Ashley Bell: A Novel (36 page)

At that moment in Fashion Island, Bibi might have been persuaded that her parents’ surrender to fate was the wisest course in a world that seemed intent on doing to you what it would, violating its own declared rules of cause and effect. Encountering Mrs. Hoffline-Vorshack twice in one day, after not having seen her for almost six years, and just when Bibi had to wend through phalanxes of murderous men without drawing attention to herself…well, it almost made her throw up her hands, walk to the nearest bar, order a beer, and wait to see what happened next, a miraculous reprieve or sudden death.

The second salesclerk strode forward, greeting Mrs. Hoffline-Vorshack without giving the impression of eagerness, and took from her the burden of the two shopping bags, to “keep them safe during your visit with us,” while the first clerk, having been stricken with amnesia as regarded Bibi, wanted to know if Mrs. Hoffline-Vorshack would enjoy coffee or perhaps an aperitif. Being a woman of social grace and propriety, the wife of the real-estate developer wondered if it might be too early to imbibe other than coffee. But when she was assured that it was always cocktail time somewhere in the world, she wondered if they had any of “that delicious champagne,” and of course they did.

Throughout the royal entrance and the ceremonial greeting, Bibi kept her back turned to her former teacher, but she expected to be recognized at any moment. She had no confidence that the ponytail, the cap, and the sunglasses pulled halfway down her nose would shield her from discovery and another upbraiding. Then the only way to stop Mrs. Hoffline-Vorshack from following her outside and loudly accusing her of carrying a concealed weapon without a permit would be to shoot her, which was not a viable solution, though an appealing one.

The promise of good champagne proved to be like a hook in the lip. Following the salesclerks, Mrs. Hoffline-Vorshack was reeled toward the back of the shop, past tantalizing garments and jewelry in which, for the moment, she revealed no interest.

When Bibi realized that she had been spared, the reprieve felt nearly as miraculous as the remission of brain cancer. As she exited the store, the five-note chimes seemed like a supernatural warning that might be saying,
She-will-yet-find-you.
Because Bibi did not believe in coincidences, she didn’t need a translation of the chimes to know that her former teacher was not done with her and that this particular wheel-within-wheels, which had begun turning at the big-box store, had at least one more revolution to go.

Hermione and Hermione were abashed by their failure to warn Bibi that the loud-as-a-Mack-truck woman had been descending on her. She had seemed to be going
past
the shop. She had turned so suddenly for the door. She was a
bitch supreme,
the way she looked at them with contempt. Those knockers coming at you were terrifying, like a couple of
torpedoes.
And those
mean-little-piggy
eyes.

Bibi assured them that they had done all they could, and the three of them set out again for the end of the main promenade and the parking lot beyond Neiman Marcus, talking about whether tattoos were cool or creepy and whether it was better to be cool and stupid or uncool and smart.

Pogo’s Honda still stood between the Ferrari and the Maserati. As far as Bibi could tell, no one was watching it. Evidently, Terezin’s thugs didn’t yet know what she was driving.

Nonetheless, she worried that it was reckless to have the girls accompany her all the way to the car, and possibly walk them into a violent confrontation. On the other hand, if the Wrong People were watching
them,
their sister act would be at once suspect if they parted at the car and the Hermiones returned to the mall.

She didn’t much like herself when she asked them to ride with her out of the parking lot, as far as Newport Center Drive, which encircled the mall. But the threat to the girls, in this most public of places, seemed less real than Terezin’s promise that Ashley Bell would die on his birthday, the day after tomorrow. Having passed the bag of books to the blonde, having fished the car key from her purse, Bibi slipped her right hand under her jacket, letting it rest upon the holstered pistol, as they approached the car.

No one rushed them as she keyed open the doors. People were walking to and from their vehicles or cruising in search of parking spaces, and everyone appeared to be without sinister intentions.

Hermione and Hermione were more taken with the ancient primer-gray Honda than they were with either the Ferrari or the Maserati, perhaps because it was an exotic vehicle in this province of luxury. Blond Hermione settled into the backseat. Brunette Hermione wanted to ride shotgun, still gripped by a spirit of adventure and hoping to milk another small thrill or two from the experience before it ended.

As Bibi backed out of the parking space, the blonde spoke from the backseat. “Instead of letting us out on Newport Center, can you take us down to Coast Highway, drop us off there?”

“Sure. Which side of the highway?”

“West. If you’re going south, that is.”

“I’m going wherever you need me to go.”

When she had reversed fully into the aisle, no vehicle rammed them, no bullets shattered the windows.

“If you drop us off at the corner of PCH and Poppy,” the blonde said, “we can walk from there to my house.”

“Done deal.”

They came to the end of the aisle, and no immense black SUV swerved in front of them to block their way.

They drove past a restaurant where one of the bulls with a shaved head and one of the silent-movie-gigolo types were standing together, talking. As the smooth lean one took the hands-free phone from his ear, the bull looked at the Honda but showed no alarm.

In the passenger seat, the brunette said, “What will they do if they catch you?”

“Kill me.”

Only a few minutes earlier, the girls would have been excited by the revelation of such high stakes, but not now.

“What did you do?” the brunette asked.

“Nothing.”

“Can that be true?”

“So far, yes. Listen, it’s better you don’t know anything more. I’m grateful for your help. I won’t ever forget you.”

The blonde had one more question. “Is there a way out for you?”

“There’s always a way out,” Bibi said. “Don’t worry about me.”

Having retreated earlier, fog was on the march again in this last hour of daylight, and no doubt it would surge a couple of miles inland, there to establish its tents for the night. Just before they reached Coast Highway, which at that point was a quarter to a half mile from the sea, a white wall rose before them, a towering slow-moving tsunami of mist through which headlights swam like golden koi.

Bibi turned south, and they rode in silence the rest of the way, until she parked on the right, just short of Poppy Avenue. The brunette opened her door and scrambled out. Then she turned, leaned back in, said, “Good luck, Jo,” and dropped the five hundred dollars on the passenger seat.

“Hey, no, honey, you earned that,” Bibi protested.

“You need it more,” the girl said. “I’m not on the run.”

The blonde took her friend’s place and said, “Hang tough, Jo. Don’t let the freakin’ butthole spiders win.” She tossed the other five hundred onto the money that the brunette had given back, and she closed the door.

Awkward in a coltish way, not yet having grown into their grace, the girls walked south, leaning into each other, sharing thoughts. The color of their clothes and the details of their forms faded as they proceeded toward the source of the fog. Even after they turned onto Poppy Avenue, Bibi could see them, because the corner property was a parking lot that served the Five Crowns restaurant, with no structures intervening. Hermione and Hermione looked back and waved. They probably couldn’t see her clearly, but Bibi returned their wave.

Considering how short a time she had known the Hermiones, she had developed a remarkable affection for them that now became even more poignant as they dwindled and eroded into the mist. Perhaps what so appealed to her was their combination of gameness and vulnerability, knowingness and innocence.

As the friends paled out of sight, Bibi thought,
There go two dead girls.

That grim sentiment so surprised her that she sat up straighter behind the wheel, disquieted by the possibility that those five words were prophetic, that the girls weren’t walking home, but instead were headed toward their imminent deaths. She started to open the driver’s door into traffic, and a horn blared. The sound startled her out of superstition’s grip, and she sat for a moment, letting her nerves unwind a little. She was no prophesier, no crystal-gazing Gypsy. She had no power to see with certainty five minutes into her own future, let alone into that of others.

She realized that the disturbing thought—
There go two dead girls
—was an expression of her sense of isolation, for now they were dead to
her,
never to be seen again, and once more she was alone in her flight and quest. In fact, an awful loneliness overcame her, more intense than any she had known before, an almost disabling
weight
of loneliness, pinning her, paralyzing her. In spite of being illegally parked, she thought that she might sit there until night fell, until dawn followed. She could not turn to anyone she loved, for fear they would become Terezin’s targets. Paxton was different. Pax could deal with threats.
Pax, please come home, please.
To the authorities, her story would sound like the fevered rambling of a deranged mind, and she would be suspect number one in the murders of Solange St. Croix and Calida Butterfly. As the fog thickened around the Honda and the headlights of passing cars repeatedly washed over her, she was swamped by confusion, seeking solace in something perilously like self-pity.

Until she couldn’t stand herself anymore. Which was after about ten minutes. Damn it, there were things she could do, answers she could seek. Many of them were locked inside herself. She knew their basic shape and, like a blind woman in a house half known, should be able to feel her way to a fuller understanding.

She waited for a break in traffic, pulled onto Coast Highway, and drove south as if her life depended on it.

In Laguna Beach, the atmosphere was apocalyptic, fog seething like the smoke from a world afire. The unseen sun was so exhausted that the last light of the day had neither force nor color, a bleak and eerie radiance that might have been intended not to illuminate but to penetrate the bones and print X-ray images of her skeleton on the sidewalk, fossil proof that humanity had once existed.

Every third store seemed to be a gallery. Fortunately, there were as many clothing stores as art merchants, and Bibi was able to buy a change of clothes. She purchased a soft-sided suitcase with wheels, and in a market she bought a junk-food dinner, among other items.

On her way back to the car, she passed the Bark Boutique, which sold toys and other gear for dogs. One of the items in the window was a leather collar that arrested her attention because it reminded her of Olaf’s collar before he was Olaf, when he had come to her out of the rain, though his had been worn and cracked and caked with mud.

The memory that troubled her now, however, was not of the day the dog arrived, but of an incident that occurred three years after his death, when she was nineteen and moving out of her parents’ bungalow into an apartment. By then, instead of a single carton of books stored in the back of her closet, there were four filled with overflow volumes from her shelves. She sat on the floor, sorting the contents, putting aside titles that had lost meaning for her. In the last box, she discovered that she’d packed the books so as to create, at the center, a hollow in which were several objects, including a chamois cloth wrapped around Olaf’s old collar. She had forgotten that she’d kept it. If she once had a sentimental attachment to it, she felt none now. The loop of leather was cracked, filthy, mottled with long-dormant mold, the buckle bent and rusted. There was no reason to keep it. But again she did not throw it away. In fact…What had she done? Hadn’t she gone to a business-supply store and bought a fire-resistant metal document box? Yes. Twenty inches square and ten inches deep, with a piano-hinge lid and a simple lock and a brass key, for the storage of grant deeds, wills, insurance polices, and the like. Hadn’t she put the chamois-wrapped neckband in that box, as well as the other items she had found with it? Yes, but…

Now, at the display window in downtown Laguna, staring at a similar leather collar, Bibi could not recall what other items she had found in the secret hollow within the carton of books. And what had she done with the metal document box? Where was it now?

As the tires of passing vehicles swished and fizzled on the wet pavement, as fog laid a shine of dew on her face, as trees dripped, as great moths of vapor throbbed wings against the panes of the streetlamps, Bibi felt like a stranger to herself.

With her latest round of purchases, she returned to the Honda, which was parked near the east end of Forest Avenue. Minutes later, on Coast Highway, she began looking for a motel on the north side of town, someplace where no one would find her but where she might begin to find herself.