Carry My Secret to Your Grave (Murder, She Wrote #2) by Stephanie Kuehn

Author:Stephanie Kuehn [Kuehn, Stephanie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2023-07-06T00:00:00+00:00

I WAKE UP TO THE sound of my phone ringing. It takes a moment to acclimate myself, but I feel the warm weight of Lemon sleeping on top of the blankets near my feet and it all comes back. I’m in the basement of my aunt and uncle’s mountain home, far from civilization and close to where a girl I never knew met her end.

Eden. She was in my dream. I’m sure of it. Or a part of her was. I was walking toward the lake at night, my feet bare, and my arms shivering. The only light was moonlight, and I stood in the mud and pine needles and watched as her pale body bobbed atop the surface of the lake, bloated and waterlogged, only to be snatched away again by the gaping maw of a giant whale.

I work to shake off these gruesome images as my phone continues to ring. Reaching for it, I resist the urge to check my feet for sap and leaves. The dream wasn’t real. I know that. But the remnants of my sleeping mind stick to me, stubborn and fickle, all at once.

“Hello?” My voice is a croaky mess.

“Bea, sweetie. It’s me. Did I wake you?” It’s my father.

“Hi, Daddy. You got my text, huh?” I’d finally sent him a message about the tarot card thing right before bed. Not a big deal, I’d written. Deputy Williams might call you, but this is all it was. He has a record of everything.

“That’s not what I’m calling about. Look, Bea, I need to tell you something. I wanted you to hear it from me.”

I grip the phone. “What’s going on?”

“Someone broke into our house last night.”

“What?”

“Everything’s fine,” he repeats. “I’ve already spoken with the Sheriff’s Office who’s gone down there and documented the damage. Which is minimal. Looks like it was probably kids goofing off. Deputy Williams says there’s been a lot of that recently, petty vandalism and other thefts. He says it’s unlikely to be related to the threats you’ve gotten, although he knows about the tarot card. The package. All of it.”

“Is that what you think? That it was just kids?”

“I don’t know. I don’t like the timing with me being out of town, but it was my office that got trashed. That’s the only room they touched. Whomever it was used our porch key—we need a better hiding place for that—and it doesn’t appear they took anything. Probably looking for electronics. Maybe some cash.”

“Was anything left behind? Like a note? Or more flowers?”

My father hesitates. “There were a couple of messages spray-painted on the walls downstairs. Juvenile stuff. It’s not nice, but there’s no reason to suspect it’s related to … you know.”

“What kind of messages?”

“Stuff like, ‘Watch out’ and ‘We’re coming for you.’ ”

My chest tightens. I bite back a whimper. “That doesn’t sound like goofing off. What if we’d been home?”

“But we weren’t. And they would’ve run off if we had been,” my dad says soothingly. “People like this are cowards.

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