The Three Beths

by Jeff Abbott

  “Let’s go inside,” he said.

  * * *

  The house, vast and sparsely furnished, wasn’t as tidy as Sharon’s. She took in details as she walked through the entryway, the grand living area, the kitchen with a large informal dining nook. It looked like a person lived here alone. A pile of laundry was near one door, a haphazard stack of books on a coffee table. The furniture was expensive, but there wasn’t enough of it, no art or photos on the walls, so the house looked half-finished. Like his life, she thought. Except, on the mantel, a wedding photo of Jake and Bethany, smiling, happy, unaware of approaching fate’s heavy footsteps. An iPad, propped up for easy viewing, at one of the dining room table chairs. He probably surfed the web or watched Netflix while eating his solitary dinners. She could smell the faint funk of dishes in the sink that needed to be rinsed and put in the dishwasher.

  “Pardon the mess,” he said. “I don’t have a lot of visitors. I’ve never quite settled into this house. Like it’s a limbo and Bethany’s going to come back and tell me to straighten it up. Stupid of me.”

  It was a naked thing to confess. “So if she returned and asked you would take her back? Even after all this?”

  “I’m not a doormat,” he said after a moment. “If she’s still alive, she doesn’t want me. I loved her, and I should have made sure she knew that. I wasn’t a very good husband. I’d be better if she’d told me how unhappy she was.” He stopped. “Sorry. That was more than you asked. I don’t…I don’t talk about this. I don’t normally have people over here.”

  “We don’t have a lot of company at our house, either.” Our houses are haunted, she thought, by people who might be ghosts.

  He said, “You want a water? Or a soda? I’d offer something stronger but that might be a mistake after fainting.”

  “Water, please, thank you.”

  He got her water, a cold bottle from a bar refrigerator. She gulped it down. She sat on the edge of a large leather sofa in his den. She tried to steady her nerves, but she felt an absolute humiliation. Here she had called, begged him to come talk to her, and then he’d found her passed out. He really would think she was unbalanced; he might call the police. She imagined Broussard showing up in a cop car and telling Jake all about her accident while hallucinating she’d seen her mother. Humiliating and crushing.

  He sat down across from her on a leather ottoman. “You should go to a doctor. There’s an urgent care place on Old Travis. I can drive you.” His voice was neutral.

  “I’m fine now, thank you.” And she was. She touched the back of her head; no bruise. Her throat, in case an arm had closed around her and stopped her air: the same, no soreness. She thought of Sharon, half-conscious on her entryway floor. Maybe this is too much and we’re just shutting off our brains. She shivered. “I thought I heard a voice behind me, but maybe it was the wind. Or my imagination.”

  “So. Not really into trivia, I take it.” He didn’t seem mad. “Poor Martin Van Buren, used and cast aside.”

  It was the slightest of thaws. “No.”

  “I think when you’ve gathered your strength you should go,” he said. Mind made up, she thought.

  “I think we should compare notes.”

  “I don’t have notes,” he said. “I’m not trying to figure it all out. That’s for the police.”

  “How can you not want to know?” Her voice shook. She felt sick again.

  He said, “Look, my wife left me. I don’t know what happened to her after that. My mother-in-law blames me, thinks I somehow got to Houston, found her, and killed her because she left me. I lost a lot of friends over this. I’m entirely innocent. I’m not trying to solve this, I’m trying to keep it from…consuming me.” He looked at her, as if surprised by the spill of words. “Is Sharon OK?”

  “She’s grieving. She’s a little lost.”

  “I’m sure she had plenty to say about me.”

  Mariah nodded.

  “See, lots of people walk away from a spouse. Who walks away from a parent who loves her? This has been the cruelest thing for Sharon.”

  “You feel bad for her?”

  “Yes, of course. She needs someone to blame. I’m it. But she still…” He stopped. “Yes, I feel bad for her.”

  “Bethany ever mention my mother? Beth Dunning? They would get together at bars like Rancho’s and Dos Amigos after work.”

  He shook his head. “She didn’t. I was putting in such long hours—sometimes twenty a day—at the company. I ignored Bethany. I thought I was building a future for us, and instead I was driving her away.” He stood. “I have a college friend who lives nearby who’s a doctor. If you won’t let me drive you to the ER, will you let her take a look at you? Please?”

  She wondered if he were worried about liability. “I’m not going to sue you.”

  “I’m not going to keep talking to you unless she checks you out.”

  “All right,” she said, because it was the only way to keep him talking, and he picked up the phone.

  * * *

  The doctor—her name was Hannah and she was polite and efficient and very pregnant—probed at a bump on the side of her head. It was a little tender.

  “Someone hit me?” Mariah asked.

  “I think you hit your head when you fell to the ground.”

  “She was on the edge of the rock garden,” Jake said.

  “That might be it. Or a sprinkler head. But you don’t appear to have a concussion. I think you’re going to have a headache for a few hours, but otherwise you’re fine.” She stood. “If you feel worse, call your doctor or go to urgent care.”

  “Thanks.”

  Jake walked her to the door, and Mariah could hear the softly spoken words: “That bump wasn’t nearly enough for someone to have hit her. If she claims that, she’s lying.”

  “I know.” And then words she couldn’t hear.

  The answer stuck at her. She rubbed palms along her jeans.

  After a few moments, Jake returned. “I’m sorry I can’t help you.”

  “Your wife asked my mom for a favor. I’m wondering what it is.” She showed him, on her phone, the pertinent email between her mom and Bethany. “What could Bethany have learned about her dad? And what is it my mom is supposed to keep safe?”

  He took a deep breath and sipped at his water. “You know her dad killed himself.”

  “I know that was the story.”

  “The story? What, you think Sharon killed him and made it look like a suicide? Why would she? It made their lives so much harder.”

  “Bethany found out something about her dad, and she asked my mom to keep something for her. Then six months later my mom vanishes. That’s the thread we need to find.”

  “Maybe she finds out her mom played a role in her dad’s death. She freaks out. She can’t be around her mom, so she leaves town. And then what?”

  That really was a question.

  Jake was still thinking aloud: “She could have trusted the wrong person in Houston. She was like a teenage runaway who gets in the wrong car. I…I can’t stand talking about her like this. But…”

  “And then what, this person finds out my mom has something related to the case? My mom would have come forward to the police if she had information.”

  He studied the email on her phone screen again. He rubbed at his face.

  “Bethany asks her not to say anything. Maybe your mom just kept a promise. Maybe she didn’t want to get involved. Maybe someone threatened your mom. Maybe your mom was in touch with Bethany when no one else was.” He shrugged. “The what-ifs can kill you.”

  “I’ve found no evidence that they were in touch after Bethany went to Houston. And the only reason my mom wouldn’t have come forward if Bethany was declared missing was that she knew she was OK. Or that disappearing was what Bethany wanted.”

  Jake rubbed his eyes.

  “Look, you know what it’s like to be wrongfully accused. Same with my dad. This has broken him. People have terrorized him. He’s in
nocent, and I have to find out the truth so people will know he didn’t do this.”

  Jake took a long breath. “Why didn’t she trust me? I was her husband. If she found out something about her mom…why not tell me?”

  “I don’t know. What would you have done?”

  “Told her we had to call the police.”

  “There’s your answer. Maybe she didn’t want to turn in her mother. Or it could have been something else. Something her father was involved in that she didn’t want exposed.”

  “Bethany only spoke about her dad with affection,” he said. Ten seconds ticked by. “But she rarely spoke about him.”

  “Andy came to see you today.”

  “How do you know that?”

  She explained she’d seen Andy while she was dropping off the note. “But he dodged my question on if he was there to see you.”

  “Yes. He comes around once a month. He wants to work in a startup; he wants free of his aunt. He pesters me for a job. He thinks I owe him.”

  “Because your wife embezzled money and he kept her from being prosecuted.”

  “She didn’t do that. Of course not,” he scoffed. But he glanced away from her, got up, poured himself a glass of water at the den’s bar.

  “Who did the embezzling, then?”

  “Might have been Andy. He’d have access to the accounts. And if he thought for a moment he could get away with it, he would.”

  “If he’s her good friend, he doesn’t frame Bethany for stealing.”

  “Good friend.” He arched an eyebrow at her. “Andy is the center of his own universe. The rest of us are just orbiting around him. He knows how to use a friend, not be one.”

  That left her silent. Jake continued: “Andy could have taken that money. First, he’d have access for his job, and second, that’s a family-run company, and their security’s a bit lax—passwords on sticky notes on monitors. She had no reason to steal. That I know of,” he said. “Or her friend Lizbeth. She left the company not long after Bethany did.”

  “Lizbeth?” Mariah asked. “Julie told me they were in a writing group together and had been hanging out a lot. I didn’t know they worked together. Have you talked to her?”

  “Maybe once since Bethany disappeared. She called me, just to say she was sorry and she hoped Bethany would turn up soon.”

  “Do you have a picture of her? Or did Bethany? Do you know her last name?”

  “No. I met her only once or twice. I was busy.” His voice went bitter. “Busy, busy, busy.”

  For a moment they were both silent in the huge, empty house.

  “Would you let me look through your wife’s papers here? Her computer?”

  “She wiped her hard drive and her backup drive and drilled a hole in each before she left. Thorough.”

  Wow, Mariah thought. She didn’t want to leave a trace. She really was walking away from her life. What was she hiding? Or did the police think Jake had done it?

  “I can tell you that email she sent your mom was from an account I didn’t know she had. It wasn’t in her backup. I don’t know if the police found it. They told me very little.”

  “Did you hire private investigators?”

  “By the time I did, the trail had gone cold.”

  Mariah got up, despite her headache, and paced the floor. “Why then? Why at that time? Her life is falling apart, she gets accused of a theft, she learns something about her dad’s suicide, she asks my mother for a favor, she vanishes. Right before you’re going to have a big success, one she should stay here for. And then my mom’s gone.” Her voice shook. “All my family’s suffering is because of Bethany, asking my mother to do something I’m guessing she never should have asked.” She made her hands into fists and began to pound the pillows on the couch.

  “Hey, hey, calm down.”

  “Don’t tell me to calm down,” she said, her voice ragged.

  “OK, don’t calm down,” he said. “But I can tell you one thing. Bethany wouldn’t have hurt anyone. Maybe your mother came across as a person she could trust.”

  “What would she have given her?” Ideas swam in her head: the money, papers, evidence about her father’s death. Maybe the DVD? But then why password it—proof of a crime was useless if it couldn’t be accessed. And it had her mother’s name on it. She didn’t even know where to start.

  “I don’t know.” He frowned in thought. “You seem certain there’s still someone who’s a threat to anyone who digs into this,” he said.

  “Someone followed my friend Chad—he writes a true crime blog, and he was the first to notice that there were two Beths who had gone missing.”

  “Chad Chang? Dude calls himself Reveal?”

  “Yes, you know him?”

  “He was the most persistent requester of an interview.” Something changed in his voice. “I always said no. You’re a friend of his?”

  “We went to high school together. He’s not a bad guy, just ambitious.”

  “He gets web clicks off other peoples’ pain. What, he sent you over here to get my wife’s computer files?” His voice remained calm, but the annoyance was clear.

  “No. No!” This was all going wrong. “Please. Because I found the email, I thought maybe your wife would have some emails with my mom, too. Maybe ones that got deleted on my mom’s account. Or would tell us what she entrusted to my mom.”

  He unclenched his fists. “You could have faked that. I don’t know you. You show up at the bar, you show up at my house, you pretend to have been attacked or passed out…” He stopped.

  “It’s not a lie that my mom is missing. I have no motive. I don’t want anything from you except information. And Reveal didn’t send me.”

  “All right,” he said, calming down. But for a moment he’d scared her.

  31

  J​AKE TOOK A CALMING BREATH. Mariah took one as well.

  “Okay, Lizbeth you asked about. I’ll have to go find Bethany’s address book. Hold on a second.” He vanished upstairs. Mariah went back to the window and looked out to see if anyone was there, watching. No Julie, no Andy. She stayed at the window for a moment longer, then went back to the couch.

  He came down with a battered old address book made of faded red leather. “You said Bethany wiped her computer backups before she left. Was that something she knew how to do?” She wondered if her mother might have helped Bethany with that.

  “She was tech savvy, yeah. And you can learn to do it with an online search. Any motivated person could manage it. When the police took her computer, I think they thought I’d done it.” He cleared his throat. “So, I don’t have her cell phone contacts list, but she also kept numbers in this.” He handed it to her. She flipped through the pages and found it: Gonzales, Lizbeth. She called the number. She got an automated message—a voicemail but with a man’s greeting. His voice was a little creaky; she thought he might be elderly. We cannot come to the phone right now. Sorry, leave a message. No name given.

  “Hi,” she said. “I’m trying to reach Lizbeth Gonzales. My name is Mariah Dunning. You can call me at 512-555-2390. This is in regard to a mutual friend, Bethany Curtis. Please, please return my call. Thank you.” She hung up and Jake shrugged.

  “Do you know anything about her?”

  “No, I really don’t. Do you think she matters? They hadn’t been friends for long.”

  “Neither had my mom and Bethany, yet Bethany trusted my mom with something important.”

  He ran his hands through his hair in frustration. “When your wife leaves you like this, you realize that you didn’t really know her. It tears you up, this person you spent your life with. And when she vanishes permanently, you think maybe you did know her. That she wasn’t this stranger, and something happened that wasn’t supposed to happen.”

  Mariah couldn’t look at him; she didn’t want to see his grief. She kept paging through the address book. Her mother wasn’t listed.

  “I don’t talk a lot about this,” he said suddenly, as if he hadn’
t said it before.

  She looked up from the address book. His gaze on her was steady. “Do you talk about your mom with people?”

  “No. It makes everyone uncomfortable. If I bring her up, or someone else brings her up, I lie. I had a client ask me once, just you know, making conversation over a working lunch, if my parents lived in town. What do you say? My mother went missing and my father was accused of having killed her and disposing of the body? And we had to endure that until the investigation against him was dropped for lack of evidence? I just say, yes, they’re here and I change the subject. Doesn’t it make dating hard?”

  “I don’t date,” he said after a moment. “How can I? I don’t know if my wife is still alive or not.”

  Here she had thought they would have so much in common, and she’d made a serious misstep. “Of course not. Yes. I understand.”

  “Did you know women wanted to date me, though? I would get emails.” He shook his head. “I suppose they thought I was tragic. Or dangerous. It made zero sense to me.” He took another sip of his water. “The police here suspected me, but not like Bethany’s family does. Her taking the flight to Houston and being seen in the airport without me took the police pressure off me. But her case got shrugged off. Unhappy wife leaves town.”

  The silence stretched and finally she said, “What?”

  He met her gaze. “I don’t normally talk about Beth. I don’t even know you. It’s hard.”

  “I probably understand better than anyone you’ve met since she vanished,” Mariah said evenly. He didn’t answer, he drank his water, and she waited to see if he would say more.

  “What no one wants to say is that Bethany wanted away from Sharon. Sharon hasn’t been right since her husband killed himself. Which I get. It’s hard. But marrying me…it didn’t keep Sharon at bay. She used to invite herself over whenever she felt lonely. I mean, fine, OK, now and then. Not every other night when we’re newlyweds. We’d go out with friends and her mother would text her, ‘Why aren’t you at home? I need you to go to the grocery.’ And Bethany didn’t like to say no to her. She was her mother; she felt she owed her everything.” He ran the edge of his hand along his lip. “I was always second place. I’d told her this couldn’t go on, I loved her, but she had to cut the apron strings. She wasn’t willing to confront her mom. I guess it was why I threw myself into the startup world so hard, because her mom was always around, encroaching. And Andy…” He stopped. “Holy smoke, I just monologued.” He shook his head with a half-smile. “I…I…”