The Three Beths

by Jeff Abbott

  Sharon Blevins waited for the reaction, so Mariah said, “No, what?”

  “He told Andy that Bethany could take care of herself and it was sexist for him to stand up for her. Honestly!”

  Mariah had no answer to this collision of values. “May I ask where Bethany’s father is?”

  Sharon’s mouth made a tight line. “He’s deceased. He died when Bethany was a teenager.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “We’ve managed. But I think Bethany didn’t have the best judgment when it came to men. She saw every man as tragic, when they’re just weak.” She dabbed a napkin at her eyes, briefly.

  Mariah wondered if there was something tragic, then, about Mr. Blevins. But Sharon’s face was a closed book, so she shifted subjects. “When she told you she was leaving Jake, that was the first sign of trouble? No earlier warnings?”

  “Bethany seemed happy with him.” Sharon finished her coffee. “Feels like most of us seem to be happy, most of the time. We’re seeming rather than being.” She set the mug down with a hard click. “Does this help you with your mama’s case? I don’t see how it could.” It was only now that Sharon seemed to remember why she was telling her sad story to Mariah.

  “My mother doesn’t seem to connect to your daughter. Other than her name.” She considered. “And that Jake works in software. My mother was a sales rep for a small software company.”

  The flimsiest of links. The software industry in Austin employed thousands of people.

  A phone rang in the distance. In the office. “Excuse me, I need to get that. Different ring tones for different clients, and that’s a lady who won’t wait.”

  Sharon got up and went into another room down the hall. Mariah stood, stretched. She wandered to the bookshelf, where there were photos of a younger Bethany and school yearbooks on the shelf. And a bound memory book. She pulled it free, hearing Sharon telling the client to let her check something. She went through the pages. Picture after picture where Bethany was with two other kids. The same boy, the same girl. The boy had dark hair, glasses, and a sly grin and the girl, prone to smiles, was always hugging on Bethany. Some of the older pictures had careful notes on the back. Andy and Julie and me, July Fourth party. Julie and me, Christmas caroling party. Andy, football camp drop-off. Maybe they could tell her something.

  She glanced in the senior yearbook. A long statement of friendship on the first signature page, a place of yearbook honor. Julie Santos. She flipped through the senior pictures and found Andy Candolet. Yes, that was the boy Sharon had mentioned. Something familiar about him; her throat went dry. The name or his face? She wasn’t sure. He was handsome, and she thought maybe he reminded her of an actor she’d seen. Then she made sure Julie Santos was the girl in the photos. Yes.

  She replaced the books and went back and sat down on the couch with her phone, still hearing Sharon talking on the phone, calmly explaining a flight schedule she’d set up.

  On Faceplace, on the FIND BETHANY page, she found Andy Candolet and Julie Santos as administrators. That took her to each of their individual pages. Julie worked as a fitness trainer at a local gym, closer to Lakehaven. Andy worked in security for a transportation company called Ahoy. Yes, she remembered that from the news accounts. Bethany had worked at Ahoy until a month before she vanished. She closed the browser on her phone as Sharon returned, blinking, trying to smile.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  Mariah stood. “I’m sorry to have kept you from your work. Thank you…for your time. I’m sorry to have brought all this pain up for you again.”

  “It’s not always painful to talk about my girl.” Now Sharon seemed reluctant for her to leave. “I kept her room, mostly, as it was. I use it as my office now. Would you like to see it? I know it’s weird that I use her desk, but it means I spend my days in a place she loved.”

  “I totally understand.” In some ways Sharon made her think of her father, Craig: lost, unmoored, dealing with an endless grief. But Sharon hadn’t been suspected of being her Beth’s killer. That was one key difference.

  Mariah followed Sharon down the hall to the room she’d seen Sharon duck into earlier. More crosses on the wall, a Bible quote framed: And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.

  Mariah walked around the room. There was a daybed with pillows in there, a desk, and a small filing cabinet. The desktop was organized with file folders of different colors: red, orange, blue. Papers and notes and an airline ticket receipt carefully laid out next to the computer. A color-coded calendar app filled most of the screen.

  “You look very organized,” Mariah said. “My own desk is a mess.”

  “I’m a VPA,” Sharon said. “A virtual personal assistant. I keep the schedules for some self-employed folks who need help but not a full-time assistant. I handle their appointments, arrange their hotels and flights, order online supplies for them and have them shipped, help them edit or put together their presentations, do additional research, whatever else they need when they need it…I can do all that remotely. I work for a few people in Dallas and a friend of my brother’s up in Little Rock and another half-dozen here in Austin.” She tried a brave smile. “I can work from her room.”

  Not from home. From her room. It made Mariah a little dizzy.

  She noticed a sticky note on the monitor. “Oh, I do that too with my passwords.”

  “That’s Bethany’s. It was on her computer monitor when she was a student. I told her it was bad security but…I couldn’t bear to throw it out.” Sharon’s voice cracked.

  Mariah leaned forward and saw the password: spiker44. In loopy handwriting that was presumably Bethany’s, and Mariah understood why her mother had kept the sticky note.

  “That was her number in volleyball,” Sharon said. Mariah nodded, politely, feeling a shift in her chest.

  Sharon had created her bubbles: home and church, and this job she could do from her computer. In her missing daughter’s bedroom. Like Mariah’s web and app business. Minimal human interaction. Sharon was a mirror for Mariah’s own life, and the thought jolted her.

  Mariah studied the pictures on the wall. Mostly of Bethany. Pretty, smiling, with no idea that one day she would be taken from the world and leave broken lives and grief and unanswered questions behind.

  “You would have liked Bethany,” Sharon said quietly, tracking Mariah’s gaze across the pictures. “Everyone did.”

  You tended to remember only the best of the missing, Mariah thought. “If we could find something that truly connected them…”

  “Otherwise you think there’s someone out there looking for women named Beth. What would be the motive? I thought serial killers”—it took effort for Sharon to say the words—“picked out victims at random. How would he even know their names if they were strangers to him?”

  “Then they weren’t,” Mariah said simply.

  “But don’t serial killers have a type? Like Ted Bundy liked girls with dark hair parted in the middle.” Sharon cleared her throat. “Bethany read a lot of true crime and talked about what she learned in them.”

  Mariah took a risk. She turned to Sharon and sat on the daybed, and Sharon sat down at her desk chair. “If someone targeted Beths, there would be ways to find them. Maybe he just spotted them somewhere where they had name tags on. A conference. A meeting, a happy hour, a fundraiser. They both could have been at a software event here, Bethany there with Jake, my mom there for her job.”

  “But it’s crazy to kill someone based on their name.” Sharon pressed her hand to her mouth and her hand trembled. “I gave my girl that name. I chose Bethany. It’s a place in the Bible. Is this my fault?”

  “Oh, no, you mustn’t think that way.” Mariah was horrified. “Listen to me, Mrs. Blevins. It’s just a theory. Nothing more. The motivation might be he hates a Beth from his own life.” Mariah wished Reveal was here so he could explain it better.

  “It se
ems like a lot of work,” Sharon said. Now her voice was steady.

  She thought of an even simpler way. “Are you on Faceplace?”

  “Yes. Well, not often. I don’t need to know everyone’s business or how great their lives are.”

  “But that is what they post, isn’t it? Details of their lives, under their real names. If you wanted to find a whole bunch of Beths—or any other name—you could search on social media. You could narrow it down by geography. By interests. The website just thinks you’re looking for a special friend. It doesn’t seem suspicious.”

  Sharon was pale. She closed her eyes for a moment.

  “But…my daughter went to Houston on that day, and only Jake could have known. It was out of the ordinary. No one knew she did it. She didn’t post on Faceplace, ‘Hey, I’ve taken off to Houston.’ She didn’t even make the reservation until a couple of hours before the flight. I just don’t see how she could have been targeted this way by a stranger. Bethany didn’t go off with strange men.” Sharon looked offended at the idea.

  “But you clearly didn’t know what she would do. She did several actions that were out of character. Leave her husband. Go to Houston. Not contact you.”

  Sharon seemed angry now, her mouth setting in a frown, and Mariah realized she’d overstepped. “I just mean, Bethany surprised you.”

  “Could this theory work with what happened with your mom? What was her last day like?” Sharon asked.

  Mariah took a deep breath. “We don’t have her on videotape, except at Starbucks, getting a morning coffee. She went to work at her office. She made phone calls to prospects, went to a meeting with the sales department. She had sales appointments that afternoon in north Austin, so she was going to be out of the office. At lunch she left—sometimes she ate lunch at home; her office was only ten minutes away—but she didn’t have lunch plans with anyone, she didn’t go to the gym, and she completely vanished. I was home sick, and she’d called me to see if I needed anything, and I told her I just wanted to sleep.” She cleared her throat. “Her car was parked by some vacant land we own; she might have driven out there on her lunch. She didn’t empty a bank account. She just disappeared.” She swallowed. “My mom and I were close. I mean, yeah, we fought some, but we confided in each other. She didn’t tell me she was unhappy. And even if she left, she wouldn’t let me think she was dead. Not in a million years.” Not even after that fight. Not even then.

  Sharon started to say something more, then stopped. But she put her hand on Mariah’s knee, the way a mom would to a daughter, and suddenly Mariah realized they’d each lost what the other was—mother and daughter. A longing, one she hadn’t known in a long time, coursed in her guts.

  She let herself take Sharon’s hand and for a long moment they sat there, hand in hand. Mariah thought, She wants to help you, yet she doesn’t. She’s reluctant. Most mothers would pursue any thread about their missing daughters. She hesitated. Why?

  You could be sticking your nose into a murder that has nothing to do with your mother, Reveal had warned her.

  Sharon stood. “I have to get to work. Will you let me know if you find out anything?”

  “Of course. How about if I call you later?”

  Sharon nodded, grateful.

  * * *

  Sharon watched Mariah drive away, from the window. She felt sick. Why? Why now, what would possess a person? She had never understood the need of others to interfere in private lives. To come, to ask questions, to judge. Always, to judge. She realized she was shivering. She went and poured herself a glass of ice water and gulped it down. It didn’t calm her. Oh, she hated them. Hated people like this Mariah person. People who dug into what wasn’t their concern. And she was dangerous, because she thought she had a good reason. A valid reason.

  What would she do if Mariah came back? She should have slammed the door in her face. She should have refused to speak to her. But it was important to know what this young woman knew. To know, so she could deal with her.

  This young woman would be back. Sharon knew the type. She went to the dresser in her bedroom. The bedroom was sparse. There were no pictures of Bethany in here; she couldn’t bear to feel Bethany’s eyes on her here. She stared at herself in the mirror. She had been so young once, ripe with Bethany, married, knowing she would have a wonderful life. She had been very confident of that. She had done everything right. Nothing but good choices and right turns, but then you made one bad choice, one left turn, and that perfect world came undone, more fragile than you ever thought.

  She had hidden the gun underneath a set of T-shirts, folded, that her husband had worn. Everything else of Hal’s was gone, but she had kept these. They were good for hiding the gun. The pistol seemed like it was less hers, and more his, if it was hidden this way.

  She checked the gun. It needed cleaning. It had not been loaded in a long time. The loaded gun was too much temptation. She got the oil and a rag and she cleaned the gun now, and then she loaded it, carefully, thinking, You won’t have to use it. You won’t need it. There’s nothing for this snoop to find, nothing for her to know. The police found nothing. No one will ever find anything.

  She realized she was crying as she prepared the gun, and she stopped, and then sobs racked her, sobs for her lost daughter, for her lost life, for every left turn she had made. She let the tears come, molten and welcome, and she felt an exhaustion when she was done. Then she just felt the coldness in her chest, the sense of doing what was necessary, like she had done before.

  She finished cleaning the gun, loaded it, and then looked for the best place in the house to keep it. The couch. No, Mariah sat on the couch when she’d come before; it would be natural for her to sit there again. OK. The armchair by the couch, where Sharon had sat. She carefully wedged the gun into place, hidden by the cushion. She sat carefully. She moved the gun to the right side, because she was right-handed and it was less visible to anyone sitting on the couch.

  Please don’t come back here, Sharon thought. Take pity on a grieving mother. Don’t come back. Go away, go find your mother. Leave me and my daughter out of it.

  Then she decided she couldn’t just wait and hope that Mariah Dunning didn’t come back or gave up. She would have to take action into her own hands.

  Sharon sat down at her computer and started to delve into Mariah’s online life. She needed to know her enemy in case she needed to make her into a friend.

  13

  L​AKEHAVEN’S POLICE STATION was not large. It did not need to be. There was a chief, and a staff of eight officers, two corporals, a sergeant, a detective, and an administrative assistant. Before Beth went missing Craig had only known Broussard’s name; now he knew them all. Craig drove his wife’s car, a red Mercedes—he thought for certain that would spark commentary—and parked by a police car. It had been so long since it was driven he was grateful the battery had started.

  He sat in the small lobby and waited. The assistant looked at him, and he knew she knew who he was. So did the officers who arrived and left, coming off duty and going on patrol duty. He sat there and took their stares. It was as if he was the sole criminal mastermind in Lakehaven, mocking them with his presence.

  The chief came out. He was a small, spare man with horn-rimmed glasses. Lakehaven’s one detective, Carmen Ames, stood with Broussard.

  “Chief. Ms. Ames.” Craig was determined to be civil, be calm.

  “If you’d come back to an interview room with us, sir,” Detective Ames said.

  Craig followed her. They sat down in a small room with a rectangular table. He had been questioned in this same room before. At least four times. “Is there a problem?”

  “No, sir, but we wanted to talk to you about Mariah and the car crash.”

  “My insurance will pay for the damage, I said that already.”

  “Yes, sir, that’s not our concern today.” Carmen Ames produced a DVD, with the name Beth written across it, in a plastic case. He stared at it. “This item was found in a permitted searc
h of your daughter’s car, in the glove compartment.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a DVD. But it’s password-protected.”

  “Why did you try to play it?” He kept his voice relaxed.

  Ames and Broussard glanced at each other.

  “I found the DVD,” Carmen Ames said. “It was stuffed in the glove compartment, under the owner’s manual for the car, and two years of expired insurance cards, and a first aid kit, and a worn paperback book. Maybe Mariah knew it was there; maybe Mariah didn’t know it was there. The DVD has your wife’s name, Beth, written across the front.” As if Craig hadn’t noticed that immediately. And they both looked at him, as if a reaction might flash in neon across his face.

  “And you said it’s password-protected?” Craig forced his voice toward total calm. He folded his hands in his lap. The picture of unconcern.

  “Yes. It could contain photos, files, documents, we don’t know.”

  “It’s probably something from her work. She worked for a software company.”

  “Why is it in your daughter’s car, then?” Dennis Broussard seemed determined to keep his voice equally clear, but the barest hint of a smile on his face said, I’m closing in on you.

  “How odd,” Craig said. “I can’t think of a reason.”

  “Do you know the password?” Ames said. “Or any likely password she might have used?”

  “No.” He looked at Broussard. “I mean, you could try my name or my daughter’s or our dog’s name.”

  “It’s just a very unusual item to find. We called her employer. They said they don’t normally give out secured discs to their salespeople. Product demos are done online.”

  “It could be something as innocent as family pictures.”

  “It could be, but again, why is it in Mariah’s car?”

  “I’m sorry, Dennis,” Craig said. “I don’t have an explanation.” He said nothing more. He’d learned long ago that if he volunteered information, they would seek to fashion it into a noose with which to hang him.