Dead Ringers: Volumes 1-3

by Darlene Gardner

  “We need to find Leanne before she disappears again,” Max says before I can figure it out. It’s not tops on my list of things to do, but I go along. By the time we get to the boardwalk, the screaming’s stopped and it’s pretty clear the pier won’t blow up. People mill about, their conversation buzzing over us like a swarm of locusts.

  “Leanne was wearing a hat. That might make her easier to spot.” Max makes a three hundred sixty degree turn, his head swiveling in all directions.

  I stand on my tiptoes, trying to see over and through the crowd. Some familiar faces pop out. Becky and Maia and Porter McRoy and the long-haired, tattooed boy who works at the arcade, all far enough away that I don’t feel like I have to speak to them. Hunter Prescott, too, with Adair holding on tight to his hand. Cops in uniform stride through the crowd, pulling some people aside.

  “Leanne was moving pretty fast,” I say. “If she kept going, she might already be gone.”

  Max swears under his breath.

  “Let’s find out what happened.” He grabs my hand and edges through the mass of people to where Officer Wainwright is talking to Ashley/Heather. She gestures expansively with her hands and covers her mouth. Her chest heaves up and down. Before we reach them, Wainwright hands her his business card and turns away. Ashley/Heather starts walking away.

  “Hey, Ashley,” I call.

  No response.

  “Heather?”

  She turns, looks around and finally figures out who addressed her. Before I vanished and lost time, the popular crowd in high school didn’t pay much attention to me. It was better than being looked at like I belong in a psych ward, but it wasn’t exactly a confidence boost.

  “What do you want?” Heather’s face is flushed and her eyes are watery. There are tear tracks down her face. “I just survived a crisis, you know. I almost died!”

  “You didn’t almost—” I begin.

  “You were great back there,” Max interrupts. “If there had been a bomb, you would saved lives.”

  “I know,” Heather says, her blue eyes wide. “Some people are just really good in a crisis.”

  Gag.

  Max takes a step toward her and gives her all his attention like she’s the most interesting thing he’s ever come across instead of the biggest airhead alive. He’s long since dropped my hand. Even though I know he’s fishing for information, I’m still annoyed.

  “What made you think a bomb was about to go off?” Max asks.

  “I got a phone call.”

  “On your cell phone?”

  “No. The restaurant phone. It was a bomb threat. She said people would die if I didn’t get them off the pier.”

  “She?” Max exchanges a look with me before turning back to Heather. “Are you sure the caller was female?”

  “Positive.” She looks at him from under her lashes. “Your name’s Max, right? If you want to hear more about it, give me your phone. I’ll put in my number.”

  “He’s heard enough.” I move closer to him. “Right, Max?”

  He sends me a cocky grin before turning back to Heather. “You heard my girlfriend. She won’t hear of me hearing any more from you.”

  Groan. Even though it’s true, it makes me sound bad.

  The other DQ Twin, Ashley by process of elimination, rushes up to Heather and embraces her. “I about died when I heard what was happening on the pier. I’m so glad you’re alive!”

  “Yeah,” Heather says, fresh tears running down her face. “It was so scary!”

  A matter of opinion. There are way scarier things than bomb threats that turn out to be false alarms. But maybe Heather and Ashley have never seen Paranormal Activity.

  Heather pulls back from Ashley’s embrace and smiles at Max. “If you change your mind, Max, you can find me at the restaurant.”

  “He won’t.” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them.

  The DQ Twins walk away, arm in arm. Max doesn’t watch them go. He’s too busy smiling at me. “I like it when you’re jealous.”

  “It was pretend jealousy, Max. Other people are supposed to think we’re a couple.”

  He tucks a stray piece of hair behind my ear and traces my jaw line with a gentle finger. “I only flirted with her to get information.”

  Why can’t I move away? “We already knew somebody called in a bomb threat.”

  “We didn’t know it was a female. That means somebody besides the three who set off the firecrackers was involved.”

  “What makes you sure the firecrackers had anything to do with the bomb threat?”

  “A hunch,” he says. “But I could be wrong.”

  “Loper would know.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “The tallest of the three perps. His name is Jeremy Gavin, but everyone calls him Loper because of the way he runs. He was on the high school basketball team.”

  Max’s face splits into a grin, and he leans down and kisses me. Back there on the pier, I thought he might never kiss me again. That’s why I don’t stop it. Life experience and all that.

  “What does Loper look like?” he asks when he raises his head.

  “Dark hair. Long sideburns. Kind of skinny. About six-five.”

  Max gestures to our right. “Is that him?”

  I start to say nobody who pulled off a hoax like that would be stupid enough to double back. But there’s Loper, walking right past us.

  “He better get a basketball scholarship,” I say, “because he’s not getting into college on brains.”

  “Hey, Loper.” Max heads straight for the taller boy and grabs his arm. “Got a minute to talk about those firecrackers you set off?”

  “Get off me, man.” Loper shrugs Max off, sticking his chin in the air. The tough-guy jock effect is ruined by the bleary look in his eyes and the sickly sweet smell of marijuana. “I’m not talking to you.”

  “It’s me or the cops,” Max says in a low voice. “Because I saw you running away.”

  Loper’s lower lip quivers. “You’re bluffing, man. You didn’t see nothin’. You don’t know me.”

  “My girlfriend knows you.” Max jerks a thumb at me. “She recognized you from the basketball team.”

  Loper blinks a few times before he can focus on me. “Her? She’s nuts.”

  I underestimated my own notoriety. I graduated in May. Jeremy Gavin is a rising high school sophomore. We’ve never once spoken.

  “Take that back.” Max is a good four inches shorter than Loper but gets right in his face. The veins in Max’s neck bulge. I can almost see the testosterone coming off him. It’s been so long since someone stuck up for me that I can’t even get annoyed.

  “I didn’t mean nothin’ by it.” Loper backs up, holding up his hands.

  I step between Max and Loper. For added effect, I lower my chin, look at him from under my lashes and try to sound insane. “You better tell us how it went down.”

  “Okay. okay.” Loper actually looks freaked out. “But I didn’t know what was gonna happen. I just did it for the money.”

  “The money?” Max asks.

  “Me and a friend were hanging out under the pier.” From the smell of him, I can figure out what they were doing under there. “Some tourist kid—maybe fifteen, sixteen—said he’d split a hundred bucks with us if we helped him set off some cherry bombs.”

  “Come on,” Max says. “You expect us to believe that?”

  “It’s the truth. The kid, he didn’t know how to set them off. And it wasn’t his money. He got it from some woman.”

  “What woman?”

  “I never saw her, man.”

  “Where’s the kid?”

  “He took off. I don’t even know if I could recognize him.” Loper’s flying so high, I believe that. “Can I go now?”

  “Go,” Max says. “If we need you again, we’ll find you.”

  It seems pretty certain the woman who paid the boy to set off the firecrackers called in the bomb threat, but why? “I don’t get it,” I say when L
oper’s out of earshot. “Why would someone want to create mass panic?”

  “Not someone,” he says. “Constance Hightower. She didn’t want her sister telling us she’s a Ringer.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  During all the commotion over the bomb threat, it slipped my mind that Max seems to believe the Black Widow is hanging out in someone else’s body. The boardwalk’s still packed since the cops closed the pier while they make absolutely sure there is no danger.

  “Let me get this straight.” I lean toward Max so nobody passing by can hear me. People already think I’m crazy enough. “By a Ringer, you mean body-stealer.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Before the whole switcheroo could happen,” I say slowly, “do you think they grew the host in a spare pod?”

  Max wrinkles his nose. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  If he’s so culturally illiterate he hasn’t seen Invasion of the Body Snatchers, I’m not about to enlighten him.

  “Or maybe this is more of a doppelganger thing.” I scratch my chin like I’m deep in thought. “Except since the Black Widow’s already a twin, how do we know she wasn’t already Looney Leanne’s doppelganger? Before she was murdered and managed not to die, I mean.”

  “I get the feeling you’re not on board with the body-switching,” Max says.

  Rolling my eyes would be too obvious so I give him the blank stare. “That’s because I’m actually sane.”

  “I need to show you something.” He grabs my hand. If we hadn’t agreed to fake a romance, I’d at least think about snatching it back. But I don’t even know where we’re going.

  Some of the tourists head for the arcade while others fill the outdoor tables at the pizza and sandwich shops that populate the boardwalk. Most people, including Max and me, stream into the carnival.

  “You’re working tonight, right?” Max asks above the chatter of voices and noise from the midway.

  “Right.” I’m supposed to be taking tickets at the Monster Slide and handing out burlap bags for the riders to sit on.

  “We can do this later if you need to get back to it. I don’t want to get you into trouble with Roxy.”

  “Don’t worry about Roxy.” The lying, conniving carnival boss is in trouble with me. I still plan to hunt her down and confront her about what I learned earlier tonight. Later, though. “I’m dying to see what you have to show me.”

  Okay, considering the two recent murders in Midway Beach, that’s not the best choice of words.

  Max walks straight to the trailer that serves as the administrative hub for the carnival. Since Roxy’s a hands-on boss who spends most of her time walking the grounds, it’s vacant for most of the night. Employees store their stuff in the trailer, so all of us have the combination for the lock on the metal door. Max punches in the numbers while my brain whirs.

  “This something you need to show me, is it in your backpack?” If it’s another missing person flier, that won’t make me a believer. But, then, nothing will.

  “Nope.”

  “Then why are we going in the trailer?”

  “Patience, Jade,” Max says and pushes open the door.

  The overhead lights are on, shining on an office that looks the same as it always does: sterile and empty with backpacks piled against one of the walls. There’s also a fairly large desk, a desktop computer and a gray file cabinet. The only other thing of interest is the bulletin board where Roxy posts the night’s work schedule.

  Max bends over, balancing his hands on the fronts of his thighs.

  “Here, Punch,” he calls. “Here, boy.”

  Nothing happens. Surprising. Roxy sometimes brings her oversized, calico cat—is its name really Punch?—to work. The last few times the cat was around, it practically accosted me, jumping at my legs and wagging its tail so hard I could feel a breeze.

  “Are you sure Punch is here today?” I hadn’t come across him, but then I’d arrived for work tonight before Roxy.

  “Oh, yeah. I saw him earlier.”

  “I thought Roxy’s cat was a girl.”

  “Judy is a girl, but she’s not here today.” Max knows way more about the boss’s pets than I do. “Punch is her dog. ”

  “Weird names.”

  “Roxy told me they’re from some old-timey carnival sideshow, I think with puppets.”

  For a dog, Punch is awfully quiet. The trailer’s completely silent.

  “Punch,” Max calls again, using a coaxing voice.

  “This is a waste of time, Max. I don’t think—”

  “Patience,” he repeats, taking a step deeper into the trailer. “Pu-unch.” His voice is a singsong now. “Where are you, boy?”

  A muscular black dog with brown markings, probably a Doberman mix, slinks from behind the desk. It’s a good size, maybe sixty pounds. With lithe, silent movements, the dog pads across the office to Max and rubs against his leg.

  “Good boy.” Max runs his hand down the dog’s back, from its head to its tail. The dog arches its back, sticking its backside in the air.

  Then it makes a strange guttural noise that sounds almost like a purr.

  “Well, that’s weird,” I say.

  The dog’s tail sticks straight up, not quite wagging but quivering. Max looks straight at the animal, but the dog won’t meet his eyes. Suddenly the dog retreats, moving with feline grace across the office and leaping onto an armchair in one fluid movement. Without paying us any more attention, it starts licking its coat.

  “That’s weirder,” I say. “Do you think he was raised by a family of cats?”

  Max tilts his head and raises his eyebrows, looking thoroughly confused. Come on! You mean he hasn’t seen Jungle Book or Tarzan, either?

  “That’s not what’s going on here.” Max gives me a measured look, like he expects me to figure it out myself.

  But the conclusion he wants me to reach? Well, it’s impossible.

  “You need more convincing.” Max crosses the room to the file cabinet with me following. On top of the cabinet is a small silver tin can with one of those easy-open lids. Max pops the tab, and I smell tuna.

  Punch makes the strange noise again. It’s not a bark or a yap or anything normal like that. More like a rasping... meow.

  Max empties the open can of tuna into a bowl, carries it to the armchair and sets it down on the floor. “Here, boy.”

  Punch leaps down from the chair with an easy grace and delicately laps at the tuna with his tongue.

  “Well?” Max looks at me with raised eyebrows.

  What I’m thinking is too fantastic for words.

  “Have you noticed how odd Roxy’s cat acts?” Max asks. “The other day, she chewed up some backpacks. Guess that’s why Roxy started bringing her dog to work instead.”

  Except that’s backward logic. Cats are typically the pets that can be left alone indoors for hours on end. Yeah, some of them get bored and tear up things. But with their claws, not their teeth.

  Max gazes at me expectantly. We’ll be here all night if I don’t say it aloud.

  “You think Roxy’s dog and cat switched bodies.”

  It sounds even nuttier when spoken aloud.

  “No,” Max says. “I think someone—or something—caused them to switch bodies.”

  I shake my head back and forth. “There must be another explanation.”

  He crosses his arms over his chest. “I’m listening.”

  I close my eyes and concentrate but nothing comes to me.

  “Okay, I can’t come up with one right now. But even if Punch and Judy switched bodies, and I’m not saying they did, it doesn’t follow the Black Widow did the same thing.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because if she was part of a body switch, the other person would be inside her body.” I feel proud of myself for making such a logical point. “Like Punch and Judy.”

  “Not if someone made it seem like Constance committed suicide after the switch was made.”

  “What would
be the point of that?” I ask.

  “She can’t risk being exposed. If everybody thinks the Black Widow is dead, she doesn’t go to trial. She gets away with her husband’s murder.”

  It’s preposterous, yet it makes a creepy sort of sense. Constance Hightower wasn’t charged with her husband’s murder until months after he died, which gave her plenty of time to stash his money where only she could access it. “She’d be rich, too.”

  “Now you’re catching on,” Max says.

  If not for Punch freaking me out by the way he’s lapping up tuna beside the armchair, I’d give in to my weakening knees and sit down. I still can’t entirely buy the switcheroo, but at this point I can’t afford to discount anything. Besides, it it’s not true, it means Max is up to something and I’ll be in position to figure out what.

  “There’s something else I didn’t tell you,” Max says. “Something that might help to convince you.”

  I brace myself. Whatever it is, I have a feeling I don’t want to hear it.

  “You were right yesterday at the field. I did get another memory back. A strong one. Another person was there with me.”

  “Who?”

  “I only heard him.” Max maintains that, like me, his face was covered by a hood when he was tied to the chair. “He was moaning about how his head hurt. I think he was supposed to switch bodies with me.”

  “But how is something like body switching even possible?” I speak my doubt aloud. “How would it work?”

  “I don’t know,” Max says. “But when it’s happening, I think it hurts. That’s why both of us had such crushing headaches.”

  “Hold on. If somebody abducted me to do a...” I can hardly get the words out. “...body switch, why don’t I remember another person moaning?”

  “You remember an animal crying.” He’s right. It was a plaintive, pitiful noise that I thought was coming from a fox. “Think about it, Jade. Before experimenting on humans, it’s common to have animal trials.”

  In The Fly, the eccentric scientist turned a baboon inside out while teleporting it from one pod to another. Too bad for him the experiment worked on the second baboon, because we all know what happened to the housefly. Except maybe movie-illiterate Max.