The Secrets of Lily Graves (25 page)

Unless, Mrs. Krezky never said that to Sara.

Because Sara never asked.

Let me do the talking.

Oh God!

My entire body began to tremble. The Persephone necklace. The night before I lost it at the quarry, I'd worn it at Sara's house when I was sleeping over. She must have found it and then, to throw the police off course, planted it on a tree in Erin's backyard.

Sara knew.
Sara knew.
And worse, she set me up to take the fall. I'd told Sara that Matt was worried Erin would harm herself. Matt knew he'd told me, but he didn't know I'd told Sara. So it kind of looked to him, or anyone else, that I used that knowledge to stage Erin's suicide. Even the formalin might have been an attempt to further link me with Erin's murder.

All those true crime shows she watched. They made her the perfect accomplice to cover her father's crime. Because after all, in the McMartin household, family rules.

School, church, family. Welcome to my prisons
, she'd said bitterly to Alex at the café.

Alex, who was innocent. Sara, who was guilty.

I fell against the glass doors, fumbling in my pocket for my phone. I had to call Matt and warn him. But my pockets were empty, and I remembered with a sinking feeling I'd left my phone in my bag on the floor of his truck.

Landline! I had only seconds left as I ran around the bedroom searching for a phone. What was wrong with these people? Where was their freaking phone?

“Oh!” Mrs. McMartin exclaimed. “You're still here.”

Steam wafted from the bathroom, providing barely enough cover for me to grab the evidence and go. I bunched up the scalpels and shirt in the bottom sheet and shoved it under my arm.

“Sorry,” I gushed. “Wanted to wash this before your husband came home.”

“Leave it,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “My goodness. I feel so much better. Must have been some bad shellfish I had at lunch. Thank you,
dear, for coming to my rescue.”

“No biggie,” I said, shrugging. “Well, I'll let you get dressed.”

“Lily?” she called as I headed to the door.

My fingers closed around the handle. “Yes?”

“I said . . . leave it.” Her tone was like steel.

I waited two beats. Then opened the door and ran.

She came after me, screaming at the top of her lungs while I took the stairs two at a time, my precious bundle clutched in my arms. If I could make it to the door I'd be safe.

Too late. Dr. Ken was already waiting, Brandon in a Superman cape by his side.

I gazed into his dark eyes, so warm and kind before, and saw only calculating cruelty.

“Brandon,” he said crisply. “Why don't you go to the basement and watch some cartoons?”

Brandon dutifully did as he was told. Dr. Ken closed the door, locking it. He dropped his eyes to my bundle, and then to his wife. “You too,” he said. “Go.”

Mrs. McMartin nodded numbly, and footsteps padded up the stairs. The master bedroom door shut, and then we were alone.

He sighed. “This is exactly what I didn't want to happen.” He plunked himself down on a bench and opened his coat so I could see the handgun under his
tweed jacket. “Give me what you found.”

I held it away from him.

“Really, Lily? You're in my home. You're unarmed. And no offense, but Sara's told me how everyone in school thinks your death obsession is weird. The stars are not aligned in your favor.”

“Matt will be here soon.”

“I don't think so.”

I fought a flutter of hysteria. “What does
that
mean?”

“What could I do?” He shook his head forlornly. “He ran my daughter off the road, didn't he? He was going to kill her with his truck just like he murdered Erin.”

“That's a lie! Your wife drove into us drunk. We saved her. If it hadn't been for Matt, we'd all be dead.”

“Oh, I don't think so.” He smiled. “You see, I'm Dr. Ken McMartin, the well-known, much-loved pediatrician. I am an established, upstanding member of the community, and you and Matt are punks who break in to cemetery tombs and, for all I know, commit Satanic rituals.”

My jaw dropped. Where was he getting this stuff?

“So what version of this story do you think the police will buy,” he said, “yours or mine?”

The bundle of evidence felt almost radioactive in
my clutches. “I think they'll trust us. Matt and me. Two against one.”

“Correction. One against one.” He frowned. “I'm so very sorry. But when I found out that Matt Houser had tried to kill my daughter, I did what any protective father would do.” He shrugged apologetically. “I shot him. Dead.”

Nooooo.
The word rang through my brain. “You didn't. Sara wouldn't let you.”

The garage door opened, and we paused to listen. Please be a truck, I prayed. But it was only the soft hum of the Mercedes.

“Let's ask her ourselves, shall we?” Dr. Ken said, standing as the door from the garage opened and Sara walked in looking like death.

She regarded her father with a sneer of disgust, “I hate you. There was no reason to shoot Matt. He never would have known.”

“Sara,” Dr. Ken said in a warning tone. “I understand that you're upset. . . .”

“Upset?” Sara yelled. “We could have just gotten the car and left. No one else would have been hurt.”

“And let him come here to find Lily dead or, worse, holding the evidence?” he asked. “I think not.”

At that, Sara spun on her heels, her eyes not meeting mine but focusing instead on the bundle of sheets.
“Give those to me, Lil. Just let me have them and maybe we can work this out.”

I held the bundle tighter. “Are you crazy?” I shot back. “You killed Matt. You covered up Erin's murder. You . . .”—and for some reason, this was even harder to say—“you lied to me! You never were my best friend, or even a friend at all.”

“I did not kill Matt. You have to believe me,” she said pleadingly, as if her words could change things. “Now, please, just hand over the stuff, or else Dad and I will have to take it from you.” She paused, her eyes wet. “One way or another.”

For a moment, we locked gazes. Everything about her was so familiar that she seemed almost part of me. They say babies can't distinguish themselves from their mothers when they look in the mirror, and that's how I felt about her. “Why?” I whispered.

Sara's lower lip trembled. “I had no choice.”

Dr. Ken was coming toward me, hand outstretched. “Just be a good girl, Lily, and do as you're told for once.”

A surge of rage raced through my veins. Throwing the bundle on the floor, I bared my nails like Erin had in the cemetery and tackled Sara's father. I came at him so hard, he was flung into the glass front doors before I kicked his knees so his legs slipped from under him
and he fell to the slate floor, his head hitting with a crack. He reached for his gun, but Sara was faster.

She stood over both of us, the gun shaking in her right hand.

My knee rammed into his genitals, rendering him temporarily defenseless, then I did as Boo had demonstrated and pressed my thumbs into his carotid artery and jugular vein, easy to find after years of practicing on corpses. He gurgled and flailed before his eyes bugged out and he collapsed.

Sara pointed the gun in my direction. “I'll have to shoot you now. That's the only way out of this.”

I got up, disgusted. “Yeah, right. As if you could.”

For Matt's sake and for Erin's, I summoned what little courage I had left and wrenched the weapon from her hand. Then I opened the door to toss it out, almost pitching it at Perfect Bob, who was there on the front step. With Mom.

No words were said as police officers swarmed the foyer, cuffing Sara and Dr. Ken. It wasn't until Mom took me into her arms that I broke down like a baby.

All I could say was, “Matt.”

Later, they would tell me that all he could say was, “Lily.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

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T
he nondescript silver sedan that had been stalking Sara and me belonged to the undercover division of the Potsdam Police Department, on loan to Mom, who'd managed to convince her boyfriend that she needed it to tail her daughter. Which, looking back, explained why our tagger sucked.

My mother had been lagging behind when Matt and I stole away from the garden to go make out. So she hadn't been there to witness Carol driving into us drunk—an accident that definitely hadn't been part of Dr. Ken's plan. If Carol hadn't made that mistake, there was a good chance the McMartins would be living in India, free from prosecution.

Then again, as Boo would say, there are no such things as accidents or coincidences.

It was Boo who'd spied Matt and me sneaking out, and by the time she'd tracked down Mom, I was already at the McMartins' putting Carol to bed. Fortunately, I'd left my iPhone in Matt's truck since, unbeknownst to me, that's how Mom had been monitoring my whereabouts—by plotting every movement of my iPhone on her Mac.

That would have pissed me off royally. Before.

But I was surprisingly cool with her overprotectiveness when I learned that because of it, Mom found Matt before he lost too much blood and managed to stem the bleeding, using her awesome anatomy knowledge, while simultaneously calling in the entire Potsdam PD to come to my rescue.

Matt was rushed by ambulance to the hospital, coherent enough to tell them that I was at Sara's before he passed out completely. By the way, it was Sara who called Detective Henderson from the Potsdam Regional Medical Center to say that I'd been at the cemetery with Matt. He'd remarked that she wasn't a friend. He'd been so right.

What will happen to Sara and her father is for the courts to decide, and I'll leave it at that. They say justice comes from the law, but forgiveness comes from
the heart. Matt says I need to forgive Sara for me, not for her. I don't know. Maybe one day I'll be able to.

These days, Matt and I are just concentrating on getting back to normal. Funny, I used to despise that word, and yet I cannot imagine any state sweeter except the one I'm currently in—madly in love.

Finally, for Matt and me, that's no secret.

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SARAH STROHMEYER
is a bestselling and award-winning novelist whose books include
How Zoe Made Her Dreams (Mostly) Come True
and
Smart Girls Get What They Want.
She lives outside Montpelier, VT. You can visit her online at www.sarahstrohmeyer.com.

Visit
www.AuthorTracker.com
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UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

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How Zoe Made Her Dreams (Mostly) Come True Smart Girls Get What They Want

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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Balzer + Bray is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

T
HE
SECRETS OF LILY GRAVES
. Copyright © 2014 by Sarah Strohmeyer. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

TK

EPub Edition October 2013 ISBN 9780062259608

14 15 16 17 18
XXXXXX
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

FIRST EDITION

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