Beyond the Pale Motel (17 page)

Todd shook his head and bit his lip. “Sorry. I just wish I'd seen that as a good-bye.”

It turned out everyone had a good-bye text from Scott that they hadn't realized was one. We began an impromptu read of them. All of the messages had a special, personal reference and the words
I love you
. I read mine but stopped at the PS about him not wanting me to go to Body Farm anymore.

It hadn't occurred to me until that moment that Bob wasn't at the gathering.
Come to think of it, neither is Leila. And Bree's still not here.

I needed her then, and Skylar, but she didn't respond to my text. I almost e-mailed Sky but decided it wouldn't be cool to do that until I heard from her. So I left.

*   *   *

At about three in the morning I woke to a knocking sound and a man's voice whispering, “I am here.”

I bolted up; my dreams never had soundtracks like that. Outside, the Santa Anas tossed branches against the glass. So it had been the wind? Sasha had moved to the windowsill and was staring out into darkness. She looked, and felt—when I touched her—electric.
I thought someone was following me home the other night,
Bree had said. Was that someone out there? Following her, following us?

I reached for the phone.

The cops came forty minutes later. Two tall men with rock-hard chests. The older one was especially hugely muscled with acne scars scattered over his angular bone structure. The younger, baby-faced one had darker skin and bright green eyes. I wished they would both just move in with me.
Or at least stay the night
.

“What seems to be the trouble, ma'am?” the older one said. His name tag read
RODRIGUEZ.
I was holding Sasha over my chest as if I hadn't changed out of my nightgown and put on a bra.

I told him about the knock on my door but not about the whisper I'd heard. They checked the perimeter of the house, said to make sure to keep everything locked up tight. I admitted I was more on edge than usual with the Hollywood Serial Killer out there, especially since my neighbor had been killed. I didn't mention the dissolution of my marriage, the death of my best friend. Scott had told me once that he wanted to be a cop but his leg surgery had prevented it. I could imagine him standing there in a crew cut and uniform, taking care of me, taking care of people.

“Yeah, we'll all sleep better when we catch him,” the younger cop said.
CORONADO.
“Meanwhile you just need to keep your eyes open and your windows shut.”

Sasha jumped out of my arms and began circling their feet, her tail wrapping their legs as if she, too, wanted them to stay. “My watch cat,” I said. “She likes you.” I was pathetic.

They nodded, kept their arms crossed, patted their biceps, and left. But the younger officer turned back, handed me his card, leaning in so I could smell his cologne. “Take it easy and call if you need anything,” he said.

I picked Sasha up again and got in bed, where I counted my lives in order to fall asleep. Or rather, deaths. Dash and Darcy London. Jarell. Carlton. Dean. Cyan. Scott was number six. I only had three more to go.

 

#12

 

My seventh death was in the shape of a key. My house key, in a Bubble Wrap envelope with Bree's handwriting scrawled across the front in hot-pink Sharpie. There was no note.

I called her, I texted, I e-mailed, but there was no response. I said, and typed, again and again, that someone had laced the cookies with THC, that I had no idea, that I would never have eaten one.

Now I was supposed to go to meetings and call Shana every day, but I was blistering with resentment and I didn't want to talk to her at all. I went to work and tried to pretend I was okay. The owners had hired my client Karli to replace Bree. She spent the entire day talking about her husband. He still didn't know she had hair extensions.

“How's Bree?” Karli asked on a break from hubby talk. “Why'd she quit? Aren't you besties?”

“She got a job somewhere else,” I said, hoping to shut her down with my grim expression.

I don't think it was necessarily my face but rather Karli's desire to return to the subject of her man that got me off the hook about Bree.

At night I drove past the corner liquor store and stared at the poster of the woman with the bottle between her breasts.

Hungry. Angry. Lonely. Tired. I was all four. It seemed I always was. I ate a salad and took a cool shower and tried to sleep, but the nights were so hot and I couldn't open the windows. All I wanted was to see Skylar's face. If I closed my eyes, I could imagine it so clearly—the soiled baseball cap, the cheeks flushed, the eyes lit green. Sometimes I couldn't look at baby photos of him; it was just too much—those fat cheeks and dimples and the gold curls tumbling down. When had he slimmed out and grown such straight, thick brown hair? Now his school photo at the salon made me feel the same cringe of pain. He didn't have a phone I could call so Bree wouldn't know. And I couldn't do that anyway. It was one thing to lose Dash and Bree, but Skylar? I hadn't realized how he'd single-handedly held the space between me and my desire to die.

*   *   *

That night I crawled in bed and watched the worst reality TV I could find. Sasha hid as if it offended her. On these shows there were all kinds of men behaving badly, but I realized that I might not have recognized it until the shows pointed it out. Had I learned more from reality TV than from my own mom and dad? Men were supposed to pay for the first dates, wait to try to sleep with you, express interest in you, not just what you looked like. Parents weren't supposed to encourage hookups between their teenage daughters and twenty-one-year-old men. Fathers were supposed to tell their daughters to put on more clothes and to quiz their prospective boyfriends at the door. To protect their daughters from danger.

“Too late,” I said to the screen. The numbness had just started to set in.

But not enough.

The phone rang. It was Todd. I hadn't seen him in a while, since I'd been avoiding the gym. He said, “Put on the local news.” I turned the channel. Leila's face was there. A head shot. And some candid shots of her laughing and without much makeup so her freckles showed. It hit me with a dull, blunt-object thud in my chest.

Todd was still talking. She had been gone since we had the gathering for Scott. Actually, before that. Since before Scott's death. Everyone figured she had just been out of town. But she still wasn't back and she hadn't returned anyone's calls.

“They found her body in the desert,” Todd said. “She was…” He stopped. He was crying.

“No.” I wanted to hang up.

“Her breasts were—”

“No,” I repeated.

“—cut off. Do you want us to come over?”

“No.”

“Catt?”

“I have to hang up,” I said.

I drove to the liquor store that night and purchased a bottle of Jack Daniel's. Then I went home and got in the bathtub and drank the whole thing. It was not dramatic in any way. I just drank it down. I did not call Shana or Bree or Dash or Cyan or Jarell. Instead, I stayed up all night and googled Leila Reynolds. So many pretty pictures of her. Clicking through them, it was as if I was looking for some clue, but I had no idea what I was really looking for. Until I found it.

There was a picture of Leila in shorts and a crop top, her hair straightened so that it looked even longer and shinier, working out at Body Farm. Around her neck she was wearing a gold necklace that spelled out one word:
California.

When I tried to stand up, I watched the room circle me like a carousel. Or a zoopraxiscope. Was that what it was called? Those early viewing machines that predated movies? Determined, I got up anyway—though a muscle spasm in my hip clawed me back—and tried to walk to the bathroom but almost fell. A metallic taste swam up my gullet. I vomited on the floor and for a moment felt a bitter relief.

Who had been in my house who knew Leila? Who had been on my couch? From whose pocket could the necklace have slipped? Bree was always here, but Bree was gone now. Scott and I had eaten Chinese food recently on my couch. Scott had been Leila's trainer before Big Bob took over. I could see a man standing over Leila with blood splattering his glasses, glazing his hands. Killing all those women as if somehow by taking their lives he could lengthen his own. Because he had nothing to lose? What was I thinking? I was thinking that Scott was a killer?

I went to look for the California necklace in my jewelry box but it wasn't there. The last time I'd seen it was when I'd photographed it for my
Love Monster
blog, draped over blue satin with a vintage 1950s
Visit California
postcard in the background.

I picked up the phone and called the North East police station, asking for Officer Coronado, the cop who had given me his card. A female officer answered and told me he wasn't available. “May I help you?”

“I think I may have some information about a case,” I said. “The woman who was killed? Leila Reynolds. I had her necklace. But I didn't know that it was hers. Someone left it in my couch. Then they took it.”

I must have sounded drunk and crazy because the officer only took down my name and number and told me someone would contact me in the morning.

*   *   *

The next day Officer Coronado called me back. In spite of, or maybe because of, the circumstances, my heart fluttered like a true-love addict's when I heard his voice. As if he might rescue me from all of this.

I told the officer that I'd last seen Leila Reynolds at the gym. That Bob was her trainer. That she was very sweet and everyone seemed to like her. No boyfriend that I knew of. No local, immediate family. That I knew of. I didn't tell him this: that I had assumed things about her because she was nice and beautiful. I had assumed she was loved and happy.

“Do you have any suspects?”

“I'm sorry, we can't divulge that information,” the officer said. “You mentioned something about a necklace on the phone?”

I wanted a drink. To put out the wildfire inside of me. “I found it between the cushions in my couch. It looked like the one she was wearing in a picture I saw online. It said
California
. But now it's gone. Do you want to see a photo? On my blog. I could show you.”

“So you say you found this item in your couch? Where is it now?”

“I don't know,” I said. “I think maybe someone took it. It was in my jewelry box and then it was gone.” The idea of Scott, the would-be cop, being involved with Leila's death, taking her necklace and leaving it in my couch, seemed insane in the light, which is why I did not mention him then. But why had the necklace been there? If it had been there at all?

“I'm so sorry, ma'am. I know this is a stressful time. But I'd imagine there are thousands of these type of necklaces, and I can't really do anything without some actual evidence. I'll be honest with you, this isn't going to go anywhere, but if it would make you feel better, I'd be more than happy to take a report.”

“Thank you,” I said, flooded with a tide of red shame that included suspecting Scott, wasting the officer's time, and wanting to smell his cologne again. “It's okay. I'm sorry.”

*   *   *

On the way home from work that night I bought some more Jack and drank it, welcoming the burn in my throat, the way my head spun. Then I went online and typed in
Hollywood Serial Killer
. I stared at the photos of the victims. Mandy Merrill. Adrienne Banks. Michelle Babcock. Leila Reynolds. They all had long hair, long legs, big eyes, big breasts. My brain hurt as I rummaged roughly through it, searching.

They all looked like someone else.

They all looked like Bree.

The pictures on my phone were mostly of Bree and me at work when we got bored. Of our hair. The styles we gave each other. Bree couldn't take a bad photograph, from either side of the camera, actually. Even when she'd been a full-blown addict, she always looked perfect in every shot. I came to a picture of Skylar and me that she'd taken. We were both leaning out the windows of her SUV, wearing aviator sunglasses and backward Dodger caps and scowling unconvincingly, smiles lurking underneath. Then there was a picture of Bree and Skylar leaning on each other, back-to-back, with their arms crossed over their chests. Badass. Bree. Who looked like Leila and the others.

And someone had followed Bree home from the gym one night.

I knew then that Bree was in danger. Worse than the danger I was in from myself.

I drove the few short blocks to Bree's apartment building. When I drank, I thought I was a pretty good driver—more relaxed. Yes, I actually told myself this. I put on NPR to help me relax more. There was a story about a tiny Egyptian statue in a museum in England that moved incrementally in a perfect circle all by itself. No one knew how it did this. I wondered if it was some sign of the end of the world.

Sleeping morning glories and insomniac jasmine clambered up the adobe walls and over the tiled roof of the building. The summer air smelled oversweet, as if it were trying to lure me somewhere unsafe. A large, sinister-looking banana tree blocked the front window. All lights were off inside.

Bree and Skylar lived on the ground floor; I had always hated that. Now more than ever.

I knocked on the wooden door, and then on the glass panel on top, knowing no one would answer. No one did. Maybe Bree was out on a date or at a meeting with Shana, and Skylar was with Baby Daddy.
Skylar should be with me.

Not now, you're fucked-up.

*   *   *

Before Bree and I were sober, we used to have parties at this apartment building. We served cheap white wine in plastic glasses and chugged whiskey from our private stash. We wore tutus and off-the-shoulder spandex shirts or corsets, cropped lace leggings, and combat boots. Our hair was cut in bangs and styled in braids.