The Jennifer McMahon E-Book Bundle (129 page)

“Stokes says you have information?” he said, backing away from Tara.

“The latest victim,” Tara said. “We know who she is. The hand was scarred from an old dog bite.” Her voice was coiled with excitement.

Stu Berr didn’t show any sign of a reaction, just studied Tara for a few seconds before speaking again.

“So who is she? This gal you know with the dog bite.”

Tara nudged Reggie, in a way that was more of a body check than a nudge. “Tell him, Reg. Tell him everything.”

Stu Berr turned his big, jowly face from Tara to Reggie.

Reggie took in a breath and spoke the words. “I think it’s my mother, Vera Dufrane.” Stu Berr looked at Reggie, then scanned the hallway. The reporters were keeping their distance, but Stu wasn’t taking chances. He pulled the kids farther back down the hall toward a bench and had Reggie sit down next to him. It was the same bench Reggie had been left on when she was five and Lorraine came to the station to pick up Vera.

“What makes you think that?” the detective asked in a low voice.

“The scars are between the thumb and index finger, right? A dog attacked me when I was five, she pulled it off, and her hand got all torn up. She could never bend her pointer finger after the accident. The dog . . .” Reggie reached up and touched her new ear, felt the scars behind it.

A light seemed to go on behind Stu Berr’s eyes, making them glitter in the dim hallway.

She wondered if Stu remembered, if he’d ever seen her mother’s hand. She tried to remember a time when Charlie’s dad and her mom were ever together, and couldn’t. She could picture her mom talking with Charlie’s mom a few times at birthday parties and school events, but Charlie’s dad was never around. And Vera usually wore gloves in public to hide her ruined hand. People thought she was being chic in an old-fashioned way.

Stu Berr pulled a small pad from the front pocket of his jacket and scribbled something down.

“When was the last time you saw her?” he asked, still holding pen to paper.

“Yesterday. At the bowling alley. I was supposed to meet her there but my bike got a flat tire. Then I twisted my ankle running, so I didn’t show up in time. She said . . . she said she wanted me to meet some guy. A guy she was gonna marry.”

Tara gasped. “You didn’t tell us that!”

Reggie looked back at Stu Berr. “But I was late. By the time I got to the edge of the parking lot, she was getting into a tan car. I called, but she didn’t hear me.”

“Did you get a look at the driver?”

“No, I was too far away. He was wearing a hat. A baseball cap. And the left taillight was out.”

Stu Berr scribbled furiously in his little notebook. “So it wasn’t a car you recognized? ”

Reggie shook her head. “No. But a couple weeks ago, she met a man at the bowling alley and ended up leaving with him. He drove a tan car.”

“The same car?”

“I can’t say for sure, but it could have been.”

“Of course it’s the same car!” Tara squealed. “How could it not be?”

Reggie told Stu everything she could remember about the man in the bowling alley.

Stu Berr closed his notebook. “Is there someone at your house now?” he asked Reggie. “Someone to look after you since your mom’s not around?”

Reggie nodded. “My aunt Lorraine. She lives with us.”

Stu Berr nodded. “Thanks for coming in,” he said. He stood up and started to walk away.

“Umm, Detective Berr?” Tara called. “Do you think we could get a ride home? Reggie’s ankle is all messed up. My mom dropped us off here, but she had to get to work.”

“Sure,” he said. “Go wait outside and I’ll send a cruiser around.”

They crossed the cool marble floored entry hall, passing the throng of reporters, and made their way out the thick glass doors into the sticky morning. Reggie’s ankle throbbed and she was limping.

The cop at the top of the steps held the door for them. “You all have a good day, now,” he said, eyes hidden behind mirrored sunglasses.

“Can you believe it?” Tara practically squealed. “We get to ride in a cop car! Do you think we can ask them to turn on the lights and siren?”

Charlie rolled his eyes. “Jesus, Tara! What are you, seven?”

Reggie hobbled down the side of the steps that wasn’t taped off, Charlie holding her arm.

They plunked themselves down on a bench at the bottom, and Reggie bit her lip hard, willing herself not to cry.

“It hurts bad, huh?” Charlie asked, nodding toward her ankle.

Reggie nodded, wiped at her eyes, and turned to look at the steps behind them where, just hours ago, her mother’s hand had been left in a milk carton.

At the top of the steps was the arched entryway they’d just come out of. The two cops stood on opposite sides, like gargoyles in uniform.

The words
PROTECT AND SERVE
engraved above the doors seemed, to Reggie, an impossible promise.

Chapter 23

October 20, 2010

Brighton Falls, Connecticut

“W
HEN WAS THE LAST
time you saw her?” Reggie asked her aunt. They were seated at the kitchen table of Monique’s Wish. It was nearly seven o’clock. Reggie had thrown a bag together quickly, stopping in the kitchen long enough to grab her espresso pot and a bag of ground coffee. She’d driven back to Brighton Falls as fast as she could, hesitating only when she got to the front door of Monique’s Wish. She had stood, hand on the knob, feeling as if the house was alive, breathing and hungry. That it just might gobble her up and spit out the bones. Then she’d touched the hourglass necklace, thought of Tara, and stepped inside.

Now, the coffee bubbled on the stove, filling the kitchen with its familiar rich aroma, comforting Reggie on some deep level.

Len had called and left a message on her phone an hour ago, just as she’d crossed the state line into Connecticut. She nearly answered.

“Shit, Reggie, I just heard Neptune’s left another hand! I’m at your house and it’s all locked up. Where are you?” His voice was crackling with panic. She should call him. She knew she should. But part of her was still good and pissed about the way he’d walked out of her house and got a little twinge of satisfaction from letting him stew in worry. It was twisted, and she knew it. She told herself she had bigger things to worry about than whether she and Len might have a future together.

The
Hartford Examiner
was on the table between Reggie and Lorraine. The headline read
HAS NEPTUNE RETURNED TO BRIGHTON FALLS
? And there was a brief article describing how a new hand had been found in a milk carton on the front steps of the police station. The article said the police knew who the hand belonged to but refused to comment at this time. Reggie knew it wouldn’t take the papers long to find out who Tara was and that she’d been working as Vera Dufrane’s private nurse. The media were going to have a field day with this one. Martha Paquette was going to be over the goddamn moon.

“Monday morning. She left to go pick up a prescription refill for your mother and to do a few other errands. She never got to the pharmacy. I’ve told the police all of this over and over,” Lorraine said. She looked exhausted and wrung her hands together as she spoke. “That young Detective Levi was here. He asked so many questions my head was spinning. Then he went up and searched through Tara’s room. It was just like before. Just like when your mother—”

Reggie cut her off.

“Did Tara say what other errands she had to do?”

“No,” Lorraine said. “But she was in a hurry. She seemed very tense, but Vera had had a bad night, and Tara was up with her. I don’t think she got much sleep.”

“A bad night?”

“A horrible night, actually—she woke us up screaming, insisting that Neptune was here, in the house, that he’d come through a door in the wall above her bed. I went in and tried to help, but that just made her more frantic. Tara finally had to sedate her. They were up for a while after that, whispering. I even heard poor Tara singing to her—I think that’s how she finally got to sleep.”

Reggie’s shoulders slumped. She shouldn’t have left. She should have been here for her mother, for Tara. Maybe if she’d stayed, Tara wouldn’t have been taken. But why Tara? Maybe the answer wasn’t so complicated. Reggie remembered the copy of
Neptune’s Hands
Tara had pulled out of her bag, the way she’d confessed to hoping Vera might give her some clues to help her figure out who Neptune was.

What if she finally got her wish?

Be careful what you wish for
. That was something Lorraine used to say all the time when Reggie wished out loud for things like not having to take the SATs or eat fish again for supper.

“Do you think Mom could have said something to her? Given her a clue that might have led Tara to Neptune?”

Lorraine frowned. “Regina, don’t be ridiculous. Tara’s a smart girl. I can’t believe she’d go chasing after a killer on her own.”

Reggie nodded, thinking,
But you don’t know Tara like I do
. Going after Neptune was
exactly
something Tara would do. But that was the Tara of twenty-five years ago. Did the grown-up Tara have just enough of a reckless streak to try something so dangerous?

Reggie stood up, took the espresso pot off the burner, and poured a cup for herself. She made Lorraine a cup of peppermint tea.

“Okay,” Reggie said. “First thing is, we talk only to the police. No press. Second, I think we need to get some decent locks put on the doors here.”

“What about another nurse for your mother?” Lorraine said.

“No,” Reggie said. “We’ll take care of her ourselves as long as we can. I don’t think it’s safe bringing in a stranger.”

Lorraine nodded, then stared down at the tea Reggie had placed in front of her. She continued to clutch at her own hands, which were dry and chapped. “Poor Tara,” she said.

Reggie took a sip of espresso. “It’s day one,” she said.

“What?” Lorraine said, picking up her cup and taking a tentative sip.

“If it really is Neptune and he sticks to his regular schedule, I’ve got to find her before day five.” If Tara could be brave and reckless, then so could Reggie. She thought of Levi, the bumbling boy detective, and knew that the police couldn’t save Tara. It was up to Reggie. And this time around, she wasn’t a scared thirteen-year-old kid. She was no detective, but she was good at problem solving, at putting a string of unlikely things together and having them make sense. If she could design an award-winning house, couldn’t she put those same skills to use to figure out a way to capture this son of a bitch before he killed Tara?

Lorraine choked on her tea. “And how are you going to do that?” she asked once she was done coughing.

“However I can,” Reggie said, reaching absentmindedly for the hourglass, turning it over.

Upstairs, a bell jingled.

“That’s your mother,” Lorraine said, standing. “Tara got her a bell so she can call for us whenever she needs anything.”

“I’ll go,” Reggie said, sucking down the rest of her coffee and heading for the stairs.

“I
T’S YOU,”
V
ERA SAID,
peering up at Reggie.

“Yes,” Reggie said, squinting at her mother in the dim light. There was a radio playing an old Bob Seger song. The room smelled of medicine and talcum powder.

“But they said you went away.”

Reggie smiled down. “I came back.”

“Where’s my angel? The one who sings?”

“Tara’s not here, Mom.”

“Where is she?”

“I think he’s got her,” Reggie said.

“He?”

“The man who took you. The man who cut off your hand. Neptune.”

Vera closed her eyes tight, the muscles of her face contracting, accentuating the bones, making her look like a skin-covered skull.

“Do you know who he is, Mom? Do you know where he’s taken Tara?”

When Vera opened her eyes, she smiled, and Reggie felt a glimmer of hope. “Do you know the weather in Argentina?” she asked.

Reggie sighed. “No, Mom, I don’t.”

“The seasons are reversed. Fall here, spring there. You just have to look around you and know that down there, it’s the exact opposite.”

Reggie nodded. “Can I get you anything, Mom?”

“Some ice cream would be nice,” Vera said.

“Coming right up.”

Reggie went down to the kitchen, put a scoop of chocolate ice cream in a little dish, and brought it back up. Her mother was fast asleep. Reggie set the ice cream on the bedside table, next to a clipboard that had a chart to help them keep track of medications. Her mother got long-acting morphine every twelve hours, short-acting morphine every four, clonazepam for anxiety every six. And if she was especially agitated, she could have lorazepam. It looked from the chart like she’d been getting the maximum dose of everything since Sunday night. No wonder she wasn’t making any sense.

Reggie left her mother’s room and went across the hall, into the room Tara had been staying in. The bed was made. Tara’s empty backpack sat on a chair, and Reggie went through the pockets but found nothing. Reggie opened dresser drawers, finding underwear, socks, T-shirts, jeans, and sweaters. It felt invasive, pawing through another woman’s clothing like this, but she was desperate to find any sort of clue. The neat piles of clothing Tara had made were all disheveled—Detective Levi had already searched through them and found nothing. It seemed foolish, looking anyway. But she told herself that maybe there was something he’d missed; something only a kindred spirit, a blood sister, might be able to find.

The bedside table held only a flashlight, a purple pen, and a half-full glass of water.

What did you expect?
she asked herself.
A treasure map leading right to Neptune?

If only.

Her heart sank into her stomach. She was failing Tara already. She looked down at her watch, seeing the seconds click by while Tara sat tied up in a dungeon somewhere, her right arm ending in a club of bandages.

Reggie felt like she’d been thrust into the middle of one of Tara’s old games.
I’ve been taken captive by a serial killer. You have four days to follow the clues and find me.
It felt like a test and a cruel joke and a nightmare all tangled up together.