Bella steps forward and offers Caleb a hand, which he takes. “My name is Bella Loyola. This is Mary Elizabeth Heart. Can we talk to you for a few minutes?”
“Sure,” he says. “Have a seat. I just have to finish up over here.”
The blond guy who greeted us grins. “Like you have anything interesting to say.” He looks at us. “I’m the one you want to talk to. Caleb’s the dullest guy around.”
The buzzing resumes. Caleb is tattooing a dagger right next to a man’s Legacy mark.
As I take Caleb’s book of tattoos with us and flip through its pages I very much doubt what the blond guy said is true. The tattoos are beautiful, curved and complex, like pearled webs. And then on the last page: a picture of Ursula and a tattoo I’ve never seen before, an octopus made up of simple, fine lines running up the side of her left thigh.
It’s unlike anything else in the book, and it sends shivers racing over me. Did he do that to her? Did he give her a tattoo and then make it a reality for her? She’s smiling into the camera, showing it off. It has to have been within the last month, after Ursula stopped straightening her hair and let it grow natural. She’s staring at the camera, staring at me, and she’s smiling in a way that can only be described as wicked, mocking, an invitation to trouble.
The man Caleb’s been tattooing hands him some money and walks out.
Caleb is wearing jeans that are tight at the hip with a tucked-in white T-shirt, suspenders, black work boots, leather Legacy cuffs on his arms, and he has tattooed lightning bolts coming out from around his Legacy mark.
“You’re from here?” I ask.
“Before I say anything, aren’t you supposed to tell me you’re cops?”
My heart drops. He knows. Bella is so obvious. We’re never going to get any information from him now.
“We’re here unofficially.” Bella looks from me to him, but she doesn’t bother denying anything. “And only I’m a cop. She’s just an intern. Ursula Atlantica has been missing for several days. She’s known to have patronized this establishment. We’re wondering if you have any information as to her whereabouts.”
His shoulders loosen slightly.
“We found your name on a random piece of paper in her stuff. We just wanted to check up on you, see if you could tell us anything.” Wow. Bella is playing this perfectly. I can see him being disarmed.
His cheeks nearly get sucked into his dimples when he smiles. “Oh, well, in that case.” He leans over and rubs the top of my head like I’m a cat that needs to be petted between the ears. “I know Ursula a little. She came in to get a tattoo. She was real loud and made me take that picture of her, stuck it right in there herself.”
I bet this is the truth. It sounds just like Ursula.
“She came in another day asking about a septum piercing,” he goes on, “but she decided not to do it, and that was it. Never saw her again.”
Bella glances at me. “And how long ago was that, Caleb?”
“About two weeks ago.”
“And you haven’t seen her since?”
“Regrettably not.”
“Do you remember anything you talked about while she was getting the tattoo?” Then I remember myself. I’m supposed to be vulnerable and innocent, so I bat my eyes a few times. “I just wonder what she was thinking about that day, you know? I thought she told me everything, but she never told me about that tattoo.”
Caleb’s pupils glitter dangerously. “Everything, hunh?”
“I mean I thought she did until she disappeared. Now I keep hearing how she had some secret life or something. I don’t know anything about any of that, so I guess you’re right. She didn’t tell me everything.” I let my voice congest with tears.
“Hey, you’re going to be okay. I don’t remember much about Ursula,” he says. “Hell, I don’t remember yesterday. But I do know how we came up with the design. She said when she looked deep inside herself, she saw something slick and many-limbed. She wanted that on her body. I think she was real happy with the work. That’s about it. The rest is a blur and I never saw her again, so I have no idea what could have happened to her. She was tough, though. I have a feeling she can take care of herself.”
If I didn’t know he was lying, I would be convinced.
“Did she say anything to you about anything unusual going on in her life?” Bella says. “Anyone upset with her about anything related to her business?”
Caleb shakes his head. “We talked about poets and the cosmos and art. You know, the stuff you talk about when someone is giving you a tattoo.”
This sounds so much like the Ursula I know, my eyes actually do fill. I wonder if her appointment gave her a chance to butter him up for information. I wonder when she went in for the kill.
“Just one more question, Caleb,” Bella says. “Where were you Thurs-day night, the night Ursula disappeared?”
“I work from noon to two a.m., seven days a week. I never miss.”
“Okay,” Bella says. “Thank you very much for your time.”
Caleb waves us out, but I see how his expression changes as we take our leave, how he crosses his arms and watches us go, features hardening over his skull, and I can feel him watching us until the crowd on Wonder Avenue sucks us in and out of view.
BELLA AND I SLIP NEXT DOOR TO THE TEA PARTY and order some coffee and a couple of cupcakes. Once the drinks have been poured and Bella has sweetened her coffee and added in the cream, she looks at me. I think she’s going to say something about Caleb Rothco and the provable lie he told about the extent of his relationship with Ursula and the fact that he almost certainly has something to do with Ursula’s disappearance.
“Cardamom rose with lilac buttercream for you,” the waiter says, and puts a cupcake of decadent pinks in front of me.
“Double chocolate espresso with a cherry chocolate mousse icing for you.” He places Bella’s in front of her.
“Thank you,” I say.
Bella swipes at the icing, then lets her lids drop. “You want to know why I don’t like answering questions? I shot someone,” she says softly. “A few months ago. I was with Tony. That’s why I was in the office doing paperwork for so long. I haven’t been able to talk about it. It was just so awful.”
I can think of a lot of troubling things, but I wouldn’t mind putting a bullet into a bad guy. Bella seems affected. “I’m sorry, Bella.”
“I was aiming for his leg, but I killed him. Tony was right behind me. We had gone to question the guy about a possible connection to some robberies that had been going on Uptown. Poof, just like that. He fell right off the fire escape.” She clears her throat. “I suppose I did not handle it well. I’ve had to prove I could handle being out on the street again, and to be honest, until very recently I wasn’t sure I actually could. So I’m trying to get back on my game, but it’s been kind of hard.” She studies her cupcake. “That’s why I was a little…well, not offended…but worried that they put me with you. But now I don’t feel that way anymore. Okay? I just want you to know that. I’ve spent more time with you in the last week than I have with anyone else in the last three months and it hasn’t been bad.” She finally looks up, smiles ruefully, and takes a sip of her coffee. “I just want you to know that in case Monday comes along and that’s the end of this.”
I hadn’t thought that far ahead, but she’s probably right. We don’t solve Mally’s case, we’re going to be disbanded. My internship will plod along until the end of the semester and that will be that. The prospect is saddening for more than one reason.
“Thank you, Bella. Really.” I take a bite of my creamy cupcake. I remember when Tea Party cupcakes were magical. One of my first memories is of being here and my mother having to get up on a chair to pull me down from the ceiling, where I had floated unexpectedly. It’s so comfortable in here with its fluffy pillows and lilting background music, I could almost forget everything else and just enjoy Bella’s company.
But then she sighs and I sigh and it’s like we bo
th know we need to get back to it.
“Okay,” she says. “Let’s talk it through. What are we not seeing? We know Caleb is lying and we should probably follow him to see if it leads anywhere. There’s a clear connection to Ursula, but we don’t know that he has anything to do with Mally Saint. We’ll check that, of course, and we can keep searching Ursula’s phone for a connection, too, but…but what if they’re dead?” Bella says, keeping her gaze steady on me. “What if it’s someone or something we haven’t even begun to think about yet because we are being too myopic? I’m going to try to get some DNA for both of them, Mally and Ursula. And we’re going to enter it into the database and see if anything pops up. There was a trucker who passed through a few years ago, kidnapped a couple people, and then left their remains outside of Las Vegas. They didn’t put it together for months because no one had done the DNA work. That way if Ursula and Mally are dead we’ll be doing everything we can to discover the truth.”
“Ursula is not dead!” I slap my hand on the table, stun myself and her with the truth. But I can’t sit here anymore and listen to her talk about Ursula as if she’s in pieces like the Mad Hatter boxes, because she’s not. I sense people in other booths looking over at us, and I don’t care.
“Okay,” Bella says. “You talk. Tell me what you think.”
“I think she’s somewhere against her will and I believe she and Mally are in the same place. I believe it’s Legacy-related.” I lower my voice. “When we find Ursula, we will find Mally, and they will be alive. I’m telling you, I’m right about this.”
I wait, but Bella has no reaction except to look pensive, like a person might while reading a puzzling book.
“The point is—” she says, finally, still quiet, without any force behind her words.
“Is what?”
“Is…Okay. We need some kind of break, something that can help us find her. Something concrete.”
“So we’ll start with Caleb,” I say. “And you can run the DNA or whatever. Maybe something will come up.”
Bella nods, then gazes outside, where a bunch of guys are practicing doing flips while a woman across the street juggles. “What a crazy little place this is.” She looks back at me. “I’ve thought about moving out of the Scar, you know. Plenty of people do it. You know how many of us go west because the weather is more like it is here, but the world is the same all over.” She takes another bite of cupcake, chews and swallows it. “At least there was once magic here. There’s something about it. The air is just different.”
I nod. I know exactly what she’s talking about. It still smells like fairy dust, like cookies and campfires. “My favorite part about being in the Scar is that you can almost see it for what it once was. The fairy godmothers, the magical clothes, the animals, the mind readers, and being able to bring anything you could ever imagine into reality. At least here there’s a little Trace of it. I can’t imagine ever leaving. I don’t know why I would,” I say. “I have grandparents in California, but I’ve met them, like, once ever. Anyway, Gia and me, we take care of each other.”
Bella’s phone beeps from inside her satchel and she signals the waiter to bring our check. She looks at the screen and launches herself out of the booth. “Let’s go,” she says.
“We haven’t paid yet.”
“We’ll get the check at the counter.” She flings her satchel strap over her shoulder.
“Bella, what’s going on? You’re freaking me out.”
“Well, you should be freaked out. I just got a text from Officer Mahony. They got the footage from Wonderland for the night Mally disappeared and the day Ursula did, and guess what?”
“What?” My body seems to swell and thump simultaneously.
“They went in and they never came out.”
BELLA AND I DECIDE TO DIVIDE AND CONQUER. Since I usually hang out at Wonderland nights anyway, it won’t raise any suspicions if I go in and see if I can snoop around. I can’t imagine where they could have gone. There’s only the front door and the one leading out back to the dumpster and the cellar. There were cameras on both.
Bella and I watched the footage. Ursula went in sometime in the afternoon when it was already getting busy with the after-school gamer-geek crowd. She walked around, got a phone call, went down the stairs, and that was it. So she must have gone out the back. Except there are also cameras in the back and the door never opened until the dishwasher went to dump the grease later that night.
Monday night was tougher. It was super packed because Stone’s band was playing. Mally could be seen walking around without Hellion, leaning against the bar. But then she disappeared into the crowd by the stage and never showed up again. The camera quality isn’t great, and with the lights down low and everyone jumping up and down, it’s like she just evaporated.
By the time we’re done watching everything so many times we’re seeing double, Wonderland will be in full swing. Bella tells me to do my best and then call her and let her know what happened. We’re running on sugar and caffeine and the thirty-six or so hours we have left until we have to report in to the chief.
It’s not until I’m heading to Wonderland that I realize I haven’t heard from James all day. I call him, but it goes straight to voice mail, then text him a few times but he doesn’t respond. On any normal day that might annoy me a little, but now it sends me headlong into panic. I push through the Narrows, commuting into Monarch so they can say they hang out at the same club as the Legacy kids. They’ve made a mess of the bar, hanging out in spots usually reserved for Legacy, leaning over stools and counters like the place is theirs and not ours. James isn’t playing pool or any games, and he’s not watching the band, so where is he?
Dally is in his white suit that’s covered in sequins and glows in the blacklight. He’s chatting and laughing from behind the bar, twirling his rabbit foot, his smile floating. I wave to him and want to ask him if he’s seen James, but that would mean he would start asking more questions, and I’m probably just being paranoid.
I play pinball croquet until my name is in the number-one spot again, waiting until it gets so packed in here no one will notice me searching for doors no one knows about, but the loneliness is getting to me. Without Ursula and James, I don’t really have anyone. People steer clear of me the same way they did Mally. They nod to acknowledge me, but they don’t come over to talk.
“Sullen tonight, Mary Elizabeth,” Dally says, coming over to me with my Caterpillar drink. He leans over the pinball machine so I have to stop and pay attention to him. Then he hands me some quarters. “Tell me everything, honey.”
I put the quarters in.
“Croquet, my dear?” the sultry feminine voice says. I start playing, flinging the ball here and there, landing in all the right places, watching the numbers rise. Asking about James is an admission, and Dally rubs his rabbit’s foot and looks at me with consternation.
“I thought you had forsaken me.” Dally steeples his fingers. “Should I be concerned?” He scans me and puts a hand over mine.
I sip on my drink and keep playing, shooting the ball up, whacking it into the other croquet balls.
“I mean, I knew I would have heard if something had happened to you like the others. But it’s eerie, isn’t it? Like this place is full of ghosts now. Where is our Mally? Where oh where is our Ursula? And then you haven’t been here, so I’m just relieved is all. I have this awful feeling we’re getting picked off over here in the Scar like mice who accidentally set up camp in a cat colony. Meanwhile I could be a victim. I could be next on the list. What happens if I’m walking home one night and someone comes out of the dark and nabs me?” He shudders. “No one would even care. They’d just say I got upset and hurled myself into Miracle Lake, same as they’re saying about Mally and Ursula. And why would I go over there, I ask you? With the whole lake-monster thing, even if I could survive it, that’s the last place I’d want to go.”
I let my last ball fall between the stoppers.
“Que será s
erá,” the machine says. “Better luck next time!”
“Nerves,” Dally says. “The nerves are bad these days.”
“Hey, Dally, can I ask you a question?”
“Shoot,” he says as we walk toward the bar together. The band is on break, so we can actually hear each other. “I mean, not really. Metaphorically only.”
“Is there another way out of here besides through the back alley or out the front?”
He twirls his rabbit’s foot. “No, why?”
I hate to have Dally and all his nerves worry there’s any suspicion of anything happening inside Wonderland, but I have to ask him. “You say you saw Mally leave the night she disappeared? Ursula, too?”
“Well, I mean, I didn’t watch them walk out the door if that’s what you’re asking. I was busy cleaning up the night Mally disappeared, and it was busy when Ursula left, or at least when I last saw her.”
“But don’t you think it’s odd that they were last seen here? Both of them?”
Dally puts a hand on his chest. “What are you trying to say, honey?”
“Nothing. I mean, I don’t know. I’m just asking you a question.”
“Sounds more like an accusation.”
“No, Dal. I’m not accusing anyone of anything.” Looking at him, I can’t imagine he’s guilty of anything. He seems so guilelessly offended. “I’m just asking.” I can’t tell him about the footage, but I believe he doesn’t know anything about this.
“Well, don’t ask. It’s agitating me.”
“I’m sorry, Dally. I didn’t mean to agitate you. This place is like home to me, you know that.”
Dally shakes off his dark thoughts and beams at me. “I’m glad you came back. We missed you. Now go! Enjoy the night!”
When the music starts up again, everyone lifts their phones with pictures of candle flames on them and they all start swaying in unison. In the midst of all the movement, I scurry down the steps to the side door by the stage, but as soon as I get close to the storeroom door I’m paralyzed. I can’t breathe. It’s like my lungs are collapsing, and I think about Dr. Tink and how she said to count backward from ten when this happens, see if I can slow my breathing, get hold of myself. I stumble away and into the bathroom, into a stall, and fall to my knees just as everything goes dark.
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