Chapter 20

TWENTY

Gulf Shores, Alabama

Wednesday, September 18

6:19 p.m.

It'd taken her more than two hours to work up the courage.

Elyse stood at the front door of the brick rambler on Augusta Drive, knuckles raised to knock. The lawn had retained a crisp green despite soaring temperatures in the past couple of weeks, with baby palm trees planted in a linear pattern near the sidewalk. The property itself was larger than the ones along the beach. Larger than hers, for sure. Here, farther north in town, houses sprawled out with black iron fences, lengthy driveways, and maintained landscaping. So different from the constant sand and beach weeds she'd become used to. Brown shutters framed exceptionally oversized windows—four of them—along the front of the house. Whoever was inside would've surely seen her cross to the front door.

She didn't want to be here. She didn't want to lie to the people inside. They'd already been through too much, but she had to know. She had to know the truth.

"Okay." The word left her mouth as little more than a sigh. And she knocked.

There wasn't an answer for a series of breaths. She'd gotten into the habit of knocking first in case there were any napping babies in the house because there'd been too many times visitors had woken up Ava as a toddler. Elyse reached for the doorbell.

Just as the front door opened.

"Yes?" A sliver of a face angled into the mere inch between the door and the doorframe. The man's voice was deeper than she expected, the lines across his forehead much more engraved than the photos she'd seen online from a year ago. "Can I help you?"

"Hi. My name is…" For crying out loud, was she really going to give these people her real name? She didn't know them. Didn't know if she was leaving a trail for Samuel Thornton to use against her. Elyse scrambled for an alias—any alias—in case this backfired in her face. "Leigh. Leigh Brody. Are you John Slater?"

Regret instantly exploded through her. Dragging her best friend into this wasn't the way to go, but it'd been the only name that'd come to mind. One she trusted with her whole heart.

"What do you want?" He had yet to open the door entirely, as though he expected her to push inside and disrupt his perfectly sealed-off world.

Her nerves interpreted his standoffishness as a threat, very real and very imminent, but Elyse wasn't going to get answers solely from the internet. She needed more. "I'd love to ask you some questions about your daughter. Poppy. I'm a journalist?—"

The door closed in her face.

It took her a moment to realize she'd gone about this all wrong. Lying to a family who'd lost their daughter, about who she was and what she wanted… This wasn't her. Elyse attempted another knock. And waited.

The door wrenched open. This time completely. She caught sight of tan paint and dark hardwood as John Slater filled the doorway. His rage flooded off him in waves as he closed the distance between them. "I told you people we're done answering your questions. Now, get off my property and leave us alone."

Elyse had no choice but to move back. Her heel missed the first step, and she fell backwards. Her rear hit the sidewalk and aggravated the bone-deep pain in her hip and shoulder. She shoved her shoes into the pavement as fear arced fast and hot through her. She threw her hands out to protect herself. Against what, she didn't know, but the instinct was automatic. "I'm sorry! I'm not… I'm not a journalist, and my name isn't Leigh Brody. I lied. I'm sorry. I thought I could get information from you by telling you I was writing a story on your daughter's death, but that's not true."

John Slater, lean and muscular despite the gray of his hair and beard, stared down at her. There was an obvious difference between this man and the one who'd offered reward after reward and plea after plea for his daughter's safe return a year ago. Thinner, angrier. His shoulders rose and fell in quick succession as he gauged her sincerity. "Then what the hell do you want?"

"My name is Elyse." The truth spilled out of her, her words tumbling over each other. "I came to ask about your daughter's disappearance, that much is true. But not for the reason you think. I want to help Ruby Davis."

"Ruby Davis?" She couldn't tell if it was the beat of the sun or the confusion in his voice that smoothed his features. Either way, it was enough to put all that rage to a stop. "What does my daughter's friend have to do with Poppy's disappearance?"

Now she was confused. "Ruby's been reported missing. Over two weeks now. The police… It's been all over the news. You didn't know?"

The strength seemed to leave John Slater right then. He reached for one of the brick columns supporting the deep front porch of the house. "We don't watch much news anymore. Not since Poppy… No one told us."

Elyse didn't know what to say to that, what to think. She just sat there, waiting for this man to give her permission to get off the ground. The police hadn't come to the Slaters for answers, for similarities between the girls' disappearances? Detective Moore hadn't thought there might be a connection between her niece and another girl who'd gone missing a year ago?

"You best come inside, or the sun will cook you like an egg." John Slater didn't wait for an answer and turned on his heel, leaving the front door open for her to follow.

She struggled to right herself as pain reignited in her shoulder and down the left side of her ribcage, but the promise of air conditioning propelled her to her feet. Elyse hiked the two steps to the front porch and crossed the threshold. Almost taken back in time when dark hardwood and yellow paint could be found in every decor magazine on the grocery store shelves. Nothing but a key holder had been hung in the entryway with two simple sets hanging from the nails. The house itself seemed bare and disorganized with photos of a handsome young man hung in odd intervals in a front room off to her right. It took a moment for Elyse to recognize why there seemed to be missing pieces to the puzzle created on the walls. Because the Slaters had removed reminders of their daughter. Would she do the same, if something ever happened to Ava? She wasn't sure she wanted the answer to that question.

Putting one foot in front of the other, she navigated deeper into the house and followed John into the kitchen.

He'd turned his back to her at the refrigerator. Obviously content enough to believe she wasn't much of a threat. "Hope you like lemonade." He set out three glasses on the brown granite countertops and poured into all three from a ready-made pitcher, and Elyse's mouth watered. For all she hated about Alabama, hospitality wasn't on that list.

She took the glass, not really sure of where to go from here. She'd memorized a list of questions she might ask the Slaters, but none of them seemed appropriate now. "Is your wife home?"

"Jill ran to the store for something. She should be home in a few minutes." John Slater grabbed his own serving, shut the refrigerator door, and turned to face her. Almost toasting toward the front door, he raised his glass. "We vary our schedules. When I go to work, when she needs something from the store. Damn jackals from the news seem to think we have something more to say about Poppy. But if what you said about Ruby Davis is true, it explains why they're coming around again."

"I'm sorry to hear that." Elyse set down her glass on the granite without so much as taking a sip. These people had had so much taken from them. A daughter, their freedom to grieve, an entire life unlived. How could she possibly take more? "I watched some of the news coverage from Poppy's disappearance online. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?"

"You're not from here, are you?" he asked.

The question jarred through her. "What makes you say that?"

"Your accent, for one. I'm guessing you're from up north." John Slater folded his arms across his barrel chest, lemonade still in hand. "And the fact you had to watch the coverage of my daughter's case online. Which means you weren't here. Living it with the rest of the people in this town."

"My family and I, we have a vacation house here in Gulf Shores, so, no, I'm not from here." Would that make a difference? Would that make her an outsider? Someone he couldn't trust?

"Why the interest in Poppy, in Ruby Davis, for that matter?" John Slater narrowed electric-blue eyes on her, the same color as his daughter's. It was easy to see where Poppy Slater had gotten the majority of her features. The straight nose and thin lips. The bright eyes and all-knowing expression she'd noted in Poppy's Instagram posts.

Elyse made an effort to distract herself from the fear she'd held on to all week by catching condensation on the outside of her glass. "I was assaulted earlier this week. By a man I believe might have something to do with Ruby's disappearance."

She hadn't said those words out loud before. Panic ate at her insides as John Slater seemed to grow an entire two inches right there in the middle of his kitchen. "I can't prove it, but I have to ask. Does the name Samuel Thornton mean anything to you?"

"You think this man Thornton had something to do with Poppy's disappearance?" Tension radiated through John's hands, to the point the glass in his hand threatened to break.

"I don't know, but I can tell you I am doing everything I can to find out." Her courage was coming back, bit by bit. "Did Poppy ever mention him?"

"No, but then again, my daughter wasn't too keen on sharing much of her life with me. We weren't exactly on the best of terms when she…" A sigh punctuated the regret in his voice. "We'd been arguing about a boy she was seeing. Her mom and I found the messages in her social media account. Mature stuff. Stuff she was too young to understand. She accused us of invading her privacy and ran out of the house. Presumably to whoever she was seeing. We never saw her again. Not until we were called in to identify her remains at the coroner's office. They… They found her in the marsh." Emotion seemed to clog his throat then. "The police couldn't even tell us if it was really her at first. She was so…bloated and swollen. The skin of her hands was coming off in sheets. The coroner said she'd probably been there for about a week."

Tangent pain burrowed deep inside her, and once again, she was picturing her own daughter in that position. Laid bare on a cold metal table with an overweight and over-the-hill coroner prodding at her pale white body.

"You didn't know the boy she was dating?" Elyse swallowed acid back down her throat at the image. "Wasn't there a name attached to the social media account?"

"The guy used one of those aliases. Something like DailySurf. The police submitted a warrant for the kid's real identity, but the platform is still taking their time. Like I said, Poppy wasn't sharing a whole lot with us, but I got the sense the guy was older. My guess is she believed I would have put a stop to them seeing each other." John Slater stared down into his glass then finished off the liquid inside before setting it in the basin on the sink. "Based off those messages, she was right."

Elyse tried to push her mind farther away from her own fears. "Mr. Slater, in Poppy's Instagram posts, she's wearing a gold necklace."

"The one with the P engraved on it." He nodded. "We gave that to her as a gift for her birthday. Just before she disappeared. She loved it. She never took it off, but the coroner told us she didn't come in with any jewelry on. Whoever'd killed her must've taken it."

As a souvenir. Another flash of the pendant, in her own hand, charged forward. Opportunity knocked at the back of her mind. "Do you mind if I take a look at those messages?"

"Poppy's phone is in her room. Right where she left it that night. The police have already been through her accounts. They weren't able to identify where the messages came from, but I've long suspected whoever she was seeing had something to do with her murder." He pointed down the hall. "You're welcome to try. Second door on the right."

"Thank you, and please, know how sorry I am for your loss." Elyse took advantage as she heard the sound of a garage door opening from the other end of the house. Had Ruby Davis taken a page out of Poppy's book and started seeing someone she didn't want anyone to know about? Was there a connection? She stepped inside a lavender bedroom with a white chair rail installed midpoint along the walls. The same color as Ava's room.

She tried to ignore that small detail as she located a phone on a makeup-ridden white vanity. Everything in this room had been perfectly preserved. Waiting for the day its owner might return. Except Poppy would never step into this room again. It'd become nothing more than a shrine for the living.

A sticky note scribbled with six numbers fell back to the faux-wood surface. Most likely left for the police. Elyse flipped the phone screen up, but nothing happened. No power. Locating the charger on the vanity, she plugged one end into the wall and the other into the phone. It took a couple of minutes, but the screen finally came to life. She tapped the numerical sequence on the note in, and the screen lit up with Poppy's Instagram profile. Automatically connected to the home Wi-Fi. The Slaters had kept their daughter's cell phone, even knowing she'd never use it again.

A message exchange between Poppy and an unknown profile—no longer in existence from what she could tell—detailed personal, sexual questions no fourteen-year-old should've been asked. John would've been right to put an end to whatever this relationship was. Had most likely been right in the sender's age as well.

Elyse caught the low sound of voices from the kitchen. Mrs. Slater had come home. She had to work quickly in case this mother decided to make her leave.

And she slipped the phone beneath her clothing.