Chapter Twenty-Six #2
“No. I said nothing. I wasn’t about to give him any details either way before I could verify that he was who he said he was. I just asked for his information and hung up.”
Son of a bitch.
Ronan lied to me.
Shame crawls slowly up my neck and settles onto my cheeks, where it burns. I want to kick myself for falling for it. Not only falling for his clever lie, but rewarding him with sex on top of it.
Thank God a million times over I didn’t let him manipulate me into telling him the truth.
Because if that was a lie, everything else is probably a lie, too. Including that line about how he’d never take me to court to get custody. Or the one about how he was sorry for the way he treated me.
Or the one about being sick.
All of it was a manipulation aimed at getting me to admit Bea is his.
I can’t believe I’ve been so foolish.
My throat tightens. My chest aches. I have to take a few deep breaths before I can speak again. “Thank you for that, Brett. If you get any other strange calls, you should probably block the number. These con men are pretty persistent if they feel like they have a foot in the door.”
Ask me how I know.
“Will do. It was nice talking to you, May. Stay well.”
“Thanks, Brett. You, too.”
After we hang up, I sit on the edge of the bed, hands shaking. I’m furious with myself for providing Brett’s name in the first place. Overwhelmed with Ronan’s persistence and never imagining he might follow up with a phone call, I blurted it out under duress.
I’ll be more careful from now on. No more slipups. No more conversations.
No more sex.
In fact, I’ll avoid him completely for the rest of my stay in Solstice.
It dawns on me that maybe Ronan’s threat to tell everyone within shouting distance that he was Bea’s father the day we ran into him in the grocery store was a bluff.
Maybe he has no intention of telling anyone anything.
Maybe he has no intention of giving us money or support or any of the other nice things he promised he’d give.
Maybe his plan is simply to take her from me.
I break out in a cold sweat. My anger turns to panic that I try to breathe my way through, but it doesn’t help.
Ronan’s rich. He’s powerful. He’s connected. With a snap of his fingers, he can get anything he wants. Even the cops are afraid of him. The private investigator said most law enforcement people he knew would rather wrestle a grizzly than go up against a Croft.
When my phone rings again, I answer it distractedly. “This is Maven.”
“Hello, there, Ms. Blackthorn.”
“Mr. Walker. Good morning.”
“Morning to you. You got a minute?”
“Yes. Go ahead.”
“I ran into something strange when I was doing my due diligence on your case. I don’t know if it’s significant, but I thought I’d pass it along.”
“Something about my missing grandmother?”
“Not exactly. It’s about missing persons in general in your area.”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“According to the National Crime Information Center, Solstice has the highest percentage of unsolved missing persons cases in the whole United States.”
“Really? That’s strange.”
“It is, especially when you adjust for the size of the population.”
“What do you think could be the cause? Human trafficking?”
“That’s a possibility. The database has only been online since 1975 and periodically gets purged and updated, so I don’t have the entire picture, but there’s a whole pile of cold cases in Solstice.
Ninety percent of the time, folks are found or return home safely within a year, but if not, the file stays open indefinitely in case new DNA or other evidence comes in.
In Solstice, nobody who goes missing ever comes back.
Not once in fifty years. Men, women, old folks, tourists, hikers, bikers, even an entire troop of Boy Scouts on a camping trip once.
You name it, people just seem to vanish without a trace. ”
Unease slithers through me, unfurling in my stomach like the coils of a snake.
“How is it possible nobody noticed this before now? You’d think there would have been a documentary made, one of those true crime things my daughter loves so much.”
He chuckles. “I seriously doubt the powers that be in that part of the state would allow a story like that to surface.”
“You’re talking about the Crofts.”
“Who else? They own the media, the politicians, everybody who counts. The last thing they’d want is some bad PR that could affect their stock price.”
“So there’s nothing we can do?”
“Like I said, I just thought it was interesting. And even more of a reason for you to watch your back. You don’t want to become a statistic yourself, ma’am.”
Those words are chilling. “Thank you for telling me, Mr. Walker. I appreciate it.”
“You’re welcome. I’ll be in touch as soon as I have anything else.”
We disconnect. I sit on the edge of the bed for a long time, thinking.
Then I call Pinecrest Cemetery, introduce myself to the person who answers, and tell him that I want to exhume my mother’s grave.
The man on the other end of the line is silent for a moment, then he produces a small, embarrassed cough. “I’m afraid that’s not possible, Ms. Blackthorn.”
“Why not?”
“We’ve been instructed not to accommodate any requests to move graves.”
“I don’t want to move her. I want to exhume her remains to conduct a postmortem. We’ll put her right back when we’re done.”
“I understand, but I’m afraid it’s still not possible. Since Anderson’s Funeral Home was shut down, the state regulatory board has opened an investigation into misconduct allegations. Until that investigation concludes, we’re not allowed to disinter any bodies.”
“I don’t understand how the two are connected.”
“To put it simply, all the graveyards Anderson’s serviced over the past few decades are considered possible crime scenes. That’s all the information I can divulge.”
I recall the PI telling me one of the complaints against Anderson’s was a body missing from a casket and being replaced by weights, and another casket having more than one body inside.
“Does that mean the authorities will dig up the graves themselves?”
“I can’t comment on that.” He lowers his voice to a whisper.
“Off the record, yes. They’ve already begun.
From the sound of it, this whole thing is about to get very dirty.
The entire Anderson clan up and disappeared, which means those rascals hightailed it so they don’t go to prison for all the nasty tricks they played that they thought would stay buried with the poor dead folks they mishandled.
But you didn’t hear any of that from me. ”
“Of course not. I appreciate the insight. Thank you for your time.”
The day passes uneventfully. The peace lasts until somewhere around midnight, when I sit bolt upright in bed, sensing a strange presence in the room.
I roll over and switch on the lamp on the nightstand. The room floods with light.
I’m alone.
I’m relieved until my intuition tells me to turn off the light and be still. I sit with my knees pulled up under my chin, my ears primed to the hum of the stillness, my heart thudding a heavy, primal beat.
Somewhere far off in the distance, a lone wolf howls.
Rising from bed, I cross to the window, open the drapes, and look out. Ronan stands outside the gate, smoking a cigarette.
I knew he was there even before I saw him.
We gaze at each other across the distance until I pull the drapes closed. Then I return to bed and lie staring at the ceiling in the dark until dawn creeps around the edges of the drapes.
When sleep finally claims me, I dream of blue butterflies and red foxes, white cats and black dogs, and Granny Lorinda riding a huge great horned owl against a backdrop of the starry night sky and the full, glowing moon, her long white hair snapping in the wind.
A flock of ravens follows closely behind her.
When I wake in the morning, my pillowcase is once again covered in blood.
My nosebleed is so bad this time, it soaked all the way through the pillow.