“I was simply—”
But he’d already hung up.
I paced the dull gray carpet, raking my hands through my hair as I digested his revelation. Who could have told Alice that Shannon Blaine had spent time at the Sunset Bay Retreat Center? And wasthisthe alarming clue she’d turned up?
In and of itself, this tidbit hardly seemed worthy of the word “scary.” It would have piqued her interest, as it had mine, but not rattled her. And it was tough to imagine how she’d found it online. I’d already come up empty searching the Internet about the retreat center. Perhaps Alice had come across an old photo from there that had included Shannon.
And perhaps this detail had led to another revelation, afact thatwastruly scary. Shannon might have befriended one of her fellow attendees—or even an employee—while on retreat, a guy who became fixated on her. The person could have known about the basement storage area in the outbuilding. Perhaps the fixation burned off over the years, only to become reactivated when the two of them recently became reacquainted. At church?
I needed to bag the missing-woman Internet search, at least for now, and follow this new thread.
Shannon’s mother might be too doped up to talk to me, but there was a chance Kelly could coax the information out of her on my behalf. Surely Killian would be trying to follow up on Alice’s question, but I had no guarantee he would share any findings with me.
I grabbed my phone and tapped the number for Kelly. Voice mail. Her words from earlier echoed in my head: “I’ve tried to be respectful of the press, but you guys go too far.” I bet there was little chance I’d hear back from her.
But I had to find a way to convince her to ask her mother about Shannon staying at Sunset Bay, and whom she might have met there. My best option, it seemed, was to pay Kelly a visit at home. I knew where the Claibornes lived—I’d looked up their address in the white pages last week in case I needed it—and if she wasn’t home, I’d wait until she showed.
Unlike the Blaines, Kelly and her family didn’t live in Lake George. They were farther south, in Queensbury, and I was there in less than twenty minutes. Though the parts of the town I’d seen before had featured mostly commercial buildings, today I found myself in an attractive residentialsection filled with fairly upscale-looking homes, probably forty or fifty years old.
The Claiborne house, the smallest on Linden Lane, wasn’t in the same league as the Blaines’ place, but it was attractive and spiffy looking, a center hall colonial painted white and accented with black shutters. The yard was bordered by a white picket fence, which looked freshly painted. There were no cars in the driveway and both doors on the double garage were down, so I couldn’t tell at a glance if anyone was home. I parked in front, swung open the gate, and after stepping under the portico, rapped on the door with the brass lion-head knocker.
No one responded. I peered through one of the windows that framed the door, wondering if Kelly might simply be ignoring uninvited visitors, but there was no sign of movement through the sheer white curtains. Had she returned to her job? If that was the case, her work as a reading specialist was probably tied to school hours and she would be home soon. And then there was the young daughter. In light of Shannon’s murder, Kelly would want to be home when the girl returned for the day.
I waited for well over an hour without seeing anyone enter the house. After a quick bathroom break and coffee stop, I returned and knocked again, but still nothing. Another thirty minutes passed. My iPod had already shuffled through most of its songs and was now into repeats. But there was no way I was leaving.
Finally, at about four, the family SUV crept into my rearview mirror and pulled into the driveway to my rear. I wasrelieved to see Kelly, not Doug, emerge from the driver’s seat. Dressed in the same black trench as yesterday, she assisted her mother out of the car. Mrs. Baker moved unsteadily and seemed to have aged ten years since the first press conference. Kelly grasped the woman’s elbow and guided her slowly indoors.
I gave them about ten minutes to settle in, hoping to keep the annoyance quotient of my visit to a minimum, and then jumped from the Jeep, retraced my steps up the walk, and knocked again. The curtain in one of the front windows twitched, and seconds later Kelly swung open the door. I was anticipating exasperation, but her expression betrayed only weariness.
“Yes, what is it now?” she asked.
“Kelly, I’m not sure if you heard my message yet, but I think there’s a chance that the reporter Alice Hatfield’s death is related to Shannon’s. Can we speak for a moment?”
She took a couple of beats before nodding, her mouth set in a grim line.
“All right, come in,” she said. She led me down the center hall into the mutely toned living room. The large coffee table was strewn with newspapers, half-full coffee mugs, used paper plates, a couple of wineglasses, two apple cores, and an old pizza box, reflecting the chaos of the Claibornes’ lives over the past days.
Kelly was wearing dark pants and a turtleneck sweater in burgundy, a color that to my knowledge had never flattered anyone. I was struck again by the contrast between her and Shannon, or at the least the dazzling, luminescent Shannon I’d seen in photos. It couldn’t have been easy having a gorgeous younger sibling. If Kellyhadfelt jealous or resentful of her sister, her grief was probably now mixing with guilt in a strange, awful brew.
Frowning, Kelly perched on the edge of an armchair and motioned for me to sit across from her.
“From what I read, Alice Hatfield’s death bore no resemblance to the others,” Kelly said. “Or are you saying she was murdered because sheknewsomething?”
“I believe the latter. The other day, you said you weren’t sure whether Shannon had ever been to the center at Sunset Bay, but Alice had reason to think Shannonhadbeen on retreat there. When she was fifteen.”
Kelly rose from the chair, apparently too restless to sit.
“Okay, but if she had, how could that be anything more than a coincidence? It would have been close to twenty years ago.”
“It could be significant in a way that we don’t understand yet. I know your mother must be suffering terribly right now, but would you be willing to ask her about this?”
She pursed her lips together as she weighed my request.
“All right, give me a moment,” she said finally.
When she returned five minutes later, she didn’t bother taking a seat again.
“According to my mother, my sister never spent any time there,” she announced. “Apparently Shannon asked once about a retreat—she doesn’t recall if it was Sunset Bay or elsewhere—but my mom wouldn’t let her go. She had heard that kids snuck into each other’s rooms at those things and ended up having sex.”
