Stones Left Unturned: The Silhouette in the Dark City

By Anthony R. Wilson

Marie Callaghan lives a simple life since her younger sister Kendra was murdered 13 years ago. Dave is her constant companion since that fateful time, moving to Allentown just days after Kendra went missing. Marie is happy to forget the past but the past won't let her forget it. A mysterious package, a series of threats, and the return of her one true love Chris make it impossible to leave behind. A transient man remains in jail for killing Kendra but with the new threats, the case is opened again.

Are the detectives able to weave their ways through a small town's lifetime of lies and deceit to find the real killer before he strikes again?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anthony R. Wilson
• Release date: Apr 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393048718

Book preview

Stones Left Unturned

Anthony R. Wilson

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2020 by Anthony R. Wilson

All rights reserved.

Content

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Bonus Giveaways for you

About the Author

Chapter One

I sit and stare off into the distance as I make dinner. I feel a wave of despair pass over me. I feel the same wave of despair every year as the holiday approaches. My sister died a month after Christmas when we were just kids. I was seventeen, and she was only sixteen. The last time she was seen, she was walking out of high school. She volunteered that day at the bake sale, and she never came home that evening. Mom was in bed with a migraine and didn’t even realize she wasn’t back till the next day when I came home. I stayed out that night, a decision I regret until this day.

Dave comes up behind me and turns down the element. I have potatoes boiling, and they are boiled almost dry. I must have been standing here for longer than I realize. Dave puts his arms around me from behind, and I melt into him.

Hey, babe. Thanks, I smile wanly.

I know, hon. It’s okay. We will get through it like we always do. I’m sorry.

Don’t be. None of it is your fault. You weren’t even around then. But thank you. I don’t know what I would have done without you all these years. I’m pretty sure you keep me sane every Christmas and New Year.

Dave smiles and turns me around. I look into his green eyes and feel safe as I always do. He has the deepest green eyes I’ve ever seen. Mysterious and handsome. I can stare at them for days. He kisses me with his soft lips and holds me. I can feel the tears bursting as they always do. It’s Christmas Eve, and nothing about the holidays has ever seemed right since Kendra died. I hear Eleanor, our thirteen-year-old daughter, come into the room behind me.

Gross. Are you guys making out? I can almost feel her eyes rolling as she says it.

No babe. I’m just sad. You know. I miss Kendra, and this time of year is always hard.

Oh, Mommy, I’m sorry. I was just joking. She comes over and wraps her hands around me as well. She looks just like me but with thick wavy brown hair and Kendra’s eyes. How I produced such a beautiful child, I will never know. I have always considered myself to be average at best.

I named Eleanor after my mother. Eleanor Kendra. My mother lives in an assisted living home despite being in her early fifties. She never recovered after her divorce and the death of her daughter. Over time, she has developed several health issues, most of which I am sure stemmed from grief and depression. She seems happy enough at the living home, aptly called Happy Oak Retirement, and she loves helping the older residents. She teaches painting once a week and volunteers at the Bingo night. She thrives in a world that is so small she could fit it on a thumbtack. I have learned over time that this is as good as it is ever going to get for her. She did go back to work for about six months the year after Kendra died, but she was not able to cope. In the end, her boss was a compassionate man, and he gave her a layoff and an eighteen-month severance package. He told her to come back if she felt better then and he would re-hire her, no questions asked. She never went back. She went on disability and then assistance until she was forced to move into an assisted living home. Dave and I pay for it. The government doesn’t have any sort of long-term benefit for someone as young as her. She is coming over tonight for dinner as she always does and will stay the night. Dave likes to make sure we all spend the holidays as a family.

Kendra’s body was found in the Delaware River in early February 1996. It was a mild winter, and the river had not entirely frozen over when she was dumped. By the time they found her, there was a thin layer of ice. Her body tangled in a swampy part of the river where several bushes had grown up in the muddy banks. It was there that a man and his dog found my beautiful sister on a sunny Sunday morning.

The weeks following were a blur of police activity and interviews. I was called in and questioned much like everyone else in the town. When you live in a small town, everyone becomes a suspect, and this was no exception. My dad was brought in and questioned more than once, and it was then that it came out about his affairs with six of the women in the town. That might have been the final breaking point for my mom. The women he had relationships with went as far back as ten years, and they were women my mom knew. In one case, she was even a friend. She became a recluse shortly after that.

I turn my attention back to the meal preparation and my boiled dry potatoes. I am making a large meal as I do every Christmas Eve, and we are having my family and several friends over as well. Dave loves having a big gathering for the holidays. He says it reminded him of when his parents were alive. Both passed away when he was a teenager, which is what led him to move to Allentown. After his mother passed away, he moved in with Mrs. Almerton. She was a friend of my mom’s and Dave’s great aunt. She lived one town over from us. Dave finished his last year of high school at Allentown High, which is where he and I met. Mrs. Almerton died the year Dave and I got married. She never even made it to the wedding. She had a stroke that left her in a coma four days before we were set to say our nuptials. I asked Dave if he wanted to postpone, and with tears in his eyes, he said no. She would want us to go ahead. She died a few short days later.  Since then, Dave has loved having big family dinners whenever the holidays come. He insists we make a large meal with all the fixings. It’s a fun time for all of us, and it does get my mind off Kendra.

This year I am preparing a turkey and a roast and all the fixings. I’ve even made three homemade pies for dessert. I carefully drain the little water left and prepare to start making the mashed potatoes. I make them the way my mom used to before she got sick. I add sautéed, pureed garlic, onions, sour cream, a dash of mustard, milk and butter. Lots and lots of butter. Both Dave’s mom and my mom were from the Midwest, and they each had precise ways that they made their potatoes. I alternate between the two recipes so that both of us get to remember life before it got so messed up.

Eleanor helps me make the gravy and the vegetables. She has always been an avid cook and baker. She is always the first one to ask me if I need help. I only have a few hours before everyone arrives, so I ask her to prepare the charcuterie tray and appetizers while I finish wrapping presents. I have a gift for everyone coming. It seems like overkill to me, but Dave likes to give. He says he gets more pleasure off someone’s face from a well thought out gift than from most other things. Sometimes I think it’s a bit strange, but he really is like a kid at Christmas, so I don’t argue. He makes more money than I do, and I have enough stress at the holidays without worrying about having a husband who gives too much. There are far worse things, I reckon.

Dave works as a senior urban planning consultant. He did his University degree in New York while I served tables to support us. By the time he graduated, I didn’t have the desire to get a post-secondary education. And besides, Eleanor was already a toddler by then. Who would look after her if I had pursued my dream of becoming a lawyer? Dave had told me at the time that we could work it out, and I should do whatever made me happy, but the truth of the matter was, he was already busy with work, and I didn’t have the passion to do anything more than care for my child. Life had kicked all the passion out of me by that point.

I worked at a small publication that I started as a hobby called The Daily Dream. It started as a passion project for me. Something to take my mind off the sadness in my life. It is an E-zine that focuses on happy stories. I do all the writing and editing myself. I get my stories from scouring the internet for feel-good stories, from friends and family, and from readers alike. Over time, the website has gotten quite large and gained some national recognition. I have a large following of loyal readers, and it makes a decent living. It is not as lucrative as Dave’s job, but if anything happened to him, I would make more than enough to be okay. I have even managed to invest some of my money into stocks and bonds so that there is more than enough for Eleanor to go to university.

I started it when Eleanor was still a baby. I suffered from postpartum depression and had severe anxiety after she was born. I missed Kendra horribly. My mom was hidden in her room most of the time, and Marcus was left to raise himself. I had the daunting task of raising a newborn and my younger brother.

Dave was a massive part of my world back then. I met him when he moved to Allentown High in my last year. He was in the same grade as me. The first day he arrived was the day after Kendra’s body was found. I went to the school to empty Kendra’s locker and to try and do something normal. I was in shock and had been in grief already since she went missing ten days prior. I couldn’t believe someone would do something as horrific as that to her. She was found with strangle marks around her neck and tied up with red rope. She had bruises all over her small body. The police said it was likely they hit her first and then tied her up and strangled her because her face was bruised and cut. It looked like someone had beaten her senseless.

I went with my mother to identify the body. My dad was away on business and wouldn’t get our message till later that evening. He didn’t return home until the following day. When I saw his car pull up in the driveway, I left for the school. Being there was better than listening to him blame my mother and make excuses for his own behavior. Of course, at that point, we didn’t know about all his affairs yet. We would find that out a week later when the police questioned everyone.

There were so many questions surrounding Kendra’s murder. As far as we knew, No one ever disliked her. The police asked about her friends. They asked if she had a boyfriend. They brought into question everything she did, and then they did the same with us. In the end, they arrested a vagrant man named Quinten on the charge of second-degree murder. The man pleaded guilty, claiming he didn’t remember doing it but was sure that he did because he was on drugs that night. His story was dodgy at best, but when another woman from Trenton came forward and identified him as being the man that assaulted her while she was on her morning run, he was tried and found guilty but mentally ill. He was sentenced to fifteen years in a psychiatric facility with regular evaluations. He is still there but could potentially get released in a couple of years.

I have always questioned whether Quinten was Kendra’s murderer or not. He had no motive, and the police had no proof he was even in the area the day she went missing. It seemed like an easy way to close the case to them, and so that’s what they did. Dave always tells me to stop overanalyzing it and that the police did their job. I want to believe him. I know he means well, and he really does believe what he says. But I was there. I knew my sister. The story just doesn’t make sense. The police said that they found her necklace about a half an hour walk from the school. They found it in a small suburban neighborhood on Old York Road. When we asked around, none of her friends lived out that way. Why would she have been walking so far away from the school and in the opposite direction of our house? None of it made sense, but