Prankster, p.12
Prankster, page 12
Aimee shifted so she could see herself in the full-length mirror beside her dresser. She’d seen photos of herself at eleven years old, and she didn’t think she looked a lot different now. She was small and skinny then, and she was petite and slender now. Obviously, her face looked a little different because now she wore makeup, but the slight slant of her eyes and severe arch of her brows, the upturned nose, and the slightly pouty mouth were the same. In the photos she’d seen of her younger self, Aimee’s long blonde hair had usually been held back in a ponytail or a braid. That was still how she wore her hair.
What would Mary Jo look like now? Would her hair still stick out from her head? Would her smile still be as big?
At first, Aimee liked to tell herself that she never saw Mary Jo again after that day in the Hiding Maze because Mary Jo got mad and ran away. It was a reasonable conclusion. Mary Jo had often threatened to run away, and she’d always had that backpack with her, ready to go.
But years later, when Aimee was being honest with herself, it was pretty clear that Mary Jo hadn’t run anywhere. Aimee’s dream told her that. The reoccurring dream—no, not a dream, her nightmare—had been telling Aimee the truth for ten years.
Aimee pulled away from her reflection and lay back on her bed. She forced herself to travel into the past.
As she had done literally thousands of times now, Aimee tried to convince herself there was no way she could have known something bad would happen to Mary Jo when Aimee left the Hiding Maze. Even though she’d been afraid of the creepy guy, Aimee’s eleven-year-old mind hadn’t really believed he found Mary Jo and hurt her. And since then, she’d tried very hard to believe that Mary Jo was never seen again because of something else, something that had nothing to do with what Aimee did.
But in truth, Aimee knew she was, in part, responsible. Just in part, though. The true culprit was the creep Aimee had seen in the arcade and at the entrance of the Hiding Maze right before she left it.
The evening of the day she’d last seen Mary Jo, Aimee had also seen the creep on TV. He’d been arrested for the attempted kidnapping of some other kid. She didn’t normally pay attention when her parents watched the news, but she’d seen the guy’s face, and she’d heard his name, Emmett Tucker. She’d also heard the word kidnapping. When she’d heard that word, her stomach had turned into a rock that dropped all the way to her feet.
When it was clear Mary Jo had disappeared, Aimee just knew that creep had taken her friend. He’d taken her, and he must have killed her. Apparently, the police were never able to prove that he did, so the guy went to prison just for the attempted kidnapping of the other kid. Aimee took some comfort in that, but not knowing exactly what had happened to Mary Jo ate away at her.
For years after Mary Jo disappeared, Aimee had carried guilt like a backpack even heavier than Mary Jo’s. She’d known the creepy guy was poking around the Hiding Maze, and she’d left her friend there. She was sure Emmett Tucker had taken Mary Jo, and it was Aimee’s fault.
Just a few months after Mary Jo disappeared, Aimee and her family had moved to another state. Long before the time they’d left—actually, just a couple weeks after the last time Aimee saw Mary Jo—the Freddy’s where Aimee and Mary Jo had played in the Hiding Maze had closed. Aimee was never sure why. Her mother thought Freddy’s closed because it was “inherently unsafe” for children; she’d never thought the animatronics were a good idea. Aimee’s mom was very upset that the town they moved to also had a Freddy’s. She didn’t have to worry, though. Aimee never went to it. It reminded her too much of Mary Jo.
But last week, her mom had called her, interrupting the cramming Aimee was doing for her Commercial Transactions class. Stepping out of the library and into the cool night to take her mom’s call, Aimee had looked up at the stars as she’d said with a sigh, “I’m studying, Mom.”
“I know you are, sweetie. But I just wanted to check in on you. How’s it going?”
“Fine, Mom. But I do need to concentrate.”
“I know. I know. I just thought you could take a break and chat for a few minutes.” Aimee’s mom’s smooth and deep voice broke into a chuckle. “You know, a few seconds for your dear old mom.”
Aimee sighed. Through the phone, she could hear footsteps tapping on hardwood floors. She could picture her mom pacing back and forth in the kitchen. That’s what her mom always did when she was chatting on the phone. Aimee could see her mom’s lovely face as if she was right here. Blonde and blue-eyed like Aimee but with more classical features, her mom had large eyes, high cheekbones, and a full mouth.
“Okay, Mom,” Aimee said. “What do you want to chat about? You have two minutes. Go.”
Her mom laughed. “Okay, I’ll start the kitchen timer. Well, let’s see. Your dad has taken up racquetball. It might be too much for him; his shoulders and arms are so sore he can barely lift his coffee cup.”
Aimee smiled.
“Oh, and I saw a blurb on the news about that man we thought took Mary Jo. Remember him?”
Remember him? How could she not? Aimee felt all her muscles contract at once, as they always did whenever she thought about Freddy’s or Emmett Tucker. “What about him?”
“Oh, they let him out of prison. For good behavior, or some such nonsense. He’s back in his home, free as a bird. For some reason, I’ve never forgotten him. Probably because of Mary Jo.”
Aimee felt her stomach flip over and try to crawl up her esophagus. She thought she was going to be sick. Mary Jo’s kidnapper was free?
“Aimee? Are you there?” her mom asked.
Aimee tried to talk, and the words caught in her throat. She swallowed and managed, “Yeah, Mom. Has he talked to the press or anything?”
“What? I have no idea. I just saw a little report about him is all.”
“I have to go, Mom.” Aimee practically threw the words at her mother. And she didn’t wait for a response. She ran inside the library, straight to the bathroom, where she threw up. After sitting in the bathroom stall and crying for half an hour, she’d forced herself not to think about what her mom had told her. She had to study and take an exam.
But of course, she’d thought about it. She’d been thinking about it for a week now.
Even so, she’d made sure it didn’t mess up her studying because before she went back to cramming the night her mom called, she made a decision. As soon as she graduated, she was going to go back to the town where she spent the first eleven years of her life. She was going back, and she was going to find out what Emmett Tucker did with Mary Jo.
Ten years of uncertainty couldn’t turn into fifteen or twenty or more. Aimee could no longer live with the assumption that Mary Jo had been kidnapped by Tucker without proving that he really did kidnap her and finding out what he did to her friend. She needed to know where he put Mary Jo’s body.
Aimee was tired of the nightmares and the horrible visions that played over and over in her head. She was also tired of trying to delude herself with the idea that Mary Jo had run off and was living happily ever after somewhere. She was going to discover and prove the truth once and for all.
* * *
Aimee remembered her hometown as a pretty little place. Hugging both sides of a river that flowed out of the nearby mountains, the town was the home of a billionaire who had built his corporation’s headquarters here. The headquarters, designed to look like an old-time Western town, sprawled along the river on one end of town. That’s where both Aimee’s parents had worked. When the billionaire had a new complex, with a more modern design, built a few states away (probably so he could have a warmer place to visit in the winter), her parents were transferred. Aimee had never really grown to like the new state. Too hot for her. And she missed snow in the winters.
If it wasn’t for Mary Jo—or actually, the absence of Mary Jo—Aimee would have probably applied for a job at the corporate headquarters here in her old hometown. But she knew she couldn’t handle living in a place that would remind her of her friend every day. Instead, she’d taken a job in a town a couple hundred miles from here. It had the same climate but no painful memories.
Aimee pulled her cute little red hybrid compact into the parking lot of the Riverside Motel just before sunset. When she turned off the engine, she tapped the steering wheel a couple times. Should she go now or wait until tomorrow?
She squinted up beyond the motel’s redwood siding and river rock–covered pillars. A reddish sun was sinking toward the glacier-topped ridge to the west. Almost blood-red rays painted the white expanses. Aimee shivered. Tomorrow. What she needed to do could definitely wait until tomorrow.
Aimee looked away from the sunset. She turned and grabbed a bright-yellow sweater from the back seat. Slipping it on, she picked up her purse and got out of the car.
It took Aimee only minutes to check into the motel and find her room. Once there, she perched atop the beige coverlet on the queen-size bed. She was facing a mirror above the low pine dresser sitting against the exposed-log wall opposite the end of the bed.
“Well, here you are,” she said to herself.
The mirror version of Aimee spoke at the same time she did, of course. Still, she had trouble recognizing herself. She looked older in this mirror, like she was pushing forty instead of barely getting to know twenty-one. Why did her complexion look so gray, her cheeks so gaunt?
Aimee raised a hand to her face and brushed a few strands of hair from her eyes. It felt like a stranger was touching her. How odd.
A tremor skittered down Aimee’s spine, and she looked away from the mirror. She needed sleep was all. She’d studied hard for most of four weeks, and over the last three days, she’d partied just as hard. Aimee didn’t have a ton of friends, but the ones she had were close ones. One of them, Gretta, was Aimee’s closest friend since Mary Jo. She had superwealthy parents and lived in a mansion with a pool, tennis courts, a huge movie room, an equally large game room, and a massive ballroom. After exams were over, Gretta’s parents threw Gretta and her friends a three-day party, complete with live music and food catered by the best chef in town. Gretta and Aimee had spent much of that time alone in the movie room binge-watching old romantic comedies. They both loved the quiet solitude. But they’d balanced it with plenty of swimming, dancing, and eating.
Aimee had been friends with Gretta since she and her parents had moved to the new state. She’d gone to junior high, high school, and college with Gretta.
Gretta was the opposite of Mary Jo, a much better match for Aimee than Mary Jo ever was. When Aimee had met Gretta, she’d realized that her mother’s theory about friendship and balance had been a bunch of crap. Aimee and Mary Jo hadn’t been friends because they balanced each other out. They’d been friends because Aimee had been too shy to tell Mary Jo to go jump in the river. Mary Jo had decided they were best friends, and Aimee had gone along with it. From that point on, everything had been all about Mary Jo. As long as they were together, they were doing what Mary Jo wanted. The only time Aimee had gotten to be herself had been when she was literally by herself.
Gretta had been the person who’d had helped Aimee figure this out. Gretta had just graduated with a BA in psychology, and she was going on to get a master’s next. She wanted to be a therapist. Aimee was one of her unofficial practice patients.
Just the day before, as they’d floated in Gretta’s parents’ infinity pool, looking out over perfectly trimmed expanses of green lawn and pruned bushes, Gretta had said, “You realize that you don’t need to find out exactly what happened to Mary Jo to get closure, right?”
Aimee, who had been sipping lemonade from a huge covered tumbler balanced on her flat belly, shook her head and smacked her lips at the tartness of her drink. “Yes, I do.”
Gretta shook a headful of short curls. A stunning redheaded beauty with flawless pale skin, green eyes, and model-worthy features, Gretta was surprisingly unconcerned about her looks. She rarely wore makeup, and she cut her own hair, despite being able to afford the most expensive hairdresser in town. She wasn’t particularly good at haircutting, so her curls were always asymmetrical.
“No, you don’t,” Gretta said. “The only thing you need to do is forgive yourself. That’s it. Easy-peasy. One step. The end.”
Aimee shook her head, and Gretta splashed water on her. Aimee closed her eyes just in time, and after the water cascaded over her sweaty shoulders and arms, she kept her eyes closed.
With her sight taking a mini-vacation, Aimee’s other senses stepped up. She could smell Gretta’s coconut-scented sunscreen, the lemon in her own lemonade, and the chlorine in the water. She could hear the water, too; it lapped lazily against their floating loungers and splashed against the sides of the pool. From the tennis courts, the thwack of rackets hitting tennis balls drifted over. From even farther away, the soothing sound of horses’ neighs reached Aimee’s ears from the pastures.
Aimee took a deep breath, inhaling all this peacefulness. Then she said, “It’s not as easy as you say it is. Mary Jo is missing because I left her in that game. I didn’t warn her; I didn’t tell an adult. I just left her right where that man could take her.”
Gretta smacked the water with her hand. The sharp sound made Aimee flinch and open her eyes.
“God, you’re so stubborn! How many times do I need to tell you that you don’t know that?” Gretta asked. “You’re not dumb enough to think that. You don’t know what happened after you left. You don’t know what she did after she left the game. Probably, some choice Mary Jo made led to her disappearance. Your choice had nothing to do with it.”
“But Emmett Tucker—” Aimee began.
Gretta held up a hand. “Tucker Shmucker. You don’t know for sure that he took Mary Jo and neither did the police. And if he didn’t take her, then why is Mary Jo’s disappearance your fault? I mean, I get it. You feel like your choice was responsible because it was such a huge deal for you. It’s not Mary Jo’s disappearance that marks that day for you; it’s your standing up for yourself that makes the day so important. That was the first time you defied her, right? That’s what you’ve always told me.”
Aimee nodded.
She and Gretta had been through all this many times, but Gretta was right—Aimee was stubborn. It was hard to disconnect her act of defiance with the end of Mary Jo, and therefore it was hard not to blame herself for Mary Jo’s disappearance.
“But I didn’t really defy her,” Aimee said. “Not directly anyway.”
Gretta opened her mouth, and this time, Aimee held up her hand. “You make it sound like I was making this big self-empowering statement that day I left her in the game, but the truth is, I was just being a scared, petulant child. I mean, if I was going to actually stand up to Mary Jo, I would have told her no. I would have said, ‘I don’t want to play in the Hiding Maze. I’m going home to read.’ I didn’t do that. Instead, I did something that left her vulnerable, and now that Emmett Tucker is out of prison …” She shrugged.
“Because of that, you’re filling your head with horrible images, imagining what he might have done to your friend, and you’re heaping even more guilt on yourself. I know that the way you took your stand with Mary Jo was passive-aggressive, but you need to cut yourself some slack. You were eleven years old. Psychological mastery isn’t a requirement for that age.” Gretta winked at Aimee, and Aimee smiled.
“You’re a good friend,” Aimee said.
“So are you. And you were a good friend to Mary Jo. You owe her nothing.”
Aimee twisted her lips.
Gretta sighed. “But you’re still going back.”
Aimee nodded. “I have to. I really do have to.”
Gretta was quiet for several seconds. Inside the house, the band started playing again. So much for peacefulness. The bass was so strong it vibrated the surface of the water in the pool.
“I could still go with you. I meant it when I said I’d be happy to come,” Gretta shouted over a screeching guitar riff.
“I know. But I need to do this by myself.”
In her motel room, Aimee lay back on her bed as the image of her friend and the relaxing pool faded away. Now that she was here, she was really wishing Gretta had come with her. It would have been so much easier with Gretta along, maybe even fun. They could have turned it into a celebration of everything they had to look forward to in the coming years. They could have …
Aimee frowned and derailed that train of thought. This trip wasn’t about having fun or celebrating. It was about finding out, once and for all, what exactly had happened to Mary Jo.
* * *
Aimee hadn’t told her parents or Gretta exactly what she was planning to do. Aimee knew they would have tried to talk her out of it. She could just hear her mother telling her how dangerous the idea was.
But Aimee didn’t think it was all that dangerous. Well, maybe a little. But she thought she could handle it.
Sure, when Aimee had been a little girl, Tucker was scary. But now? Aimee was more than capable of handling herself. She was strong and athletic, and she’d taken self-defense classes. Plus, she had both mace and a pretty blue Taser in her purse. And she had her determination. She was going to find out what Tucker did, one way or another.
Besides, Tucker was more than likely a wuss. He took little kids, not adults. He wouldn’t know what to do with someone who could fight back. Or at least that was what Aimee told herself as she headed to Bernadette’s Bakery on Main Street.
Before Aimee came back to face Emmett Tucker, she read the newspaper article about his release. The article had featured a photo of Tucker sitting in front of Bernadette’s Bakery. A little research had revealed that though the bakery served tourists and locals alike, it was a favorite of longtime residents. Hoping Tucker was a regular, Aimee figured the bakery was a good place to start her search for him.
Bernadette’s was one of a couple dozen long-established businesses in the heart of town. The little downtown area was built around a brick-covered square with a stone fountain and a rose garden, and Bernadette’s was the shop closest to the fountain.
