vnNeSsa1 (6 page)

“Rachelle, I’m sorry. Don’t answer that. It’s none of my business.” She splashes cold water on her face and rubs off any remaining make
-up.

“No, it’s
OK. You’ve been great. His name is Liam.” My suspicions confirmed, I work to keep my face neutral.

“Oh, yeah. I know him a little. He suggested the apartment to me. Seems like a nice guy.” I’m about to put my top back on when Jennifer walks in.

“If you ever have hopes to be in a nude line, you’re going to have to grow bigger boobs than that.” She’s looking at my bra pointedly, smiling, pleased with herself. “Are you OK, Rachelle? You guys have been gone a long time.”

“I feel better now that I’ve thrown up all over the bathroom. But I think I need to go home.”

We rode in together, so that means we both need to leave. After settling our part of the bill and listening to Lily fuss over Tink, I drive us back to our apartment complex. I make sure Tink is safe in her apartment and then I lock myself in mine, strip off my smelly clothes and take a long shower. Tossing in bed, the argument with myself goes like this: So we’re both probably underage, afraid of our pasts to the point of getting physically ill, audition for the same show and live in the same complex, all connected by the same man. So what? I try to pass it off as coincidence. But my dreams that night of a man with light blue eyes are anything but peaceful.

Chapter 8

I love this room. It’s heaven to breathe in the aroma of books, run my fingers across the antique furniture and fill my eyes with the art I’ve collected over the years. It also reminds me of the women I’ve had in here and, most recently, of the life I’ve taken. My feet rest on the spot where I had to kill the man. I bend down and re-enact those last few moments. Ah, lovely. This carpet is even more beautiful than the one I had to dispose of. It was excruciating to buy it, though, having to listen to the prattling of my offspring.

I straighten up and return to my plush desk chair, good mood spoiled. She gave me a migraine with her incessant gossiping. I had to feign interest in the goings-on of Brittany, Ryan, Megan, Kyle, and Brett. It wounds me to say if they’re friends with her, they haven’t an ounce of gray matter. My focus sharpened at information about Brett. He used to go with the Van Clief girl. Apparently, my daughter stole him away. Doesn’t take too much imagination to figure out how she did that. Her voice, grating like her mother’s, rings in my ears.

“She couldn’t get over it and acted like a bitch after
me and him got together.” Yes, her ability to turn a phrase is a wondrous thing. And she went on: “She always acted superior just because she got good grades and thought she was smart and everything.” I remember wanting to slap the pouting expression off her face. “We were her only friends, you know. You’d think she’d want to keep us. It was so weird how she was close to her parents. It wasn’t normal.” My daughter’s insensitivity never ceases to amaze me. Undoubtedly a trait inherited from her mother.

There was an abrupt shift in the conversation at that point that startled me and worries me as I think back on it.

“Daddy, why haven’t they found Vannessa’s body?”

“I don’t know, Pumpkin. Sometimes drowning victims are never found.” I was hoping she would be satisfied with that. But she wouldn’t let it go.

“What if she’s not dead?”

“How is that possible? She would have gone for help immediately if she made it to shore.”

“What if she hit her head on some rock in the rapids and lost her memory and doesn’t know who she is and got lost?”

“That’s simply bizarre. If she had hit her head with that kind of force, she would have drowned. Olivia, I know it’s difficult to lose a friend, but you’ve got to come to grips with the fact she’s gone. I’m sorry. This has been difficult for all of us. I lost a friend, too.”

My peaceful strolling of half an hour ago has been replaced by agitated pacing across my new carpet. I didn’t lose a friend. Far from it. Van Clief was a business partner and competitor. And that my daughter of all people is hypothesizing about the disappearance of Van Clief’s daughter puts all the more pressure on me to find her.

Finally I receive word that the damn tracker has arrived. Better get the
Scotch ready. Her thunderous footfalls precede her appearance at my study door. She looks even more like a frog in housemaid’s clothing than I remember. She lights up at seeing the full decanter of Scotch at the desk’s edge. If bulging eyes and a mouth tic can be described as such.

“Howard.” She uses my first name to greet me. My fingers turn white gripping the desk’s edge.

“Rita. You don’t like phones. I trust you have much to report.” Ignoring me, she pours her glass to the rim. Then a quick glance around; she sees what she wants and heads for it. Not my Louis XIV again. Her tree-trunk legs stomp over to fetch it. She hauls it in front of my desk and nestles in like a chicken to roost. I’ve come prepared this time with a ball you squeeze in the palm of your hand, meant to exercise your forearm. I pretend it’s her head. She pulls long and hard at her drink. I marvel at my patience.

“Found a trucker who saw her.” My fingers stop squeezing the ball and there’s the inevitable pause while she takes another drink. “She stowed away on an
eighteen-wheeler custom sleeper headed down I-94. Smart choice. Driver never even knew she was there. We caught a lucky break in that another driver saw her sneaking out of the cab when her driver was getting gas. That was at a truck stop just outside Chicago.” She drains her glass and pours herself another. She’s probably putting bottles of Scotch on my tab. I’ll surely go broke. “Asked questions at the coffee shop there. She came in and ordered a lot of food and ate it all. The waitress remembers her because the girl asked if she could use her phone to call a taxi. Then a cab came and drove her away.”

“She got rid of her ph
one immediately because of the GPS chip. Chief found it on the road by the cabin,” I inform the tracker. She goes up slightly in my estimation because she nods as though she already knows about the phone. I go on. “What was she carrying?”

“Two backpacks. Nothing else.”

“And next?” But Rita’s ignoring me again, slurping her drink, contemplating God knows what. Between gulps, when she’s deep in thought, she has the habit of licking a mole just below her lower lip. Revolting. I go back to squeezing my ball at what feels an inhumanly fast pace. She seems to remember my presence after a moment of mole-licking and continues.

“Canvassed the cab companies, as the waitress didn’t remember what the taxi looked like other than ‘yellow.’ Took some doing but I found it. She took the cab to O’Hare
Airport. Driver dropped her off at the international terminal.” Pleased with herself, Rita settles back in her seat with her third full drink and smacks her lips. Her eyelids are doing that frog-thing I remember from last time, where both upper and lower lids close simultaneously. I know we may not have much time.

“So, again, she could be anywhere.”

“She’s sharp. She didn’t buy a plane ticket. Too easy to track. She could have taken the el from there to the train station and bought a train ticket. I’m checking the downtown train terminal. Again, I think too obvious for this girl. She also could have taken a bus from the airport. Too slow for her. So I’m in the process of questioning employees on the ground at O’Hare who worked the night she got there.”

“To what end? That could take forever.” I’m beginning to think this woman’s an idiot like all the rest.

“She went to an airport to throw us off in case we tracked her that far. So many choices at an airport. She’s not going to choose the obvious. I think she did something a little more out of the ordinary. With a little luck, somebody saw her do it. Girls, alone, looking a little desperate, attract attention. Somebody noticed. I’ll find that somebody.” This woman is nothing if not confident. But all this work has taken it out of her. Poor dear. Her drinking arm is undoubtedly strained all to hell. Lord knows her eyes are barely open and she’s slumped in the chair, breasts resting on her belly like lapdogs.

I’m staring at her breasts in horrified fascination, the way you feel compelled to stare at a wreck on the freeway, when she asks what information my daughter gave me. I wrench my eyes away and fill her in
, omitting the more gossipy aspects. Toward the end of my account, her lips begin pumping in and out. Is she snoring? Was this a bedtime story for her after a nightcap or two? I don’t know whether to shake her or kill her. Then she starts licking her mole again with vigor and suddenly sits up.

“She’s alone and terribly lonely, under considerable psychological strain. She lost her mom a few months ago, now her dad in a traumatic way. Her friends screwed her. She has no one. She’ll seek people. She’ll also be easy prey. She’ll be in a big city. My bets are on New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, New Orleans, Miami, and possibly San Francisco.”

“What’s your rationale?”

“Although it may be easier to make friends in a small town, it’s harder to hide. The cities I named are the easiest to have fake identification produced. She could have found out that information easily on the
Internet.” With considerable effort, she pushes herself out of the antique chair, the strain causing her to pass gas. She shows absolutely no embarrassment, but moves closer to me and stops.

“I’m going to continue to approach this methodically, but if it takes time
, I suggest moving my people to those locations and beginning a search. Cost prohibitive now, I know, but an option to consider for later.” Without waiting for me to respond, she lumbers toward the door, but turns back just before exiting.

“Oh, yes,
I almost forgot. My man applied a little pressure to Scott DeFray, their family attorney. You were right. There are only two copies. His copy was to be released to Roland Mason, the congressman, in the event of the girl’s death. Vannessa is the only one who knows where the other copy is.” She loses her arm up to her elbow, digging in her cleavage, and tosses me a flash drive. It lands in my upturned palm and I drop it as if I’ve been burned. It’s warm and clammy and God knows what all from her flesh.

I just sit there stunned. It
seems the tracker dropped two bombs on me. One from her backside. The other in the form of this flash drive.

When the tracker vacates my sanctuary
for good, she leaves more unpleasantness in her flatulent wake than the dead body did. When I’m over my shock, I break out the air freshener and run a soft cloth over surfaces her offending fingers have smeared. My decanter of Scotch has been emptied enough so that I place it and her glass on a tray outside the door. Treating them as a biohazard would not be an overreaction.

Reek and room tamed to some degree
, I consider what Rita Wilcox said. She’s making progress on the girl but it is too slow. Her hypotheses about the girl’s psychological state confirm what I had been thinking myself. Her logic about the cities seems sound. I’ll give her two weeks to find a lead from employees at O’Hare. If that yields nothing, she can spread her people out to the cities. I’ll have to eat the cost. The cost won’t matter when I find the girl.

I plug the flash drive and earphones into my computer and listen to it all.
By the time it’s finished, my forehead is on my desk. Nothing could ease the tension in my neck. It feels like my head would snap clean off with correctly applied pressure. I want to kill something. Right now. The evidence is far more damning than I imagined.

This DeFray may be a loose end, but not if he doesn’t know the contents of the flash drive.
The girl, on the other hand…I’m sure she knows everything. She’s the thing I want to kill.

Chapter 9

Between rehearsals, dance class, going out and shopping, I’m exhausted. But it feels good. The four of us have started hanging out a lot. Everyone’s even calling Rachelle “Tink.” I accidentally called her Tink in front of everyone and she laughed and clapped her hands when she found out what it meant. The two older dancers are good about not asking about our pasts anymore. And most days I can forget about all those coincidences between Tink and me.

Right now we’re watching the show from the balcony to see it from the audience’s point of view and tomorrow we’ll rehearse with the entire cast. The line captain, or head dancer, has led rehearsals to incorporate us into the show. But the idea of dancing with the whole cast
, including the singer, intimidates me. I can’t think about it without my stomach feeling queasy. But I push the thought away and try to concentrate instead on how fun it will be to watch the cast perform. Tonight, thanks to Lily, my clothes feel right. Even so, if I breathe too deeply, the seams are going to rip right out of this gorgeous, sapphire-blue dress.

And I do breathe in sharply because the house lights have lowered and the curtains part to reveal a jungle scene on the massive stage.
Abundant foliage dominates the set in lush hues of green, accented by sharp reds and yellows, softened by twilight blue lighting. The male dancers are on stage, melding perfectly with the scenery as they circle to a quiet drumbeat. Fog rolls across the bottom of the stage and the drums pound louder. Female dancers appear, wearing bodysuits and feral expressions. They dance, long-limbed, imitating panthers, their predator-like movements thrilling me to the core.

The volume of the music slowly increases. The dancers’ movements become more abandoned in response. A back curtain rises to reveal a soaring structure that
brings a gasp from the audience. It’s a thirty-foot waterfall cascading down what looks like a sheer rock wall. Building drumbeats course through my body as the dancers move skillfully around and over the rocks that flank the waterfall. I’m further amazed by a white tiger lounging lazily on one of the rocks.

How am I ever going to look like the other female dancers, so effortless
in front of all those gaping people in the audience? And the male dancers, bare-chested, strong muscles flexing, cover the expanse of stage with ease. They’re fantastic. Some dancers are perched on rocks at the very top of the falls! How did they even get there? I’m transfixed; nothing can break my concentration.

Nothing except for the person who sits next to me.

“Impressive display, isn’t it?” There’s a beautiful Latino accent that goes with the face I was blinded by. I just about melt out of my blue dress. My voice fails me for a moment.

“Yes,” I choke out brilliantly.

“You will be doing this in just a few short days.”

OK, brain, think of more than a one-word answer.

“Yeah, I’m pretty nervous about it. I’m especially worried about dancing with the heels and headdresses in the later numbers.” The waterfall number is building to a crescendo. The star of the show, Brynne, is being lowered from the catwalks to the stage in a large cage. The male dancers are helping her out of the cage as the female dancers melt off stage. The male dancers fight over the singer in a mock battle, slaying one another until only she is left standing at the end with the tiger. Her dark brown skin and black bodysuit perfectly complement the white tiger. There is a tremendous crashing of cymbals, pulsing of lights and the stage goes black.

We st
ay silent, watching. The theater breaks into wild applause at the number’s end and then becomes quiet as the scenery changes to a Parisian setting. The singer has switched costumes during the scene change. She begins singing a French song in clear, sweet tones. Jennifer, Lily, and Tink are craning their necks to get a look at the man seated next to me. I sneak a quick look at his profile.

Again,
there’s the feel of confidence like a force field surrounding him. Thick, black waves of hair frame a proud face. Absurdly long eyelashes beat too slowly on overly large eyes. His nose is broad, lips are full, and skin is brown. His skin looks as if it might be rough if I were to reach out right now and touch it. A slight twitch to the corner of his mouth tells me he knows I’m studying him. My face heats up. He turns my way, smiling, and continues our conversation in a whisper.

“I’ll bet the heels and headdresses are something you get used to pretty quickly. I’m sure you’ll be just great.” He says t
his last thing with a smile so genuine that it makes me feel warm down the length of my body.

“I hope so. We’ll find out soon enough.” His eyes are
a deep chocolate brown and look as welcoming as his smile. He nods, looks at me with those slow blinking eyes, and then gets up and leans over close to my ear.

“My break is over. Of course you and your friends will be going to the cast party tomorrow night? I can properly introduce myself there.” He is so close I involuntarily close my eyes and tilt my face toward him to take in his scent. Oceans and pine and a wood-burning fire come to mind. How is that possible? I feel off-balance.
He stays by my ear long after he’s done talking. Then he smiles again as he slowly straightens up, nods at the other dancers, and makes his way down the aisle.

We are all staring after his departing figure, the show forgotten. The dancers start whispering all at once. “What did he say?” “Did you find out who he is?” What’s his name?” “Did I hear an accent?” “What does he do here?” “Why didn’t he sit by me?” This last question is from Jennifer
, who looks upset. She has an empty seat beside her, too, and is taking it personally that he sat beside me and not her.

“I’m closer to the entrance, Jennifer. That’s all.” But she’s not convinced. She turns away, her expression closed. Another number begins. I expect to be distracted by thoughts of our recent visitor, but this is my favorite dance and I’m soon engrossed in it. My feet automatically trace the pattern of steps beneath my seat. The entire set is done in black and white. All female dancers wear white silk gowns.
Ten lead male and female pairs tap and then twirl around the stage together in a fun, yet elegant routine. I try to gauge the audience’s response because there aren’t any feathers or half-exposed bodies. They seem to love it.

When the singer needs a break to change costumes, the dancers get a number all to themselves, as in my favorite number. But the show is definitely centered on her. She’s
really good. So are the dancers. The pacing is fast. The live orchestra is thrilling. The production overwhelms me. I have to pinch myself to believe I’m really here and a soon-to-be-member of this cast.

The three other dancers seem impressed by the show, especially Tink. She’s bouncing in her seat when the curtain closes, making me laugh, but she also frets about the
three-inch heels and headdresses that a couple of the numbers require. As we make our way backstage, we’re talking about how we’ll manage to dance while wearing them. We’ve been to the dressing rooms with the long rows of mirrors for our costume fitting, but not when they’ve been occupied by the cast.

People seem in a hurry to shed their costumes and leave, but most of them take time to say hi
. We try to stay out of the way. I’m noticing how the stations along the mirror have personal touches reflecting the personality of each dancer when I overhear Jennifer talking to the line captain. Jennifer is asking her whether she knows anything about the new “Spanish” guy who works somewhere in the hotel. Wow, she’s single-minded. Apparently, the line captain’s not sure but thinks he has something to do with hotel security. I don’t hear more because a middle-aged woman with a sweet face walks up and introduces herself to me as Josie, my dresser. There’s one dresser for every four dancers, I’ve been told. Sometimes the turnaround between numbers is so fast, we have to change backstage, so the dressers are vital. Still, it makes me feel special to have Josie and I thank her. She laughs and says I should wait to thank her until she’s actually done something for me, but she seems pleased.

We stay a bit longer, but Jennifer seems eager to leave. As soon as we are in the large hallway that goes outside to employee parking, she pulls Lily toward a stairway that leads back into the casino of the hotel.

“Lily and I are going to go get a drink at the bar outside the main showroom. We are going to ask the bartender, pit boss, and anyone else we can think of about the new guy. Maybe we’ll even catch sight of him and buy him a drink on his next break.”

“We are?” This seems news to Lily but she’s allowing herself to be pulled along. I feel shut down, excluded, too young. I find myself a little bit mad at Lily.
Then again, Lily has been a good friend to me. Why shouldn’t she go with Jennifer? But my hand goes up in a half-hearted wave good bye just the same.

Tink and I are more quiet than usual on the drive home
. I don’t ask her about why she’s quiet because my body is worn out and my emotions have been on a roller coaster today. Once in my apartment, I peel off my blue dress, step gratefully out of my heels, slip between cool sheets and am instantly asleep.

There’s a frantic pounding on my apartment door. Raising my head, I can see the clock reads 4:10 a.m. My heart racing, I run to the door to look through the spy hole. It’s Tink, in her pajamas, looking terrified and disheveled. As soon as I open the door, she collapses into my arms and weeps. Soon her body is shaking so violently with sobs, her ribs feel like they’re going to break under my fingers. Her words are nearly incomprehensible through her crying. I make out “he found me,” “it started again,” “I can’t do it.” She repeats these phrases over and over. I lead her to the couch with soothing words and keep my arms wrapped around her. I stroke her head and tell her everything’s going to be all right until eventually her body stops shaking. This reminds me of the night on the restaurant bathroom floor. It also makes me think of my own demons. She takes a deep, shuddering breath.

“Thank you, Savannah. I’ve fallen apart on you twice now.” Tink wipes her running nose with the back of her hand and I get up to fetch a tissue.

“Glad I can be here for you,” I say, over my shoulder. My foraging takes less than a minute. I hand her a box of tissues and tuck a blanket around her sylph-like body before settling back on the couch. “You don’t have to, of course, but would you feel better if you talked about it?” Tink looks up at me then and her big, blue eyes fill with tears.

“I had a nightmare. It was awful.” She’s crying again, quietly now.

“It’s OK. Take it slow,” I cut in. But she has stopped talking and seems to be struggling with something. When Tink continues, she doesn’t look at me.

“Well, you’d understand the nightmare better if you knew why I left. My mom and dad divorced two years ago. She met this guy at a bar and I swear to God he married her so he would have drinking money because he didn’t have a job.” She’s starting to talk really fast. I hand her another tissue to slow her down a little. “All he would do is sit around the house all day and drink while she worked.” She blows her nose and twists the tissue in her fingers. “I would go to school and come home and he would be drunk on the couch most days. When I turned
fifteen, he started…coming after me.” She puts her head in her hands and rubs her forehead. She’s still crying, but angry at the same time. “I fought him off, but he started hitting my mom and he told me he’d beat my mom worse if I wasn’t nice to him. So…” Her face contorts and I see anguish, shame, and regret in succession. I fold her into my arms again and wait for the wave of weeping to pass.

“I just let him do it for almost a year. He got rougher and rougher. I turned
sixteen. I hated everyone. I wanted to die. Then one day, he was especially rough. I had really long hair then.” She sits up suddenly and runs both hands through her short hair. “He had me from behind like I was a dog and was yanking my hair back so hard I thought my neck was going to break. He was also slapping me. Sick pervert.”

“My God, Tink…”

She’s up and pacing now. “Something inside just snapped. The minute he let up on my hair, I threw my head back and I think his nose broke. He was furious and started beating me. I fought back and managed to get out from under him. I ran to the kitchen trying to get to my phone, but he was right on me. There was a knife on the table. I picked it up and stabbed him.” Her legs give out and she folds onto the floor, shaking uncontrollably.

I’m off the couch immediately, sitting her upright, gripping her arms firmly.
“It’s not your fault. None of it is your fault.”

“I could have killed him
. I’ve left my mom defenseless and he could come after me.”

“He’s not dead?”

“I don’t think so. I looked on the Internet as soon as I could for news about a murder in that town, but there was nothing. So far, no one’s come looking for me. Also, no one’s filed a missing person’s report.” Is there a hint of regret? She’s probably wondering why her mother isn’t looking for her.

“Well, it’s good the police aren’t looking
for you. But you’re scared he’ll come after you, aren’t you? And that’s what the nightmare was about?” Her body trembles beneath my arms at these questions.

“Yes. I’m scared to death of him. I’m scared he’s going to hurt my mom. I feel bad for leaving her and not protecting her.”