“That’s it,” Vero said, rolling up her sleeves and shoring up her gloves. She marched to the corner of the barn and picked up the rotting rabbit corpse by its ears.
“Ew. Seriously?” I whispered.
“It worked for Glenn Close.” She grabbed a rusty hay hook in her other hand and stood in front of Riley, the fraying rope hangingwithin reach above her head. She jerked her chin at me and rasped. “Take off his bag, Robin.”
“Robin?” I protested.
“You’re not exactly Wonder Woman. Hurry up. I’m hungry.”
I yanked the grocery tote off of Riley’s head. His eyes were squeezed tightly shut and sweat poured down his temples.
“Open your eyes,” Vero snapped.
He gave an emphatic shake of his head. “I don’t want to see your face!” he cried. “You’ll have one more reason to kill me, and I don’t want to die!”
“Open your damn eyes, or I’ll have Robin gouge them out and feed them to the mouse!”
Riley’s eyes flashed open. They widened into black holes of terror as Vero held the rabbit’s corpse inches from his face, its mouth stretched into a Munch-like scream. Riley shrieked loud enough to wake the dead. “The keys are in my pocket! Take all the donuts you want!”
“Tell me your source!” Vero bellowed.
“Don’t do it!” Max shouted through her tote. “They’re only trying to scare you!”
Vero dropped the rabbit and reached for the rope. Riley’s eyes rolled up in his head and he passed out cold. He fell over sideways and slumped against Max’s shoulder.
“Riley?” she said in a small quaking voice. “Riley! What did you do to him?” she cried.
“Tell us your source.”
“We don’t know! She never told us her name!”
She.The anonymous caller was a woman. “But you know who she is,” I pushed. If Max didn’t know who the source was, she wouldn’t have fought so hard to keep it a secret.
“I don’t know for sure,” she sputtered. “It’s only a suspicion.”
“Spill it,” Vero said in her Batman voice.
I could hear Max’s swallow through the canvas. “I’m pretty sure the caller was Penelope Dupree.”
Vero and I locked eyes through our ski masks.
Vero dropped the rusted farm hook. Riley stirred when she ripped the duct tape from his wrists. She dug around in his pocket for his car keys, pressed a button to unlock his car, then tossed his key ring into the hay.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said, laryngitis wearing at the edges of her Batman voice. “We’ll grab the donuts on the way.”
“What about our anonymous tip! You promised us a story!” Max cried.
Vero shrugged at me, as if to sayWhat the hell? We’d be long gone by the time Riley woke up, freed Max, and they managed to find his car keys anyway. Might as well toss them a bone. If we threw it far enough, maybe they’d chase it out of the state.
I cleared my throat and affected my Robin voice. “You’ll have to ask the Pleasantville police. The cops found a piece of evidence at Ike’s house. The investigation has moved to New Jersey.”
CHAPTER 8
I slept in too long the next morning. The sun was too high and too bright outside my window for the house to be so quiet. I bolted upright in bed before remembering the children were with my mother. Flopping back down, I buried my face in the pillow, still exhausted after our long drive home from Culpeper last night.
When Vero and I had returned to the house at two thirty in the morning, Cam was already gone. According to my phone, he’d Venmo’d himself money for an Uber just after midnight, and Mrs. Haggerty had been snoring softly in my room when Vero and I had finally crept upstairs to our beds.
Vero’s door was still closed. I slipped quietly past her room and headed downstairs. Mrs. Haggerty didn’t look up from the newspaper she was reading when I came into the kitchen. I hadn’t even realized newspapers were still printed anymore, and I could only assume—since she could no longer drive—that she had walked across the street and taken it off her own front porch.
