The Secrets of Lily Graves

by Strohmeyer, Sarah

  Kate went back to her book. “See ya!”

  “You need to come forward about this and what you know about Erin’s baby daddy.”

  She kept on reading.

  “Because you don’t want that guilt for the rest of your life. Erin was your best friend, and if I know anything about the dead, it’s that they demand justice. She’s watching you, Kate, and waiting for you to do right by her. Or else.”

  I left Miss Kline to stew about that for a while. My words might have gone in one ear and out the other, but I had reason to hope. As I walked up the stairs, I peered over the banister and saw she was still staring at that passage about Chinese family culture.

  Ghosts. The Chinese weren’t so far off about them being everywhere.

  The Sara thing was really getting to me. All morning, I’d had the feeling that I was forgetting something, and then I’d remember . . . it was my best friend. There was no one to relate, detail by detail, the deliciousness of my juicy encounter with Kate Kline, no one to analyze the wet weed twist or trade notes in physics. I even missed her occasionally tedious rundowns of criminal cases gone wrong.

  Finally, at lunch, I couldn’t take it anymore. I found Matt and asked him to give me a lift downtown to Boo’s salon so I could borrow her car and go to Sara’s. The only problem there was that I had to hide in the back until he showed his ID, proving he was a senior and therefore free to go, and we were safely past the police guard.

  “This is getting old, very fast,” I said, crawling out of the back to the shotgun seat.

  Matt gripped the wheel. He looked troubled.

  I said, “What’s happened now?”

  “It’s probably nothing, but I got a text from Allie when I was walking out to the parking lot. All it said was, ‘I’m sorry.’”

  “Good. She should be sorry. Kate’s convinced her that if they go to the cops and tell them what happened Saturday night that their lives will be ruined.” I threw up my hands in helplessness. “Doesn’t matter that your life will be ruined and possibly mine . . .”

  He ran a hand through his hair, standing it on end. Football season was almost through, and I was dying for it to be long again. Not a fan of the military look.

  “I’m still going to check on her after practice. She wasn’t in school today and she hasn’t been herself lately.”

  That was nice of him. Maybe too nice. “Um, is there a thing going on between you and . . .”

  He turned to me, exasperated. “Geesh, Graves. You have a habit of underestimating yourself, don’t you?”

  “No.” To be quite honest, I’d often worried that I had too much self-esteem, if that was even possible.

  “Then, what is it?” he asked. “Don’t you like me?”

  Now, I was completely confused. “I think we’re having two different conversations simultaneously.”

  We got to the corner of Main and Pine and I said he could let me off there. As I hopped out of the truck and thanked him for the lift, Matt leaned over and said, “Someday this whole nightmare’s going to be over and then . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  He shook his head. “Forget it. Talk to you later.” He pulled into the Dunkin’ Donuts so he could head back to school. I watched him go and smiled all the way to Boo’s.

  Boo’s salon was one of three in downtown Potsdam, distinguished only by the fact that its awning was green while the other two were white. Its plateglass storefront featured bottles of sun-faded hair products and pictures of women glancing down and to the side modestly so you’d focus on their unmanageably nineties styles.

  A bell tinkled when I opened the door to a haze of hairspray and chatter. Boo was one of the more colorful stylists, seeing as how she was covered head to toe in tats, and one of the more popular, too. Friday was her busiest day, but that didn’t stop her from giving me a big hug and telling me to take a seat in the free chair next to her station.

  She was finishing up a perm on ninety-year-old Mrs. D’Angelo, who would likely end up on Boo’s other workstation in the not too distant future. This was a more common pattern than people knew in Potsdam, especially among Boo’s regulars. They’d trusted her to make them look their best when they were alive, why should it be any different when they died?

  “School out already?” Boo asked. Then, checking the clock on the wall and seeing it was only twelve thirty, she said, “Lily. We’ve been over this. You promised to stop cutting.”

  I twirled in the chair. “I have a crisis, and I can’t concentrate.”

  She sighed. “Okay, let’s situate Mrs. D’Angelo under the dryer and we’ll get a cup of coffee.”

  Mrs. D’Angelo picked up right where their conversation had ended when I’d apparently interrupted, therefore I was treated to a recitation of complaints—why jars were so hard to open these days, how kids were so obsessed with electronics they couldn’t communicate with fellow humans, and what a shame it was that the one good teenage girl in town had to meet such a brutal end.

  “She went to my church and she was an angel,” Mrs. D’Angelo gushed. “I didn’t think they made them like that these days.”

  I fingered the pentagram at my neck. Boo gave me a wink.

  Once Mrs. D’Angelo was set up with her Us and Family Circle magazines, along with a cup of weak tea, Boo wiggled her finger for me to join her in the back. There were a couple of stools there and a washer/dryer that was forever spinning towels. Boo dropped a tiny plastic coffee cartridge into the Keurig and said, “Hazelnut?”

  “Sure.” I took one of the stools as Boo popped open a box of peppermint tea for herself and plugged in the electric kettle. Girl was old school.

  “Spill,” she said, handing me a paper cup of coffee. “What’s so distracting that you have to leave school?”

  “Nothing much. Just a girl getting murdered.”

  She gave me a look. “Fortunately for you, my twelve thirty’s late, so cut to the chase.”

  I told her about Sara and what Mom had said about giving her space. “Does your mom know about the text Carol sent?”

  “No.” I watched while Boo fixed herself a cup of chamomile. “Should that matter?”

  Boo poured hot water over her teabag. “Look. You know your mother and I have different philosophies about what you need.” She unplugged the kettle and turned to me. “At the end of the day, she is your mother and her word goes.”

  “I sense a but here somewhere.”

  “Buuuut, if it were me and my lifelong friend suddenly cut off contact, I think I’d go over to her house and see what’s up.”

  This was such a relief. “I was thinking the same thing. I mean, I can understand why her parents want to keep her out of school. It’s crazy there with the cops and metal detectors. But there’s no reason we can’t see each other, right?”

  “Right.” Boo dumped her teabag in the trash.

  “And I really do need to talk to her about why Perfect Bob took down the serial numbers on the embalming fluid bottles.”

  Boo’s pierced eyebrow arched over the rim of her tea cup as she took a sip. “You have a theory about that, huh?”

  I told her what Allie said about the bad high and the wet weed and how Kate had confirmed Erin had stolen formalin from the hospital.

  The teacup nearly fell from Boo’s hand. I caught it as it slipped out of her grasp, tea all over her apron.

  “Oh,” she whispered, bringing her delicate fingers to her lips. “Oh, no.”

  I’d never seen my aunt so flustered. Usually she was cool as a cucumber. I grabbed a wad of paper towels and dabbed the tea off her front. The bell tinkled and in stepped a young woman in skirt and heels, obviously on her lunch hour. Boo’s twelve thirty.

  “I’ve got to go,” Boo said, brushing back her hair and checking her reflection in the mirror.

  “Hold on.” I caught hold of her elbow before she could escape. “Tell me.”

  “I can’t, Lily. I’m sorry. Your mother . . .” Boo’s lovely blue eyes watered. Clearly t
his was killing her.

  Gripping her by the shoulders, I said, “Matt’s future is at stake. Mine, too. Erin’s dead. This is not the moment to be keeping secrets.”

  Boo held up a finger to show her twelve thirty she’d be right there. “Okay. I’ll tell you. But I need you to swear you won’t breathe a word to anyone else.”

  I crossed my heart.

  “This is going to be upsetting for you, but when Erin arrived for prepping, there were several anomalies I had to fix.”

  “Okay.” So far, so good. Pretty routine.

  “For example, her nostrils were filled with blood. I had to clean those out and plug them, and it wasn’t easy. But the worst was the interior of her mouth. I had a dickens of a time weaving the wires through her gums because they had simply rotted away.”

  I wasn’t following. “Why would her gums have been rotted?”

  “For the same reason that her tongue was black and the inside of her mouth was gray and why, when I zipped open the body bag, I had to grab a mask and cover my mouth and nose because she so reeked of formaldehyde.”

  “Formaldehyde?” I said, puzzled. “Before you embalmed her?”

  Boo nodded. “That’s how she died. Not from blood loss. Not from overdosing on wet whatever, but from someone pouring embalming fluid down her throat.”

  I gasped, unable to imagine a more awful death. “And that’s why the cops searched our stuff.”

  “And why Bob wants to name you as a suspect. Guess he’s not so perfect after all, huh?”

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  SEVENTEEN

  “That explained why Mom had been so cold to Bob after the search, because according to Boo they were “on hiatus” until this case was over. Part of me felt crummy for ruining Mom’s love life. Despite all the teasing I gave them for running together and being kale-munching, yoga-practicing health nuts, they made a cute couple.

  The other part of me thought Bob was a jerk for even considering that I was capable of murder. And not just any murder, either. Death by formaldehyde. Seriously, I would never forgive him.

  Boo loaned me her car so I could go to Sara’s. First, however, I walked down to my old haunt, the Potsdam Public Library—a place I would always associate with falling in love.

  In my fear of leaving a digital trail, I was pretty skittish about checking out medical journals on formaldehyde or Googling the term on my iPhone, so I logged on anonymously to one of the public computers instead. What I discovered was so horrifying that a librarian shushed me when I involuntarily let out a cry of horror.

  Apparently, formalin was only four percent formaldehyde, a naturally occurring gas that’s soluble in water. The rest of the solution is methanol and other compounds to keep it stable. It is used mostly in laboratories and hospitals to “fix”—or pickle—nonliving organisms, and in morticians’ prep rooms for the same reason. It also kills bacteria and was once widely used as a disinfectant until people caught on that they were wiping poison all over the place.

  If ingested in large amounts, it could lead to intense pain, violent convulsions, coma, and eventually death. Even worse, formalin corroded the mouth on contact, instantly killing all taste buds, before it went on to shred the esophagus and pulverize the stomach and intestines. For that reason, it was rarely used in suicides because death by formalin was such a painful process. The overpowering noxious odor alone was enough to deter most people from getting their noses near it.

  I covered my face with my hands, willing the world to stop spinning. Obviously, Erin hadn’t consumed the formalin willingly or even accidentally. The killer had poured it down her throat, as Boo said. Had he held a gun to her head? Or did he employ another threat?

  Enough. I logged off and went to find Sara.

  My goal was to catch her at home alone before Carol returned from picking up Brandon at the elementary school. However, the house was closed up when I pulled into the driveway. The garage door was down and the blinds were drawn on the first-floor windows. Weird.

  I rang the doorbell anyway, twice. It was a big house and Sara could have been in the TV den at the far back, or taking a shower. On the third ding-dong, I was rewarded with the sound of heavy footsteps crossing the foyer.

  The door swung open and there stood Dr. Ken on the other side of the glass storm door, in his white lab coat, merrily colored bow tie knotted under his black beard.

  “Hi!” I said, waving. “Is Sara in?”

  He made no move to open the door. “I’m sorry, but Sara’s not here. She’s at the doctor.”

  It hadn’t occurred to me until then that Sara might have been sick, that she was suffering from some dreadful illness she’d bravely been keeping to herself. I recalled Mom’s warning that I should give the McMartins space because they were dealing with issues, and instantly regretted barging over here to share a piece of gossip.

  “Oh, wow. I had no idea. Is she going to be okay?” I asked.

  I must have looked pitiful on the doorstep, near tears at the imminent death of my best and—let’s face it—only true friend, because Dr. Ken finally opened the door and said, “Come on in, Lily. And I’ll explain.”

  We walked through the huge foyer to the kitchen, with its familiar black granite counters and sparkling white cabinets. Dr. Ken went to the sink and poured a glass of water. “You might need this,” he said, leading me to the great room.

  I sat on the edge of their pristine white couch and clutched my glass. Whatever Sara was facing, I would be with her every step of the way. I sucked my lower lip and tried to channel strength. God, this had been an awful week.

  Dr. Ken smiled. “It’s okay, Lily. Sara’s fine.”

  “You mean she doesn’t have cancer or something?”

  He seemed amused. “Heavens no. Sara’s incredibly healthy.”

  I pondered the water. “Then what do I need this for?”

  “Because you’re in for a bit of a surprise.” He leaned forward, hands clasped between his knees. “The reason Sara’s at the doctor’s is so she can get her vaccinations.” He smiled broadly. “We’re going on a mission to India! Isn’t it wonderful?”

  “What?” Sara never mentioned going to India. Then I realized he meant the rest of the family, because she needed to stay here in Potsdam and finish senior year.

  “When did you decide this?” I asked, taking a sip.

  “Last spring. That’s why Sara applied early decision to Yale, so she could get that admissions gobbledygook out of the way and be free to leave during Christmas vacation.”

  “Oh, I get it,” I said, much more relieved. “You guys are going to India for a mission and Sara’s visiting you over Christmas vacation. Cool.”

  He shook his head. “No. We are a family and families stick together, Lily. We had planned on leaving at the end of the year, but after this outburst of violence in the community, Carol and I thought maybe we should expedite the trip. We’ve been urging Sara to break the news to you so it wouldn’t be such a shock, but . . .”

  I put the glass on a coaster, my hand shaking. “Wait. Are you telling me you’re taking Sara three thousand miles away from here?”

  “Four thousand. But we’ll be back next summer.”

  My head started to pound. I wanted this to be a Dr. Ken wacky practical joke, for him to jump up and say, “April Fools!” even though it was November.

  “Gee whiz, Lily,” he said. “It’s not the end of the world. You can stay in touch, maybe not digitally, but last I checked the old mail system still worked.”

  I breathed in and out. He was serious. I couldn’t believe it. “How soon are you going?”

  “Well, our church is throwing us a farewell potluck brunch on Sunday and from there we’ll drive to JFK and take a six-thirty flight to Delhi.”

  This wasn’t happening. They couldn’t take Sara away from me. I got up and for some
reason went to the kitchen. Then returned to the great room. It was like my legs wouldn’t let me stay still.

  “Dr. Ken. You don’t understand. I need Sara.”

  “I understand,” he said, closing his eyes. “And Sara needs you. But it’s not forever. Like I said, she’ll be back by the fall.”

  That was no good. “By next fall, she’ll be in college and I’ll be . . . here!”

  “Lily, please sit.”

  I couldn’t. I folded my arms and positioned myself in front of the fireplace while Dr. Ken looked up at me pleadingly. “It’s only for ten months.”

  “I just don’t see why you have to go now.”

  “You’re not a parent, so you don’t know what Carol and I have been going through. Erin interned in my office for six weeks and we really got to know her as a fine, moral girl. For Carol and me, the similarities between her and Sara are too close for comfort.”

  I couldn’t think of two more opposite people. Did Dr. Ken even know his daughter or how she’d been mercilessly taunted by “fine, moral” Erin all through grade school?

  “Both Erin and Sara are sweet girls who love God,” he continued. “They are innocents.”

  Granted, Potsdam High might have been right up there with Sodom and Gomorrah, but he definitely didn’t know his daughter if he thought Sara was an innocent.

  “When Erin was found dead—murdered—a mere hop and a skip from our house, it shattered our perception that this neighborhood was a sanctuary.” Dr. Ken stroked his beard. “I’m sorry, Lily, but I would rather subject my children to the known challenges of poverty and disease while serving the Lord, than to let them succumb to the unknown temptations of a secular society.”

  He sighed. “And those true crime shows I know Sara’s watching on her computer late at night while we’re in bed . . . they are so unhealthy.”

  Perhaps if I could reason with him . . . , I thought. “You’re wrong about Erin being like Sara, Dr. Ken. Erin was into way more stuff than anyone suspected. She was hanging out with a dealer named Stone Bone, who was a bad influence. I don’t want to blame the victim, but Sara is not Erin. She’s got a good head on her shoulders.”