Shallow Grave (7 page)

My phone beeps.

Shannon and I fly apart. We stare at each other, terror mixed in with something new.

With shaking hands, I pull my phone out of my pocket and look at the display. If it says anything crazy like Jessica, I know I'm headed for permanent residency in the insane asylum.

Assuming I get out of here, that is.

No ghost. It's just some random telemarketer. They're always calling around dinnertime.

But sitting there, staring at the phone in my hand, I have an idea. How did I not think of it before?

I look at Shannon, and right there, I see it in her eyes too. She nods, silent. Excited.

I'm going to call someone and get us hauled out of here.

I raise my thumb to key in my password. But then I stop.

My mind flashes back to having my fingers slammed in the door.

The burning.

The hot pokers in my eye sockets.

I take a long, slow breath in.

The air in the boathouse has gone unnaturally still. It's utterly, deafeningly silent.

Everyone's waiting.

On me.

I'm feeling torn. I want to call, but I'm terrified of what might happen. So really, there's only one reasonable decision to make.

Only one decision that guarantees no one gets hurt.

I exhale slowly. I reach forward—slow-mo—and place my phone on the floor in front of me. Moving carefully, I push it away so it's out of reach.

I feel Shannon sag against my chest a bit when I put the phone down, but I think she understands. Disaster averted.

The phone grazes the yearbook, which is still sitting open on the floor beside us. Still open to the page full of chirpy cheerleaders.

I pull the lantern toward the pages and lean in for a closer look.

“Which one is Jessica?” I run my finger along the list of names under the photo, looking for a J.

Shannon points at a girl sitting in the center of the group. Front row, seated on a low bench. She balances a huge trophy on her lap. Big grin.

Shannon was right. She's a babe.

“What's the trophy for?” I ask.

“The Laurel Cup,” she says. “It's given to the top cheerleading squad. It went to Wildwood last year.”

“And Jessica's holding it because she's the captain?”

“Well, the team won because of her,” Shannon says.

I look at the girls. Their happy, smiling faces. Eerie to think that one of them is now dead.

My eyes skip down to Jessica again.

Specifically, that one.

“Hey,” I say, leaning closer. “Is that like the necklace you found in the bin?”

“Where?”

“Right there.” I point to a girl sitting beside Jessica in the photograph. Her hair is tied back, the end of her ponytail curled loosely beside her open collar. She isn't laughing like the others. Instead, her smile looks tight.

Shannon peers at the picture.

“Yeah, it's the same one. The BEST. Weird.” Her mouth drops open. “Oh my god,” she breathes.

When her eyes meet mine, there's a sudden understanding in them.

“That's Sam Stokes.”

I'm drawing a blank.

“Sam Stokes?” I ask. “Who's she?”

Shannon releases a long breath. “She's Jessica's best friend. Or she was. Or at least I thought she was.”

I look back at the photograph. Slowly, things begin to slide into place.

“So…” I say. “Sam's got one half of the necklace. And…”

“Jessica would have had the other half,” Shannon finishes.

We both look to see whether the matching half is around Jessica's neck. But you can't see her neck because of the Laurel Cup.

“The cup's in the way,” I say. “So we have no way of knowing whether she had the other half or not.”

Shannon looks at me. “Yes, we do.”

Chapter Sixteen

We sit facing each other. Shannon pulls the board over and arranges it between us. The chalk looks just as clear as it did when Shannon printed all the letters out.

That seems like a week ago.

“Did you have the other half of that necklace, Jessica?” she asks.

YES.

My scalp crawls.

I look up at Shannon. “Which bin did you find the necklace in?”

She turns and points. “That one.” Then she shakes her head. “But it's not there anymore,” she says.

“Where is it?” I ask.

“I dropped it, remember? When the door slammed that first time?”

“Right.” I do remember. I scan the floor for the little silver chain. I hope it didn't fall through the floorboards. Because the boathouse is right on the dock. And the dock is right over the water. I don't see it.

Damn.

“Oh, but…oh my god,” Shannon says. Her eyes widen, and she scrambles to her feet. “In that bin. There was rope in that bin, Elliot. Lots of it. The thin kind.”

“Rope?” I look at her. “Aren't we looking for a necklace?”

Suddenly I get it.

Thin rope. The perfect kind of rope to wrap around someone's neck.

The necklace, found in a bin full of exactly that kind of rope.

But how likely is it—how perfect—that the suspected killer would actually have her necklace come undone at exactly the right moment, leaving it behind in a bin full of potential murder weapons?

Unless…

I grab Shannon's hand and pull her back down to the floor with me.

I put my fingers on the lid. “Did Sam strangle you with the rope that's in the bin?”

YES.

Shannon shudders.

“Did you fight her?”

YES.

I glance up at Shannon. She nods.

“Why did Sam strangle you?”

The lid moves like it's going somewhere, but then it just sort of stops.

Shannon takes her hands off and looks at me. “What kind of question is that?”

“What?” I ask.

“It's too open-ended,” she says. “Everything has to be spelled out. That could be, like, eight paragraphs.”

“So? It's not like we're in any sort of hurry.”

“But we don't really need Jessica to explain it all. It's already pretty obvious why Sam would want to see Jessica dead.”

“What? Why?”

Shannon rolls her eyes. “You are such a guy.”

“That's a bad thing?”

She sighs. “I think Sam was completely jealous of Jessica,” she says. “She had the looks, the boyfriend, the marks, the talent.” Shannon glances down at the photo in the yearbook. “The cheerleading cup,” she adds.

“But they were best friends,” I say. “I don't get it.”

“They probably were, for a while,” Shannon says. “Maybe even for a long time. Those necklaces? They probably had those since they were little. That's the kind of thing young girls wear.”

I nod toward the board. “Ask her.”

“And over time,” Shannon says, finishing her thought, “as Jessica got more and more successful, I'll bet Sam started to hate her guts.” She moves to put her hands on the board.

The second she touches it, the lid flies to YES.

A chill slips through me.

Sick. A best friend who turns into a jealous killer?

“And, oh my god, I get it now,” says Shannon. Her eyes widen as she looks at me. “Jessica disappeared the week before the cheerleading finals.”

“Right, so?”

“Sam won, Elliot. She took the championship for Wildwood.”

I give a low whistle. “She didn't want any competition for the cup. And Jessica was just too tough to beat.”

Shannon turns back to the board. Her next question is interrupted by a soft grating noise. We turn our heads to see a necklace appearing from between two floorboards. The tiny silver links roll up and over the edge of one board, coiling up like rope on a ship's deck.

My skin breaks out in goose bumps.

We watch until it's finished moving.

Shannon shivers and looks at me.

“And there's your evidence,” I say. I push myself to my feet and walk to the spot where the necklace sits, bunched up on the boards.

“Which one is it?” Shannon asks.

I squat down to examine it, but I can't see a thing. I bring the lamp over.

“It's the BEST. Same one as before.”

“Sam's part,” Shannon says.

“So then where's the other half?” I ask.

We look at each other, and then Shannon looks back at the board. “Jessica, were you wearing part of this necklace when you died?”

YES.

Shannon swallows. “Where are you now?”

With a low squeak, the door swings open.

Chapter Seventeen

We shiver as the evening air rushes in.

I'm not sure if it's because it's cold or dark or just plain freaky out there, but I'm not in any rush to leave the boathouse, even after all our wishing that we could leave. It's funny.

Or almost funny.

I turn to Shannon. “Shall we?”

She nods and gets to her feet. I blow out the lantern and set it on the shelf beside the padlock.

The breeze from the lake is sharp. Shannon wraps her scarf around her neck and slips her mittens on. I zip my hoodie.

“We still don't know how Sam's necklace came off,” I say. As we step out of the boathouse and onto the dock, I feel lighter somehow. I don't feel like any weird things are going to happen now. Jessica's story has been told. She doesn't need to slam any more doors or move stuff around or burn people to get them to pay attention to the truth.

To listen.

“Jessica said she fought against Sam,” Shannon says. “The necklace could easily have come loose in a struggle.”

I think about that for a minute. “Man, that'd be a hell of a fight.”

Shannon nods. “You don't want to mess with someone who's strong enough to lift another human being into the air while shaking a pom-pom and spelling out W-I-L-D-C-A-T-S.”

“Especially if she's mad,” I say.

“But there's not much you can do if someone sneaks up on you and throws a rope around your neck.”

My words settle over us. We go quiet for a few minutes as we look out at the lake. The wind's calmed down now. The night is almost still.

“There,” Shannon says. She points down the dock a little ways, off to one side. I look, but I can't see anything.

She crosses the distance in a few quick steps and kneels down, hanging on to the edge with her mittened hands.

“Oh my god, she's here,” Shannon says. Her voice is thick with tears.

I follow, peering into the depths. Is she seeing a light or something? I strain my eyes against the dark, but I can't see anything.

Shannon's crying now, sniffling and wiping her nose and sitting right near the edge of the dock with her legs all bundled up against her body. I sit beside her.

“How do you know she's here?” I ask.

She takes a deep breath and releases it slowly. “I can feel her,” she says. “You know? Can you feel her too?”

I close my eyes and try to feel, but all I can think about is how damn cold I am.

“She's free now,” Shannon says.

I get that. I felt that release when I left the boathouse. So I guess I did feel Jessica, after all. On her way to a better place.

Shannon sniffs and glances back toward the boathouse. “But how did the necklace end up back in the bin?” she asks.

I suppress a laugh. Nothing can stop the relentless whirring and clicking in this girl's brain.

“Well, they would have fought on the dock, right?” she says. “And then the necklace would have fallen off into the water.”

I shrug. “Maybe it came loose and only fell off later. Maybe when Sam was putting the lid back on the bin? Covering her tracks?”

Shannon nods. “Maybe.” We sit there, huddled together on the dock, looking out across the dark lake. I slip my arm around her shoulders.

My touch triggers more questions.

“But, then,” she asks, “how would Sam have even gotten into the boat-house in the first place? How would she have bypassed the padlock?”

“Well, when we got there today, it wasn't even locked,” I tell her. “When I went to put the key in, the padlock was already open. So it could have been open this whole time, I guess.”

Shannon looks at me. “But why was it unlocked? Who left it that way?”

I smile and touch her hair.

She smiles back. “Look at us,” she says. “All sleuthing.”

“Like we have any clue what really went down,” I agree. Dozens of unanswered questions swirl around us.

She glances back toward the boathouse. “But who's going to believe us that we were talking to a ghost?”

“We leave the ghost part out of it,” I say. “We just have to show them the necklace.”

“And what, they'll automatically connect it to Jessica's disappearance?”

“The photo in the yearbook,” I remind her. “That's a pretty clear connection to who owned the necklace. Finding Sam's necklace down here is reason enough for them to investigate.”

Shannon looks back at the dark water in front of her.

“They'll find her,” I say softly.

She nods, without words for once.

I stand and hold my hand out to her. She takes it, and I pull her up from the dock.

I can just imagine what Harrison's going to say to me once the police are involved. Something about sending me out to clean up and instead getting a dead body dumped in his lap.

I laugh.

“What?” she asks.

“Harrison.”

“What about him?”

“Just what he's going to say about all this.”

“Who gives a rip?” Shannon growls. For a second, I see a flash of the girl I thought she was before this whole thing started.

All two and a half hours ago.

Not too often your entire outlook on life changes in such a short span.

“You're right.” I nod. “Karma'll take care of him.”

“Or an act of god,” she says. She laughs, and for a second I wonder what it's going to be like between us.