Pretty Girls: A Novel Page 23

“This is the way Julia went.” Claire pointed through the Arch toward the Hill Community, where Julia had lived during her freshman year. “The dorms are air-conditioned now. Mom says they’ve got free cable and wi-fi, a gym, and a coffee bar.”

  Lydia cleared her throat. She had gone from thinking that Rick was going to be mad at her to being mad at Rick for telling her what to do, which was crazy because none of the conversations had actually taken place anywhere but inside her own head.

  Claire said, “The Manhattan’s still over there. It’s completely different now.”

  “Does Mom still walk the path on the anniversary?”

  “I think so. We don’t talk about it much.”

  Lydia chewed the tip of her tongue. She wanted to ask if Helen and Claire ever talked about her, but she was too afraid of the answer.

  Claire said, “I wonder what’s wrong with her.”

  “With Mom?”

  “With Lexie Fuller.” Claire twisted in her seat to face Lydia. “Paul obviously chose me because of Julia. I was so vulnerable after she disappeared. He was drawn to my tragedy. Don’t you see it?”

  Lydia hadn’t seen it until now.

  “When we first met, Paul pretended he didn’t know about Julia, but of course he knew. His parents lived fifteen minutes away from where she disappeared. The farm wasn’t self-supporting. His father did seasonal work with the campus grounds crew. His mother did bookkeeping downtown. Missing posters with Julia’s face were everywhere. The story was all over the newspaper. Even without that, people in Auburn knew. There were a lot of students from Athens. You were there. You saw it for yourself. We didn’t tell a soul, but everybody knew.”

  “Then why did you believe him when he said he didn’t know?”

  “Part of me didn’t. I just thought he was trying to be polite, because it was kind of like gossip.” She leaned the side of her head against the seat. “That’s the only instance I can think of when I didn’t believe him about anything.”

  Lydia slowed the car as the GPS alerted her to an upcoming turn. Strangely, she got no pleasure from Claire finally seeing the problems that Lydia had spotted eighteen years before. Maybe Claire was right. Lydia had only seen the dark side of Paul because he had chosen to show it to her. If that moment in the car had never happened, it was just as likely that she would’ve tolerated him all these years as an annoying brother-in-law who for some reason made her sister happy.

  And he had clearly made Claire happy. At least while he was alive. Knowing how the bastard worked, wooing Claire had probably been part of a long game that started before they even met. Lydia wouldn’t put it past him to have a thick file somewhere on Claire Carroll. Was he at Auburn because he knew that Claire would follow Lydia to the university? Was he only working in the math lab because he found out she was flunking trig?

  Lydia could still remember the breathless way Claire had told her about the new guy she had just met in the lab. Paul had discovered the perfect way into Claire’s psyche—he hadn’t praised her good looks, which she’d been hearing about practically from infancy. He had praised her mind. And he had done it in such a way that it seemed like he was the only man on the planet who recognized she had more to offer than her face.

  Lydia pulled the car over to the shoulder. She slid the gear into park. She turned to Claire and told her something that she should’ve told her all along. “I have a seventeen-year-old daughter.”

  Claire looked surprised, but apparently not for the reason Lydia was thinking. “Why are you telling me that now?”

  “You already knew.” Lydia wanted to kick herself for being so stupid, and then she wanted to throw up because the idea of Paul paying a stranger to follow her was so deeply unsettling. “Why didn’t you tell me Paul had a file on me?”

  Claire looked away. “I was trying to protect you. I thought if you knew what Paul had done, you would—”

  “Abandon you like you abandoned me?”

  Claire took a deep breath and slowly let it go. “You’re right. Every time I say that you should stay out of this, I find a way to drag you back in because I want my big sister to make it all better.” She looked at Lydia. “I’m sorry. I know it sounds trite, but I really am.”

  Lydia didn’t want another one of her apologies. “What else do you know about me?”

  “Everything,” she said. “At least everything that we know about Paul’s other victims.”

  Victim. If she hit that nerve any harder, Lydia was going to need a root canal.

  She asked Claire, “Did you know about it?”

  “Absolutely not. I didn’t know about any of them.”

  “How long was he having me followed?”

  “Almost from the moment we stopped talking to each other.”

  Lydia saw her life flash before her eyes. Not the good things, but the shameful things. All the times she’d walked out of the grocery store with stolen food shoved down the front of her shirt because she couldn’t afford to buy anything. The time she’d switched tags on a jacket at the outlet store because she wanted Dee to have the cute one that all the popular girls were wearing. All the lies she’d told about the check being in the mail, the rent money being at work, loans that would soon be repaid.

  How much had Paul seen? Pictures of Lydia with Rick? Dee on the basketball court? Had he laughed at Lydia struggling her way out of poverty while he sat in his lifeless air-conditioned mansion?

  Claire said, “I know you don’t want to hear it, but I am profoundly sorry. I wasn’t going to tell you, but then you told me about your daughter, and it felt wrong to pretend.”

  Lydia shook her head. It wasn’t Claire’s fault, but she still wanted to blame her.

  “She’s beautiful,” Claire said. “I wish Daddy was still around to meet her.”

  Lydia felt a current of fear ripple through her body. She had been so focused on what it would feel like to lose her daughter that she had never considered what it would do to Dee if she lost her mother.

  Lydia realized, “I really can’t do this.”

  “I know.”

  She didn’t think Claire could possibly understand. “It’s not just me. I have a family to think about.”

  “You’re right. I honestly mean it this time. You should go.” Claire unbuckled her seatbelt. “Take the car. I can call Mom. She’ll get me back to Atlanta.” She reached for the door handle.

  “What are you doing?”

  “This is the road Paul lived on. The Fuller house is around here somewhere.”

  Lydia didn’t bother to hide her irritation. “You’re just going to walk down the street and hope to find it?”

  “I seem to have a real knack for landing in shit.” Claire pulled on the handle. “Thank you, Liddie. I mean that.”

  “Stop.” Lydia felt certain Claire was hiding something again. “What are you not telling me?”

  Claire didn’t turn around. “I just want to see Lexie Fuller for myself. Lay eyes on her. That’s it.”

  Lydia felt her eyes narrow. Her sister had the carefree air of someone who’d made up their mind to do something stupid. “Why?”

  Claire shook her head. “It doesn’t matter, Pepper. Go home to your family.”

  Lydia grabbed her for real this time. “Tell me what you’re going to do.”

  She turned to face Lydia. “I really am proud of you, you know. What you’ve done with your life, the way you’ve raised such a smart, talented daughter.”

  Lydia brushed away the flattery. “You think Lexie Fuller is another one of his victims, don’t you?”

  Claire shrugged. “We’re all his victims.”

  “This is different.” Lydia tightened her grip on Claire’s arm. She felt a sudden flare of panic. “You think she’s locked inside the house, or chained to a wall, and you’re going to go in there all Lucy Liu and save her?”

  “Of course not.” Claire looked out at the road. “Maybe she has information that will lead us to the masked man.”

  Lydia’s
flesh crawled. She hadn’t seen that part of the movie, but Claire’s description was terrifying. “Do you really want to meet that guy? He murdered a woman with a machete. And then he raped her. Jesus, Claire.”

  “Maybe we’ve already met him.” Claire shrugged, like they were talking unlikely hypotheticals. “Or maybe Lexie Fuller knows who he is.”

  “Or maybe the masked man is in that house with his next Anna Kilpatrick. Did you consider that possibility?” Lydia was so frustrated that she wanted to bang her head on the steering wheel. “We’re not superheroes, Claire. This is too dangerous. I’m not just thinking about my daughter. I’m thinking about you and me and what could happen to us if we keep digging up Paul’s secrets.”

  Claire sat back in the seat. She stared down the long, straight road ahead of them. “I have to know.”

  “Why?” Lydia demanded. “He’s dead. You know enough about him now to view that as divine justice. The rest of this we’ve been doing—it’s just asking for trouble.”

  “There’s another video out there that shows Anna Kilpatrick being murdered.”

  Lydia didn’t know what to say. Again, Claire was ten steps ahead of her.

  Claire said, “That’s the whole point of the series, to ramp it up to a crescendo. The movies show a progression. The final step is murder, so there must be a last movie that shows Anna being killed.”

  Lydia knew that she was right. Whoever abducted the girl wouldn’t get rid of her without having his fun first. “Okay, let’s say by some miracle we find the movie. What would it show us other than someone who might be Anna Kilpatrick being murdered?”

  “Her face,” Claire said. “The last movie with the other woman showed her face. The camera actually zoomed in on it.”

  “Zoomed in?” Lydia felt like the inside of her mouth had turned into sandpaper. “Not auto-focus?”

  “No, it zoomed into a tight frame so you just saw her from the waist up.”

  “Someone else has to be working the camera to make it zoom.”

  “I know,” Claire said, and Lydia could tell from her dark expression that her sister had been skirting around this possibility for a while.

  “Lexie Fuller?” Lydia tried, because she knew that suggesting Paul as an active participant would be the thing that finally broke Claire in two. “Is that what you’re thinking, that Lexie was behind the camera?”

  “I don’t know, but the movies follow the same script, so we can assume that the last Anna Kilpatrick movie zooms in on her face.”

  Lydia chose her words carefully. “You really think if this Lexie person is behind the camera zooming in on a murder, she’s going to confess that she’s an accomplice and hand over the recording?”

  “I feel like if I see her, look her in the eye, I’ll know whether or not she was involved.”

  “Because you’re such a fucking great judge of character?”

  Claire shrugged off the observation. “The masked man is out there somewhere. He’s probably looking for his next victim. If Lexie Fuller knows who he is, maybe she can help stop him.”

  Lydia said, “Let me get this straight: You get Lexie Fuller to give you a copy of a movie that you think shows Anna Kilpatrick being murdered. Let’s set aside the fact that Lexie’s incriminating herself. Who would you give the movie to? Mayhew? Nolan?”

  “I could put it on YouTube if someone would show me how.”

  “They’d take it down in two seconds, and the FBI would arrest you for disseminating obscene material, and Nolan would testify against you at the trial.” Lydia thought of something far more horrible. “You think the masked man’s just going to let all that slide?”

  Claire kept staring out at the road. Her chest rose and fell with each breath. She had that same look of focused intensity on her face that Lydia had seen back at the coffee house.

  Claire asked, “What if, twenty-four years ago, two women had information about what happened to Julia—who took her, exactly what was done to her—and they kept their mouths shut because they were too afraid to get involved?”

  Lydia tried to give an honest answer. “I hope I would understand that they had to think about their own safety.”

  “Because you’re so understanding?” Claire shook her head, likely because she had known Lydia all of her life and she knew better. “Look at what not knowing did to Dad. Do you want Bob Kilpatrick’s suicide on your conscience? Do you want to carry around Eleanor Kilpatrick’s misery on your shoulders?” Her tone had become strident. “I have nothing to lose, Liddie. Literally— nothing. I don’t have children. I don’t really have any friends. My cat is dead. I own a house I don’t want to go back to. There’s a trust to take care of Grandma Ginny. Mom will survive because she always survives. Paul was my husband. I can’t just walk away from this. I have to know. There isn’t anything left in my life except finding out the truth.”

  “Don’t be so damn dramatic, Claire. You still have me.”

  The words hung between them like weighted balloons. Did Lydia really mean them? Was she here for Claire, or was this ludicrous road trip really about proving that Lydia had been right about Paul all along?

  If that was the case, then her point had been made long ago.

  Lydia closed her eyes for a second. She tried to get her thoughts in order. “We’ll go by the house.”

  “Now who’s being dramatic?” Claire sounded as irritated as Lydia felt. “I don’t want you to do this. You’re not invited.”

  “Tough.” She checked the mirrors before pulling back onto the road. “We’re not going in.”

  Claire didn’t put her seatbelt back on. The warning started to chime.

  “Are you going to jump out of a moving car?”

  “Maybe.” Claire pointed up ahead. “That must be it.”

  The Fuller house was thirty yards past a shiny silver fire hydrant. Lydia tapped the brake. She coasted the car past the white clapboard house. The roof was new, but the grass in the yard was winter brown. Weeds shot up through cracks in the driveway. There were weathered sheets of plywood nailed across all the doors and windows. Even the mailbox had been removed. A lone four-by-four post stuck up like a broken tooth at the mouth of the driveway.

  Of all the things Lydia expected to find, this was not it.

  Claire sounded just as puzzled. “It’s abandoned.”

  “For a long while, it looks like.” The plyboards had started to peel apart. The paint was chipping from the vertical wood siding. The gutters were full.

  Claire said, “Turn back around.”

  The road was sparsely traveled. They hadn’t seen another car since Lydia had pulled over ten minutes ago. She executed a three-point turn and drove back toward the house.

  Claire said, “Pull into the driveway.”

  “It’s private property. We don’t want to get shot.”

  “Paul’s dead, so technically, it’s my property.”

  Lydia wasn’t so sure about the legalties, but still she made a wide turn into the driveway. There was something sinister about the Fuller house. The closer they got, the stronger the sensation got. Every bone in Lydia’s body was telling her to go back. “This doesn’t feel right.”

  “How is it supposed to feel?”

  Lydia didn’t answer. She was looking at the large padlock on the metal garage door. The house was isolated. There wasn’t another structure for miles. Large trees forested the areas on either side of the house. The back yard was about fifty feet deep, and beyond that were acres of empty rows waiting for spring planting.

  Lydia told Claire, “I have a gun.” As a convicted felon, she could’ve gone to jail for possessing a weapon, but Lydia had been a single mother living in some very sketchy neighborhoods when she’d asked a guy at work to get one for her. “I buried it under my back porch steps when we moved into the house. It should still work. I put it in a Ziploc bag.”

  “We don’t have time to go back.” Claire drummed her fingers on her leg as she gave it some thought. “There’s a p
harmacy off Lumpkin that sells guns. We could buy one and be back here in thirty minutes.”

  “They’ll do a background check.”

  “Do you think anyone’s watching background checks? Mass murderers buy machine guns and enough ammo to take down twenty schools and no one bats an eye.”

  “Still—”

  “Crap, I keep forgetting I’m on parole. I’m sure my PO put my name in the system. Where’s the NRA when you need them?”

  Lydia looked at her watch. “You were supposed to meet Nolan over an hour ago. He’s probably put out a BOLO on you.”

  “I have to do this before I lose my nerve.” Claire opened the door and got out of the car.

  Lydia let out a string of curses. Claire went up the stairs to the front porch. She tried to see between the cracks in the plywood covering the windows. She shook her head at Lydia as she walked back down the steps. Instead of returning to the car, she walked around the back of the house.

  “Dammit.” Lydia took her cell phone out of her purse. She should text somebody that they were here. And then what? Rick would panic. She couldn’t get Dee involved. She could post it on the Westerly Academy Parents’ Bulletin Board but Penelope Ward would probably hire a private helicopter and fly down to Athens for the story.

  And then Lydia would have to explain why she was sitting in the car like a coward while her baby sister tried to break into her dead husband’s secret house.

  She got out of the car. She jogged around the side of the house. Weeds as high as Lydia’s waist had taken over the back yard. The sturdy-looking swingset was covered in moss. The ground crackled under her feet. The storms had not yet made their way over from Atlanta. The vegetation was as dry as kindling.

  Claire was standing on the small back porch. She had her foot braced on the side of the house and her fingers curved under the sheet of plywood nailed over the back door. “There’s no basement, just a crawlspace.”

  Lydia could see that for herself. Claire had kicked in the access panel to the enclosed area under the house. There was less than two feet between the dirt and the floor joists. “What are you doing?”

  “Ruining my manicure. There’s a pry bar in the trunk.”