He hadn’t given them to her. Probably she’d stolen them the night she left. She’d taken forty dollars out of my purse that night too.
I rubbed my thumb along the surface of the pearls, feeling several faint scratches on the curvature of one of the seeds, invisible to the eye but evident to the touch. Pearls were easily scratched. My grandmother had taught us to polish her pearl jewelry with olive oil and a chamois cloth, pushing our cloth-covered fingernails into the crevices where each pearl was secured. But Robin was careless.
I closed my fingers around the earrings. The backings dug into my palm like children’s teeth. If I didn’t call the police, Robin Voigt could stay Rachel Vreeland. Rachel Vreeland could have a crappy City of Las Vegas burial, a heroin addict with no family, the person she had chosen to be when she was sixteen. It gave me a thick, sick pleasure to think about. I wanted her to be alone in the ground.
But it wouldn’t matter. Either way, I couldn’t get what I needed from her.
She would have loved that.
I had been in the room with her body for almost five minutes now. The pacing on the porch had stopped; Iker was considering whether to come back upstairs for me.
There was a series of faint rusty creaks as someone else came up the second set of stairs, which clung to the siding on the rear of the house, allowing access to the upper floor from the backyard. Whoever had come in went into the second bedroom and slammed the door.
Her roommate. Yes. Iker had said there was another tenant.
I heard the muffled noises of quick movement from the second bedroom. The roommate could come into the hall at any moment and see me—see Robin’s body—wonder where the police were, who I was, why Iker hadn’t called—
The front door opened into the house, and Iker’s voice came floating up the inner stairs. “Miss, um…Leslie? Did you…Leslie…?”
I didn’t reach for my phone. I slipped the earrings into my purse and walked quickly toward the back door. I was out before anyone saw me, making as little sound as I could manage on the metal stairs.
At the noise of the ignition, Iker ran back out onto the front porch, waving his arm at me to stop. He shouted something after me, something I couldn’t hear as I drove away.
2
Leslie
I glanced in the rearview mirror again. The same blue sedan kept pace with me until I got on the freeway, then disappeared into the crush of cars heading into the city for Saturday night. That wasn’t Iker, I told myself. He drove a different car. A black one.
Gradually my ears picked up a dull buzzing noise. Coins rattling in the cup holder. No—my phone ringing. I fished it out of my purse. Two missed calls. Iker was trying again. The screen lit up as he left a message.
Why had I left? I’d run out of there as if I’d killed her myself. Stupid—stupid—
It was the earrings. I drew in a breath and felt blindly around the car for them, trying to keep my eyes on the road. They weren’t in my purse. Had I dropped them? At last I thought to pat myself down and found that I was wearing them. I didn’t remember putting them in my ears.
She’d just stuffed them in her shoe. I couldn’t understand why it upset me so much. I hadn’t even thought about these earrings in at least fifteen years. But the idea that Robin had helped herself to my mother’s jewelry box on her way out—and hadn’t even taken care of them—
I touched the scratch again, compulsively, like an itch. How could she have let it happen?
I was forced to stop at a light. The image of my sister’s body floated up before me, more bone than flesh.
How could she have let it happen?
The exultation of my escape began to leach out of me. All the way into the city that morning I’d felt myself pushed forward as if on a wave. I’d never driven so far alone before. The highways between New Mexico and Nevada were dwarfed periodically by mesas, and the traffic was so infrequent that the cars resembled a thin rushing stream between the lowering rocks. The whole way here I’d been thinking to myself: I’ll talk to her—I’ll explain—and then everything will be all right—
I pulled off the freeway at the next exit and turned in to the first open parking lot I saw. Three cars took up the only spots shaded by the single tree. The sun hung just past the visor, turning the dust on the windshield opaque, so that I could barely see beyond the confines of the car. The illusion of privacy gave me a little comfort, and I picked up the phone to call Iker back.
My hands shook. I tried to press the home button, but my fingers were stiff from gripping the steering wheel so tightly. I fumbled and dropped the phone into my lap.
I clenched my teeth and let the air escape in a hiss. Maybe it was hunger. The last time I’d eaten was breakfast. It was just past five now.
I had to strain to make out the sign on the building I’d parked in front of. GEORGE’S. Some kind of steakhouse. The building wore a badly constructed stone façade, like a Macaroni Grill, and all the blinds were drawn, but the outer doors stood open.
The bottoms of my shoes warmed as I crossed the parking lot into the stuffy little vestibule and pushed through the inner set of doors. It was cooler inside, with a large exposed air vent near the ceiling whuffing away; despite that industrial fixture, the rest of the restaurant was outfitted like a midcentury men’s club, with dark wood paneling and heavy curtains flanking each window. At the edges of the room were large plush booths with gold hooks for coats and hats; the rest of the dining room was taken up by freestanding tables set with white tablecloths and upended water glasses. No one was in the restaurant, not even any workers; except for the air vent, I was the only thing breathing.
I went up to the host stand, feeling underdressed in my slacks and blouse. “Hello?” I said. “Are you open?”
There was a clanking noise from the kitchen, and a rat-mustached teenager leaned out from between the swinging doors, his head suspended briefly midair. “One second.”
I edged behind the host stand and took a menu. It was expensive to eat here. Vegas prices. Ordinarily I wouldn’t. The red meat. But my hands wouldn’t stop shaking; the menu fluttered as I held it. Didn’t they say you should eat protein if you felt faint?
The teenager returned and crept around me to reach the wrapped silverware. “Just one?”
“Yes,” I said, trying to fit the menu back into its stack and knocking several others to the floor. The kid scrambled to pick them up for me. “A steak. A porterhouse. And a glass of wine. No—I have to drive. Water.”
“Do you want it to go?” His forehead wrinkled.
“No.” I gripped the edge of the host stand. “I want to sit down.”