Who is Maud Dixon?(48)

Florence nodded. She felt ashamed, as she was sure he’d intended her to.

“My nephew was in jail for six months for this. But my nephew, of course, is not American.”

“I’m sorry,” Florence said lamely. She didn’t ask, although she wondered, why he hadn’t been able to use his police connections to help get his nephew out of it. Maybe that didn’t happen here.

“Your English is very good,” she said, hoping flattery might soften him.

“Yes, I’m chosen for the new brigade touristique,” he said through gritted teeth. “Police. Just for tourists.”

“Congratulations,” Florence said unsurely.

He scoffed and pressed harder on the gas.

When they arrived at the house, Amina started down the footpath to meet the car. She stopped when she saw the policeman behind the wheel. He nodded at her. She just looked at him.

As Florence put her hand on the door handle, Idrissi suddenly asked, “Where is your friend?”

She spun to face him. “What friend?” she asked sharply. She thought she saw a shadow of a smile on his face, as if he’d been waiting to spring that question on her.

“The one you ate dinner with at Dar Amal.”

Of course. He’d spoken with the restaurant.

Florence wondered if it was too late to come clean; to tell him about the whiskey and the scarf and the dark hole in her memory. She opened her mouth and shut it again.

“She took a taxi home early,” she said so quietly that Idrissi had to lean in to hear her.

“Why’s that?”

“She wasn’t feeling well.”

“Did the restaurant call the taxi?”

Florence shook her head. “She did it on her phone.”

“And where is she now? She didn’t come to see you in the hospital?”

Florence shrugged. “Her plan was to go back to Marrakesh the next morning. I assume she still went. She probably doesn’t even know about the accident.”

Idrissi stared at her and said nothing.

Florence hesitantly returned her hand to the door handle. When Idrissi made no move to stop her, she opened it and climbed out.

As she started to walk away, Idrissi rolled down the passenger window and called out, “Madame Weel-cock?”

Florence turned.

“Tell me if you have plans to leave Semat.” He held a business card out the window. She slipped it into her still-damp purse then stepped gingerly across the driveway in her bare feet to where Amina stood. The two women watched Idrissi drive away down the hill.

When his car was out of sight, Amina turned and gestured at the bruises on her face and the cast on her wrist. “You are okay?” she asked.

“I’m fine,” Florence reassured her. She felt a rush of relief to be someplace familiar. She was grateful for this woman’s kindness, in stark contrast to Idrissi’s anger and suspicion.

She followed the older woman into the house and went straight upstairs. Her body ached and she longed to lie down. But before going into her own room, she went to investigate Helen’s. All of Helen’s clothes were still hanging in the closet. Her jewelry was scattered on top of the dresser. Even her toothbrush was in its place in the cup on the sink. It all looked as if their owner were due back at any moment. A small part of Florence had been holding on to the hope that Helen really had left Semat on her own, but now she saw how foolish that was. Helen wouldn’t have left without her clothes, her toothbrush, her passport.

Florence ran her hand lightly across the dresses hanging in the closet. The hangers responded with a quiet tinkling.

She sat down heavily on Helen’s bed and pulled the pain medication she’d been given at the hospital from her purse. She swallowed two hydrocodones with water from a half-empty glass that had been sitting there for two days. She collapsed backward and stared up at the shadows on the ceiling. It had been a mistake to lie to the police. But she couldn’t have told him that there was someone else in the car. They might look the other way when a tourist drove drunk, but they certainly wouldn’t if she’d killed someone in the process. Manslaughter was manslaughter.

Besides, what was the point? Helen was clearly gone. It wasn’t like she was hanging on a piece of flotsam, waiting to be rescued. She was dead. Nothing could change that.

Florence tried to consider the implications of this fact. She would never see Helen again. She now had no job and no home. No one would ever read another word by Maud Dixon. Florence waited for the tears to come. But the painkillers were starting to kick in and her head felt cloudy. Everything was muffled.

Her thoughts kept returning to Helen’s body. Where was it right now? She knew from the sensationalized Florida news shows her mother liked to watch that bodies became unidentifiable after just a few days in the water, bloated with water and eaten away by fish. She also knew that in some cultures—most cultures—the treatment of dead bodies was of sacred importance, but Florence had never understood that, and she suspected Helen would not have sanctioned such sentimentality either. The dead were dead. The rites were just a salve for the living.

She rolled over onto her side and looked around Helen’s room. It was much bigger than hers.

Without another thought, she was asleep.





29.



Florence spent the next day in bed. Even if she hadn’t been in too much pain to get up and do anything, she was paralyzed by crushing anxiety. What had she done? How was it possible that in the last sixty hours she’d killed her boss—one of America’s most respected novelists—and lied to the police about it? It was like it had happened to someone else.