t.”
“Don’t be so sure. You remember Carla Remson? She used to be the school nurse, and she said sometimes football players like Matt suffer concussions that go undiagnosed and turn them violent.”
I lifted my fingers. “Matt is not brain-injured, if that’s your theory.” The smile fell. I pinched it up again. “Anyway, I have to see him. There are a whole bunch of questions I need answered and Matt doesn’t want to call or text.”
“That right there is alarming.” She squinted at her work, lowering the side I’d been holding so Mrs. D. didn’t end up mimicking a demented clown. “I’ve come around to your mom’s view, Lil. The more distance you put between yourself and him, the better.”
The Secrets of Lily Graves Page 10
