The Elizas: A Novel(107)

The words sink into me, fizzling like acid. “You saw me push her,” I eke out.

Her expression tells me all I need to know. “I’ll never tell on you. That’s not why I’m here. I’m here because you need to know she’s gone. I wanted to get to you much sooner, right after it happened—but your family took you away. As time passed, I couldn’t bring myself to say what I knew.” Stella gives me a hard look. “But here I am.”

I sit back, resting my hands on my thighs. “Wow. Wow.”

Stella’s smile is crooked and small. “Yes. Wow. And I’m so very sorry.”

I have so many more questions for her. So many more tiny things and big things to ask. But just as I’m gathering them up in my mind, my phone rings. It’s Posey. I wince.

“I’ll be there in a sec,” I say as I answer. “Two minutes.”

I hang up and give Stella an apologetic look. “I don’t want to stop talking.”

“No, go,” she says, waving her hand. “I shouldn’t have taken up this much of your time.”

“Are you kidding?” I cry. I linger on her for a moment. I want to hug her, sort of, but instead I just touch her hand and mouth Thank you, and then hurry back to the ballroom.

Waiters are placing plates of crème br?lée on the table. Posey gives me a worried look when I approach the stage, but I shrug her off. She returns to the microphone and introduces me, and I try to pull it together as I take my place at the podium. My purse carries a marked-up copy of my book. But as I open it to the right page, I hear voices in my head.

It was like I was in the presence of a paranormal event! It’s Eleanor. Dorothy. I’d split in two! She should play a look-alike of me at parties.

Or you could play a look-alike of her, I answered.

Then the story of Gigi Reece and Diana Dane pops into my mind. There’s a marvelous story about a murder at this hotel, Dorothy had said. Eleanor said it, too. And they both said, later, in the same dreamy, faraway voice, You know what would be interesting? If the famous starlet was actually the one in trouble with the goons in Palm Springs, but she sent this other gal in her place to bear their wrath.

Had Eleanor been trying to tell me the whole time? Of course she used Stella to her advantage. She was her look-alike. She was a get-out-of-jail-free card.

But what if she took it even further? If my aunt used Stella as a convenient standin for an alibi, and if my aunt had Stella at her disposal the night she planned to kill me, what if she also used Stella in those last moments? Yes, Stella had told me, moments ago, that she’d only been there to slip into Eleanor’s seat at the table, and that she’d watched me push Eleanor over the guardrail. I could believe that at face value—but should I? After all, in my murky recollection of what happened, Eleanor had looked so different in those last moments before she fell. Like herself . . . but also not like herself.

Was it possible that, amid our scuffle, Eleanor had wrested Stella from the shadows and forced her to take her place?

I can’t exactly wrap my head around how Eleanor could have convinced someone to do this, or why Stella wouldn’t have immediately revealed to me who she really was. I also don’t know how Eleanor could have recovered from the poison, because of all the memories that are blurry, those images of Eleanor vomiting bile moments before her fall are still crisp and vivid in my mind. And yet . . .

What if the woman I’d just spoken to wasn’t Stella at all?

I start to shake. Stop it It was Stella. Let it go.

Detective Carson told me the police had identified Eleanor Reitman by her driver’s license. For the crazy scheme I have just cooked up to have happened, my aunt would have had to slip the ID into Stella’s pocket before she fell into traffic—or else Stella had had it on her person all along. But it could have happened, right? No blood had been taken to prove it was Eleanor. No autopsy had been performed. Dr. Singh, who I’d never been able to find, came to the morgue, took her away, and disappeared, too.

I look up. My audience is staring at me expectantly, waiting for me to start.

“I’ll be right back,” I say.

There are murmurs as I step off the stage. Posey grabs my arm. “What’s going on now?”

I smile bravely. “Just . . . the bathroom again.”

I jog away. I have to pass my family; Desmond is looking at me in alarm. He knows me best—he probably can sense the panic on my face. I only pray he doesn’t come after me, though when I peek over my shoulder, he isn’t.

I want to run, but I don’t want to draw attention to myself. The distance to the ladies’ room seems farther than the first time I walked here. I fling open the bathroom door, heart thumping. I’m prepared for anything from an uncomfortable confrontation to a gun being shoved in my face. All I know is that I need to talk to Stella—or whoever she is. I just need to make sure.

When all I see is an elderly woman staggering out of a stall, struggling to pull up her panty hose, I’m struck dumb. “Oh!” the woman says when she looks up. “Goodness, I’m sorry.” She yanks down her skirt so that her underwear isn’t showing. “These damn nylons. They’re all twisted.”

I stare at the corner where Stella had been. Even her toiletries are gone. “Did you see someone here?” I ask breathlessly. “A bathroom attendant?”