Page 22 of The Witch’s Orchard

SEVENTEEN

O N THE WAY BACK from the Jacobses’ neighborhood I pass a strip mall boasting a Taco Bell, a Laundromat, a boarded-up ice cream shop, and a little local diner with an unlit sign above the place that says “Ellerd’s” in old-fashioned spaghetti Western–style letters.

I tell myself I should just go back to the cabin and make a peanut butter sandwich to save money, but then I spot a familiar, beat-up, mostly red Civic on the far side of the lot.

“Perfect,” I say. I pull in and park. It’s nearly seven o’clock and I figure this is as good a place as any to get some chow.

Inside, Ellerd’s looks like it’s had a few iterations over the years, with remnants of each preceding generation’s remodel left behind.

There’s the fifties black and white tile floor and the seventies Formica tables along with the Western-themed wood bar and nineties mauve seat cushions.

The whole place is an exercise in transitory properties, like low-rent, small-town eateries.

I sit down at the bar and pick up a laminated menu and am trying to decide between the chicken fried chicken and the chicken fried steak when Mandy Hoyle emerges from the double kitchen doors.

She almost drops a plate of pork chops when she sees me but recovers and keeps going toward a table with a couple of farmer types in battered boots and Carhartts.

A young woman who’s probably fresh out of high school steps up on the other side of the bar and asks if I’m ready to order. I tell her I’d like the chicken fried chicken with tater tots, extra gravy, a side of fried apples, and a large coffee. She nods and leaves.

And then Mandy Hoyle is there. She puts a red plastic cup of ice water down in front of me and then looks from side to side, her huge blue eyes watery and scared.

“I heard what happened,” she whispers. “About… about Molly.”

“Yeah,” I say.

“Are you leaving?”

I shake my head.

“You’re going to keep looking?”

“Yes,” I say. “I am.”

Her pale blond eyebrows draw up and together and her eyes fill with tears but she bites down hard on her bottom lip and sniffs.

“I need to talk to you,” I say. And I say it more because I feel it’s what she wants to say. Like this is a play and she forgot her line and I’m just cuing her to keep things rolling.

She nods her head, then turns and looks at the big black and white clock above the doors to the kitchen.

“I get a break in about thirty minutes.”

“Okay,” I say.

“Can you meet me out back?”

“Sure.”

Mandy sniffs again and then heads into the kitchen.

Soon enough, the young waitress returns with my plate of food.

I knew I was hungry, but I hadn’t realized just how famished I was until that salty, greasy goodness appears on the bar before me.

My eyes fill with honest-to-God grateful tears, and if I weren’t so wholeheartedly focused on stuffing my face, I’d get down right there in the middle of Ellerd’s and thank this angel for bringing it to me.

Instead, I wolf down every single bite of the crispy chicken and peppery white gravy. The tots are, each of them, explosions of salty, oily starch and the apples slip around in my mouth, slick and cinnamony and perfectly tender.

“Mmm…” I can’t help but moan. I chase the whole thing with coffee and check the clock. Ten minutes left.

The eighteen-year-old comes back and picks up my plate.

“Can I ask you a question?” I say before she can disappear.

“You that PI?”

“I guess.”

“This about those girls?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” she says, and puts my plate back down.

“What do you think happened to them?” I ask.

She looks side to side, then crouches closer to me and says, “You know one was found dead this morning, right?”

“I do. I was the one who found her.”

Her eyes widen, but then she takes on a skeptical look and says, “So why ask me about it?”

I shrug. “You work in here. You hear stuff. You live in this town. You hear stuff.”

“Okay,” she says.

“So, what do you think happened?”

“Well.” She pauses. Squeezes her lips together. Glances around. Leans even closer. “I always heard they probably were kidnapped by some pervert who put them in a basement.”

“A basement?”

“Yeah, or like… a hole in the ground somewhere. Or, you know, my friend Jada always said they probably were sold to some billionaire to use as sex slaves. Nasty.”

She shivers and then says, “But now with Molly Andrews turning up dead… Pretty creepy. Makes you wonder what happened to the other one.”

“The other one,” I repeat, encouragingly.

She leans in and whispers, “Mandy’s daughter, Jessica. Makes you wonder if he’s going to kill her the same way. Leave her right in Mandy’s backyard just like he left Molly out behind the Andrews place. Poor Max. I always liked him. You know my cousin asked him to prom? He said no. Didn’t even go.”

Trying to get her back on track, I ask, “Has Mandy ever said anything to you about Jessica?”

“No,” the girl says. “But I had homeroom with Tam, Mandy’s oldest kid. He never wanted to talk about it. But once I remember he said they were probably killed a long time ago. Some serial killer, he thought. But I don’t know what he thinks now. I graduated in May.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thanks. I’m going to the community college over in Mason.”

“Congratulations,” I say again.

“Whatever. I want to be an X-ray tech. They make good money.”

“What does Tam want to do?”

She snorts.

“Dumbass wants to be a cop,” she says. “You believe that?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I do.”

I get up and say thanks, leave behind a tip and pay at the register before heading back out into the cool night. I let out a sigh and then get behind the wheel, pull around to the back of the shopping center, and park. I get out and lean against the fender to wait. I check my phone. Five minutes.

Soon enough, Mandy Hoyle comes out the rear door with a black trash bag. She throws it in the dumpster and comes over to me. She doesn’t have a sweater or jacket so she stands there shivering, her white arms crossed in front of her, her hands brushing up and down her skinny biceps.

“Shit,” I breathe. I reach into my car and pull out the nearest fabric thing I can find, an old hoodie. I hold it toward her and she takes it but doesn’t put it on, just drapes it around her shoulders.

“You found Molly,” she says.

“Yeah.”

I feel like this is going to be an exact repeat of our earlier conversation and I know Mandy probably has only a five-minute break so I short-circuit the whole process and say, “Mandy, the day Jessica was taken, did you fall asleep in your car?”

She gives me a wide-eyed, terrified stare. And then she bursts into tears.

They’re hard, racking, ugly sobs. She holds her thin fingers up in front of her face, mashing them into her skin like that can make the tears or the pain or the needing stop.

“It’s okay,” I say.

She shakes her head.

“No,” I say. “It’s understandable. It just… it helps me know how things happened. You didn’t look away and she vanished.”

“No,” Mandy says. It comes out jittery and thick.

“You were exhausted and pregnant. You had a toddler asleep in the backseat.”

“She was right there, ” Mandy heaves. “She was right in front of me. She was a smart girl. She knew not to run off.”

“I know,” she says.

She sniffs, wipes her nose on the back of her arm.

“I was so confused. I fell asleep. I wasn’t asleep long.

I swear. I’d been listening to the radio, really low, and…

I know I was still awake when Dottie did the weather at ten after.

I remember her saying the time. Then, I opened my eyes and Jessica was gone.

I remember I looked at the clock and it was almost twenty after and she… she was gone. My baby. My baby girl.”

The last word draws out in a long sob.

“I lost her,” she moans. “It’s my fault.”

“No,” I say. I take a step toward her and squeeze her shoulder. “You thought you were safe.”

She nods.

“The church,” she says. “I thought, well, hardly anyone was there but…”

“Do you remember anyone? Remember seeing anyone?”

“No,” she breathes. “No, I’ve tried so hard.

But it was just cars. And I don’t go to that church.

I didn’t know any of their cars except the Zieglers’ Buick.

And I remember thinking that if we wanted to pee we’d have to drive on into town and use the bathroom at McDonald’s because…

because I didn’t go there. And maybe if we’d gone there…

maybe someone would’ve hel-hel—” Her word disappears into hiccups, which she swallows before she tries again and finally gets out, “Helped us.”

I tug Mandy’s shoulder, and she comes without any resistance. Falling into my arms, she’s just as small and thin and light as I thought she’d be. She cries into my jacket for a while and then, when she’s finally all cried out, she backs away.

She pulls a phone out of her pocket and looks at the cracked screen.

“Oh,” she says. “I have to go back in.”

She turns on her phone and holds the camera view up to her face, checks her makeup.

It’s still there. Amazing; drugstore mascara is truly a marvel of modern science.

She scrapes at the redness under her eyes like that will help and then adjusts the strands of hair that have gone frizzy with her wallowing on my shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs.

“Don’t be.”

“You’re going to keep looking?” she says.

“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah. I’m going to keep looking.”

She meets my eyes and nods. Then, she turns and walks back into the diner.

I get in my car and drive back toward the cabin.

“Not long now, Honey,” I say. I am exhausted, I realize. I began this day before dawn, finding Molly’s body in the forest in the wan early light and now, in the dark, I slow down as I pass the Andrewses’ farmhouse. Max’s truck is there, solitary in the driveway, but there are no lights on inside.

I keep going and pull down the lane and into the driveway in front of the cabin.

There’s a sheriff’s department cruiser waiting for me.

I breathe out a long sigh. My night is not over yet.