ABC Amber LIT Converter (8 page)

Rhonda thought of Aggie’s steady decline: the drinking, the increasingly strange behavior. How she started to play with her hair, pulling out one strand at a time, working at it for hours until she looked like a dog with mange. She got paranoid, accused Clem and Justine of knowing where Daniel was and not telling her. She drank to excess, drove her car into Clem and Justine’s house, and bit the earlobe off a police officer who was sent to investigate a report of a woman dressed in only her underwear trying to steal avocados at Price Chopper.

Aggie eventually ended up in the state hospital for six months, then went off to her sister’s in Maryland. When her sister got burned out, she had Aggie moved into a sort of residential hotel for the mentally ill.

“And you’re sure it was Lizzy’s dad who took her?” Warren
leaned toward Rhonda. His breath smelled sweet and chocolaty and she let herself wonder, for exactly one second, what it might be like to kiss him.

Rhonda nodded.

“Positive. Two weeks after she left, we got a postcard. There were a few more, all saying she was doing fine and telling about adventures she was having with Daniel. The last one was from San Francisco. I was a junior in high school then. The card just said she was taking singing lessons, which was really weird.” Rhonda closed her eyes, tried to remember the sound of Lizzy’s voice and couldn’t. What she remembered instead was her friend’s habit of singing the wrong words on purpose, trying to get a laugh.

“Weird?”

“Lizzy gave up speaking after her dad left. Wouldn’t talk to anybody. Three years without a single word. Then she writes that she’s taking singing lessons.” Rhonda laughed weakly, and began peeling the lip off of the now empty paper cup in her hand.

Warren nodded. “Freaky.”

“Yeah,” Rhonda agreed. “We were close, then the summer Daniel left, everything just kind of fell apart. Things were never the same.”

“That must have been really hard. Your best friend just disappearing like that.”

There it was. The thing she’d longed for from Peter over the years. Just a simple acknowledgment of how hard it was on Rhonda, on all of them. How hard and wrong and terrible the whole mess was. Instead, she heard it from Warren, practically a stranger, but with those two sentences, a thousand times more empathetic than Peter had ever been. It didn’t seem fair. But life wasn’t, was it? She looked down at the photo of Ernie on theMISSING flyer, then went back to working at tearing apart her cup.

“Itwas hard. And the hardest part has always been not knowing what happened to Lizzy. We never heard from her again. She
and Daniel just snuck off and made this whole other life somewhere and none of us ever knew why.”

Warren nodded. “Two lost girls,” he said.

“What?” Rhonda’s cup was in shreds. She scooped the torn pieces into a pile.

“Lizzy and Ernie,” he said.

Rhonda let out a breath of air through her teeth. “The two have nothing to do with each other, Warren.”

Warren began picking up the torn pieces of Rhonda’s cup, studying them like they were evidence. “I’m just saying that I think things happen for a reason, it’s just that we don’t always know what the reason is.” He gnawed his lower lip, then continued. “I don’t think it was a mistake or just shit luck that you were here in the parking lot at the Mini Mart when Ernie was taken. You were meant to see it, meant to get involved.”

“I don’t buy it,” Rhonda said, scooting her chair back, away from him. “Lifeis all about shit luck and random chaos. That’s how the universe was created. It’s why we’re all here.”

“YOU SHOULDN’T BEhere,” Trudy hissed at Rhonda.

It was lunchtime and Katy and her mom showed up with a cooler full of sandwiches for the crew at Pat’s, with Trudy Florucci in tow.

“Aunt Trudy, she’s here because she wants to help,” Katy said.

“Make her leave,” Trudy said to Pat, who had stepped in to intervene.

“Trudy, she’s…” Pat started to say.

“I made the sandwiches. It’s the one thing I’ve been able to do to help since Ernie was taken. It took every ounce of energy I had. And I’ll be damned if that little twat is going to sit on her fat ass eatingmy sandwiches thinking she’s some kind of fucking hero when it’s her fault Ernie is gone!”

Pat nodded at Rhonda, who stood up on shaky legs. Pat put an arm around her, guiding her toward the back of the store. “Go hide out in my office till she’s gone,” Pat whispered. “We need you here.”

Rhonda did as she was told, taking a seat behind Pat’s massive desk. In the corner, a small TV was tuned to CNN. On the wall beside her was a clipboard with the employee schedule on it. Pat’s desk was cluttered with magazines, newspapers, printouts andMISSING flyers with little Ernie peering up, smiling. In the middle of the chaos was a large granite rectangle, similar to a grave marker, the wordsPAT HEBERT, STATION OWNER AND MANAGER engraved on one side. Beside it was a framed photo of three little girls, one of whom was most definitely Pat at ten or eleven. It was odd to see that Pat had been young once, but somehow comforting to see that, from appearances anyway, not much had changed. Pat looked serious, the oldest girl of the group, the girl who was obviously in charge. The middle girl had a complacent, bucktoothed smile. The littlest one, the girl on the end, had her hair done up in ribbons and looked a little mischievous, like the minute the photo taker turned away, she’d pull the ribbons out.

In front of the photo in its heavy metal frame was the issue ofPeople with Ella Starkee, the farmer, and his border collie on the cover. Rhonda flipped it open, scanned the article, which she’d already read several times.

Ella’s kidnapper met up with her on her way home from school. He asked if she wanted to see a magic trick. She shrugged. He pulled a coin from his ear and gave it to her. As she palmed the shiny quarter, he grabbed her wrist and pulled her into his car.

“Coast is clear!”

Rhonda jumped. Warren popped his head through the doorway, his smile sweet and slightly apologetic, like Trudy’s behavior was somehow his fault. “Katy’s still here, but her mom and aunt are gone. Come on out and grab a sandwich.”

Back at the volunteer table, Katy pushed a tuna on wheat toward Rhonda, who refused it, though she was starving.

“My aunt Trudy’s not herself,” Katy told Rhonda. “She just wants someone to blame, you know? And I’m sure that when she gets her head back on straight, she’ll see it wasn’t your fault about Ernie. I mean, I can see that clear as day, you know? What were you supposed to do? The guy grabbed her and was gone.”

Rhonda nodded.Gone. Hopping off into the sunset, hand in paw.

“So this is what I’ve been able to figure out: the rabbit had been visiting Ernie for at least three weeks. The last time we know he saw her for sure was this past Thursday: Ernie told her mom she missed the bus and the rabbit brought her home. She drew pictures of him hiding in the bushes by the playground at school and talking to her through her bedroom window. But most of the pictures looked like this,” Katy said, slipping a page surreptitiously out of a school binder that saidGIRLS RULE in sparkly letters on the cover—a bright crayoned drawing labeledRABBIT ISLAND in crude letters.

“Shouldn’t the police have this?” Warren whispered.

Katy shrugged. “Ernie made so many drawings of the same scene. Crowley got all of them. I figured I should save one, just in case we never get the others back, you know? They’re evidence now. And it didn’t seem right to give every last one away. It seemed like, I dunno, bad luck or something. Like I was giving away every last piece of her.”

How pleasant it looked, Rhonda thought, like a scene from a brochure showing a tropical island getaway. She studied the palm trees, the multicolored rabbits lounging on neat rows of rocks in the sun, the pale clouds shaped like hopping bunnies. The island was surrounded on all sides by dark, shark-infested water. A small black fence circled the island, and to get in, you walked through a swinging gate guarded on either side by giant bunnies. Pulled up in the water next to the gate was a small brown submarine.

“That’s obviously the Volkswagen,” Warren said, pointing to the sub. “Look at the shape. She’s just added a periscope and propeller to it.”

“But how could the rabbit have used Laura Lee’s car again and again?” Rhonda asked. “I mean, I can see taking it once and her not noticing, but he must have used it several times. That seems pretty chancy.”

“Not if it was someone Laura Lee knew,” Katy said. “Someone she trusted. Someone who had his own set of keys.”

Rhonda shook her head, looked back at the picture.

She saw Ernie and Peter Rabbit in the center of the island, Ernie smiling, holding the rabbit’s paw.Rabbit Island. Rhonda imagined Ernie there right now, happy and warm in the sun. Maybe Rabbit Island was the place everyone who disappeared went to. Maybe, Rhonda thought in spite of herself, Lizzy and Daniel were there too. Perhaps, thought Rhonda as she touched the missing child’s drawing, Rabbit Island was a place populated by all who were lost. She shook her head.Be logical, she told herself.Look at the evidence.

“So if the sub is the car, then Rabbit Island is probably an actual place, too,” she said.

“A zoo maybe?” Warren guessed.

“Looks more like a park to me,” Katy said.

Rhonda nodded. “Chances are it’s not all that far away. When the rabbit took her for these rides, they couldn’t have been gone long. He always got her back home before Trudy noticed she’d been missing.”

“With all this water,” Warren said, “it might be some place by the lake.”

“Could be,” said Rhonda. “The lake doesn’t have any islands but there are plenty of small beaches and rocky outcroppings.”

“There’s another thing—something only the police know,” Katy said as she looked up from the drawing. “For some reason or other, the rabbit had this weird name he called her.”

“Weird name?” Rhonda asked.

“He called her Birdie,” Katy said. “I heard my aunt tell my mom. Crowley found a card from Peter Rabbit tucked under Ernie’s mattress. It was addressed to Birdie.”

“Jesus,” Rhonda said.

“Bizarre,” Warren said, sucking in his lower lip and biting down.

“But you didn’t hear the Birdie thing from me,” Katy said, sliding the drawing back into the folder and sticking the folder in her backpack. “And if anyone sees I’ve got this, it’ll go straight to Crowley. If my aunt catches me talking to you, she’ll have a conniption. Maybe I’ll see you guys later. If I can’t come back this afternoon, I’ll make it tomorrow.”

“Take it easy,” said Warren, smiling. “And thanks for lunch!”

“No problem,” Katy said, practically glowing as she smiled back at him.

“So what do you think?” Warren asked as they watched Katy hop on her bike outside.

“I think someone’s got a crush on you,” Rhonda said.

Warren’s face flushed. “I mean about the drawing and this weird bird name,” he said.

“I don’t know yet,” Rhonda said, standing. “You want a candy bar?” Warren shook his head, started doodling on the paper in front of him.Birdie , he wrote.

Rhonda walked over to the rack of candy, picked out a Snickers bar and brought it up to Pat at the register. Pat looked up from the latest Ernie spread in the newspaper (in which a photo of Pat herself featured prominently) and gave Rhonda a huge smile.

“It’s on the house, Rhonda. It’s the least I can do to thank you for all of your work here. You know, what Trudy said wasn’t fair and I’m sorry.”

Rhonda shrugged.

“You keep your chin up, now,” Pat ordered. “We mustn’t start
to lose hope. We’ve got to stick together and bring this little girl home.” She gave Rhonda a robust pat on the shoulder. Maybe Warren had spoken up for her, and she was off Pat’s list?

Pat came out from behind the counter and walked over to Warren.

“FYI, we have a new volunteer, Cecil Lowry, coming in around two. He used to be the fire chief but he’s been retired for years now. He’s still got a lot of connections, knows everybody. He’ll bring a real sense of order to things here. He’s a character alright—I think you’ll like him.”

Then she bent down and said something in a low voice to him. He glanced over to Rhonda, then away. He whispered something back, looking a little frustrated.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Rhonda muttered to herself. So much for being off the suspect list.

She walked down the hall past the bathroom, office, and storeroom, and into the garage, where Jim was doing an oil change while he listened to the Red Sox game on the radio. There was no sign of Peter.

There was a metal desk in the corner, with a large appointment book taking up most of the surface. Rhonda saw no harm in wandering over and taking a look. It was opened to today’s date, June 7. Peter was the one supposed to be doing the oil change. There were two inspections and a brake job scheduled for later that afternoon: things she knew Jim wasn’t qualified to do. She flipped back through the greasy pages, glancing at the schedules over the past three weeks. Laura Lee’s car had been in three times. Peter had installed a new fuel line and fuel filter back on May 15. The VW was in again on May 25 to have the rear brakes replaced. Then, on June 1, last Thursday, Peter had replaced some clamps and hoses. There was also a list of things he hadn’t gotten around to: replacing the fan belt (he had to order the part) and fixing the latch on the passenger side door (a note in the book said Laura Lee
reported the door only stayed closed if it was locked). Peter had penciled her in again for next Friday to finish the work. Doubtful she’d come now that the car had been impounded.

But ithad been in last Thursday, which was, according to Katy, when the rabbit had given Ernie a ride home in his submarine.

Shit.

Rhonda closed the book.

“You doing our scheduling now?” Jim had come up behind her.

“Huh? Oh, no. Sorry, just looking. I was wondering when Peter worked next.”

Jim nodded grimly. “Supposed to be here now. I don’t know what’s gotten into him lately. Shows up when he feels like it, I guess. Must be nice.”

“I guess he’s got a lot on his mind,” she said.

“No excuse,” Jim said.

“I guess not,” Rhonda answered. “I better get back to the phones.”

On the short walk back to the tables in the corner, Rhonda made up her mind not to tell Warren about seeing Laura Lee’s car in the scheduling book. Like it or not, the evidence was stacked against Peter and proving his innocence was going to be tricky. She needed more clues. Rhonda peeked into Pat’s office as she went by—empty. She stepped in and glanced at the clipboard on the wall next to the desk: the employee schedule. She flipped back to the week before and scanned the schedule for Thursday. Pat was working, along with someone named Carl. And Peter. Surely, if Peter drove off in Laura Lee’s car for any length of time, someone would have noticed. She couldn’t very well ask Pat, who would just see it as more evidence of Peter’s involvement (and possibly Rhonda’s too), so what she needed to do was find this Carl guy. She saw his name on the schedule later in the week. Perfect.

Rhonda hurried out of the office and back down the hall, and there he was: the suspect of the hour.

“Hey, Ronnie,” Peter called.

He was standing next to Warren, holding the hair back from his forehead, showing off his scar. Warren, apparently, had remembered Laura Lee’s instructions and thought to ask about the scar. Beside Peter was Suzy, dressed in a tie-dye shirt and cutoff shorts. Rhonda scanned the store quickly: no Tock. She practically bounded up to them.

“Aunt Rhonda!” Suzy said, “Daddy says I can come see Sadie again soon.”

“Of course,” Rhonda said. “Any time you like.”

“Can I bring her some apples?”

“Of course, sweetie. She’d love that.”

“What, you have a horse or something?” Warren asked.

Rhonda and Suzy giggled.

“A pig,” Suzy told him.

He looked shocked.

“A guinea pig,” Rhonda explained.

“Hey Ronnie, can you keep an eye on Suzy for a minute?” Peter asked. “I’ve gotta go patch things up with Pat and Jim. Tock and I screwed up our schedules and I’ve got Suzy all day. I had to bring her to the doctor’s this morning.”

“I had another storm,” Suzy said.

“They changed her medication again. Freaking doctors. You’d think they’d have a clue what would work here. That’s her third seizure in a week.” Peter was already on his way across the store and into the garage. Suzy sat down at the table, flipped over a flyer with Ernie’s picture to the blank side and began to scribble.

“So what’s this guinea pig like?” Warren asked, directing the question more at Suzy than Rhonda.

“She’s albino,” Suzy said. “She’s all white with red eyes. Like a ghost.”

Suzy began to draw an octopus, counting the legs carefully.

“No kidding,” Warren said. “How cool is that? When do I get to meet her?” Now he looked in Rhonda’s direction.

“Anytime,” Rhonda said before she had a chance to think better of it.

“Today? When we get out of here?” Warren suggested.

“Why not?” Rhonda said.

“She likes apples,” Suzy told him.

“Well then I better go see if I can find one. I don’t want to make a bad first impression by arriving empty-handed.” He got up and walked over to the coolers to search for an apple.

“He’s funny,” Suzy said.

“Yeah, he is,” Rhonda agreed. Had she really just invited Warren home? What was she thinking? Why did he even want to come? Maybe he was just an animal lover.

“Daddy says you’re helping to find Ernie,” Suzy said, looking up from her drawing. The octopus now had eight legs and had been joined by a smiling starfish.

“We’re sure trying,” Rhonda said. The reality was, they weren’t doing shit. It seemed no one was. Forty-eight hours later, there was no sign of the little girl. It was like they disappeared into thin air, she and the rabbit in the submarine.

It could so easily have been Suzy,Rhonda thought as she stroked the little girl’s hair.It could have been any little girl.

“Hey, Suzy? Did you know about the rabbit visiting Ernie?” Rhonda asked.

“Yep. He came to school.”

“You saw him?”

“No. Only Ernie. She said she was lucky. That Peter picked her because she was special. I only met theother Peter.”

Was Suzy drawing a rabbit there, hopping through her underwater scene?

“What other Peter?” Rhonda’s heart began beating double-time.

No, it wasn’t a rabbit. Suzy was drawing an angelfish.

“The stuffed one. Like a toy? Ernie said the real Peter gave her the stuffed Peter to keep her company. So she wouldn’t be lonely when he couldn’t be with her.”

“So he gave her a stuffed rabbit?”

“Uh-huh. White and fluffy but it got dingy quick.”

“Come on, Suzy Q, time to jump back in the saddle!” Peter called.

He was walking stiffly toward them.

“That was fast,” Rhonda said.

“It doesn’t take long to get canned,” Peter said, trying to sound casual, but Rhonda heard the faint tremor in his voice.

“What?” Rhonda asked.

“They fired me. Said my working here was bad for business.”

“They can’t do that!”

“Sure they can,” Peter shrugged. “It’s a small town. People talk.” He drew in a breath, blew it out slowly, calmly. Only someone who knew him as well as Rhonda could read his face: he was seething.

“About what?” Suzy asked.

“A lot of nonsense, that’s what,” Peter said. “Now grab your latest masterpiece and come on. We’ve gotta get the shopping done and dinner cooked before your mama gets home.”

“I DIDN’T KNOWguinea pigs were so talkative,” Warren said as he kneeled on the floor of Rhonda’s living room, stroking Sadie, who was showing off with whistles and coos.

“I think she’s got a thing for you.”

“She just loves me for my apple slices.” He reached into the aquarium and fed her another. “Her pink eyes are kind of freaky.”

“Some cultures believe that albinos have magical powers,” Rhonda said.

Warren raised his eyebrows. “Don’t tell me: that’s why you chose Sadie, to help with your mojo?”

“Nope.” Rhonda leaned in and stroked Sadie’s head. “No magical powers here. Just a distinct lack of melanin. I rescued her from the lab at school.”

Warren tossed in another apple slice, then stood up, wiping his hands on his shorts. Rhonda found herself staring at the fine hairs on his legs and wondered, for an instant, what it would be like to run her fingers lightly over them.

Get over it,she told herself.

Rhonda had dated in college. Not much, but enough to know that it always ended in disappointment. She’d gone out to the movies, dinner, even fooled around a little, but it never amounted to anything. No matter how nice the guy, how well he treated her or how much they had in common, he still wasn’t Peter.

“You want a drink or something?” Rhonda asked, turning away from Warren and his legs. “I’ve got Diet Coke and beer. Or I could make tea.”

“Beer would be great.” He followed her down the hall toward the kitchen, stopping to study the dissection drawings.

“Did you do these?” Warren asked, finger hovering over the eviscerated rabbit, tracing the outline of its lungs and heart.

Rhonda nodded.

“They’re really good. Kind of a sick thing to put up on the wall of your home—animals all taken apart like this—but they’re excellent. Beautiful, even. You’re an artist.”

Rhonda shook her head. “I just draw what I see. An artist interprets and manipulates—I don’t have that kind of imagination or ability.”

“Yeah and I just film what I see too and they call it art. It’s all about perspective, Rhonda.”

She shrugged and led him to the kitchen, where they settled in
at the table with a couple of beers and some mildly stale pretzels Rhonda dug out of the back of a cupboard.

“I’ve been thinking about this thing with Peter,” Rhonda said.

“I think it’s shitty that Pat and Jim fired him. And it’s probably not even legal.”

Warren nodded. “Probably not.”

“So I thought maybe you could talk to them. Convince them that firing him isn’t the right way to handle things. It’s just going to make everything worse. People are looking to Pat as a key player in this Ernie thing—she’s had way more media exposure than Trudy and she’s pretty much become the star of Pike’s Crossing overnight. If she fires Peter, it makes him look even more guilty.”

“I don’t know, Rhonda. Jim’s pretty easy. But Pat, once she makes up her mind about a thing, it’s like trying to stir dried cement.”

“Will you try?”

“Okay. I’ll try. If you’ll do something for me.”

“What?”

“Consider that Peter might not be what you think. I’m not saying he’s the one who took Ernie, I’m just asking you to look at the evidence and realize he might be involved in some way. He might not be the person he seems.”

“I’ve known Peter since I was born!”

“I know. I know you have. But everyone has secrets.”

She was about to open her mouth to say that she knew all of Peter’s secrets, and he all of hers, but she was interrupted by the ringing phone. She excused herself and grabbed the cordless phone from the table in the front hall.

“Ronnie? It’s Tock. Listen, Suzy just told me she was talking to you about Ernie this afternoon.”

“Yeah, a little.” Rhonda began to pace back and forth across the hall, studying the dissection drawings.

“She said you asked about Ernie and the rabbit.” There was an edge to Tock’s voice that made Rhonda cringe.

“I just wondered if she’d ever seen the rabbit,” Rhonda explained. She looked at her own rabbit drawing, the layers of fur, skin, and tissue peeled back to reveal the bright, jewel-like organs inside.

Tock blew out a breath, hissing into the phone like some far-off snake. “She had one of her worst seizures ever last night. Did Peter tell you that? God, I can’t believe he brought her into Pat’s in the first place, all that Ernie stuff around…it’s too much. She’s alittle girl , Rhonda. A very upset little girl with a serious medical condition that isn’t being controlled very well at the moment.” Tock’s voice was strained. She sounded like she was on the verge of either crying or screaming.

“I’m sorry, Tock. God, I would never do anything to hurt or upset Suzy. I was just making conversation. I’m so sorry. I’ll be more careful in the future.” Rhonda stood with her back against the wall and let herself sink down, back sliding, until she was sitting on the floor.

“Thank you. That’s all I’m asking.”

“Of course,” Rhonda said. “Thanks for calling, Tock. Thanks for telling me.” She started to stand.

“Wait, there’s something else. Did you stop by my mother’s trailer yesterday?”

Rhonda took in a breath, let herself fall back to the ground. Shit. “Yeah. I just wanted to see how she was.”

“And you brought some guy…some movie director or something?”

“I brought a friend. My friend Warren. He’s not really—”

“My family’s been through a lot these last couple of days. I don’t know what it is you hoped to find by interrogating a sick woman and a little girl, but you’re not the cop, Rhonda. It’s not your job to go digging around in other people’s lives. You’re just
awitness . A witness who did nothing, which, let’s face it, is pretty fucking suspicious, isn’t it?”

Before Rhonda could respond, Tock slammed the phone down, sending a smashing shriek across the lines, echoing inside Rhonda’s already rattled skull.