“So it wasn’t a psychiatric hospital?” Carole asked as we walked back out of the archives room and she locked the door with a key from the ring in her hand. I tried my phone again, but there was still no signal. We were too deep in the basement.
“I don’t know. It was something called the Elizabeth Trevor House for Women. There’s no signal down here, so I can’t tell you what that was.”
Carole had paused and was looking at me with a bemused look on her face. “The Elizabeth Trevor House? I’ve never heard of it, but that wouldn’t have been a psychiatric institution. You’re barking up the wrong tree.”
“What do you mean?”
“Elizabeth Trevor wasn’t crazy, at least that I know of, so they wouldn’t have put her name on a mental hospital.”
“What?” I blinked at her. “Who was Elizabeth Trevor?”
Carole tutted at me with the pleasure of someone who knows an obscure piece of trivia that has finally become useful. “You should brush up on your Claire Lake history,” she said, “especially your feminist history. Elizabeth Trevor was a factory worker who got fired because she got pregnant when she wasn’t married. She campaigned for rights for unwed mothers. In those days, single mothers were discriminated against by employers, landlords, doctors, everyone. Elizabeth Trevor tried to change all that. She was a badass.” Carole nodded. “You’re not looking for a psychiatric hospital; you’re looking for a home for unwed mothers. Are we done here? I’m going home.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
October 2017
SHEA
“Jesus, Shea, what is it? I got here as fast as I could.” Michael slid into the booth opposite me, brushing his hair back from his forehead. “I’ve never heard you sound like that.”
Panicked—that was how I must have sounded. Excited. Alive.
I cupped my hands around my hot coffee cup. We were in a diner around the corner from the courthouse. People were coming to grab takeout on their way home from work. I was still in my scrub top under my jacket and was finding it hard to keep warm. The shock was starting to get to me.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Michael. “I know you were probably busy.”
He shrugged and motioned to the waitress for a coffee. He was wearing a gray T-shirt under a dark brown blazer, a look that was just formal enough that I knew he had been working when I called. “It sounded important. I wanted to hear what it is.”
I let out a breath. “This is going to sound insane,” I said. “Completely insane.”
“Okay. I’m ready.”
“I may have just cracked the Lady Killer case.”
The waitress brought Michael’s coffee, and I watched her give him a once-over before she walked away. Michael didn’t notice. He also didn’t touch the cup. “What did you find?” he asked, his gaze fixed on me.
“Beth’s mother wasn’t mentally ill,” I said. “Sylvia got it wrong. The place Mariana went before she was married, the papers Julian had—she wasn’t admitted to a mental hospital. She was in a home for unwed mothers.”
I watched it hit him, the way it had hit me. The way it was still hitting me, almost an hour later.
“I found it in the file for 120 Linwood,” I said, pulling out my phone and calling up the photos I’d taken of the file. I turned the phone so he could see the photos on my cracked screen. “From 1949 to 1956, it was the Elizabeth Trevor House for Women. There are no records of the place online, but there are articles about Elizabeth herself. She was an activist for the rights of unwed mothers.”
“You’re kidding.” Michael peered closer at my photo, trying to read. “I’m going to send myself this,” he said.