It was definitely Leslie’s phone, not the old man’s. The last text message had been sent in late February, after he’d died. Leslie had said:
We met earlier this afternoon. Please use this number to contact me from now on.
The reply came several hours later:
OK to come by Sunday with the cash. If Ed is at front desk ask for me.
After that, the other person never responded again. Leslie had texted over the next several weeks:
Please confirm one more time so I can be sure.
Please confirm.
I need to hear back from you.
No one answering door. Please reply.
I need an answer.
Reply.
The store has been closed all week. What’s going on?
I want my money back.
I want my money back.
Give me my fcking money back.
I clicked slowly through the rest of the phone. No email. Nothing in the trash. When I clicked on the navigator, the navigation history loaded below the search bar. Just one address: 31 Piedra Roja Rd, Corrales, NM, 87048.
I copied the address and went back to the phone’s main screen to paste it into the Google search bar.
Google said it was a Curves—one of a chain of gyms that only allowed women and were decorated like the set of an infomercial.
But Leslie didn’t go to Curves. She went to Planet Fitness—I’d seen the messages on Facebook only this morning reminding her to re-up her membership. I thumbed through the reviews, of which there were three. One of them began, I’ve been going to this gym since it opened in April, and I’ve lost twelve pounds with the help of their lovely trainers!
Thank you, Carol Fernandez. I gave her review an anonymous thumbs-up.
So Leslie had gone to the Curves before it was a Curves. I scrolled through all the Google results for the address, but I couldn’t find the name of the business it had been before it went up for sale.
how to find out what building used to be, I searched.
The National Archives, Find a Historic Building, Cyndi’s List, How to Find Out If a Building Is Being Demolished Near You! Zoopla, Zillow, Reddit threads, Google Maps. I tried Zillow and a couple of records-of-sale sites. None of them listed the sale to Curves—maybe it was too recent to have been entered into the archives online. I clicked on a Quora question that more or less matched mine. The respondent listed several of the links I’d already seen on Google and finished up with, But if you’re looking for a privately owned residence that’s not a historic building, and there are no records of sale available online, there’s not much you can do unless you’re buddies with a P.I.!
I blinked. I wasn’t buddies with a P.I., but I did know a police officer.
33
Mary
The phone rang six times before Nancy picked up. “Hello?” I tried. “Nancy? It’s me.”
A long few seconds of silence. Then Nancy said, “Okay, hang on,” far away, as if to somebody else. The line went dead.
I blinked and jabbed at the phone to redial. It went straight to voicemail this time.
I paced out of the study and into the living room, opening my texts app. For some reason I had expected her to pick up right away. I could’ve sworn that was exactly what she would do. The way we had tilted toward each other—how easily it had happened, as if the muscle memory was still there.
As I was staring at the texts app, my phone buzzed in my palm. I swiped to answer.
“Hi, sorry,” Nancy said. “I was inside, I don’t have good reception in the building.”
My mouth hung open for a moment. “It’s Robin,” I said experimentally.
“I know.” I heard her make a little glottal noise; she’d almost said something else.
“I wanted to talk to you again,” I said, hoping to draw it out of her.
She cleared her throat. “I was thinking about calling you,” she said quietly. “But then I thought…I didn’t know when you were leaving again.”
A funny feeling stole through me. Nancy is in love with me, I thought. That’s what this is about. I pictured her wrapped around her wife, staring at the phone on the bedside table. My face in her mind now. For ten years, she’d wanted to see Robin one last time.
And then I’d arrived.
It was sort of beautiful. Romantic, almost. And if Nancy could help me with Leslie, that was a win-win, wasn’t it?
I let the silence spool out before I said, “I was supposed to leave today. But I didn’t.”
Nancy exhaled, sounding like she was trying not to let me hear her relief. “Okay,” she said.
“I’m scared.” My throat felt tight. “I’ve never…You’re just…I don’t know.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t want to get in the way of you and—I don’t want to get in the way of anything,” I said. “I don’t even know what I want.”
“I don’t know what I want either.” She sounded like she was echoing me just to soothe me.
“Things are so crazy right now,” I said. “With my family. I found out—I mean, I can’t tell it to a cop. But I wasn’t even thinking about it with you. It felt like ten years hadn’t even passed.” I put the phone close to my mouth and drew in a quick breath so she could hear it. “Did it feel like that to you?”
“Maybe,” she said. “Are you in trouble? What’s going on?”
“It’s nothing. I just—This is crazy, but I canceled my flight home.”
“You canceled?”
“I want to see you again,” I said, letting the words spill out like I couldn’t help myself.
“I don’t know.”
She was so ready to give in. I could hear it in her voice. “Please, Nancy,” I said.
“I’m on a shift.”
I squeezed the phone. “I could meet you somewhere?”
She didn’t reply for a minute. Then she said, “Do you remember where we used to meet at the lookout off La Cueva?”
“Yeah, of course,” I said quickly.
“We could talk there. I have to go,” she said. “Wait there for me.”
“I will,” I breathed into the phone. “I’ll wait for you.” I picked my words carefully. Nancy had waited for a decade. She’d like it, me waiting for her this time. I envisioned myself leaning against Nancy’s cop car with the hazy, dusty city spread out below me. Where was my lipstick? I rummaged in my purse.