“I want to go down to the beach,” Rachel announced. “I’ll bet the waves are, like, awesome.”
“I’ll drive you down,” I said, earning disapproving looks from Mom and Althea. “We won’t go in the water,” I reassured them.
“Cool!” Rachel said. She looked much better than earlier, with the smeared mascara scrubbed off her face and a grin replacing her woebegone look. What had Mom said a couple of days ago about youth being resilient? Here was proof.
The waves didn’t achieve the heights of those on Hawaii’s north shore or anything, but they rolled onto the beach with tremendous crashes, sending up a spray that misted Rachel and me as we walked along the beach a couple of miles south of St. Elizabeth. I loved the briny smell that filled the air, the smell of salt and water and seaweed and something mysterious dredged up from miles beneath the surface. Surprisingly, we weren’t the only ones out there; a couple walked a golden retriever who was busy keeping the gulls off the sand, and a lunatic in a wetsuit rode a surfboard in almost to the beach before paddling back out to catch another wave.
“I wish I could do that,” Rachel said, watching the surfer.
“You have a death wish? We’ll be hearing about that guy on the news tonight,” I said.
“You sound like my mom.”
This was apparently not a compliment. Stifling the thought that I might be getting stodgy, I said, “Your mom just wants to keep you alive long enough to spend all her savings on college tuition.”
Rachel grinned at that and took off running down the sand toward the water. I fought the urge to call her back. She was barefoot and let the surf just lick her toes before running back toward me as another series of waves boomed on the beach.
I pulled my white cardigan around me against a chill that came from the wind rather than the air temperature. My feet were bare, too, and I worked them into the sand, searching for yesterday’s sunny warmth stored somewhere beneath the top layer. “I need you to tell me about the kids who were on the ghost hunt, especially those who might have wanted to harm Braden,” I said.
“Nobody would want to hurt Braden,” she protested automatically, then made a moue of disgust. “Like, I sound really stupid, since obviously someone did hurt Braden.”
I pulled my feet out of the sand and we walked, Rachel scanning the ground for shells. “Start with Mark,” I suggested, when she didn’t say anything.
“Mark is—was—his best friend,” she said, tucking a strand of black hair behind her ear. “They do everything together—football, classes, even dating. Braden and I double-dated with Mark and Lindsay a few times; in fact, I think Braden may have dated Lindsay a couple years back, before she and Mark got together.”
That was interesting—could there be some unresolved jealousies or a teen love triangle at work? “Do you like Mark?”
Rachel shrugged. “Sure. He’s okay. A bit . . . intense, but that might be because his folks, like, put so much pressure on him.”
“What do you mean?”
“To hear Lindsay tell it, they’re always after him about his grades and being involved in the ‘right’ clubs and doing volunteer stuff and taking on leadership roles so he can get into the Naval Academy and carry on the family tradition. His dad is really keen on him being in the navy.”
“You mean his stepdad?”
“I guess.” She hesitated, kicking up some sand, which the wind promptly blew back at us. “Sorry. You know . . .”
“What?”
“Lindsay told me once that she thinks maybe his dad . . . Mark’s dad hits him,” she said in a rush.
“Did Mark tell her that?”
“Oh, no.” She shook her head violently. “He told her that she was crazy, that he got his bruises playing football.”
“Plausible.” But not necessarily the truth. I thought of the bruise on Joy Crenshaw’s wrist. “Did Lindsay tell anyone, like her folks or a teacher?”
“I don’t think so. I’m sure not. I mean, it’s not like she was sure or anything.”
Shoot. What was I supposed to do with this information, if anything? Lindsay was a teenager; it was understandable that she would feel uncomfortable making an issue out of possible abuse, especially if her boyfriend denied it. I, however, was an adult who might be expected to do something, although I only had secondhand hearsay plus my observation of Mark’s bruised face. Surely, I argued with myself, his teachers would have noticed if there were a problem. Pushing the dilemma aside to deal with later, I tried to return to my original line of thought. “What about the others—Lonnie, Tyler, Lindsay, the other kids who were at Rothmere? How did they get along with Braden?”