The Jennifer McMahon E-Book Bundle (25 page)

“What is it you want to do?” he asked.

“Find Ernie.”

Tock returned, a lit joint in her mouth.

“We should check out the eleven o’clock news,” Tock said. “I bet they’ll have something about it. Hell, maybe they found her by now. Maybe it was just some kind of prank.”

“Who would pull a prank like that?” Rhonda asked.

“I dunno,” Tock said. “Maybe someone got the idea because of that girl in the hole in Virginia. It’s been all over the news for weeks. Maybe it’s just some gung-ho kid and he’ll just drop her off down the highway once he realizes what a totally fucked-up thing he’s done.”

The Virginia girl, Ella Starkee, was found by a farmer and his border collie. The farmer and the dog had since made the rounds of every morning news show in the country. They posed with Ella for the cover of last week’s
People
magazine. The little girl was all smiles, rosy-cheeked, hair neatly braided.

Rhonda found herself wondering what size beetles the little girl had eaten—tiny ones or something more like a June bug. Something substantial.

“Where were you today, anyway?” Rhonda asked Peter. “Don’t you usually work Mondays?”

“I took the day off to go hiking,” he said.

“All of you went?” Rhonda asked.

Tock passed the joint to Peter, exhaled, and said, “No. He snuck off without us. Suzy and I packed a lunch and drove out to the trailhead to join him, thinking he’d be up at Gunner’s Ridge, but he wasn’t there. So we had a little girls’-day-out picnic of our own.”

“I hiked a different route,” Peter explained. “Over by Sawyer’s Pond.”

“I bet the blackflies were god-awful,” Rhonda said.

“Not too bad,” Peter told her, examining his arms. Rhonda didn’t see a single bite.

“So you said the Florucci girl is a friend of Suzy’s?” Rhonda asked.

“Yeah,” Tock said. “They’re in the same class. Suzy went to Ernie’s birthday party back in March. Lives with her mom in a little trailer out on Meckleson Hill Road. Kind of a dump. But Ernie’s a good kid. She’s been out here to play a few times, right, hon?”

Peter nodded.

“It could have been Suzy,” Rhonda said.

Tock shivered and looked away.

“That little girl could be cut into a hundred pieces right now and I could have done something to stop it,” Rhonda said. “I could have at least remembered the fucking license plate.”

“You’re too hard on yourself, Ronnie,” Peter said, reaching through the water to take her hand and squeeze it. “You need to let shit go.”

Like I let Ernie go?
Rhonda thought to herself. She looked up into Peter’s watery blue eyes and let her fingers squeeze back.
Like you let Daniel and Lizzy go?

L
IZZY AND RHONDA
danced through the woods, hurrying to the stage. Just a month before, they’d chased the rabbit down the same path, but now the snow was gone and the maple trees that were mixed in with the spruce, hemlock, and white pines were just beginning to leaf out. It had rained the day before but now the sun was out and the woods smelled green and loamy.

Lizzy was singing “Achy Breaky Heart” and getting the words wrong, which cracked Rhonda up.

Lizzy spun in a circle, then put her hands on her hips and kicked her right leg up high. The move was more karate than Rockette.

They had just come from Lizzy’s, where she’d changed from school clothes into a leotard, leggings, and turquoise leg warmers,
then showed Rhonda the metal bar her father had installed at the top of the closet doorway.

“What’s this for?” Rhonda had asked.

Lizzy’d jumped up, grabbed the bar, and hung.

“It’s going to stretch me,” she’d explained. “If I hang for fifteen minutes a day, I’ll get taller. Guaranteed.”

Rhonda figured about the only thing that was going to get stretched out was Lizzy’s arms, which would leave her looking more like an ape-girl than a Rockette, but Rhonda knew better than to say anything.

“And look,” Lizzy had said, pulling first one leg, than the other, over the bar and letting go so that she hung upside down in the doorway. Lizzy closed her eyes and hung, focusing, no doubt, on stretching herself taller as her face grew redder and redder.

“Easy there, Rocket.” Rhonda turned and saw Daniel standing in the doorway to Lizzy’s bedroom. “You don’t want to burst anything.”

“It’s Rock-
ette
, Daddy,” Lizzy said, pulling herself up, then jumping down and straightening her leg warmers. “Come on, Ronnie, Peter’s waiting.”

THEY FOUND PETER
sitting cross-legged in the center of the stage, puffing on his homemade corncob pipe; the air sweet with the smell of the cherry-flavored tobacco he swiped from the general store. In the afternoon sun that came down over the tops of the pines into their clearing, lighting up the stage, Peter seemed to glow. He wore faded brown corduroy pants and a green chamois shirt. And a crown made from woven grapevines stuffed with an assortment of leaves. He looked, to Rhonda, like a fairy prince—something you’d come upon while lost in the woods, then you’d blink and he’d be gone. So Rhonda blinked, just to see, but Peter was still there, radiant as ever.

Lizzy and Rhonda hurried up onto the stage, holding their breath in anticipation: maybe today Peter would tell them about the play.

He’d been keeping to himself for weeks, locked in his room, spending afternoons at the library and coming out to the stage on warm days after school to write in his notebook. No one was allowed to disturb Peter when he was writing a play. And only when he was finished with the script and all his production notes, would he reveal anything.

Peter got to his feet, smiling impishly at the girls. He reached out his hand to Rhonda.

“Come away with me, Wendy,” he said.

And Rhonda took his hand without hesitation, without any consideration of who Wendy might be or where he wanted her to go. Together, her hand tucked into his, they jumped off the stage and ran around the clearing like crazy birds, cawing and laughing, Peter yelling, “Isn’t it wonderful to fly?” Lizzy sat on the edge of the stage, clapping and laughing with them until finally, exhausted, they came back to the stage and collapsed at Lizzy’s feet. They were both on their backs, and Rhonda’s head was resting on Peter’s chest, going up and down with each breath he took. Lizzy lay down with her head on Rhonda’s belly and her legs over Peter’s, the three of them forming an imperfect triangle.

“Have you guessed yet?” Peter asked.

Rhonda’s mind was spinning with possibilities: a play about birds? Greek gods? Fairies maybe?

“
Peter Pan
!” Peter said at last. “We’re going to do
Peter Pan
! It’ll be the best play yet. I’ll play Peter. You, Ronnie, are Wendy. And Lizzy, you are the infamous Captain Hook!”

THEY HAD DONE
other plays, of course—plays Peter had written, and ones they’d made up as they went along. Short, predictable
dramas about knights slaying dragons, cowboys killing Indians, cops shooting criminals. Last year, Peter even let the girls talk him into doing a play about a roving band of gypsies. Peter played the gypsy king, Rhonda was the queen, and Lizzy her treacherous sister who was also in love with the king. Lizzy poisoned Rhonda, who got to die a spectacular, three-minute death on stage. Peter, the gypsy king, had Lizzy hung then stabbed himself in the heart with his dagger, cursing the wicked ways of women, damning the gypsy life. This followed the formula of most of their plays: all the important characters died at the end, even the hero. Only in
Peter Pan
, everyone would live.

“Everyone but Captain Hook, that is,” Peter explained. “He gets eaten by the crocodile.”

Peter, as writer, director, and star (not to mention the oldest kid in the neighborhood), made the rules, and, as they got older, the plays got more complicated, as did the rules. But from the beginning, it was a strict rule that the plays were not to be discussed with outsiders. No one was allowed to hear about the play, or see any part of it performed until the opening night, when it was for paying audiences only. Rehearsing a play was like training to be a ninja, Peter said. You cleared your mind of everything else and developed your art in secrecy. You strived for perfection.

Some children wanted a tree house, a secret fort somewhere, but these kids wanted a stage of their own, and they got their wish. They’d built a stage out in the woods three years ago, in a clearing between Rhonda’s house and Peter and Lizzy’s, right beside Clem’s old, rusted-out Chevy Impala convertible, parked there the year Rhonda was born. Clem and Daniel helped put up the stage, doing all the sawing and heavy lifting, letting the kids pound nails.

The stage went up like a strange life raft marooned in a clearing surrounded by tall white pines. It was built from two-by-
fours and tongue-and-groove boards taken from an old silo that had been torn down a few miles away. The back of the stage was a framed wall from which they hung sheets with scenery painted on (which Rhonda, as resident artist, was always responsible for). There was no curtain. Sets were changed out in the open, for the audience to see. To the left of the stage sat Clem’s old red Impala with its top down, and this was often used as a prop. It had been a cop car, a gypsy wagon, and now, Peter was explaining, it would become a pirate ship complete with mast, sail, and a skull-and-crossbones flag at the top.

Rhonda opened the sketchbook she’d brought and started to work on designs for the boat as Peter talked, throwing ideas at her. Drawing was the thing Rhonda did best. She could draw better than she could act, and she was by far the best artist in her class, if not the best in the whole school. Writing and directing the plays was Peter’s job, costumes and choreography were Lizzy’s department, but the scenery was up to Rhonda.

They were just in the planning stages now. They’d spend the next weeks painting scenery, making their costumes, designing the sets. When school let out and the summer kids came to the cottages around the lake, Peter would hold auditions and they would begin rehearsing every day.

“And this is where our crocodile will lie in wait,” announced Peter, pulling open the trapdoor in the back of the stage floor. It led to a hole the kids had dug underneath. The hole was four feet wide, four feet long, and four feet deep. The trap door above it was designed so that evil wizards could appear and disappear, so that the dead could rise from quiet graves.

“But who will be the crocodile?” Lizzy asked, nervous about who was going to kill her.

Peter shrugged. “Don’t know yet. But that crocodile’s out there somewhere, I can feel it!”

T
HE HOLE ELLA
Starkee was left in was nine feet deep, and the floor, said the article in
People
magazine, was roughly the size of a wooden shipping pallet. The kidnapper, whom Ella came to call The Magic Man, covered the top of the hole with boards and leaves. He came to visit every day. The article didn’t say what he did during these visits, only that he used a ladder—fashioned from saplings lashed together—to get down into the hole to see her. Each day, he brought her one butterscotch candy, golden as sunlight, with crinkly cellophane wrappers that she saved and sucked on long after the candy was gone.

PAT’S MINI MART
had transformed into the Find Ernie headquarters. Pat and Jim had cleared the shelves in the back aisle of Ho Hos and Smartfood, and moved the shelving units into storage.
They were replaced with a long row of folding tables, piled high with flyers, envelopes, and legal pads. Extension cords and phone wires snaked out from behind the deli’s meat case, powering the laptop computer and two cordless phones. Those who stood too close to the work area for long, Pat roped in—“Surely, you have five minutes to stuff envelopes?” or “How about manning one of the phones for ten minutes, while Alison here takes a break?”

Pat’s nephew, Warren, who had just finished his freshman year of college down in Philadelphia, had driven all night to get there to help out. His job was to collect all the phoned-in tips, jotted on the legal pads, into a database on the laptop. Karen Boisvert, who worked for IBM, had set up a Find Ernie Web site, complete with all the latest news and a form to submit possible sightings and leads. Peter had been there, working right beside them, until Crowley pulled him into Pat’s office for questioning.

Rhonda was sitting next to Warren and his laptop, answering phones. Warren wore a Penn State baseball cap and a hemp necklace with brown and black beads. His eyes were bloodshot from not having slept the night before, and he seemed to have a strange, boyish addiction to hot chocolate with mini marshmallows (he was on his fifth cup since Rhonda had been there).

So far, it was mostly dead ends and crackpots calling: a woman who had a dream that Ernie was in a well, a man over in Chelsea who said he believed there were rabbits living among us, wearing people suits. Rhonda drummed her fingers on the table, got up, and paced. Surely there must be more she could do. She had shown up at Pat’s first thing in the morning, as soon as Peter called to tell her about the gathering of volunteers, and she’d been sure then that today they’d find Ernie.

Pat had seemed overjoyed to see Rhonda: she caught Rhonda up in a tight embrace and said, “How awful for you to have seen such a thing. You must be a wreck! But don’t worry, we’ll find her. You mark my words! I bet she’ll show up this very morning!”

Pat led a small group through the streets of Pike’s Crossing, then into the woods bordering the state forest. They were gone most of the morning and came back for lunch and went out again, to continue combing the woods with Pat cheering them on, saying she was sure they were going to find Ernie that very day.

Rhonda had believed Pat, had even let herself fantasize that it would be her who took the important call; she who put together the string of clues that would lead the cops to Ernie. But now, here it was, a little after three p.m.—twenty-four hours since Ernie’s kidnapping. And the most productive thing Rhonda had done was to keep the coffee pot full.

“Fuck,” she mumbled to herself, then started organizing papers and pens—busy work. Useless. Little Ernie Florucci’s face stared up at her from the flyers strewn across the table.
MISSING
, said the bold red letters at the top of the page. Underneath was a snapshot of Ernestine taken just the week before. She was wearing a flowered sundress and sitting in the dull yellow grass of her front yard, a plastic kiddie pool in the background. She had dark brown, straight hair done up in pigtails. Her small nose was dotted with freckles and she had a slight gap between her two front teeth. She was smiling up into the camera, squinting a little, like the sun was in her eyes. Or like she couldn’t make out something she was looking at in the distance.

“I’m sorry,” Rhonda whispered to the little Ernie as she put the flyers in a neat pile, then sat back down in her chair, willing the phone to ring.

“What’d you say?” Warren asked, looking up from his computer. His eyes were a deep, rich, chocolaty brown. A little sad and totally sincere, like the eyes of a basset hound. Rhonda imagined the string of girls Warren must have back in Pennsylvania.

“Nothing,” Rhonda said, looking away. She leaned back in her chair and turned to see if there was any sign of Peter yet. No. Still in the office with Crowley.

Rumor had it, among the other volunteers, that Peter had the distinction of being Crowley’s first suspect. Rumor also had it that the police had impounded Laura Lee’s Volkswagen and that they’d found one of Ernie’s red pigtail holders in the front seat. Rhonda herself had overheard Crowley ask Peter if he had a set of keys to his mother-in-law’s VW, when she went back to get more pens from the storeroom.

“I did,” she heard Peter admit. “But I lost my key ring about a week ago.”

Rhonda could picture the key ring: a half dozen or so keys attached to a bottle opener and, of all things, a small white rabbit’s foot for luck.

Afraid of being caught eavesdropping, she grabbed the box of pens and returned to the phone table, where she resumed drumming her fingers, waiting for the phone to ring. It was bullshit that Crowley was wasting his time questioning Peter. Everyone, it seemed, was wasting precious time.

By the cash registers, Pat was holding a small press conference, her arm around the silent and tearful Trudy Florucci.

“It’s times like these,” Pat was saying, “that pull a community together. The people of Pike’s Crossing are not the sort to just stand back and let tragedy overtake them. No, the people of Pike’s Crossing are going to go out there and find that little girl. Mark my words: we will find Ernestine Florucci. We will not rest until she is back in her mother’s arms, safe and sound.”

Rhonda caught Warren’s eye. “God, I hope she’s right.”

“She is,” Warren said, chewing his lower lip. “Aunt Pat is hardly ever wrong. And once she makes up her mind about a thing, there’s no stopping her—she’s like a force of nature.”

Rhonda glanced around the room at the whirlwind of activity Pat had put into motion in less than twenty-four hours, and nodded. “That I can believe.”

Rhonda and Warren were the only two volunteers for the
moment. Peter was stuck in back with Crowley, the others had left.

“So you believe her, then?” Rhonda asked.

He set down his paper cup of cocoa, leaned in closer, and nearly whispered, “Wanna know what I believe?”

Was he flirting? Had
she
been?

Rhonda suddenly felt horribly guilty. How could she even be thinking about some unattainable guy while Ernie Florucci was still missing, being held under lock and key by the rabbit, or worse?

“No matter what happens, we’ve gotta think positive,” Warren said, as if reading her mind. “Thoughts have power, Rhonda. That’s what I believe.” He leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes tightly for a minute, then opened them, looking at her.

Rhonda shook her head. “
Actions
have power,” she told him. “Ernie’s not just going to come walking back on her own. Someone’s gotta go find her.”

AS THE PRESS
conference was breaking up, a woman in hospital scrubs and white clogs came in. Behind her was a girl Rhonda guessed to be about twelve, shouldering a heavy-looking knapsack and looking flushed and out of breath, like she’d run the whole way.

The woman in scrubs embraced Trudy and whispered something to her. The girl headed straight for the folding tables, opened her knapsack, and pulled out two large plastic containers.

“I’ve got cookies and brownies for you guys,” she said, smiling. She addressed both of them but was clearly focused on Warren, who, with his disheveled teddy bear looks, was an adolescent girl’s dream. “I baked them myself. I’m Katy,” she said, extending her hand to Warren, “Ernie’s cousin.”

She wore jeans, canvas sneakers, and a black T-shirt with a large-eyed anime character on it.

She extended her hand to Rhonda, though even when Rhonda took it, Katy stayed focused on Warren. Katy had long, straight, blond hair that she wore pulled back in a braid. She had braces, but didn’t seem the least bit self-conscious about them. When she smiled, she showed her teeth and the metal flashed like jewelry.

Warren peeled back the lid on the brownies and dug in. “These look amazing. You’re our savior.”

Katy grabbed an empty chair and pulled it up between Rhonda and Warren, turning it so that she sat backward, legs straddling the seat, arms wrapped firmly around the wooden back.

“Anything new?” she asked. Again, the question was clearly directed at Warren.

“Not much on our end. Crowley’s been in there talking to the mechanic who works here, Peter, for about forty-five minutes now,” Warren reported.

“My mom said they found the car the guy used but they don’t think the owner’s involved. Belongs to some nutty lady who didn’t notice it was missing. Lives over by the lake.”

“You mean Laura Lee Clark,” said Rhonda. She felt odd discussing the details of the case with this girl. But still, it was good to have an in with Ernie’s family—to hear what the police had been telling them.

“Peter’s mother-in-law,” Warren added. Clearly, he’d been paying attention to the rumors and gossip of the day.

“Not technically,” Rhonda corrected. “I mean, Peter and Tock never got married.”

“But they have a kid, right?” Katy asked. “A friend of Ernie’s. My mom said Ernie would go over to their house to play. This Peter guy
totally
knew her.”

“Just because he knew her doesn’t mean he did it. I know Peter, all right? He would never do anything like this. Ever. I’d bet my life on it.”

Katy and Warren exchanged a
yeah, right
look.

“You guys know about the drawings, right?” Katy asked. Rhonda nodded. Warren shook his head, said, “What drawings?”

“She made these pictures of her and the rabbit going on all these adventures together. He’d take her to this place called Rabbit Island. I bet that’s where she is right now!”

Warren frowned. Chewed his lip. “Rabbit Island,” he muttered.

“Time to go, Katy!” called the woman in scrubs, who Rhonda figured must be her mother. Trudy was still holding on to her arm, like she might crumple and fall without the extra support. Trudy glared at Rhonda with such fierce hatred that Rhonda felt her stomach do an icy drop down into her bowels.

“See you guys later,” Katy said, taking her leave.

“SO HOW WELL
do you know Peter?” Warren asked once they were alone again. Peter and Crowley were still hidden away in Pat’s office—it had been nearly an hour.

Rhonda took in a breath while she considered what to say.

“We grew up together. Next door neighbors. He was like my big brother.”

“You know, I thought you guys were a couple at first. Until Peter started talking about his wife and little girl,” Warren said.

“They’re not married,” Rhonda said again, as if that made any difference. “And no,” she continued, allowing herself for half an instant to imagine that alternate universe where she and Peter
were
a couple and had been living happily ever after all along.

“We’re just good friends.” She gave him her best and-I’m-just-fine-with-that smile.

Warren nodded, plucked at his goatee. “So do you think he could have had anything to do with this, or is Crowley barking up the wrong tree?”

“No question. Wrong tree entirely,” Rhonda said. “He’s wasting valuable time.”

“But if it was his mother-in-law’s car…”

Didn’t I just say they weren’t married?

“We don’t know that for sure. I was actually thinking I might take a ride over to Laura Lee’s after I leave here. See what her story is.”

“Mind if I tag along?”

“What? Why would you want to do that?”

“Curiosity. And besides, what else am I gonna do? Uncle Jim and Aunt Pat are all caught up here and it’s not like I know anyone else in town. Come on, you can show me the exciting sights of Pike’s Crossing.” He flashed her a warm smile that Rhonda, in spite of herself, found impossible to resist.

“I don’t know if Laura Lee’s trailer counts. She’s kind of a nut job,” Rhonda warned.

“I like nut jobs. Come on, every great sleuth has a sidekick, right?”

“I don’t know…” Rhonda said. She eyed the hallway leading back to the office, thinking of Peter. Ridiculous. She didn’t need his permission or approval.

“Okay,” Rhonda agreed. “Why not?”

LAURA LEE CLARK’S
trailer rested on a cinder block foundation about one hundred feet back from Nickel Lake. The trailer itself was an old metal one, covered in faded and peeling flamingo-colored paint. The yard was a forest of lawn ornaments, whirligigs, bird feeders, and bird baths. Rhonda led Warren through the gnomes, colored gazing globes, and wooden cutouts of fat women bending over, showing their knickers. Rhonda was trying to seem calm and composed, but inside, she was fuming. She had learned, on the drive over, that Pat, who had been friendly to the point of near nausea today, considered Rhonda a suspect.

“What did your aunt say to you on the way out?” Rhonda had
asked Warren. There was something odd in the way the ever-friendly Pat had pulled Warren aside and whispered in his ear just before they left the Mini Mart together.

Warren’s face reddened a little at Rhonda’s question.

“Come on,” Rhonda said. “I thought you were Mr. Think Positive, Surround Yourself with White Light and Don’t Ever Tell a Lie.”

Warren laughed, chewed on his lip. “Hardly.”

“So really, what’d she say? You both looked all serious and conspiratorial.”

“She told me to stick close to you,” he admitted.