Night Film(24)

“What else did she have on?” I asked.

“Jeans, black boots, a black T-shirt with an angel on the front.”

The same clothing Ashley was wearing when she died.

“Did she speak to you? Mention if she was meeting someone?”

Nora shook her head. “I said my usual ‘Good evening’ and ‘Will you be joining us for dinner?’ There’s a little script they like you to memorize to be welcoming. But she didn’t answer. Every night since I met her—before I knew she’d passed away—I’ve had nightmares. You know the kind where you wake up fast and sounds are echoing through the room but you have no idea what it was you’d just screamed out loud?”

She was actually awaiting an answer, so I nodded.

“That’s what I’ve had. And my grandmother Eli on my mom’s side of the family said the Edges are in tune with stuff from fourth and fifth dimensions.”

I sensed it was compulsory to intervene now before we were treated to more wisdom from Grandma Eli.

I smiled. “Well, I’ll look everything over and be in touch.”

“First we need to exchange numbers,” Nora said.

She and Hopper gave each other their info. I was just starting to wonder how I was going to auto-eject myself out of here, when Nora glanced at her watch and let out a squeak, scrambling out of the booth.

“Shoot. I’m late for work.” She grabbed the check, digging through her purse. “Oh, no.” She looked at me, nibbling a fingernail. “I left my wallet at home.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.”

“Really? Thanks. I’ll definitely pay you back.”

If that was indicative of her acting talent, not even a daytime soap would hire her. She zipped up her purse, heaved it onto her shoulder, and grabbed the Whole Foods bag.

“I can take the coat. So you don’t have so much to carry.”

She glanced at me with a flash of mistrust, but then reconsidered, handing me the bag.

“See ya later,” she called out cheerfully as she jostled away, bags banging her shins. “And thanks for breakfast.”

I climbed out of the booth and, reading the check, saw that the girl had actually consumed two meals: the French toast and coffee, but also scrambled eggs, a side of bacon, half a grapefruit, and cranberry juice. So the string bean Dame Dench had the appetite of a sumo wrestler. It had to be the reason she’d decided to talk, so I’d subsidize breakfast.

“What’d you think?” asked Hopper, sliding out behind me.

I shrugged. “Young and impressionable. Probably made most of it up.”

“Right. That’s why you looked so bored and nearly tripped over yourself to get your hands on that coat.”

I said nothing, only pulled two twenties from my wallet.

“For one thing,” he said, “she’s got no place to live.” He was staring out the window where Nora Halliday and her many bags were still visible, far across the four-lane street. She was using a building’s mirrored reflection to fix her hair into a ponytail. She then picked up the bags and vanished behind a delivery truck.

With a last hard look at me—clearly indicating he didn’t trust me or particularly like me—Hopper put his phone to his ear.

“Keep those eyes open, Starsky,” he said, heading out.

I held back, waiting for him to duck past the window. I doubted I’d see him again—or Hannah Montana, for that matter. When New York took over, both of them would fall by the wayside.

That was the magnificent thing about the city: It was inherently Machiavellian. One rarely had to worry about follow-throughs, follow-ups, follow the leaders, or any kind of consistency in people due to no machinations of one’s own but the sheer force of living here. New York hit its residents daily like a great debilitating deluge and only the strongest—the ones with Spartacus-styled will—had the strength to stay not just afloat but on course. This pertained to work as much as it did to personal lives. Most people ended up, after only a couple of months, far, far away from where they’d intended to go, stuck in some barbed underbrush of a quagmire when they’d meant to head straight to the ocean. Others outright drowned (became drug addicts) or climbed ashore (moved to Connecticut).

Yet the two of them had been helpful.

All those nights ago, it had been Ashley Cordova. I thought I’d decided on my own to look into her death, and yet incredibly she’d come to me first, wedged herself like a splinter into my subconscious. I’d have to review the timing, but I remembered the Reservoir encounter was a little more than a week before her death. When I saw her it must have been just a few days after she’d escaped from the mental-health clinic, Briarwood Hall.

How had she known I’d be there? No one knew I went to the park to jog in the dead of night except Sam. One evening months ago, while tucking her into bed, she’d announced that I was “far away” and I’d answered I wasn’t, because I went up to her neighborhood to run. With every lap, I could look up to her window and see she was snug in her bed, safe and sound. This was a stretch, of course; I could no more see Cynthia and Bruce’s ritzy apartment on Fifth Avenue than the Eiffel Tower, but the thought had pleased her. She’d closed her eyes, smiling, and fell right to sleep.

The only possible explanation, then, was that Ashley had been following me. She would have known about me after her father’s lawsuit. It was conceivable she’d tracked me down in order to tell me something, something about her father—John’s ominous words immediately came to mind, There’s something he does to the children—but had lost her nerve.