Into the Dark (20 page)

“
What?
”

“He died last night. Probable heart attack.”

“He . . . he wasn’t even that old.”

“I know,” Brenna said. “If it’s any consolation, it
apparently happened during sex.”

“How did you find out?”

“The police,” she said. “And also, the motel desk
clerk.” She swallowed hard.
Keep it together. She’s not the
only one in the world with that name . . .

“You okay?”

“Yeah . . . just . . . The
clerk told me that . . . uh . . . He said that Errol’s
date’s name was Clea.”

Trent shook his head. “Asshole.”

“Huh?”

“Obviously he recognized you from TV. He was
messing with your head.”

Brenna exhaled. “I didn’t even think of that.” She
thought back to the clerk’s face. The way he’d looked at her when she’d turned
to him.
Kevin Wiggins. Desk Clerk to the Stars.
Not
a hint of recognition in that smile, and he’d stared so closely at her face.
Anybody ever tell you, you look a little like Barbara
Stanwyck?
“He didn’t seem like he was lying,” Brenna said.

But then again, there was the way he’d grinned at
her when he’d told Tim Waxman,
The lady’s name was
Clea.
Was it the grin of a lonely man, trying a little too hard to
flirt with a stranger—or had he been watching for Brenna’s response to the
name?

“Listen, Brenna. I screen your work e-mail, right?”
Trent said. “You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff I never show you.”

“Such as . . .”

“Clea sightings.”

“Really?”

He nodded “Each one more full of crap than the
next. Just last week, some dipshit claimed he knows for a fact that Clea’s a
one-eyed Wal-Mart greeter in Erie, Pennsylvania. Another freak swore up and down
that Clea is his wife’s divorce lawyer—and oh, by the way, her name is Alfred
now. She’s a
dude
.”

She shook her head, Kevin Wiggins’s grin still in
her mind. “I never should have let Faith talk about Lieberman’s book.”

His bathroom door opened. A very curvy blonde
slipped out.

Brenna looked at Trent.

“Uh . . . That’s . . . um
. . .”

“Your friend. Who was visiting.”

“Yeah, she’s . . .”

“I’m Jenny,” the girl called out. She wore a pink
angora sweater and jeans, both of which she was poured into to the point of
overflow, sky-high spike-heeled pumps—your basic Trent LaSalle wet dream. Though
there was something a little off about the look, Brenna thought. She couldn’t
quite put her finger on it, but it had to do with the way her stilettos so
perfectly matched the sweater, the deliberate way she tossed her hair and rolled
her hips as she moved toward the door. It was almost as if she were in costume,
playing a role.

“Sorry to interrupt you guys,” Brenna said.

“It’s okay,” said Jenny. “I was just leaving.” She
had a high, velvety voice.

“Are you sure?” Brenna asked.

Jenny turned to her, for just a few seconds. “I
have something I need to be at,” she said. And for the first time, Brenna got
a
good look at her face . . .

Jenny was saying something to Trent—some hasty,
polite, nice-talking-to-you type of comment, her hair flipping into her eyes
as
she spun back around, heading for the door, shouting good-bye to Trent, Trent
making that tired “call me” gesture with his thumb and pinkie, mouthing the
words “call me,” at the back of her blonde head, just in case she found that
gesture too cryptic.

But Brenna wasn’t paying attention to any of it. In
her mind, she was on the
Maid of the Mist
on October
30, Maya sitting next to her . . .
She feels the
chill wind at her back, wet hail hitting her face, so cold it burns
.
The boat is docking now, everyone stumbling to get off.
Brenna watches the others as they pass—the elderly women, the little boy
crying against his mother’s side
,
the
shell-shocked young girl, her mascara dripping . . . Brenna stares
at this poor, pretty mess of a girl, then at her boyfriend standing behind
her, his hand on her shoulder, the fingertips white from the tightness of
the clutch. She looks at the girl’s face, at the mascara streaks on her
cheeks, so awful for the wear—
worse than Maya and me put
together—
and then, into the eyes . . . such
fathomless sadness as she meets Brenna’s gaze, her boyfriend oblivious,
smiling a little.
She doesn’t want to be here. None of us do,
but . . .

The girl taps her lip three
times like a Morse signal.

Brenna heard Trent’s door close and she came back,
that thought scrolling through her mind again . . .

She wants to
die . . .

Trent was staring at the closed door as if he was
about to propose to it. “I like her,” he said.

“Your friend. Jenny.”

“Yeah.”

“You might be a rebound, you know.”

“Huh?”

“She had a boyfriend on October 30.”

“Cut it out.”

“I’m serious.”

“You saw her?”

“She was on the
Maid of the
Mist
with Maya and me. Some guy had his arm around her. Maybe it was
just a date.”

“Wait. Are we talking the same boat ride where you
saw the lip tapper?”

Brenna looked at him. “She
was
the lip tapper.”

Trent’s eyes went huge.

“Small world, I guess. Huh?”

“You’re telling me that the same girl you saw on
that boat—the one who made the exact same gesture as Lula Belle does on the
download . . . That was
her
?”

“Yeah, what’s the big deal?”

“You’re definitely sure? What am I talking about?
You’re
always
sure. Oh my God.”

“Trent, you’re overreacting. You don’t know because
you don’t remember faces the way I do, but coincidences like this happen all
the
time. The world’s a lot smaller than you think it is. You’d be surprised at how
often I see the same people in different places. Sometimes it’s years
apart.”

“You don’t understand.” Trent said.

“I do,” she said. “Jenny had the same dumb idea I
did to go on the
Maid of the Mist
in sub-zero
weather. It’s not that big a deal.”

“I’m serious. You don’t understand. Her name’s not
Jenny.”

“Huh?”

“It’s Diandra.”

“
What?
”

“That was Diandra. I told her to lie about her name
because I knew you’d be pissed.”

“The Errol’s Angel? What the hell was she doing
here?”

“I sent her a text today, Brenna, I swear. I told
her we were through. Well, what I said was, ‘later,’ which means the same
thing.”

Brenna looked at him. “Wow. You broke up with her
by text.”

“I’m crappy at dumping girls. You’re probably going
to find this surprising, but I don’t have a lot of practice.”

“Uh-huh . . .”

“But see, after I sent the text, she wouldn’t take
no for an answer. I was all ready to take a nap. But then she shows up at my
door with those . . . with that sweater.” He cleared his throat. “So I
un-dumped her.”

Brenna stared at him.

“Come on, Brenna. I’m a
guy
,” he said.

“Whatever.”

“Anyway, I figured I could still hang with her, as
long as I didn’t mention any cases . . . Hell, she’s out of work now
anyway, right? Ludlow . . .”

Brenna shrugged. “I’m surprised he hired her.”

“Why?”

“She’s so eye-catching. Errol’s Angels tend to be a
little subtler—hard to fade into the background and spy on a guy when you look
like that.”

Trent swallowed hard. “This is weird, Brenna.”

“Well I’m sure she doesn’t wear that sweater to
stake-outs.”

“Not that,” he said. “I’m talking about Diandra in
general. She’d just started working for Errol when I went to see him for that
pitch meeting. Before that, she was on the
Maid of the
Mist
with you.”

“The
Maid of the Mist
couldn’t have been planned, Trent. How would she have even known I was in
Niagara Falls?”

Trent picked at a nail. “I’m . . . uh
. . . I’m pretty sure I told somebody you were going up there.”

“You did? Who?”

“Page Six.”

“Oh for God’s sake.”

“Plus, I mean . . . I know I’m
irresistible and all, but she has been on me like you wouldn’t believe. I mean,
come on. A girl like that?”

“Good point,” Brenna said. “You think she’s
following us?”

“I think she’s following the Lula Belle case.”

Brenna nodded, very slowly.

“And she taps her lip in the same way Lula Belle
does in a lot of those videos.”

“Eighteen,” Brenna said quietly.

“Huh?”

“She taps her lip in eighteen of the videos.”

“Brenna?”

“Yeah?”

What if Diandra is
her
?”

“Her?”

“Lula Belle,” Trent said. “What if she knows we’re
trying to find her and wants to make sure that we don’t and so she’s trying to
distract me . . .”

“So she’s sticking around and getting close to all
the people looking for her, when she could far more easily leave town?”

“Hiding in plain sight,” Trent said. “Oldest trick
in the book.”

“No it isn’t.”

“Looks-wise, she could be Lula Belle.”

“Lula Belle is a silhouette.”

“Yeah, but she’s got the body. She’s got the
flexibility, too, trust me on that.”

“It doesn’t make sense.”

“Why not?”

“Because.”

“Because why?”

Brenna was breathing hard, now. Her jaw was tight.
“Because she’s
just a kid
.”

Trent opened his mouth to say something, then
closed it.

“How would she know all that stuff about my
family?” Brenna said. “How would a twenty-year-old girl like that
. . . How would she . . .”

“You don’t think Diandra is Lula Belle,” Trent
said, “because Diandra can’t be Clea.”

Brenna didn’t say anything.

“Listen, whether or not she’s Lula Belle,” he said,
“she’s got a sick interest in this case.”

Brenna stared at her hands.

“Brenna?”

She couldn’t answer. It was the way Trent had said
her sister’s name—the same way Maya had said it this morning, the same shiver
in
the tone . . .
What if Grandma is right about
Clea, though? What if she’s crazy and destructive and stuff?
She
thought of Kevin the desk clerk again. The way he’d said the name of the woman
who saw Errol, just before he died.
The lady’s name was
Clea.
Said, not to Brenna, but to Officer Tim Waxman. Would a meek
old guy like that really lie to a police officer, just to mess with Brenna’s
head? Maybe.

But maybe not. Maybe Diandra wasn’t the only person
with a sick interest in the Lula Belle case. Maybe the real Lula Belle really
was
hiding in plain sight. And maybe, when he’d
asked, she’d decided to give Kevin the desk clerk her real
name . . .

“Bren, are you okay?” Trent said.

“I’m not sure.”

Brenna’s phone tapped Morse code. She glanced at
the screen, and saw a text from Maya.
Chanukah
tonight
, it read.
You coming home
soon?

Clea, were you at the MoonGlow
last night?

Brenna looked at Trent. “I need to see her.”

“Who?”

“The woman who was with Errol.”

He frowned. “How the hell are you gonna manage
that?”

“I’ve got an idea,” she said. “It’s a weird one
. . .”

He waited.

“I’ll tell you later,” Brenna said as she texted
Maya back and hurried out the door. “In the meantime, keep looking for
Shane.”

Chapter 16

“Y
ou so owe me,” said Maya—a surprisingly deadpan reaction, seeing as five minutes ago,
a drunken woman had thrown up on her shoes.

When it happened, Brenna and Maya had just gotten out of the cab on 108th and Second,
Maya clutching her giant sketch pad in a way that made Brenna remember her at five
years old—March 23, 2002, walking through the living room of Brenna’s then-just-moved-into
apartment at 7
A.M.
holding her Bob the Builder doll to her chest.
Prince Harry and I want breakfast, Mommy.

Coming out of the memory, Brenna had thought,
God I’m a terrible mother to take her here
. And then a sinewy bald woman in a strapless red minidress had stumbled up and puked
on Maya’s high-tops, putting exclamation points on Brenna’s thought process.

Worst! Mother! Ever!

“I hate to see what this area is like after 5
P.M.
” Brenna was trying to sound cheerful as she went at Maya’s shoes with seltzer water
and a wad of paper towels, both of which she’d bought at the bodega next to the hotel.
They were in the lobby of the MoonGlow—Errol’s body long gone, and the police presence
along with it.

It was 3
P.M.
now, a bright, crisp winter day on this dismal block, Christmas decorations wilting
on the streetlights outside lobby windows so grimy, it looked as though they were
under water.

Brenna hadn’t paid much attention to the decor in here earlier, but if she were to
classify it, it would be mid-twentieth-century-what-the-hell-were-they-thinking. Mauve
and tan floor tiles, mirrored walls, a chandelier that looked as though it were made
of melted plastic. A big faux Ming vase next to the front desk, filled with the dirtiest
fake flowers Brenna had ever seen, and an odor pervaded the space—cheap pine air freshener,
tinged with sulfur and cheese. “You’re right,” she said to Maya. “I do owe you. Big
time.”

“Mom, I can clean my own shoes. This is embarrassing.”

“I don’t want you touching them,” Brenna said. “And who are you embarrassed in front
of? I guarantee you, you’re not going to run into any of your friends here.”

“Oh my God! There’s my history teacher coming out of the elevator. Hi Mr. Stewart!
Is that your wife?”

Brenna’s head shot up.

“Kidding,” Maya said, but when Brenna looked at her daughter, she could see the fear
flickering in her eyes
. God, she’s still a child. What am I thinking?

Brenna said, “Do you want to leave, Maya?”

“Mom, stop. I’m
fine
.”

“Something I can help you with?” said a voice behind them, which Brenna immediately
recognized. “Kevin Wiggins.” She sprang to her feet and turned around, stuck out her
hand. “Do you remember me, from earlier today?”

He smiled. “Barbara Stanwyck.”

Maya said, “Who?”

“This is my daughter, Maya.”

Kevin squinted at her. “Uh . . . we aren’t really what you’d call a family hotel.”

“No, no,” Brenna said. “Maya is just helping me out.”

Maya, who clammed up with most strangers—let alone an old, greasy-haired desk clerk
with enormous pores and hairs poking out of every visible orifice—said absolutely
nothing. But to Brenna, there was something comforting in his presence—the reminder
of why she was here, what was at stake . . .

“Before we start,” Brenna said, “I just want to make sure of something.”

“Yes?”

“When you told me about the woman with Mr. Ludlow . . . you weren’t pulling my leg,
were you?”

He screwed up his face to such a degree, Brenna was worried he might get a cramp.
“Of course not,” he said.

Brenna was glad she asked—she was ninety-five percent sure he was telling the truth.
She looked at Maya. “You okay with this?”

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, Mother. I’m okay.”

Brenna sighed. “Maya here is a composite artist.”

“She looks awfully young to have a job like that.”

“No, no. What I mean is, she’s going to be acting as one now. For me—that is, if you
don’t mind describing the woman you saw.”

His eyebrows lifted. “Seriously?”

“I know it sounds strange,” Brenna said. “But Mr. Ludlow was a private investigator,
and I was working on a case with him, and I’m thinking that this woman you saw may
have had something to do with it.”

“With what? The case?”

“Yes.”

He let out a guffaw.

“I’m serious.”

Kevin stepped closer. He smelled of ointment. “Okay, listen,” he said. “I don’t want
to talk about this in front of your daughter, but I’m sure those two didn’t even know
each other. I mean, outside of in the biblical sense. Wink, wink.”

Maya grimaced.

Brenna put an arm around her. “Why do you say that?”

“She was here for one hour. I’m talking to the minute,” he said. “Personal friends
don’t punch clocks.”

“Even so. I’d love to know what she looked like.”

He frowned at her. “What’s your name again?” he said. “And what is this case that
you’re working on?”

Brenna started to try and explain, but then her gaze drifted over his shoulder, to
the open door of the office behind the front desk. An old movie poster on the wall.
Something starring Jimmy Cagney . . .

Brenna closed her mouth, leveled her eyes at him, gave him her best Barbara Stanwyck
half smile. “ ‘What do you want, Joe, my life history? Here it is in four words: big
ideas, small results.’ ”

Maya stared at her as if she’d just gone insane.

Kevin broke into a huge grin. “
Clash by Night
,” he said.

“Yep,” Brenna said. “I’ve probably seen it twenty times. I’m a big fan.” It was half
true . . . Okay, maybe a quarter true. She did like Barbara Stanwyck. But Brenna had
seen
Clash by Night
only once—on March 30, 2000, when she was laid up with the flu and they played it
on Turner Classic Movies. She’d sneezed and shivered throughout most of it and fell
asleep three quarters of the way through. But she had liked that line.

Kevin was beaming at her. “You’ve got good taste in movies.”

“They really don’t make ’em like that anymore.” Brenna sighed, the fever from nine
years ago still rippling in her cheeks. “You know what I miss? Those big, gorgeous
movie palaces. The revival houses, where you could see a classic noir, or maybe a
fifties Technicolor movie on a big screen . . .”

“I love early Technicolor.”

“Yep,” she said. “Now it’s all this CGI crap. Movies don’t have heart anymore.”

His eyes widened. “Yes, exactly,” he said. “Say, do you like classic TV?”

“Well yeah, of course,” Brenna said. “But I can’t stand it when people talk about
classic TV as coming from the seventies or eighties. Sid Caesar. Now
that
was classic TV.”

“I own the
Your Show of Shows
box set!”

“Oh my God. Me too!”

She could feel Maya gaping at her, no doubt this close to mentioning that the only
DVD sets Brenna owned were the first eight seasons of
90210
and
A History of Glitter Rock
. Brenna gave her a quick, sharp look. “Something wrong, honey?” She locked eyes with
Maya, then cast a deliberate glance at the movie poster in the office.

Maya’s gaze followed hers. “Uh . . .”

“It’s nice to meet a young person with such great taste in entertainment,” Kevin said,
Maya gaping even wider at the description of her mother as young.

Brenna said, “That’s funny. I was about to say the same thing about you.”

“Unbelievable,” Maya whispered.

Kevin grinned—a wide, giddy grin that split his face in two. “I’ll describe the young
woman for you,” he said. Just like that. He didn’t even mention the fact that, even
though he’d asked her for it, Brenna had never given him her name.
A kindred spirit
. If you were lonely enough, there wasn’t anything you wouldn’t do for just a few
minutes with one. Brenna knew this, because she so often felt lonely.

“Oh thank you so much!”

“We can talk in the office,” he said. “Let me just straighten it up a little.”

He headed back behind the desk, and Brenna and Maya followed.

As they walked, Brenna turned to her daughter, now looking at her with something that
seemed close to admiration.

God, Brenna needed to work on her parenting skills.

T
wenty minutes later, Kevin was directing Maya as she busily sketched. “Make the lips
a little fuller. Great . . . Okay, and the neck is longer than that. Maybe you could
add a shadow, under the chin?”

Brenna couldn’t look. She could barely listen. It struck her that Clea, her Clea,
would be forty-five years old now. Not a smiling teenager in a class picture or a
coltish ten-year-old, clutching the handlebars of a bike. A forty-five-year-old woman
with a
gift for destruction.
What did that look like? Brenna’s sister. Brenna’s living, aging sister . . .

Maya’s pencil flitted across the pad, and for several moments, there was nothing in
the room but the sound of her daughter, drawing . . .
Clea at forty-five . . .

“How’s this?” Maya said, tilting the sketch pad so Kevin could see.

Kevin said, “A . . . very impressive likeness.”

Brenna held her breath. Maya held up the pad.

Brenna’s eyes went big. It wasn’t Clea on the sketch pad. It wasn’t a forty-five-year-old.
“Diandra.”

Kevin said, “Huh?”

Brenna rubbed her eyes. “Sorry. It’s been a long day.”

“You’re an incredible artist, young lady,” Kevin was saying to Maya. “Do you mind
if I make a copy of this? The Xerox is right over there.”

“Uh . . . Sure.” Maya actually looked pleased with herself.

Brenna smiled, a vague dread creeping through her. She tried swatting it away.
So Diandra slept with Errol. That isn’t a crime. He could have died hours later.
“I have to make a quick call,” Brenna said.

Maya gave her a puzzled look. “Okay . . .”

Kevin said, “Maya. That’s your name, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“All right, well, listen. I’ve got these charcoal sketches of Joan Crawford I did
for this extension course. I’m wondering if you could give them a quick look and tell
me if they’re any good.”

“Sure, I guess.”

Brenna stepped into the doorjamb as Kevin removed a sheath of sketches from his desk.
“Now what do you think of this one?” he was saying. “Did I get the eyebrows right?”

Brenna put her back to Maya and Kevin and closed her eyes, hoping she could do what
she needed to do, even with distractions.

W
hat Brenna had said to Trent back at his apartment hadn’t just been lip service. It
was true. It was amazing what a small world it was, but you could only really see
it—and use it—if you had a perfect memory.

Kevin was telling Maya how he tried to capture Joan’s quiet strength in
Johnny Guitar.
Brenna took a deep breath and pushed the colliding thoughts out of her head—thoughts
of Diandra and Trent and Errol. And Clea.
Why had she told Kevin that her name was Clea?
Brenna pushed away the phone call she’d received last night from Errol, his last
phone call in life. She pushed away his cheery voice (
Ta-ta!
) asking her if she’d heard from Gary Freeman’s wife.
Why would I have heard from Gary’s wife?
She pushed away panicky Diandra, stumbling out of Trent’s apartment on her pink high
heels, tossing her hair into her eyes when she caught sight of Brenna.
Hiding her face from me. Why?

She pushed all that into the back of her mind along with Kevin’s droning voice and
threw her focus onto June 10, 2006, the day she’d been lurking around the edges of
a crime scene—a murdered co-ed turned prostitute who called herself Marjorie Morningstar,
but whose real name had been Kara Wheeler. Hired by Kara’s parents, Brenna was unwanted
at the crime scene and didn’t stay long. But of course she remembered everything about
it. The heat in the Lower East Side walk-up where Kara’s strangled body had been found,
the walloping death smell as she entered the tiny studio apartment, the lumpy crime
scene tech, pushing her out of the way,
his phone dropping to the hallway floor and clattering down the stairs as he hurries
in, Brenna thinking,
Would it kill you to watch where you’re going?

Brenna picks up the phone
. I shouldn’t even give this back to him
,
s
he thinks, the smell choking her, making her eyes water . . . She starts to head back
in and the phone vibrates in her hand. The theme from
Weird Science
explodes out of it. Brenna rolls her eyes.
Cheesiest lab tech ringtone ever.

She opens the phone, hits send. “Uh, hello?”

A woman’s voice, “Hello. Who is this?”

“I just picked up this phone, I . . .”

“I need to talk to Mark.”

“We’re at a crime scene, ma’am.”

“Listen. I need you to tell Mark that Nora called. You got that? Please tell him I
can’t pick Gracie up at school today. Mark Jr.’s soccer practice was canceled, and
I have to get him, So he’s gotta get Gracie. Do you understand me? You’re breaking
up. Service sucks around here  . . .” And she’s gone.

Brenna closes the phone. She starts to call out Mark’s name, but stops herself. First,
she hits the button next to the screen, and the phone’s number appears on it. She
stares at the number for several seconds, taking it in.
You never know when you might need these things . . .

“Four score and seven years ago,” Brenna whispered. The crime scene smell dissipated,
replaced by the slightly (but only slightly) subtler pine-and-sulfur odor of the MoonGlow’s
lobby.

“I don’t know,” Maya was saying. “It seems like you could . . . like . . . soften
these angles a little bit, so she doesn’t look so two-dimensional?”