Dr. Christian Campbell does not exist.

CHAPTER
31

NOT AT KETTERING Medical, anyway.

I spend another hour doing other research. I’m sweating. Grim-faced. When the doorbell rings, I ignore it. It rings again. Someone knocks. Irritated, I swing open the front door, ready to tell someone off, half expecting to see a smug and grinning C.C., but it’s Lisa.

She looks terrible. Dark circles under her eyes. Smudged lipstick. “Beth is missing.”

“What? Come in.” I usher her into my kitchen, where we sit at the table across from each other.

“She wasn’t answering my messages. I thought maybe she was mad at me because I’d texted her to use her good sense and stay the hell away from C.C., but finally I just called her. Steve answered her phone. Said she hasn’t been home in almost a week.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. He said they had a fight, and he thought she’d gone to her sister’s, but when he called Tammy to find out when Beth was coming home, Tammy said she wasn’t there, and she hadn’t seen her. Or heard from her.”

“That’s messed up.”

Lisa drops her face into her hands for a few seconds, rubbing at her temples. “I need a drink.”

I don’t point out that it’s barely noon. I find a bottle of wine and pour us both glasses. She drains hers and shoves the empty glass across the table.

“Do you have any vodka?”

“I might.” I check in the cabinet next to the fridge, way in the back, where my parents used to keep their booze. The bottle I pull out isn’t that old, but it is dusty. I put it, along with a carton of orange juice, on the table and get her a glass.

She fixes herself a drink while I watch. She lifts it toward me, sips, returns it to the table with a grimace. “She’s done this before. Steve, in case you haven’t guessed, is kind of an asshole, and he didn’t bother to follow up for a few days. When Tammy said she hadn’t seen her, he called the police. That’s what he told me, anyway.”

“Wow,” I say again, like a loser.

“I’m seriously freaked out. Even if she went off someplace without telling me, she wouldn’t go anywhere without her phone,” Lisa says. “He asked me if I knew whether or not she was sleeping with Christian. I said as far as I knew, they were just friends.”

“Lisa.”

“She’s my friend,” Lisa says. “And as far as I do know, they weren’t sleeping together.”

We stare at each other for few seconds.

“What night did you see her with C.C.?” Lisa asks at last.

“I don’t remember the exact day. I’d have to look at my calendar.”

Lisa gives me a grim look. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about what you said about Jen Tillis. That you thought maybe Christian was the reason why she killed herself. I don’t know. Shit, Jewelann. Do you think C.C. could have hurt her? Not just her feelings. Her. Could he?”