Chapter 5 - THE GOLD WATCH
The drive back to my house was a blur of neon streetlights and the rhythmic, hypnotic thumping of the windshield wipers. It had started to rain, mirroring the night I lost her.
Sophie sat in the passenger seat, clutching her knees, entirely silent. She had watched her mother throw her suitcases into the Lexus and drive away, abandoning her without a backward glance. I had put my hand on Sophie's shoulder as the taillights faded into the dark, silently promising her she would never be left behind again.
My mind was screaming.
Peter killed his partner.Peter followed Lily.
I pulled into my driveway. The lights in the house were blazing, but Peter’s SUV was gone. I threw the car in park and ran to the front door, my keys slipping in my frantic hands. I threw the door open.
“Peter!” I screamed.
Silence answered me. I ran upstairs to our bedroom. His closet doors were wide open. His suits were gone. His travel bag was missing from the top shelf. He had run.
I sank onto the edge of the bed, my hands buried in my hair. He knew Vanessa was going to tell me. He knew the walls were closing in.
I pulled my phone from my pocket and dialed Officer Davis. He was a family friend, the man who had sat in my kitchen and cried with me when he delivered the news about Lily.
He answered on the third ring, his voice groggy. “Claire? It’s 2 AM. Is everything alright?”
“Mark, I need you to meet me at the precinct,” I said, my voice eerily flat. “Right now. I need to see Lily’s accident file.”
“Claire, you know I can’t do that. The case is closed. It was hydroplaning—”
“It wasn’t an accident, Mark,” I interrupted, the tears finally spilling hot and angry down my cheeks. “Peter was chasing her. He was embezzling money, and she had proof. Please. As my friend. Let me see the photos.”
There was a long, heavy pause on the line. I heard the rustle of bedsheets.
“Give me twenty minutes. Come to the back door.”
I left a note for Sophie on the kitchen counter, telling her to lock the doors and not answer for anyone, then drove like a madwoman to the police station.
Mark let me in through the alley entrance. The precinct was mostly empty, smelling of stale coffee and floor wax. He led me into a small interrogation room and placed a thick manila folder on the metal table.
“I shouldn’t be doing this,” Mark said quietly, leaning against the door frame. “If the captain finds out—”
“He won’t,” I said, already opening the folder.
Inside were the glossy eight-by-ten crime scene photos. I had refused to look at them during the investigation. I wanted to remember Lily laughing, not broken. But now, I forced my eyes to take in every agonizing detail.
The crushed front end of her blue sedan. The shattered windshield. The deep, violent gouges in the muddy embankment near the quarry.
“You said she hydroplaned,” I said, studying a wide shot of the road.
“That’s what the evidence suggested,” Mark said gently. “The roads were slick. She took the curve too fast and lost control.”
“Look at the skid marks, Mark.” I slid the photo toward him, tapping the black rubber trails burned into the wet asphalt. “They don’t curve off the road. They’re perfectly straight. She slammed on the brakes as hard as she could. She didn’t lose control. She stopped because something was blocking the road.”
Mark frowned, picking up the photo. “Claire, if an animal ran out—”
“It wasn’t an animal,” I snapped, flipping to the next photo. It was a close-up of the ditch where the car had finally come to rest. The flash of the police camera had illuminated the tall grass and the scattered debris of my daughter’s life. A textbook. A CD case.
And something else.
I pulled the photo closer to my face, my heart hammering against my ribs. In the bottom left corner, half-buried in the mud about ten feet from the car door, something metallic was catching the light.
I grabbed a magnifying glass from the pen cup on the table and held it over the image.
It was circular. Gold. With a broken chain.
Answer one: Lily was forced off the road. Open two: How did the watch get there?
“Mark,” I whispered, my blood running cold. “What happened to the personal effects you found outside the car? The debris?”
“Everything was bagged and tagged, then released back to you in that box,” he said, leaning in. “Why?”
“Not everything.” I pointed to the gold object. “This is a pocket watch. Peter’s antique pocket watch. It wasn’t in the box you gave me.”
Mark squinted at the photo. “I remember that. The tow truck driver, Gus, picked it up. He assumed it belonged to the tow company or was trash. It didn’t look like a teenager’s jewelry. Why?”
“Because Peter claimed it was stolen months ago. But Lily found it. She pawned it the day she died.” I looked up at Mark, my chest tight. “If she pawned it, how did it end up in the mud outside her wrecked car?”
Before Mark could answer, his radio crackled. The dispatcher’s voice filled the small room.
“All units, be advised. We have a 10-50 major, vehicle over the embankment at the quarry road. Vehicle is fully engulfed. Plates match a black SUV registered to Peter Bennett.”
May you like
My husband.
Cliffhanger: Mark grabbed his radio. “Is there a driver inside?” The radio crackled back. “Negative. But we found a female wandering the shoulder. She’s covered in blood. Says her name is Vanessa.”
