Gold Digger

10. Somewhere to run away to.

The day before I met Beth Greer was a Tuesday, with a gray sky overhead

and a thin drizzle that wet my face and beaded in my hair as I waited at the

bus stop. It was unseasonably warm, and the concrete gave off that rainy

scent it sometimes has, rising up from beneath my ballet flats. There was a

man standing next to me, wearing an overcoat and scrolling through his

phone with an exhausted look on his face. On my other side was a worried-

looking woman who was frantically texting. I closed my eyes, inhaling the

scent of the rain laced with a thread of cologne from the man next to me,

overlaid with gasoline and diesel fumes from the street. This was my life.

It wasn’t a bad one. I was twenty-nine and divorced. I lived in a small

complex of low-rise condos on a tangle of curved streets with the

aspirational name of Saddle Estates. In my mind I called it Singles Estates,

because it was almost exclusively populated with romantic failures like me,

people who needed somewhere to live when they sold off their married

house and took their half of the money. The man in the overcoat was

divorced, guaranteed, and I’d bet money the woman was texting a kid who

was in school while spending a court-designated week with his father.

My divorce was still new. I had no kids. My place was small, smelled

of paint, and only contained the bare necessities of furniture. But it wasn’t

the worst life I could have. I’d known since I was nine that I was lucky to

have any life at all.

On the bus, I pulled out my phone, put my earbuds in my ears, and

played the audiobook I was in the middle of listening to. A thriller: a

woman in danger, most of the characters possibly lying, everything not

quite as it seemed. A twist somewhere near the end that would either shock

me or wouldn’t. There were dozens of books just like it, hundreds maybe,

and they were the soundtrack of my life. The woman’s voice in my earbuds

told me about death, murder, deep family secrets, people who shouldn’t be

trusted, lies that cost lives. But a novel always ends, the lies come to the

surface, and the deaths are explained. Maybe one of the bad characters gets

away with something—that’s fashionable right now—but you are still left

with a sense that things are balanced, that dark things come to light, and

that the bad person will, at least, most likely be miserable.

It was dark comfort, but it was still comfort. I knew my own tally by

heart: My would-be killer had been in prison for nineteen years, seven

months, and twenty-six days. His parole hearing was in six months.

Work was a doctor’s office in downtown Claire Lake. I was a

receptionist, taking calls, filing charts, making appointments. As I came

through the door, I pulled the earbuds from my ears and gave my coworkers

a smile, shaking off all of the darkness and death.

“Busy day,” Karen, the other receptionist, said, glancing at me, then

away again. “We open in twenty.”

We weren’t bosom friends, my coworkers and I, even though I had

worked here for five years. The other women here were married with kids,

which meant we had nothing much in common since my divorce. I hadn’t

talked to any of them about the divorce, except to say it had happened. And

I couldn’t add to the conversations about daycares and swimming programs.

The doctors didn’t socialize with any of us—they came and went, expecting

the mechanism of the office to work without much of their input.

I took off my jacket and put on my navy blue scrub top, shoving my

phone and purse under the desk. I could probably make friends here if I

tried. I was attractive enough, with long dark hair that I kept tied back, an

oval face, and dark eyes. At the same time, I didn’t have the kind of good

looks that threaten other women. I was standoffish—I knew that. It was an

inescapable part of my personality, a tendency I couldn’t turn off no matter

how much therapy I did. I didn’t like people too close, and I was terrible at

small talk. My therapists called it a defense mechanism; I only knew it was

me, like my height or the shape of my chin.

But my lack of gregariousness wasn’t the only reason my coworkers

gave me a wide berth. Though they didn’t say anything to me, a rumor had

gotten out in my first week; they all knew who I was, what I had escaped.

And they all knew what I did in the evenings, the side project that

consumed all of my off-hours. My obsession, really.

They probably all thought it wasn’t healthy.

But I’ve always believed that murder is the healthiest obsession of all.

—

“Don’t tell me,” my sister, Esther, said on the phone. “You’re hibernating

again.”

“I’m fine,” I said. It was after work, and I was at my local grocery

store, the Safeway in the plaza within walking distance to Singles Estates. I

put cereal in my cart as I shoulder-pinned the phone to my ear. “I’m

grabbing some groceries and going home.”

“I told you to come over for dinner. Will and I want to see you.”

“It’s raining.”

“This is Claire Lake. It’s always raining.”

I looked at a carton of almond milk, wondering what it tasted like. “I

know you worry about me, but I’m fine. I just have work to do.”

“You already have a job. The website isn’t paid work.”

“It pays enough.”

My big sister sighed, and the sound gave me a twinge of sadness. I

really did want to see her, along with her husband, Will, a lawyer who I

liked quite a lot. Esther was one of the only people who really mattered to

me, and even though she gave me grief, I knew she tried hard to understand

me. She’d had her own guilt and trauma over what had happened to me.

She had her own reasons to be paranoid—to hibernate, as she put it. The

difference was, Esther didn’t hibernate. She had a husband and a house and

a good job, a career.

“Just tell me you’re trying,” Esther said. “Trying to get out, trying to do

something, trying to meet new people.”

“Sure,” I said. “Today I met a man who has a hernia and a woman who

would only say she has a ‘uterus problem.’ ” I put the almond milk down.

“I’m not sure what a ‘uterus problem’ is, and I don’t think I’m curious.”

“If you wanted to know, you could look in her file and find out.”

“I never look in patients’ files,” I told her. “You know that. I answer

phones and deal with appointment times, not diagnoses. Looking in a

patient file could get me fired.”

“You make no sense, Shea. You won’t look at patients’ medical files,

but you’ll talk about murders and dead bodies on the internet.”

I paused, unpinning my phone from my shoulder. “Okay, that’s actually

a good point. I get that. But does it mean that in order to be consistent, I

should be more nosy or less?”

“It means you live too much inside your own head, overthinking

everything,” Esther said. “It means you need to meet people who aren’t

patients, real people who aren’t murder victims on a page. Make friends.

Find a man to date.”

“Not yet for the dating thing,” I told her. “Maybe soon.”

“The divorce was a year ago.”

“Eleven months.” I dodged a woman coming the opposite way up my

aisle, then moved around a couple pondering the cracker selection. “I’m not

opposed to finding someone. It’s dating itself that freaks me out. I mean,

you meet a stranger, and that’s it? He could be anyone, hiding anything.”

“Shea.”

“Do you know how many serial killers dated lonely women in their

everyday lives? Some divorcée who just wants companionship from a nice

man? She thinks she’s won the dating lottery, and meanwhile he’s out there

on a Sunday afternoon, dumping bodies. And now we’re supposed to use

internet apps, where someone’s picture might not even be real. People are

lying about their faces.”

“Okay, okay. No dating apps. No dating at all yet. I get it. But make

some friends, Shea. Join a book club or a bowling league or something.”

My cart was full. I paused by the plate glass windows at the front of the

store, letting my gaze travel over the parking lot. “I’ll think about it.”

“That means no,” Esther said.

“It means I’ll think about it.” The parking lot looked like any normal

parking lot during after-work hours, with cars pulling in and out. I watched

for a moment, letting my eyes scan the cars and the people. An old habit. I

couldn’t have told you what I was looking for, only that I’d know it when I

saw it. “Thanks, sis. I’ll talk to you later.”

I bought my groceries and put them in the cloth bags I’d brought with

me. I slung the bags over my shoulders and started the walk home in the

rain, my coat hood pulled up over my head, my feet trying to avoid the

puddles. The walk toward Singles Estates took me down a busy road, with

cars rushing by me, splashing water and giving me a face full of fumes. Not

the most pleasant walk in the world, but I put my earbuds in and put one

foot in front of the other. Esther had long ago given up on telling me to get

a car. It would never happen.

Besides, I got home before nightfall, so I didn’t have to walk alone in

the dark. I called that a win.

.

.

.

Someone

had revived an old thread about the Zodiac Killer because of a recent

podcast they’d heard, and someone else had posted a link to a new theory

about the JonBenét Ramsey case. I read through everything and added my

own comments, looking out for messages that were inflammatory or

insulting. Even in a closed group, the internet was the perfect place for

people who wanted to call each other names, and it required constant

moderation. People could get as angry about a twenty-year-old murder as

they could about modern-day politics.

When I was finished, I clicked over to the article I was currently

working on, about a woman in Connecticut who had left her house and

disappeared, leaving her two-year-old daughter alone in her playpen.

Security footage showed her walking past a mall three miles away, but how

had she gotten there, and why? She’d left her car in the driveway. Cell

phone records showed a single phone call from the woman’s phone to 911

four hours after she disappeared. The call had disconnected as soon as the

operator answered. Did that mean the woman was still alive then, trying to

call for help? Or had someone else used her phone? These were the kinds of

questions that could send me straight down the rabbit hole for days on end.

I picked up my phone and called Michael De Vos, the private detective

who worked for me sometimes. Being a layperson had its limits when you

wrote crime stories, and Michael was a help when I needed expert analysis.

He used to be a cop in the Claire Lake PD. He picked up right away.

“Shea. You’re home?” he said. Michael knew a lot about my paranoia,

though he didn’t know the reason. He didn’t seem to find it strange; he

often checked that I was home safe when we talked.

“I made it,” I said. “Where are you?” Michael was usually somewhere

interesting. As a private detective, he lived the kind of life that would be

way too much for my anxiety to handle.

“Right now I’m in a parked car,” he said, “waiting for someone. Where

I’ve been since noon.”

He did, in fact, sound bored. “Waiting for who?”

“You know that’s classified.”

I felt myself smiling. Everything Michael did was classified, according

to him. At least the interesting stuff was. “If you’re doing a boring

stakeout,” I said, “then you had time to read the article I sent.”

“I did.” I heard him sip something. I pictured him in a car parked at the

side of a road somewhere, the misty rain dripping down the windows.

Maybe he was waiting for a cheating spouse or an embezzler. In my mind,

the car was a big, boxy seventies thing, even though it was 2017. Michael

gave off that old-school vibe.

Not that he was old. As far as I knew, he was somewhere in the second

half of his thirties, with dark brown hair and brown eyes. Good-looking,

most women would think. Women who weren’t closed off like me. I’d only

ever seen a photograph of him, which he’d sent me early on; we’d never

met in person.

I wasn’t very good with meeting strange men in person.

“What did you think?” I asked him.

“If you want to know what I think about the article, it was excellent. If

you want to know what I think about the case, then the husband did it. With

the father’s help.”

“There’s no evidence,” I said.

“When they find her, there will be. Because she’s definitely dead.”

Something inside me that had been coiled tight loosened for the first

time all day. I loved Esther, but she didn’t really get me. Our parents lived

in Florida, and they definitely didn’t get me. My coworkers didn’t get me.

My ex-husband didn’t get me.

Michael got me. I didn’t know how or why. He just did.

No one in my life wanted to talk about this stuff except him.

“What about the mall footage?” I asked him.

“Inconclusive. My guess is it isn’t her. The killers caught a lucky break

with that.”

“The husband and the father working together is unusual.”

“Unusual, but not unheard of. It’s going to be difficult for them to

maintain. One of them will probably make a deal, giving up the other one.”

“But the husband, really? Everyone says they were a loving couple.”

“Everyone always says that, and everyone is always wrong.”

“You’re a cynic,” I said, scrolling through the article again, looking for

typos. “That’s a good quality to have.”

“My ex-wife would not agree.”

I paused. He hadn’t mentioned an ex-wife before; we didn’t usually get

personal. “Then she can call my ex-husband,” I said, trying it out. “It

sounds like they have a lot in common.”

“They’d probably get along just fine.” He paused. “I think I see some

movement. I have to go. Put the article up. It’s good.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Good luck.”

When we hung up, I put my phone down and did a circuit of my place,

checking that the doors were locked, the windows fastened. Singles Estates

had a security guard at the entrance to the complex, but that didn’t mean

much to me. Anyone on foot who was determined to get in could find a

way. I was on the third floor—no way was I taking a ground-floor

apartment—and I had a security system just in case. Locks on the windows,

no fire escape, no easy-to-pop screens. One of the few things I missed about

marriage was the everyday presence of a man in the house, keeping the bad

things away without even knowing it.

But I didn’t have that anymore, so I had to be careful.

Everything was in place. When I was finished, I sat down in front of my

computer again. I tapped it awake and logged in to the Book of Cold Cases.

.

.

.

I was tired at work the next day, because I’d stayed up later than I should

have, working on the Book of Cold Cases. The bus had been ten minutes

late, I’d dropped my bus pass, and I’d gotten to work out of sorts. I was on

autopilot.

Our office was in downtown Claire Lake, and our patients were mostly

rich, or at least well-to-do—Claire Lake on the whole was well-to-do, a

town of chic kitchen specialty stores and French bistros laid out along the

ocean shore. The spectacle I saw from the safety behind my Plexiglas was

never that of people digging their nails in for survival, doing their best to

get through every day. Instead it was often the foibles of the rich, the ones

who had the money to make their aches and pains go away.

For a few minutes, I thought the woman who walked in might be

someone famous. Her face was familiar in a way I couldn’t quite place. She

was an actress, maybe, one who had been on TV several decades ago. She

was tall and stately, likely over sixty. Her skin was nearly flawless, with

creases around the eyes and the mouth to give her character. Her hair was

fashionably cut, with long bangs sweeping to her eyebrows and layers

falling to her shoulders in light and dark shades of gray. She wore a black

turtleneck sweater and sleek black pants under a trench coat. To me, the

glamour wafting off her was worthy of Isabella Rossellini or Helen Mirren,

though the woman seemed unaware of it. She looked distracted, and after

slipping her ID beneath the Plexiglas to Karen, she took a seat, pulled out a

pair of stylish reading glasses, and started reading a dog-eared novel.

“What?” Karen said to me as she wheeled her office chair back to the

shelf and looked for the woman’s file.

“I know her from somewhere,” I said. There was a brief lull in which

the phone wasn’t ringing, and I sipped my coffee and tried to be discreet as

I looked at the woman again. She flipped a page in her book, oblivious. I

couldn’t read the title from here, but I could see a cover of deep blue with

slashes of jarring yellow lettering, which meant a thriller like the ones I

read.

“She doesn’t look familiar to me,” Karen said. “Maybe she was a

teacher of yours? A neighbor?”

I shook my head, studying the woman’s face, still trying to place it.

There was something about her cheekbones, the line of her mouth. She was

beautiful, for sure, and had likely been even more so when young. I’d never

had a teacher who looked like that. She had to be an actress, yet that didn’t

seem right.

“A singer?” I said, trying to jar my memory. “A politician?”

Karen shrugged, uninterested. “I don’t follow music or politics. If it

bothers you, Google her.” She glanced down at the file she was holding.

“Elizabeth Greer.”

I went still, the breath going out of me. “What?”

“That’s her name, Elizabeth Greer.” Karen squinted at me, frowning.

“What? Is she famous? Should I try and get an autograph?”

I put my hands on the desk. My fingers were tingling, my cheeks going

numb. “No,” I said. “No, you don’t want her autograph.”

“Whatever,” Karen said. The phone rang, and she turned away to

answer it.

Elizabeth Greer, I thought, glancing at the woman again. Beth Greer.

She sat reading her book, unaware I was staring.

Of course I knew her face. I’d seen dozens of photos of her, news

footage. I’d put photos of her on my own website. I hadn’t recognized her

because the photos on my site were from forty years ago, and no one had a

photo of what she looked like now.

The woman sitting twenty feet away from me, reading a book, was Beth

Greer.

And in 1977, she’d been Claire Lake’s most famous murderer.

—

In October of 1977, a man named Thomas Armstrong left work at six

o’clock at night and got in his car. He left downtown Claire Lake and drove

toward his house at the edge of the lake, taking the smaller roads out of

town. He never got home. At seven thirty, his car was found, the lights on

and the engine still running as Armstrong lay dead on the side of the road.

Armstrong was a family man, with a wife, two children, no criminal

ties, and no debts. It appeared that he’d pulled over on his way home,

possibly to help someone who needed aid. He was shot twice in the face,

one bullet piercing his brain and killing him instantly. Next to him was left

a note written in a woman’s hand that said: Am I bitter or am I sweet?

Ladies can be either. Publish this or there will be more.

Murders were rare in Claire Lake, so there was no question the case

would receive front-page press. But the note put the local police in a

quandary. Keep the note quiet and don’t encourage a possible copycat? Or

give the killer what she wanted? There didn’t seem to be a right answer.

Finally, they handed the note to the press, who immediately dubbed the

murderer the Lady Killer.

No one could understand it. Had a woman really shot a strange man

point-blank in the face, like the Zodiac Killer or the Son of Sam?

Thomas Armstrong had no enemies. No one could think of anyone who

would have wanted to murder him; he seemed to be an everyday husband

and father on his way home from work. No one could see a reason why he

was targeted. But there he was, dead by the side of the road, the lenses of

his glasses smashed and a note in a woman’s hand left by his body.

And then things got worse.

.

.

.

___________________________