“No,” she breathed, resting her head against the door and trying to wiggle it in further. The key didn’t move.
When she tried to pull it out, the key remained stuck. Bette pulled off her gloves and stuffed them in her back pockets. She cursed silently as she shook the key. Finally, it jerked free.
As she retreated from the stoop, Bette missed the bottom stair. She flung her arms out to break her fall and landed with a crack on hands and knees. The key flew from her grasp as both palms smacked the cement walkway.
She winced at the pain and fought back her tears, leaning forward and searching gingerly for the bit of metal that would allow passage into Weston’s home.
“Shit… shit… shit,” she murmured, pausing and lifting one of her scraped palms.
The tears didn’t stay put. They flowed down her cheeks as she pressed her lips to her tender skin.
Through her tears, she spotted a glint of metal on the path in front of her.
“Yes, thank you,“ she gasped, standing and hurrying over to the silver key.
She picked it up, hugging the house to stay in shadow, and moved to the front porch. She crept up the wooden stairs, glancing toward the house across the street, hoping whoever lived inside wasn’t watching her too.
Bette opened the screen door and propped it on her hip as she slipped the key into the lock. It pushed in all the way and when she turned her hand, the lock slid open with a quiet click.
“Yes,” she whispered, pushing into the dark foyer. She kept one hand on the screen door and eased it shut before shuffling in and firmly closing the door behind her.
As Bette crept down the hallway, pitch black as if the shades in every room had been drawn closed, she realized she hadn’t brought a flashlight. Not even a lighter or a book of matches.
“I’m a terrible sleuth,” she murmured.
She squinted into each room, frustrated as her eyes took ages to adjust to the shapes of the various pieces of furniture.
A sliver of light snaked beneath a curtain at the window over the kitchen sink. She walked in, nearly bumped into the table, and made her way to the counter. She peeled back the curtain, allowing the scant light to filter across the blue linoleum.
She opened drawers and pushed aside silverware, cooking utensils with plastic ladles and spatulas before finding the jumbled drawer of miscellaneous junk.
Bette bit her lip and sifted through the drawer, leaning her head close to it, which only blocked the sliver of light.
“Ugh,” she hissed, squeezing her hand into a fist against her lips.
She pushed around guitar picks, dozens of poems scrawled on napkins, and twenty or more pencils.
“Where’s the flashlight?” she demanded, but there was no flashlight.
She slammed the drawer shut, too hard.
Without light, she couldn’t search for anything. What good would it do to stumble through a black house?
She leaned her back against the counter, panic rising as if her nervous system had only just gotten wind of what she was up to. The slender cut of light grew dark as her vision narrowed. Her lungs seemed to shrivel and collapse behind her ribs, and she opened her mouth, gulping for a breath. She gasped and pressed a hand to her chest.
She’d lose consciousness. Weston Meeks would find her on his kitchen floor and then he’d dispose of her just as he had disposed of Crystal.
Bette hadn’t told her father where she was going. She’d parked several blocks away. How long would it take for the police to find her car?
Her knees trembled as she sank to the floor, her mind kicking into overdrive, the terrified what-if thoughts drowning her.
“Three things,” she croaked, reciting one of the many calming techniques she’d learned from Crystal to quell panic attacks. Focus on three objects in front of her.
She spotted Weston’s phone and then her eyes slid down to a nail poking from the wall. A small blue flashlight hung from the nail.
She stared at the flashlight and pulled in a shaky breath.
“Oh, thank god,” she croaked.
She started counting by threes, practicing another of the many coping mechanisms she usually forgot when a panic attack took hold.
“Three, six, nine, twelve, fifteen, eighteen…” Bette continued until she reached sixty and then forced herself up.
She swallowed, gulped two more deep breaths, and walked to the flashlight, pulling it from the nail.
During attacks, the sounds of the world grew muted, blocked by the rush of blood between her ears. Now she strained to hear any sounds, but nothing stirred in the dark house.
She walked from room to room, letting the small halo of light drift over furniture. Poetry and paintings of musicians hung from the walls. In the sitting room, piles of books sat on the coffee and side tables that butted against matching brown-leather furniture.
Bette walked up the stairs, coming first to a large bedroom with a queen bed covered in a black and white checked comforter. Draped across the foot of the bed was a fluffy orange blanket. Bette recognized it immediately. It was Crystal’s blanket, and if she were to unfold it, she’d see a smiling sun with yellow and red rays streaming from its perimeter.
A dresser revealed a few stacks of clean laundry separated into jeans and shirts. More of Crystal appeared in the bathroom. Long red hairs in a black brush. Two tubes of vanilla lip gloss, Crystal’s favorite, lay inside the medicine cabinet.
Only one other room stood on the second floor. It was a study with a cheap particle-board desk in the room's corner — the kind of furniture her father hated. It had multiple heights with space for files, a desktop computer and plenty of room that Weston filled with books and stacks of student papers.
Bette swung her light over the papers before she slid into the rolling ergonomic chair.
She opened drawers, shifting around pens and more papers.
Nothing offered any clues to Crystal’s whereabouts.
Bette’s foot kicked something tucked beneath the desk. She squatted and groped in the darkness until her hands found a hard suitcase, propped on its edge.
She pulled out the suitcase and laid it on its back, flipping open the fake gold clasps.
The suitcase was a jumble of stuff: photographs, letters in envelopes, old concert tickets. She lifted out a single pearl earring, frowning at the tiny piece of jewelry lost in the mass of stuff.
A shrill ring cut across the silence, and Bette gasped. Her heart pounded as she listened to the rings.
Downstairs, the message machine kicked on. Bette dropped the earring and stood, sprinting from the room and down the stairs.
“Hi, you’ve reached the phone of Weston Meeks. I’m currently unavailable. Please leave your name and phone number, and I’ll call you at my earliest convenience.”
“Hi, this is Eliza Sanders returning your call, Mr. Meeks. As I’m sure you’re aware, my days at Sunny Angels are not terribly busy, but you caught me during a nap. Feel free to return my call when it suits you. I’m happy to answer any questions you have about Joseph Claude and the Northern Michigan Asylum.”
The call ended and silence fell once more.
Unsure of the caller’s purpose, Bette walked to the phone stand and scribbled the woman’s information on a slip of paper, tearing it from the pad and stuffing it in her pocket.
30
Now
Homer hadn’t moved from the picture window where he stood, staring at the street as if he expected the next clue might be somewhere in the yard, like an I Spy game with a pair of eyeglasses neatly tucked into a bush or a shovel lengthwise against the post of a mailbox.