Page 41 of The Witch’s Orchard
THIRTY-THREE
I T’S DUSK WHEN I finally get back to my little rental cabin and AJ is there with a six-pack and two Styrofoam containers of food from King’s Garden, Quartz Creek’s one and only Chinese restaurant.
“Marry me,” I say, taking the six-pack and leading him up the porch.
He chuckles and says, “Now here I was thinking you weren’t the marrying type.”
“Oh, yeah,” I say, shrugging. “I forgot.”
“We could settle down right here,” he says. “Couple of kids, a big ol’ farmhouse, church on Sundays.”
I get us both in the door and set my keys on the counter, stash the six-pack in the fridge, get out two cold ones.
“I rescind my offer,” I say.
He winks at me and says, “Thought you might.”
He puts the Chinese food down and opens the containers to reveal lo mein, sweet and sour pork, black pepper chicken, egg rolls, crispy crab Rangoon, and plenty of fried rice.
It’s a veritable smorgasbord that only barely resembles food from actual China but is everything Chinese food is to this southern mountain girl.
“I wasn’t sure what you liked so I got two buffets to go.”
“Amazing,” I say, taking a pair of paper-wrapped chopsticks from him. “Maybe I could become the churchgoing motherly type after all.”
He laughs, and we dig in.
“Nothing on Lucy?” I ask. I know if he had anything he’d tell me, but I can’t help checking, hoping there’s some new thread to follow.
He shakes his head.
“State troopers are pitching in, doing what they can. They canvassed the mountain behind the church today. Dogs and everything. No trace yet. Reporters are starting to get into town. It’s going to be a circus before too much longer.”
“What about the FBI?” I say. “Are they coming?”
“Yep. They’re sending a task force. Should be here tomorrow,” AJ says. “A few other towns have sent deputies already to help comb the area but… nothing so far. Everyone who’s not working to track Lucy is working with the fire department to collect evidence at the explosion site.”
We mull things over while splashing soy sauce out of packets and into the already oversalted food.
AJ says, “So you saw Bob Ziegler today?”
“Yes.”
“Did he admit to seducing a fourteen-year-old?”
“He did.”
“And he was how old?”
“Eighteen.”
“Hmm.”
“It’s not the same, though. Right?” I say.
“That’s what I keep telling myself. A teenager having sex with a younger girl at a party in the sixties where he maybe didn’t even know her age isn’t the same thing as kidnapping three little girls.
Jessica was the oldest. She was almost six. But she looked younger.”
He nods.
“I don’t know, Annie. I don’t think we can rule anyone out.”
He tells me the cops paid a visit to Lucy’s dad today and checked up on him. He was at his home, in Asheville, with his wife and her little boy and their dogs when they got there. Last night, they were all at a birthday party together.
“So, it wasn’t him,” I say.
“No.”
“But we knew it wasn’t.”
“Had to check,” he says.
We both eat some crab Rangoon, dipping the deep-fried cream cheese wonton into the sweet tangy red sauce.
“Have you ever been out to Susan McKinney’s cabin?” I ask.
“Once,” he says. “Sort of a creepy place. But not big enough to hide a couple kids, is it?”
“No,” I say. “And the FBI searched her cabin after she was brought in for questioning. She told me herself they found a bunch of applehead dolls in her bedroom. But, hell, my own granny had some of those sitting on a shelf in her room. I’d love to know what was said when they questioned her, though. ”
“Oh,” AJ says. “That I can actually help you with.”
He hops off his stool, opens the backpack he’d left lying on the floor, and pulls out a manila folder. I’d been hoping for a thick stack of reports and witness statements but, instead, what I see is maybe ten or twenty pages.
“I still don’t think I have all of it. I spent most of the day out combing the woods, but I did manage to find these.”
He slides the folder across to me and I open it up.
Here, again, is the list of cars checked the day Jessica was taken.
And a small stack of pages of statements from the church picnic.
Finally, I discover Deena’s statement from the day Molly was taken, and I read over it while eating, never bothering to look at what I’m putting in my mouth.
“It’s just like she said,” I mumble after reading through it.
She came at her usual time. When she was finished, she shouted goodbye.
She ran into a plumber on the way out and was afraid she’d lose time trying to get him to move his truck.
He was leaving. They exchanged pleasantries.
She had no idea Molly had been taken until the next day.
“She told me today about a scarecrow,” I tell him. “But she doesn’t mention anything about it in the statement.”
“Probably didn’t think it was relevant,” he says. “If she was sure it was a scarecrow.”
I find the same version of events from Dwight Hoyle’s point of view. Came to fix a pipe. Heard piano music. Finished up. Saw Janice in the garden, later heard her talking to someone. Saw Deena. Left.
“Someone else was there,” I say.
“What?”
“Someone else was there. Dwight says he heard Janice talking to someone in the garden.”
“It must have been Deena,” AJ says.
I shake my head.
“No,” I say. “No, Deena didn’t know Janice was in the garden. She told me when I first questioned her that if she’d known Janice wasn’t in the house, she’d never have left without letting her know.”
“So it wasn’t Deena talking to Janice?”
I look back at Dwight Hoyle’s statement.
I saw Janice Andrews working in the garden when I got to the house.
She was taking water from the burst pipe and pouring it over the garden.
After I finished, I left the barn and heard her talking to someone.
She was saying something about the weather.
Something about the heat killing her zucchini.
As I left, I waved to her, but whoever she was talking to was around the other side of the barn.
I didn’t see them. I went back into the barn to get the pipe so I could take it for scrap.
It took me a while to get it and my toolbox situated.
Once I did, I went to my truck and saw that piano teacher woman.
We talked for a minute, just saying hello.
And then I left. I didn’t see anyone else.
“Someone else was there,” I say again. “But who?”
“And he doesn’t mention any scarecrow,” he says.
“No,” I say. “But he told Mack. Mack said something about it creeped out Dwight. Picture a scarecrow. Tell me what you see.”
He swallows a big bite of pepper chicken and then closes his eyes.
“Burlap face. Like a sack. Maybe painted. An old hat. Overalls, usually. But sometimes just old worn-out clothes. A flannel shirt and jeans. Stuffed with straw.”
“Yeah,” I say. “That’s what I picture too.”
I poke at my food for a few moments and then say, “Molly’s kidnapping is an outlier.
Jessica was taken from what is essentially a public place.
The playground outside of a church. Olivia was taken from a church picnic in the park.
But Molly was taken from her own house. In broad daylight. Who else could’ve been there?”
AJ shakes his head.
“I don’t know,” he says. “Everyone around here leaves their doors unlocked. Even now. Even after everything this town has been through. And Molly was sitting right there in the front room.”
I groan and mash one palm into my forehead, as if that will make my thoughts form some kind of cohesive solution.
“Uggh. I don’t know. I feel like I’m not any closer to figuring this out than when Max hired me.
And all I’ve done is stir up trouble and probably get Molly killed when she was apparently just fine all this time. ”
“Annie…” he says. “She wasn’t fine.”
“No, I know,” I breathe. “Whoever took Molly and Jessica left those applehead dolls in their place. It’s not the work of someone in their right mind and—”
I stop and look toward the door, alert. There’s a car outside. Voices. It’s not Max. It’s female. There’s a low moaning. A shushing sound. I look at the clock. It’s just after eight.
AJ and I are both off our stools and across the room by the time there’s a knock at the door.
“Who is it?” I ask, hand on my gun.
“Annie? It’s Nicole Jacobs. Can you please open up?”
I open the door.
Nicole is standing there wrapped up in her coat and scarf. Leaning on her, looking disheveled and pissed, is Nicole’s sister, Olivia Jacobs.