Chapter 5 - BRIAR HOUSE
The letter had contained only five words.
LOOK UNDER WHAT SHE LOVED.
No signature.
No return address.
Reeves assumed it was a hoax.
Still, Claire's case had bothered him for sixteen years.
So he contacted Lorraine.
She dismissed the letter immediately.
Then she sold the old Mercer family property three weeks later.
That property was known locally as Briar House.
Ethan searched it.
A sprawling country estate appeared on a real-estate archive.
Stone house.
Greenhouse.
Old barn.
Gardens.
A small lake.
Claire had grown up there.
Reeves said she especially loved the greenhouse.
“She studied horticulture for two years,” he explained. “She practically lived in that garden.”
Look under what she loved.
Ethan understood why Reeves had remembered the letter.
“Did police search the greenhouse?”
“In 2009? Briefly.”
“Under it?”
“No.”
The original theory was voluntary disappearance.
There had been no warrant to tear apart a family property without evidence.
Ethan looked again at Claire's photograph.
“What do I do with the pendant?”
“Give it to me.”
Ethan hesitated.
“Officially?”
“I'll contact the current department and reopen the chain properly.”
“What happens to Victoria?”
“That depends on what she knows.”
Ethan looked toward the bathroom.
Lily was brushing her teeth, humming quietly as if the previous day hadn't dismantled their lives.
“There's something else,” Ethan said.
“What?”
“She assaulted my daughter trying to get the pendant back.”
Reeves stopped speaking.
Then:
“That matters.”
“Why?”
“Because someone doesn't attack a seven-year-old over a harmless family keepsake.”
By noon, Ethan and Lily had checked out of the wedding hotel.
They drove home.
Thirty minutes later, another vehicle appeared behind them.
Victoria's black SUV.
She followed for nearly six miles.
Ethan called the police.
The SUV eventually turned away.
At home, Ethan found three voicemails.
The first was Victoria crying.
The second was Victoria apologizing.
The third was different.
Calm.
Controlled.
“Ethan, don't involve strangers in something you don't understand. Claire was sick. She hurt people. That pendant doesn't mean what you think it means.”
He played the message twice.
Then a fourth voicemail arrived.
This one came from an unknown number.
An older woman spoke.
“You don't know me, but my name is Ruth Mercer.”
Ethan immediately called back.
Ruth was Lorraine's younger sister.
Claire and Victoria's aunt.
She had heard through relatives that Victoria's wedding had collapsed.
More importantly, she had heard why.
“The pendant,” Ruth said. “Does it still have Claire's picture?”
“Yes.”
Ruth began crying.
Ethan waited.
Finally she said:
“Victoria told police Claire took that pendant with her.”
“I know.”
“No,” Ruth whispered. “You don't understand.”
“What?”
“I gave Claire that pendant the afternoon she disappeared.”
Ethan's grip tightened around the phone.
“And she made me promise something.”
“What?”
“If anything happened to her…”
May you like
Ruth's voice broke.
“…I was supposed to go to the police and tell them to look at Lorraine's accounts.”
