The Last Real Secret: A Mystery

Book 3: The Disappearance of Charlotte Walters

by L.C. Warman

Synopsis

A missing girl with dark secrets. A friend who cannot let her go. A ticking clock that is running out.

***

Almost one week ago, 17-year-old Reese watched her best friend, Charlotte Walters, run laughing out of a party and into the woods by the lake.

Charlotte never returned.

Since then, Reese has followed up on every lead, talked to every suspect at the party, and found out secrets about Charlotte and St. Clair that she never would have believed. And yet, Charlotte is still missing.

Even a heart-wrenching confession from one of the partygoers has only solved one mystery, and opened up many others. Reese begins to ask herself: how well did she actually know Charlotte? Can she trust any of the people around her, including Charlotte's enigmatic older brother? And will she ever find Charlotte at all?

Soon, Reese realizes that she'll have to stake everything on one final effort, because time for Charlotte is running out. Now, Reese will finally get the answers she's been seeking--if she's brave enough to face them. But one last secret from Charlotte's family may just change everything.

THE LAST REAL SECRET is the third and final novel in the YA mystery trilogy "The Disappearance of Charlotte Walters." The complete trilogy includes:

• THE LAST REAL GIRL (Book 1)
• THE LAST REAL CRIME (Book 2)
• THE LAST REAL SECRET (Book 3)

Praise for THE LAST REAL SECRET:

A Kobo Double Daily Deal Selection

Praise for THE DISAPPEARANCE OF CHARLOTTE WALTERS:

"Warman's taut prose is pitched perfectly for her subject matter, managing to make the high school drama feel high-stakes and creepy by turns... The author's sharp senses of pacing and character make this a thoroughly enjoyable read. Readers will be waiting with anticipation for future volumes. A captivating teen mystery in a secretive lakeside town." -Kirkus Reviews

"An intriguing blend of realism and reflection, unsettling discoveries and natural consequences... In this young adult mystery, nothing can be taken for granted and no one connected to the missing girl is untouched." -Foreword Reviews

About:
L.C. Warman is the author of the St. Clair mystery series. She grew up in New England, in a town where real estate contracts stipulated that you couldn't back out if you discovered your new place was haunted. She currently lives in a Michigan lakeside town with her husband and two dogs.

Release date: June 18, 2019

Publisher: Greenleaf & Plympton

Print pages: 174

Sample

It was just the other side of six a.m. when I arrived at Wolfclaw Coffee to meet the police detective. Someone had just redone the chalkboard; scrubbed out were the pumpkin and orange chocolate Halloween drinks, the cursive October letters that were nestled amongst jack-o-lanterns and little grinning ghouls. November had taken its place, with brown and red leaves and cornucopias and a new list of specials, including something called the cranberry stuffing latte. I opted for maple.

 

Officer Stone was already seated near the window, admiring the maple-leaf stickers that had gone up overnight. She flashed me a quick smile as I slid into the armchair across from her, seemingly oblivious to the stares that floated our way from the early-bird students coming in for their caffeine fix.

 

“How are you feeling?” she said, taking me in. I had slept poorly the night before. At least I had showered that morning, twisted my wet hair into some semblance of a bun, and was wearing a clean, long-sleeved t-shirt and jeans, lightly dusted with Morty’s fur. I was exhausted, but not slovenly. I hoped.

 

“Fine, thank you.”

 

“I’m glad you check your messages so early. Or so late?”

 

I didn’t answer. Riley had texted me at five a.m. saying that Officer Stone wanted to meet with me, before or after school, to talk about the arrest of the boy who had given his confession to me the night before. I opted for before, because I wanted it over, and because, just as yesterday, I didn’t plan to go to school.

 

I planned to search for my missing best friend. I planned to find Charlotte.

 

“Well,” Officer Stone said, smiling as she blinked her dark brown eyes. If she had been in a sweater and boots instead of a uniform, she might even have passed as a student, or else one of those young, try-hard teachers. “We want to thank you for your help in getting Danny to talk last night.”

 

“I didn’t know Riley was recording it.”

 

“Of course not. We’re having a word with Riley about that, anyway. Don’t you worry.”

 

I wasn’t sure what this meant—was he in trouble for recording the confession? For listening as Danny described to me, in excruciating detail, how he had snapped and accidentally killed Cassandra Lewis? I wasn’t sure why that would be the case, considering Riley was working with the police—had been working with them for months. Just like Charlotte had been.

 

“I wanted to meet with you to assure you that everything is being taken care of on our end,” Officer Stone continued. “We’ll make sure Danny gets the help he needs.”

 

“Great,” I said flatly. I didn’t care about Danny. I cared about my friend—that was why I had spent over half an hour upstairs in that room with him, while the Halloween party raged below. It was why I had pretended to sympathize with Danny as he explained how Cassandra had mocked him, how he hadn’t meant to hurt her, how he had really, in his own mind, had no choice but to throw her in the lake. I listened because I wanted him to tell me what he had done to Charlotte last weekend, and then, when I had finally gotten to the point where I could ask, he had given me that blank, fish-like stare. Nothing. He knew nothing. I had come up empty.

 

“And we’re doing everything we can to find Charlotte,” Officer Stone said. Her fingers drummed on the wood table between us. She had a pink manicure, I noted. A few of the fingernails were chipped. I wondered whether she had been to some bachelorette party or girls’ night out recently. Or maybe that was part of her whole self-care routine. Seemed an interesting choice, for a police officer. “I want you to know that we’re doing everything we can to get your friend back safely.”

 

“Do you have any leads?”

 

She smiled without sympathy. “Unfortunately, I can’t discuss an ongoing investigation.”

 

So no, I thought, even though I flashed her a smile back, the compliant best friend, just happy to be of service. My foot tapped on the ground; I was ready for this to be over. 

 

Officer Stone took a long swig of her coffee. She was watching me closely over her mug, and I tried not to squirm. I felt the question before it floated from her lips.

 

“I get the feeling you know something about Charlotte, Reese,” she said quietly. “Something that maybe could help us.”

 

I’m not doing your job for you, I thought to myself. Aloud I said, “What do you mean? I know a lot of things. I’m her best friend.”

 

“Of course you do. I mean specifically something about why she went missing.”

 

I blinked innocently. I knew a lot of that, too. I knew that she had been pretending to be interested in Danny the past few months, to get closer to him and help the police find out whether he had killed Cassandra. Though Officer Stone knew that, too. I knew that Charlotte’s whole family had been acting strangely lately, and her brother was spending too much time at home when he should be enjoying his freshman year of college. I knew that Charlotte had had some sort of falling out with Mindy, likely due to the fact that Mindy had grown obsessive over Charlotte’s older brother Aiden—who, by the way, Mindy now claimed had an addiction to painkillers. I knew that Charlotte’s neighbor Blake was creepy and a little too obsessed with her, and might not have had a good alibi that night.

 

Oh, yeah. I knew a lot of things. And I knew that if I told the police, then all the avenues before me, the roads I could go down to figure out the final pieces, would be closed off. Cop cars would come. People would be questioned. Meanwhile, Charlotte would be stuck wherever she was, starving, thirsty, suffering.… I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head to dissipate the image.

 

“Everything okay?” Officer Stone said. My eyes leapt open.

 

“Fine,” I said. “It’s just—hard.” Officer Stone nodded again in mock sympathy. I had the feeling she saw right through me. 

 

“I’m sure you’re worried about her,” Officer Stone said. “That’s why we need to know if there’s anything else you thought of in the past few days. Anything at all that could help.”

 

“Do you think it’s related? To Cassandra?” I said. I had already ruled out the possibility in my head that Danny had done something to Charlotte: he had seemed too surprised, too taken aback, when I had asked him point blank last night. But perhaps there was some other thread I was missing, something else I did not see. 

 

Officer Stone cocked her head sideways. “Certainly we’ve considered it. What do you think, Reese?”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

“Hmm. But what do you think? Maybe you’ve heard something. A rumor. Maybe Charlotte told you something.”

 

I bit the inside of my lip and looked down at my maple latte. The foam had receded into the milk, leaving only pale brown creaminess with a few bubbles floating near the side. “I don’t know,” I said again. “Nothing. I mean…if it wasn’t Danny, who was it?”

 

I looked up at her. I wasn’t sure I liked the way she was looking at me then, her head tilted to the side, her eyes fastened on mine. She looked like a coiled serpent, silent, deadly, ready to strike. I felt sweat prick the back of my neck, even though a wave of cold came over me every time another customer entered the café, door swishing open.

 

“We’re doing our best to figure it out,” Officer Stone said. “I want to ask you, Reese, where you were when you realized Charlotte was missing.”

 

“What? I was outside. I raised the alarm. She ran out, and—” I paused, noting the expression on Officer Stone’s face. She looked like my mother did when I was trying to pull a fast one. You don’t believe me, I thought. Either she believed I was covering for someone, or she believed I was covering for myself. I stiffened, and tried to hide it by taking a sip of my latte. “I couldn’t find her.”

 

“Was anyone else outside when you were calling for her?”

 

“No. I mean—not that I remember.” Did I ask for a lawyer now? Or was that too guilty? Maybe Officer Stone would laugh right in my face, tell me that lawyers were for T.V. shows and that I was entitled to nothing but a trip to a jail cell. I mean, I was a minor still, technically, and here we were, chatting in a coffee shop. That wasn’t kosher, was it? It certainly wasn’t kosher on T.V.

 

“Think, Reese,” Officer Stone said, leaning forward towards me. “It’s important. If you remembered something lately, something you forgot to mention that night…”

 

She left the sentence dangling between us. An opening, if I had been lying to her, to come clean. So that was it. They thought that since their investigation had stalled, they would pin something on me. Cassandra Lewis was a poor, sorry, homely girl whose investigation they had botched for a year and had only been closed by accident, by eavesdropping on a conversation that I had had with her killer. Charlotte Walters was wealthy, beautiful, and well-connected. They wanted her case closed yesterday, and they didn’t care who they had to sacrifice to do it.

 

But I wanted more than to bring Charlotte to justice. I wanted to save her.

 

“I’ll definitely think about it,” I said eagerly, giving my best earnest-student impression. “I’ll keep wracking my brain. Maybe there’s something!” I almost wanted to add “golly gee!” to the end of each sentence. “You think you’ll find her, Officer Stone?”

 

She frowned, obviously annoyed as I rose to my feet, slinging my backpack over one shoulder as I checked my watch with the other. Good little student, couldn’t be late!

 

“We’ll find her,” Officer Stone said, and it sounded like a threat.

 

I’ll find her first, I thought. I said my good-byes and ducked out of the café.

 

When I knew I was out of Officer Stone’s eye line, I swerved left and pulled out my phone. And requested a ride out to the Walters’ lakeside mansion.