Every Secret Thing

by Laura Lippman

  “What time is it?” she kept asking her mother. It was eight o’clock, it was eight forty-five, it was nine-twenty, it was ten-fifteen. “What time is it?” Time for bed, Helen said as eleven o’clock came and went. She tucked Alice in and went downstairs, feeling pleased with the world and herself. She had done well for a single mother. Alice was a lovely child, even if she did yearn so for everyone’s approval. She would grow out of that. Helen would see to it.

  It was past twelve when Helen heard a strange snuffling sound coming from the backyard and found Ronnie huddled beneath the overhanging honeysuckle vines. And it was only then that Helen understood why Alice had wanted to read, and why she had been so fixated on time. She had been establishing her alibi. She wanted Helen to be able to tell the police where Alice was, and what Alice was doing, every minute until midnight.

  Alice knew she would need an alibi because she knew Ronnie was going to kill Olivia Barnes that night. She knew Ronnie would kill Olivia that particular evening, at that particular time, because Alice had persuaded her to do it. That was the story Ronnie had confided in Helen in choked sobs, as she crouched beneath the honeysuckle seven years ago, and Helen had never doubted it for a minute.

  35.

  Alice curled her fingers through the gaps of the chain-link fence and pressed her face close enough to feel the metal on her cheek, yet there was very little to see from this vantage point. Here, at the north end of the swim club property, there was a basketball court and an old shuffleboard court, but these areas were deserted after sunset. The pool sat on higher ground, beyond this neglected little valley, and the clubhouse was even farther away. But with nothing to see, there was no risk of being seen, which was why Alice had chosen this spot for her almost nightly visits.

  There was plenty to hear, especially on an evening like this, when the pool’s teenagers were having a dance party, their monthly reward for all those fifteen-minute increments surrendered to adult swim. Water and concrete combined to send strangely pure sounds to Alice, snatches of conversation and music, the thumping bass lines beneath the songs. “I told you to stop.” “Diane thinks she’s so in demand, but she’s so not.” “We had to drive to D.C. to find the right ones.” The chatter was female, while the bursts of shouts and laughter were male.

  “It stings!” This seeming objection, voiced by a girl, was clearly a mock complaint, flirtatious and pleased, but it reminded Alice to check the underbrush around her ankles one more time. No, there was nothing to fear here, no leaves of three, no reddish tinge.

  Alice had been surprised the first time she realized how close the swim club was to her evening route through Ten Hills. It had seemed so far away when she was young, yet here it was all along, separated by a narrow strip of undergrowth and weedy trees. The sounds had drawn her here, once she figured out how to cut through people’s yards and driveways to reach the unclaimed land that buffered the club. That had been nerve-racking at first, but Alice had learned to vary the routes she took each night. She also had a lie at the ready if anyone challenged her. She was looking for a cat or a dog. Nothing more serious than that. After all, if you said you were looking for a little brother or sister, people might actually care. Her fictional cat was black, except for a spot of white on its chest, and wore a blue collar with a round silver tag that identified it as Stella. Her made-up dog was a collie named Max.

  So far, however, no one had asked. Sometimes Alice drew a puzzled look from a homeowner watering her garden, or a man stealing a smoke at the edge of his own property. Alice, plain and fat, was as good as invisible. She had resented this once, even after finally finding someone who didn’t agree, who praised her eyes, who loved her body. But this quality had come in handy when she was on her quest.

  She heard a rustling sound in the wooded no-man’s-land behind her and turned, ready to tell her story. A collie named Max, a cat named Stella. The cat has a blue collar. We call her Stella because my mom says she always wanted to have a cat named Stella, so she could go in the backyard at night and yell “Stella.” That makes her laugh. I don’t know why. Helen had, in fact, told Alice she would name a cat Stella, if she had a cat. But she had allergies.

  The person coming toward her was thin and not very tall. Alice didn’t need to see the face to figure out it was Ronnie Fuller. No need to make excuses to Ronnie about why she was here. She wouldn’t waste a good lie on Ronnie.

  “What are you doing here?” Alice asked, her voice soft yet belligerent. It was, in fact, Ronnie’s old tone, the one she had used to bluff and bully when they were children, back when Alice was a little scared of her. She wasn’t scared of Ronnie anymore, not really, just angry.

  “Looking for you.”

  “We’re not supposed to talk to each other.”

  “It’s not a rule.” Ronnie’s voice scaled up, however, as if she wasn’t sure. “It’s not”—she groped for a word—“a condition, or anything. It was just, like, advice.”

  “It’s good advice. For me. If I don’t have anything to do with you, I won’t get into trouble.”

  “I’m not—I haven’t—I didn’t do anything.”

  Something in Ronnie’s voice suggested she knew Alice had.

  “Really? The police think you did. The police asked me lots of questions about you and the missing girl.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Ronnie repeated.

  “It happened near where you worked.”

  “It was near where about a thousand people work, I guess.”

  The pool area was illuminated at night, but there were no lights here at the edges, so Alice could not make out Ronnie’s expression. The old Ronnie had been more likely to hit or pinch when contradicted, blubbering wordlessly. It was disorienting to see her stand her ground. Alice had been prepared to fight the old Ronnie in the old way, using words, piling them on until Ronnie was confused. But Ronnie seemed comfortable with words now.

  “There’s only one person like you who works near Westview.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A baby-stealer. A baby-killer.”

  Ronnie’s voice trembled. “You know I never wanted to—”

  “But you did. You held a pillow over her face until she stopped breathing. That makes you a baby-killer. Not me. I wasn’t there. Remember? I wasn’t even there.”

  “It was your idea.” But she was growing tentative, betraying her uncertainty. “You told me to do it.”

  Alice put on a grown-up’s prissy, reproving voice. “If Alice told you to jump off a building, would you do that? If Alice told you to play with matches, would you do that? If Alice told you—”

  “Shut up.”

  Ronnie’s voice was almost a shriek, loud and sharp enough to carry to the pool. For a second or two, it felt as if everyone was holding their breath, Alice and Ronnie included, waiting to see if something was about to happen. But no footsteps came toward them, and the noise around the pool soon started again.

  “I don’t want to talk about what happened in the past,” Ronnie said, dragging the words out as if they hurt. “It’s over, and we can’t change it. But what’s happening now—if you did it, you have to tell them. You have to take them to the missing girl, and let her mother know where she is. You can’t blame me for this.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  “Well, I didn’t do anything last time, and I got blamed.” Alice put on her bland, obstinate voice, the one she used whenever pressed to give answers she didn’t want to provide. You have to tell us what happened, Alice. Why? So we can take steps, punish the man who did this. But I wanted him to do it. I love him, and I don’t want you to punish him. You can’t love him. Why? Because he doesn’t love you. But he does, he said so. Alice, we have to know what happened. Why?

  “It was your idea,” Ronnie said.

  “Prove it.”

  “You told me what to do, how to do it. You said it had to be done.”

  Alice shrugged, he
r gaze fixed on the pool.

  “Look, I don’t care about then.” Ronnie’s voice was increasingly desperate. “I care about now. If you don’t tell the truth, the police are going to keep coming to where I work, and I’m going to lose my job. Or the newspaper will write about us—”

  “Really?” Alice had thought there would be newspapers and television shows eventually, but not so soon.

  “Really. I went to see Helen and she said—”

  “Why did you go see my mom?”

  “Because I was looking for you. And Helen said—”

  She hated to hear her mother’s name in Ronnie’s mouth. She wanted to yank it from her, scream “Snatch pops, no snatch backs” the way the tough kids did when they stole Popsicles and candy bars. “You shouldn’t call her that. Even now. She’s my mother. She’s a grown-up.”

  “Helen said—”

  “She’s my mom. Not yours. You have your own mother and a father, too. All I have is a mother. She’s mine. Stay away from her. Can’t you just stay away? You don’t even live next door anymore. There’s no reason for you to be hanging around.”

  “I just—” Ronnie was stuttering and lost, the way she had been in class, when sister’s questions came too fast. When Ronnie began to fall behind, she could never catch up.

  “My mom didn’t even approve of you.”

  “Alice—”

  “She felt sorry for you. That’s why she made me play with you, that’s why she let you spend time at our house.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Because she felt bad for how awful and nasty your family was, and how you didn’t have any real friends. But she never liked you. She made fun of you behind your back.”

  “No. No, she wouldn’t do that.”

  Alice had thought her final accusation would unhinge Ronnie, but she was suddenly quiet, thoughtful, dangerously close to being in control. “She liked me. She told me all the time how much she liked me. She said I was more like her than you.”

  Now it was Alice’s shriek that cut through the night air. “She didn’t, she didn’t, she didn’t! You’re such a liar. You were always a liar and a loser, the girl that no one chose for sides or partners. My mom couldn’t possibly like you.”

  Again, the voices around the pool stilled, waiting. Again, they resumed. Alice lowered her voice.

  “Do you know why you did it? Why I told you to do it?”

  “You said the baby was sick and unhappy—”

  Alice’s voice, while low, was triumphant. “I made all that up. Because I knew they would take you away. I thought they would lock you up forever and I wouldn’t have to see you anymore. I didn’t know you’d be smart enough to steal my jack-in-the-box and leave it there. Otherwise, I could have said I was never there and they would have believed me because it would have been my word against yours.”

  “I didn’t—I never—the jack-in-the-box wasn’t what I wanted—”

  Flashlight beams suddenly began cutting paths through the woods, playing across the fence, landing only a few feet from where Alice and Ronnie stood.

  “Alice? Alice Manning?” a woman’s voice called.

  “It’s the police,” Alice hissed, her eyes bright with excitement. “They’re coming for you. They know who you are and what you did. They’re going to lock you up forever this time. And the newspapers are going to write about you, and everyone will know. Ronnie Fuller killed a baby. Ronnie Fuller, nobody else. Now she’s taken another baby, and she’ll probably kill her, too.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “I’m going to tell them you told me as much. I’m going to tell them that you said you took the girl and chopped her in little pieces and threw her in the incinerator. I’m going to tell them you did it because she looks half black and you hate black people, always have, just like last time. You told me you hate it when black people and white people have babies together. I’m going to tell them—”

  But Ronnie didn’t wait to hear the rest of Alice’s manufactured history. She turned and ran, away from the lights, indifferent to the twisted vines beneath her feet. She moved with surprising grace through the dark trees, barely making any sound.

  “Hurry, she’s getting away!” Alice cried out in the direction of the lights. “We’re over here, near the fence. Hurry!”

  It sounded as if a dozen people were rushing toward her, but it was only two, the police detectives who had talked to her before Sharon said they couldn’t anymore.

  “Alice Manning?” the female detective asked, as if she didn’t already know who she was.

  “Ronnie was just here. Ronnie’s getting away. Ronnie told me—”

  The detectives turned, shining their beams in several directions, but Ronnie had moved so swiftly through the trees that there was nothing to see.

  “We’ll send a patrol to her house,” the woman said. She had her hand on Alice’s wrist. Why was she holding on to Alice when she should be chasing Ronnie?

  “We want to talk to you,” the man said. “We need to ask you about something we found in your file from Middlebrook.”

  “What file?”

  “Your medical records.”

  “Oh.”

  “Would you mind coming with us back to headquarters?” The woman made it sound like a question, but Alice had a feeling it wasn’t. “You can call your lawyer from there if you need to. But we really need to talk to you.”

  Alice turned her gaze back to the fence. The teenagers who had been allowed to take over the pool for the evening were standing at the deep end, looking toward the woods, their hands shielding their eyes as they tried to make sense of the light and noise coming from Alice’s side of the fence. She did not actually know any of them, but she might have. Her old friends from St. William of York could be among the bikini-clad girls. One of the boys could have been her boyfriend, if she didn’t already have one. She imagined confiding in one of these girls: “I have a boyfriend who’s six years older than I am. He has a pickup truck, and he takes me out driving, and he wants to marry me.” The last was not exactly true, but it was true enough. He would marry her, if she told him that’s what he had to do. He would do anything she told him to do. So would Helen, and Sharon, and even her new lawyer, that ugly woman who smelled bad. For once, everyone had to do what she said.

  It was nice, being in charge, on the verge of getting the recognition she deserved. Finally, the world was going to know what it had done to her, and she was going to be compensated. She would probably be very rich when this was all over, not to mention famous. She would be on talk shows, where a professional would do her makeup, maybe even pick out her clothes.

  Although, if she had a say in it, if she could change who she was and what had happened to her, she’d rather just be eighteen and thin enough to wear a bikini.

  “Did you match the blood?” she asked the detectives, curious to know how they had gotten ahead of her, not that it would make much difference. “Is that how you found out? Did you get his blood?”

  The man and the woman exchanged a look, but said nothing, just held out their arms to her to help her back through the woods, as if she didn’t know the way in and out better than anyone. They climbed the hill to the roadside, a detective on either side of Alice, holding tight to her upper arms. It was like The Wizard of Oz, Alice thought, except they didn’t skip.

  36.

  “It’s my baby,” Alice said. “You can’t arrest someone for taking her own baby.”

  “Sure you can,” Nancy said. “Only this isn’t your baby. And even if it were, it wouldn’t be legal for you to take her, to hurt her, or put her somewhere she isn’t safe.”

  “She’s my baby.” Alice spoke in a monotone, as if the conversation bored her. “It took me a long time to find her, but now that I have, you can’t make me give her back. I never wanted to give her up in the first place.”

  “Alice…” Sharon put a cautionary hand on her shoulder, but Alice shook it off. On Alice’s left, Rosario Bustamante rolled he
r eyes and looked around the interview room, as if hopeful a bar might suddenly materialize. She had arrived on a wave of gin fumes, Nancy couldn’t help noticing, but there was nothing to suggest that the older woman was the least bit impaired. She looked rumpled, but no more so than Sharon, who had been getting ready for bed when summoned here.

  “She’s my baby,” Alice said. “I knew it the moment I saw her.”

  Alice had been repeating this one assertion over and over, her own Baltimore catechism, refusing to elaborate, indifferent to the evidence the detectives offered to the contrary. Told that the DNA evidence had already established Brittany Little was, in fact, the daughter of Maveen Little, Alice had shrugged and said: “Then you did it wrong. You better double-check.” Asked where the child was, she said she wouldn’t admit to anything until they conceded the girl was hers.

  And so they had gone, around and around, until it was going on eleven o’clock.

  “Look, this isn’t productive,” Sharon said. “Make us an offer. Maybe a misdemeanor.”

  “What misdemeanor?” Nancy’s voice was hoarse from exhaustion, and she sounded a decade older than she had that morning. It was a good effect, actually. She wished she could cultivate it at will. “She’s all but confessed that she took the child. There’s no turning back from that.”

  “She’s confused, she’s suggestible. She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”

  “I know exactly what I’m saying,” Alice said. “That girl is my baby. They took her away from me so no one would find out what happened to me when I was in Middlebrook. But now everyone is going to know.”

  Frustrated by the girl’s stubborn will, Nancy left the interview room. Helen Manning was sitting with Infante, drinking a soda, as carefree as if she were just passing time in some teachers’ lounge. Infante’s jowls were blue-black, the bags under his eyes darker still, his hair shiny from being slicked back with his palms over and over again. He looked like the world’s most tired werewolf. Nancy tapped him on the shoulder and nodded toward the interview room. They had been taking turns all evening, spelling one another. Lenhardt had come in, but even he conceded he had nothing to bring to the interviews. Nancy and Infante were marathon dancers, obligated to shuffle to the end together or be disqualified.