“Maybe he didn’t want her to be found. Maybe he was relieved she left.”
That statement hit Claire like a splash of cold water in the face. She’d considered the possibility that her stepfather might not have been as upset as he’d seemed. She couldn’t question whether he might be culpable of Alana’s murder and not examine the likelihood of insincerity. But even if he wasn’t the person who’d harmed Alana, had he been glad to have her gone?
Tug had acted distraught, but Roni moved in with them less than six months later. And by then he and Roni were so far along in their relationship Claire sometimes wondered if they might’ve been involved before—not that she’d ever let herself fully embrace that suspicion.
“With Mom gone, he didn’t have to worry about losing us,” Leanne said.
“So now you’re blaming Dad? Are you suggesting he killed her?”
“Of course not!”
“But why would he want us? We aren’t even his children.”
It was Leanne’s turn to be shocked. “You know how much he loves us. He’s always loved us. We were part of the reason he wanted to marry Mom. He tells that to everyone. And it wasn’t as if he had any competition from our real dad, who didn’t even put up a fight when he adopted us.”
Was it all about love? Or was it more about making do because he couldn’t have children of his own? Claire wasn’t positive he was infertile. He’d never spoken of it. But he’d never fathered a child, either, even with his first wife. And Claire was pretty sure her mother had once mentioned, on the phone with Grandma Pierce, that she thought he was sterile. Claire had walked in on the middle of the conversation and been curious about it, but her mother had changed the subject and shushed her when she tried to confirm what she’d heard.
“Mom was gone, so not only could he keep us, he was free to be with whoever he wanted without a nasty divorce,” Leanne said. “And he’d inherit everything Mom had just received from Grandma and Grandpa Pierce. It was the perfect setup for a man who loved us but no longer loved her.”
Leanne had never approached the subject from this angle before. Claire had no idea why she was doing it now. Was it revenge for what Tug had finally revealed about that tape? “We can’t know how Dad feels. Only he knows that. But we can look at the facts. A suitcase was missing but nothing else. Where would Mom go with an empty suitcase?”
“She could’ve filled it with brand-new clothes for her brand-new life.”
“She didn’t use her debit card, or any credit cards, after she went missing.”
“Of course not. They’d be too easy to trace. But she might’ve had cash. She and her sister had just split four and a half million dollars. Who knows how much she hid away?”
The money had changed a lot of things in their lives—or promised to. They didn’t have it for very long before Alana went missing. For nearly twenty years, Tug had worked at Walt Goodman’s gun store and Alana had clerked part-time at the Stop ’n’ Shop. She sold some of her artwork, which helped, too, but not for much money. She hadn’t yet fulfilled her dream of making her mark on the art world. They’d lived hand to mouth—until Grandma and Grandpa Pierce died.
Maybe some of what Leanne said was plausible, but Claire couldn’t accept that Alana had left them. She couldn’t accept that Alana had left her only sister, either. Claire would never forget standing at the grave of her cousin, Aunt Jodi’s son, who’d drowned while surfing off the coast of Maui. She’d repeatedly scanned the cemetery for anyone who might look like her mother. That was the day she’d known without a doubt that Alana hadn’t left voluntarily. She wouldn’t have missed Chris’s funeral.
“What do you have to hide, Lee?” Claire whispered. “There’s more than you’re saying, despite everything you’ve told me about that p**n ographic video. I can’t figure out what it is, but…it’s not that Mom was having an affair with the married man you were trying to tempt. There’s something else.”
The blood drained from her sister’s face. “You’re crazy. I’m not hiding anything. I just don’t want you to accuse someone and realize later that you were wrong.”
“Why? Because you think I might accuse you? Is that where you’re afraid my search will lead me?”
“No!” she cried, but she’d already turned to the door. “I was thirteen, Claire. I don’t know how you can even ask me that.”
Neither did Claire. But she’d never guessed her younger sister would set her sights on a married man while she was still in junior high. Or be aggressive enough to make a sex tape for him. Or entertain all the eligible men in town now that she was an adult. Was the one person she believed she knew best actually someone she didn’t know at all?
“Did you hurt her, Lee?” she called.
Did she even want an answer? What if Leanne said yes? Wasn’t a life spent in a wheelchair punishment enough for anything? If it was Leanne who’d hurt Alana, she must’ve acted in anger, and Tug must’ve helped hide the evidence. Claire couldn’t imagine any other interpretation. Leanne wouldn’t, couldn’t, harm those who were closest to her in a calculated way. She wasn’t like the psychopaths Claire had studied in her quest for answers, wasn’t so narcissistic as to be completely indifferent to the pain of others.
Or was she? She was certainly smart enough to mimic true emotion. Was there a killer behind the mask of her pretty face?
The very idea made Claire shudder. No. That would mean she’d faked other things, as well—such as the love she professed to feel for Tug, Roni, even Claire.
Leanne stopped when she reached the porch. “Quit being ridiculous,” she said, and it was a comfort to hear her state it so emphatically. “I should’ve known you wouldn’t be able to see the truth. It doesn’t matter how much time goes by, you’re as stubbornly ignorant as ever.”
Stubbornly ignorant, or doggedly determined to reveal facts Leanne desperately wanted to keep hidden? “I’m going to find out, Lee,” Claire said softly. “Whatever it is, I’m going to find out.”
The slam of the screen door was her only answer.
11
Claire had called Isaac with the address on Les Weaver’s check not long after he’d returned home from dropping her off. But it was only a P.O. box. Isaac had to use Weaver’s phone number and a reverse directory to come up with a physical address.