Little Girl Gone (18 page)

“And it might not go anywhere either.”

“Still,” Afton said, “Muriel Pink seems to be remembering a lot more. A lot more than she told us anyway.”

“You've got to let this thing go for a while,” Max said. “Or else you're gonna drive yourself nuts and burn out. Take a bubble bath or whatever you ladies like to do. Or better yet, hug your kids and read 'em some Dr. Seuss.”

“You're right,” Afton said with a certain reluctance. “I hear you. See you tomorrow.”

Afton tried, she really did. She piled up their burgers with pickles, onions, and cheese, wiped bean spatter off the stove, and joked with Lish about her date this coming Saturday night.

Finally, she sprawled on the living room rug with Poppy and Tess and played a game of Clue.

But she still couldn't let it go. Because trying to resolve the Darden kidnapping just wasn't as cut and dried as discovering Professor Plum in the Billiard Room with a candlestick.

M
ARJORIE
feathered her brush just so against the baby doll's face, creating a perfectly arched brow. She'd always had a steady hand. Even as a child, she'd been able to trace her letters perfectly. Her teachers always told her that she was gifted, advised her parents to send her to art school. Those teachers were so stupid—they didn't know her father. They didn't know what he was capable of, or what a sadistic bastard he really was. But that was then, this was . . . years later.

Blessed with a photographic memory, Marjorie required no pictures of babies to provide her with inspiration. She knew what appealed to mothers the most—big blue eyes, cherubic lips, masses of silken hair. So she created baby dolls that were so impossibly beautiful that women were driven almost delirious when they saw them.

Now, as she labored over her latest creation in her workroom, Marjorie gently placed the doll in a silk-lined holder and wheeled her chair sideways. She pulled open a plastic drawer that contained bags of fox fur in dozens of brown, auburn, and red tones. This baby boy she was working on had chestnut hair with a few auburn highlights, so she needed just the right color for his eyelashes. She inspected one of her plastic bags. It wasn't quite right. She tried another bag. Finally, she found just the perfect color. She
took a small bit, just what she needed, and sealed the bag up tight again, rolled back to her workbench.

Wearing a pair of Bausch & Lomb magnifier glasses, Marjorie leaned in close and began the painstaking process of inserting each individual strand of fox hair. She worked steadily, humming as she went, and was halfway through the second eye when she was interrupted by a loud pounding on her door. She ignored it.

The pounding came again, this time more insistent.

“Go away,” she called. It had to be Ronnie.

“Ma!” he shouted. “Ya gotta come see this!”

“What?”

“Ma! Come quick!” He pulled open the door, his face a mask of excitement and concern.

“Okay, hold your water, hold your water,” Marjorie said. She got up from her chair and followed Ronnie into the living room, where the TV set was blaring.

Ronnie gestured frantically at the television. “It's that lady,” he cried. “The same one who organized the doll show last Saturday. She's on TV!”

“Shit.” Marjorie sat down hard in one of the chairs.

They both watched, a little stunned, as Portia Bourgoyne posed with Muriel Pink in the woman's neat-as-a-pin kitchen in Hudson, Wisconsin.

Portia was doing a quick recap: “Mrs. Pink is the woman who organized the doll show where Susan Darden supposedly met the vendor who is suspected of abducting little Elizabeth Ann Darden.”

“Shit, shit, shit,” Marjorie said.

Portia peppered Pink with questions, and as the interview progressed, Pink seemed to remember more and more. She even seemed to be intimating that she definitely
did
remember seeing Molly, the doll lady, who was the prime suspect in the Darden baby kidnapping.

Ronnie thrust out his chin. “This ain't good, Ma. You really screwed up.”

Marjorie held up a hand. “Shut up.” She wanted to hear the rest of the interview.

The Pink woman blathered on as Marjorie watched with growing rage
and ever-narrowing eyes.
This woman could be trouble
, she thought to herself.
If the police come back and question this woman, it could be the end for us. For me anyway.

“Ma, don't ya think . . .” Ronnie started.

Marjorie tuned him out as the camera moved in close on Portia Bourgoyne. “Here at Newswatch 7,” Portia said, looking smug, as if she'd already scored a network anchor job, “we feel this information will be critical in helping solve such a horrific crime.”

“That's what you think,” Marjorie said to the TV.

The TV cut back to the anchor desk, where a blow-combed anchorman gazed steadily into the camera and said, “On a related note, the baby found in the woods outside of Cannon Falls . . .”

Marjorie's heart was jolted for the second time in two minutes. “What!” she exploded. “What did I just hear?”

Ronnie frowned as Marjorie extended a hand toward the television set and listened to the story. When it was over, she grabbed the first thing she could lay her hands on—an amber glass ashtray with a Budweiser logo—and hurled it at Ronnie's head. Cigarette butts exploded everywhere as it caught him squarely in the right temple.

“Ma!” he yelped.

“You left that baby in the woods near Cannon Falls?” Marjorie shrieked. She was on her feet and screaming, hopping up and down like a crazy person. “What the hell were you
thinking?
You were supposed to
bury
it!”

Ronnie held up a hand. “I can explain everything.”

She folded her arms across her scrawny chest. “This better be good.”

“Do you remember when I went to pick up that bobcat carcass from that hunter down in Red Wing?”

“Not really, but go on. I want to hear your whole stupid story.”

“It was just a couple of months ago, right after that other baby died. You wanted me to bury her, but it was too cold. We had that early ice storm and the ground was already frozen. Even the pickax would just, like, bounce back at me.”

“Lazy,” Marjorie said. “You stupid lazy boy. So you're telling me you took the kid along with you? To Red Wing?”

Ronnie was nodding now. “I thought I was just being, you know, practical. But Red Wing is kind of . . . populated. More populated than here anyway. So I drove farther west, until I came across this woodlot. How was I supposed to know that a couple of dumb-ass hunters would stumble upon the thing? I couldn't, right? I mean, I couldn't know that.”

“Huh,” Marjorie said. She didn't want to hear any more of his excuses. She had too much to think about.

Ronnie touched a hand to his forehead and winced. “Jeez, Ma. You really clobbered me.”

“Shut the hell up, Ronnie. You're the one who screwed things up. Now I gotta think for a while.” Marjorie got up and walked out of the room. Her voice trailed after her. “I have to figure out what to do.”

Retreating to her craft studio (if you could even call it that), Marjorie grabbed her tweezers and resumed working on the doll's eyelashes. She nipped and poked for another ten minutes until she had them just about perfect. The whole time she worked, her brain skittered along, planning, scheming, trying to calculate the odds. She knew the Cannon Falls kid probably wouldn't present that much of a problem. If Ronnie had left it in the woods like he said he had—and she had no reason to doubt him—they should be fine. Animals, rain, wind, and snow would have erased any little bits of telltale evidence.

No, the real problem, the major dilemma Marjorie faced right now, was talky old Muriel Pink. Muriel Pink, who had started flapping her lips once they poked a TV camera in her face. Because as sure as God made little green apples, the cops were gonna go back and talk to that old bitch again.

*   *   *

BY
nine o'clock that night, Marjorie had devised what she figured was a pretty smart plan. It was dangerous, even daring. But executed properly, would surely put an end to all their worries. They'd be safe again. And Marjorie, just like a little brown spider who'd administered its lethal bite,
would be able to scuttle back into her snuggle hole again. Because she wanted to,
needed
to, be safe.

Ronnie was standing in the kitchen, refrigerator door wide open and drinking milk directly from the carton, when Marjorie said, “We're going out. Just get your car and don't ask any questions.”

Ronnie wiped his mouth. “Can't,” he said. “My battery's fried. I tried putting a charger on it but it wouldn't hold worth shit. Probably gonna have to go to Fleet Farm and buy a new one.”

“Can you take the battery out of my car for now?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Ronnie said.

“Do it.”

Marjorie knew that Ronnie's car, a two-door lowrider from the late eighties, was the perfect crime car. Painted a dull brownish burgundy, it had been stripped of any make or model insignia, and a bystander would be hard-pressed to give an exact description of it. Besides, the car was registered in Ronnie's name. If things really went off the rails tonight, if Ronnie got caught red-handed and hauled down to the police station, it might give her the break she needed to get away. She still had five grand in cash stashed in a lockbox in Eau Claire. After that . . . well, she'd just have to improvise.

Five minutes later, Ronnie came stomping back inside. “Done,” he told her.

“What's done?” Shake asked. She'd heard doors opening and closing and had crept in to investigate.

“None of your beeswax,” Marjorie said. That's all she needed was Shake nosing around. She didn't trust the girl as far as she could throw her.

“Ronnie?” Shake said. But Ronnie was focused only on Marjorie.

“How bad's the weather?” Marjorie asked. She'd already looked up Muriel Pink's address in an old phone book.

“It's sleeting like a bastard out there,” Ronnie said. “Really coming down.”

“What are you two up to?” Shake asked. She clutched at a ratty pink cardigan that barely stretched across her belly. “Where are you guys going?”

“Just some business,” Marjorie said. “I have to run over to the Family Resource Center.”

“At this time of night?” Something didn't feel right to Shake. But she was dog tired and her ankles were sore and swollen again. All she could think about was crawling back into the lounger and settling into a restless sleep.

“We won't be gone long,” Ronnie assured her. “You take it easy. Get some rest.”

“I guess,” Shake said. She stared at them again, then waddled out of the room.

Marjorie turned anxious eyes on Ronnie. “Do you still have your night vision goggles?”

“Yeah, sure I do.” Ronnie had bought a set of Sightmark Ghost Hunter night vision glasses that were his pride and joy. He'd earned the money to pay for them by doing taxidermy jobs for local hunters. Sometimes he even hit the jackpot and got to work on something really great, like the bobcat he'd done for the guy over in Red Wing. A great big cat the man had shot when he was hunting out in Wyoming.

“And you need to bring your hunting knives, too.”

Ronnie stared at his mother for a full fifteen seconds before comprehension finally dawned. “Oh shit,” he said. “You wanna do that old lady, don't you?” He was suddenly both aroused as well as struck with an almost paralyzing case of nerves. Was this what he wanted to do? Was this all he was good for?

“We can't do nothing about that Cannon Falls baby,” Marjorie said. “That's a done deal.” She was pulling on her coat, fumbling with her mittens. “But we can sure as hell do something about Muriel Pink.”

*   *   *

THE
drive through the countryside was dicey at best. Sleet pelted down, icing the windows and turning the blacktopped county roads into a skating rink.

“This is really getting bad,” Ronnie said. He snuck a sidelong glance at Marjorie. “You think we should turn around?”

Marjorie just stared straight ahead. Her mind was made up; there was no turning back.

They crawled along County Road BB, finally came out on Carmichael Road, and then, four miles farther, hit the Interstate. Finally, they slid down the hill, the Saint Croix River a wide swath of darkness below them, and turned off into Hudson. As they cruised through the downtown area, they didn't see a soul out walking. Just lights burning in a couple of bars.

“They really roll up the sidewalks in this town, don't they?” Marjorie said. “That's good.” She peered out, silently mouthing the names of the street signs. “Turn here. Locust Street.” They drove up a slight hill, past the police station, and then hung a left on Third.

They cruised past the Octagon House at Myrtle and Third and then turned right on Oak. A couple more turns and Ronnie slowed the car as they glided past Muriel Pink's house on Flint Street.

“That's it?” he asked. The house was dark, save for a dim light that glowed somewhere. Maybe in the kitchen.

“Keep going,” Marjorie said. “Go on past her house a little ways.”

Ronnie drove to the end of the block and stopped. Put the car in Park, left the engine running. “You sure you want to do this?” he said. Ronnie didn't mind a little rough sex when he needed to get his gun off, but killing a woman? Then again, it might be interesting. Sort of a new . . . diversion.

“She's gonna be a problem,” Marjorie said, sounding almost philosophical. “Sooner or later. You saw the way she talked on TV. All puffed up and certain of herself. With a little more coaxing, she could probably identify me. You, too.”

“I don't think she saw me.”

“Don't get smart.”

Ronnie hunched forward over the steering wheel.

“I need you to man up and take care of business,” Marjorie said.

“What do you mean?” Ronnie snapped back. “Exactly?”

“I want you to go in there and use your hunting knife. Take care of that woman nice and quick, just like you would an ordinary whitetail deer.”

Ronnie smiled crookedly in the darkness. “You mean kill her?”

Marjorie stared at him.

Ronnie was sweating in the faint warmth being spewed out by the car's
heater. He'd worked with a butcher once, a guy named Hofferman over in Martell. Helped him butcher and process more than fifty deer during hunting season. Skinned 'em, carved out the front shoulders, backstraps, brisket, sirloin, and hindquarters. Quick and efficient, assembly-line style. He'd found the work thought provoking.

Finally Ronnie said, “I never did a person before.”

“There's a first time for everything, my boy. Besides, you've gone after women before, don't play dumb with me.”