The Bakersville Dozen

by Kristina McBride

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  Jude shrugged.

  “How did you get here?”

  “Walked,” he said. “From Jonesy’s. The police took me to the station for questioning, then called my parents. They obviously freaked, but I talked them into letting me stay at Jonesy’s anyway.”

  “And then you walked over here?”

  “I couldn’t sleep. Lane’s already passed out in his tent, snoring. Jonesy and his brothers are on clean-up crew.”

  “You came through the woods?” I asked, though I knew the answer from the thistles clinging to the legs of his jeans.

  “Yeah, but I—” Jude’s voice cracked. He cleared his throat. “I had to take the long way. The pond is swarming with cops. They’re looking for evidence.”

  I stiffened. Evidence.

  Wes and I had been at the scene a little more than twenty-four hours ago; we’d fallen right on that blanket, and I’d thrown up on the ground next to Leena’s body. Then we’d taken Tripp and Hannah to see what we had found. I wondered what we’d left behind that we didn’t even know about.

  “Should we walk?” I asked, suddenly wanting to go directly to the pond, where I could hide in deep shadows and watch the police.

  “Nah.” Jude turned and stumbled toward the hammock, collapsing onto the canvas.

  He held a hand out to me, and I felt a surge of relief as he wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me down. I snuggled up to his side, breathing him in, feeling the heat of him melt away all my fears.

  Jude was safe, and he was mine. He knew me better than anyone. It’s like the scavenger hunt—being forced to follow the clues with Wes at my side distracting me—had made me forget the facts, but lying there next to Jude brought them all rushing back.

  I had this sudden urge to spill everything: the clues and the threats and how I had been the first to find Leena. That I’d left her there. And then done the same to Becca.

  “I have something to tell you,” I said slowly.

  “Me, too. Can I go first?”

  I closed my eyes, pressing my cheek to his chest, feeling the vibration of his voice run down the length of my body until it hit my toes.

  “Of course.” I was sure he had a lot to unload. He probably wanted to tell me all about what he’d seen when he’d found Leena.

  “I’m worried about you,” Jude said, his words heavy.

  “What’s new?” I asked. “People have been worrying about me—about all of the girls from The Bakersville Dozen—for months now.”

  “It’s more than that,” Jude said, his voice slow, cautious.

  I met his eyes. “What’s up?”

  “I don’t want to piss you off.”

  “What’s going to piss me off?”

  “It has to do with Wes. I know he’s like a brother to you. That you’re protective of him. But—”

  “I’m hardly protective,” I said, rolling my eyes. “He can handle himself.”

  “Okay,” Jude said. “That’s good.”

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t trust him.”

  “With what?”

  “You.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say next. I pressed my lips together, waiting. Jude took a deep breath. “It’s not like I’m spending time with him,” I said. “I mean, he just got home from college, like, forty-eight hours ago.”

  “Yeah, but he’s been back before now.” Jude dropped a foot to the ground and started slowly swinging the hammock. “I’ve seen him around a few times.”

  “When?” I asked, trying to sound casual. As far as I knew, Wes hadn’t been home since Winter Break.

  “I saw him driving through town a few months ago. Then again on one of the back roads last month.”

  I shrugged, but that odd feeling of fear and doubt and not knowing who to trust, started creeping back in, spreading to places I’d never expected it to reach.

  “So?”

  “I don’t know,” Jude said. “It’s not something I can put my finger on, okay? But he’s never serious, so all of his pranks and plots seem shady. I never know what he’s thinking. It’s like he has something to hide.”

  “Jude,” I said, “Wes is the last thing you need to be—”

  “Take the last day of school. I saw Wes in the hall, and he just breezed past me, like he’d never seen me before.”

  “Wes was at school yesterday?” I asked, trying to sound nonchalant when I felt exactly the opposite. Wes hadn’t said a thing, not even when our attempts to find out about the stolen tiara had taken us right to the school’s main doors.

  “Yeah. It was right after the final bell. I thought it was fate that the host of last year’s Last Day Ceremony walked past me right before we started. I tried to stop him so I could ask a few questions about how he introduced the music, but he just blew me off.”

  My skin broke out in a cold sweat. If Wes was hiding a trip to school, what else was he hiding? And why?

  “Anyway, he was headed toward the student lot—seemed to be in a big hurry. But that’s not what really bothered me. Tonight was just weird. The way he dragged you away from the party.”

  “It wasn’t like that. I told you, I had to go with him.”

  “Right,” Jude said. “Because of something he told you about your brother. Who seems totally fine to me, by the way. I mean, I know you trust Wes, but I don’t. He’s shifty. Pulling you all the way up to the hayloft to talk to you about your brother? What was that about?”

  I shrugged. “He wanted to talk in private.”

  “There are lots of other private places on the farm.”

  My mind raced with all of this new information, my doubt about Wes growing by the second.

  “Look.” Jude ran his thumb along my jaw. “I trust you, okay? And I’m not trying to be all paranoid or overprotective, but I don’t trust that guy. He’s either in love with you and trying to stir up something—”

  “Jude, that’s crazy.” I twisted away from him, trying to slip out of the hammock, but he caught my wrist, his fingers squeezing tight.

  “That leaves another option,” Jude said. “If his whole cloak-and-dagger thing doesn’t have to do with you, it might be about something else. The Bakersville Dozen. The missing girls.”

  “Wes doesn’t have anything to do with any of that,” I said. But as the words slipped out of my mouth, I knew that I could be wrong. The truth was, the killer could be anyone.

  “You never know,” Jude said.

  I slid out of the hammock, feeling it bump against my side as I stepped away. “I’m tired, Jude. I’d better go in.”

  “I love you,” he said, looking up at me. “Bailey, I need you to promise me one thing.”

  “What?”

  He slipped out of the hammock, wavering a little as he stood. He grabbed both of my hands and squeezed them tightly. “Don’t be alone with Wes. Not until the police figure out who’s behind this whole thing and it’s over for good.”

  I looked Jude in the eyes—he was afraid, but not for himself.

  “Okay,” I said. “I promise.”

  Jude sighed, then pulled me to him. “Thank you. You have no idea how much better that makes me feel.”

  I propped my chin on his shoulder and wrapped my arms around his neck, feeling my feet lift off the ground as he spun me in a slow circle. When my toes hit the grass again, I was facing the shadow of the Greens’ house. I glanced up instinctively, my eyes locking on the window of Wes’s bedroom.

  And I saw him.

  He was standing in a ray of moonlight, just beyond the window frame.

  Staring out at us.

  CHAPTER 21

  10:27 AM

  “Did you see the press conference?” Hannah asked. I’d called her as I left my house, just like I’d promised. She was driving; the steady sound of wind and music streamed from her end of the line to mine.

  “Yeah.” I twisted my way down the trail that led away from my house. “When my parents learned about
the bodies, they lost it.”

  “I’m surprised they let you leave the house.”

  “That’s not exactly how it happened,” I said. “They flipped into hover mode, but I faked a headache and said I needed to rest. It was easy to sneak out—they were fully engrossed in the media frenzy.” Watching my dad comfort my mom as they stared at the TV, tears streaming down their cheeks, made the situation feel terrifyingly real, but sneaking away was a risk I had to take if I ever wanted to find a way out of this mess.

  “You’re as slick as Wes,” Hannah said. “You must have picked up some of his tricks along the way.”

  “Shut it,” I said. “There’s no time to talk about Wes. The cops are searching both locations. You think we need to be worried?”

  Hannah laughed.

  I stopped walking, turning my face to the sun as I leaned against the tree that marked a fork in the trail. “There’s nothing funny about any of this.”

  “That laugh was one of supreme sarcasm. Don’t you know me well enough to translate the tone of my—”

  “We don’t have time for this,” I said. “We need a plan, Hannah.”

  “We have a plan,” she said. “That’s why you’re walking out to the pond while I head to the amphitheater.”

  “Sit-Watch-Wait won’t work. We need to get ahead of this guy.”

  “What are you suggesting? We plant hidden cameras at The Flying Pizza to catch him?”

  My stomach churned as I pictured us sitting at a table covered with a red and white checkered tablecloth later that evening, the scent of baking pizza spiraling through the air as we waited for the next clue to be delivered to us.

  “Actually,” I said, “that’s kind of a brilliant idea.”

  “I was kidding. Where the hell are we supposed to pick up cameras, let alone hide them?”

  “I don’t know. But if we could, we might actually learn something new.”

  “Ifs are not something we can work with. So let’s get serious. We need to talk suspects.”

  “I thought we were meeting up with Tripp and Wes to do that later.”

  “Well, I thought maybe we should chat a little on our own first.”

  “You have a reason?” I asked, shifting my weight so the tree’s bark scraped my back through my T-shirt.

  “Kind of.”

  I sighed.

  “I have a few ideas that I might keep to myself when we meet up with them,” Hannah said. “I’d like to see what the guys come up with on their own.”

  “You’re testing them?”

  “Something like that.” I heard a car door click open and slam closed.

  “Are you at Timber Park?” I asked.

  “Just got here. Parking lot’s pretty full. You remember Becca’s bumper sticker?”

  “The one that says THESPIANS DO IT ON STAGE. WANNA WATCH?”

  “That’s the one. I’m counting eleven cars with the same sticker. Which means there are lots of mourning thespians here. Should be dramatic.”

  “Hannah,” I said with a groan, looking down at the batch of daisies and Queen Anne’s lace I’d cut from my mother’s garden. The yellow satin ribbon tying them together stirred in the breeze.

  “Sorry. I had to,” Hannah said. “Okay, aside from the creep factor of Tiny Simmons, we have Roger Turley.”

  “Both obvious possibilities,” I agreed.

  “If the rumors are true that Turley was forcing himself on Emily, then he could be the one.”

  “So why take the other girls?” I asked.

  “Diversion. Pulls the focus away from him when the others go missing. And, if he’s twisted enough to get it on with his step-daughter, he might actually enjoy a little time with the others.”

  “Eww,” I said. “But you have a point. Plus, he was at school Friday. I’m sure it wouldn’t have been hard to find out which locker was mine so he could plant the first clue. And, thanks to you, we already know he was near the locker room where you found Sylvie.”

  “Which leads us to suspect number three,” Hannah said.

  “Sylvie Warner.” I shook my head, thinking of how solid her voice had been after I’d confronted her about stealing the tiara, her eyes locked on mine as she told me to leave her the fuck alone.

  “She’s a freak of nature,” Hannah said. “Totally type A—high-strung, obsessive and controlling to the extreme. Something just might have set her off, you know? Put her in a place where she thought she needed to teach some people a few lessons.”

  “She hated Leena,” I said. “It was obvious whenever we’d meet to try to figure out who was behind the video. Sylvie was all business, and Leena was always laughing at her. But Sylvie’s not strong enough to drag bodies through the woods.”

  “Maybe she didn’t,” Hannah said. “Maybe she walked them to the spot where she wanted them found, and then killed them.”

  “Oh, God, Han, I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “You’ve gotta think of everything, B. Even your brother’s totally effed up suggestion that I might be behind all of this.”

  “He’s an idiot. He didn’t mean it,” I said, but my heart lurched a little, all the same.

  “There’s Jude, too,” Hannah said. “I hate to add him in, but he actually found Leena’s body, which could be suspicious, depending on which way you look at things.”

  “No way, Hannah. I found Leena’s body before Jude. Does that make me a suspect, too?”

  “I wasn’t going to go there,” Hannah said. “But the cops definitely will if they figure out you were at both scenes. Speaking of, are you at the pond yet?”

  “No,” I said. “I stopped walking. Thought it might look disrespectful if I was on the phone when I got there.”

  “You’re chickening out?”

  “Of course not.” I pushed away from the tree and started walking down the trail again, my feet carrying me to the last place I wanted to be. “But I’m still not convinced this is a good idea.”

  “It’s perfect,” Hannah said. “Everyone’s meeting up at one place or the other, though Leena’s bound to draw a bigger crowd. Chances are, the person we’re looking for will be at one of the scenes. Take notes. Get a video if you can do it without anyone noticing.”

  “We’re done with the suspect list?” I asked.

  “Not quite,” Hannah said. “I’m throwing Wes’s name on it.”

  “Why Wes?” I asked, trying to keep all emotion out of my voice.

  “He followed you out to the pond, Bailey. He put himself there, at the scene, in the exact moment that you found Leena’s body. I can’t explain how he would be able to take all the girls or put the first note in your locker. Or how he’d have slipped the tiara on Leena’s head. But him appearing right by your side when you found Leena would be a genius way to join in on the scavenger hunt so he’d be able to ensure that you’d trust him, all while watching every move you make. It’s strange enough to make him a suspect.”

  With everything Jude had told me, I couldn’t help but wonder if she could be right. And then my mind tripped back to Friday afternoon, the moment Wes and I had found Leena lying on that yellow blanket.

  “It’s not Wes,” I said, suddenly sure. “You should have seen him when we found Leena. His face, his voice. He was horrified. And you saw how frantic he was when we were racing to the amphitheater to find Becca. No one could fake that.”

  “All right,” she said. “I was just throwing it out there. It was a longshot, I know. I mean, it’s not like you left him alone with Leena. Right?”

  “What, so I could go take a dip in the pond or something? Why are you asking me that?”

  “The tiara.” Hannah said. “If he was with you the entire time, there’s no way he could have slipped that tiara on Leena’s head after you saw her without it. Which would make him innocent.”

  And then I remembered texting Hannah just after exiting the grass, standing there after hitting SEND, waiting for Wes to emerge behind me. I’d been entirely focused on trying to forge
t what I’d seen. How much time had passed between me sending that text and Wes breaking his way into the clearing? A minute? Two? It would have been long enough for him to grab the tiara from where he’d hidden it and plant it on Leena’s head.

  “I’m almost to the amphitheater,” Hannah said. “But there’s something else we need to consider.”

  I couldn’t speak. I was too busy trying to come up with a reason—any reason—why Wes had taken a minute or more in the clearing alone before he’d followed me. A reason that didn’t involve him tucking a tiara into Leena’s hair.

  “The timing of this is important, Bailey. We have to go back to the beginning.”

  I made the final turn onto the trail leading to the pond, hearing a rush of voices just ahead. Taking a deep breath, I tried to prepare myself.

  “Hannah, back to the beginning means the video. All of this started with that stupid video.”

  “I’ve been thinking, analyzing every angle, and I’m not sure that’s right,” Hannah said. “The video was out for more than three months before Emily went missing. That’s a lot of time between the two events. Something else—something closer on the timeline—might have triggered the kidnappings.”

  “But the video is the root of everything.”

  “It may look that way, but I think there’s a lot more going on here. Which might be why the cops are having so much trouble cracking the case.”

  “Hannah, the girls who have gone missing, they’re all in the video.”

  “Right. But we still don’t have any motive to connect the video to the disappearances. Or the murders. Think of what we said about Roger Turley. If he’s the guy, then all of this loops back to Emily. Maybe he accidentally killed Emily and then took the others to throw the cops off track and the whole thing spiraled out of control.”

  “So you do think it’s Turley?”

  “I don’t know. With so many people involved, there are a thousand scenarios. My point is, we have to stop focusing all of our attention on the video and start to look at the timing of the disappearances.”

  “Emily went missing January second,” I said, my words mingling with the drone of voices drifting from the pond.