And Now She's Gone(56)
“You’re telling me.”
“I’m so sorry, Nat,” he said. “I should’ve done better. Guess I got cocky. Guess—”
“Dom,” she whispered. “Don’t. Evil squeezes into tight spaces. We’ll figure it out.”
“You’re remarkably calm.”
“I’ve been asleep all day.” And drugged. “I have a gun. I have knives. I have a phone and muscle memory. I’ll watch my back. If it starts to get crazy, I will move in again. Promise. I’m not planning to lose my life to this man. I’ll go to jail first.”
“It won’t come to that. I’m still taking an earlier flight home. You have the house key?”
“Yup. I have to do a little work now. Earn my paycheck.” She peered through the window blinds at the dusky sunlight turning the hills of Chavez Ravine creamy blue. “Thank you for calling. I feel a little better, to be honest.”
And she did. Still, she decided not to do too much today, since today was damn near over. She listened to her voice mails—every woman except Toyia wanted something from her.
Call me back.
Let us know you’re okay.
Call me back.
Let me know if you got it.
Toyia’s message was exact: “Omar ain’t married. I don’t know no Elyse Miller.”
Gray said, “Fuck it,” because Omar Neville wasn’t her client. Not my monkeys, not my circus. What grown people did in the privacy of their own homes did not concern her. And with that, she pulled on her favorite pair of relaxed Levi’s and a soft black T-shirt. After makeup, hair, leather jacket, and black leather Cons, she went out the door and down into the twilight.
Located off Venice Boulevard, the Helms Bakery District used to be exactly that—a strip of shops, established in 1931, that delivered baked goods to Angelenos all around the city. Now a landmark, that strip was home to fancy furniture stores and restaurants that charged too much—for a couch and for a sandwich. Shalimar sold Persian-inspired decor, from curly-edged accent tables to fussy chaise longues that cost as much as Gray’s Camry.
Mitch Pravin, the store owner and Isabel Lincoln’s ex-boyfriend, wore a Bluetooth earpiece like the commander of the starship Enterprise and twisted impatiently in his scrolled and ornate, built-for-a-shah office chair. His work space smelled domestic and exotic—French fries and paprika.
Gray asked him about his relationship with Isabel Lincoln.
That’s when he stopped twisting in his chair to sneer at her. “Who?”
She held up the picture of the Mary Ann with the long ponytail and Vogue cheekbones.
He flicked his hand. “We never dated.”
“Slept together, kicked it, booty call, whatever.”
“You don’t get it. I didn’t date her. I didn’t sleep with her. That bitch T-boned my Maserati last year.”
According to Mitch Pravin, the accident had happened four months before Isabel met Ian O’Donnell. “And then she tried to talk me out of suing her. Letting her pay me off the books and shit. And yeah, she offered to blow me, so I took her number. She sent me a promissory note … Where’d I put that?”
Gray waited, nervous and wanting to chew her fingernail or rub her jaw scar or pace, but she willed herself to sit and wait and ignore the pew-pew-pew now going off around her body.
He opened a drawer and halfheartedly pawed through some papers before slamming the drawer shut. “It said she’d pay me six hundred a month. The first money order she gives me goes through, right? But then the next month? She sends me nothing. So I called her, and she called back, but I was with a customer. I called her again and no answer. She stopped returning my calls, but I kept lighting up her phone all times of night. From March to September, every fuckin’ night I’d call, understand? And then I started texting her. Nothing.
“That’s when she finally blocks me. The address she gave me, some dump over on Vermont, near USC? A complete lie. She didn’t live there. I didn’t have any other information cuz how many fuckin’ Lisas or whatever live in L.A.? Hundreds. Anyway. You find her, let me know, cuz so help me, I’m coming after her ass.”
30
The stalking, violent boyfriend? Wasn’t violent. Wasn’t a stalker. Wasn’t even a boyfriend. He was a victim. Isabel’s victim.
And now she was gone.
But Gray would find her. Just like Sean had found her.
And how had he done that?
Had he used someone like Nick to search for her? Had he somehow obtained her medical records? Always sold and shared, those records, and the janky clinic that had performed her appendectomy looked like it needed some cash.
But she hadn’t used her old name at admissions at that janky clinic. Hell, she hadn’t used her married name at admissions even when it had been her name at that moment.
Back then, she’d only visit shady clinics in Las Vegas, or farther south in Henderson. Hours-long waits. Clinics where iodine was the solution to everything. Blood everywhere, since the staff hoarded bandages like dwarves hoarded gold. Drug addicts shot up while waiting to see a doctor. No ventilation. Every floor was sticky with … something.
Back then, she’d used aliases for check-in: Kirby Lewis, Keisha Laramie, Karen Larson. Always Ks and Ls, always those three names, sometimes scrambled—from Kirby Laramie to Keisha Larson. There were no Natalie Dixons with a cracked third rib. No Natalie Dixons with twelve stiches above their jawline or lacerations above the left eye. The beaten Natalie Dixon never existed in patient records, and her regular general practitioner never knew that Natalie Dixon had been cheating on him with Dr. Oxley at Canyon Medical Center, Dr. Mendelbaum at Nevada Health Center, or Nurse Anderson at Rapid-Care.