One of Those Faces (11)

I clicked on the first article and skimmed it. While police remained silent, the person who had called in her body had told a reporter that Holly’s body had dark, thin bruises around her neck and that the tips of her fingers on one hand were bloodied and the nails broken. There were fingernail marks on a garbage can lid where she had clawed at it in her final moments.

My heart lodged in my throat as I moved from the articles to her Instagram page. Photo after photo of Holly among coworkers in pencil skirts and blazers and selfies of her on her morning jogs. Halfway down her feed, one picture caught my eye. Holly was photographed from the passenger seat in front of the steering wheel of a BMW, her key ring dangling from the ignition. Beside the key was a rabbit’s foot charm.

It couldn’t be.

I leaped to my feet and stumbled to Woodstock’s usual hidey-hole in the closet. The charm was nowhere to be seen among the small collection of cat fur and dirty clothes. I shuffled the blankets on my bed, seeing if anything rolled out.

I lost track of how long I combed through the apartment until my phone rang. Sunlight was now obnoxiously streaming through my blinds.

It was Erin.

“Hello?”

“Hey, did you forget something last night?” Erin snapped.

I knew that tone. My stomach dropped. “What?” Had I remembered to throw that drawing away or only imagined doing it?

“You didn’t lock the front door!” she screeched through the speaker.

I kneeled beside the bed, leaning onto my shoulder and placing my cheek against the floor to peer underneath. I definitely had. “I locked it right after the last person left,” I said weakly. I considered the drawing, the blood, the torn illustrations. “Did someone break in?” Goose bumps erupted all along my neck. Had someone been in the studio with me while I slept?

“No, everything is still here. Nothing is missing.”

I sighed, squinting into the darkness under the bed. “I’m so sorry. I could’ve sworn I locked that door. Really.” There it was—a tiny shadow. I could probably reach it if I stretched.

She was silent for a moment. “Did you leave through the front?”

“No, I left through the back.”

“Well, whatever. It’s just disappointing.”

I stopped caring as the last word left her mouth. “How was your date?” I didn’t care about that either, but I saw a way out of the current conversation. I stifled a grunt as I outstretched my fingers and closed them around the rabbit’s foot.

“It was amazing,” she gushed after a long pause. “We went to this great restaurant. I can’t wait to tell you the other stuff.” Her voice lowered. “But Dad’s here this morning, so we’ll have to do brunch on Saturday or something.”

“I can’t,” I said, relieved to have an excuse other than that I was short on money. My idea of brunch was a two-dollar breakfast taco, but Erin’s included Bloody Mary bars and lobster Benedict. “The illustrations for that cat-mouse project got destroyed, so I have to start the entire thing from scratch.”

“Ugh!” she scoffed. “So I can’t see you all weekend?”

“Yeah, but I’ll see you in the studio next week when I come in.”

“Okay, well I covered for you with Dad and told him I came in a little earlier and forgot to lock the front door, in case he mentions it to you.”

He and I hadn’t spoken other than my ten-minute interview years ago. She knew that. She wanted me to feel like I owed her something.

I swallowed. The charm in my hand was identical to the one in Holly’s photo.

But how?

What did you do?

“Okay,” I said through clenched teeth. After we hung up, I replayed the previous night in my mind. My eyes had met briefly with Iann’s through the glass door as he climbed into his Jeep. I locked that door.





CHAPTER FIVE


The next days were a blur of frantic drawing and buckets of coffee, divided only by three hours of sleep at a time. I ignored the calls and texts from Erin. I didn’t even respond to the author’s vaguely threatening emails about the upcoming deadline.

Woodstock insisted on being let out on my landing intermittently throughout the day and basking. Those few seconds when I opened the door for him were the only times I saw the sun in days. With the added pressure of the nearing deadline, I had made good time and was almost caught up to where I’d been before that bizarre incident at the studio. I laid out the illustrations sequentially along the table. They were slightly worse than the previous iterations that I had sent for approval, but they would have to do. I leaned back in my seat and tugged at the blinds, letting the light come in. It was overcast outside, with the sun peeking out only through small cracks in the clouds occasionally.

I opened my laptop. The article about Holly was still on the screen. I hadn’t been able to resist looking at that photo when I’d taken a lunch break earlier. I observed it again now, recalling the contents of the article. She had bloodied her fingers trying to get someone’s attention while she lay there dying. I had kept walking because I was scared. I stroked the rabbit’s foot in my palm. I couldn’t explain why, but after I’d found it again under the bed, I’d washed it, mentally weighing the dangers of holding on to it or calling the police. What good would it do? It wasn’t like they could pull DNA from it—at least not any nonfeline DNA.