Page 131
Story: Holly
“I don’t know her num…” Barbara thinks of the message Penny Dahl left. Her number will be in Barbara’s contacts. “Never mind, yes I do. I’m more worried about Holly than I am about Bonnie Dahl’s mother.”
“Right there with you, sis. What about the police? Isabelle Jaynes?”
“What am I supposed to say? That she parked her car in the wrong space with a tire on the yellow line and forgot to turn the wall safe dial back to zero so call out the National Guard?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I see your point. But Izzy’s sort of a friend. Do you want me to call her?”
“No, I’ll do it. But before I do, tell me everything you know about the case.”
“I already—”
“You did, but I was wrapped up in my own shit, so tell me again. Because I feel like I almost know. I just can’t… I’m so upset… just go through it again. Please.”
So he does.
19
Emily comes halfway down the stairs and stops when she sees her husband lying facedown in a spreading pool of blood. “What happened?” she screams. “What happened?”
“I cut his throat,” Holly says. She’s standing against the cement wall at the far side of the cell, next to the potty. She feels remarkably calm. “Would you like to hear a joke I made up?”
Emily bolts down the final six or eight risers. A mistake. She trips on the last one and loses her balance. She puts out her hands to break her fall, and Holly hears the snap as a bone in her left arm—old and brittle—fractures. This time it’s a shriek instead of a scream, not of horror but of pain. She crawls to Roddy and turns his head. The blood from his cut throat has begun to coagulate, and there’s a sticky ripping sound as his cheek pulls free of it.
“A new millionaire walks into a bar and orders a mai-tai…”
“What did you do? WHAT DID YOU DO TO RODDY?”
“Weren’t you listening? Cut his fracking throat.” Holly bends and picks up the golden earring. “With this. It was Bonnie’s. If there was ever a case of revenge from beyond the grave, I’d say this is it.”
Emily gets up… too fast. Not a scream or a shriek this time, but a howl of agony as her back goes nuclear. And her left arm is hanging crookedly.
Broke at the elbow, Holly thinks. Good.
“Oh my God! Oh my dear God! HOW IT HURTS!”
“I only wish you’d split your crazy evil skull,” Holly tells her. She raises the earring. It glitters under the fluorescents. “Come over here, Professor. Let me put you out of your misery, which looks to be considerable. Maybe it’s not too late to catch up with your husband on his way to hell.”
Emily is bent over, haglike. Her hair, which she put up in a neat bun that morning, is coming loose and hanging around her face. Holly thinks it adds to her overall witchy-woman vibe. She wonders if the calm she feels means she’s lost her mind. She thinks not, because she’s perfectly clear on one thing: if Emily Harris can get back up to the first floor—and then back down—Holly is going to die.
At least I got one of them, she thinks, and then flashes on Bogie saying We’ll always have Paris.
Emily takes shuffling baby steps to the stairs. She grasps the rail. She looks back once, not at Holly but at her husband, lying dead on the floor. Then—very slowly, pulling herself along—she begins to climb. She’s breathing in harsh gasps.
Holly calls after her. “A new millionaire walks into a bar and orders a mai-tai. Fall and break your neck, you bitch, fall!”
But Emily doesn’t.
20
Barbara thinks there may be a solution to the mystery of Holly’s disappearance in the back of the book after all. If, that is, you think of Penny Dahl as the back of the book. There’s a MISSING WOMAN flier on a streetlight pole next to the Frederick Building’s parking lot. It’s been faded by three weeks of weather and part of it is flapping in the hot late-morning breeze, but Barbara can still see the girl’s smiling face.
Dead, she thinks. That girl is dead. Please God, Holly’s not dead, too.
She calls Penny Dahl’s number. As the phone rings, she looks at the picture of the smiling blond woman on the poster. Not much older than Barbara herself.
Be there, Mrs. Dahl. Answer your damn phone.
Penny does, sounding breathless. “Hello?”
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 52
- Page 53
- Page 54
- Page 55
- Page 56
- Page 57
- Page 58
- Page 59
- Page 60
- Page 61
- Page 62
- Page 63
- Page 64
- Page 65
- Page 66
- Page 67
- Page 68
- Page 69
- Page 70
- Page 71
- Page 72
- Page 73
- Page 74
- Page 75
- Page 76
- Page 77
- Page 78
- Page 79
- Page 80
- Page 81
- Page 82
- Page 83
- Page 84
- Page 85
- Page 86
- Page 87
- Page 88
- Page 89
- Page 90
- Page 91
- Page 92
- Page 93
- Page 94
- Page 95
- Page 96
- Page 97
- Page 98
- Page 99
- Page 100
- Page 101
- Page 102
- Page 103
- Page 104
- Page 105
- Page 106
- Page 107
- Page 108
- Page 109
- Page 110
- Page 111
- Page 112
- Page 113
- Page 114
- Page 115
- Page 116
- Page 117
- Page 118
- Page 119
- Page 120
- Page 121
- Page 122
- Page 123
- Page 124
- Page 125
- Page 126
- Page 127
- Page 128
- Page 129
- Page 130
- Page 131 (Reading here)
- Page 132
- Page 133
- Page 134
- Page 135
- Page 136
- Page 137
- Page 138
- Page 139
- Page 140
- Page 141
- Page 142
- Page 143
- Page 144
- Page 145
- Page 146