Wonderland

by Jennifer Hillier

  “I’m really glad you’ve come by,” Bianca said. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting Earl’s new deputy chief, and I must tell you, I was pleased he hired a woman. We don’t have nearly enough women in positions of authority here in Seaside.”

  “Thank you,” Vanessa said. “I didn’t expect to be so busy right off the bat, was hoping to settle in a little bit more, but dead bodies are notoriously inconsiderate of a cop’s personal needs.” She waited a beat for the laugh—or at least smile—the joke should have generated, but the CEO’s face remained blank. “Anyway, my son is a huge fan of Wonderland, and I’ve been promising to bring him here since we moved. Haven’t been able to make it happen yet.”

  “How old is your son?”

  “Seven. He’s hoping he’s big enough to ride the Legion of Doom.”

  Bianca crossed her legs. “If you’re interested, I’d love to offer him a special tour of Wonderland. If he can be here early one morning before the park opens, I can have one of the ride mechanics show him how the Legion of Doom is maintained. He’ll be allowed to operate the control panels to make the roller coaster move.”

  “He would go nuts for that.”

  “Call me directly and I’ll arrange it.” Bianca’s words were polite, but her face continued to remain largely expressionless. “I met your daughter the other day. How’s she enjoying Elm Street? I hear she’s doing very well.”

  Ah, that explained the sudden transfer. “You make it a point to check on your new Wonder Workers?” Vanessa smiled. “I wouldn’t think you’d have time for that.”

  “I don’t normally,” Bianca said. “But she struck me as enthusiastic, mature, and ambitious. That’s a rare combination in girls her age. I wanted to ensure she was in the right job to make the most of those qualities. But you’re right, I’m normally much too busy to have personal contact with the Wonder Workers.”

  “So then I suppose you don’t consider sex to be personal contact.”

  Bianca blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “You were having sex with Aiden Cole, is that right?” Vanessa didn’t miss a beat. “Also known as Homeless Harry?”

  “What?”

  “Aiden Cole,” Vanessa said patiently. “You were sleeping with him three years ago just before he went missing. You just said you don’t have much personal contact with the Wonder Workers, so I assume that means you don’t consider sex to be personal contact. Or perhaps the Wonder Workers you’re sleeping with are the exceptions to that rule. Which is it?”

  Bianca’s face reddened. “I can assure you, I’ve never had a sexual relationship with any of my Wonder Workers. How dare you come into my office and accuse me—”

  She stopped. Vanessa was holding up the naked picture of Bianca and Aiden Cole, the one Jacob Wei had texted her. “Normally I’d ask if this was you, but considering I can clearly see your face in the photo, I don’t think it’s necessary. You have gorgeous hair, by the way. You should really wear it down more.”

  Bianca let out a breath and leaned back in her chair. Her demeanor—which had been polite but strangely distant to begin with—shifted to hard and cold. “Where did you get that?”

  “I can’t say,” Vanessa said. “And I apologize for showing it to you, but I wanted to spare you the trouble of lying to me.”

  “Why are you here, Deputy?” Bianca stared at her. “Is it to embarrass me? Because if that’s the case, I should tell you that you’ve made a huge mistake. The chief of police is a very good friend of mine, and once I tell him how you’ve treated me, he will be very disappointed.”

  “And the mayor is a very good friend of mine,” Vanessa said. “And when he hears of Earl’s disappointment in me, well . . .” She held out her hands, palms up. They were empty. “These are all the fucks he’ll give.”

  The CEO fell silent. A few seconds later, having regained her composure, she said, “Are you always this aggressive and rude?”

  “Only when someone lies to me.” Vanessa put her phone away. “I have no patience for liars. If you’re straight with me, this will go much faster. I personally don’t care whether you had with sex with Aiden Cole, because he was eighteen and it was legal. It’s obviously inappropriate given the fact that you’re the boss of, well, everything, but that’s not for me to judge. And he looked pretty happy in that picture.”

  “Do I need a lawyer?”

  “Why, did you kill him?”

  “Of course not!” Bianca said hotly.

  “Then why would you need a lawyer? Aiden is dead. It’s not like he can file a sexual harassment suit against you, which he threatened to do, didn’t he?”

  Bianca’s jaw tightened. She seemed not to know what to say to that.

  “How long were you sexually involved with Aiden?” Vanessa asked.

  “Six weeks. Seven. I can’t remember, exactly.”

  “And why did it end?”

  “It ran its course,” Bianca said. “As relationships do. He wasn’t surprised. He’d already moved on, anyway. But he did get upset, and some unkind things were said. I didn’t take them personally.”

  “Was Tyler Wilkins upset when you ended it with him, too?”

  Bianca sat up straighter. “Tyler Wilkins? What are you talking about?”

  “You were sleeping with him, too,” Vanessa said. “I have pictorial proof of that, as well. Do you need to see it, or can we skip that part and just go straight to the truth?”

  Bianca stared at her, trying to gauge whether Vanessa was bluffing. Vanessa didn’t have the sketch of Bianca nude that Carl Weiss had found under Tyler’s bed, but she had no doubt it had existed.

  “It was also a brief fling,” Bianca finally said. “What have I done that’s so wrong? I’m here at the park all the time. I live in Seaside, for Christ’s sake. Do you know how difficult it is to meet men here? They’re all married or they’re teenagers. Haven’t you ever slept with anybody you worked with?”

  “How many Wonder Workers altogether?” Vanessa asked.

  “There have been . . . several.”

  “Kyle Grimmie?”

  “Yes.”

  “Blake Dozier?”

  A full five seconds passed, and then the CEO slumped in her chair a little. “Yes.”

  “Did you kill them?”

  Bianca’s head snapped up. “They’re dead?”

  “We think so.” Vanessa was surprised by Bianca’s reaction. The woman seemed genuinely shocked. “We haven’t found them yet, but there’s evidence to suggest that Blake, Tyler, and Kyle are all dead, yes.”

  The CEO slumped deeper into her seat and let out a long, slow breath. “I didn’t kill them.”

  “Assuming I believe you,” Vanessa said, “I have to ask you the next obvious question. You were sleeping with these boys—sorry, young men. They’ve all gone missing. You weren’t concerned about that?”

  “I . . .” Bianca looked around, helpless. It seemed to be the first genuine emotion, other than shock, that the woman had registered since Vanessa had begun speaking to her. “Of course I was concerned. But you have to understand boys at that age. They don’t stick around. The ones who are local, who grew up in Seaside, they want out. The first chance they get, they go off to college, or they join the military. They leave. The ones who are in Seaside for the summer to work at Wonderland can’t wait to go back to where they came from once the season’s over. They leave, too.” Her expression grew distant. “Some go off and do great things. Some are never heard from again. I don’t track where they go. When they’re gone, they’re gone.”

  There was an element of truth to what Bianca Bishop was saying, but of course Vanessa couldn’t let her off the hook that easy.

  “Okay, back to Blake,” she said. “Did you see him before he died?”

  Bianca shook her head. “No. I was actually trying to avoid running into him. He didn’t ta
ke the breakup well. He wanted to get back together.”

  “Were you in your apartment here the night he died?”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t see or hear anything unusual?”

  “The walls are soundproofed. I wouldn’t have heard a thing.”

  “So you were alone.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s a terrible alibi,” Vanessa said. “Why didn’t you tell anyone you were here?”

  “Nobody asked.”

  Sadly, Vanessa could believe that. She herself hadn’t been aware that there was a private apartment inside Wonderland, because Oscar hadn’t mentioned it, and neither had Earl. Neither had Carl Weiss, for that matter. She’d had to hear it from Donnie, who’d told her as an afterthought.

  “Tell me about your relationship with Glenn Hovey.”

  Again, Bianca looked surprised. “Well, he’s worked here a long time. Since the beginning, actually.”

  “When the park was still World of Wonder.”

  “Yes. He and my uncle Nick were friends. They’d both been through a lot.” Bianca paused. “With Jack Shaw.”

  “Are you aware Glenn’s been arrested and is in our custody?” Vanessa asked.

  “Jesus Christ,” Bianca said. “No, I didn’t know that. Earl didn’t tell me.”

  “It’s not Earl’s job to tell you.” Vanessa leaned forward. “Glenn Hovey had several items belonging to Blake, Aiden, Kyle, and Tyler hidden in his home.”

  Bianca stared at her. “He killed them?”

  “We’re still piecing it together,” Vanessa said. “Do you yourself have a personal relationship with Glenn Hovey?”

  “I . . . oh, Christ.” Bianca squinted, as if a headache had just come on, and she removed the pins and elastic holding her bun in place. Her hair was longer than Vanessa expected, and a vibrant shade of red that couldn’t be natural. But it was gorgeous nonetheless, and as she massaged the tension out of her scalp, Vanessa could finally see the appeal she might have on a young male Wonder Worker.

  “I used to torment him a long time ago,” Bianca said. “I was nineteen, and I’d been at the park for maybe two years, and I was a very angry person. Back then, Hovey was in his thirties, and he was very socially awkward. The only reason my uncle kept him around was because Uncle Nick had an extreme sense of loyalty to those he’d felt helped him. I didn’t know the whole Jack Shaw story back then, and suffice to say, I wasn’t the kindest person. I teased Hovey a lot about his shyness around girls, not realizing he was quite sexually confused at that point. One night, just for fun, I came on to him. We didn’t actually have sex. He had . . . performance issues. Which I made him feel ashamed of.”

  “How did Glenn Hovey help your uncle Nick?”

  Bianca closed her eyes, continuing to massage her scalp in circular motions. “Uncle Nick told me that Hovey killed Jack Shaw,” she finally said. “He went to his house when Shaw’s wife was away. Dumped gasoline over him while he slept. Lit a match.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Vanessa’s mind flew back to the conversation she’d had with Oscar while they were in bed, when she’d asked him if he knew who killed Jack Shaw. Oscar had said that if he knew, he wouldn’t tell her.

  “I don’t know if it’s true,” Bianca said. “I didn’t ask questions. After Shaw’s house burned down, I know that Uncle Nick had a lot of intense conversations with Carl Weiss, whose little brother was one of Shaw’s victims. Carl spoke to the fire chief, and the fire was declared an accident—just your run-of-the-mill natural gas explosion. But nobody was sad Jack Shaw was dead. Nobody wanted to know how it happened. They were just glad it did.”

  Vanessa felt her own headache coming on as she worked to process this. If Nick Bishop and Carl Weiss both knew the truth, then obviously Oscar did, too. They’d all covered it up.

  “You can’t possibly understand it, but Shaw’s death was a good thing for everyone,” Bianca said. “I understand if you’re going to arrest Hovey for Aiden Cole and the other Wonder Workers, but for Jack Shaw? Even if he did it, no jury within two hundred miles of Seaside would convict him for that one.”

  “And then your uncle bought the park a few years later,” Vanessa said. “Turned the place around. Turned Seaside around.”

  “Along with the assistance of the banks here in town, the support of Seaside PD, and the old mayor, yes. Everybody wanted Uncle Nick to succeed with Wonderland.”

  “So who all knows the truth about Shaw’s death?” Vanessa wondered just how deep the conspiracy went.

  “You mean, who was aware of what Hovey told Uncle Nick?” Bianca was choosing her words carefully. “Just Earl, the fire chief, me . . . and Oscar Trejo.”

  Vanessa did her best not to react.

  “There’s nothing Oscar doesn’t know,” Bianca said. “And there’s nothing he wouldn’t do to support Uncle Nick, or the park, or me personally, for that matter. We’re extremely close, he and I.”

  Vanessa’s heart skipped a beat. “In what way?”

  “We’ve known each other a long time.” Bianca finally offered a small smile. “First we were friends, and then it turned into something more. We’ve had our ups and downs, and we’ve been with other people during that time, but I think we’re on the right track now.”

  “Romantically, you mean?” Vanessa found herself holding her breath.

  “Yes,” the CEO said. “We’ve been spending a lot of time together. Yesterday, we both canceled everything and just spent time together alone, reconnecting. I’ve spent a lot of years pushing him away, but that’s all done now. He’s my equal, and that’s what I need. No more Wonder Workers. I want a stable, normal relationship with someone who knows me and loves me, despite my flaws.”

  Doesn’t every woman? Vanessa had to refrain from expressing the thought out loud. Well, that explained why Oscar hadn’t bothered to return any of her texts. She was surprised by how she was feeling right now. She was sadder in this moment than she expected to be, and more jealous than she’d ever been in her entire life. With great effort, she forced to herself to put her feelings aside and focus on why she was here: to solve a series of murders.

  “If you were here at the park when Blake Dozier climbed the Wonder Wheel and when Aiden Cole’s body showed up, how is it possible you didn’t see anything?” Vanessa pointed at the window. “Look at this view. You have a clear shot right to the midway. I don’t understand how you couldn’t have noticed someone climbing the wheel, or someone dropping off a dead and partially decomposed human body.”

  Bianca winced. “I didn’t see anything. I was sleeping.”

  “You didn’t see Glenn Hovey? He was scheduled to work that night.”

  “I was sleeping,” Bianca said again. “If I saw him, I’d have said something.”

  “As I said before, that’s not much of an alibi.” Vanessa stood up. “I think we should finish this conversation at the police department.”

  “What? Why?” Bianca stood up, too. “I was here all night. And do you really think I’m strong enough to drag a dead body across the park? If anyone killed Aiden, it was Hovey.”

  “And we’ve arrested Hovey because he’s our main suspect,” Vanessa said. “Especially in light of the evidence we found, and what you just told me about him killing Jack Shaw. But it’s not the whole story, and I think you know more than you’re telling.”

  “What reason would I have to lie?” Bianca said. “You don’t think I want whoever’s murdering these boys to get caught? Of course I do. It’s terrible publicity for the park—” She stopped, realizing what she’d just said. “Obviously it’s a tragedy. But I had nothing to do with it. Hovey’s always been obsessed with boys he can’t have, and I’m probably partly to blame for why.”

  The CEO had already confessed to sleeping with each of the missing boys, which alone was enough for probable cause. She was hiding so
mething more, though, and Vanessa could feel it.

  “Until I can clear you, you’re a suspect,” she said. “Maybe you helped Hovey. Maybe you were upset that your boy toys were leaving you, and you had him do your dirty work. You have no alibi for where you were—”

  “Okay, fine. You want a better alibi? I was trying to protect him, but—” Bianca took a breath. “I wasn’t alone that night, okay? I was with someone, and he’ll vouch that I was nowhere near the midway when Blake Dozier climbed the wheel, and when Aiden Cole’s body was dumped.”

  “I’ll need a name.”

  “Oscar Trejo.”

  Vanessa blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “I was with Oscar that night,” Bianca said. “All night long. You can ask him yourself. I didn’t want to say before because I didn’t want Oscar to be involved. He’s already thinking of leaving the park, and something like this—I wanted to keep him out of it. But that’s who I was with, and it’s easily verifiable.”

  Of course it was. It was easily verifiable because Bianca Bishop was so certain that Oscar Trejo would cover for her. Even if it was a barefaced lie. Oscar hadn’t been with Bianca that night—he couldn’t have been; he was with Vanessa. But the CEO obviously didn’t know that. Whatever she said, she was certain her VP of operations would cover for her.

  Because he probably always had. And if they were back together, then he probably always would.

  What else had Oscar done for Bianca Bishop?

  “Come with me,” Vanessa said. “I’d rather not walk you out in handcuffs, but I will if you’re resistant.”

  “You’re arresting me? For what?”

  “Obstruction of justice. Making false statements. Conspiracy. Take your pick.”

  “Talk to Oscar! He’s right down the hall.” The panic was beginning to show on Bianca’s face. “Earl won’t stand for this.”

  Vanessa pulled out her handcuffs. “Bianca Bishop, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you can or say will be used against you in a court of a law. You have the right to an attorney . . .”