Girl in the Rearview Mirror Page 23

  I set the glass down and it rattled on the tabletop. I felt raw from Bryant’s anger, but I told myself I deserved it. Not for going to Verde, but for Guy.

  I climbed the stairs, my legs unsteady. The shower was running. I opened the bathroom door. Steam filled the upper half of the room. Through the glass partition, I watched Bryant rinse shampoo from his hair. Noticing me, he froze, as if afraid. Then I saw that he was crying. His entire face was red. Stricken, I stepped forward and touched him. His back was flushed with hot water.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He turned his face into the stream and held it there, and then wiped his hair off his forehead. “Come here,” he whispered.

  I peeled off my shirt, stepped out of my shorts. I ducked into the shower, shivering. He put his hands on my shoulders and swung me under the stream. We kissed, his chin sharp.

  “Just promise you’ll stay away,” he said.

  I nodded. I didn’t speak. He accepted it.

  Then there was only the noise of the water, and the stamp of feet on tile, and the brief release I felt, like a valve turned until some pressure hissed free, only to be tightly sealed again.

  In the small hours of the night, while Bryant slept, I lay awake. I was exhausted but my mind was frenzied. I held the facts awkwardly, unable to find a pattern, as though I’d been dealt too many suits in a losing hand of poker. Iris still expected money, enough to leave town. And she wasn’t pregnant, though the Martins had argued fiercely. Someone burned her car. And Bryant was furious with me for getting involved.

  He was right: it was dangerous for me to dig into Philip’s secrets. But I sensed the risk wasn’t what Iris or Guy might do. It was losing Bryant.

  Imagine the alternative. I could stay at Bryant’s place in the morning. I could get groceries delivered, work out in the condo gym, pass the daylight hours in the cool clean rooms. When he came home from work, I could be pleasant, pouring drinks, asking about his day. I’d study for the GRE. Time would pass, months; the election would keep him busy. Then, when it was over, and the Senator comfortably secured, there would be a pause. If I made it until then, we had a real chance together.

  But I’d never know the truth.

  I watched Bryant sleep for a long time. When I woke in the morning, he was gone, and I had a text from Iris.

  Stay away from my sister.

  I made Bryant’s bed, folding the sheets into military corners. I dressed and brushed my hair and applied sunscreen. For once I felt completely calm and certain. I wouldn’t pretend nothing had happened. I was involved.

  30

  Not yet noon, and The Grove was already hit by the lunch crowd. White-shirted elbows jutted from every booth. I made my way to the bar and wedged my shoulder in. “Tommy!”

  The head bartender spotted me and passed off the bill he was tallying to a waitress. He shook his head as he came over, and I was afraid Philip had told him to send me away. Instead, Tommy took my hands in his smooth, fat ones. His wrist was still smudged with the stamp of whatever club he’d gone to the night before.

  “Finn. My God. You must be a disaster. I was a disaster when I heard.” His bright blue eyes were iridescent.

  I was startled by my gratitude. He was the first person to offer straightforward sympathy. “I was. I am.” I couldn’t help squeezing his hands longer than the polite moment he probably intended.

  When I let go, he adjusted the bar towel over his shoulder.

  “When did you reopen?”

  “Today. They called us last night. I guess if you’re closed too long, they’re afraid the customers will forget about you. But listen to me going on.” He lightly docked my chin. “What are you doing here? You should be with that gorgeous boyfriend of yours. He’ll take care of you.”

  “Philip’s not here, is he?”

  “Not since it happened. You looking for him?”

  “He asked me to pick up some papers from his office.”

  He flashed a coy smile. “Well, well.”

  I must have stiffened, because he shook his head and said, “Don’t pay attention to me. Once I step behind the bar, flirting is a reflex.” He tossed me a key. “Bring it back, huh?”

  The other bartenders hustled around him, glancing at us curiously.

  “One other thing. Did you ever meet a woman named Iris? Did she work here?”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “She’s about my age. Bright red hair. You couldn’t miss her.”

  “Sorry. Lots of girls in and out of here, you know?” He flashed a wink, turned back to the customers, leaving me to wonder what he meant. Girls in the restaurant, girls with Philip?

  I locked the office behind me and pulled open the blinds. Dust rose in the air. A dry-cleaning bag hung from a basketball hoop on the wall.

  Philip’s desk was bare apart from a leather pencil cup and a heavy lamp. The drawers were crammed and disorganized. One by one, I pulled them onto the rug. I was hunting for anything connected to Iris—a pay stub, a letter, a lipstick left behind. I found invoices, a blue zippered pouch jammed with receipts, takeout menus. Everything so chaotic I couldn’t possibly keep it in the same position I found it in.

  I was about to give up when I noticed the desk lamp was crooked. I lifted it. Under the base, I found a card printed with a setting sun. I opened it. A hotel key was tucked inside, the number 107 scrawled in pen.

  I sat in Philip’s chair and twisted, thinking. The air was stale and warm. I smelled cigarette smoke, but maybe I was imagining it. Across from me was a black office chair, tricked out with knobs and angled planes of supportive mesh. It had once sat in the Martins’ office but neither of them had liked it. The night of Amabel’s play, a long-haired stranger had sat there, arguing with Philip. The same man he’d visited at the Sunset Motel, days before Iris’s car had burned. Had Philip given him cash, in that envelope? A payment for a fire? Philip might have wanted to scare her. Keep her from showing up all over his town like a bad penny. We have to take steps.

  Remembering the man’s seedy gaze, I thought he’d talk to me, if I acted nice.

  I took the key, replaced the drawers, shut the blinds. If Philip heard I was there, I’d say I was trying to find him, that’s all.

  In the car, the ribbon of road vanishing under my tires, the pressure of the pedal under my foot, my grief fell into a stilled quiet, like a baby momentarily hushed. Telephone poles whipped by. My spare tire groaned noisily. I needed to get to a repair shop. I couldn’t afford it. Not unless I dipped into the Martins’ cash. But I couldn’t start spending it, shearing off a hundred here and there, until it was whittled down to nothing. I still carried the envelope in my purse, touching it with my fingertips now and then, like an amulet.

  Turning into the motel, I rolled down my windows. The blacktop was soft as taffy. I felt as though I were driving through a dream. The quaint wooden sign. The empty parking lot. The green pool.

  There wasn’t a car in the lot. Strange. As I pulled closer, I saw a ribbon of yellow tape strung along the first-floor balcony. More tape crisscrossed one of the doors, a forbidding X.

  I inched forward. There was the old Coke machine, faded to pink in the sun. There was the spot where I watched Philip’s brief rendezvous, not with Iris, but with that man.

  The taped-off door was the one the man had returned to. Number 107.

  The day was silent apart from my shuddering engine. The motel seemed abandoned. I unbuckled and stepped out. The sun cracked over my skull and heat poured down my skin. My heels sank into the tar. I walked cautiously, waiting for a door to open, a police car to drive in. Nothing. Blinds were pulled down over the office window, where a sign read simply, closed. I passed the soda machine, which groaned in the heat. At the taped door, some wild part of me wanted to swipe the keycard and see what happened. Instead I cupped my hands to the window. Curtains sealed off the glass, a thin crack between them. Through the murky darkness, I made out the white corner of a mattress.

  I drew ba
ck and my face reflected in the dirty glass. Stark red lips, hoop earrings, blue silk blouse. What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this? I imagined the long-haired man saying, if he’d been here. Instead there was silence.

  I stopped at a diner down the road. I walked unsteadily across the lot and into the waiting area, where the glaze of sweat on my skin evaporated instantly in the air-conditioning. The waitress tipped her head at the tables, indicating that I could sit anywhere. I perched on a counter stool. She was quick to bring a glass of water, and I emptied it, the ice stinging my teeth. She offered a menu, but I waved it away.

  “Can I have some toast? And maybe orange juice.”

  “Maybe?” She fanned herself with the menu, bored.

  “Yes, orange juice.”

  She stuck the order paper through to the kitchen. Reaching back to tighten her apron, she chatted with an old couple perched on stools. A newspaper was folded on the counter beside them.

  I leaned over. “May I borrow this?”

  The man flicked his hand dismissively. They were intently discussing the heat.

  The story was on the front page, below the fold: Police Investigate Suspicious Motel Death. The text box was a postage stamp, one line only: “The death of a man staying at the Sunset Motel continues to be considered suspicious, according to a source close to the investigation. STORY CONTINUES PAGE 8.”

  I flipped ahead. The story took up half of page 8, including a few photographs. One of the motel, obviously grabbed from its brochure. Much larger, a shot of a body on a stretcher, covered with a white sheet, feet jutting up like a mummy’s. And finally, a mug shot, a grainy face staring out of a frame of long hair.

  The waitress brought my juice. There was ice in that, too.

  My palms were clammy. I wiped them with a napkin as I read.

  Clint Davis of Florence, Arizona, was found dead in his motel room on Tuesday afternoon, when a housekeeper entered the room for a routine cleaning. The body was in the bathtub. Police were alerted immediately.

  Investigators believed Mr. Davis had been dead between twelve and twenty-four hours. They hadn’t ruled out the possibility of criminal activity. An autopsy would reveal more details, and was under way.

  I counted back. He died on Monday, afternoon or night.

  The motel owner said Mr. Davis had been staying at the motel alone for an extended period. He was a quiet, solitary guest.

  Mr. Davis had previously served time for driving under the influence, drug possession, and violation of a restraining order. At the time of his death, he was serving probation for second-degree battery.

  A neighbor at the Florence Mobile Home Village said Mr. Davis had no close relatives, apart from an estranged wife and daughter.

  My toast arrived. A pile of white bread with a tablespoon of butter melting into a puddle at the center. I ate it with a knife and fork, the salt and fat quelling my nausea. The bread was soft and sweet as cake. I wolfed it down.

  When I went outside, the sky was bleached as bones. I held the newspaper under my arm.

  I paced the perimeter of the lot, but I didn’t get any calmer. All I’d done was start sweating again. I stared out at the freeway, the semis dragging their cargo like shells. I recognized the name. Clint. That Sunday afternoon, Philip had said it, his voice emphatic, gripping the red chair. Clint won’t say a word.

  31

  Back in the car, drive. My phone’s cool, robotic voice directed me to the house of a dead man. I concentrated on the unfamiliar road. I didn’t want to think about the keycard in my purse, or the envelope I’d seen Philip pass Clint in the parking lot, or the acrid smell of smoke on Iris’s street, or the sagging caution tape over room 107. Didn’t want to think of the police who must be working on Clint’s case. Digging through his suitcase. Finding the envelope from Philip. Reading Clint’s call history, his texts.

  The Florence Mobile Home Village sprawled along a six-lane county road. Across the street, an airport advertised skydiving. An airplane trundled down the runway and lifted into the air, its white wings almost invisible against the chalky sky. It flew directly over me, and I had the funny thought it was watching as I turned into the trailer park.

  I parked outside the office, a trailer with a leasing sign out front. Its interior was decorated in the bland aesthetic of model homes, the air-conditioning shaking the leaves of the rubber plants, the beige walls yawning at the gray carpet.

  “Up to three beds,” the manager said, offering me a chair and a mouthful of teeth. “Or we have streamlined units for singles.”

  I had a line prepared. “Actually, I’m not here to rent. I’m a journalist. I was hoping you could tell me which trailer is Mr. Davis’s.”

  “A journalist?” He looked me over. “There’s no trouble, is there?” His worry wasn’t concern; it was the worry of someone who doesn’t want trouble, or late rent.

  “Just checking on a few facts.”

  “Didn’t know newspapers cared about facts anymore.” He snorted. “Nineteen. Down on Palm Lane.”

  I drove over. The trailers sat in curved rows like an elaborate run of dominoes. I’d expected them to look transitory, but they were homey, ballasted with cheerful clutter: lounge chairs, lawn gnomes, flower patches, American flags, NASCAR pennants, grills, kiddie pools, bicycles.

  Clint’s address was unremarkable among its neighbors. No police cars guarding it or caution tape warding off the curious. I wasn’t surprised; the manager hadn’t known he was dead, after all. Somebody knew—the neighbor quoted in the article. I thought if no one was at Clint’s, I’d walk around, try the nearby places.

  But it was easier than that.

  I climbed the steps to Clint’s trailer. A bulky air conditioner hung from the window, girdled with duct tape. I rang the bell.

  I’m Sarah Dewitt, I rehearsed. A journalist. I’m writing about Clint.

  No—a reporter. Covering Clint’s death.

  “Hey!” A brusque, feminine voice.

  I turned to see an enormous woman slowly closing the distance between us, hitching up a knee as if it hurt her. She was entirely pink: lipstick, blouse, capris. Her painted toenails were fat raspberries.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” She stood below me, holding the stair railing with a proprietary air. The part in her hair was sunburned to a rosy pink.

  I tucked my purse tightly against my side and extended my hand. “I’m Finn Dewitt,” I said, messing up my cover name. “I’m a reporter. Mr. Davis’s death is my story.”

  It was a mouthful of garbage, delivered in a trembling voice, but she wrenched my hand up and down triumphantly, with a fierce smile. “I’ve been waiting for someone to show up. I’m Brenda. Brenda Argyle, like the plaid.”

  “You knew Mr. Davis?”

  She glanced over her shoulder, at the empty street. “Let’s speak in private.” Moving past me, she dug out a set of keys. When she opened the door, stale, smoky air wafted out. She held it, waiting for me to go in first. Holding my breath, I went past her into the dim heat of Clint’s kitchen.

  The place was torn apart. Cabinets open and contents spilling onto the countertops. Drawers tugged out and emptied onto the floor. I crossed the linoleum, trying not to step on anything, and went into the living room. A recliner hunkered in a stare-down with a TV. The easy chair beside it had had its cushions ripped open, its ottoman flipped over, four feet in the air like a dead beetle. The braided rug on the floor had been pulled back and crumpled. A painting of a wolf hung askew on the wall.

  In the closed-up space, the heat was oppressive and thick. Back in the kitchen, Brenda was trying to get the air conditioner on. When she slapped the unit with a flat hand, it sputtered to life.

  “Hot as sin in here,” she said, moving into the living room. She sank onto the recliner. “It’ll be nice and cool by the time we’re ready to leave.”

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  “You’re lucky I saw you,” she said. “I was just about to go to the gr
ocery store, and then I looked up and there you were at Clint’s. Have a seat.” She swept her arm grandly, as if she owned the place.

  I righted the ottoman and perched on its edge. The suede-ish microfiber immediately coaxed sweat from the backs of my knees.

  “Did you know him well?” I said.

  “Oh, sure. We go way back. Fifteen, twenty years. I don’t think you’ll find anyone who knew Clint like I do.” Her smile was wolfish, with shiny brown-edged teeth.

  “Perfect,” I said, though I doubted her. She seemed too eager, too delighted by me. I wondered whether she’d dressed up deliberately, waiting for the news cameras.

  “What do you think of this mess?” she said, grinning. “This is the police’s version of investigating a man’s murder.” Her cheeks were flushed pink.

  In spite of her superficial tone, hearing the word aloud chilled me. I swallowed dryly. “Are the police investigating the death that way? As a murder?”

  “I doubt they’ll bother.” She fanned herself with a hand.

  “Why would the police do this?”

  “Looking for drugs, I’d bet. Probably found some, too.”

  “When were they here?”

  “I didn’t see. I only heard he died yesterday. I came right over and it was already a mess. But it musta been cops. Clint hadn’t been here in more than a week.” She squinted at me. “Who did you say you write for again?”

  “Metro Digital,” I invented. “I’m new.”

  “They would give this to the newb. Nothing sexy about an old burnout, eh?” Though her words were tough, she seemed suddenly tired and sad. Her skin was crisscrossed with faint lines, like linen. Her too-bright blush stood in ovals on her cheeks.

  “What was he like?” I asked, sensing an opening, a lull in her conspiracy theorist’s energy.