Her eyes were wide and startled as she spun. She slammed the phone into its holder.
Her quick motion made her earrings swing, gold balls on the end of a long chain.
The same style earrings Maureen and then Brenda had been wearing.
The earrings Ed had bought for them.
CHAPTER 48
I was shaking her so hard her fox-red hair flew in her face. “Where’d you get those?”
“You’re hurting me!”
My fingers were sunk deep into her shoulders, almost to the first knuckle. I released her. “Those earrings,” I said, hoarse with fear. “Who gave them to you?”
“I bought them for myself. They were only a couple dollars.”
“That’s not true.” The kitchen had turned into the Swirling Hypno Tunnel from the county fair, spinning beneath and around me, churning everything. “I know how much they cost. Who gave them to you?”
She fondled one of the earrings, chin quivering. “It’s none of your business.”
I fought the urge to slap her. “Junie, tell me where you got them.”
“You’re just jealous!” she screamed, pushing me away. Her sweet, pointy chin was jutted out, her cheeks puffed up. “You’re jealous of me because you only have one ear, and no one will ever buy you earrings.”
“Junie,” I said, my voice steel, my movements small because I couldn’t scare her off, couldn’t survive her death, never, not in a million years. I couldn’t lose Junie. Not my June Bug. She had to tell me. “Was it Ed? Did he give you those earrings?”
She shook her head once, sharply, the earrings winding up to smack her cheek, left and then right. Tick tick.
“Then who? You’re too young to be hanging around with someone who gives you jewelry like that. It’s dangerous.”
She opened her shiny pink lips, like she was about to tell me, but then a hot wash of anger flowed out instead. “You want the attention; you’ve always wanted it. You and Dad are in love. Everyone can see it. Everyone. That leaves only crazy Mom for me. But now I have someone all my own.”
“Junie,” I pleaded. I’d been so precariously balanced above everything, and I was crashing down. “Please.”
She crossed her arms. She looked so much like Mom, from before.
She wasn’t going to tell me.
“It’s Ed,” I wailed to Dad over the party line. “He’s coming for Junie.”
He slammed down the phone so hard my ear echoed. Ten minutes later, he raced up to the house in a howling police car, lights whirling, a deputy behind the wheel.
I didn’t have the strength to be grateful he’d believed me.
When he tore into the house, I pointed at the stairs. He took them three at a time to reach her. If Junie could see him, she wouldn’t ever again question how much he loved her. I followed him, saw him rip open her door, run in and gather her into his arms. Like if he let go she’d be sucked away forever.
His attention frightened her, I could tell.
“I’m not mad, Junie,” he said, releasing her after several seconds. “But you have to tell me who gave you those earrings. It’s important.”
She’d taken them off. They were resting on her vanity. She’d begun to understand how serious this was, I think, might have even told Dad where she got them, if Sheriff Nillson hadn’t thundered into our house right then.
“Gary?” he hollered from downstairs.
Junie’s mouth closed tight as a clam.
Nillson trundled up the stairs, and he and Dad went at her for twenty minutes. They were unable to get any more information out of her, not under threat or promise. Ginger-colored Gulliver Ryan showed up halfway through and offered some questions of his own, but Junie still wouldn’t talk.
Sheriff Nillson used our kitchen phone to call in an APB on Theodore Godo. Agent Ryan stayed behind to keep an eye on Junie and me.
It all happened at the speed of light.
After Dad and Sheriff Nillson left and Agent Ryan was settled downstairs, I went to the loose board in my bedroom. I pulled out the Anacin bottle containing a bunch of Mrs. Hansen’s heart medicine, a sprinkle of her happy pills, and an actual Anacin or two.
Sheriff Nillson had claimed Maureen likely took enough heart medicine to slow her down so that she wouldn’t fight back when she was drowning.
I’d pilfered it for myself with a vague idea of doing the same.
Not anymore.
Now I was going to make Ed swallow every last damn pill.
CHAPTER 49
That night, I spoiled Junie rotten with the spaghetti and meatballs, mint chocolate chip ice cream for dessert, and her pick of television shows. It was uncomfortable with Agent Ryan there at first, but he sat in a chair by the door, and after a while that’s what he felt like: a chair by the door.