Don't You Cry(75)

“Good enough?” Detective Robert Davies asks when he hands me the State Farm card, and I say, “Yeah. Good enough,” as I open the door and slide into an unmarked Crown Victoria that’s parked in the public lot off Columbus. The car reeks of the fast-food bag that lies open on the passenger seat. He scoops it up before my rear end has a chance to squash it flat, and tosses it into a nearby garbage can. It’s much warmer in the car without the cold and the wind, but the dreariness of the enclosed parking garage is still unsettling.

Detective Davies pulls out of the narrow parking spot too quickly and down the garage ramp so that my insides continue to turn. There’s a blare of his horn—warning others that he’s coming through at breakneck speed—as he guns the engine out onto Columbus and drives me home.

As he drives, the bile again rises up inside my chest until I feel that I could vomit. My head swims with dread. My hands shake, a tremor that makes the rest of me exhausted and dizzy. My heart, itself, has grown wings and can fly, and there it sits in my chest, flapping its birdlike wings, threatening to soar out of my body.

I think of Esther, sad and scared, and me not knowing. Was she really sad and scared, or were these things simply a charade? Who is Esther, really? Is she even Esther or is she Jane? The questions all but take over my mind until I can no longer see straight and I can scarcely think.

Detective Davies drops me off at the front door of my apartment building. Before I can turn around to say goodbye to the detective or thank him for the ride, he speeds away quickly, with Esther’s cell phone and the letters to My Dearest now in his possession. He plans to see what his tech guys can extract from inside that phone—Esther’s call activity and voice mails, her videos and photos.

In my hand, I carry his business card, and in my head, a directive: call if anything happens, if I find anything, if I hear from Esther, if Esther reappears. Just call.

As I step from the car, I peer to the window of our unit, of Esther’s and my unit, and half expect to see her, standing there, staring down at me. But of course Esther isn’t there. The cloudy window is bare, just the window coverings and the reflection of the other side of Farragut Avenue staring back at me.

But then I see a woman standing beside the locked door, pressing a button repeatedly on the intercom panel with a hand. She waits with a toe tap for a reply that doesn’t come. She stands before the door, clutching what I know to be Esther’s powder blue, quilted satchel in her leather-gloved hands. She’s a small woman; she can’t be taller than four foot ten with bulky hair that must weigh as much as the rest of her. I’d bet my life she weighs eighty-nine pounds. Everything she wears is tight: tight pants, tight coat, tight boots.

“Can I help you?” I ask precipitately, my eyes glued to that purse. I have a sudden, overwhelming desire to reach out and clutch that purse in my hands, to hold it. That’s Esther’s, I want to bark out loud, and I stare at my hands, which, before me, continue to shake. I’m worried. Worried for Esther. The detective’s story leaves me feeling panicked and utterly confused—even more so than I already was—this strange twist of events that takes me from mad to scared to worried. Instead of thinking that someone is after me—that Esther is after me—I’m worried for Esther.

But still, there are so many questions running in my mind: What about Kelsey Bellamy, and why did Esther change her name to Jane Girard, and seek out a roommate to replace me? Why did she take fifteen hundred dollars out of the ATM? This makes no sense to me, none at all.

“Are you Jane...” the woman at the intercom panel begins, followed by a pause while she peers at some card in her hand and finishes with, “Girard?” Are you Jane Girard?

Who is Esther Vaughan anymore? I wonder. Do I even know Esther?

I shake my head quickly. I say no, that I’m not, but I’m Jane’s roommate. Quinn. I say it, anyway, even though I’m guessing she doesn’t care about my name. She’s come for Jane.

“Oh, good,” she says, a great wave of relief washing over the inflated facial features—the big eyes, the big smile, the big hair. “I found this,” she says as she thrusts the powder blue satchel into my hands, “in a trash can of all places,” and I take it, grateful to have something, some part of Esther, to hold. I press it close to me; I breathe in the scent of Esther that’s begun to wear away and be surpassed by a grungy city smell, mixed with this lady’s forceful perfume, the heavy scent of jasmine and rose.

“You found her purse in a garbage can?” I repeat, just to be sure, and she nods and tells me how she was about to toss in her coffee cup when she saw it lying there on top of a jillion fast-food bags, the blue of the satchel catching her eye.

“It’s a pretty purse,” she says. “Much too pretty to just throw in the trash. I figured it was an oversight,” and then she says how she didn’t want my roommate to worry. “I know I’d be worried if I couldn’t find my purse.”

“That’s really kind of you,” I say, and it is. Of course it is, if she doesn’t have some ulterior motive. Right now I’m not sure of anything, other than the fact that I’m tired and twitchy all at the same time. My head hurts; my hands shake. If any more questions fill my mind, it might just explode.

What was Esther’s purse doing in a garbage can?

“What garbage can?” I ask, and she points in the direction of Clark Street and says aimlessly, “Over there.”