Trish (named after her aunt), who was visiting from out of town. They hadn’t seen each other in a long time, and everyone was laughing and reminiscing when Dave got a call from Liz. Though they could hear only Dave’s side of the conversation, it was apparent to everyone listening that Liz wanted to join him, but he very clearly told her not to come. They were shocked when Liz showed up a few hours later. She claimed she had been nearby, attending a meeting, and, since she was already in the neighborhood, had decided to drop in. Dave’s mother remembers that her niece took her aside and with a worried look exclaimed, “There’s something really wrong with her!”
On another occasion, Tom and Trish went to Omaha to take Dave and their grandchildren to a steakhouse for Calista’s birthday. Though not invited, Liz showed up, ordered an expensive meal and expected Dave’s parents to pay for it. They were taken aback by her rudeness but quietly paid the bill.
It was a pattern with Liz. She usually expected someone else to pick up the tab, and she rarely said thank you, as Tay learned during that impromptu visit. After they left the Kroupa house, Liz suggested they go out to dinner. Tay and her husband decided to take her to one of their favorite places, a nearby Chinese restaurant. No sooner had they ordered when Liz got up and left the table. The food came, but she didn’t return. “David and I were sitting there, wondering what we were supposed to do. Do we start eating or wait for her? I said, ‘Well, maybe I better go check on her.’”
She found Liz in the ladies’ room, cellphone pressed to her ear, in a heated exchange with Dave Kroupa. Tay could hear his angry voice coming through the phone. “Kroupa’s screaming, and she’s screaming! I’m like, ‘I don’t even know what the hell’s going on here,’ and everybody was so mad!” Tay gathered that Dave was upset at Liz for infiltrating his gang of pals and stirring up trouble with Heather. When he hung up on Liz, Tay said, “Let’s go, Liz. You can’t sit in the bathroom all night!”
Seething, Liz followed her back to the table for a tense meal. “The conversation was weird,” Tay recalls, describing lengthy, awkward silences with sudden outbursts from Liz. She had insisted they go to dinner but showed no interest in the food. When the Bravers paid the bill, she didn’t offer to chip in or leave the tip. She also failed to say thank you, irritating Tay. “I’m pretty big on manners, and she didn’t possess too many of those.”
As infuriating as the dinner was, it was what happened later that Tay would never forget. The Braver family had a full house and were short on beds. Dave and Tay Braver normally slept together in their basement bedroom, but he’d been working graveyard shifts and wasn’t tired when the ladies were ready to turn in. As he played games on his computer in a partially sectioned off corner of the basement, Tay invited Liz to share her queen-sized bed. They slid between the sheets, talked for a while, and then Tay drifted off to sleep. “At one point, I rolled over, and she was looking at me.”
Liz appeared to be in a daze as she stared, unblinking. Tay felt sure it was her intense gaze that had woken her. “It was like she was boring holes through the back of my head.” Tay felt a chill and asked, “Hey, everything okay?”
The light from Dave Braver’s computer cast an eerie glow on Liz’s face, and Tay was startled by her oddly blank expression. Suddenly, Liz blinked a couple of times, seeming to “snap out of it” and replied, “Yeah, I’m just having a hard time sleeping.”
It wasn’t quite 5 A.M., and Tay had barely slept three hours, but she got up with Liz. “We ended up coming upstairs and sat on the couch talking.” When Liz announced she wanted to go home, Tay didn’t argue and was relieved to see her walk out the front door. Liz was an odd duck and very rude, but she didn’t seem dangerous. Not then. Today, Tay looks back on the visit with a shudder, certain that Liz had a dark plan for her. “She expected I’d be there alone, but thank God my husband was there.”
It was not the last Tay heard from her. Liz called and texted