Holly

At the Dairy Whip, Stinky’s friends fill Holly in on his disappearance. Though they can’t tell her much, she comes away with the impression that he has nothing to do with Bonnie Dahl. Jerome asks if he can work on Stinky’s, or Peter Steinman’s, disappearance; Holly agrees. They split up for the day, with Holly going for a walk in Deerfield Park and reflecting on the Bonnie Dahl case. Holly suspects that Bonnie was abducted and is eager to talk to Keisha.

Checking her phone, Holly calls David Emerson, her mother’s lawyer. Emerson informs her that Charlotte left her entire estate to Holly, including her current house. Holly is not enthused. She has only negative memories associated with the house and plans to sell it. Emerson insists that she do a walkthrough of the house to pick out anything she wants to keep before it goes on the market.

Emerson shocks Holly by telling her that Charlotte was worth $6,000,000 at the time of her death. In her head, Holly goes over a timeline of events beginning in a previous King novel, Mr. Mercedes, in which a mass murderer named Brady Hartsfield killed Holly’s cousin Janey. Janey left a sizeable inheritance to the Gibneys, including a $500,000 trust fund for Holly to support her independence.