The Last Housewife (21)

We were coming up to the Performing Arts Center. Edie spotted it, froze, then did an about-face, pivoting left. We scrambled to follow.

“Sorry,” she mumbled. “I don’t like walking past it anymore.”

“Edie,” I said, “I know this isn’t something you want to remember, but can you tell us about finding Laurel? It would really help us. And her, hopefully.”

She stopped in her tracks. Her eyes darted to Jamie. He seemed to be the winning factor, because she nodded. We settled down on a bench, Edie in the middle. All around us, students streamed by.

“Like I told the cops,” she said, twisting a ring, “I was on my way from Penfield—that’s where I live—to Cargill for swim practice. We meet super early, when the sun’s just coming out. I was passing by the theater when I saw her”—her voice thickened—“hanging from the tree. I didn’t think it was a person at first. I thought it was, like, a banner or something. But when I got closer, I saw.”

“What did you see?” Jamie asked.

She cleared her throat. “She was wearing a blue dress, kind of old-fashioned.”

Laurel could have made it herself.

“Light-blond hair, pale skin. Her head was…facing down…but I could tell she was pretty.” Edie bit her lip.

“It’s okay,” I said, resisting the urge to pat her.

Her voice grew smaller. “I’d never seen a dead body before.”

I gave up resisting and patted her shoulder. “I’m sorry. I know this is strange and painful, but these details are very helpful. There were cuts, right?”

She nodded. “On her arms and hands. Thin cuts, but they still looked terrible. Bright red and angry.”

Fresh, then. “This is going to sound weird,” I said, “but did they spell out any words?”

Edie frowned. “Words? No.”

“Okay. It was worth a—”

“But there was that symbol on her arm.”

I froze. On the other side of Edie, Jamie leaned closer. “There was no mention of a symbol in the police report.”

“What did it look like?” I asked.

Edie looked between us. “I told the officer who interviewed me.” She lifted her right arm and pointed to the soft flesh underneath. “It was right here. I could see it because her arm was twisted. It was the size of a quarter.”

“A tattoo?”

She shook her head. “Like a birthmark, or a scar. It was a triangle.” Edie drew the shape in the air. “With four little lines branching down from it, and a horizontal line at the bottom. Kind of looked like a frat house, like you see in movies. Whitney doesn’t have a Greek system.”

I tried to envision what she was describing. “Like a…temple?”

She brightened. “Or maybe a jail? It was hard to tell.”

Jamie’s eyes met mine over Edie’s head. Laurel had a symbol hidden on the underside of her arm, and the police hadn’t mentioned it in their report. Why?

“I record my lectures, so I don’t have paper on me,” Edie said. “But if you have some, I could draw it.”

I hesitated for only a second before swallowing my pride and reaching into my purse, pulling out the bright-purple Lisa Frank notebook.

***

Half an hour later, Jamie pulled up to the valet at the River Estate, threw the car into park, and hopped out. A valet rushed up and Jamie tossed him the keys, along with a quick “Shay Deroy.” He turned to me. “Is there somewhere private we can keep talking?”

The air grew charged. The awareness tickled the soft hairs of my arms into standing.

“You can come to my room, if you want.” I kept my eyes straight ahead, on the River Estate’s stone entranceway.

“Okay,” he said lightly. “That’ll work.”

He was so impressed with my room that I expected to feel embarrassed. But to my surprise, I felt nothing but pleasure at his reaction. I suspected some part of me had always longed to show off to him, to confirm his high estimation of me.

“Not to pry,” he said as he slid onto the plush couch in the sitting room, “but this can’t be writing-for-The-Slice money, or I’m in the wrong kind of journalism.”

“It’s Cal’s money,” I said, the pleasure fading.

“Shit. Where do I find one of those hedge funders of my very own?” He read my face and cleared his throat. “Anyway.” He patted the couch. “Do you want to talk?”

I sat gingerly on the opposite end. The curtains on the floor-to-ceiling windows were pulled back, revealing the dark Hudson River, the green, tree-lined shore, and the rising mountains in the distance. All of it was lit by a slowly dying sun.

“We have to go to the Hudson Mansion,” I said. “Find Tongue-Cut Sparrow.”

He nodded. “That’s what I was going to say. Any luck with our last interview?”

“No.” I drew my feet up on the couch. “I left Laurel’s mom half a dozen voicemails, but I haven’t heard anything.”

“You’d think she’d want to connect with one of her daughter’s friends.”

I watched the river, little waves eddying, lapping at each other. “We know so much more than we did just two days ago. The fact that Laurel started acting erratically five or six years ago, quitting her job and disappearing from her apartment for months at a time. That she was interested in Tongue-Cut Sparrow. That she had a strange symbol on her arm—”