Slice Of Cherry (17 page)

Fancy gets to stay home and eat ice cream in the—”

“Oh, fine!” Madda snatched the car keys from her pocket.

“Take the car, but hurry back for dinner.”

“We will!” promised the sisters.

Kit hooked her arm around Fancy’s shoulders and hustled her outside, laughing. “I get to drive the Honda! I get to drive
the Honda! After we drop this off ”—she tossed the basket into the backseat—“we can go to the record store.”

“Or Mexico!” Fancy closed her eyes and imagined herself in the surf.

“And be back in time for dinner? Maybe next time,
mamacita
.”

Arriving at the Darcys’ muted the sisters’ good mood a bit. Stepping onto the lawn was like stepping into a war zone. The lower wall of the two-story house was punched through, as though a car had driven out of it. The sisters could see the remains of the kitchen from the yard. A hairy six-legged beast was strung up in the tulip tree near the walkway, dripping yellow blood into the grass. Fancy assumed that was what had burst out of the house, though it didn’t look strong enough or big enough to have caused so much damage.

They found a woman near the tree thanking everyone and falling all over herself in gratitude. She was very teary, but Fancy couldn’t tell what was setting her off: her destroyed house, the outpouring of help she was receiving from her neighbors, or the creature that had been hanged in her tree. “It’s so barbaric,” she kept saying.

She got even tearier when Kit gave her Madda’s basket of food.

“She sent her persimmon preserves!” Mrs. Darcy exclaimed.

“I always knew Lynne was sweet, thinking of my troubles when she’s got so many of her own.”

She hugged both of the sisters. Her tears smeared against Fancy’s cheek, and when Fancy finally pulled free, the side of her face felt as though it had been licked.

“Ma?”

A girl near Fancy’s age, maybe a few years younger, wearing overalls and an engineer’s cap came forward to tug on Mrs. Darcy’s arm. “What is it, Jessa? Girls, this is my daughter.”

“Hi,” said Jessa perfunctorily before tugging once again on her mother. “I’m gonna help Pop board up the hole in the wall. Okay?”

“You are not.” Despite all the crying, Mrs. Darcy didn’t seem to be a pushover. “You stay away from all this dust and asbestos and who knows what all. You know how your lungs are. Now go get these girls a cool drink from the cooler out back.”

“No thanks, ma’am,” said Kit as Jessa pouted. “We’re on a tight schedule. Madda’s expecting us back in time for—”

“Kit?”

Gabriel came up behind them, pushing an empty red wheelbarrow to a stop beside Kit. He was wearing a gold cross
similar to the one he’d given Kit at Cherry Glade. Probably he had a drawer full of crosses that he passed out to silly girls like candy. He was wearing a T-shirt that read 1 timothy 1:15, some high-minded bit of biblical wisdom, Fancy was certain, but the look he gave Kit wasn’t at all Christian.

Gabriel hugged Kit as though they were old friends, and Kit greatly disappointed Fancy by not punching Gabriel in the face for his presumption. Instead she just giggled like an idiot.

“You were great in class yesterday,” he said. “Your jazz improvisation was the best one, just real natural.”

“That’s because Fancy’s been making me listen to a lot of Depression-era crap lately.”

Since Kit had referred to her, Gabriel finally acknowledged Fancy’s presence with a quick nod. “So y’all came to help Miz Irene?”

“Yes!” Kit answered.

Fancy elbowed her.

“Just for a little while?” Kit was practically begging. “Just long enough to help haul some of this junk away?” Kit took her sister’s long-suffering sigh as an affirmative, and pretty soon Fancy found herself hauling trash in the hot sun, desperately wishing for an ice-fishing hole to fall into.

A little while had turned into forty-five minutes, and after Fancy rolled Gabriel’s red wheelbarrow of broken house to the curb for the millionth time, cursing Kit and her hormones for the trillionth time, she heaved the wheelbarrow onto its side. It hit the ground with a cold, satisfying
clang
. She then went in search of Kit, and if her sister still wasn’t ready to leave, Fancy was fully prepared to drag her away kicking and screaming.

Inside the Darcys’ house, Fancy went upstairs and, through the doorway of a spare room full of camping equipment, saw Gabriel kneeling over a girl on the floor. Kissing her. And the girl wasn’t Kit.

Fancy must have made a noise because he looked up and said, “I have more kisses.” His voice made her skin crawl. “Plenty of kisses for you, too.”

Fancy recoiled from the ugly expression on his face, ready to disbelieve she’d seen that level of ugliness on such a pretty face.

Almost.

Fancy ran downstairs and searched until she found Kit in the backyard with Mrs. Darcy. Fancy grabbed her sister and dragged her inside the house, Mrs. Darcy right on their heels demanding to know why Fancy looked so upset. When they
reached the room where Gabriel was, he was no longer kissing the girl. He was pushing down on her chest.

“Oh my God!” Mrs. Darcy screamed. “Jessa!”

Before she reached her daughter’s side, Jessa started gasping and coughing, and Gabriel sat back. “Finally, kid. That took forever.”

Mrs. Darcy squeezed her daughter to her chest. “What happened?”

Gabriel said, “Mr. Darcy sent me up here to find a tarp, and I saw her passed out on the floor, not breathing.”

“I
told
that girl to mind her lungs.” Mrs. Darcy gave Jessa a good shake. “Didn’t I tell you?”

“I just wanted to help,” Jessa said.

Mrs. Darcy gave her another big squeeze. “My poor baby. We gotta get you to a doctor.”

Jessa said, “I don’t need a doctor.” “Shut up!” Mrs. Darcy beamed at Gabriel. “But first thank this young man for saving your life.”

“Thanks,” said Jessa shyly.

He waved away her thanks, as modest and bashful as if he hadn’t just had his tongue down her throat moments before. While she was unconscious.

“He’s a real treasure,” said Mrs. Darcy to Kit, who was also beaming at Gabriel. “I’d keep a good eye on him if I was you.”

She took the words right out of Fancy’s mouth. Fancy understood now why Ilan was so mean to his brother. Gabriel was beyond weird—he was dangerous.

“‘I have plenty of kisses for you, too.’ And he was looking dead at me when he said it.”

Kit bumped Fancy aside with her hip and then mopped the bit of floor where her sister had been standing. “So what?”

“So he’s disgusting, that’s what. Hitting on me while he’s making out with an unconscious girl.”

“He was reviving her, not making out.”

“Then why would he say what he said?” Fancy hopped onto the dining table, out of her sister’s way. She picked a strawberry from the fruit bowl, a breeze blowing in from the open door. Madda had left for work, and now that the sun was gone, it was much cooler.

“He was probably just trying to freak you out,” said Kit. “I do stuff like that to people all the time.” Kit scowled at Fancy, who handed her the uneaten green part of her strawberry, expecting her to get rid of it. “Especially obnoxious people.”

“I’m not the obnoxious one,” said Fancy, scowling right back. “Why didn’t you tell me Gabriel was in your music class?”

“Didn’t I?” Kit’s face was carefully blank as she threw away Fancy’s strawberry remains. When she saw her sister reaching for more fruit, Kit pulled her off the table and jabbed the mop at her feet. “Stop snacking and go do your own chores. I know you haven’t even watered the garden yet.”

“Fine,” said Fancy, her dirty feet leaving tracks on the wet floor. “Be that way.” She stepped through the back door and recoiled with a squeak from a girl coming up the porch steps, dragging a boy behind her.

“Sorry,” the girl said, not sounding like she meant it, posing in the porch light like it was a spotlight. She was athletic and wearing a backless unitard and shorts, the sort of thing Kit would wear, only this girl had much better posture and infinitely more grace. “Are you Fancy?”

“Who wants to know?” Kit answered, joining Fancy at the door.

The girl pushed the boy in the back. “Go to the nice girls, Mason.”

“Okay,” said Mason, and he came to a stop before them, docile as a sheep. A glazed look dimmed his eyes, but otherwise
he looked normal: tall with brown, gel-sculpted hair and a rather homely face. Under his unremarkable jeans and T-shirt, though, was an amazing body—headless-statue amazing.

Kit looked him over, appreciative but confused. “What is this?”

The girl cocked her hip. “God, do you need me to say it? I want him dead. Right now.”

D
ADDY WAS LYING IN THE ROAD.
H
E WASN’T DEAD BUT HE WAS A BIG BLOODY MESS, LIKE A CAR OR TRUCK HAD RUN OVER HIM.
H
E WANTED ME TO HELP HIM TO HIS FEET, BUT
I’
D JUST HAD MY BATH AND DIDN’T WANT TO TOUCH HIM.

“I can’t believe you want us to kill him,” Kit said, poking the boy, Mason, in the stomach. “He’s got such great abs.”

The girl on their porch, the one who wanted Mason dead, put her hands on her hips. “It would be nice if you’d take this seriously. I don’t aim to be here all night.”

Kit gave Mason’s abs one last poke before giving the girl her full attention. Fancy would have just slammed the door in the girl’s face—who needed to deal with that kind of attitude?— but Kit always did have an unhealthy interest in people. “Who sent you here?”

“Don’t worry,” the girl said. “I drove myself. And I parked down the road so no one would see me pulling up to your house.”

“I mean how do you know about us? Did you get a letter?”

“What letter? It’s all over town what you did for Bill, rescuing him from a bunch of transies. Transies who are now missing. So now I need you to make
Mason
disappear.” It was like she was ordering them to take out her garbage.

Fancy and Kit looked at each other, communicating silently.

All over town?

Town schmown. No one can prove anything.

Kit turned to the girl on the porch, and repeated it aloud to her: “No one can prove we did anything.”

“What am I?” the girl said. “A lawyer? I don’t need proof. I know what I know.”

Kit got right in the girl’s face. “That guy, Bill, was being beaten. Did you know that? We don’t make people disappear without a reason.”

“Don’t give me that. You’re the Bonesaw Killer’s daughters. You don’t need a reason. Everybody knows that psycho stuff is genetic.” For a girl who thought the sisters were psychos, she seemed remarkably unconcerned about being alone with them. “But don’t do it right away,” she said. “Give me an hour to get to Ryan’s house, to see and be seen, and then you can do it.”

When the sisters just stared at her, she huffed. “Do you want money? Here.” She rummaged through her hobo bag and fished out a wad of bills rolled together. “Four hundred bucks,” she said, “and worth every penny.”

Fancy had to take the money because Kit had turned away from the girl and was poking the boy, Mason, in the abs again. His only response was to smile at her.

“What’s wrong with him?”

“I drugged him,” the girl said impatiently. “It was the only way to get him here. His grandma died, and he was babbling about having to go out of town for the funeral. But I need this taken care of now. Tonight. I won’t be able to focus on the audition with this hanging over my head. Do you dance?”

Kit seemed startled by the random question. “I can’t even touch my toes.”

“Too bad,” the girl said, looking relieved. “You have the body for it.”

Kit regarded the girl for a moment and then seemed to come to a decision. “What’s your name?” she asked, in full bubbly mode.

“Call me Claudia.” Fancy could almost see the neon lights surrounding the girl’s name just from the way she said it.

“That’s my stage name: Claudia Cresswell. It’s much more stylish than my real name.”

“Oh, I couldn’t agree more,” Kit chirped. “Fancy, go get Claudia a cool drink.”

When Fancy came back with a tray of iced tea, Claudia and Kit were sitting on the porch. Tin pails full of flowers lined the steps, and Claudia sat next to a pail of Indian blanket. She plucked the red flowers bald, as though she was nervous or just instinctively destructive. The boy kept vacant watch over them, mannequin-still and smiling for no reason.

“So we’re both auditioning for it,” Claudia was saying. “I’m a great dancer, but Mason’s family runs the Cultural Advisory Board, so he’s a shoo-in to get the part, even though he doesn’t work half as hard as I do. I’m sick of being passed over just because he’s rich and I’m not.”

“Thanks, Fancy,” said Kit as Claudia took a glass of tea from the proffered tray. Kit brought Fancy up to speed while Claudia sipped her drink. “Seems like Mason here is holding Claudia back as a dancer, and so if we kill him, that’ll make Claudia’s life way easier.”

Fancy set the tray aside and rolled her eyes.

“My sister agrees.” Kit placed a comforting hand on Claudia’s
shoulder. “Your case is superimportant to us, so come along, please, and allow us to give you the help you so richly deserve.”

“Come with you where?” she asked, allowing Kit to pull her to her feet.

“To the cellar.”

Claudia froze. “The Bonesaw Killer’s cellar? No way.”

“That’s where we’ll do it,” Kit insisted, “and we need you there so that just in case you ever feel like going to the cops, you’ll have to explain why your fingerprints and”—she grabbed a handful of Claudia’s hair and yanked—“your DNA is at the crime scene.”

“Damn it!” she yelled, rubbing her head and staring at the long strands of dyed red hair in Kit’s fist. “I just got my hair done!”

“It looks very nice, by the way,” Kit assured her, leading her and Mason into the cellar, with Fancy bringing up the rear.

Claudia’s star power dimmed considerably in the small gray space. The sisters cornered her and smiled at each other when Claudia backed away.

She cut her eyes at Mason, who was smiling at the kinetoscope, and said, “I don’t wanna be here when it happens.”