Heartless

by Alison Gaylin

  Zoe was short of breath. Her heart slammed in her chest as if she’d been running, and her palms were starting to sweat. This was the worst thing to Zoe—the not knowing. It was like that ride to Las Aguas—staring out at a blank road, no idea where she was going, no idea what was running through the mind of the person sitting next to her. . . .

  At least he left a note.

  She picked the paper off the pillow and peered at the letters, trying to figure out if they looked like they’d been written by an angry person. But when she realized what she was doing—attempting handwriting analysis on her boyfriend— she put the note down fast. She’d crossed the line. This was officially pathetic.

  “Goodbye, Eddie, Goodbye” poured out of her cell phone, and she hurried across the room to answer, but it wasn’t Warren calling. It was Steve. She took a breath, made her voice sound normal. “Hey.”

  “I heard back about your friend’s gun.”

  “What, no foreplay?”

  “I figured you were anxious to know.”

  “Yeah, I . . . My . . . my friend is anxious, yeah.”

  “You okay, Zoe? You sound a little—”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Upset.”

  “I’m fine, Steve. What about the gun?”

  “You can tell your friend the Glock is totally clean. It was legally purchased in San Antonio, Texas, twelve years ago.”

  “No crimes committed with it?”

  “Nope, and it was never reported stolen.”

  “Great.” Zoe cleared her throat. “What was the name of the owner?”

  “Garrett Christopher.”

  “Who?”

  “Kind of confusing—first name for the last, last name for the first. Easy to remember, though.” Steve coughed. “Not the boyfriend’s name, huh?”

  “Not even close,” she said. “Thanks, Steve. You’re the greatest.”

  “Yeah, I rock. Listen . . . Zoe?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you have a minute to talk?”

  She headed over to the bed and grabbed the key. “Sure. What’s up?”

  “I’m gonna give you a hypothetical, okay?”

  She walked to the desk, put the key back in the drawer. “Go crazy.”

  “Say there’s a soap star,” he said. “She’s not giving interviews, but your editor says she wants a profile, like, yesterday. What do you do—talk to the soap star’s friends, family?”

  Zoe sat on the floor, thinking, Now that’s an unexpected question.

  “Or do you do the whole disgruntled employee thing? Do you look for former assistants or bodyguards or . . . Do soap stars even have bodyguards?”

  She stared at the phone.

  “Zoe, are you there?”

  “Yeah, I’m here,” she said. “I’m just kind of amazed you’re asking me about interviewing soap stars. Did Kathy offer you my old job?”

  “No!”

  “I’m kidding, Steve.”

  “Oh, right,” he said. “Well, the truth is, I . . . I needed some extra money, so I got some freelance from TV Guide. Their Web site.”

  “Okay. Well . . . no to both your questions.”

  “Really?”

  “If the star isn’t giving interviews, it’s a waste of time to talk to loved ones. And a disgruntled employee is going to be lopsided and inaccurate and very often . . . a little nuts.”

  “Publicist?”

  “Please.”

  “Who, then?”

  “Old-timer.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You find the oldest actor on the soap—the ‘daytime legend’ who’s been on since 1962, and you set up an interview with her.”

  “But what if the star you’re interested in is young?”

  “Doesn’t matter. The old-timers always know everything that’s going on. They’re the ones everybody confides in because they’re not competition. They’re like Grandma.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Veteran actors are usually a lot more articulate than the younger ones, too. They don’t take themselves as seriously. They tend to have fewer scheduling conflicts. Plus, this is the best part: When you reach a certain age, you realize life is too short to mince words, so you feed that nice young reporter the hottest dish of her life.”

  “Great!”

  “That help you?”

  “Definitely.”

  “So . . . are you going to tell me what this is really about?”

  “What?”

  “It’s not for a freelance piece,” she said. “You hate soaps, Steve, and you’re a terrible liar.”

  Several seconds of silence, then: “So are you.”

  “Meaning . . .”

  “Meaning, you tell me why you’re upset, I’ll tell you why I’m asking about soap stars.”

  Zoe heard footsteps, coming up the stairs. “I’ve gotta go, Steve.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Then we’ll both take a rain check.”

  After they hung up, Zoe braced herself. She pulled her pajama top around her, and turned toward the bedroom door. The footsteps moved closer, but Zoe realized they were lighter than Warren’s, and then she saw Guadalupe striding up to the glass door, opening it.

  “Hello, Señorita Zoe,” she said.

  “Have you seen Warren downstairs? Is he back?”

  “No,” she said. “I let myself in.”

  “You speak such good English, by the way. Have you ever lived in the States?”

  Zoe had only said it to make conversation, maybe squeeze a smile out of her. But a look passed into Guadalupe’s eyes— a look Zoe didn’t like. “No. Señor Clark taught me,” she said. “He is a wonderful man.” She averted her gaze, but that look stayed with Zoe—a wariness, a distrust. “Are you enjoying your stay?”

  “Yes! I had a great time in town yesterday.”

  Guadalupe smiled. “I am glad,” she said. But still she wouldn’t look at Zoe, and when she went about her cleaning, she started with the desk.

  As quickly as she could, Zoe pulled an outfit out of the closet—underwear, skirt, sleeveless blouse. Then she headed into the bathroom, grabbed her soap, toothbrush, toothpaste, shampoo, towel. “There’s a shower in the second-floor guest room, right?” she asked.

  Guadalupe gave her a tentative yes. Zoe felt the housekeeper’s cold stare on her back as she walked out of the room.

  Zoe headed directly for the guest room on the second floor, thick beige shades drawn over the glass doors. She turned the knob, pushed one of the doors open. The air within was still. It felt as if the windows had been shut for a long time—years, maybe—but the room was clean, the bathroom spotless. Zoe showered quickly. Only after she’d put on her clothes and headed back into the bedroom did she consider the very strong possibility that this was where Warren’s friend Nick Denby had spent his last night alive.

  Zoe let her gaze linger on the perfectly made bed, the walls bare save for a mirror, the tall, plain wooden armoire. Compared to the other rooms in the house, this one was unusual—all function, no decor. It seemed neglected. She remembered what Warren had said about bad memories: You put it away. Shut the door on it. After a while it’s like it never happened. Did Warren think of this room as a type of bad memory? Yes, Guadalupe cleaned it. But had Warren set foot in here since Nicholas Denby’s disappearance?

  She ran her hand over the thick bedspread. Then she moved toward the armoire, opened the door.

  Zoe saw it immediately—the only other thing in the closet besides a stack of folded blankets. A cross, hanging in the shadows, on the back wall, painted with a bleeding, thorn-crowned heart. Just like the one in Warren’s dressing room, only . . . Something was tied to the bottom.

  As if her arms were working on their own, Zoe lifted the cross off the wall. She held it against her forearms and stared at the thing that had been tied to the cross with thick string, and her breath went fast and shallow like the breath of a small, frightened animal.

  It was the browned spine of a ma
guey plant, its thorns thickly coated with dried blood.

  Zoe swallowed hard. There has to be a logical explanation. . . .

  Carefully, she placed the cross back on its hook and closed the closet door. Her heart was beating so hard that the whole room seemed to echo with it, with the rasp of her breathing. Nicholas Denby’s room. Maguey spines coated with Nicholas Denby’s blood.

  No, stop. There has to be a logical . . .

  She whirled around, so anxious to leave this room that at first she didn’t feel eyes on her. She didn’t notice Guadalupe, standing in the doorway, glaring at Zoe as if she’d just robbed a grave.

  FIFTEEN

  “Hey, Steve,” said Enid, the city editor, “what’s your ETA on the Brink mom story?”

  “When do you need it?”

  “I don’t know ... three hours ago?”

  Steve winced. “Sorry.” He never turned in anything late—especially something like this Barbara Brink interview, which he’d had to fight to get in the paper in the first place. (Enid did have a point. Exclusive or not, Jordan’s grieving mom saying he didn’t steal drugs wasn’t what you’d call news.)

  But he’d wanted the story in so badly. Barbara Brink had allowed him into her home and talked to him for half an hour, and it was the least she deserved. When he’d explained that to Enid, she had said, “Okay. Three inches. And make it fast.”

  Three inches. Steve could turn around a three-inch story in ten minutes, easy. But here he was, hours after arriving at his desk, staring at his computer screen like some poet with writer’s block.

  It was that damn list Jordan had made. A list that meant nothing to Barbara Brink and would have meant nothing to Steve forty-eight hours ago, but now it was crowding his brain to the point where he couldn’t do his job. He’d close his eyes, try to envision a lede for the Barbara Brink story, but all he’d be able to see, in Jordan’s spidery pained handwriting, was the last name he had put in the question mark column:

  TIFFANY BAXTER.

  He’d recognized the name from all the Nexising he’d done on Warren Clark. She was the little girl who played his daughter on The Day’s End. How old was she anyway, fourteen? A child actress on a New York soap opera, and somehow, her name had been printed on a list by a murder victim in Mexico.

  As far as Steve could see, there was only one possible connection. . . .

  When he’d gotten to work that morning, the first thing he’d done was called The Day’s End’s studios and asked for publicity. The receptionist had hooked him up with a woman named Dana LeVine.

  “Hi, Dana, this is Steve Sorensen, calling from the Trumpet.”

  If Steve had said he was George Clooney calling to tell her she’d just won Megabucks, Dana LeVine couldn’t have sounded happier. “I adore the Trumpet! What can I do for you, Steve?”

  “I was wondering if you could set me up with one of your young actresses.”

  “Absolutely. Which one?”

  “Tiffany Baxter.”

  There had been a brief pause, and then her voice had come back with about 80 percent of the happiness wrung out of it. “Can I ask what this is about?”

  Steve had started to think of a line to feed her—a feature article about child stars, a profile describing Tiffany as the Miley Cyrus of daytime TV—but that tone change of Dana’s had kept him from that. He wasn’t going to get an interview with Tiffany Baxter, no matter what, he knew. At this point, the best thing he could get out of Dana was a fast, honest reaction.

  So Steve had been honest and fast himself: “It’s about Warren Clark.”

  Click.

  Got my answer. Tiffany Baxter and Warren Clark were definitely connected . . . in ways that their show’s publicist did not want to discuss.

  The next task was trickier—how to get to Tiffany. He’d been drawing a big blank on that one until an idea had flashed in his head: Call Zoe and ask her advice. And then Detective Krull had called him back with the NCIC info on the gun, giving him an excuse. He’d spoken to Zoe. And she’d given him good advice—advice that, while she didn’t know it, would ultimately help her. (And from the way she’d sounded, she could use a little help.)

  The only problem was, before he could do anything in terms of locating an “old-timer” to ask about Tiffany and Clark, Enid was on him like eczema.

  He called the Brink transcript up on his screen and made himself focus, finding his lede in Barbara’s claim that her late son’s only true addiction was reading. He tore through the story, finished it in ten minutes and told Enid it was done. She read it quickly and said, “See? That wasn’t so bad, was it?” indicating she no longer wanted to push him out of the thirtieth-floor window.

  Then, and only then, did he call up The Day’s End on the Internet Movie Database, and find the name of the longest-running character: business titan Wellington Hardy, played by Andrew Fennimore since 1965.

  Steve walked over to Glen Campbell’s desk. “How’s it going?” he said.

  Glen’s face lit up at the sight of him. Never before had Steve met a reporter so grateful for half a byline. “Vanessa St. James didn’t give me jack,” he said, “but I suspect she’s hiding something, Steve.”

  “Me, too.”

  “I will press on.”

  “Thanks. Listen, can you do me a huge favor?” Glen nodded of course, and Steve handed him Dana LeVine’s number at The Day’s End.

  “This is about Warren Clark?”

  “Yeah, but when you speak to her, don’t mention his name. I already did and . . . This woman, Dana LeVine . . . she doesn’t like the sound of my voice. So, uh, don’t mention my name either.”

  Glen stared at the number. “Okay . . . ,” he said. “But you do want me to say I’m with the Trumpet, right?”

  “No.”

  “So . . . what do you want me to tell her?”

  Steve listened to that reedy, innocent voice, so unexpected from a New York City reporter. Glen also had the type of earnest Southern accent that sounded natural saying ma’am and an enthusiasm that was obvious even over the phone. At this particular moment, Steve considered him the Trumpet’s best find ever. “Tell her,” Steve said, “that you’re the world’s biggest Andrew Fennimore fan.”

  Vanessa still wasn’t home. It had been more than fifteen hours since Naomi had banged on the door to her bedroom and found the room empty, yet all she’d gotten as far as proof that her aunt was even alive was a phone call—to Soccoro, no less—saying she was “preparing for Rafael’s party” tonight and was “busy running errands.”

  Naomi hadn’t been able to sleep much the previous night. Every time she closed her eyes, she heard Alejandro’s quavering voice. I like you, Naomi. I don’t want it to happen to you. I really don’t.

  You are being watched.

  I am serving someone. A powerful person. Evil.

  “Who are you serving, Alejandro?” she whispered. “Who is watching me?”

  In her mind, Naomi kept going back to what Jordan had said about San Esteban. I know it’s beautiful on the surface, but it is really fucked up. Naomi would think about those words, on the surface, and she’d envision herself floating on the surface of the ocean. She would smell the salt and feel the current, the bright sun sparkling on aqua waves. She would look to her side and see a beautiful mermaid—Vanessa—all glistening hair and clamshells and big, warm smile. Vanessa’s boyfriend, Brad Rafael Pitt, would be splashing beside her, and Warren Clark and Reiki Master Paul and Robin and Dr. Dave and God knew who else, all of them would be gliding through the water in unison like the happiest synchronized swim team on the planet . . . until the hooded angel appeared—the one from the dream that she’d had in the desert—only it would be hovering over the waves. Again, it would tell Naomi, You are safe. Then it would tie a blindfold over her eyes and push her beneath the surface and Naomi would know that she wasn’t safe at all.

  The episodes—flashbacks or post-traumatic stress attacks or whatever you wanted to call them—were becoming more f
requent. Since breakfast, Naomi had been hearing this noise—not so much a ringing in her ears as a fluttering, like insect wings. . . .

  And always, always Alejandro’s voice. Don’t ask any more questions and you will stay safe.

  But if I don’t ask questions, I won’t get answers. She couldn’t look for Alejandro; she couldn’t go back to the parque. But Naomi needed someone, anyone, to explain what was going on. She needed Xanax and she needed answers, and if she didn’t get both soon, she’d go insane for sure.

  Naomi looked at her watch. It was eleven a.m.—she wasn’t sure what time Mrs. Woods’s plane left, but maybe she was still around. And maybe if Naomi let her know how scared and desperate and ready to lose it she was feeling right now, she could pull more than an “ask your aunt” out of her. Naomi yanked her cell off the charger. Because of Corinne, she had Mrs. Woods’s number on speed dial, so she hit it, waited. . . . No answer. Her machine wasn’t on either. Already gone. Great.

  Naomi could still hear that fluttering. Would it stay with her always? Would she have to just get used to the sound in her ears—live with it, like a scar?

  No. That isn’t fair. Nobody should be expected to do that. Naomi put on her shoes, left her room, headed down the hall and opened Vanessa’s bedroom door. Her Xanax prescription was on Vanessa’s vanity table. Her aunt hadn’t even bothered to take it with her. Naomi picked it up and hurried downstairs.

  Just as she was putting her hand on the door, Soccoro came running up and slid in front of her. “¿Donde vas?”

  Naomi looked down at her—this tiny woman blocking her way. “No se.” Why did she need to tell Soccoro where she was going? Her aunt never did.

  Soccoro told Naomi that she wasn’t allowed to leave the premises, adding, “Tu tía me dice.”

  Naomi almost told her she didn’t give a flying fuck what her aunt said, and if Vanessa wanted her to stick around the house, she ought to try sticking around it herself. But she knew Soccoro was only doing her job. It wasn’t her fault if her employer wanted to make part of that job disciplining her own niece.

  So instead, Naomi moved a step closer, using the nine inches she had on Soccoro for all they were worth. “No comprendo,” she said sweetly. Then she turned the knob and stepped around her and left the house.