Page 90 of This is Why We Lied

“Drew and Keisha have stayed at the lodge twice before.” Will shrugged. “Keisha pissed off Mercy at dinner asking for a new glass.”

“That’s hardly something you’d murder over.” Sara added, “Then again, there are multiple crime documentaries about women who snap.”

“I’ll take that as a warning.” Will was joking, but not for long. “Dave made the most sense. There must’ve been something that made you look in a different direction.”

“I can’t explain it other than a gut feeling. In my experience, someone who has been abused for any length of time knows when their lives are most at risk. When Mercy and I talked, Dave was barely a blip on her radar.”

“His credit check didn’t have a lot of surprises. His bank account is overdrawn by sixty dollars, he’s got two credit cards in collections, his truck was repossessed, and he’s drowning in medical debt.”

“I’m sure everyone up here has medical debt.”

“Not Mercy,” he said. “As far as I can tell, she’s never had a credit card, a car loan, a bank account. There’s no record of her ever filing a tax return. She doesn’t have a driver’s license. She’s never voted. She doesn’t have a cell phone account or phone number in her name. No Facebook, Insta, TikTok or other social media accounts. She’s not even on the website for the lodge. I’ve seen some wonky background checks before, but nothing like this. She’s a digital ghost.”

“Delilah said she was in a bad car accident. That’s how she got the scar.”

“Her criminal record is clean. I guess it helps if you’re family friends with the local sheriff,” Will said. “Which brings us to Mercy’s parents. Cecil and Imogene McAlpine. There was a huge payout from the insurance company after Cecil’s accident. They’re both drawing social security. They’ve got around a million bucks in a private pension fund, another half million in a money market, a quarter of a million in index funds. Credit cards are paid off every month. No outstanding debt. The brother’s in good shape, too. Christopher paid off his student loans one year ago. He’s got a fishing license, driver’s license, two credit cards and a bank account with over two hundred grand in it.”

“Good God. He’s only a few years older than Mercy.”

“I guess it’s easy to save money when you don’t have to pay room and board, but Mercy’s in the same boat he is. Why doesn’t she have anything?”

“It sounds deliberate. Maybe they were using money to control her.” Sara didn’t want to think about how helpless Mercy had felt. “Was there cash in her backpack?”

“Just clothes and the notebook,” Will said. “The arson investigator’s processing it for evidence, then it’s going to be turned over to the lab. The plastic cover on the notebook melted and the pages are soaked from the rain. If they’re not careful, the whole thing could be lost. We have to wait it out, but I’d really like to know what Mercy wrote.”

Sara shared his eagerness. Mercy had packed the notebook for a reason. “What about her phone?”

“The fire destroyed it, but we tracked the number through Dave’s caller ID. She was using a VoIP provider. We’re waiting for a sign-off on a warrant for the account. She probably used a pre-filled debit card to pay for it. If we can get the card number, we might find out if she was using it for other things.”

Sara felt more anxious with every new detail of Mercy’s claustrophobic life. “Did you find out anything about Delilah?”

“She owns her house, but it looks like her main source of income is an online candle-making business and whatever she gets from the family trust. Credit score’s reasonable. Her car is almost paid off. She’s got around thirty grand in a savings account, which is good, but she’s not flush like the rest of the family.”

“She’s better off than Mercy.”

“Yeah.” Will rubbed his jaw as he watched a car slowly navigate a two-inch-deep puddle. His body was tensed, almost coiled. If the UTV didn’t show up soon, he would probably climb back up the mountain trail on his own. “The chef came back clean. The waiters are teenagers.”

Sara asked, “What’s the plan?”

“We need to find that broken knife handle, but that’s a needle in a haystack. Or a forest. I want to talk to every man who was at the lodge last night. Mercy was raped before she was murdered.”

“We don’t know for certain that she was raped. Her pants could’ve been taken down during the struggle.” Sara had a job to do, too. She could only follow the science. “I’ll note any signs of sexual trauma and do the swabs, and I’m sure whoever performs the autopsy will closely inspect the vaginal vault, but you know assault doesn’t always present itself post-mortem.”

“Don’t say that to Amanda. She hates when you talk like a doctor.”

“Why do you think I do it?” Sara knew that would get a smile out of him.

Unfortunately, it didn’t last long this time, either.

“Where is this guy?” Will looked at his watch. “I have to get back up to the lodge and start asking questions. They’ve had too long to get their stories straight. I need Faith to help me pry them apart. I also want to find the guest registry so I can run the names.”

“Do you think the McAlpines will make you get a warrant?”

He had a sly smile on his face. “I mentioned to Frank it might be a good thing for him to poke around the office.”

“He’ll expect a junior police badge before this is over with,” Sara said. “Poor Mercy. She was basically a prisoner up there. No car. No money. No support. Completely alone.”

“The chef’s definitely at the top of my list. He had the most consistent interaction with Mercy.”