Two Can Keep a Secret

by Karen M. McManus

  Mom sets down the coffeepot and turns toward me. “Malcolm, you didn’t happen to see Brooke when you picked the twins up, did you?”

  Officer McNulty looks up. “You were at Fright Farm last night, Malcolm?”

  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  “Just to give the Corcoran twins a ride home,” Mom says quickly. But not as though she’s really worried that I’m going to get into trouble.

  My stomach twists. She has no idea.

  Officer McNulty rests his forearms on the kitchen island’s shiny, swirling black marble. “Did you happen to see Brooke while you were there?” His tone is interested, but not intense like it was when he interrogated Declan.

  Not yet.

  Five years ago we were in a different kitchen: our tiny ranch, two miles from here. My dad glowered in a corner and my mother twisted her hands together while Declan sat at the table across from Officer McNulty and repeated the same things over and over again. I hadn’t seen Lacey in two days. I don’t know what she was doing that night. I was out driving.

  Driving where?

  Just driving. I do that sometimes.

  Was anybody with you?

  No.

  Did you call anybody? Text anybody?

  No.

  So you just drove by yourself for—what? Two, three hours?

  Yeah.

  Lacey was dead by then. Not just missing. Workers found her body in the park before her parents even knew she hadn’t come home. I sat in the living room while Officer McNulty fired questions at Declan, my eyes glued to a television program I wasn’t watching. I never went into the kitchen. Never said a word. Because none of it involved me, not really, except for the part where it became this slowly burning fuse that eventually blew my family apart.

  “I…” I’m taking too long to answer. I scan the faces around me like they’ll give me some clue how to respond, but all I can see are the same expressions they always wear whenever I start to talk: Mom looks attentive, Katrin exasperated, and Peter is all patient forbearance marred only by a slight nostril flare. Officer McNulty scratches a note on the pad in front of him, then flicks his eyes toward me in a cursory, almost lazy way. Until he sees something in my face that makes him tense, like he’s a cat batting at a toy that suddenly came to life. He leans forward, his blue-gray eyes locked on mine.

  “Do you have something to tell us, Malcolm?” he asks.

  ELLERY

  SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 29

  This time, unlike after the hit-and-run with Mr. Bowman, I’m a good witness. I remember everything.

  I remember taking the paper clip from Brooke’s hand, and picking up a second one from the floor. “Paper clips?” Officer Rodriguez asks. He went directly into questioning mode as soon as Ezra told him we’d left Fright Farm with Brooke. We moved into the kitchen, and Nana made cocoa for everyone. I grasp the still-warm mug gratefully as I explain what happened before Ezra joined Malcolm and me.

  “Yeah. They were pulled apart, you know, so they were almost straight. People do that kind of thing sometimes, like a nervous habit?” I do, anyway. I’ve never met a paper clip I didn’t immediately twist out of its preexisting shape.

  I remember Brooke being sort of goofy and funny and rambling at first. “She made a that’s what she said joke,” I tell Officer Rodriguez.

  His face is a total blank. “That’s what she said?”

  “Yeah, you know, from The Office? The TV show?” I tilt my head at him, waiting for it to click, but his brow stays knit in confusion. How can anyone in his twenties not get that reference? “It’s something the lead character used to say as, like, a punch line after a double entendre. Like when someone says something is hard, they could be referring to a difficult situation or, you know. To a penis.”

  Ezra spits out his cocoa as Officer Rodriguez turns bright red. “For heaven’s sake, Ellery,” Nana snaps. “That’s hardly pertinent to the conversation at hand.”

  “I thought it was,” I say, shrugging. It’s never not interesting observing Officer Rodriguez’s reactions to things he doesn’t expect.

  He clears his throat and avoids my eyes. “And what happened after the…joke?”

  “She drank some water. I asked her what she was doing in the basement. Then she started seeming more upset.” I remember Brooke’s words like she’d just spoken them five minutes ago: I shouldn’t have. I have to show them. It’s not right, it’s not okay. What happened? Wouldn’t you like to know?

  My stomach squeezes. Those are the sort of things that seem like nonsense when a drunk girl is babbling at a party, but ominous when she’s missing. Brooke is missing. I don’t think that’s really sunk in yet. I keep thinking Officer Rodriguez is going to get a call any second telling him she met up with friends after she got home. “She got a little teary when she said all that,” I say. “I asked her if it was about the pep rally, but she said no.”

  “Did you press her?” Officer Rodriguez asks.

  “No. She said she wanted to go home. I offered to get Kyle and she said they’d broken up. And that he wasn’t there anyway. So Malcolm offered her a ride home, and she said okay. That’s when I left to get Ezra. Driving Brooke home was…” I pause, weighing what to say next. “It wasn’t planned. At all. It just happened.”

  Officer Rodriguez’s forehead creases in a quizzical frown. “What do you mean?”

  Good question. What do I mean? My brain has been whirring since Officer Rodriguez said Brooke was missing. We don’t know what it means yet, but I do know this: if she doesn’t show up soon people will expect the worst, and they’ll start pointing fingers at the most obvious suspect. Which would be the person who saw her last.

  It’s the cliché moment of every Dateline special: the friend or neighbor or colleague who says, He’s always been such a nice guy, nobody ever would have believed he could be capable of this. I can’t think everything through clearly yet, but I do know this: there was no master plan to get Brooke alone. I never got the sense that Malcolm was doing anything except trying to help her out. “I mean, it was just random chance that Malcolm ended up giving Brooke a ride,” I say. “We didn’t even know she was in the office at first.”

  “Okay,” Officer Rodriguez says, his expression neutral. “So you left to find Ezra, and Malcolm was alone with Brooke for…how long?”

  I look at Ezra, who shrugs. “Five minutes, maybe?” I say.

  “Was Brooke’s demeanor any different when you returned?”

  “No. She was still sad.”

  “But you said she wasn’t sad earlier. That she was joking.”

  “She was joking and then she was sad,” I remind him.

  “Right. So, describe the walk to the car for me, please. Both of you.”

  It goes on like that for another ten minutes until we finally, painstakingly get to the moment in our driveway when I asked Brooke if she was going to be okay. I gloss over the part where Malcolm asked if he could call me, which doesn’t seem important right now. Ezra doesn’t bring it up, either.

  “She said, Why wouldn’t I be?” Officer Rodriguez repeats.

  “Yeah.”

  “And did you answer?”

  “No.” I didn’t. It hits me with a sharp stab of regret, now, that I should have.

  “All right.” Officer Rodriguez snaps the notebook shut. “Thank you. This has been helpful. I’ll let you know if I have any follow-up questions.”

  I unclench my hands, realizing I’ve been knotting them in my lap. They’re covered with a thin sheen of sweat. “And if you find Brooke? Will you let us know she’s all right?”

  “Of course. I’m heading to the station now. Maybe she’s already home, getting a talking-to from her parents. Most of the time that’s—” He stops suddenly, his neck going red as he darts a glance at Nana. “That’s what we hope for.”

  I know
what he was about to say. Most of the time that’s how these things turn out. It’s the sort of thing police officers are trained to tell worried people so they won’t spiral into panic when somebody goes missing. But it’s not comforting in Echo Ridge.

  Because Nana’s right. It’s never been true.

  MALCOLM

  SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 29

  “You’re an important witness here, Malcolm. Take your time.”

  Officer McNulty is still resting his forearms on the kitchen island. His sleeves are rolled up, and his watch reads 9:15. Brooke has been missing for almost ten hours. It’s not that much time, but it feels like forever when you start imagining all the things that could happen to a person while the rest of the world is sleeping.

  I’m sitting on the stool beside him. There are only a couple of feet between us, which doesn’t feel like enough. Officer McNulty’s eyes are still on me, cold and flat. He said witness, not suspect, but that isn’t how he’s looking at me. “That’s it,” I say. “That’s everything I remember.”

  “So the Corcoran twins can corroborate your story right up until you dropped them off at their house?”

  Jesus. Corroborate your story. My stomach tightens. I should’ve brought Brooke home first. Everything would look a lot different if I had. “Yeah,” I say.

  What the hell must Ellery be thinking right now? Does she even know?

  Who am I kidding? This is Echo Ridge. Officer McNulty has been at our house for more than an hour. Everyone knows.

  “All right,” Officer McNulty says. “Let’s go back a little while, before last night. Did you notice anything unusual about Brooke in the past few weeks? Anything that concerned or surprised you?”

  I slide my eyes toward Katrin. She’s leaning against the counter, but stiffly, like she’s a mannequin somebody propped there. “I don’t really know Brooke,” I say. “I don’t see her much.”

  “She’s here a lot though, isn’t she?” Officer McNulty asks.

  It feels like he’s after something, but I don’t know what. Officer McNulty’s eyes drop from my face to my knee, and I realize it’s jiggling nervously. I press a fist onto my leg to stop the movement. “Yeah, but not to hang out with me.”

  “She thought you were cute,” Katrin says abruptly.

  What the hell? My throat closes, and I couldn’t answer even if I knew what to say.

  Everyone turns toward Katrin. “She’s been saying that for a while,” she continues. Her voice is low, but every word is perfectly clear and precise. “Last weekend, when she was sleeping over, I woke up and she wasn’t in the room. I waited for, like, twenty minutes before I fell asleep again, but she didn’t come back. I thought maybe she was visiting you. Especially since she broke up with Kyle a couple of days later.”

  The words hit me like a punch to the gut as all the heads in the room swivel to me. Jesus Christ, why would Katrin say something like that? She has to know how it would make me look. Even more suspicious than I already do. “She wasn’t,” I manage to say.

  “Malcolm doesn’t have a girlfriend,” my mother says quickly. In the space of a half hour she’s aged a year: her cheeks are hollow, her hair’s straggling out of its neat bun, and there’s a deep line etched between her brows. I know she’s been traveling down the same memory lane that I have. “He’s not like…he’s always spent more time with his friends than with girls.”

  He’s not like Declan. That’s what she was about to say.

  Officer McNulty’s eyes bore into mine. “If there was anything going on with you and Brooke, Malcolm, now is the time to mention it. Doesn’t mean you’re in trouble.” His jaw twitches, betraying the lie. “Just another piece of this puzzle we’re trying to figure out.”

  “There wasn’t,” I say, meeting Katrin’s cool stare. She edges closer to Peter. He’s been silent all this time, arms folded, an expression of deep concern on his face. “The only time I ever see Brooke is when she’s with Katrin. Except…” A thought hits me, and I look at Officer McNulty again. He’s fully alert, leaning forward. “I did see her a few days ago. I was in the car with Mia,” I add hastily. “We saw Brooke downtown, talking with Vance Puckett.”

  Officer McNulty blinks. Frowns. Whatever he was expecting me to say, that wasn’t it. “Vance Puckett?”

  “Yeah. He was painting over the graffiti on Armstrong’s Auto Repair, and Brooke walked up to him. They were talking sort of…intensely. You asked about anything unusual, and that was, um, unusual.” Even as the words spill out of me, I know how they sound.

  Like a guy with something to hide who’s trying to deflect attention.

  “Interesting.” Officer McNulty nods. “Vance Puckett was in the drunk tank last night, and in fact”—he glances at his watch—“is most likely still there. Thank you for the information, though. We’ll be sure to follow up with him.” He sits back and crosses his arms. He’s wearing a dress shirt, and nicely pressed pants. I realize he was probably getting ready for church when all this happened. “Is there anything else you think would be good for us to know?”

  My phone sits heavy in my pocket. It hasn’t been buzzing, which means Mia probably isn’t even awake yet. The last text I have was the one Declan sent before I entered the House of Horrors to pick up the twins.

  In town for a few hours. Don’t freak out.

  Why was he here? Why was my brother here, again, when a girl goes missing?

  If I showed that text to Officer McNulty now, everything would change. Katrin would stop looking daggers at me. Officer McNulty wouldn’t keep asking the same question a dozen different ways. His suspicion would shift away from me, and go back to where it’s been ever since Lacey died. To Declan.

  I swallow hard and keep my phone where it is. “No. There’s nothing.”

  ELLERY

  SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 29

  I can’t sit still.

  I pace through Nana’s house all afternoon, picking things up and then putting them down. The bookshelves in her living room are full of those porcelain figures she likes—Hummels, Nana calls them. Little boys and girls with blond hair and apple cheeks, climbing trees and carrying baskets and hugging one another. Nana told me, when I picked one up a couple of days ago, that Sadie had broken it when she was ten.

  “Knocked that one on the ground so its head split in two,” Nana said. “She glued the pieces back together. I didn’t notice for weeks.”

  Once you know to look for it, though, it’s obvious. I held the porcelain girl in my hand and stared at the jagged white line running down one side of her face. “Were you mad?” I’d asked Nana.

  “Furious,” she said. “Those are collector’s items. The girls weren’t supposed to touch them. But Sadie couldn’t keep her hands off them. I knew it was her, even when Sarah told me she’d done it.”

  “Sarah did? Why?”

  “She didn’t want her sister to get punished,” Nana said. For the first time when talking about Sarah, a spasm of grief crossed her face. “I was always a little harder on Sadie, I suppose. Because she was usually the one causing trouble.”

  It didn’t occur to me, until just now, that some of that sadness might have been for my mother. For another cracked girl, broken and pieced clumsily back together. Still standing, but not the same.

  There’s only one family photo in the living room: it’s of Nana and my grandfather, looking like they’re in their late thirties, and Sadie and Sarah around twelve years old. I pick it up and study their faces. All I can think is: they had no idea.

  Just like Brooke’s family had no idea. Or maybe they did. Maybe they’ve been worried since Brooke’s locker was vandalized and the bloody meat was thrown on her car, wondering if there was something they should be doing. Maybe they’re sick about it now. Because it’s almost one o’clock, and nobody’s heard a word from her.

  My phone buzzes, and I put th
e photo down to pull it from my pocket. My pulse jumps when I see a text from Malcolm: Can we talk?

  I hesitate. I’d thought about texting him after Officer Rodriguez left, but I didn’t know what to say. I still don’t. Gray dots appear, and I forget to breathe while I watch them.

  I understand if you don’t want to.

  The thing is, I do.

  I text back, Okay. Where?

  Wherever you want. I could come by?

  That’s a good idea, because there’s no way Nana’s letting me out of the house today. I’m surprised she even went to the basement to do laundry. When? I ask.

  Ten minutes?

  Okay.

  I go upstairs and knock on Ezra’s bedroom door. He doesn’t answer, probably because he’s blasting music with his headphones on. It’s his go-to escape whenever he’s worried. I twist the knob and push open the door and sure enough, he’s at his desk with a pair of Bose clamped firmly over his ears, staring at his laptop. He jumps when I tap his shoulder.

  “Malcolm’s coming over,” I say once he’s pulled off the headphones.

  “He is? Why?”

  “Um. He didn’t say, exactly. But I assume…you know. He wants to talk about Brooke and maybe…” I think about his second message. I understand if you don’t want to. “Maybe explain what happened after he dropped us off.”

  “We know what happened,” Ezra says. We already heard a version of it from Nana, who heard it from Melanie, who probably heard it from Peter Nilsson. Or one of those other people in Echo Ridge who seem to know everything as soon as it happens. “Malcolm dropped Brooke off and she went inside.” He frowns when I don’t answer. “What, do you not believe that? Ellery, come on. He’s our friend.”

  “Who we’ve known a month,” I say. “And the first time I met him, he was holding a can of spray paint at Lacey’s fund-raiser.” Ezra’s mouth opens, but I plow ahead before he can interrupt. “Look, all I’m saying is that it’s not unreasonable to question him right now.”