You Are Not Alone(83)
I know this woman. She held my hand as she helped me down to the subway and made me laugh with her joke about a vibrator.
But she—and the Moore sisters—told me her name was Anne.
She’s still looking in my direction, but I’m hopeful she won’t recognize me with my hoodie up and sunglasses on.
I must have known I’d need to be invisible.
When she heads toward the elevator, I step out from behind the telephone pole and start walking back to Sean and Jody’s.
I home in on the facts I need to add to my Data Book. I thought there were three different people: Anne, who took me on the subway; Deena, the client who hired Jody; and the mysterious woman I house-sat for.
But they all must be the same woman.
I was living in Valerie Ricci’s apartment when she pretended to be someone else and met me to help me through my subway fear. It’s so strange I can barely wrap my head around it. The Moore sisters obviously knew all of this, too; they set up both my house-sitting gig and that meeting.
In that very apartment I first began to think about changing my look. I stared into a big rectangular mirror in the entranceway, pulling up my hair and taking off my glasses.
I made banana smoothies there every morning, too. Were the Moore sisters somehow watching me?
I almost trip over a curb, grabbing the side of a trash can to prevent my fall.
It sounds crazy. But no crazier than anything else that has happened to me recently.
All this time, I’ve been fixated on Cassandra and Jane Moore. I’ve researched their PR company and clients, I’ve tried to be someone they’d want to hang out with, and I’ve even viewed them as my saviors.
But Valerie Ricci must have colluded with them to get me into that apartment. And she was the one who hired Jody and questioned her about me.
Valerie must be more than just a casual friend of Cassandra and Jane’s, like they portrayed her.
She’s not just a part of this. She’s at the epicenter of whatever it is.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
CASSANDRA & JANE
MAYBE IT WAS TOO MUCH to hope that Shay would be arrested on the spot for James’s murder, after Valerie phoned the police with an anonymous tip about the open door and bloody towel in apartment 3D.
But at least it should have taken the police focus off Daphne. That text she’d sent to James: I hope you rot in hell. The letter R carved into his forehead, with the beginning of an A next to it. Had some shrewd investigator guessed at the word and envisioned a link back to Daphne?
Surely the police had already retraced James’s steps on the evening of his death. They would have gotten a description of the woman seen leaving the Twist bar with him: tall, with golden-brown hair, wearing a tan sundress. Maybe a security camera affixed to a bank or nearby building had captured the image of the two of them departing and heading toward Central Park on that breezy August evening.
It could easily have been Shay. Especially once the dress—which the Moore sisters had removed from Amanda’s laundry bin only hours after her death—was discovered on Shay’s floor.
Shay should be holed up in Sean’s apartment right now, still reeling not only from the drugs, but also from her subsequent police questioning, and Cassandra’s searing rejection.
The last thing the sisters expected was for unassuming, gentle Shay to go on the offensive.
Immediately after Cassandra and Jane receive the call from Valerie—“I think Shay was here; she tricked me into coming down into the lobby”—they know they have to increase the pressure on her.
The tracker in Shay’s new purse has remained at Sean’s apartment. But when Jane telephones Jody immediately after Valerie received the flowers with no card, Jody confirms Shay left early that morning.
“Thank God we caught you alone,” Jane says, speaking quickly to circumvent Jody’s questions—such as how the Moore sisters have her cell phone number. “Cassandra and I are in your neighborhood; we can be there in ten minutes. We have to talk to you.”
Jody must have been looking out the window for the sisters because before they can even press her intercom, she buzzes them in.
As soon as Jody closes the door behind them, Cassandra grips Jody’s forearm and speaks in a hushed, urgent tone: “We may not have a lot of time. Listen, there’s no easy way to tell you this. But you may be in danger. We have reason to believe that your boyfriend’s former roommate is seriously unhinged.”
Jody gasps as her hand flutters to her chest. “What? Shay made it sound like she was in danger. She said she had a date Friday night and woke up surrounded by a bloody scalpel and a man’s wallet! Sean thought maybe the guy roofied her.”
Jane slips her hand into her coat pocket. Her fingers close around a four-by-six photograph. The Moore sisters have been in this apartment once before to collect Amanda’s necklace from Shay, but only in the living area. They can see a few doors; they need Jody to lead them into the room that Shay is using.
“I know,” Cassandra continues while Jane nods. “But she’s been doing all this crazy stuff lately, like following us.”
“She’s stalking some of our friends, too,” Jane adds. “Shay followed one to an exercise class and went shopping at this boutique another one owns.”
“Oh my gosh,” Jody whispers. “Does she have one of those split-personality disorders? I saw this movie about it once.… I can’t believe I slept in the room next to her!”