Wonderland (22 page)

“So why don’t you?”

“Because it’s Seaside. It’s like Hotel California. Every time I try to leave, I keep getting sucked back in. And truth be told, it’s all I know.” He turned back to her. “Is it true that you got hired because of Greenberg?”

“Yes.”

“He owed you a favor?”

“He didn’t owe me anything. He owed my late husband. They went way back.”

“So now you owe him a favor?”

Vanessa didn’t answer. She hadn’t even seen Frank since she’d moved here, and she had no plans to. What they’d done with John that night could destroy them both, and it simply made sense to stay away. “I think he and I are even,” she said.

“Good. Keep it that way. You don’t want to owe anyone in Seaside anything. It’s too high a price to pay when they call in their favors. That’s the only piece of advice I could ever give you.” Carl Weiss turned back to the window. “You can show yourself out, Deputy. Leave the Jim Beam.”

She did as he asked. On the drive back to the department, she called Jerry at the White Oaks Inn. Without preamble, she told him that Tyler Wilkins had been sleeping with the Dragon Lady of Wonderland, and that Carl Weiss had deliberately omitted that fact from the case file. Then she listened through the car’s speakers as the easygoing private detective let loose a string of obscenities that would have made a sailor blush.

TWENTY-NINE

B
ianca Bishop knew what the Wonder Workers called her behind her back: Dragon Lady. Blake Dozier, also known as the Wonder Wheel Kid, had told her about it once while they were in bed together. He’d thought it was funny, and had laughed when he said it. She, on the other, had not laughed, though she supposed there were worse nicknames.

Blake had thought a lot of stupid things were funny. He had snapped pictures of them once while they were lying in bed together, postsex, sheets tangled, bodies naked. She’d flown into a rage when she’d woken up a bit later and he’d showed her the photos, which he’d already uploaded to Instagram. Why did teenage boys always do this? It didn’t matter that in this one, her face wasn’t in the pictures. You could still see her signature red hair and part of her breast, and the idea that she was out there, exposed in any way, was abhorrent to her. The only saving grace was that he’d Instagrammed the pictures in the middle of the night, and so hardly anyone had seen them. She demanded he delete them immediately, and then threatened to break his iPhone if he didn’t delete them from there as well.

She should have known better than to trust someone with her privacy who prided himself on documenting every single thing he did on social media. Blake had begged for her forgiveness, and she’d given it, but his phone was never to be seen in her presence again after that night. When Aiden had tried taking pictures of her three years earlier, she’d smashed his phone to pieces. Which had been no easy feat, considering smartphones were built to withstand blunt force.

Her affair with Blake had lasted longer than most, which is probably why he took it so hard when she’d said it was over. He’d followed her around like a hungry puppy for weeks, arranging to bump into her at places he knew she’d be, trying to talk to her about their relationship. It had gotten annoying. And discretion was important. It was bad enough that Oscar knew she had slept with Blake, but she wasn’t concerned about her VP telling anyone. She had her secrets, he had his, and if she went down, so would he.

It was all Patrick’s fault.

Even thinking about him now, she still felt that familiar tingle. Patrick Voss had been her first love, an eighteen-year-old golden boy with hair the color of beach sand and eyes like the sky just before twilight. She’d fallen deeply in love with Patrick when she was only seventeen. They’d worked together at the park, and they’d had big plans for their lives. Even though Uncle Nick disapproved of her having such a serious relationship at that age, she hadn’t cared. Patrick had promised to take her away from Seaside. Patrick had promised her a new life.

But Patrick had broken that promise. And then he’d broken her heart. And then he’d done the worst thing of all: he’d tried to leave Wonderland. He’d tried to leave Seaside.
Without
her.

It was nineteen years later, and the thought still made her want to smash something. Because she still wasn’t over it. Because she still couldn’t let him go.

•   •   •

When Uncle Nick had first bought Wonderland, Bianca hadn’t been the least bit interested in working there. It was a stupid amusement park, and she had more important things to keep herself busy. She was midway through her senior year of high school and had just received her early acceptance letter to Stanford in the fall. Not only was she going to her first-choice school—
of course
she was going to her first-choice school—she also had a scholarship. It wasn’t an academic scholarship, because realistically, she was smart, but not brilliant. It was for athletics, but it was exactly what she’d been working for her whole life.

Bianca had been a competitive tennis player.

She had dreams of winning a grand slam one day, but realistically knew it might never happen. She was a very good player—competitive, determined, and utterly focused—but as her coaches liked to remind her, she lacked that X factor, that extra amount of god-given talent that separated the good players from the great ones. You were born with it or you weren’t, and Bianca knew there was no point in deluding herself that any amount of hard work or dedication—both of which she had in spades—would make up for it. She’d never win Wimbledon or the U.S. Open. She’d never be a Steffi Graf or a Martina Navratilova.

But that was okay. She was good enough to get a scholarship to Stanford, and good enough to maybe spend a few years on the ATP tour after she graduated, playing tournaments and traveling the world. The Olympics were a given. And when she was done with tennis, she’d go to graduate school. For law. Or business. She had it all planned out.

Tennis was Bianca’s ticket out of Seaside.

But then she’d gotten injured over spring break of her senior year of high school. Bianca had gone horseback riding at a ranch in Raymond, something she’d done a hundred times, and the horse—the same horse she’d ridden a hundred times—was startled by a low-flying plane. He bucked her off. She’d hit the ground badly, at an awkward angle, and had felt something in her back break.

Lying on the ground as she waited for someone to come help her, she felt true terror for the first time in her life. Her fear, in that moment, outweighed the pain.

Three surgeries followed. After the third one, due to her age and her exceptional physical health, her doctors were confident she would walk normally again. Her tennis career, however, was over. Her back would not be able to withstand the rigors of six-hour practice sessions and two hours of strength and cardio training every day. So it was goodbye, Stanford. Hello, Puget Sound State University.

And hello, Wonderland.

Uncle Nick had always looked out for Bianca. He was the one she’d first played tennis with when she was little, the one who’d encouraged her to follow her dreams. When her father left Bianca and her mother, it was Uncle Nick who’d stepped into the father role. Uncle Nick was who she called when her mom was too drunk to drive her to tennis practice. Uncle Nick took over her guardianship when her mom died of cirrhosis after Bianca’s sixteenth birthday. Uncle Nick was always there.

So when he suggested she come work at the park for the summer to get her mind off tennis, she agreed. Bianca had never been into amusement parks, but she knew she needed something to keep her busy while she worked on accepting that her dreams would never materialize, and that her life would never be the same.

“It’s going to be fun,” Uncle Nick had said to her, just after her high school graduation. “You’re my niece, so you can set your own hours, choose your own gigs. You can basically write your own ticket at the park until school starts. It’ll be good for you, B. I promise.”

And he’d been right. It was good for her. It was exactly what she needed.

Her first summer at Wonderland had been the first time Bianca had ever felt like a regular teenager. For the first time since she was a little kid, she didn’t have a grueling schedule. No more 6 a.m. tennis practices, no more strict diet, no more having to choose between homework and sleep. No more high pressure from tournaments. No more coaches yelling at her.

She could just . . . be.

And then she met Patrick—tall, blond, and impossibly handsome. They’d taken one look at each other and had fallen in love the way only two teenagers could. It was movie love, all angst and passion and arguing and laughter and whispers in his dorm room in the afternoons when his roommate was working at the park. Before Patrick, she’d never even kissed a guy, but a week after they met, he’d already taken her virginity. It had been the greatest night of her life—she didn’t think it was possible to feel so close, so connected, to another human being. They couldn’t get enough of each other.

Together, they made plans. Patrick was also attending PSSU in the fall. They would both live on campus during freshman year, and then in their sophomore year, they would move in together, get a little apartment in Seattle’s University District. Patrick would study hard and write songs and play guitar and perform in coffeehouses. Bianca would study hard and teach tennis and prepare for law school. They made plans. All kinds of Big Plans.

Stanford had never seemed so blessedly far away.

But toward the end of the summer, Patrick started pulling away. At first she didn’t think anything of it. Sure, he’d canceled a couple of dates, and there had been a couple of times when Bianca had stopped by his dorm after her shift and he hadn’t been there. But then he stopped returning her calls, and his roommate would always be vague about where he was. When they did speak, their conversations were shorter, more rushed. When she saw him, he was distant. Preoccupied. Distracted.

Still, she wasn’t overly concerned. Why would she be? They were in love. So when he finally broke up with her in August, two weeks before college was supposed to start, she honestly hadn’t seen it coming.

“Have you met someone else?” she’d asked him, struggling not to cry. They were standing outside the Tiny Tom Donuts hut in the center of the Avenue. It was the end of the night and the park had just closed, and whatever doughnuts weren’t sold, the Wonder Workers could eat for free. There was always a bit of a crowd, and Bianca pulled him aside so nobody could eavesdrop. “Is there another girl?”

“It’s nothing like that,” he answered, staring at his feet. “It’s just . . . it all feels so serious, B. You and me, I mean. And we’re starting college in a couple of weeks. You don’t really want to go to college being in a serious relationship, do you? Don’t you want to meet other guys?”

“Other guys?” What the hell was he talking about? “No, of course not. There’s nobody else for me but you. I love you, Patrick. You mean everything to me. And you love me, too.”

“I care about you a lot.” His smile didn’t quite touch his eyes. “You’re a cool girl, and I hope we stay friends. But I just want to go to school and have fun, you know? I want to pledge a fraternity. See if I can put a band together. College will be hard enough without throwing a relationship into the mix, too. You understand, right? I think it’s better this way, for both of us.”

She didn’t understand. She didn’t understand at all.

And he’d been lying when he said it had nothing to do with other girls. Two weeks later, after the end-of-summer Hawaiian luau party where he’d avoided her and had kept himself surrounded by all his friends, she’d waited for him outside his dormitory. She needed to talk to him alone, about something very, very important. When the employee shuttle pulled up, she took a deep breath and stepped forward. But he hadn’t gotten off the shuttle by himself. He’d gotten off the shuttle with a
girl
.

Bianca only knew her by reputation. Her name was Connie Shepherd, and she was a year older. She had deep red hair that looked vibrant even in the dark, which made girls like Bianca—whose natural hair color fell somewhere between light brown and dark blond depending on the season—feel plain. She was gorgeous, confident, and not the least bit socially awkward like Bianca often was. Connie was a natural flirt, and all the boys liked being around her, though Bianca didn’t think Patrick had ever paid much attention to her before.

Well, he was noticing Connie now. After they stepped off the shuttle together, he took the redhead by the hand and kissed her. Then he pulled her into his dorm building, laughing. And while Bianca couldn’t see what happened next, she could picture it, their naked bodies pressed against each other, rubbing and writhing. Patrick kissing Connie all over, doing things with his tongue that he’d done to Bianca, things that made her feel special, things you would only do to someone you really loved. And he was probably telling Connie that he loved her, that she was the only one he loved, and they were probably going to lay in bed all night, making Big Plans.

Bianca had never been one to fly off the handle. Her coaches had always praised her ability to stay focused and calm in tough situations, which had won her a lot of match points, and was probably her biggest strength as a tennis player. Rarely did she lose because of nerves. Anger—when she felt it, which wasn’t often—always began as a slow burn. First there was a little spark, and then there’d be a flame, and if the flame burned long enough, there would be rage.

Pure, white-hot, unfiltered, unapologetic rage.

Bianca had missed a menstrual period and had just taken a pregnancy test that morning after a stealth trip to a pharmacy in a neighboring town; she didn’t want anyone she knew to see her. The test came out positive, and the baby was Patrick’s. Of course it was. She’d never been with anyone else.

Her plan had been to go to Patrick’s dorm and tell him the news in person. She had no idea how he’d feel about it—
she
didn’t know yet how
she
felt about—but she’d been certain Patrick would take her in his arms and tell her that they were in it together, and that everything was going to be all right. He would hold her and stroke her hair and assure her that she wasn’t alone, that he loved her, and that he would always love her.

But that was before she’d found out about that slut Connie Shepherd. Oh, how Bianca hated her.

Two mornings later, Connie Shepherd, age eighteen, was found dead in the woods two miles east of Wonderland. There was a trail near the Falls River where Connie liked to run in the mornings before work. Her body had been spotted by a fellow jogger later that morning, right where the river washed into the bay. After a brief investigation and citing lack of evidence, Earl Schultz, the deputy chief of Seaside PD, concluded that Connie had likely tripped on the trail and had fallen down the bank into the river and drowned. There was a huge gash just above her knee and another one on her temple, both consistent with a fall, but whatever evidence there might have been to suggest foul play had been washed away by the water. Connie Shepherd’s death was ruled an accident.