The woman studied her with a curious expression and then she bobbed her head in agreement.
Crystal sensed suddenly that Greta was angry, violently angry about the man who’d blocked her in, despite her good-natured explanation.
“Karma, boy would I like to believe in that,” Greta said. “I have a handful of people waiting to get what’s coming to them.”
Greta took a bite of her sandwich, shaking her head and swallowing. “Sorry, wow, now it’s me who’s going overboard. I don’t mean to unload my anger.” She replaced her scowl with a smile. “Like I said, I’ve had a day. I want to pay you back for the sandwich, though. Can you give me your address? I’ll pop a check in the mail.”
Crystal shook her head. “It’s on me, okay? Maybe we can meet for lunch again sometime and you can pick up my sandwich. How does that sound?”
“It sounds great,” Greta said.
“Do you go to the school?” Crystal asked.
Greta shook her head. “I’m a researcher. No specific title. I do research for a small publishing company. They work with writers who publish nonfiction and I’m in charge of collecting information, scouring newspapers, visiting old places — that kind of thing.”
“That’s neat. What’s it like?”
Greta shrugged.
“Like any job. It has its ups and downs. It’s flexible and I get to travel a lot, which is good for me. I don’t enjoy working for other people.”
“I get that,“ Crystal agreed. “I work for lots of other people, but I’d love a job with more freedom someday.”
Greta finished her sandwich and stood up.
“I’ve got to run. I’m meeting with an author in twenty minutes, but can I get your phone number, Crystal? I’ll call you for that lunch date.”
Crystal wrote her phone number on a napkin and handed it to her.
She watched the woman leave and realized her entire body had grown taut. Crystal took a deep breath and felt the tension slowly drain out.
Crystal hadn’t picked up many little tidbits about the woman as she often did in first meetings. A May birthday, she thought, Taurus. What she most felt was the woman’s anger, a hot boiling anger that seemed to flow beneath her skin.
26
Now
Bette sat down with the cardboard box Officer Hart had returned from Crystal’s car. She’d looked at it a dozen times since he’d brought it over, but had not brought herself to look inside a second time.
“I can do this,” she told no one.
She pulled out one of Crystal’s journals, a flimsy notebook covered in little silver spirals. Headbands, a few CDs, a half-eaten bag of cashews, and a purple rain jacket. There was also a gift box with a little card in a red envelope taped to the front.
The envelope contained a card from Wes, which included a sappy love poem and more declarations of love. Bette trembled as she read it and tried not to rip it into a thousand pieces.
Inside the box, wrapped carefully in tissue paper, she found a framed picture.
It was a poem superimposed over a faded photograph. She leaned closer and realized it was a photograph of Bette and Crystal perched in their mother’s lap. It was the photo that sat beside Crystal’s bed. Their mother had been sitting in the rocking chair that now stood on Bette’s porch. The sisters were young. Bette probably four and Crystal two.
The poem over top of the image was Edgar Allen Poe’s, Dream Within a Dream.
“What is it, honey?”
Bette looked up to find Lilith standing on the porch.
Bette held it out.
Lilith took the frame and smiled sadly.
“Your mother’s favorite poem.”
Bette nodded.
“Did Crystal make this for you?” Lilith asked.
Bette shook her head. “Weston must have given it to Crystal as a gift.”
Lilith frowned. “Hard to believe that he could love her so much and still…” Lilith didn’t finish the thought, but Bette did in her mind.
Murder her. Love her so much and still murder her.
They didn’t know if he’d murdered her.
Bette continued to hang on to some shred of hope that he’d abducted her and hidden her somewhere, or she’d escaped but been injured and was hiding at some little cottage deep in the woods, where an old medicine man was nursing her back to health. Foolish fairy tales. Bette had never been keen on such stories, but now they were the only things keeping her going.
Lilith sat down. “It’s strange that he kept the pregnancy test,” she said.
Bette glanced at her profile. She still looked young, far younger than her sixty years, but her face had become drawn in the previous days.
“Yeah,” Bette murmured. “I’ve wondered about that. Why didn’t he throw it away?”
Wes had to know the police would search his house. Why on earth did he choose to keep the very item that would most implicate him in Crystal’s disappearance?
“Maybe he didn’t hurt Crystal,” Lilith puzzled. “What if it’s not Weston at all, but some random guy who saw her pumping gas or buying a book and followed her?”
Bette shook her head, her obsessions with Weston’s guilt churning rapidly in her head.
“He did it. He built a world of lies and with the pregnancy, it was going to implode. I think he kept it because he believes he’s smarter than anyone else. He assumed they’d never get an actual warrant. I think they caught him off guard.” Bette spat the words out, but the picture in her hands told another story.
Weston himself told another story.
“But I don’t believe it,” Bette hissed.
“Don’t believe what, honey?” Lilith asked.
“Nothing, sorry,” Bette grumbled.
The phone rang in the house.
“I’ll get it,” Lilith said, standing and walking inside. A moment later, her head peeked out. “It’s for you, Bette.”
Bette returned the picture to the box and walked in the house.
“Law Offices of Henderson and Kissinger,” Lilith said, lifting an eyebrow and handing Bette the phone.
“This is Bette,” she said, wondering why their father’s attorney would be calling.
“Bette, hi, this is Marvin Kissinger. How are you?”
“Not great. Crystal is missing. Have you heard?” she muttered.
“Yes, actually that’s why I’m calling. Could you come to the office? I wanted to talk about a few things.”
Bette frowned, watching as Lilith sprayed and cleaned the kitchen sink.
“I’ll leave right now,” she said.
“Crystal didn’t have much, but she wanted to put it in order. She visited me four weeks ago, Bette,” Marvin explained.
Bette sat in the stiff leather chair that faced his enormous desk. A gold placard displayed the lawyer’s name: Marvin Kissinger, LLM.
Bette leaned forward in her chair, clutching her knees and studying the dizzying weave of red and blue carpet beneath her flats.
“Wait, no. Crystal created a will four weeks ago?” she asked trying to look at him.
He was older than their father, pushing seventy, but his lined face was tan and he still had a head of thick dark hair.
Marvin nodded.
“But why? Why would she do that?” Bette demanded.
Bette’s thoughts spun in her head. Crystal was not a planner. If someone had asked, Bette would bet on her sister never putting a penny into a retirement account, never writing a will, never even signing up for health insurance.
Their father had sometimes referred to her as the invisible girl when they were young because she floated through life seemingly unscathed. While Bette suffered broken bones, sobbed over failed tests and obsessed about college transcripts, Crystal drifted as if on a rainbow that always delivered her to the pot of gold, to the perfect man, school, job — whatever.