I had no intention of leaving until I got what I came for, so I continued to dog Bethany’s footsteps, talking as I went.
“You and Laini spent Saturday night together at your house, like you said, discussing life, love, men, work, the future. You probably tried to persuade her to stay, but Laini Carter wasn’t a stayer — not for her brother or the man she loved in Colorado, not for Carl Mendez or any job. Not even for you.”
Bethany tried to hang the clipboard back in its place near the door, cursing as she missed the small hook several times. Her hands were unsteady; I had her rattled.
I stepped around to block the way out of the shed. “Maybe you urged her to think on it that night. You hoped she’d change her mind. But the next morning, you saw she was determined to leave. She was going to ruin everything on a selfish whim. How dare she? And thinking a bunch of flowers could compensate for ruining your business, your ‘everything’ Carl called it, and leaving you without your right hand and best friend? Maybe your only friend? It was an insult. She’d even snatched Carl out from under you, and now she was just ditching him. And you doubted he’d want you back — who wants first princess when they’ve had the pageant queen?”
At that, Bethany struck me across the face, hard enough to make my ears ring.
“Ow!” I gasped, outraged.
“You had it coming.”
“Is that your life philosophy? Giving people what they have coming, especially when they cross you?” I demanded, pressing my cold hand against my stinging cheek and ear. A muscle worked in Bethany’s pale cheek. “You were angry that morning, too. Your rage must have been building all night. Hell, you’d been seething for decades — since you were tiny tots, and she kept breaking your little girl’s heart, trampling on your dreams. Over and over, she kept winning the crown, stealing the attention, enchanting everyone. And doing it so effortlessly! While you had to work for it. You sweated and trained and tried harder. And lost.”
Bethany’s breaths were coming faster now. I pressed my advantage.
“You were so jealous of her, so deeply envious in so many ways, that you couldn’t even bear to face it consciously. She was prettier, freer, less needy and more lovable. She’d beaten you in every way that counted. The envy and the anger and all the wounds had been accumulating for years and years, collecting emotional interest, turning what you felt for her into something bitter and dangerous. Only two things mattered in your life — your business and your relationship with her, and now she was going to jeopardize the first and abandon the second. Abandon you. Her decision to flit away was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
I took a step closer to Bethany.
“Laini was going to ruin your hopes once again. And once again you were feeling like that little girl you once were — furious, jealous, inadequate, rejected. And so alone. If you could’ve, you would have caged Laini like one of your birds, kept her by your side. But you couldn’t, and if you couldn’t have her, no one would.”
I took another step closer, and Bethany backed up a few paces, her ice-blue eyes fixed on me and filled with hatred.
“That Sunday morning,” I said, “Laini didn’t volunteer to go buy you cider donuts — I’ll bet a pastry hasn’t crossed your lips since you were a little girl. No, you came up with a ruse to get her to the quarry. Maybe you told her the magnificent view would change her mind. Or maybe,” I said, thinking of the black Lycra cycling pants Ryan had said Laini was wearing when she died, “she wanted to go for a bike ride, and you volunteered to drive her out to the quarry so she could take a pretty route back through the woods.”
Bethany’s mouth was a tight white line. She said nothing.
“You suggested going in Laini’s car because hers had a bike rack, and yours didn’t. You left, with no one to see you go — you live alone, your maid doesn’t work Sundays — and you swung past the factory to collect Laini’s bike and helmet from the hallway in the office before driving out to the serpentine quarry. And when you got there, you begged her to hike to the top with you — one last time, Laini, for me, please?” I mimicked a cajoling tone.
“Nonsense! This is all nonsense,” Bethany spat.
“And at the top of the quarry, you tried one last time to convince her to stay. You argued, and she laughed, confused. She said you couldn’t be serious.”
“Wha– How do you …?”
“I saw it. I heard it.”
“That’s not possible,” Bethany cried, backing away from me until she came up against the huge tank of sap.
“She hadn’t even seen it coming. It never occurred to her carefree, gypsy mind that every time she upped sticks and moved on, she left broken hearts and damaged lives behind, and that one day it might catch up with her. But she’d hurt the wrong person one too many times. You thrust out your hands and pushed her over the edge.”
“No!”
“You hurried back down the hill, took her bike off her Jeep and put on the helmet, hiding your face. Then you cycled all the way home, put the bike in the back of your SUV and returned it to its rack at the factory before driving back home to wait. I’m guessing you didn’t expect her body to be found so soon. You’d probably planned on waiting until the next day before checking in with Carl and raising the alarm with the cops. Still, it worked out well enough anyway, didn’t it?”
“This is all wild speculation. You have absolutely no proof,” Bethany said.
“Not true. You made a mistake with the bike. Jim saw Laini bringing it to the office that Saturday morning. She was on her way to you but left it there in case anyone from the company wanted it once she left town — she wasn’t planning on taking it with her, and she knew you weren’t a cyclist. Then, when Jim came in on Sunday afternoon to clean the boilers, he saw it again, but this time it was muddy, because it had been ridden. Thing is, Bethany, you made no mention in your statement to the cops about Laini going for a ride.”
“I forgot. She went out on Saturday afternoon.”
“There’s a witness who saw someone cycling on a mountain bike — while wearing a blue helmet — near the Brookford turnoff on Sunday morning.”
“I mean Sunday,” Bethany said. “It was on Sunday morning when she went cycling. I remember now.”
“At a time when she was already dead? They know the exact time from her phone.”
“Then your witness — if there even is one — must have seen another cyclist. It could have been anyone.”
“And that hi-tech watch you always wear?”
“What about it?”
“It has a fitness tracker on it, too. And I’ll bet that when the cops check it, they’ll find an intense period of activity after eight fifty-seven on that Sunday morning that corresponds with a five-mile cycle between the quarry and your house.”
“If it does, that’s because I was exercising at home.”
“The tracker can tell the difference between yoga and cycling — your heart rate would be different. Besides, it’s got a built-in GPS tracker that will show exactly where you were.”
Bethany’s mouth fell open, then snapped shut. She stared down at the watch on her left wrist for a moment and then, quick as a flash, unfastened it and tossed it into the vat of sap behind her.
I dashed over to the tank and stuck my arm inside, trying to grab the watch as it sank through the clear liquid, but it slipped through my fingers and dropped to the bottom. Cursing, I leaned over, stretching my arm and fingers to their limit.
Then solid ground disappeared beneath me as Bethany lifted my feet into the air, tipping me face-down into the tank. Keeping my head deep in the sap.