And Now She's Gone

by Rachel Howzell Hall

  “Isabel’s dangerous.” Gray nodded at Trinity’s purse. “Is that why you’re packing?”

  The nurse said, “I have a conceal carry license. She scares me. Her eyes … There’s no emotion in her eyes, no flicker of anything.”

  Ugh. Dangerous. Unpredictable. Scary. Lacking emotion. Common adjectives used to describe black women.

  Trinity continued, “And, one time, she showed up at the hospital.”

  “Yes, I’m told that she knew about you and Ian. And wouldn’t she have that right to show up at the hospital since she was the girlfriend? And yeah, I would wild the fuck out if my boyfriend was sleeping with his nurse. It may not be a good look, but I would show up at the hospital ready to box. Just being honest. Woman to woman, over kale chips and cocktails.”

  Trinity stared at the melting ice in her glass.

  “There are rumors that Ian beat her,” Gray said.

  Trinity’s eyes widened. “That Ian O’Donnell beat—What?”

  Gray sipped her mineral water and kept her gaze on the woman seated across from her. “You seem shocked.”

  Trinity finally blinked. “That’s the most offensive thing I’ve heard today. Ian may be a jerk in some ways, in many ways, but he’d never, never…”

  The nurse folded her arms and her fingers gripped both elbows like vises. “The man volunteers at women’s shelters all around the city. He pays out of his own pocket for plastic surgery for abused women who can’t afford it. He hides women from their boyfriends and husbands and baby daddies who storm the E.R.” She dropped her voice, then added, “He helps women disappear. That’s how he knows your boss.”

  Hot air rushed across Gray’s face. “So, Ian’s one of Rader’s … consultants?”

  “For almost seven years now.”

  And that’s why Nick had insisted that Ian … why he told her to take two steps back …

  “Tell me about these.” Gray showed Trinity the pictures of Isabel’s injuries. “This happened in April. And to be honest, I thought these, not you, were his big secret.”

  Trinity pointed at Gray’s phone. “She’s saying that he did this to her?” The nurse’s eyes couldn’t grow wider. Her skin couldn’t get paler. True horror racked her face—she wasn’t faking this terror, this distress. “It’s a lie. She’s lying. She’s a liar.”

  “Why would she lie?” Gray swiped through the pictures again. The bruise above Isabel’s left kidney … the gash above Isabel’s right eye. That wound alone would’ve needed …

  Gray’s chest tightened. That wound alone would’ve needed stitches. At least ten.

  “I don’t know why she’s doing this,” Trinity said. “I don’t know why she took Kenny G. To get back at Ian for me? Because she’s evil? I don’t know. I do know this: Ian O’Donnell…”

  She pointed at Gray’s phone again. “He isn’t that guy.”

  26

  Back in the Camry, Gray found Tea’s Facebook profile.

  There had been one picture of Isabel, added on April 28, taken on the steps of the Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook, two days after Ian had allegedly beaten Isabel.

  Gray zoomed in on Isabel’s face, tighter on her right eye.

  No bruises. No scars. No signs of new stitches. No signs of any type of trauma. Barefaced; no makeup. A pretty girl without the paint. Eyebrows on fleek.

  Gray studied the proof of life picture that Isabel had emailed her. A picture she knew was a piece of shit. The time zone … If Isabel had escaped to Hawaii four weeks ago, or even three days ago, her phone’s clock would have switched from Pacific to Hawaii time.

  So who mocked up the picture? Isabel?

  Or maybe it still was Ian O’Donnell behind this, eager to prove that his ex-girlfriend was alive and to end his business relationship with Gray and Rader Consulting by sending that faked picture. See? Nothing’s wrong—and the P.I. found nothing wrong.

  Gray’s phone buzzed in her hand. Ian O’Donnell’s number sent the missing woman’s picture to the background.

  “Hey,” the doctor said. “Tea just texted me. She said that Iz responded? When were you going to tell me?”

  “Well, I wanted to confirm—”

  “You need to come over,” he said. “I’m home. You can show me the picture and then we can end this. We’re done.”

  “But—”

  “No. Now. Thanks.” He spat out his address.

  Twenty minutes later, Gray reached Ian O’Donnell’s neighborhood, a block lined with jacarandas. This late in the season, a few bright purple flowers still clung to their branches. Like Gray had clung to this case. He stood in the doorway, wearing Adidas trainers, a gray Harvard T-shirt, and black slip-on sandals. He said, “That took forever.”

  “Traffic.” The usual excuse for tardiness in Southern California.

  Ian’s living room boasted lots of light and bleached wood floors. A comfy couch and pastel throw pillows, a coffee table the color of driftwood. Chill. Relaxed. A room she wouldn’t have picked out for the so-not-chill man standing beside her.

  “Anything to drink?” He strolled to an airy kitchen the size of Gray’s entire apartment.

  “Yes, please. Anything would be good.” She wandered the living room, pausing at the mantel and the pictures of Ian and Isabel at a black-tie event, Ian and Isabel shaking hands with Stevie Wonder, Ian and Isabel parasailing. Those frames were dust free, unlike the pictures of him and an older blond couple who had his eyes and his jaw. Or the six pictures of Kenny G. on surfboards and sailboats. Either he’d dusted Isabel’s pictures and forgotten to dust the others or he had just placed those pictures on the mantel before Gray’s arrival.

  Ian offered her a glass of white wine. “Hope you like Viognier.”

  She said, “Perfect,” and it was.

  He settled in the armchair with his own glass of wine.

  Gray sat on the love seat. She closed her eyes as the wine scoured a throat thick with ashes and anxiety.

  He said, “So? How was your meeting with Rebekah Lawrence this morning?”

  “More on that in a minute. Have you heard the name Kevin Tompkins before?”

  “No. Who is that?”

  Gray told him about the soldier’s claims that he and Isabel were secretly dating.

  Ian flicked his hand. “Isabel is a lot of things, but she’s not crazy enough to date … that guy. And army, so his checking account isn’t big enough for her.”

  Gray chuckled, because if a broke Navy SEAL was standing naked in her bedroom … Money? What was money? Sometimes women craved something more than big dollars.

  She handed Ian her cell phone with Isabel’s email on the screen.

  His eyes pecked at the words there. “She answered correctly.”

  “What are the secrets she’s referring to?”

  “Not really your concern.”

  “Then this won’t be over. As long as she has something on you…”

  “The picture. She send the picture?”

  “Tap the attachment.”

  He squinted at the image. “That’s Isabel. And that’s USA Today. Maybe my dog is at the groomer’s, or at a boarding facility.” He handed the phone back to Gray. “Anyway, I guess that’s that. She’s alive and wants nothing to do with me.” He looked tired—red-rimmed eyes, sallow skin, gnawed fingernails.

  “Don’t you want me to authenticate the picture?” Gray asked. “Don’t you want to know for sure if the dog is okay?”

  He set his wineglass on the coffee table. “She’d never hurt him. She loved him almost as much as I did.”

  “It wouldn’t be a problem—”

  “She answered correctly, Ms. Sykes. What difference does the picture make? She’s in a tropical paradise and she’s obviously happy. And Kenny G.—he’s okay. I know he is.”

  Gray cocked her head. Why did he want to end this? “This picture can’t be.”

  Irritation spiked from the doctor’s eyes. “Pardon?”

  “This can’t be Isabel standing here hol
ding today’s paper.” She hoped that he didn’t leap over the coffee table to strangle her and then bury her beside his other big secret.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have drunk the wine. Maybe he poisoned it and I’m already dying. Since it was too late now, she went on to explain the discrepancy between the email’s time stamp and the time Isabel had mentioned in the words she’d typed.

  “I’ll confirm that what I’m saying is correct,” Gray said, “but I’m pretty sure. Also, her hair in the picture isn’t black and she didn’t send a picture of her tattoo or a picture of the dog.”

  He covered his eyes with his hands.

  “Dr. O’Donnell,” Gray whispered, “there’s something else.”

  He groaned, then let one hand fall from his face.

  Gray told him about the allegations of abuse.

  “She’s lying,” Ian said, his voice quavering. “Never. Not ever. My mother was abused. She had heart problems because of it, and she … I … Nick Rader, your boss, and I…”

  “Why is she saying that you hit her?”

  “Trinity. When did she say this happened? That I … did that to her?”

  “Late April was the last incident.”

  “The last? She’s saying that I hit her regularly?”

  “She thinks you’re capable of killing her.”

  He placed his head between his knees. After a moment of deep breathing, he looked out at her. “If I showed you something…”

  “Everything is confidential—that is, until we go to court, if necessary.”

  “I … recorded us.” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “With her knowledge, of course.”

  Her skin prickled. She knew what that meant. “Okay. Let’s see what you have.”

  What Ian had was a recording of him naked, a tattoo of an X over his heart, golden skin, tight abs. There was naked Isabel, kneeling on a bed, flawless skin from there all the way to there. No blood, no bruises. In the background, there was a sixty-inch television and Rachel Maddow reporting that April day’s breaking news.

  Face burning, Gray asked, “May I have a copy? Again, this is all confidential.” She’d be fine if she never glimpsed another minute of this recording.

  Ian tapped a few keys and whoosh, the video landed in Gray’s inbox. “It’s Tea. She’s the one who puts all these thoughts in Isabel’s head. Tells her that I’m abusive and mean and … I know I gave you Tea’s number. Maybe I shouldn’t have. I know you’ve already talked to her, but maybe … Don’t trust a word she says.”

  “There’s something else.”

  “I don’t know if I can hear any more.”

  “Rebekah and Joe Lawrence aren’t her parents. They’re not her stepparents. They’re not related at all.” Then Gray told him of her conversation with Inglewood’s Clair Huxtable.

  Ian frowned. “What do you mean, she doesn’t know me?”

  Gray told him that Rebekah Lawrence was the mother of one of Isabel’s friends.

  “Noelle?” Ian said. “I don’t know a Noelle and I never saw anyone living in the condo.”

  “Do you know the names Christopher Lincoln or Hope Walters Lincoln?”

  He shook his head.

  “They’re on Isabel’s birth certificate,” Gray said. “They’re her parents.”

  Ian grabbed the wineglass from the coffee table. “Maybe she was adopted.”

  “Maybe. Do you want me to keep working?”

  Ian rolled the cool wineglass against his forehead. “This is crazy. This is nuts.” He took in a deep breath, then slowly released it. “I was thinking about something you asked me yesterday. Shit—was it just yesterday? About her ex-boyfriends.”

  Gray said, “Okay,” then took a long sip of Viognier.

  “She told me about this one guy, Mitch. He owns a furniture store off of Venice Boulevard. Spoiled her sometimes. Smashed her head in, the other times. Sounded like a jerk.”

  “I’m also trying to reach Omar. Anything else?”

  “Slicked-back hair. Lots of jewelry. All about the machismo thing, but the Russian version. We drove by there once, so that I could get a look at him.”

  “I’ll talk with Mitch, then. See what he knows, find out when he talked with her last. May I ask … if you weren’t with Isabel, where were you on Memorial Day weekend? Really?”

  Defiance shone in Ian’s eyes briefly before it vaporized. “I was with Trinity Bianchi.”

  “Your nurse.”

  “We stayed at the Four Seasons in Newport Beach.”

  “Do you have proof?”

  “Credit card bills—it was a very expensive weekend. I’m sure there’s closed-circuit TVs around that hotel. And there’s Trinity. You can ask her—but her word is as good as mine, right?”

  Secrets and lies screamed out of Ian like bottle rockets and barn owls. Secrets and lies had led to Gray being hired to find his girlfriend. He wasn’t who he said he was. Neither was Isabel Lincoln. But then again, who was?

  Stricken, Ian said, “I didn’t touch Isabel. Not like that. Not even in some sexual BDSM thing. She didn’t leave because I hit her or because I tried to kill her. I know that for a fact.”

  “Why did she leave then?”

  “She was threatening to tell the board about Trinity and me. About an … episode in one of the treatment rooms late one night. Either I paid her fifty K or she’d do a Gone Girl and fake her death, leaving all evidence pointing to me. She said she had bills, and if I didn’t pay up she’d make me pay in other ways. I couldn’t figure out which bills she had left, since I’d paid almost every bill she had, including rent. Her name is on the application as tenant but I’m fucking on the hook for everything else.”

  “So, basically, it’s your apartment.”

  “That’s what the Gardners told me.”

  “And did you pay the fifty grand?”

  “All cash—and I have a bank record, because I’m not that stupid and it’s a lot of money.… I left it on the counter in the condo. But she never responded. I texted her to make sure she received it. No answer. So I worried—about the money, yes, but she took my dog and…”

  He scrubbed his face with his hands. “I just want her to stop. I don’t want to keep paying her. I want my dog back—that’s really why I hired you guys. Fuck her—she could drop off the face of the earth, but I’m scared she’s gonna keep blackmailing me and I need it to stop. I’m hoping you find her and that Nick, you know, convinces her to leave me the fuck alone. You probably don’t know this, but Nick can be … persuasive.”

  “The cops—”

  “I don’t want the cops involved. This is my reputation. My career gets destroyed because I started seeing someone else? Isabel and I, we weren’t even married. And when I did try to break things off with her properly, in March, she lost it and left town, but then she came back with bruises and I worried that she hurt herself because of me…”

  The two sat in silence until Gray asked, “May I have the condo key and your permission to touch and take what I need? Since your name is on the lease.”

  He worked the key off his key fob and handed it to Gray.

  Now she had all the keys to the condo. No one could enter except through her.

  “If I continue…” Gray said.

  “I’ll keep paying your rate. Just get my dog back and make all of this stop.”

  27

  Gray was exhausted now, and buzzed from delicious white wine and the last breaths of lunchtime Vicodin. She had one more hour left in her, an hour and a half at most, before her internal clock hit midnight and she turned into a pumpkin.

  Sitting in traffic, she was too irritated to listen to Oleta, Angie, or even Jill. She didn’t want to hear about lost love, found love, found faith, lost faith. She wanted to get to that damned place, to finish this damned case, either by standing over a body or by sitting across from one.

  The evening brought with it cool breezes, and the sky swirled with colors of tangerines and pomegranates, eggplants and lemons. She was hungry, and he
r fridge at home was filled with diet shakes. Neon signs lining La Brea Avenue suggested burgers, chicken, and poke.

  No, she didn’t want any of this.

  Fifteen minutes later, a young black man with sleepy eyes spooned oxtails and gravy into a foam carton. “Your first side?” he asked.

  A line snaked across the rust-colored tile floors of Dulan’s. Squirming kids, exhausted nurses, and starving men wanted their protein and three sides. Cobbler, too, but only if it was fresh.

  Gray stood at the front of that line and her eyes darted from the steaming steel pockets of glistening collard greens and the colorful medley of corn-tomatoes-okra to the creamy orange of macaroni and cheese. At the register, she added a tub of peach cobbler to her bill because, today, she had earned every sugary cinnamon bite. She deserved the soft crunch of crust after having received a faked proof of life picture. Those buttery, melt-in-your-mouth peaches, no longer fruit but more of a memory of fruit, were rewards for peeking through Kevin Tompkins’s album of peeping tomfoolery. Every calorie she ate would replace a smidgen of the soul she’d lost since meeting Ian O’Donnell and the people associated with this case.

  And Hank. Fucker. Not a text, not a call. Nothing. She’d eat both corn muffins to cloud her feelings about that. The six thousand calories and countless carbohydrates would slog down those feelings, mute her hatred and resentment, quiet the “Girl, you was used” drag queen that sometimes perched and preached in her head.

  The bottle of Viognier that she purchased from the fancy downtown grocery store would help it all go down like a queen’s feast. No LaCroix at queen’s feasts.

  Her phone rang right as she buckled her seat belt. Wasn’t Nick. Wasn’t Hank. It was definitely work related, and she’d already accepted that being a private investigator was not a nine-to-five gig. And so she answered.

  “Hey, it’s Bruce Norwich, over at Allan Construction.” The man sounded out of breath and phlegmy but strong enough to haul a beam of wood across his back. “Looks like you called a few hours ago. Sorry for getting back to you so late.”