The Secrets of Lily Graves

by Strohmeyer, Sarah

  Matt plunked himself down next to me, our legs touching. “Okay, shoot. I’m ready.”

  “Before I say anything, I want to tell you how sorry I am about Erin. This must be awful for you.”

  He draped his arms on his knees and nodded. “Not half as bad as for her parents. She’s their only child.”

  Was, I thought. “Have you seen them?”

  “Been to their house every day. They want me to stand in the receiving line with them at the wake tomorrow.”

  That was going to be awkward. “So they don’t think you . . .”

  He shook his head, looking not at me but at a spot on the floor between his knees. “I don’t know if they’re in denial or what. But they’re treating me like the son they never had and they keep saying how I’ll be part of the Donohue family forever.”

  Yup. Denial. “Can I ask,” I said gently, “if they know about Erin’s . . . condition?”

  He snapped his head up, his brown eyes afire. “What do you mean, ‘condition’?”

  This was going to be harder than I’d expected. “Brace yourself, but Erin was pregnant.”

  His shoulders slumped. “Oh, that’s what you mean. Yeah, they know.”

  “And you?”

  “I found out on Friday. Kate called me and said I needed to get over to Erin’s house because she had big news and wasn’t taking it well.”

  My lungs tightened. “Hold on. It was Kate who told you?”

  “You know how girls are. They tell each other everything.”

  Before the father? “Um, not sure I remember reading that in the handbook.”

  Matt looked puzzled, and then it dawned on him. “Oh, no. I know what you’re thinking.” Bringing his hands up defensively, he said, “It wasn’t my baby.”

  I wanted to believe him so much. But I also was tired of playing the fool. “Come on, Matt. You and I both know that Purity Pact crap was just to please her parents. You and Erin have been together forever. Of course you were hooking up.”

  He blushed to the tips of his ears. “Depends on how you define hooking up.”

  Now, it was my turn to blush. “Right.”

  “I mean we did stuff, just not that.”

  “Enough to keep her membership active in the Purity Pact.”

  “Kind of. I guess.” He rolled his eyes. “The stupid Purity Pact. Her father actually gave her a diamond, like an engagement ring, for being a virgin and ‘wed to him.’ How sick is that?”

  I assumed Matt meant that not in a good way. “So, if it wasn’t your baby, then whose was it?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?” he said. “When I got over my shock, I told her I was there for her, and she told me it was not my baby and therefore none of my business. I’ll admit, the whole thing had me pretty messed up.”

  I leaned into him. “Don’t take it personally. Just think what it must have been like to have been in her position. Founder of the Purity Pact gets knocked up? Reason enough right there to commit suicide.”

  “Except everyone assumed she killed herself because I’d broken up with her.” He stood and thrust his hands in his pockets. “It just made everything so much worse. Erin’s dead. I have to deal with that. Then I have to wonder if somehow I was responsible.”

  I said, “How badly did she take the breakup?”

  “Not bad at all. There she was, pregnant by some other guy and telling me that I wasn’t as mature and responsible as he was and that he was going to do the right thing. So I said, sort of angrily, ‘Then I guess you don’t need me.’ And she said . . .”

  Matt stopped.

  “What? What did she say?”

  “I don’t want you to feel guilty.”

  “Please. I’m the daughter of Ruth Graves. I was born feeling guilty. What did she say?”

  He sat down again. “She said, ‘It’s okay, because you don’t need me, now that you have Lily.’ I was so pissed, I just left.”

  “Oh.” It was kind of him to omit the expletives and the word freak, which Erin had undoubtedly used instead of my real name. “And that was it?”

  He bowed his head. “Pretty much.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” I said, sliding an arm around the back of his neck. “James didn’t die because of you, and neither did Erin.”

  He exhaled heavily. “I’ve been telling myself that, but it’s not sinking in.”

  “You know what I think?” I said. “I think whoever killed Erin knew about you and me and her.” I carefully sidestepped the term love triangle, since I didn’t want to go there. “And they timed the crime so that the police would naturally assume you and I committed the murder.”

  He frowned. “A setup? That is both very weird and very disturbing.”

  “And very frightening.”

  “No shit. If you get charged for this, I will never forgive myself. It just doubles the pain.”

  “We will not let that happen.” I removed my arm and hopped up, my mind churning. “Let’s start with the facts. Where were you on Saturday night?”

  “In my room, on my bed, staring at my ceiling, feeling shitty about Erin.”

  “That’s healthy. Any witnesses?”

  He shook his head. “The cops are all over that.”

  Of course they were. “Next question. Who do you think is the father?”

  Matt said, “No clue.”

  “Really? How about Alex Bone?”

  “That wimp?” Matt scoffed. “Erin told me about him. All they did was talk about writing and poetry. That day we saw them at the library, he gave her a book of poems by some dude named Ginsburg. I read a few. They sucked.”

  “He’s a little alternative.”

  “So’s Stone Bone. He’s such a loser, working at the coffee shop, living at home with his mom. I mean, the guy’s in his twenties. Be a man.”

  “Some girls get tremendous pleasure from turning frogs into princes.”

  “That’s Erin. She was always pushing me to dress better and take harder classes. That’s how I ended up in US History, because she said I should challenge myself.”

  That explained a lot. I started pacing and counting my steps . . . one . . . two . . . three. That was all the length of the tomb would allow. “Okay, so the first thing we have to do is find out what Alex Bone was up to on Saturday night. I have reason to believe he was at a pity party Kate threw for Erin.”

  Matt cocked an eyebrow. “How did you hear about that?”

  “I have my sources. Secondly, we have to find out what they were doing at the party.”

  “Doing?”

  “Drugs. Alcohol. According to the preliminary death certificate I just saw, the cops are running toxicology tests, and they don’t do that unless they have probable cause.”

  He looked utterly stunned. “It’s like she was two different people. The good Erin and the bad Erin. I’m looking back on our three years together and asking which part of her was real and which part of her was a lie.”

  That rang a bell. I quit pacing and crossed my arms. “Speaking of which, do you mind telling me why you lied about failing US History and why you spent two hundred dollars being tutored for a test you didn’t have to take?”

  “Don’t get mad.”

  “Why would I get mad? I made two hundred bucks.”

  “I did it because . . .” Matt rose and came close, which put me at a distinct disadvantage, rhetorically. It was much harder to win points against someone whose tanned abs I cherished as a precious memory. “. . . because I wanted to get to know you, and I was too stupid to think of any other way.”

  Surprised and secretly pleased by his answer, I played with a strand of hair that had been tickling my neck. “You could have just called. Or faked your death. It worked for Romeo and Juliet. Oh . . . wait. Scratch that.”

  He cracked a smile. “See, it’s that kind of twisted of humor that makes me . . .”

  “What?”

  He cupped my cheek. “Analyze Troy Polamalu’s defense. Because if I don’t t
hink about football, I will go crazy thinking about you.”

  I felt a tingling sensation on my ass. It took a second for me to realize that it wasn’t the effect of Matt about to make a pass, but my phone.

  “Hold on,” I said, wiggling it out of my jeans pocket. “It’s probably Sara wanting to know if you’ve killed me yet.”

  He groaned.

  The screen said Barb Graves, aka Aunt Boo. “No, it’s my aunt wanting to know if you’ve killed me.” I pressed Answer. “I swear I’ll be home soon.”

  She did not sound happy. “You better be, because according to the scanner the police are swarming the cemetery. Apparently, someone reported that they heard a girl screaming, and I just prayed to God it wasn’t you.”

  Had I screamed? “Okay. Well, don’t worry. I’m turning the corner to Cedar Crest.”

  “Hurry. Before your mother gets back—and another thing: don’t talk on the phone and drive.”

  I hung up and bit my lower lip, trying to figure out how I was going to get out of this one.

  “You’re not on Cedar Crest,” Matt said. “What’s going on?”

  “The cops are here. They heard a girl scream. Boo thought it was me.”

  “With me, right?” Matt ran a hand through his hair. “If they find the two of us together, it will not be cool.”

  “Ditto. What are we going to do?”

  “Classic football strategy. I head toward them and cause a distraction while you slip out the back and go through the fence to Hennessy. Where are you parked?”

  “Dry cleaners across the street. Is that really a football play?”

  “Kind of. When are we going to see each other again?”

  “At the wake.”

  He nodded. “I’ll find out about the party.”

  “I’ll find out about Alex.”

  “Sounds like a plan.” He hesitated as if he wanted to say something else. “Lil, we’re going to get through this. We’ll figure out who killed Erin and put this behind us.”

  I bent over and turned off the light so it was pitch-black. “Matt?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What did you do with my Persephone necklace?”

  “Huh?”

  “The cameo I used to wear. The goddess of death.”

  “That thing? Nothing. Why?”

  There was the crackling sound of police radios squawking in the distance. The cops were here. “Nothing. You’d better go.”

  “Good luck,” he whispered.

  I felt something warm and vaguely rough on my cheek as he leaned down and, missing my lips, ended up brushing his lips against my ear. Then he yanked open the door and ran, hollering with all his might, while I headed silently in the opposite direction, my heart pounding for a zillion different reasons.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  THIRTEEN

  It is a truth universally acknowledged that Homo sapiens flourished because he, better than all other creatures on the planet, was uniquely hardwired to adapt. This ability to easily adjust to one’s environment meant that we could learn to walk upright, create tools, and eventually even get used to the metal detector at the door in high school every morning.

  But there was a downside to evolution too. The confidence I felt in the tomb was gone by morning. When I woke, I lay in bed contemplating the evidence stacked against us, and how bleak our chances were of finding Erin’s killer.

  “Justice is not only blind, it can be deaf and dumb,” Sara said as we ate lunch outside in the courtyard, despite the bleak November sky that added to the general atmosphere of hopelessness. “The best homicide prosecutors are the ones who make the mental effort to put themselves in the minds and bodies of the murderers. Therefore, if you’re going to abandon my advice and investigate Stone Bone instead of Matt, then the questions you need to ask are not only how Alex drugged and killed Erin, but why.”

  “Because she was pregnant,” I said, biting into my apple with a definitive crunch.

  “So? What does Alex care? When you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing left to lose. For all we know, a baby could have brought purpose to his otherwise nihilistic, coffee-brewing existence.”

  I thought of this, swinging my legs and watching the TNs cross the grass to their next classes. Kate and Cheyenne were acting as if nothing had changed, laughing and texting as they walked. Allie, however, was like a silent shadow three paces behind.

  “She knows something,” I said.

  Sara watched her for a bit. “What?”

  “That’s what we have to find out.”

  Sara tossed her empty bottle into the recycling bin, wiped her mouth, and brought out her math notebook, flipping to a fresh page and handing it to me. “Ready?” she asked, as a damp breeze blew back her long, white-blond hair.

  During the drive to school this morning, Sara and I agreed that any investigation we conducted needed to be cloaked in utmost secrecy. We could not risk creating a digital trail with texts or emails. Not even phone calls. Every note had to be on paper. And that paper would eventually be burned since, as every mortician knew, ashes told no tales.

  “We have to start from ground zero,” I said. “We need to go to the crime scene and interview witnesses.”

  “Like Erin’s neighbors.” Sara wrote that down. “They’ve already been interviewed. Cops were in and out of Pinewoods for two straight days. People started to complain.”

  “Too bad. We have to find the next-door neighbors with the dog who saw Erin fighting with Alex.”

  “Allegedly,” Sarah said. “That’s the Krezkys. Mrs. Krezky is super nosy. Figures she peeped in Erin’s window. I sold Thin Mints to that woman for three years, and she would sit me at the kitchen table and grill me about the teachers at Potsdam Elementary.”

  “What are the chances that they’ll be at the wake tonight?”

  “Pretty good. But let me talk to her. Not you. It’s a more efficacious approach.”

  I looked up, slightly offended. “Why?”

  “You know how some people treat those with physical disabilities like they’re retarded?”

  “No.” Despite her obsession with Investigation Discovery, Sara was second in our class—right behind Erin. Smart was her middle name.

  “Well, they do, and Mrs. Krezky falls into that category. I’d take her cold, hard cookie cash and make perfect change, and she’d speak really slowly and pat me on the head.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Am I laughing? Anyway, this is one case where I can see her stupidity working to our advantage. So let me do the questioning tonight while you’re busy refilling the coffee or whatever it is morticians’ kids do at wakes.”

  “Empty garbage,” I said, writing S next to Krezkys. “In the meantime, what are you doing eighth period?”

  “Cramming for the physics test during my free band. Why?”

  “Because I was thinking maybe we should be doing our studying at the café.

  As far as coffee shops went, the Pots & Cups—a name that was supposed to be some sort of play on the word Potsdam—fell short on the necessary inspirational atmosphere found at, say, any given Starbucks.

  The concrete floor that was supposed to be hip ended up costing the establishment untold dollars in broken ceramic cups. The cappuccino maker was forever getting clogged and exploding onto the brown walls. And the jazz was just plain annoying.

  At 2:00 p.m., not much seemed to be happening. Sara and I strolled in and noted with disappointment that Alex Bone did not appear to be on duty. There was only one person working, a girl, and she had her back to us.

  “Excuse me,” Sara said after we’d waited a good five minutes for her to finish whatever she was doing.

  “Just a minute,” the girl said, smearing her fingers on her apron as she came to the cash register.

  I did a double take. “Tam?” I barely recogni
zed her from last spring when she graduated. She must have gotten fifty pounds lighter since Jackson held up her soda and made fun of her for washing down a Magic Bar with a Diet Coke.

  Tam smiled wide. “Hey, Lily and Sara. What are you guys doing here? I thought you were still in school.”

  “We are,” Sara said. “Just skipping eighth period.”

  “Ah, yes, the pleasures of senior year,” she said, her dark eyes flashing. “Wait till second semester. You’ll never go to class. So, what do you guys want? You should definitely try the pumpkin hot chocolate. Sounds gross, but . . .” She licked her lips. “To die for.”

  I checked to see if Alex was around. “Actually, we came here looking for someone. Alex Bone.”

  Tam’s face fell. “Oh, him. Really? What for?”

  Sara leaned over the counter. “It has to do with Erin Donohue.”

  “Isn’t that awful?” Tam asked. “That’s all anyone here’s been able to talk about since the cops said it was a murder. You should have been here for the morning rush. There were people crying.”

  “Including Alex?” I asked.

  Tam bent back and looked out the window toward the patio. “You see him out there?”

  She pointed to a set of tables under the awning that faced the alley. Sure enough, there sat Alex Bone holding a lit cigarette between his fingers as he scribbled something in a journal. Now that he was up close, I was shocked at how old he seemed, with long, stringy black hair pulled into a ponytail and a soul patch under his lower lip.

  “Is he supposed to be working?” Sara asked.

  “He’s on break, though he claims he’s too depressed to deal with the public, so the manager has him cleaning equipment,” Tam said. “But all he’s done since Erin died is sit and write and smoke and drink coffee while the rest of us pick up his slack. I want to kill him myself.”

  Sara read my mind. “Can we get two pumpkin hot chocolates?”

  “Sure, I’ll bring them out to you,” Tam said.

  At the glass door to the patio, Sara stopped me. “Look, I don’t think we should mention the pregnancy unless Stone Bone brings it up.”

  That struck me as odd, since that was one of our main reasons for talking to Alex. “Why?”