“Bathroom’s on the other side, honey.”
I nod, nervously, and because she was kind and didn’t slam the door in my face I ask, “Is Lacy working tonight?”
“Not tonight, sorry.”
I find a small table in the back of the room. I didn’t put a lot of thought into how it would look, a woman alone in a strip club. Pathetic, I suppose. I don’t even know exactly what I plan to do, but maybe if I can find the other girls Joe came to see, I can gain something from talking to them. It surprises me that he can get away with hanging out at strip clubs and paying for sex as a detective, but it’s not a crime to come in here, and nobody would ever admit money was exchanged for sexual favors. It’s all protected. He’s protected. Not just by his badge, but by women too frightened to challenge it—women who, in the eyes of most, have little credibility and are great targets for his type.
I order a vodka tonic and ignore the sideways looks I’m getting from a table of men nearby. I swallow the drink down quickly for liquid courage, and order another. I begin feeling the familiar elasticity in my arms and legs as each sip navigates its way through my blood. I’m slightly more at ease, but still without a plan.
A spotlight illuminates a figure onstage. She’s announced as Sugar Cane, and she’s sucking on a rainbow lollipop and spinning around a pole. “Feelin’ Love” fills the room from speakers hanging in every corner. The moving lights are making me ill. My heart beats in my throat and my head feels light. The room reminds me of going to the roller rink as a kid. It was dark and the lights glittered and danced on the floor like fallen stars. I could never skate over the moving dotted pattern on the floor because it would make me dizzy and I’d fall and trip other passing kids on the rink. I feel like that now, and I decide to just go home, until a woman, almost entirely naked, sits down right next to me, tapping the ash of her cigarette into the tray on my table.
“You here about a job? You gotta talk to George.” She points at a large, sweaty man with a sports coat on, lingering around the bar.
“Oh no. I’m not...I’m just...” I don’t have a reason to state why I’m here, so I stop.
“Well, not many girls come in here unless they’re looking for a job or to catch their man cheating. You’re pretty enough if you want the work. George would put you on a couple weeknights. What’s your name, sweets?” She rests her cigarette between her lips to hold her hand out to shake mine, and she squints to keep the smoke from her eyes.
“Uh...Mel.” Should I have given a fake name? I don’t really see a reason to, and it’s too late anyway.
“Cinnamon,” she says, confidently. “You must be here to bust your boyfriend, then. Maybe I can help. At least if he’s a regular, I might know him.”
“Cinnamon?” I repeat, dumbly. That’s one of the names Lacy gave me. “Have you seen Joe Brooks here recently?” I ask, and her face goes pale. There is something like anger in her eyes, but she stands, wordlessly, and turns to go. I go after her, grabbing at her elbow, but she pulls it away and turns to me.
“You the wife or somethin’?”
“No! I—I know Lacy. I feel like Joe may be involved in something...I...look, can I buy you a drink or something and talk?”
“You’re not an old girlfriend—you’re not gonna trick me here ’cause you’re pissed at him about something?”
“No, I’ve never dated him, it has nothing to do with me, I just have a few questions. I think he might have hurt someone, and any help I can get is—it’s just really important.”
She thinks about this a moment, her face softening a little.
“If you know Lacy, I guess. I was on the early shift, so I’m finishing up soon. You can buy me that drink and meet me over there.” She points to the dressing room, and then dissolves into the crowd.
A half hour later, Cinnamon pulls two small wooden chairs out from the dressing room, and we sit with our drinks in the darkness of the oppressively hot back hallway.
“What’d he do now?” she asks, a question I wasn’t prepared to hear. I never expected cooperation like this. “Lacy’s okay, right?”
“Yeah. She is. I mean, I think. I haven’t heard from her in a few days, but I assume she’s fine.”
I know Joe already has an alibi for the night of the murder, but I ask about it anyway because there was something in Lacy’s reaction when I asked her that didn’t sit right.
“I know it’s a long shot, but you wouldn’t remember if he was here the night of September 20, would you?”
“Sure he was,” she says right away.
“What?”
“I only remember because I had tickets to Lady Gaga that night in New Orleans. Lacy called, bawling, ’cause little Ronny Lee was sick or something. She was close to getting fired for missing shifts, so she begged me to cover.”
“You’re kidding. He was here.”
“I told her I could only do it if I could scalp the tickets and, man, I got a fortune for them, so it worked out.”
I try to be patient with her story to get to the part I need.
“What time did he come?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Late. I just remember ’cause he usually pays for extra services in the champagne room, but he didn’t that night. He was ignoring me, acting weird.”
“Weird how?”
“I don’t know. He’s usually drinking and hootin’ and hollerin’, ya know. But that night he just sat at a table by himself and didn’t look good, didn’t talk to nobody.”
I think of Joe coming here after the charity event to decompress, maybe still in shock from the crime he’d committed.
“I’m only telling you this ’cause Lacy’s messed up with him again and she’s my friend. God knows there’s plenty of shit he should go to jail for and probably never will, so if you think you got a way to do something, I’m all in.”
“Were you ever involved with him? Outside of here?”
She looks off, into the faceless cluster of bodies down the hall inside the main club room, and lights another cigarette.
“I won’t say anything to Lacy, if you don’t want me to,” I say after a minute of quiet.
“She knows already. I’m not proud of it.” She wraps one long leg around the other. Her cheekbones are high and her lips are full. Her hair, obviously once blond, now dyed a copper red, falls around her neck and she adjusts a shoe strap, unsure whether to confide in me. “They weren’t together at the time, but still. It was a shitty thing to do to a friend. He’s good though, I mean you don’t know how he can talk his way in.” I think of this dual life Joe must live. He poses in photos at charity balls and presents himself as a saint to all the single moms whose kids he coaches. He even dates high-society women now and then and probably treats them like royalty, and then he goes into the slums and lets the devil in him loose. He finds these girls who he thinks of as low-life stripper types he can string along, abuse and keep secret. It makes my stomach flip thinking of it.
“When were you seeing him?”
“Mostly in between when Lacy saw him, the weeks they were on the outs. Then I find out Angela is screwing him too, and—”
“Who’s Angela, she work here?”
“Oh. Yeah.” She gestures with a twirl of her finger to the dressing room behind us. “Luscious is her name at the club. She’s around somewhere. Thing is, we all figured out he’s a shit eventually, ya know. But Lacy, she’s in trouble. She won’t stay away.”
“What exactly did he do, what made you stop seeing him?” I ask. Her eyes fill and she sighs.
“He takes his time, ya know? He gets you to trust him real good. He brings you presents and tells you you’re beautiful. He doesn’t try anything for a good long time. Then, like out of the blue one day he’s different. He’d only ever meet me at my apartment or here. After we did our thing, he got up to go home. I was just kidding with him, you know, trying t
o be cute, and I pulled him back down on the bed a little and told him to stay.” She wipes away a tear that’s escaped her eye.
“He turned and punched me so hard, he knocked the wind out of me, and while I was trying to get my breath back, he held me down on the bed saying I better never think I can tell him what to do again. I could hear my kids crying in the next room ’cause they heard me scream. He wouldn’t let me go, he just held me there awhile. Then, like, just walked out and left.” She wipes her nose with the inside of her tiny top and shakes her head softly.
“Was that the last time you saw him...romantically?”
“Ya’d think so, right? But that’s what I’m saying. It’s like a total Dr. Phil show. He comes back with apologies and gifts and I give him another chance, and two weeks later, he fuckin’ chokes me ’cause I showed up at Sully’s bar. Like I knew he was even there. He thinks I’m following him, trying to get attention or something. Like he owns the town. When you say it afterward, it sounds really bad, but at the time, I thought—I don’t know, I thought I was in love. I wanted him not to be the man he actually is.”
“How long, then, until you stopped seeing him?”
“It was off and on for a year, maybe.”
“Did he ever do anything else, like other sorts of assault?” I ask. She steps on the butt of her cigarette.
“I gotta go. I got kids at home.” She stands and reaches inside the dressing room for her handbag. “Maybe ask Angela about that. She got the worst of it.”
She hollers inside the door.
“Angie, you got a sec to talk to this lady? She’s asking about Joe Brooks.” The door slams, violently, in my face, and I hear “Fuck that guy” from inside the dressing room. Cinnamon shrugs.
“Thank you for talking to me,” I say.
“Get him,” she says, looking right into my eyes, then turns on her heel and leaves.
26
VALERIE ELLISON SEEMS LIKE a completely normal woman online. She’s accepted Dylan Bisset’s friend request, and as I sit back at the library again the next day, she doesn’t resemble the maniac extortionist I’ve come to know. In one image, she’s posed in a new-looking yoga outfit with an enormous Starbucks cup in hand, and in another she’s with girlfriends at a picnic table at a camping site, holding up red plastic cups in a cheers. She’s giving close-up duck lips in her car and has captioned it feelin’ cute. She looks like she’d fit right in with Gillian and the neighborhood ladies.
It’s not until I scroll all the way down to a year and a half ago that I see photos of her and Luke together. It makes my stomach drop a little at the sight of them looking up to the camera, at whoever is taking the photo, heads touching at a restaurant. He’s kissing her on the cheek on the deck of a cruise ship in another. Their wedding photos are from six years ago. I flip through them, forcing myself to look. She was stunning on a beach in Mexico. A barefoot bride next to her striking groom in beachy burlap trousers and a white button-down. In one photo, he is knee-deep in the sea and he lifts her up like a dancer, her legs bent behind her, reaching down to kiss him. They look...in love.
I wonder what happened. Anything, I guess. My own wedding photos look not too different than these, and look what I’ve done to destroy my marriage. Maybe this greedy, psychopathic side I have seen in her started to show. Maybe one of them cheated. Then I see, around two years back, her activity stops and there are hundreds of posts from friends, people sending “thoughts and prayers” for sweet Lily.
They had a daughter.
A flurry of clicks produces images of a happy child in a wheelchair. When I go all the way back to photos of Lily’s birth, Valerie posts a sad announcement explaining the degenerative disease the child was diagnosed with. I wonder if their child’s passing was what fractured their marriage. I swallow down the lump in my throat. Why didn’t he tell me he had a daughter? We told one another so much. I guess it would mean explaining his ex-wife, but I still feel lied to, which is ridiculous because he had no obligation to tell me anything, truth be told.
Her page is a great disappointment because it tells me nothing I can use to my advantage. She looks like someone I would be friends with. Except that she wants several thousand dollars from me in a few days, and I have no idea how I can get that kind of money without Collin finding out it’s missing.
I click to minimize Valerie’s profile and search cubic zirconia rings, three carat, quad princess cut engagement rings. There are pages of them. I stop when I see one that looks closest to my own. My eight-thousand-dollar ring looks almost identical to the fake version worth only ninety-nine bucks. If I pawn my own ring and buy this one, I can’t imagine Collin ever noticing. They look so similar, and he’s a guy. Why would he even look closely at it? There is nothing else I can sell that wouldn’t be missed. It still won’t be enough, but as long as I’m paying something, why would she stop the cash flow? I need more time.
There are a few available at a jewelry store in the mall. I pay the ninety-nine dollars in cash and slip the fake diamond on my finger. It’s lighter and shinier than my own ring, but no one else would notice that. I can’t afford sentimentality right now. This is survival, and I will not get emotional when I hand over the ring that’s been on my hand for over fifteen years to the apathetic pawnshop cashier.
A few days later, I find myself in the same motel room. This time it looks like she’s stayed the night. The sheets are rumpled up at the end of the bed, and there are two wineglasses, one on each nightstand with a slip of red liquid dotting the bottom of each. Who was she with? I don’t see men’s things or an overnight bag.
“It’s all I could get,” I say, handing her the six thousand and feeling a bit of déjà vu from the last time I was here, feeling scolded like an impish child.
“Fuck. Are you kidding me?”
“The whole reason you’re getting money at all is so my family doesn’t find out about my relationship with Luke. You think that I can just take fifty thousand out of my bank account and my husband won’t ask questions? If he finds out, I guess you lose your position and wouldn’t get any money, so maybe be a little patient.”
She stares at me, lips parted, taken off guard.
“Whoa. The housewife is feisty today,” she says, amused.
I almost start the words, I’m not a... but before I can decide whether to bother, her phone vibrates across the table, and she grabs for it so quickly that I don’t see the incoming number before she flips it upside down. What does she want to hide from me?
“Check your phone, and I’ll send more instructions soon,” she says, opening the door and unmistakably pushing me out with her eyes. I step outside the threshold. I want to ask her about knowing Joe, call her out, gauge her reaction, but I don’t. Not yet. She closes the door and I hear the click of the lock behind me.
At home, Ben’s just home from swim class, and he and Collin are in the garage changing the oil in Collin’s car. Ben can name different parts of the engine like he can crayon colors and likes to boss Collin around as he works, and Collin is a great sport about it. Ben sits in an old office chair we store in the garage and pushes off his heels, flying himself back and forth across the concrete floor between suggestions.
“You should have gotten synthetic. It’s better for the engine,” Ben says, peering at the container of Pennzoil Collin holds. I twist my new ring as I walk in the open garage door.
“Hey, fellas.”
“Mom! Dad waited more than three thousand miles to change the oil and I know that because it’s not the right color. He waited too long.”
“Well, I’m glad he has you supervising, then.”
“Yeah. I put a reminder on my calendar so I can remind him next time.”
“Good thinking, bud,” I say, and kiss Collin on the cheek as I pass him and go through into the house with the bag of groceries I stopped for.
“Rachel home?” I ask.
/>
“Out with friends,” he says, concentrating on curling the remains of a paper bag from the recycling bin into a funnel so he can pour the oil through it. “You goin’ to Gillian’s pretend book club tonight?”
I’d forgotten it’s Saturday, and I dread the idea, but after my odd behavior last week, I feel like I should. I wonder if any of them have heard that I’m being questioned in the murder. I need to put out fires if any small-town gossip has spread.
“Oh right. Yeah, I guess.”
“Well, you sound over the moon about it.” He winks at me and I roll my eyes before going inside and placing the groceries on the counter.
That evening, I’m almost to Gillian’s house when my phone rings. A number I don’t recognize illuminates my screen, and I pick up, a tone of defensiveness in my voice, not knowing what to expect.
“Is this Melanie Hale?” a woman’s voice with a thick Southern drawl asks.
“Who’s this?” I try to keep my voice light.
“Well, ma’am. We have a patient here at Park Hospital. Her ID says she’s a Miss Lacy Dupre, but we can’t reach any family members, and—”
“Oh my God, is she okay?”
“So you do know her.”
“Yes. What happened?”
“Well, looks like she’s been in some sort of accident, a hit and run, and we found your name and number on a scrap of paper inside her purse. We were hoping you could help us reach her family. Are you her family?”
“Friend. But, yes, I—can I see her? Is she...?” I stop. The woman doesn’t offer any more details over the phone, but tells me to come down. I make a sharp U-turn and race to Park Hospital.
In the white, buzzing aesthetic of Lacy’s hospital room, I sit, holding Lacy’s hand, minding the oximeter clamped to her index finger. A fluid bolus is connected to a needle in the crease of her arm, where it looks like the nurse fought to find a vein. Her right eye is swollen completely closed with purple-and-black bruising, and stitches close a long contusion on her cheek. The ligature marks and bruises around her neck are obvious, even though the nurse has referred to the incident as a hit and run. Lacy’s left wrist is broken, bound with a small cast.
Such a Good Wife Page 21
