The Lady Upstairs

by Halley Sutton

  The drop from the side of the road wouldn’t be enough to kill someone if this were really an accident. But if you weren’t paying attention. If you had the police in your pocket—or thought you did. I lifted shaking fingers to my brow. I tried to block out Ellen’s face as it had been the day I first met her, that hopeful grin and large dark eyes, so unusual with her coloring.

  When I opened my eyes, there was a very real Lou right in front of me, her face so pale I could map each freckle on her face in one glance. Expecting an answer from me.

  “You don’t have a gun, do you? No. That’s too obvious. It has to be a plausible accident.”

  Lou stood there, watching me, smoking still.

  “Put that out,” I said quietly. “We’re already going to have to pick up enough evidence as it is.”

  Silently, she reached into her purse and shook a plastic bag at me. She bent over and started collecting the spent butts. Then she went to Ellen’s side of the car and tapped on the window with two fingers, as politely as she’d done once to me. That same friendly smile. Ellen opened the door, pushing her legs out, sitting sideways. I could see her hands shaking in her lap in the moonlight.

  Ellen, who had already threatened our livelihood once. Who I still owed money to. Who had taken slaps from the dead thing in the trunk because of me. She’d irritated me, and she’d fucked up, she’d killed a man, but wasn’t there some line I wouldn’t cross?

  Lou’s hand was on her shoulder now, touching her hair, cupping her face. So kind. My Lou. So loving. Ellen’s trembling was starting to ease under her gentle fingertips.

  Lou straightened and motioned me over, and Ellen turned to look at me. Her eyes were red, so swollen I wondered if she could see me, and Lou’s magic wore off—it wasn’t only her hands shaking; it was her whole body now. Like she was scared of me. How could she be scared of me? I would never actually hurt anyone.

  Lou’s hands all over her, still.

  And then I could hear the click of my own heels on the pavement, walking toward Lou with my arms outstretched, reaching for them both.

  Chapter 16

  I’m not normally this stupid, but I wanted to watch the sun come up over the ocean, because I was alive and I could. I could remember each toss and roll on the mattress, the buzz of the refrigerator like a live wire threading my veins, keeping me company. Even the hushed murmurs of the TV I switched on in the early hours couldn’t soothe me back to sleep. When you remember it, that’s not sleep. And I remembered every sleepless moment of that night.

  It was a long enough walk from my apartment to the water that it made me feel warm and awake by the time I got there. I took my shoes off and trekked into the sand, the crystals smooth and sparkling as white sugar. A navy sky flickered with the jets taking off, and I sat there and looked at the gray-blue gush of the water for a long time. The curls of white spray like smoke over the waves. I’d gotten there early enough that dawn was still pinkening, rosy like the color of blood vessels popping in eyeballs.

  No.

  Rosy like the color of nipples or bubble gum or eyeballs or a sunrise, goddammit, that was all it looked like. Pink dawn, that was all I meant.

  “Don’t worry,” Lou had said the night before, washing her hands in my bathroom sink. She worked up a lather with pale green soap, eucalyptus wafting from her wrists, then flicked the drops off and made handprints on her black silk dress to dry them. Lou stared at herself in the mirror for one long moment before she caught my eye and said, “None of this happened, not at all.”

  So it hadn’t happened. Not the events of the canyon, or the return to Ellen’s apartment, after, where we’d finished cleaning anything that might have had my prints on it and picked up my car. If none of that had happened, that meant there was nothing to worry about. And if it hadn’t happened, then I was still me this morning. Still human.

  I sat and stared at the ocean until I couldn’t bear thinking my own thoughts any longer, and then I got up and walked along the beach until I found a 24/7 convenience store near the water. I told myself: no drinks or maybe just the one.

  I grabbed some rotgut gin and a glass bottle of apple juice, wanting something punishing, and slapped down a twenty-dollar bill in front of the bored and sleepy cashier, who barely even twitched her ponytail in response. I left before she could give me my change. I didn’t want to stare at her face, wondering what it would look like after six long minutes noosed by a seat belt. Her eyes popping out, her tongue lolling.

  Be human, Jo.

  I parked it on the beach, dropping down on the slightly damp sand and kicking back a swish of gin topped with a mouthful of apple juice. I made myself do it three times in a row, the sugary juice hurting my teeth while the gin fogged my brain. In the distance, I watched a woman march back and forth on the bike path, her arms behind her, touching an ankle to a wrist with each step. She moved slowly but with purpose, concentrating hard. Like, if she could get each step right, nothing else mattered.

  I’d asked Lou to stay the night but she’d said no and I couldn’t help myself, I’d said: “I didn’t mean like that.”

  Lou sighed—in my kitchen by then, my fingers already opening a bottle of something clear and not very cold—and then she shook her head and said, “Oh, Jo.”

  “But if someone comes asking us about . . . about Ellen. Maybe someone saw something at her apartment. It was stupid of me to move the body.” My fingers scrabbled against the plastic protector on the vodka and I gave up, put it to my mouth and tugged with my teeth.

  Lou ran her fingers through her hair, snagging. She winced. “She killed him. She wouldn’t have waited there with him for the police to show up. She’d have tried to get away.”

  “So was it vigilante justice for our mark? What happened tonight?”

  “No,” she said patiently, like speaking to a slow child. “Nothing happened tonight. Nothing we know about. If we knew Ellen, it was only in passing, some girl we—you—grabbed drinks with once or twice. The only thing that happened tonight was a very young, very stupid girl killed her lover somewhere, in her apartment, on a dirt road, wherever. It doesn’t matter. She was tired of—well, whatever. There will be reasons, but that’s not our job. She killed him, and she put him in the trunk of her car. And then she lost control of the car. A fluke accident.”

  An accident, being strangled by your own seat belt. I wasn’t sure anyone would buy that. But there wasn’t anything we could do about it now. “I don’t think anyone saw me,” I said, but I couldn’t be sure. I couldn’t tell if it was only wishful thinking. Those bright lights flicking in my rearview.

  Lou stood perfectly still, watching me. No one could stand as still as Lou, even sweating through a silk dress. Looking to see if I was cracking up. If I was a liability. I knew that look, but I’d never been on this end of it before. I pulled the feeling down into my spine, tucked it away in case I needed more nerve in the future.

  “No one saw me. I’m sure of it.”

  “Good girl,” she said with a brief, tight smile. “The police will have no reason to link the two of you. They won’t be trying very hard, either.”

  “I’ve never heard of anyone strangled by their seat belt,” I said, closing my eyes against what I saw as I said it.

  “A midmonth bonus should make it more plausible,” Lou said, grabbing her keys and her purse.

  I should’ve told her then, that thing I knew and she didn’t. A thing that might make all the difference in the world. But all I could think of was Ellen next to me in the car, teeth chattering, wailing and wild and alive.

  “I don’t think either one of us should be alone tonight. I don’t want to be alone tonight.”

  “The oldest line in the book,” Lou said, smiling and moving to the door. “It’ll be all right, you’ll see.”

  Because I hadn’t been careful, a small line of sand had gathered around the mouth of the ju
ice bottle. I didn’t bother to wipe it clean as I chased more of the gin down my throat.

  In front of me, the ocean was sluggish. Ghostly palm trees, fronds sharp as scissors, cracked apart the asphalt of the empty parking lot. In a few hours, a gaggle of sticky little waders circled by inflatable red tubes making a toilet of the ocean would descend upon the beach, and then you’d never find the space in your own head to not think about things. Far in front of me, the waves blued the air with salty reaching fingers.

  Somewhere else, perhaps not very far away, Lou waited for the sun to rise, the black silk dress tossed over the chair next to her bed. Or maybe she was asleep still, nestled in someone’s arms. From the beach to the hills to that canyon in no time at all—some spandexed do-gooder chasing a bichon frise would find her way to Ellen and the car soon. If they hadn’t already. I could almost picture the scene—the puffball of a dog yapping at the edge of the canyon, pissing as it ran. It would know before anyone else did; it would know what a body looked like after six hours cooking in the new-morning sun.

  For God’s sake, be human, Jo.

  At some point, I’d started crying and I hadn’t even realized it. One of the signs of cracking up. I was going to go crazy, sitting there with nothing but my thoughts.

  Lou picked up my call on the third ring.

  “I can’t stand this. Why didn’t you stay last night?”

  A pause. “Jo, where are you?”

  “I mean, what’s my alibi? We should’ve watched movies all night or something. Made a prank call to Jackal. Something with a time stamp.”

  A longer pause. Mentally, I put together my to-do list: 1. Alibi. 2. Make nineteen grand in a day. 3. Laundry. I choked back a giggle. There was always the possibility I’d lose my mind before I found money for the bribe, and then I wouldn’t have to worry about anything at all.

  Lou’s voice was soft, a little tired. “I was with someone else last night. As far as he knows, it was the whole night.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’ll raise more questions if I have to tell him something else later.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Where are you? Let me come get you and we can discuss it,” Lou said.

  “I’m sure you already have plans with Mr. Alibi. I’d hate to intrude.”

  “I’ll pick you up. We’ll grab a drink.”

  I wanted to believe the worry in her voice was for me, that she’d realized she’d made a mistake. That she should’ve stayed with me. I said yes, a drink would be nice. I gave Lou the name of the convenience store I’d left, and she told me she’d be there in twenty minutes.

  I waited another few minutes, working a little more on my bottles, thinking and not thinking, trying to make myself believe that what we’d done had been only a nightmare I’d concocted after one too many nips of bad gin. Time kept moving forward, never backward, no matter how bad you wanted it to, and after fifteen minutes that went too quick, I got up and walked back to the convenience store to wait for Lou.

  Behind me, the ocean kept its own counsel because nature is far wiser than any of us and who knows what sleeps under its waters. I bet you anything the ocean itself couldn’t even tell you.

  Chapter 17

  Lou’s car shimmered like a mirage on the horizon, and I skidded into the passenger-side door, yanking at the handle before she’d even stopped the car.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey yourself,” Lou said, pulling away from the curb. She was a little pale, a red slash of lipstick making it more obvious, and she was wearing dark cat-eyed sunglasses. It didn’t look like she had slept much last night, either.

  “You look—”

  “Better than you do,” Lou said. She didn’t take her eyes off the road.

  “Where are we headed?”

  “Chinatown.”

  “We never go to Chinatown,” I said. An unpleasant idea, like cake smashed into cashmere: “Are we meeting Mr. Alibi there?”

  Lou didn’t say anything. If I were a different woman, maybe I could’ve left it at that.

  “Who is he? A new mark?”

  We stopped at a light. I studied Lou’s profile, tipped away from me. The mussed hair. The long line of her neck, all smudgy with fingerprints I could almost see. Her silence was making my skin crawl. “Christ, an old mark?”

  Lou checked her lipstick in the side mirror, slid a thumbnail around her bottom lip. “I wish I hadn’t said anything.”

  Outside, the green palm trees were turning dizzy cartwheels against the sharp white sky. God, I hated the sun. I hated the heat. Of course I was wrong; he wasn’t a case. She wouldn’t have asked him to cover for her if he were. Well, there was now one thing between us he’d never have.

  Lou’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel, and she was tapping the brakes steadily, which made the car jerk and jump. Good.

  I couldn’t stop. The murder and no sleep, Ellen’s bulging eyes and little blue neck—and now this. “What about me, Lou? I’m just hanging out here, twisting in the fucking wind, no alibi, nothing? It wasn’t my idea to strangle her, if you remember. That was definitely not my idea.”

  Lou slammed on the brakes at a red light, practically making a trampoline of them, and I jerked forward against the seat belt, smacking my hand against the dashboard. I stared at her, and she rubbed her hand across her face, trying to smooth out the anger. “Drunk again,” she said finally. It wasn’t a question.

  “Yeah, well.” I stared out the window. It wasn’t even noon. This day would never end. When we passed by dark buildings shimmering in the heat, the glare made a mirror of my window. Black smudges under my eyes. Lips chewed to bits. Dark hair pulled back in a low ponytail, an efficient style that wasn’t doing my face any favors. “I don’t think you can blame me for that today.”

  After that, we rode for a while in silence. Lou nudged us onto the freeway, and I stared up at each shrub-covered overpass, refusing to break the silence. It stayed frosty between us through the golden twin-dragon gate, past the street vendors hawking yellow, red, and pink fake flowers on the sidewalk, past abandoned concrete curly-maned lions protecting no one, until Lou parked, not waiting for me to get out of the car before she was halfway through the gates to Chinatown.

  I scampered after her, catching the full force of the gasoline fumes in my mouth where it mixed with the gin and made a not-unpleasant sweet taste on my tongue, and I wondered if it had even bothered her at all. Last night. Ellen. Any of it.

  She led me through a square bookended by pagodas, one red, one green, decorated with sun-bleached lanterns that shimmied with any puff of air. Right, left, left—she didn’t slow down or check where she was going. The neon signs were quiet, waiting for a nighttime resurrection. I remembered what Jackal had told me once, that Chinatown had been designed by Hollywood scenery artists, a sort of living movie set. Except that people really made their homes here. Lou and I knew it well: when you kept up the illusion long enough, it became real. This city knew it, too.

  Once or twice Lou moved out of sight and I had to pick up the pace to find her again. It wasn’t that she was faster than me, I realized. I had the longer legs. She was cruising on autopilot, finding her way back to some old haunt. Making a point of showing me the pockets of her life I didn’t know. Finally, Lou stopped in front of a matte-black door, a name buried in the corner of the shuttered glass window. She held the door open and followed me inside.

  Lamps with dark Tiffany glass along the sleek bar cast an orange glow into the corners of the space. It made the bar look muddy, like clay. Even with the lamps, the bar had that darkness made for drinking, the kind the best can manufacture no matter the hour. Lush leather chairs grouped in corners. It was a good spot to seduce a mark for the first time—to make a not-so-random rendezvous seem like fate.

  Lou picked a seat in the farthest corner from the door. She gave a nod to the bartender, b
usy polishing a glass, who nodded back. Without asking what I wanted, she held up two fingers as if to say, Two of the usual. Lou drew a cigarette out of the case in her purse, setting tip to flame, exhaling a feathery plume of smoke.

  “You’ll like the drinks here.”

  “I like the drinks everywhere,” I said. “They treat you like a regular.”

  Lou took another long drag, blew it toward the ceiling. “I was, once.”

  The bartender set two whiskeys in front of us. I gulped half of mine in one go. She watched me drink and said, “Now, are you ready to talk about it like adults?”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t mention him before. I don’t know why you wouldn’t tell me.”

  Lou waved her hand. “I meant getting our stories together. What’s bothering you?”

  “The murder, mostly.”

  Lou cut her eyes at the bartender and back at me. She didn’t have to say anything. I held up my hands, a half apology. Hours ago, if Ellen had made that mistake, mentioning the murder in public, I might have slapped her. But it wasn’t hours ago anymore. Funny how that worked.

  “The police won’t find anything to trace”—Lou mouthed Ellen’s name at me—“back to us for a few days at least, and once they do, they’ll be less inclined to poke around. You know what I mean.”

  I took another gulp of my drink. I thought about Lou’s face when she left my apartment, the look of knowing pity she gave me when I suggested she stay. I thought about that thing I knew about the police’s bribe money that she didn’t. What her face would look like then. I finished the drink.

  Lou reached into her purse, drew out another cigarette. “After I left, did you go over to Robert’s?” She didn’t look me in the eye as she asked it, signaled to the bartender to bring me another. “Part of Jackal’s paycheck covers alibis. If it comes to that.”

  “I didn’t want to involve him in this. I don’t want him to know about it.”

  “You haven’t mentioned anything to him?”