Chapter 27
Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept...
Brooke
“So... I’ve been thinking.”
Ah, here it was, thought Brooke. The reason behind Alex’s offer to buy dinner at what passed as one of Mansbridge’s nicest restaurants.
Alex cleared her throat. “We have to find the body.”
Brooke put down her dessert fork, glanced around the all-but-empty dining room to make sure they wouldn’t be overheard. “Connie’s body?”
“No. Jimmy Hoffa’s.” Alex rolled her eyes. “Of course, Connie’s body. Who else’s?”
“Her baby’s?”
They both glanced at Maryanne. She hadn’t even started on her cheesecake yet, and from the look on her face, she wasn’t going to be able to eat a bite.
Beneath the other girls’ silent scrutiny, Maryanne lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “I’m just saying, there was more than one victim here.”
“I know,” Alex said.
“But if we find the body—or bodies, plural,” Brooke said, “then what? The police will want to know why we went looking for them. Then you’ll have to hand over the diary.”
Brooke’s words had the anticipated effect on Alex, who blanched. “No one is getting the diary!”
“I don’t know, Alex.” Maryanne frowned. “Brooke’s right. If we did find a body, how would we explain why we went looking in the first place?”
Alex dragged a frustrated hand through her hair. “I wasn’t proposing we do this for a police investigation,” she said. “I’m thinking about Connie’s cast.”
Brooke blinked. Holy shit! “You think she can get back into her original? If we find the remains, I mean?”
“Whoa!” Maryanne, who’d been hunched over the table, sat up straight. “Wait just a minute here. We just found Connie, and now you want to send her packing? You want to knock her off? I thought you liked her?”
Ouch. Brooke closed her eyes and waited for an explosion from across the table, but what came was Alex’s shocked, tremulous voice.
“God, Maryanne! How can you say that to me?”
Brooke opened her eyes to see the last bit of color drain from Alex’s face.
“Yeah, it is a bit harsh, don’t you think?” Brooke said.
“Harsh?” It was Maryanne who exploded, but in a controlled way, thank God. Not the kind of way that brought the help rushing from the kitchen. “Are you kidding?” she hissed. “Harsh is sending that girl to her grave. She’s been alone for all these years, going mad with it, unable to touch another living creature. And now she finally has some friends and our first act of ‘kindness’ will be to send her packing?”
“We’d be doing her a favor,” Brooke interjected. “She’s beyond tired. Haven’t you noticed?”
“But she has all that copper!” Maryanne protested. “It gives her energy. You know it does. We’ve all felt it. And we can get more for her.”
“Yeah, we’ve all felt it,” Brooke agreed. “But then we go home, shoot back into ourselves and sleep like babies in our beds. We’re never out there for more than a few hours. We can’t even begin to imagine what it would be like never to be able to come home to our bodies. Hell, that copper is probably the only thing that keeps her going.”
“Exactly,” Alex said. “She needs her rest now.”
Tears sprang to Maryanne’s eyes. “But Connie put herself out there. She wanted to survive.”
“And she did,” said Alex. “She survived far longer than Connie probably imagined she would. If she imagined it at all. I mean, it was probably a split-second decision.”
“Yeah,” Brooke agreed. “A way to sort of survive the lousy fate she saw coming. And she succeeded. But now her cast is tired.”
Maryanne blinked rapidly. “How come you guys got that impression but I didn’t?”
Brooke shrugged. “I don’t know. You do get pretty hard-core out there.”
Alex shot Brooke a glare.
“What? She gets into it. That’s all I’m saying.”
“We all get into it.” Alex turned back to Maryanne. “Tell you what, next time we’re out, touch her, okay? I don’t know—shake hands with her or hug her or just... touch her. And if you don’t come away with the same impression, we can talk about it again.”
“I will,” Maryanne agreed. “But if we do find her remains, no matter what happens, I can’t see not calling the police.” Maryanne looked at Alex.
“Of course we’ll call the police. Eventually. After Connie has a chance to see if she can get back inside. But we’ll just have to think up some other reason why we went looking for a body that doesn’t involve giving up the diary.”
Brooke snorted. “Okay, but if one of us has to pretend to be psychic, it probably should be me. You know, with my reputation for sensitivity and all.”
That set the girls to laughing, as she’d intended.
“If it comes to that,” Alex said, drying her eyes, “I’ll claim to be the psychic. Everyone thinks I’m crazy anyway.”
“Not anymore,” Brooke pointed out. “Well, except the ones who liked you crazy.”
“Gee, thanks, Brooke.”
“No problem,” Brooke said, but her mind had leapt on, already on the hunt. “So, Maryanne still needs convincing that Connie is ready for this. Fair enough. But there’s no reason we can’t start looking for the body, is there?”
“Where would we start?” Alex asked. “They could have put her in a sack full of rocks and sunk her in the river for all we know. Or buried her in the woods miles from here.”
“Wait a minute—it was winter when they killed her, right?”
“February,” Alex answered.
“Well, they couldn’t have dumped her in the river, then. It would have been frozen solid, with months to go before a thaw. And they probably didn’t cart her body off to the woods. They used to get a lot more snow than we do now, right? So it wouldn’t have been easy to get around. The woods roads would probably have been impassable. And the ground itself would be snow-covered and frozen. Hard to bury someone in the dead of a Northern winter.”
Alex frowned. “Maybe they stashed her body somewhere in the house over the winter, then buried her somewhere in the spring.”
“Or maybe it’s still in the house.”
At Maryanne’s suggestion, Brooke shivered. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe. You read about that shit from time to time. Bones found in the walls when a new owner renovates, or in the foundation when they tear a place down, or in an old sealed oil drum in a shed.”
“Omigod,” Alex said. “You don’t suppose... she wouldn’t still be... in the attic?”
“No, not in the attic.”
Brooke and Alex swiveled in tandem to look at Maryanne.
How could she possibly know that? Brooke drew breath to challenge her, but one look at the other girl’s face stopped her. It also froze the breath in her lungs and sent cold dread snaking through her gut.
“Have either of you been to the basement?” Maryanne whispered.