“Matt was stabbed to death in Bishop Park,” Lisa explained. “Back then, a lot of teens hung out there, in a spot with a circle of boulders and a firepit in the middle. They went out to smoke and drink, make bonfires. I never went. By the time I was old enough, Matt had been killed there, and the town had demolished the site. It took a lot of work, bulldozers and stuff. No one made an outcry like they normally would. Protect the trees and all that. Everyone wanted it gone. They removed those big boulders and threw them in Lake Superior. They ripped the trees down and leveled out the land. A woman’s group planted a garden but a few years later, they demolished the whole park and built a shopping center. Small towns have long memories. No one was sad to see that park go.”
“That’s terrible,” Bette said. “Was there evidence that Greta did it?”
Lisa shook her head and took a final drag on her cigarette before snuffing it out in the ashtray. She crossed her arms over her chest.
“Not really. No knife, no fingerprints. Matt didn’t put up much of a fight, but he didn’t have a chance. Someone walked up behind him and slit his throat while he was sitting on a rock. He bled to death. She stabbed him in the back thirty-two times. The cut to his throat would have killed him. But she kept on going.”
Lisa’s story terrified Bette. Each new revelation made Bette heart shrivel and slip deeper into her body as if preparing for the inevitable blow that would soon come.
Bette rubbed her eyes. The long day crept up on her. She yawned and covered her mouth. “Sorry, I haven’t slept well lately. I will take you up on that coffee.”
Lisa offered a sympathetic smile and stood. She returned with two cups of coffee.
“Milk or sugar?” she asked.
“No, black is great. Thanks.”
“Me too,” Lisa admitted, returning to her seat and automatically running a hand over the stuffed bunny. “I used to add globs of sugar and cream, but after I had Matilda, I could never shake the extra ten pounds. Out went the cream and the sugar.”
“You look great,” Bette told her, though the compliment felt flat and irrelevant in the midst of Lisa’s story.
“The police didn’t fail in their investigation,” Lisa went on. “They didn’t leave a stone unturned. The sheriff is the father of Matt’s best friend, Nate. That man was obsessed. Still is. He calls me a couple times a year with updates. Unfortunately, most of the tips dried up years ago. Every lead was a dead end.”
“And Matt was dating Greta?”
Lisa pursed her lips and nodded.
“You didn’t like her?” Bette asked.
“No, I didn’t. She was a bitch, and I have no problem saying that. It’s true. She was the exact opposite of Matt. I never understood what he saw in her. I couldn’t find a single redeeming quality in that girl. She was attractive. Slim and blonde, but she rarely smiled or laughed. She walked like she had a two-foot pole shoved in her ass.”
“How did they meet?” Bette asked.
Lisa shrugged. “At school. Greta was the new girl in town. She moved here in 1973 to live with her aunt and uncle out at this dingy trailer park east of town. The place was a dump! Matt took a liking to her. She had that stray-kitten-needs-to-be-saved look about her, and Matt loved to rescue strays.”
“She wasn’t from here, then?”
“Nope, she came from Traverse City. Matt told me she lived in an asylum down there. Creepy! But both her parents died and there was nobody to take her, so they shipped her up here. She was fifteen.”
“She lived in a mental institution?” Bette shuddered.
“On the property, I guess. Her father was the caretaker or something. No wonder she was nuts.”
“Did the police ever officially name her as a suspect?”
“Not publicly.” Lisa scowled. “But the sheriff started considering her and then one day, poof, some rich guy in a fancy car pulled into town and whisked Greta Claude away. Just like that, she was gone.”
Bette widened her eyes. “So, wait. She lived up here in a trailer and then suddenly someone with money came and took her away?”
Lisa nodded. “Pretty much. I spoke to the sheriff a few months after she left. He tried to track her down. He wanted her to take a polygraph test, but lawyers protected her; not a lawyer, but plural lawyers. He couldn’t get anywhere near her. She was still a minor, so that only complicated things more.”
Bette frowned. “Why did the sheriff suspect her?”
“More than a few of Matt’s friends mentioned her name. She isolated Matt. For a while, she had total control over him. He quit the football team, stopped hanging out with his friends. If she said jump, he asked how high.
“But his senior year, he changed. He was graduating in the summer, and he’d gotten into Michigan State. My parents planned to take him to East Lansing early. We had an uncle who lived down there for him to stay with. My parents claimed they wanted him to have extra time to get acclimated, but you know what? They wanted to get him away from Greta. She was wicked and everyone knew it.
“By the spring, he’d started to pull away from her. I heard them fighting on the phone a few times. She showed up at our house in the middle of the night more than once. They’d be screaming at each other on the lawn, and then they’d be in his car, windows all fogged up.”
Lisa shook her head.
“Talk about a dysfunctional relationship,” she continued. “It was an abusive relationship but the typical roles were reversed. Greta was the abuser. She held all the power, except she was losing it. He was leaving her. Two weeks before he was scheduled to move, she murdered him.”
“What about Greta’s aunt and uncle? What are they like?” Bette asked.
“Well, her uncle is dead. He died six months after Greta moved in with them.”
“You’re kidding me. How?”
“Fell off the cliffs at Presque Isle Park.”
Bette gave a little start at the park’s name.
“What?” Lisa asked.
“My sister visited Presque Isle Park a few weeks ago. Just… odd coincidence I guess,” Bette murmured.
“Greta’s uncle was a drunk,” Lisa went on. “Apparently, he went out there to fish and just fell right off the cliff. They didn’t find his body for a week. His wife called the police after he never came home. Later they spotted his truck at the trailhead for the Black Rock cliffs. One strange thing, the cops found his fishing gear in the bed of his pickup. He didn’t take any of it up there with him.”
“Where was Greta?”
Lisa shook her head. “No idea. I’m sure they questioned her, but everyone, cops included, assumed he fell. Peter wasn’t exactly a model citizen. He’d spent a few nights in jail for drunk and disordelies.”
“Did Greta like him? Or her aunt?” Bette asked.
“No, definitely not. She hated them, and she hated living in the trailer park. I’m pretty sure the aunt hated her too, though I don’t know for sure. I only heard one side of the story, when she’d complain to Matt about them.”
“Two deaths in less than two years. That’s pretty crazy,” Bette said.
“Yeah, tell me about it. You should talk to Sheriff Montgomery, Bette. He’s been working the case for the last seventeen years. I am curious, though, what does Matt’s death have to do with your sister’s disappearance?”
Bette finished her coffee and set it on a magazine on the glass-topped side table.
“My sister was having an affair with Greta Claude’s husband.”
37
1973
Greta Claude