Sunset City (11 page)

I thought about what Sally had said. It was true Danielle went out of her way to piss off her mom. The drugs, the stripping, the temper tantrums. She knew exactly what would embarrass Sally, what would upset her, make her feel powerless, and that's what she did. I understood why, but even so, I felt sorry for Sally. She tried to believe she did the best she could, automatically justifying each of her mistakes. She knew how to spend money on a problem, and if that didn't work, she was lost.

And Danielle did not forgive. She was not someone you could fuck with. But that wasn't right, though, not exactly—people
did fuck with Danielle, people hurt her all her life. Her uncle. Sally. Even her dad just left and never stayed in touch, never supported her. And then she got killed. How could someone do that to Danielle, when she was so tough and smart?

While I waited for Ash I called Sally back. She answered right away.

“Charlotte, honey,” she said. “I'm so sorry—”

“I have a question,” I said, cutting her off. “Where is your brother now?”

“I'm not sure. He's still in Denver, as far as I know. I haven't spoken to him since that Thanksgiving.”

“Thanks,” I said, and hung up.

I sat on the stoop, thinking and chain-smoking. If Danielle's two-point share of the development was three hundred thousand dollars, that meant the whole project was worth fifty times that amount. I did the calculation: fifteen million. It was crazy to think Danielle stood at the hinge of a deal that huge.

Finally Ash showed up.

“Hi,” I said.

He sat down on the step beside me. “Charlotte, what's going on?”

“I saw Sally,” I said.

“Sally Reeves?”

“She did something. Maybe something bad.”

“Why do you think that?” Ash said.

“The land, because of the land.”

“In Tomball? The inheritance?”

“Danielle wouldn't sell it, so now that she's dead Sally gets the land and she'll make a ton of money. She always hated Danielle. She pretended not to but she always did. Do you know how much money it is? Fifteen million dollars, and it all depended on her doing what Sally wanted. And Danielle wouldn't.”

“Sally wasn't there,” Ash said gently. “She was at home. We have phone records, alarm records, a browser history. She took calls, she couldn't have left without resetting the alarm.”

“Maybe she got someone else to do it,” I said. “Paid someone.”

“We know about the land, about the development. We know all about it.”

“Then do something.”

“We're checking it out. Her financial records, her recent contacts. We are investigating it very carefully.”

“Good,” I said. “There's something else. Sally has a brother.”

I told Ash about the abuse, the Thanksgiving dinner, and the rift between Sally and Danielle. “Maybe he came back,” I said. “Maybe he hurt her. That's a motive, right? If she threatened to go to the police or something.”

“Yeah,” Ash said. “What's his name?”

“I don't know. Neither one of them ever said it.”

“What else do you know about him?”

“He used to send Danielle birthday cards every year, in high school. That's it.”

“Why didn't you tell me this before?”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I never told anyone. It was her secret.”

“You have to be up front with me,” he said. “If you're not honest, I won't be able to find out who killed her. You have to tell me everything.”

I nodded, and without warning I began to sob. He sat next to me, his arm around my shoulders, waiting until I got my breath.

“What do you say we go inside?”

I stood and opened the door. My legs felt wobbly. Ash led me to the couch and brought me a glass of water.

“I need to ask you some more questions,” he said. “You okay with that?”

I nodded.

“You ever hear about a guy named Eddie?” he said.

“No, who's that?” I said.

“Danielle didn't talk about him?”

I shook my head.

Ash frowned. “The clerk at the motel knew her. She worked out of there as an escort.”

“She'd been to that place before?”

“A few times. She met at least one guy there. We have a description.” Ash flipped a few pages of his notepad. “Medium height, five foot ten, white guy, late forties, dark hair, athletic.”

“He was there that night?”

“No one saw him. He was there with Danielle two months ago. The guy who works there remembered them.”

“Everybody remembers Danielle,” I said.

“We have another statement that Danielle occasionally saw a john named Eddie. Might be this guy, might not.”

“Who told you that?”

“Friend of Danielle's. Audrey Wright.”

Why hadn't Audrey told me about that, I wondered. No one told me shit. Whatever happened, I was on the outside of it.

“Seems weird, though,” I said. “That she would go there.”

“Why?”

“That motel looked so crappy. I guess I thought she'd be more . . . expensive.”

“You never know what people are into,” he said. “Or where they go to hide.”

“I guess,” I said.

“So you didn't know about Eddie. What about Brandon Young, Danielle's boyfriend?”

“He wasn't really her boyfriend,” I said.

“Okay, what was he?”

“A friend, you know, a good friend.”

“They were sleeping together.”

“Yeah. But it wasn't serious. He was trying to look out for her.”

“Oh? How?”

“He gave her advice, but she didn't listen to him. He said it was the only time they ever got in a fight.”

“When was this?”

Fuck, I thought. Ash didn't know. Brandon hadn't told him.

“Nothing, I mean, Danielle was really stubborn, it wasn't—”

“Where are you getting this information?”

“Brandon told me,” I said. “Look, he's a good guy—”

“Charlotte. Tell me about the fight.”

I started to cry again. This time Ash was impatient. He didn't try to comfort me.

“He's got a history of aggression,” Ash said. “He was sleeping with the victim. And he has no alibi. If you have information I need to know it.”

“It's not him,” I said. “No way.”

“Why no way? Because you like him? How well do you know him?”

“I just met him, at the memorial service.”

“Charlotte, you need to be careful around these people. What if he did it? You want to protect a murderer?”

I thought about last night, the connection I'd felt with Brandon. Not the sex, but the way he talked to me . . . there was no way it could be him. I couldn't believe it.

“He wouldn't have hurt her,” I said.

“Charlotte, what if you're wrong? Look, you don't have a choice. Tell me about the fight.”

“This is not why I called you.”

“You called because you want to help. Right?”

“Yeah.”

“All right, tell me what he told you. It's not your job to protect him. All you have to do is tell me the truth. Tell me what you know. It's simple.”

I was too confused and exhausted to resist anymore. I relayed the gist of my conversation with Brandon. I had to admit it looked bad for him. But I couldn't believe Sally wasn't involved in some way. If Danielle was that mad at Brandon for suggesting she sell the land, there was no way she would simply change her mind with Sally. I pointed this out and Ash nodded, taking notes.

“Please don't tell Brandon I told you all this,” I said.

“Don't worry about that,” he said. “I won't. You're doing the right thing.”

“Whatever,” I muttered, feeling utterly miserable. I lit another cigarette and watched him drive away. My throat was sore from smoking.

I went inside and poured a glass of whiskey, angry at myself for calling Ash, for betraying Brandon. And Sally, too, for that matter. I was crying again. I poured more whiskey. I thought of what Brandon had said: “Since Danielle died, I can't be sober.”

On the wall hung a paint-by-number of egrets on a lake. My mom had bought it at a thrift store when I was a kid. The boundary of each shape had the same wildly trembling line. I drank and stared at it until the wobbly edges took over. I was retreating to the place where everything gets quiet and still, and I didn't have to think about Ash or Danielle or Sally or Brandon or my own fucking feelings. I practiced not breathing until I felt like nobody, like open space. I kept drinking, kept looking out the window. The sunset began in ugly pink streaks.

T
he sunset faded and I turned on a lamp. I sat on the floor, flipping through an old
Southern Living
I'd brought home from the café. I studied a recipe for pressed herb pasta, thin sheets of dough encasing the tiniest leaves of basil and thyme, like flowers flattened in a book. I didn't have a pasta machine or know where to buy those baby herbs. Maybe you had to grow them? And if I made the recipe, what would I do, eat it? Have a dinner party? I marveled that such a thing existed in the world. It was so pretty and foreign and ridiculous I almost laughed.

My phone rang. It was Audrey.

“Hey,” she said. “Are you busy tonight?”

“No.”

“Can I come over?” she said. “I have weed.”

“Sure,” I said. “That sounds good.”

A half hour later she sat in the chair by the window and pulled a one-hitter from her bag. It was painted to look like a cigarette, white with a brown filter. I poured her a drink and we smoked the weed.

“I can't stop thinking about Danielle,” Audrey said.

“Me either.”

Audrey passed the fake cigarette to me.

She said, “When we first met I knew she would be my best friend. I knew immediately.”

“How?”

“We connected. It was like we already knew each other. I can't explain it.”

“We became friends right away, too,” I said. “I thought she was cool. I couldn't believe she liked me.”

“How could she not?”

I shrugged. “She was rich, popular. I wasn't.”

“Well, you're really easy to talk to. That matters more than money, you know?”

“I guess,” I said. “She did need somebody to talk to. With all the shit that happened to her.”

“What do you mean?”

“You knew, right?” I said. “That she was abused.”

Audrey shrugged. “Yeah, that. Well, who wasn't?”

“Me,” I said.

“I bet you were and you don't remember. People block it out. You have to get hypnotized and stuff.”

“I don't think so,” I said.

“Well, if you don't remember, that's what you would say.”

“You're nuts.”

“Whatever, I'm not the one with repressed memories.”

“How do you know?” I said.

She giggled, and I did, too. I was glad to be high, to laugh and not be alone.

Audrey said, “I keep thinking about before she died. I stopped by Brandon's to borrow this top from Dani, this little blue silk halter with cutouts along the bottom, super cute, and we smoked weed and watched some reality show on TV, I can't
even remember what show it was. And I left. With the fucking top. I should've stayed.”

“Audrey, you were friends. You cared about her. Think about that part.”

“I'm sick of being sad,” she said. “I'm fucking tired from it.”

“Me, too,” I said.

She breathed out, as though to expel the sorrow. “Let's go out,” she said. “It's a nice night.”

“Sure.”

I sat on my bed and watched Audrey hunt in my closet. She held a pink sequined party dress from the sixties I'd bought thrift shopping and never worn.

“Here we go. This is perfect,” she said.

“You're wearing that?” I said.

“What size shoes are these?” She held a pair of sandals with rhinestone buckles.

“Eight,” I said.

“They're a little big,” she said. “But it'll do.”

The sequins on the dress tossed light around the room as Audrey pulled it over her head. The pot made me slow, distracted by sensation. I sipped from my glass and had to close my eyes at the taste of the bourbon and the way it burned my throat.

“Hurry up, get ready,” Audrey said.

She was talking from the bathroom, applying her makeup, and her tone altered as she stretched her face this way and that. I changed into a skirt and top and some pink wedges. I sat on the rim of the tub while she did my face. It tickled. I liked the sensation of her hands on my skin, her scrutiny and care. I smiled.

“Hold still,” Audrey said, concerned with my eyeliner. She finished and I studied my face in the mirror. I looked like someone else. The makeup made my eyes smoky, glamorous.

I pocketed my keys and we went down the steps together. On my block there were no curbs, and trash accumulated in the muddy ditch. I kicked a lone brown shoe out of the way. Wrappers and bones from the chicken place were piled here and there. A scruffy dog lay in the shade across the street, gnawing on something.

“Chicken bones are bad for dogs,” Audrey said. “They splinter.”

“He does all right,” I said. “His name is Tupac.”

“That's awesome,” she said. “Hop in.”

We took 288 to 45 and got stuck in construction traffic for nearly an hour. Workers operated their machines under floodlights, and the jackhammer got into my head like grit. Her AC didn't work when the car was stopped, and we had to have the windows up to keep out the dust and noise. My clothes wrinkled and my enthusiasm flagged.

“Typical Houston,” she said. “Sitting in traffic forever on our way to find drugs.”

“It is emblematic,” I said.

We got to a shithole bar on the north side. It smelled of stale cigarettes and cleaning products. Behind the bar were bottles of flavored vodkas, cheap gin, Southern Comfort.

“Don't worry,” Audrey said. “This'll only take a second.”

She went in a back room. I ordered a drink from a pale man with dyed black hair and inscrutable tattoos covering his skinny arms. He poured the drink in a plastic cup. Rust stains marked the sink behind him. After a minute he went to a shelf at the end of the bar and fiddled with an iPod until a ska song from the nineties blossomed from the speakers. He raised the volume and the bass rattled the bottles. Audrey came out, sniffing and shaking her head like a frightened horse.

“Let's get the fuck out of here,” she said.

She had to yell over the music. I swallowed the drink. I was down from the pot by now, hungry, my brain swaddled in cold leather.

In the car, I said, “How about some food. Aren't we near those dim sum places?”

“Have a bump,” Audrey said. “It'll clear your head.”

I pinched some of the powder and breathed it off my palm. Immediately I felt focused, alert,
ready
. My throat tasted like detergent.

“Give me some,” Audrey said. She snorted the coke and put the car in gear.

“Still hungry?” she asked.

“No.”

“Good.”

We drove to a bar called Slush and took over a picnic table. I ordered a martini with cucumber in it and Audrey got this slushy drink with rum, pink and fruity and cold. She slurped it through a straw. We sat under an umbrella adorned with logos of Mexican beer and a network of Christmas lights.

“This is what's so great about this town,” she said.

“What?” I said.

“Well, you drive around all night, sweating in traffic.”

“Yep,” I said. “That's awesome.”

“No, by the time you finally sit down with a drink, it's like you appreciate it more, because you earned it.”

“Wow,” I said, smiling. “Where does this optimism come from?”

“Necessity,” she said gravely. She held her daiquiri aloft. “To Houston.”

“To Houston,” I agreed.

“You always lived here?” she said.

“My whole life.”

“Your family, too?”

“It was just me and my mom,” I said. “She died.”

“I don't have family either,” she said. “Sometimes I wonder what it would be like.”

“I bet it's not always that great,” I said. “Look at Danielle and Sally.”

“Good point.”

“I've been wondering if Sally had something to do with it. The timing of it. The money involved.”

“They always say that in TV shows, the family members are the most likely suspects,” Audrey said.

“It kind of freaks me out. I mean, I know Sally. I practically lived at her house.”

“After your mom died?”

“No. Before.”

The waitress came by and we ordered more drinks. We took long sips.

Audrey said, “I have a dead mom, too.”

The way she said it, so casually, struck me as funny and I laughed without meaning to.

“What?” she said.

“I'm sorry. You make it seem like such a normal thing to have, when you put it that way: I have an apartment, I have a cheese sandwich. I have a dead mom.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I have a pair of scissors, an accordion, a Dolce handbag.”

“Why do you have an accordion?”

“I found it in my place when I moved in,” she said. “What, you don't?”

“No,” I said, “but I have a CIA coffee mug that I found in my apartment.”

“Close enough.”

“It was weird. It was on the floor of the bedroom closet.”

“That's where spies always keep their dishes.”

“What happened, with your mom?” I said.

“It was years ago. She had cancer. How did yours die?”

“OD'd,” I said. “Prescriptions.”

“That sucks.”

“It's weird,” I said. “It's not like she took care of me. And it's not because I miss her. I mean, I miss her, sure. But that's not what bothers me. It's like now there's no buffer between me and . . . I guess everything.”

Audrey nodded. “Exactly,” she said. “You're alone.”

“You're alone,” I said. “And you're going to die.”

Our little encampment under the umbrella seemed haunted. Danielle huddled in on one side, my mom on the other.

“It's like you're next,” Audrey said.

“Yeah, as if it goes in order. Stupid to think that way.”

“It's not stupid. I mean it feels true, right? But you don't have to be scared of it. It can make you free.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“If you're going to die no matter what, you can do whatever you want. Nothing matters.”

I wished I could believe that; it would make things easier.

“Nothing matters? Do you really think that?” I said. “There's nothing you care about?”

“That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying you can do anything you want.”

“So what do you want to do?”

“I don't know. More blow.”

She took my arm and we walked through the bar into the alcove of restrooms. Audrey pulled me into a stall and brought
out the coke. With one more bump the world drifted from the stream of regular existence. I loved the separateness of it. I opened the stall door. Black granite covered the floor, the walls, the counter of sinks. The polished surface reflected light but the darkness underneath sucked it in. I watched the struggle between the stone and its sheen, like a tug-of-war, pulsating. I smelled the cocaine in my nostrils, a plastic bitterness that repulsed me if I gave it any thought. Back at the picnic table I was jittery, excited. The music played louder. We had to be close in order to hear.

“I saw one of your movies,” I said. I heard my voice shaking.

“You did? Which one?”

Haltingly, I described the video of Danielle and Audrey together.

“Well?” she said. “What'd you think?”

Her words brushed against my face. They smelled like rum and mangoes. I hesitated. I didn't know how to talk about it, what I was supposed to say. A thread from my skirt was coming loose. I pulled at it.

“Quit,” she said, her hand on mine. “You'll tear out the hem. We can cut it later.”

She smoothed the skirt over my knee and squeezed my thigh.

“I loved that dress you wore,” I said.

“Oh, I loved that dress, too,” she said. “Fucking George ripped it during the shoot.”

“I liked the beginning,” I said. “The part where you're on that couch.”

“Do you like girls?” she said.

“Um,” I said.

My face flushed. I fished out the cucumber in my drink and nibbled it.

“People think I'm a dyke,” she said.

“Are you?”

She made some gesture I couldn't decipher, perhaps a simple nerve response to the coke.

“I thought you were sexy,” I said. “You looked—real.”

“Thank you.”

“But I'm not,” I said.

“Not real?”

“I'm not gay,” I said.

“Duh, Charlotte. Obviously. No one would ever, ever, ever mistake you for a lesbo.”

Absurdly, I felt hurt. “Why not?” I said.

“Because, come on!”

“What?”

“You're such a fucking girl,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, like, here's how you stand, here's how you move your hands, you wear this frilly dress.” She touched her pink party dress.

“Audrey, technically you are wearing that dress.”

“So? It's your dress!”

“Still,” I said, giggling.

“We're alike, us two,” she said. “We have a lot in common.”

I didn't see it, but I wished I could be more like Audrey, with her allure and easy laugh. She adjusted my skirt on my knee again, and kept her hand there.

“I was in love with her,” she said.

“Who?”

“Danielle. Weren't you?”

“We were best friends,” I said. “It was more like I wanted to
be
her.”

“Do you think she loved me?” Audrey said. “She told me she did. But did she, really?”

“If she said she did, she probably did,” I said.

“We never messed around except on camera. I don't know what it meant to her. I won't ever know.”

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“Ugh, anyway,” she said. “We're not being sad tonight. Let's get another round.”

We signaled the waitress. We drank. We snorted more coke. It helped.

“So you liked it,” she said.

“What?”

“The video. You liked watching me?”