The Jennifer McMahon E-Book Bundle

by Jennifer McMahon

  “Jesus, an M?” Nicky asked, sitting up straight. “Are you sure it was an M? Do you know what this means? It’s a fucking clue. It’s probably the initial of the killer. The police suspected it was someone she knew, someone she felt comfortable with.”

  I nodded, agreeing. Then I continued. I told Nicky about my plan with Ellie, about the double-agent scheme, about how it went so wrong. I tried not to make excuses for myself. I described Del’s last afternoon at school. Nicky’s eyes brimmed with tears, then seemed to darken with rage. I let myself go on, fearful that maybe I had gone too far, that I was at risk of alienating him, being seen as the enemy, but it was too late. And as much as I was ashamed of what I had done, it was a relief to finally be telling my story.

  I described how in my last moments with Del, I was chasing her, a rock in my hand. Then I jumped forward in time, telling him everything that had happened since I had come back to New Canaan: the cat’s disappearing and then turning up dead next to my missing knife, the footprints in the snow, the matchstick message, my mother’s painting, Del’s sheriff’s star mysteriously showing up in my purse. I told him all about Opal: that she said she’d seen the Potato Girl, that she was sure it was she herself who was the killer’s intended target, that I’d caught her twice searching the woods for something. I described the scene earlier that evening, when my mother spoke to me in Del’s voice, demanding her star back. I told him I thought I was going crazy, that I didn’t believe in ghosts and the supernatural but was running out of rational explanations. Either I was completely losing my mind, or my tangible, scientific, orderly way of looking at the world was just shit. Lousy choices.

  When I was finished, I poured two fingers of Wild Turkey into my empty glass and sucked it down fast. My hand shook. Nicky didn’t look me in the eye. I wanted to take his face in my hands, turn him gently toward me so I could read some response in his eyes.

  Nicky poured himself another drink and studied the flame of the lantern.

  When he finally spoke, his voice was hoarse, like he was on the verge of either crying or screaming. I felt a little afraid.

  “Do you know where Del got that star, Kate? Did she ever tell you?”

  “No. She never told me.”

  “That mute kid, Mike Shane, gave it to her. That’s what I finally figured anyway. She said the boy who gave it to her loved her. She told me that it was supposed to remind her that she was his guiding star or some shit like that. Puppy love, ya know? He gave her notes, too. Poor bastard couldn’t talk, but he sure could write. Poured his mute little heart out. God, how Del loved that damn star. Thought she was really the sheriff, like it gave her some kind of power or something.”

  Her talisman.

  He fiddled with his lighter, turning it around and around in his fingers. He had mechanic’s hands: blunt fingers, dirt under the nails, grease deep in the lines of his skin. Like it or not, I found myself longing to be touched by those fingers. To be taken back in time.

  “I remember.” I nodded, taking my eyes off his hands. “I remember Mike Shane, too. Do you know what ever happened to him?”

  “I hear he’s up in Burlington. A buddy of mine at the garage knows his family. Real trailer trash, the whole lot. Sammy, the guy I work with, says Mike’s dad used to burn the kids with cigarettes and shit. Sad story.”

  “Yeah, I’ll say. He got about as much crap at school as Del did. It’s no wonder they were drawn to each other.”

  Nicky nodded. “Kate, I’d like to see your mother’s painting.”

  I grabbed a candle and led him back to the studio. He walked right up to the canvas, still clutching the bottle of Wild Turkey, and squinted at the shadowy form in the flames. I stood behind him, holding up the candle.

  “Spooky,” he whispered, taking a step back and bumping into me. We stood like that a moment, his back pressed into my front, me breathing on his neck. I knew I should step away, retreat while I could, but it was too late. I leaned forward, pressing into him, bringing my left hand up to his shoulder, tracing the outline of his arm, reaching around to his chest, where I felt his heart racing through the soft cotton folds. But as I slid my hand inside his jacket, that wasn’t the only thing I felt.

  Suspenders? I thought at first when I felt the webbed nylon strap, but when I followed it to the bulge on his left side, I knew just what it was.

  “What is this?”

  “Protection,” he said, reaching in and removing the small automatic pistol, then laying it down on the cot.

  Like it or not, seeing the gun gave me a little shiver of excitement. What can I say? I guess I have a secret thing for gun-toting bad boys. Give me an outlaw over a cardiologist any day.

  “From little old me?” I whispered into the back of his neck, my hands feeling the straps of the nylon holster.

  “You can never be too careful,” he said.

  My fingers found the top button of his shirt and undid it, then the second. I let my hand slide beneath his shirt, brushing gently against his right nipple.

  “That’s so true,” I said. “Maybe you shouldn’t have been so quick to give up your weapon.”

  At last, he turned.

  Our second kiss, some thirty years after the first, was no less violent, and fueled by a raw desperation unknown to us as children.

  KATE, WHAT HAPPENED TO THE STAR? What’d you do with it?”

  Nicky was facing me, leaning on his elbow, holding the bottle of Wild Turkey between us. The candle flickered on the table beside the cot, the light playing in his hair and over his skin. He looked lovely.

  “Buried it in the root cellar,” I answered drowsily. “I did it just last night.” My fingers traced their way from his throat to his sternum. I didn’t want to think about the star. It felt good to be with a man again. Too good. Now here he was, about to ruin it.

  “You know what we have to do, don’t you?”

  I didn’t respond. I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to like the answer. Sure enough:

  “We have to go get it. We have to give the star back to her.”

  I jerked my hand from his chest and sat up, irritated.

  “Jesus, Nicky. We’re talking about a girl who’s been dead more than thirty years. How are we supposed to give her an actual, tangible thing? You want to dig up her grave and throw it in?”

  He shook his head. “I think we have to give it to your mother. I think she’ll know what to do.”

  This was great. My sexy hero and his brilliant suggestions.

  “My mother! Oh Christ, this is perfect.” My words came out with a slight bourbon slur. “My mother—in case you don’t recall—is just a step away from being stuck in a nursing home. I’m taking her to visit one in the morning, as a matter of fact. You’ve seen her. Her mind is mush. She’s not going to know what the hell is going on if we go handing her some rusted-up old star. It’ll just confuse her even more.”

  “Maybe so. But she seems to be communicating with Del in some way. The painting sure shows that. And what about the way she talked to you in Del’s voice, asking for the star back?”

  “I could have imagined that. It was a voice that didn’t sound like hers—that’s all. It didn’t have to be Del’s. She doesn’t know what she’s saying, Nicky. She’s sick.”

  Now he sat up.

  “Whatever, Kate. You can backpedal all you want. I’m just saying I think we should go get the star. You don’t have to give it to Jean tonight, or ever even. Let’s just go find it. What harm can that do?”

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t remind him that I’d ditched the star in a desperate attempt to keep myself out of jail. That Del’s old badge was what the police would consider crucial evidence and whoever was caught with it would have an awful lot of explaining to do.

  “No harm, that’s what,” he said, giving me his sly, flirtatious grin as he leaped up from the cot and began dressing. “It can’t do no harm at all. Now come on, Desert Rose, put on some clothes and let’s go.”

  Reluctantly, I o
beyed. As I was buttoning my blouse, my gaze fell upon the painting and the figure within it. The eyes—her eyes—seemed to bore into mine.

  Caught again.

  I RAN THE BEAM OF THE FLASHLIGHT over the shelves, then down to the dirt floor. There was no trace that I could see of last night’s activity—I had done a good job covering my tracks. And in my drunken state, I didn’t have the faintest notion where I’d buried the star. Nothing to do but start digging. Just pick a place and begin. Heigh-ho, heigh-ho.

  Nicky took a swig from the bottle he’d carried with him, then set it on a shelf. I picked a spot toward the back—I had been near that candle in the jelly jar, right?—stepped back, then stomped the metal spade into the ground, nearly tumbling over.

  I was good and drunk. This had sunk in on the walk through the woods and down the path on the hill. By the time we got to the old pea field, I was clinging to Nicky, asking him questions that all started with the word remember.

  Remember when you were Billy the Kid?

  Remember when you taught me to shoot that old BB gun?

  Remember the way our teeth banged together when we kissed?

  Such force. Like an accident.

  Nicky helped steady me as we walked, though he stumbled now and then over a tree root or a clump of weeds. Yes, he told me. I remember. I leaned into him, felt his heat, yearned to be back on the cot.

  Then we were at the root cellar and he was pulling the door open and I was feeling my way down the steps, smelling Del all around me. I missed the last step, twisted my ankle, landed on my knees in the dirt. I looked around with the flashlight. Nicky put the shovel in my hands. He held the small trowel in his own.

  “Let’s do it,” he told me. “Dig it up.” Only it sounded almost like he said her. Dig her up.

  Digging. Digging. Digging to China. Grave digging. Digging potatoes. One potato, two potato. I started to hum it, then felt bile rising in my throat.

  “Gonna be sick,” I said.

  “Keep digging,” he told me. “It’ll pass.”

  This too shall pass. I dug like an old dog trying to find the tasty bone she’d just buried. Teeth are bones, I remembered. What are Del’s bones like now, deep inside their metal coffin? I wondered. Metal. Metal shovel. Metal star. My mouth tasted like tin.

  The star wasn’t in the place I thought it should be. The place I’d just buried it.

  “We need a metal detector,” I complained.

  “We’ll find it,” he promised. “You just have to remember.”

  He stabbed the trowel into the earth floor.

  Remember. Yes, I remembered. Remembered the way that letter M looked on Del’s chest. Puffy. Infected. Her secret. A good kind of hurt. I stopped digging and reached for the bottle, polished it off, rinsing the metallic taste from my mouth. Said, “Gobble, gobble,” then went back to work. A dwarf in a mine. Heigh-ho, heigh-ho.

  “What were the seven dwarves digging for anyway?” I asked Nicky, laughing, nearly falling over. “Fucking dwarves,” I said. “Made it look so easy.”

  I forced my spade into the earth once more, a foot over to the right, knowing the star had to be there. Star of wonder. Star of light. Star with royal beauty bright.

  “Remember,” I started to ask, “that first day? How you threw open the cellar door and there was Del with her shirt off and there I was looking and none of us knew what was coming. None of us knew it was all an accident we were getting on board, a fucking derailing train. Remember how none of us knew?”

  There was the click of my shovel hitting something metal. I bent down and felt around in the dirt. There it was once again. Rusty and pointed. Heavy in my hand. More like a burden than a wish come true.

  “Christ,” I said. “The deputy found it.”

  Then I leaned over and threw up.

  PART 2

  The Last Days

  NOVEMBER 17, 2002

  June 16, 1971

  One potato, two potato, three potato, four She’s coming after you now, better lock the door

  13

  November 17, 2002

  I’M NOT STAYING HERE!”

  “No one said you had to, Ma. We’re just here to look.”

  My mother’s eyes were blank and wild, focused on a spot above my right shoulder. “I’m not staying here!”

  I turned to give an apologetic look to the woman giving us the tour—a Mrs. Shrewsbury, who did, in sad fact, resemble a small, beady-eyed rodent.

  “Perhaps,” said the shrew, as she peered over the top of her glasses, “your mother would be more comfortable sitting in on an art class while we finish the tour.”

  I nodded and we sat my mother down at a long table where several old people were set up with fat brushes, huge sheets of newsprint, and cups of tempera paint in primary colors. I helped my mother into a plastic smock and watched the art teacher get her started.

  “I’m not staying here,” she repeated, but some of the intensity had gone out of her voice. Once she had the brush held clumsily in her bandaged hand, she settled right down, forgetting her surroundings.

  Mrs. Shrewsbury showed me the residents’ rooms, dining hall, visiting lounge, and a calendar of events. I nodded vaguely at everything, too hungover to do much else. My ankle throbbed and I walked with a slight limp. I was eager to end the tour and escape the terrible smell of the place—a sickening combination of antiseptic and boiled peas.

  The events of the night before were a blur. I knew Nicky and I had gone to the root cellar to dig up the star and that we’d been successful—the rusted sheriff’s badge was under my pillow in the morning, dirt from the root cellar floor still clinging to it. I didn’t remember getting home, or into bed. I didn’t remember Nicky leaving, but knew it must have been near dawn. When Raven stopped by on her way to work to drop off some bran muffins, she commented on it. I see you had an overnight guest, she said. When I explained that we’d just been talking she only raised her eyebrows and said, Mmm. It was clear that Raven didn’t believe a word I said anymore. And I didn’t exactly have warm and fuzzy feelings toward her after my visit from Zack. If she didn’t want me to see her daughter, so be it, but come on—she should have at least had the guts to come and tell me herself. Was she really that afraid of me?

  I KNOW HOW HARD THIS CAN BE,” Mrs. Shrewsbury was saying. “It’s a big decision and your mother may seem…resistant. As a nurse though, you know the level of care a person in your mother’s condition requires. It’s just too much for one person, twenty-four hours a day.” I nodded, thinking of my mother’s painting, her new habit of speaking in Del’s voice. You don’t know the half of it, Shrew.

  “There’s always a lot of guilt involved,” Mrs. Shrewsbury continued. “But in time, you’ll see you did the right thing. She’ll settle in. Honestly, people in your mother’s condition don’t hold grudges. After a few weeks, it will be like she was always here.”

  And that’s supposed to be a comfort?

  Then I thought of how easily distracted my mother had been by the paints in the art room. Maybe it wouldn’t be that hard for her to settle in after all.

  “She’ll be safe here. Well taken care of. As I said on the phone, we have two vacant rooms. She could move in this week if you wanted.”

  I nodded, said it wasn’t a decision I wanted to rush into. Though in truth, I was more than a little eager to be done with the whole mess and get on a plane back to Seattle. Safely ensconced in a nursing home, my mother could paint whatever she wanted, speak in Del’s voice to her heart’s content. But as I thought of leaving, I felt a little tap on my shoulder: The killer’s still out there. And what if Opal really is in danger?

  Mrs. Shrewsbury patted me on the arm and said again that she knew how hard it was.

  Then she led me into the dayroom where a television blared. Three old women with their walkers parked nearby stared at a game show. An old man sat on an orange plastic chair in the corner, smacking his gums and singing a song. The tune was familiar to me, but I couldn’t m
ake it out—something childish, singsongy. I got a little closer so I could hear him over the applause on the television.

  “Potato Girl, Potato Girl, smells so rotten she’ll make your nose curl,” he sang.

  Jesus. My mouth went dry. I wondered if I had misheard him.

  “What did you say?” I asked, leaning down so that I was at eye level with this toothless old man in stained pajamas. His blue eyes were watery and pale. He smelled like spoiled milk.

  “Oh that’s just Mr. Mackenzie,” said Mrs. Shrewsbury. “He’s quite the singer, aren’t you, Ron?”

  “One potato, two potato, three potato, four—she’s coming after you now, better lock your door.” He was chanting now, not singing, his cloudy wet eyes fixed on mine.

  “Ron Mackenzie? Did you used to drive a school bus?” I asked.

  The old man only grinned, smacked his lips. A little drool trickled down his stubbled chin.

  “Sure you drove the bus, didn’t you, Ron?” asked Mrs. Shrewsbury. “Drove until you retired. You were a mechanic, too, down at the town garage, weren’t you?”

  “She’s coming after you now, better lock your door,” Ron repeated, his eyes on me, his gummy smile wide.

  “Do you remember Del Griswold?” My voice was squeaky and desperate. “The Potato Girl? She used to ride your bus.” I had my hand on his sleeve and was holding back the impulse to shake the answer out of him.

  He grinned. Drooled a little more.

  “She was a monkey,” he finally said. “Dirty little monkey. Her brother, too.”

  “Which brother? You mean Nicky?”

  “Potato Girl, Potato Girl, she smells so rotten she’ll make your nose curl.” He was muttering now.

  I stared down at the old man, leaning in so that his hot, sour breath was on my face.

  “M is for monkey,” he whispered. “She was a monkey.”