Wonderland

by Jennifer Hillier

  “I also know you’re an excellent detective who’ll be able to keep his bias in check,” Vanessa said. “Ask her if she was involved with Aiden, see what she says. My guess is she’ll lie about it, but we have proof.”

  “You really don’t want to do this yourself?”

  “I can’t be in two places at once, and right now I’m so pissed at Carl Weiss I can’t see straight. His work on Aiden’s case—all their cases—was shoddy, and that’s putting it nicely.” When the detective didn’t say anything, Vanessa said, “Come on, it’ll be fun. Here’s your chance to stick it to the Dragon Lady herself. That, and it’s a direct order.”

  “Pulling rank, huh?” Donnie sighed. “Fine. I’m on it.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Former deputy chief of police Carl Weiss lived on the outskirts of Seaside, away from the beach and the bustle of downtown and Wonderland, in an older neighborhood on Lakeshore Drive. Vanessa had heard of the neighborhood, known for its mini mansions and affluent residents, but this was her first time visiting.

  Lakeshore Drive wrapped around Belle Lake, a small but pretty oval-shaped lake that sparkled like crazy when the sun was out. Earl Schultz, Frank Greenberg, and Nick Bishop all had addresses here, too, and while Vanessa could understand how the last three could afford it, she couldn’t imagine how Carl Weiss managed a house in this neighborhood on a small-town deputy chief’s salary.

  The Weiss residence was set on a third acre of perfectly manicured lawn. It was a sprawling, older Craftsman, with mature trees and a flourishing garden. As she pulled her unmarked into the generous driveway, a Filipino gardener who was trimming hedges near the garage glanced over at her curiously. Vanessa parked beside a silver Mercedes and gave him a small wave as she stepped out, throwing her bag over her shoulder as she headed for the front door. She pushed the doorbell and waited.

  A Filipino housekeeper answered.

  “Can I help you?” Her voice was soft, with only a trace of accent. She was young, maybe late twenties, with a pretty face. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and had a small flowered apron tied around her waist.

  “Is former deputy chief Carl Weiss home?” Vanessa held up her credentials.

  “Who may I say is asking?”

  “Vanessa Castro. The current deputy chief.”

  The woman’s eyes widened slightly. Before she could answer, a woman’s voice called out from a different room somewhere behind her.

  “Jade, who’s at the door?”

  A woman, whom Vanessa could only presume was Mrs. Carl Weiss, appeared in the hallway. Even from a distance, Vanessa could tell she was well maintained, and suddenly the house made more sense. Salon-highlighted blond hair framed a tanned, tight face, and she was wearing coral-patterned Lululemon yoga attire from head to toe. She headed toward Vanessa carrying a small dog with curly fur in one arm, and a yoga mat under the other.

  “Who’s this?” Her voice was bright. Her pink lip gloss matched her freshly pedicured feet. Thanks to the Botox and fillers, it was impossible to tell how old she was, and Vanessa’s best guess was that she was somewhere between forty and sixty.

  “It’s the deputy chief from Seaside PD, ma’am Melanie.” Jade stepped aside.

  “Well, hello.” Gray eyes took Vanessa in all at once, darting from face to badge to gun holster and back to her face again. “How wonderful of you of stop by. We spoke on the phone the other day, didn’t we? I’m Melanie Stratton-Weiss. What can I do for you?”

  “Hello, Mrs. Weiss,” Vanessa said. “I’m Vanessa Castro, the new deputy chief of Seaside PD. I was hoping to speak to your husband. Is he available?”

  “It’s Stratton-Weiss.” The woman’s smile never left her face. “But please call me Melanie.”

  “My apologies, ma’am,” Vanessa said. “Is your husband home?”

  “Well, yes he is, he arrived late last night, but he’s pretty tired today and is taking a nap. But I can tell him you stopped—”

  “Mr. Carl is awake now, ma’am Melanie,” the housekeeper said. She was standing back from the front door, behind her boss. “He woke up fifteen minutes ago. I was preparing a snack for him.” She gave Vanessa a small, knowing smile.

  “Well, thank you, Jade.” The older woman’s smile hardened slightly. “But he’s not expecting visitors today, so I think it’s best that he—”

  “Who’s at the door, Mel?” A man’s voice boomed from somewhere on the second floor. “There’s an unmarked Dodge in the driveway. Who’s here?”

  “Deputy Chief Castro, sir,” Vanessa called out before his wife could answer. “I was hoping to talk to you about one of your old cases.”

  Pursing her lips, Melanie Stratton-Weiss stepped aside. “I’m late for yoga class,” she said. “Otherwise I’d stay. I’m studying for my certification. Do you practice yoga? There’s a wonderful studio—”

  “Mel, for god’s sake, invite her inside.” Carl Weiss came down the stairs. He was dressed in baggy sweatpants and a faded Wisconsin Badgers T-shirt, his hair still wet from a shower.

  Frowning, his wife slipped past Vanessa and headed for the Mercedes.

  “Deputy Chief,” Weiss said with a grin. “Isn’t this a nice surprise.”

  • • •

  He looked pretty much the same as his wall portrait at Seaside PD, which nobody had bothered to take down, only he was deeply tanned, grayer, and sporting a beard that looked about two weeks old. He showed her into the den, where they took seats opposite each other. Jade brought in a tray with two sandwiches, a pitcher of iced tea, and two glasses. Weiss looked at the pitcher and frowned, then grabbed one of the sandwiches and took a bite.

  “I’m sorry to bother you at home, Deputy,” Vanessa said. “I tried calling you last week, but your wife said you were away.”’

  “Call me Carl.” He took another bite of the sandwich. Crumbs fell onto his shirt and he absently brushed them onto the carpet, something only a person with a housekeeper who did all the cleaning would ever do. “Deputy is your title now.”

  “It’s Vanessa, please.”

  “So how it’s going over there?” Weiss said. “You guys still working on the Homeless Harry thing? Heard about it this morning when I got back. Christ, that’s an icky situation. How long was the kid dead?”

  “A few days, based on the stage of decomp,” Vanessa said. “He died six, maybe eight days before his body turned up. Are you aware that Homeless Harry was Aiden Cole? He was one of your cases. Disappeared three years ago.”

  Weiss nodded. “Yeah, I read that part, too. Not the way you want a missing persons case to resolve, that’s for damn sure. How’d David Cole take the news?”

  “Not terribly well.”

  Another bite of the sandwich, another frown at the iced tea, and a big sigh. “Well, thanks for coming to tell me. Closure is closure, even if it’s not the outcome I was hoping for. David Cole called almost every month. He never let me forget that his son was out there.”

  Vanessa reached into her bag and pulled out the bottle of Jim Beam she’d picked up on the way over. “I could use a drink. You?”

  She could almost see his mouth watering. “Mel know you brought that in?”

  “I kept it in my bag.”

  He put the sandwich down and reached for the glasses. “Open it. We have at least two hours. She always gets a latte after class with her yogis. Let’s drink.”

  She poured the whiskey and they clinked glasses. Vanessa’s sip was tiny; Weiss’s was not. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he leaned back and smiled at her. While he wasn’t a wholly unattractive man, he seemed a little uncouth for the likes of Melanie Stratton-Weiss, and Vanessa wondered what drew the woman to him.

  “So what else can you tell me about the Cole case?” he said. “I’m assuming that’s why you’re here?”

  “We don’t have a lot so far. The suspect was
taken into custody in a different state and is being transported here as we speak.”

  “You’re not gonna tell me who it is? Someone from Seaside?”

  “It’s Glenn Hovey.”

  “Christ,” Weiss said. “That weirdo again.”

  “Again?”

  He took another sip of his whiskey. “His name came up on a couple other things involving the park.”

  “Kyle Grimmie and Tyler Wilkins,” Vanessa said.

  The older man raised an eyebrow. “So you’re working that angle, then. I don’t blame you, I guess.”

  “What angle is that?”

  “That there’s a connection between them.”

  “All due respect, Carl, I don’t think that’s an angle. I think at this point, that’s a given.” Vanessa braced herself. “David Cole wasn’t too happy with the way his son’s case was handled. Neither was Tanner Wilkins. Both parents believed more could have been done.”

  “You’ve seen the case files for them?” Weiss poured himself another whiskey. “You saw how little there was to go on.”

  “Yes, and our job is to dig. And when we find something, or if something falls in our lap, we take it and run with it.”

  “All due respect, Vanessa, I don’t need a lecture on how to be a cop.” Weiss threw back another shot. “I was in law enforcement when you were still in pigtails.”

  “Then why didn’t you question Bianca Bishop about her sexual relationship with Aiden?”

  “Who says I didn’t?”

  She blinked. That wasn’t what she was expecting him to say. “It wasn’t in the file.”

  “A lot of things weren’t in the file,” Weiss said. “But I knew. Of course I knew. And I questioned her. Of course I did.”

  “What am I missing?” Vanessa was completely lost. She set her drink down on the table. “If you followed through, why are there no notes in Aiden’s file? Why wouldn’t you write that down?”

  “Because I couldn’t,” Weiss said. “You’re too new to Seaside to understand how things work here. And I’m too old and too tired to explain it to you in detail. What I can tell you is that the Bishops—both Bianca and her uncle, Nick—revived this town from near-death. They carry a lot of weight in Seaside, and deservedly so. I didn’t put what I knew about Bianca and Aiden in the file because those case files can be accessed by anyone at Seaside PD, at any time. I didn’t want to take the chance that rumors might start, so I kept it all up here.” He tapped the side of his head. “Had there been anything to show Bianca Bishop had anything to do with Aiden’s disappearance, I’d have been all over it. But there wasn’t. They had a fling, end of story.”

  “Did Earl Schultz know?”

  “Who do you think told me not to write it down?”

  Vanessa let out a long breath. The level of ass-covering in Seaside just kept going deeper and deeper. “What else should I know? Who else was she sleeping with?”

  “Tyler Wilkins,” Weiss said. Vanessa almost fell off her chair. “When I was searching the kid’s room after Tanner reported him missing, I found a drawing. A sketch, done in colored pencils. Folded up under his bed. Tyler was an artist, did you know that?”

  “Yes, but it wasn’t in his file.” She was unable to resist the jab.

  “He was good, too,” Weiss said, ignoring it. “The sketch was of Bianca, sleeping, naked from the waist up. Unmistakably her, down to the long red hair. I took it with me, confronted her about it, and all this was before Aiden, obviously. She denied anything happened between them, said Tyler used to follow her around, that he seemed to have a crush on her, and that the sketch was just an expression of his imagination. I didn’t believe her.” He poured himself another drink. His words were beginning to slur. “Earl told me to keep it quiet, that unless I knew for a fact she’d done something to Tyler, Bianca sleeping with her Wonder Workers wasn’t enough to accuse her of a crime. Tyler and Aiden were both eighteen, after all.”

  “Do you still have that sketch?”

  “Earl took it. He obviously didn’t want it in the file.”

  “And Kyle Grimmie?”

  “I could never verify whether she had a relationship with him, but you know how these things go.” He reached for the bottle of Jim Beam again. Vanessa had lost count of how much he’d drunk. “If she slept with two, she’s probably slept with twenty.”

  “Cop to cop, you think she’s capable of murder?”

  Weiss heaved a long sigh. “I hate that question. I’m sure you do, too, though you have to ask it. You already know the answer.”

  “Which is?”

  “Everyone’s capable of murder,” he said. “Everyone. In the right circumstances, in the right place and time, anyone could kill anyone. Any cop worth his salt knows that.”

  He was absolutely right, of course.

  “What else can you tell me?” she asked. “I’ve got four missing boys, Carl. One turned up dead. The other three are likely dead. Nineteen more potential victims. All teenagers, all blond, all worked for the park. Their Wonderland ID cards were in Glenn Hovey’s possession, and I’ll be questioning him later today. But should I be looking at Bianca Bishop, too? Because unlike you, I don’t give a shit who she is, or what she’s done for this town. I’m too new to feel any sense of loyalty. I just want these cases solved.”

  Carl Weiss stood up and walked to the window, staggering a little bit. The blinds were down, and he reached for the cord and tugged. Sunlight spilled into the room, and the view from his den was beautiful. Belle Lake sparkled.

  “If it were up to me, I’d move.” The former deputy chief spoke slowly. His words were fuzzy. “But my wife loves it here. This is her house, you see. Her first husband was a plastic surgeon, made a ton of money until he dropped dead from a heart attack on the golf course. Do you know why she married me?”

  “I have no idea.” Vanessa remained seated on the chair. She was speaking to the back of his head, and she had no idea what Carl Weiss’s marriage had to do with the fact that Bianca Bishop might have teamed up with Glenn Hovey to kill her teenage lovers.

  “Because even though I’m sloppy and old and not that bright, I had some clout in this town as deputy chief. We’ve had dinner at the mayor’s house—not Frank Greenberg, the one before him—and also at Nick Bishop’s, whose house is on the other side of the lake. She liked that I was in a position of authority; she already had a ton of money, so what she wanted was status. I knew all the right people. But if it were up to me, I’d leave. I’d buy myself a little condo in Cabo, get a little fishing boat, and spend my days out on the water.”

  “So why don’t you?”

  “Because it’s Seaside. It’s like Hotel California. Every time I try to leave, I keep getting sucked back in. And truth be told, it’s all I know.” He turned back to her. “Is it true that you got hired because of Greenberg?”

  “Yes.”

  “He owed you a favor?”

  “He didn’t owe me anything. He owed my late husband. They went way back.”

  “So now you owe him a favor?”

  Vanessa didn’t answer. She hadn’t even seen Frank since she’d moved here, and she had no plans to. What they’d done with John that night could destroy them both, and it simply made sense to stay away. “I think he and I are even,” she said.

  “Good. Keep it that way. You don’t want to owe anyone in Seaside anything. It’s too high a price to pay when they call in their favors. That’s the only piece of advice I could ever give you.” Carl Weiss turned back to the window. “You can show yourself out, Deputy. Leave the Jim Beam.”

  She did as he asked. On the drive back to the department, she called Jerry at the White Oaks Inn. Without preamble, she told him that Tyler Wilkins had been sleeping with the Dragon Lady of Wonderland, and that Carl Weiss had deliberately omitted that fact from the case file. Then she listened through the car�
�s speakers as the easygoing private detective let loose a string of obscenities that would have made a sailor blush.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Bianca Bishop knew what the Wonder Workers called her behind her back: Dragon Lady. Blake Dozier, also known as the Wonder Wheel Kid, had told her about it once while they were in bed together. He’d thought it was funny, and had laughed when he said it. She, on the other, had not laughed, though she supposed there were worse nicknames.

  Blake had thought a lot of stupid things were funny. He had snapped pictures of them once while they were lying in bed together, postsex, sheets tangled, bodies naked. She’d flown into a rage when she’d woken up a bit later and he’d showed her the photos, which he’d already uploaded to Instagram. Why did teenage boys always do this? It didn’t matter that in this one, her face wasn’t in the pictures. You could still see her signature red hair and part of her breast, and the idea that she was out there, exposed in any way, was abhorrent to her. The only saving grace was that he’d Instagrammed the pictures in the middle of the night, and so hardly anyone had seen them. She demanded he delete them immediately, and then threatened to break his iPhone if he didn’t delete them from there as well.

  She should have known better than to trust someone with her privacy who prided himself on documenting every single thing he did on social media. Blake had begged for her forgiveness, and she’d given it, but his phone was never to be seen in her presence again after that night. When Aiden had tried taking pictures of her three years earlier, she’d smashed his phone to pieces. Which had been no easy feat, considering smartphones were built to withstand blunt force.

  Her affair with Blake had lasted longer than most, which is probably why he took it so hard when she’d said it was over. He’d followed her around like a hungry puppy for weeks, arranging to bump into her at places he knew she’d be, trying to talk to her about their relationship. It had gotten annoying. And discretion was important. It was bad enough that Oscar knew she had slept with Blake, but she wasn’t concerned about her VP telling anyone. She had her secrets, he had his, and if she went down, so would he.