I hadn’t been the only girl in that interview waiting room whose body and soul had been torn apart by Pierce Martin. The police knew. I’d lay my life down on that.
I’d buried everything as deep as I could thirteen years ago. I’d vanished for a year, cutting ties to everyone except my parents, who agreed to support a year abroad at a small university in Rome. They hoped the experience would help heal me. I never even registered at the university. My parents wired a monthly check to a Rome bank. An anonymous person forwarded each one to me after the first month without a single bit of hassle, even though I asked them to address the envelope to another girl’s name, two hundred miles away. The Italians understand that questions don’t always need to be asked.
I wrote my parents pure fantasy about my life: how I painted and studied during the week and backpacked to European landmarks on the weekends with a sisterly roommate who didn’t exist. I sent them little pencil sketches, all drawn from postcards I bought in a secondhand bookstore.
I returned home to my parents as myself, with my old name and my real hair color, hoping to leave my guilt and bewilderment behind. Instead, it chased me across the ocean, receding, crashing, teasing, always threatening to drag me under for the last time.
I glanced at my watch, a cheap piece with a flat yellow smiley face and a fake white leather band that I bought in Times Square for $7. It always ran about five minutes slow, which I figured was more than fair for the price.
Eleven minutes plus five had passed since Maria left me alone in the closet. I’d thumbed through the rest of the folders on the desk but didn’t recognize any names. I stuck my own file in my purse without any hesitation.
I walked over to the row of file cabinets and tugged on the first one. It opened an inch. Unlocked. A more aggressive pull and the drawer revealed a row of orderly files, each with a name printed on a color-coded tab-red, green, or blue. Some files appeared yellowed and aged, others brand-new. All were neatly stored like the diaries in the pink room. Alphabetical. Organized by the same compulsive fingers.
Last names. I needed to remember last names. Beswetherick. Nope, there was no Beswetherick. I thumbed through the first row of files and found Cartwright, Jennifer. Jenny, one of the blond Southern stereotypes who cavorted with me in Caroline’s plush Garden of Evil? Beach House or Red Mercedes, I couldn’t remember which. I pulled her file and set it on top of the cabinet.
Dunn, Harold and Dunn, Leticia. I yanked them out. This was almost too easy.
I thumbed my way along the D’s and E’s. There had to be hundreds of files here. Caroline’s voracious information-gathering apparently extended far beyond the club. I glanced at the door. How much time did I have? Camel. I remembered that Mary Ann’s last name was “Camel,” something she mentioned during that drunken Bunko game. The other woman in the Garden of Evil, she of the Mephisto habit. I went back to the C’s. No Mary Anns. I tried the K’s. Kimmel. Bingo. I hadn’t factored in the Texas accent.
Five files away was Gretchen Liesel’s. Thick. My stack was getting tall.
I opened another cabinet. Rich, Misty. Thin. Maybe empty. Onto the pile anyway.
I racked my mind but couldn’t think of the last names of either Tiffany the Puppy Killer or Holly Who Had to Carve a Potato. Twenty-three minutes now without Maria. I yanked open another file cabinet and my fingers searched for Valdez, Maria. Nothing at all in the V’s. Had Maria taken it?
My brain was shrilling, Light a match and get out. What I was doing was illegal, not to mention immoral, and the two weren’t always the same thing and one was bad enough.
But I had to get some idea of what I was dealing with, of what Mike was dealing with, right? And this seemed as good a place as any to start. I tucked the stack of files I’d pilfered into my bag, alongside mine. Thank God Lucy had talked me into this monster of a fake-patent-leather purse.
When Maria showed up with a tray, the shelf was clicked in place and I was pretending to finish up a row of walking shoes. Everything felt unreal, including the beautiful plate of food she set on the dressing table where Caroline probably sat to fiddle with her earrings. An egg salad sandwich on black rye bread cut into perfect, crustless triangles, a pile of plump, chilled purple grapes, a homemade oatmeal cookie with chocolate chunks, and a glass of what appeared to be fresh-squeezed orange juice. Impossible to resist.
I stood up and stuffed a triangle of sandwich into my mouth.
“You find the room, right? I give you enough time?”
I stared at Maria blankly, still chewing, thinking I’d misheard her. She shrugged. “I left the catch loose. I don’t want to get in trouble for showing you. I put your file on top.” She hesitated. “I don’t read it.”
Right. A rush of heat flooded into my face. Is Maria with me or against me? I purposely kept my eyes off my purse, lying at my feet. Should I scream at her? Or say thank you?
I slipped my purse casually over my arm. I decided to play nice.
“Maria, you don’t have to stay here. To work for her. Whatever is going on… you don’t need to be part of it.”
“I have to find my file. She showed it to me once when she was angry. I know it is somewhere.” Her face wore a mask of tight desperation.
“How much time did she spend doing this? Snooping on everyone?”
“Every afternoon. Two to four. I brought her peach tea and dry wheatberry toast every day at four exactly.” She snatched my plate. “I will wrap this up for you. You need to go. You should never be here. It was a mistake.”
Her eyes were glued to my purse. She seemed to be considering whether to rip it off my shoulder.
“I read your file,” she said calmly. “Whatever you have put in your bag, you will need to bring it back. Talk to your husband about Rojo.”
It was no longer a request.
14
After pulling in to my driveway, I rolled down the windows, opened the sunroof, adjusted my seat into a more comfortable position, and picked out Harry Dunn’s file.
The top sheet detailed an efficient list of Harry’s trysts for the last year, courtesy of the Diskreet Agency, for whom my respect was growing. Fourteen different lovers, times and dates, most of them anonymous women met in roadside motels, only one person I knew.
Mary Ann had dallied with Harry for three weeks last October, once in the back of his Escalade. A telephoto lens had been able to showcase the crack of his ass. I wondered if Caroline had shared the details with Letty. Maybe she had blackmailed him into behaving and Letty was none the wiser. Caroline, the diabolical Dear Abby.
I glanced into Mary Ann’s and Jenny’s files. The first women, other than Letty, whom I met at the Bunko party that night. Official members of Caroline’s toxic little club. And right in my lap, their private applications for membership.
Caroline required that hopefuls answer invasive, truth-or-dare questions. They ranged from the softball, When did you tell your first lie? to What’s the biggest mistake you’ve ever made? to Who is the person you like least in Clairmont? A little beyond your average college sorority crap. These were very, very bored women.
The undertones rang clear to me. Hold back and you won’t get in. A bold line at the bottom promised that all applications were “strictly confidential.”
As for Jenny and Mary Ann, they wrote the answers to Caroline’s questions as if they’d sucked down a couple of pitchers of margaritas together and let their baggage and poor spelling fly.