Lily continues to sink her teeth deeper and deeper into the
puzzle of the murders and the case that her boyfriend, Jack, is working
on. There still isn’t enough evidence
collected on either case to tie them together, but the two seem to have a
working assumption that there is a connection.
The newest murder, Meredith Osborn’s, threatens to tear the town apart
to the point of cancelling the wedding, and Lily is half convinced that Dill,
the groom-to-be, is the murderer anyway.
Meredith’s husband shows every sign of being devastated by her murder,
making it seem a stretch to suspect him.
Dill is another story.
The only way that Lily can see for her to make headway into
the case – an option not open to Jack – is to offer to clean the Osborn house
and Dill’s house. In the Osborn house
she does find the yearbook with the page missing that is was sent to Jack and
is his most valuable tangible clue, but she also finds another intact copy of
the same book. She also manages to steal
one of Meredith’s old hairbrushes in order to secretly obtain her fingerprints
to see if there is a match with the ones on the yearbook page.
Her meeting with the police chief, Chandler Brainerd – an
old school buddy that she had had a short-lived relationship with – doesn’t
produce much, but serves to clear the air with him and put most of the cards on
the table. Their meeting ended amicably
enough but “I knew that if Chandler thought I was concealing something that
would contribute to solving the murders that had taken place in the town he was
sworn to protect, he would come down on me like a ton of bricks.” Her encounters with another old school
friend, Mary Maude Plummer, were a little more productive. It’s hard to put a finger on any specific
clues, but one gets the feeling that when the case does get resolved, Lily will
remember something from one or both of these encounters that was said that will
help everything fall into place.
Her cleaning of Dill’s residence – the one he and her sister
are planning to share after the wedding – was interrupted by her turning to
suddenly find him there; a tense moment that he either doesn’t notice or
pretends not to. He makes the mistake of
trying to play on her emotions: “’Lily,
I know you and I have never gotten close.
But I don’t have a sister, and I hope you’ll be one to me.’ I was repelled. Emotional appeals were not the way to make a
relationship happen. ‘You don’t know how
hard it’s always been for Varena.’ I
raised my eyebrows. ‘Excuse me?’ ‘Being your sister.’” Wow.
This is Dill trying to “connect.”
He tries to explain that Varena feels that she’s always lived in Lily’s
shadow, but the damage has already been done.
His ineptness here would seem to preclude any guilt on his part in the
murders, but then she blindsides him with a reference to his previous wife …
“’Did your wife ever threaten to hurt Anna?’
He turned white as a sheet. I’d never seen anyone pale so fast. ‘What – how – ‘he was spluttering. ‘Before she killed herself, did she threaten
to hurt Anna?’ ‘What have you heard?’ he
choked out.” This seems practically an admission
that he has something to hide.
Next week: Conclusion
January’s book of the month; “The Fault in Our Stars,” by John Green.
(Segment chapters: 1-5, 6-10, 11-15, Conclusion)
TIME Magazine’s #1 Fiction Book of 2012!
“The Fault in Our Stars is a love story, one of the most genuine and moving ones in recent American fiction, but it’s also an existential tragedy of tremendous intelligence and courage and sadness.” —Lev Grossman, TIME Magazine
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