The Bad Sister

by Kevin O'Brien

  Over the shot of the garden, they superimposed a black-and-white photo of what must have been bungalow eighteen. It looked just like the one in which Hannah lived. Then they showed photos of the victims—and the girl who had survived. Three young women, the reporter said in a somber voice-over, all of them good students showing so much promise, bright futures ahead. They went to sleep in their beds fifty years ago tonight. But only one of them was still alive in the morning . . .

  Rachel sat down beside Hannah. “God, they’re laying it on a little thick, don’t you think?” With the remote, she turned up the volume and then started switching channels. “Let’s see if you’re on ABC . . .”

  Hannah glanced over her shoulder at Maddie checking out the clothes and shoes in Rachel’s closet.

  Rachel rolled her eyes. “God, I can’t stand her,” she said under her breath. She kept channel surfing—until Hannah came up on the screen.

  Hannah didn’t like seeing and hearing herself on TV. All her insecurities went into overdrive. It seemed almost sadistic of Rachel to turn up the volume:

  “Yes, of course, I miss my sister,” Hannah told a reporter. “We—we fight a lot, but we also keep each other in check. I feel kind of lost without Eden. I hope she’s okay. I don’t want to think of her as anyone’s prisoner . . .” Hannah remembered it was the closest she’d come to crying during any of the interviews today. The camera zoomed in for a close-up as her eyes welled with tears. She let out a sad laugh. “Eden would make a terrible prisoner because she has a mind of her own and loves the outdoors. She loves exploring. I hope that’s what she’s doing right now. I hope we’re wrong about what happened to her . . .”

  “Talk about laying it on a little thick,” Rachel groaned. “And that close-up, eek, I can see every pore on your face. That sadistic cameraman should be shot at sunrise. At least your hair looks good . . .”

  “Thanks,” Hannah said—with a pinched smile.

  “Hey, I’m just being honest,” she said, switching channels again.

  Hannah thought she heard a noise downstairs, like floorboards creaking. “What was that?” she asked. “Did you just hear something? Turn down the TV . . .”

  Rachel dismissed her with the wave of a hand. “It’s a big, old house, lots of squeaking and creaking. You’ll get used to it. We’re fine. The place has all the latest home security.”

  Hannah couldn’t help thinking someone was downstairs. She felt so utterly helpless. “Y’know, Rachel, I’d really like to check my messages,” she sighed. “Where’s my phone?”

  “In my purse, which I hid earlier while you were in the bathroom.” Rachel gave her a self-satisfied smirk. “Relax. You’ll get your stupid phone later tonight. Or if you want, you can start looking for it. You might start in the basement and work your way up. There are only thirty-eight rooms . . .”

  Restless, Hannah got to her feet. She walked out of the bedroom and glanced down the dim hallway—with all the expensive art on the walls, and all those doors. Some were closed, and others were open—leading into dark rooms. Thirty-eight rooms, total—so many places for someone to hide.

  In her head, there was another number. Three.

  The three of them alone here, and tonight of all nights—it was almost like they were tempting fate.

  And maybe that was just the way Rachel wanted it.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Friday, 6:33 P.M.

  Nate glanced in his rearview mirror. The black SUV was still behind him. He’d first noticed it on Interstate 94, forty-five minutes ago. It had stayed one or two cars back, following him across the state line into Wisconsin. Since turning onto Highway 50, Nate had noticed the damn SUV still on his tail, directly behind him. He’d given the vehicle plenty of chances to pass, but it hadn’t. He couldn’t get a good look in his rearview mirror at the driver, but it looked like two people in the front seat.

  He told himself Lake Geneva was a popular weekend resort for Chicagoans. The odds weren’t too crazy that the SUV happened to be headed there, too. Still, as he passed another exit and saw the SUV still hovering back there, it rattled him even more. “Shit,” he whispered, tightening his grip on the steering wheel.

  The headlights in his rearview mirror blinded him for just a moment. Nate tried to focus on the road ahead.

  His phone rang. He reached over and grabbed it off the passenger seat. He saw it was Ellie calling. “Hi, how’s it going?” he asked, trying not to sound too tense.

  “Where are you?”

  “About twenty minutes from Lake Geneva. Where are you?”

  “On my way to the college,” she said. “I’m going to check on Hannah. But my friends at the Tribune have been working for you in my absence. They just called me with some information. Can you pull over and write this down?”

  “Let’s see if I can remember it,” he said—with his eyes on the road. “Go ahead.”

  “The address of the Bonners’ vacation home is Three Old Timber Lane. It’s where God lost His shoes, as my dad likes to say. The scuttlebutt here is that it’s a big, fenced-in compound in the woods. I wouldn’t go there if I were you. They could make you disappear very easily.”

  “Three Old Timber Lane,” Nate said out loud. He figured he could pull over and look it up on Google Maps once he got to town.

  “I have someone looking into where the Bonners might be tonight. I’ll call you back as soon as I get any word. But one of their favorite spots is the Lake Geneva Country Club. If they’re not there, they often dine at the Geneva ChopHouse or, sometimes, at Medusa Grill and Bistro. Can you remember that?”

  “Yes, I’ve got it, thanks,” Nate said, trying to commit the address and names to memory.

  “Try the restaurants first,” she said. “The country club will be tougher to get into, and their house will be practically impossible, I’m sure. After I check in with Hannah and make sure she’s okay, I’m driving up there to meet you. If you wait, the two of us can confront them together. I have a big spotlight on me right now, and I’m with the press. So it’ll be a lot harder for them to ignore us if we’re together. Could you wait for me, Nate, please?”

  “Okay,” he lied. He didn’t want to put Ellie in jeopardy. He glanced once again at the black SUV in his rearview mirror.

  “I’ll call you as soon as I get word about where the Bonners are tonight. Take care.”

  “You too,” Nate said. “And thank you, Ellie.”

  She hung up.

  Nate put the phone back on the passenger seat. He saw an exit just ahead.

  He anxiously checked the rearview mirror as he passed the turnoff.

  The SUV was still looming behind him.

  “Shit,” he said under his breath.

  * * *

  Driving through the campus was eerie. Things were usually hopping around dinnertime on Friday nights. But the quad was practically empty. Ellie noticed a campus security vehicle in front of the student union, and police cars parked in front of the library and O’Donnell Hall.

  The windows were dark in nearly all of the bungalows in St. Agnes Village. The street was deserted except for a few people gathered in front of the garden where bungalow eighteen used to be. The makeshift shrine in front of the site had at least thirty candles flickering in the night.

  Ellie parked her car two bungalows down.

  The front window of bungalow twenty was dark. But Ellie noticed a glimmer of light coming from a room in the back. With her head down, she ignored the small crowd on the other side of the front yard and started up the paved walkway toward Hannah’s bungalow. She followed the flagstone path that veered off and wound around the side of the bungalow to the tiny backyard. There was no lawn, just a neglected flagstone patio in the shadow of two large trees on the other side of the property line. Around another corner toward the other side of the bungalow, she had a unique view of the overgrown, slightly neglected chrysanthemum garden that had become the focus of so much attention today. Ellie remembered Hannah saying that her bedro
om window looked out at it. That window was where the light came from. As Ellie crept up to the barred window to peek inside, she had a flashback to yesterday morning—when she’d peered into Pamela Rothschild’s window and discovered her corpse on the kitchen floor.

  She hesitated for a moment, then gathered up her courage and moved closer to Hannah’s window. The tiny bedroom was empty—with both twin beds made. A box fan was in one corner of the room. A poster of Degas’s Dancers Tying Shoes was on the wall over one of the beds. Hannah had left the desk lamp on. It was the only light on in the whole place.

  Ellie turned away from the window and headed through the shadowy backyard and up along the flagstone path again. As she rounded the corner of the house, she stopped dead.

  A man blocked her way.

  Horrified, Ellie gasped and stepped back.

  “Who are you?” he asked. The man was in his mid-thirties, stocky, with a crew cut and a heavy five o’clock shadow. He wore a dark suit with no tie.

  Ellie stood frozen for a minute. “I—I’m a friend of Hannah O’Rourke’s,” she finally answered. Her heart was pounding. “She lives here. Who are you?”

  He didn’t respond for a moment. Ellie could hear people murmuring next door in front of the impromptu shrine.

  “I’m Perry,” he said. “I take care of Rachel. I’m sort of her chauffeur-bodyguard.”

  Wide-eyed, Ellie nodded. Now she remembered both Hannah and Nate mentioning him.

  “In fact, right now I’m looking for Rachel,” he continued. “I have a feeling she and Hannah decided to sneak off on their own someplace—without telling anyone. How do you know Hannah?”

  “I’m her teacher, Ellie Goodwin.” She stared at him and tried not to look too intimidated.

  “Do you mind if we go talk some place where it’s light?”

  He gave her a lopsided grin. “Sure.”

  He turned and lumbered along the stone pathway toward the front of the house. His back was to Ellie. “I think the girls gave me the slip about two hours ago. I’ve left Rachel a couple of messages and checked her regular local hangouts, but no luck . . .”

  In the light of the front yard, he turned to face her. “I was just about to try this place outside Waukegan, her cleaning woman’s house . . .”

  “Alma?” Ellie said. She remembered Hannah telling her that the cleaning woman was Lance’s mother. Rachel owned the house they lived in. “Why would they go there?”

  He sighed and reached for his phone. “Well, I’ve driven Rachel out there before. In fact, just the other night, she brought a load of laundry there, and I ended up waiting for a couple of hours. The house is a real dump. Anyway, maybe she’s there right now. The son has a car. Sometimes he drives Rachel to his house, and I’ll have no idea where she is until she calls for me to come pick her up. I can’t think of anywhere else she’d be—at least, none of the usual places.”

  Ellie wondered why in the world Rachel would be hanging around at the home of her cleaning woman and her son—unless Lance was supplying Rachel with drugs or something. That would explain all the clandestine trips there. And Lance definitely seemed like the type who might have a drug-dealing business on the side. “I can’t imagine Hannah wanting to go there with her,” Ellie murmured—almost to herself.

  He shrugged. “Well, those two girls have been hanging around together a lot lately, I just figured, you know . . .”

  Ellie pulled her phone out of her purse. “You don’t have a phone number for Alma or Lance, do you?”

  “No, just the address of the house,” he said. “It’s about twenty-five minutes away, out in the middle of nowhere . . .”

  Checking his phone, Perry read the address to her. Ellie figured it was worth a shot to check out the place. What was Lance running there?

  Ellie felt like a real reporter again, chasing down a lead like this. She wasn’t a bit surprised that Rachel would be hanging out at such a place. But she prayed Hannah wouldn’t be there. Best-case scenario: Rachel would be there and tell her that Hannah was safe and sound in one of the dorms.

  She and Perry exchanged phone numbers. They promised to call each other if one of them found out where Rachel and Hannah were.

  As Ellie climbed back into her car, she realized Perry was probably employed by Donald Sloane—a “ruthless, slippery scumbag,” according to Garth. But Sloane’s people had no reason to be concerned about her. She’d only asked a couple of trusted reporter friends about him and the Bonners. Hannah was the only one who could link her to Nate, and no one knew his true identity. Sloane’s people thought he was dead.

  Ellie was entering Lance and Alma’s address in her GPS when Perry tapped on her car window. She lowered it and looked up at him.

  “I just put it together that you’re the newspaper reporter,” he said.

  And I just put it together that your boss has people murdered, she thought. Ellie nodded. “Yes, that’s me.”

  He grinned. “I’ll have to get your autograph later.” He tapped the hood and backed away from the car.

  Rolling up her window, Ellie put the car in drive. She cruised past the small crowd in front of the shrine where the two girls were slain fifty years ago.

  She didn’t look back.

  * * *

  The black SUV was still on his tail as Nate pulled into Lake Geneva. He turned into the empty parking lot of a Chase Bank. He almost expected the SUV to follow him, but the other vehicle kept going straight down West Main Street.

  Nate parked in a space marked BANK CUSTOMERS ONLY. He kept his eyes glued on the taillights of the SUV. He prayed it wouldn’t turn around. Several other cars passed, and he finally lost sight of it.

  Three Old Timber Lane, Lake Geneva Country Club, Geneva ChopHouse, and Medusa Grill and Bistro—he’d been repeating that to himself for the last half hour.

  Grabbing his phone, he started searching for the addresses. Ellie was right about the Bonners’ vacation home. Three Old Timber Lane was six miles away—a tiny road off some lakeside route that took him way on the other side of town. It looked like it was in the woods somewhere.

  He was about to look up the location of the country club when the phone rang. It was Ellie. “Hey, how’s it going?” he answered. “Did you find Hannah?”

  “Not yet,” she said. “I’m on my way to this place that sounds like a crack house. It’s probably just a wild goose chase.”

  “And you’re going there alone?” he asked, alarmed.

  “I figure if Rachel Bonner is safe there, so am I.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a long story. Never mind. I just wish Hannah would answer her damn phone. Where are you? Are you in Lake Geneva yet?”

  “Yeah, on the edge of town,” Nate said.

  “I found out where the Bonners are tonight.”

  “How did you do that?”

  “A friend at the newspaper started calling up restaurants and asking if the Bonners had reservations. They’re booked at the Geneva ChopHouse for eight-thirty. They’re having dinner with another couple. So—just sit tight. If Hannah’s actually hanging out with Rachel at this place, I’ll drag her along and we can be there by nine. We can catch the Bonners before they have their dessert.”

  “I can’t let you get involved any more than you already are,” Nate said. “It’s too dangerous.” It suddenly occurred to him that he may have already put Ellie in harm’s way. “In fact, I need to warn you. When I tried to see the Bonners at their place on Lake Shore Drive, I gave the cab driver your name and phone number. In case I didn’t come out of the house, he was supposed to call you. Anyway, I’m thinking there’s a chance Sloane’s man got the license plate of the taxi and they tracked down the driver. So, be careful, okay? Make sure no one’s following you . . .”

  There was silence on the other end.

  “Ellie, are you still there? Did you hear what I just said?”

  “I’ll keep my eyes peeled. Meanwhile, stay put. I’ll give you a call after I check out this
place near Waukegan. Will you wait for me?”

  “I’ll wait,” he lied. “Be careful. And don’t take any chances, okay?”

  “I won’t,” she said.

  He had a feeling she was lying, too.

  After he hung up, Nate looked up the directions to the Geneva ChopHouse. It looked like it was about fifteen minutes away.

  He glanced at his wristwatch. If he left in an hour, he’d catch the Bonners while they were having their cocktails.

  * * *

  The dilapidated farmhouse was the only residence on a dead-end road in a rural area. It was between two empty lots with barbed-wire fences and faded signs that read LOT FOR SALE. The lawn in front of the house was mostly crabgrass. A rural mailbox at the end of the long driveway had two names stenciled on it: ALMA PIERSON/LANCE PIERSON. Ellie thought it was strange that Rachel’s father owned this property—and that Rachel had leased the decrepit house to her cleaning woman. Plus it wasn’t exactly convenient to the school where both Alma and Lance worked.

  The place looked deserted. There wasn’t another car in sight. But as Ellie pulled farther into the driveway, she noticed a faint, flickering light in an upstairs window. It looked like a TV was on.

  After what Nate had told her about Sloane’s man possibly getting her name from the taxi driver, she had every reason to question Perry’s intentions when he’d sent her here. But so far, everything jibed with what he’d said. This house was indeed a “dump,” and Alma and Lance obviously lived here.

  Climbing out of the car, Ellie walked up the creaky steps of the front porch and knocked on the door. The evening was so quiet. She’d almost expected to hear murmuring from the TV upstairs, but there wasn’t a sound.

  Ellie was about to knock again when it suddenly occurred to her. She could be standing on the tribute killer’s front porch.

  Lance and his crazy holy-roller mother were the perfect candidates. Was his mother spurring him on to kill the “holy sluts” as Lyle Duncan Wheeler’s mother had spurred on her son? They also had a key to Rachel and Hannah’s bungalow. They’d have had no problem getting into the place and leaving Hannah that note from her “runaway” sister. And Lance probably had a key to the grotto, too.