The Jennifer McMahon E-Book Bundle (37 page)

I
T WAS QUARTER
of nine by the time Rhonda pulled into the Mini Mart. The gas signs were off and the store and garage were dark, but Pat’s car was there in the lot.

Rhonda got to the front door and found it unlocked. Slowly, she opened it, hearing the little electronic ding-dong that went off at the registers as she entered.

She did a quick scan of the Mini Mart. No Pat. No Warren.

“Hello?” she called, her voice squeaky, hesitant.

She went back to the front door and looked out across the parking lot toward the road. No one. Nothing.

How could she never have considered Pat a suspect before? Pat knew Trudy and Ernie. But it still didn’t make sense. Pat had been so earnest in her search for Ernie. She so desperately wanted to find the little girl.

Had Pat and Peter been in on it together? Or was Rhonda wrong about Peter?

Rhonda had never been alone in the Mini Mart before. She’d never noticed the low droning hum of the coolers and air conditioning. The place was full of barely audible clicks and whirs. At each new noise, she turned to look over her shoulder.

She was sure she could hear breathing.

“Pat?”

Rhonda walked through the store, around the racks of snack cakes and chips, finally stepping behind the register, where she flipped the wall switches, making the store blaze with light. She looked up at the rows of cigarettes, the warnings about selling tobacco and alcohol to underage kids, which included a visual guide to acceptable photo IDs. The counter was covered in scratched Plexiglas and, under it, was a list of prices for beer, soda, coffee, and dairy products. She heard a low rumble in the back corner—just the soda fountain machine making ice.

She made her way to the abandoned volunteer table. Notepads, telephones, and the laptop were scattered across the surface. And there was a Styrofoam cup nearly full of hot chocolate. Rhonda picked it up—still warm.

“Rhonda.”

The voice behind her made Rhonda jump, spilling the warm cocoa on the leg of her jeans. “Jesus!” she yelped, spinning around to face Pat.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” Pat said. “I was doing some work in my office and thought I heard a noise.”

“I…” Rhonda stammered. “I just wondered if there was any word yet.”

Pat shook her head. “Not yet.” She eyed the cup of hot chocolate in Rhonda’s hand.

“Looks like maybe Warren showed up?” Rhonda asked.

Pat gave a slow nod. “He’s in my office, actually. I think he’s got some things to explain to you.”

Rhonda set the Styrofoam cup down, wiped her hands on her
jeans, and looked across the store and down the hall that led to the office.

“It’s time he told you the truth,” Pat said.

“Truth?” Rhonda murmured. Pat gestured toward the back hall, reminding Rhonda of the way the white rabbit had guided her through the woods that Easter long ago.

Now Warren was the basket of candy.

Hesitantly, with Pat half a step behind her, Rhonda made her way to the office. She opened the door and stepped inside.

“Where is—” Rhonda said.

Pat slipped in and closed the door behind them, standing with her back against it. Next to the door, a large crowbar leaned against the wall. Pat bent and picked it up in one quick move.

W
HY?” RHONDA SAID.
“Why would you want to wreck our stage?”

“Because it’s over,” Peter said.

“What is?” Rhonda hoped he meant things with him and Tock. Maybe Tock and Lizzy
were
secretly in love. Right then, up on stage, Tock spooned against Lizzy, whispering in her ear, they looked like two people in love. Rhonda was almost embarrassed for them. But jealous at the same time. Whatever this big thing was that was happening between them, Rhonda wasn’t a part of it and she had been a part of everything in Lizzy’s life up till then.

“Do you trust me, Ronnie?” Peter asked.

She nodded.

“Then help me do this.” He held out his hand and Rhonda joined him on stage. Together, they grabbed the sheet with the painted scene of the Darling children’s nursery and ripped it
down. Behind it were the blue water and palm trees of Neverland.

“But Peter—” Rhonda began.

“We need more tools,” Peter said, jumping off the stage, running behind it to the box where they kept a few basics. He returned with a crowbar and saw.

“It’s time,” Tock whispered, pulling Lizzy up. Lizzy picked up the hammer Peter had been holding and started hitting the floorboards, cautiously at first, then using all of her force. Tock picked up the crowbar and began ripping floorboards up, the rusty nails screeching.

Peter was sawing at the two-by-four frame of the wall that held the backdrops. “It’s over,” he said, more to himself than anyone in particular. Lizzy dropped the hammer and started to cry.

“Lizzy?” Rhonda said, walking over to her friend, putting a hand on her shoulder. “What happened, Lizzy?”

“Let her be,” Tock warned, coming toward them with the crowbar in her hand. Rhonda backed away.

“Ronnie, I need you over here,” Peter called. He was pushing on the left side of the backdrop frame, making it sway. “Grab the other end.”

Rhonda went over and wrapped her hands around the two-by-four, imagining it was Tock’s neck.

“No one ever has to know,” Tock whispered to Lizzy.

Know what?
Rhonda screamed inside her head.
What did you do to my best friend?

“Pull!” Peter shouted.

The back wall didn’t budge. Rhonda jumped up, grabbed hold of the board that ran across the top of the frame, and swung there, the Neverland landscape behind her: blue water, even bluer sky, the shoreline of their island.

I sometimes wonder if I ever did really fly…

She thought of Lizzy hanging from the closet, trying to stretch
herself, to grow taller. She could just hear the music pumping out of the speakers back in the bright chaos of her yard: “Brown-eyed Girl.” Van Morrison crooned,
Do you remember when we used to sing…

There was a cracking sound and the wall broke free, tipping, sending Peter and Rhonda down, a pile of boards and the tangled sheet with the painted island on top of them, a searing pain in Rhonda’s forehead, like everything in there—all her memories of Lizzy and Peter, and all the random things she’d learned, like lines from their plays and the shape of buttons on the uniform of a Confederate soldier—was trying to find a way back out. She closed her eyes. Let the shoreline of Neverland cover her, hold her, threaten to never let her go.

P
AT HEFTED THE
crowbar and rested it on her shoulder casually. “He was just supposed to take her to the woods. Leave her there. She would’ve stayed put and we would’ve found her in a few hours.”

Rhonda nodded, took a step back, bumping up against the large metal desk. “Who?” she asked.

“Little Ernie, of course. I was going to find her. It was all arranged.”

It made sense in a horrible sort of way. Pat’s guilt over what happened to her sister. An opportunity, years later, to redeem herself. To be the hero. Even if it meant staging a kidnapping. She’d have her fifteen minutes of fame. Be redeemed. The whole town would benefit, really. It would be Ella Starkee all over again.

But if it wasn’t Pat in the rabbit suit that day, who was it? Had she talked Peter into taking the little girl? Blackmailed him somehow?

“It was you who visited Ernie all along, right? You wanted to be the one to develop the relationship. To build trust.”

Pat stared, stone-faced.

“You picked her up in Laura Lee’s car. I bet she liked it. It must have made her so happy, to see the rabbit waiting for her, ready to take her to the cemetery.”

Pat gave a wistful little smile. “Rabbit Island,” she whispered, relaxing her grip on the crowbar.

“Right, Rabbit Island. I saw one of Ernie’s drawings,” Rhonda said. “She made it look like paradise.”

“Yes. She loved it there. She loved
me
.”

Rhonda nodded. “Who did you get to wear the suit that last day, Pat? Who took her? Where is she now?”

“You’re a smart girl.” Pat’s eyes blazed now as she spoke. “I thought you’d have it figured out by now.”

Rhonda shook her head. She put her hand back on the desk and felt around. Her desperate fingers found only papers. Magazines. A pen.

“Warren,” Pat said, the name an angry hum through her clenched teeth. “It was Warren. Warren killed her.”

“No,” Rhonda almost laughed. “He wasn’t even here. He was in Pennsylvania.”

“I offered him money. Five hundred dollars. An easy job for a college kid. Just pick her up, drive a few miles, and drop her off. I drew him a
goddamn map
.”

“You’re lying!” Rhonda said. “Where is he? What did you do to him?”

Pat continued: “Then he’d lie low and tell everyone he’d come up to help out the next day. Driven all night, that was the story. He heard about the kidnapping and wanted to help. Such a good boy.”

Rhonda reached back, stretched her arm across the desk until her fingers found the cool, smooth edge of the granite stone, felt the indentations of engraved letters:
PAT HEBERT, STATION OWNER
AND MANAGER
. She grabbed it. Heavy. Seven or eight pounds maybe.

“Good boy, my ass!” Pat hissed. She clenched the crowbar.

“He killed her. He took my little Birdie and he…”

“No!” Rhonda raised the stone and aimed for Pat’s temple. She made contact, and the force of it vibrated through her arm and into her chest. The crowbar slipped from Pat’s hands, clanking on the ground. Then Pat herself went down.

Rhonda, gripping the granite stone in her hands, stepped carefully over Pat and opened the door.

“Shit, shit, shit,” she whispered, trying to calm herself. What had she done?

“I didn’t have a choice,” Rhonda whispered, trying to convince herself. “Warren?” she called out.

She peered carefully left, toward the store, and right, down the hall toward the garage. No one. Quiet. She tiptoed across the hall and into the dark storeroom, felt for the switch, and turned on the lights, only to find herself face-to-face with a tall man in sunglasses and a baseball cap. She swung and knocked him flat.

“Fuck!”

She’d knocked down a life-size cardboard cutout of a race car driver advertising motor oil.

“Good shot, Farr,” Rhonda told herself. Her hands were shaking.

She backed out of the storeroom, keeping the light on. She wanted every corner blazing.

Adrenaline buzzed through her body. She turned and faced the metal door leading to the garage.
EMPLOYEES ONLY,
warned a red-lettered metal sign.

She looked for a light switch to the garage outside the door leading to it. No such luck. She’d have to go in and feel her way around. Still clutching the heavy
PAT
stone in her hand, she pushed the door open and stepped into the garage, where she smelled
burned rubber, oil, and exhaust. An engine was running. The metal door swung closed behind her with a loud thunk. After the fluorescent bright hallway, her eyes could make out nothing in the inky black garage. The air was hot and thick, full of exhaust. She turned and felt along the wall for a switch. There was one to the right of the door: four switches, all pointed down. Using her index finger, she flipped them all up and turned around.

Rhonda’s heart jackhammered. She dropped the stone, which hit the cement floor and cracked, the words
PAT HEBERT
breaking off from
STATION OWNER AND MANAGER.

There, in the far bay, was Warren’s car. The rabbit was strapped into the driver’s seat. The car was running, and a length of hose ran from the exhaust pipe to the back window cracked open.

“Shit!” Rhonda leaped forward, hurried to the car. She pulled the hose from the exhaust pipe and went around to the driver’s side. Locked. “Shit!”

Back to the tool bench, where she found a small sledgehammer. Two swings and she’d shattered the front passenger side window. She reached in, pushed the button to unlock the doors, then returned to the driver’s side and opened the door. The rabbit was leaning back, seat reclined like he was just taking a little bunny nap. She leaned over him, turned off the car, then found the button to release the seat belt.

He was heavy. Dead weight. No, she thought, not dead. Can’t be dead. Can’t be a killer.

She dragged him from the car. Laid him down on the cement floor of the garage.

Air. She had to get air. She unlatched the lock on the overhead door of the left bay of the garage and yanked it open. She took a deep breath, then crouched beside the rabbit. She placed two hands on the mask, and gently, ever so gently, she pulled it off.

A sob escaped her lips. She snatched her cell phone from her pocket and dialed 911.

While Rhonda waited for the ambulance, she thought about Ella Starkee—how the Magic Man was found dead in his living room the day Ella was rescued and was able to describe him and his car. He was a thirty-two-year-old janitor, described by coworkers and neighbors as a helpful, friendly man. Later, in a televised interview, Ella had only this to say about his death: “It’s sad, really. Sometimes, a person does a bad thing but it doesn’t make them a bad person. Sometimes…” she paused here, twirled her hair in her fingers, then looked straight at the camera, “sometimes, what a person needs most is to be forgiven.”

D
ANIEL HAD BEEN
gone for five days. Aggie was pacing in Rhonda’s living room, talking to Clem and Justine. Rhonda hovered in the kitchen, out of their line of sight, but where she could hear perfectly. She heard Aggie’s footsteps, the fevered pitch of her speech.

“Something’s happened to him,” Aggie insisted as she rattled the ice cubes in her empty glass, a not-so-subtle hint for one of them to pour her another gin and tonic.

“Ag, you’re overreacting,” Clem told her. “He’s just lying low. Guaranteed he’ll be back any minute now hungover and all fired up about some cockamamie money-making scheme.”

“He’s never been gone this long,” Aggie said. “A night or two. But not this long. Do you know what I did today, Clem? I even called up Laura Lee.”

Clem cleared his throat. “What did she say?”

“She claimed not to know a thing, but I think she was lying.”

“Why do you say that?” Justine asked.

“Because that’s what women like her do. They lie.”

Clem mumbled something Rhonda couldn’t make out, then she heard Aggie softly sobbing.

“I’ll go put on some coffee,” Justine said, and Rhonda darted back to her room.

“WILL DANIEL REALLY
come back?” Rhonda asked. She and her father were side by side in his old car in the woods.

“Of course, sweetie. Of course he will. Don’t you worry.”

But Rhonda
was
worried. If Daniel was out of the picture, what was going to stop Clem and Aggie from being together all the time? Surely not Rhonda’s mother. Clem would leave Justine and Rhonda and pick up his old life with Aggie. The thought of it made Rhonda’s stomach ache. She reached up and touched the wiry stitches above her eye. There were seven of them. Lucky number.
Right.

Peter got nine stitches. Tock and Lizzy hadn’t been hurt at all when the wall came down. But the weird thing was, Lizzy hadn’t said a word since that night. Not to Rhonda or Peter, not even to Tock.

“She just needs a little time,” Tock said. “Let’s all quit bugging her about it.”

CLEM TURNED AND
looked at their ruined stage once again. “I still don’t get it,” he said. “Did you all have some kind of fight?”

“Sort of,” Rhonda said, unwilling to admit to her father that she really had no idea why they’d torn it down, other than that Peter had told them to.

“It just seems like such a shame,” Clem said. Above them, the
pirate flag flapped in the breeze, the painted skeleton face the one remnant of their play that hadn’t been destroyed.

“I’ve been thinking,” Rhonda said, eager to change the subject.

“Nineteen seventy-nine was the year Peter was born.”

Clem’s jaw tensed. He gripped the cracked steering wheel and stared out at the woods in front of him, imagining some invisible road. “Yes. It was.”

“So that means Peter is your son, right? My brother.” The words felt thick and bitter in her mouth:
son
,
brother
.

Clem closed his eyes. Shook his head. “No. He’s Daniel’s son. You can see that, right? He’s the spitting image of his dad.”

“But if you and Aggie were married…” She opened the glove compartment and found only a tangle of wires and the shredded leaves of an abandoned mouse nest.

Clem sighed. Got that faraway look in his eyes he did just before telling one of his stories.

“I remember standing in front of the nursery window and pointing Peter out to nurses, visitors, any passers-by. My son. My boy. My Yankee doodle, born on the Fourth of July, all-American kid.”

Clem played with the gear shift on the steering column, put his foot on the gas pedal, and pushed it to the floor. It let out a rusty squeak of protest, reminding them they weren’t going anywhere.

“It was exactly a year before I found out the truth,” Clem continued. “Peter’s first birthday. We had a little party in the backyard with Daniel. He brought red, white, and blue hats, streamers and sparklers. I went inside to put the baby to bed, but I forgot his blanket. It was his special blanket, he never let go of it. When I came back out into the yard to get it, I saw them: Daniel and Aggie. They were…” he cleared his throat. Rhonda nodded, trying hard to imagine the scene—all of them so young, her father married to Aggie, thinking he’d had a baby with her; thinking his life was perfect until that moment.

“When I stepped out the back door into the yard that night, I heard this strange popping sound inside my head, like a little explosion of bright white light cleaning everything out.”

Rhonda nodded. It was a little like how she felt tearing down the stage; like everything she knew and understood was somehow over.

“I knew right then that Peter was Daniel’s son. I think part of me knew it all along, even in the very beginning. But I pushed that part to the back of my brain. We believe what we want to believe, Ronnie; even when the truth is right there under our noses.”