Chapter 29
Unease ripples through me. “What should we do?” I ask Hilary.
“I’m coming back there,” she says.
“Do you want me to try to get inside?”
“No, it’s locked up like a drum. But just stay there, please, in case she finally answers the door. I’ll see you in twenty minutes.”
As I drop the phone in my bag, I catch sight of Craig leaning across the front seat and powering down the passenger-side window.
“Everything okay?” he yells.
“Uh, yeah,” I call out, traipsing back to the car. “But it’s going to be longer than I said. Maybe up to an hour.”
“These things happen, I know, but I’m gonna have to come back for you or send another driver. I got an airport pickup I can’t be late for.”
I groan internally. It would be so much better to have a car waiting here so I could quickly exit no matter how this plays out today.
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll call when I’m ready.”
He starts the car and drives off, leaving me totally alone on the empty road.
The sky has darkened since I set out from Cartersville, and it’s cooler now.
Tightening the belt on my coat, I head back up toward the front porch but instead decide to walk around to the back.
Maybe I can get a glimpse of Riley, reassuring myself that she’s okay.
Rounding the rear corner of the building, I see that Hilary has taken pains with her backyard, too.
Adjacent to the house is a small, nicely designed stone patio with a bird feeder standing at the far end.
The rear lawn is as manicured as the front one, though it quickly gives way to a thickly wooded area that seems to extend for miles.
Some of the trees have buds already, but no leaves yet, and a few of the closest ones have blue bird boxes tacked to them.
I step onto the patio. The large window at the back of the house has its drapes open, and after peering inside, I realize I’m looking into the living room with a dining area on the far left. No sign of Riley.
I return to the front of the house and plop onto the porch chair.
My disquiet seems to swell by the minute, not helped by how strange it feels to be out here all by myself.
Finally, I hear a car approach and soon spot a silver SUV barreling up the road.
The vehicle makes a sharp turn into the driveway, screeching a little as it comes to a stop only inches from the garage door.
Hilary Brown bolts from the car.
“Any sign of her?” she calls out to me. Her apple-green coat is unbuttoned, and the sides flap as she hurries in my direction with her house key already in hand.
“None,” I say.
She jabs the key in the lock and quickly opens the door. I follow her into a small corridor.
“Riley?” she says, raising her voice a little.
We’re greeted by silence, along with the lingering smell of room spray, one of those scents that’s supposed to remind you of rain or fresh linen.
Hilary takes a few steps in her sensible-looking pumps and stops at the first door on the left, pushing it open. We’re now staring into the guest bedroom I saw earlier from the front window.
“Is this the room she’s staying in?” I ask.
“Yes.”
As she strides toward the en suite bathroom and glances inside, I survey the space. The only belongings I spot are a pair of black-and-tan ballet flats by the closet door.
Hilary starts moving again, back to the living room, with me right behind her. She calls Riley’s name twice more without getting a response.
Our eyes seem to fall simultaneously on the large glass coffee table, where a smartphone in a turquoise case lies next to the TV remote.
“That’s hers,” Hilary says, though its presence is hardly reassuring. Riley’s phone might be here, but where in the world is she?
Hilary ducks into a small kitchen just behind the dining area. It’s empty, too.
“That’s odd,” Hilary says, returning to the living room. The muscles in her face are taut with worry.
“What?”
“The dishwasher’s warm. She must have run it, but I didn’t ask her to.”
So, Riley’s taken the time to tidy up.
“Could she have gone back to Buffalo sooner than planned—and forgotten her phone?”
“No, I checked the Ring camera on the front door before I left the office, and she hasn’t been in or out of the house. And it’s not just her phone that’s here. All her toiletries are still in the bathroom.”
My unease shape-shifts into a low-grade dread.
“Maybe she left in a rush and went out the back,” I say as my gaze lights on a door from the dining area to the outside.
“She could have panicked about speaking to me—because she knew I had doubts about the date she was raped . . . Did you know, Hilary? That it didn’t happen when she claimed it did? ”
She shrugs out of her coat, tosses it on the table, and turns to face me, her expression grave.
“Yes, she told me on the phone today—after she talked to you.”
So, there it is: my nagging suspicion finally confirmed.
“Did she say when it did happen?” I ask.
“On the previous Monday night. I’m sorry—I had no idea until today.”
I fight off a swell of emotions, a chaotic mix of anger, frustration, and unbearable sadness. Just as I told myself before, if she’d reported the crime, Mel would surely be alive.
“I’m glad she admitted it to you,” I say finally, “but it seems she’s decided to take off rather than explain herself.”
Hilary shakes her head. “She said she wanted to tell you the whole truth, and I said fine, as long as I was here at the time. I can’t believe she left without any word.”
“What if you call your nephew? He might know what’s going on.”
“Right, but”—I see her eyes flicker with a thought—“let me check the den first. She sometimes reads in there. Maybe she’s fallen asleep.”
She hurries off again with me still following, and I realize we’re headed down a short corridor to the other room that faced the flower bed, which I’d assumed was a bedroom.
The door is closed.
She raps lightly and calls Riley’s name again. Nothing. For a moment, Hilary hesitates as if gathering her nerve. Then she slowly pushes open the door.
We see her at the same time. I gasp as my knees buckle. Hilary lets out a wail of anguish.
Riley is sitting slumped over on the floor with her back against a partially open bathroom door and her neck wound with orange electrical cord.
The cord extends from over the top of the door and seems to be tied to the handle on the other side.
Her head has dropped onto her chest, but I can see enough to tell that her eyes are closed and her pretty face is dark red, like someone’s held a blowtorch only inches away.
We lurch in unison toward Riley, and each of us grabs hold of an arm. Somehow, we manage to hoist her into an upright position so that the cord finally slackens. My cheek is almost touching Riley’s, but I can’t hear her breathing.
Let her still be all right. Please, please, please.
“I’ll keep her lifted,” I say, panting. “Can you unknot the cord?”
“Yup.”
I feel Hilary working on the other side of the door, and from the way the cord jiggles, I can tell her hands are shaking.
“God dammit,” she yells. “I can’t get this.”
“Do you have something to cut it with?”
Riley is too heavy for me to hold much longer, and I’m scared I’ll drop her and that the cord will tighten around her neck again.
“Yeah. No, wait . . . I’ve got it.”
I feel the cord slacken even more, and as I lower Riley back to the floor, it slithers quickly down this side of the door. I lay her on her back and loosen the cord enough so that it isn’t choking her. An angry red bruise is circling her neck.
“Do you know CPR?” I ask as Hilary stoops down next to me.
“God, no, I don’t.”
“I do, kind of. Call nine-one-one and I’ll try.”
As Hilary races out of the room, I kneel to the floor, tear open Riley’s pale-blue blouse, and start chest compressions, aiming for a hundred per minute. With my arms aching, I reach one hundred, then two hundred.
“They’re on their way,” Hilary yells from the doorway. I hear her come up behind me. “Please tell me she’s alive.”
“There’s no sign she’s breathing,” I say, still working desperately. “Can you take her pulse?”
She drops to the floor, shoves up the sleeve of Riley’s blouse, and shifts her fingers around until they’re finally resting in one place.
“I can’t feel anything,” she says, her voice breaking.
I glance closely at Riley’s face for the first time. Her mouth is slack, and every inch of her skin looks burned. Instinctively, I reach up with one hand and touch her forehead. Despite the fiery color, it’s cool to the touch.
“I think it’s too late,” I say hoarsely, letting my hands drop to my sides.
Hilary moans, and we both sink back onto our heels.
My own hands are shaking now, partly from doing the compressions, and the rest from despair. Riley is dead, has died within hours of speaking to me. She will never return to her job or her fiancé, never have children like she wanted, never slip her feet into those black-and-tan ballet flats again.
I swallow hard and fight off the urge to dry heave.
“Why would she do this?” Hilary exclaims, pressing her temples hard with her hand. “She said she was ready to put the past behind her.”
But I’d pushed her, hadn’t I? Was she terrified about people learning of her failure to come forward and then judging her harshly? Shaken, I realize she might have put off the conversation with me today just to buy herself enough time to end her life.
“Did she sound distraught when you spoke to her?” I ask.
“No, just a little nervous about admitting the truth,” Hilary says. “Besides, Riley was a survivor. I can’t believe she’d give up and do this.”
I gasp.
“Hold on,” I say and stagger to a standing position. “Maybe she wouldn’t do it . . . Does the cord belong to you?”
“Uh, it must have been in the garage with stuff that got left by the previous owners.”
“But you’re not sure?”
“No . . . Are you saying she was murdered?”
Instinctively, I glance down at Riley. Someone could have surprised her from behind, strangled her with the electrical cord, and strung her up over the door.
“Yes, maybe. Even if she wanted to take her own life, would she have chosen to die like this—in the same horrible way she was attacked years ago?”
“Oh dear . . . then we need to get out of this room,” Hilary says, rising now, too. “I’m not a criminal lawyer, but I know we shouldn’t be tramping around in here any more than we already have.”
We back out of the den, then hurry to the living room. As I stand nearly shell-shocked in the center of the space, Hilary drifts to the back door and stares hard at it.
“The bolt’s not on,” she says. “And it was when I left this morning.”
“So, someone broke in from the back?”
Hilary shakes her head. “No, there’s almost zero way to pick the lock . . . And I can’t picture Riley opening the door to a stranger.”
I shake my own head, bewildered. “What . . . what if it wasn’t a stranger?” I say finally, chilled as I utter those words. “We know Riley lied about the timing of the assault, and maybe somehow that caught up with her in a way we don’t understand.”
“For God’s sake, how?”
“When Riley and I spoke on the phone, I asked her if anyone knew the real date besides her, and she admitted that she’d told someone right afterward. Did she say anything to you about that?”
“No, we never got that far.”
“Maybe that person found out she was going to tell the truth, and it would have been bad for him.”
“But how could that be bad for anyone?”
I press a hand to my head, trying to force my thoughts.
“Uh, because it might have exposed him somehow . . . or because it meant that the world would know Riley was attacked before Mel, and that threatened him—because of what he did with the information.”
There, I’ve said it. What’s been knitting together since I spoke on the phone to Riley: Someone used the details of Riley’s attack to kill Mel.
“And then,” I say, “that person showed up here today, pretending to want to talk or offer support but really intending to silence her.”
Hilary gasps, then darts into the kitchen.
Perplexed, I follow behind her. After tugging down the right sleeve of her blouse so that it covers her hand, she yanks open the dishwasher, releasing a small gust of warm air.
The machine is nearly empty, except for three upside-down coffee mugs on top and a couple of spoons in the caddy on the lower shelf.
“So, what are we looking at?” I ask, still confused.
“I used one of those brown mugs for coffee before I left,” she says. “And the white one is the mug Riley’s been using each morning. I don’t know what the other brown one is doing here.”
“Could it have been used last night?”
“I emptied the dishwasher before I even had my coffee this morning. And why would she run it with so few dishes?”
Hilary swivels and stares at the bright-red Keurig coffee maker on the countertop, then opens the trash can in the corner.
“There are four capsules in here,” she says. “Riley and I each had a cup of coffee this morning, so how do you explain the other two?”
“She definitely had a visitor, then.”
Someone who’d steered clear of the Ring camera on the front door. Someone who’d been invited in for coffee. Someone who clearly put their mug in the dishwasher and ran it so there’d be no fingerprints or trace of their DNA.