They All Fall Down

by Rachel Howzell Hall

  He chuckled, then added, “It will be the best apology tour ever devised. It will rival Hugh Grant’s and Reese Witherspoon’s. I promise.”

  FROM: Mimi Macy

  TO: Morgandancer

  SENT: 1:37 p.m., Sunday, July 10

  SUBJECT: Good news from Mexico!

  Hey, Mo-sweetie!

  I’m emailing you even though you may not get this message until I’m back on the mainland, which should be soon. I’m packed and ready to leave. Yes, already. Can’t believe that it’s time to go. Just in case a bar pops up, though, and this message goes through, I just wanted you to know … all the rules here have changed. Long story short: I was bamboozled! But I’m still going to win. I’ve met someone. No, not like that. ☺ His name is Wallace Zavarnella and he’s a real estate guy. He’s also Phil O.’s husband (surprise, right??)—Phil died last month from a brain tumor, sad news! I was shocked speechless. Yes, me. Speechless!

  We’re actually here for Phillip’s memorial service, and I’m supposed to get something he left me, thousands of dollars, I believe, and a referral to another lawyer. I’ll find out for sure in another 2–3 hours, after the service. So soon, this will all be over. Also good news that Wallace adores me and he understands why I’ve done what I’ve done and that the McAllisters are out of control. He’s promised to represent me (or something) against them. He said he’d also help me land a literary agent who will sell my book! He thinks I could probably get millions. Bestselling author, here I come! So. Even though there is no prize and this weekend won’t be on TV, I will still win a few things that money can’t buy. Freedom! Peace of mind! A new career!

  Call it Fate that I landed here in Mexico. Whatever it is has changed our lives forever. In a good way this time. Ha ha.

  I love you with every breath that I take.

  Mom

  P.S. There are no souvenir shops on this island. But I will find that purple sweatshirt if it kills me!

  23

  Wallace was now a member of Team Miriam, and that man’s will was stronger than mine. Good Morning America. The Wendy Williams Show. Maybe he could sell my story, something that showed my side, the truthful side, like that documentary on Amanda Knox. You think you know everything, but you have no idea.

  I left the Gucci dress in the corner of the room. Didn’t need to shove something that didn’t fit and that reeked of poisonous vomit back into my luggage. I glanced at my phone—the yacht would soon arrive. The memorial service would begin and end with Phillip’s ashes released on the bluffs. Then we’d return for the reading of his will, and then I’d be out—the first person to set foot back on La Charon. Packed and ready to go, not one more minute spent at Artemis. I’d wait for the bad vibes to dissipate before asking Wallace’s permission to return.

  None of this had been expected. The real reason for our coming here. Javier’s death. Desi’s death. And Phillip …

  This trip to Artemis had been his last big joke. Ha. Good one, Omeke.

  Not that he’d meant for any of this to happen, either. Except that now, two people had died as a result of this strange gag, and those of us who were still alive had been left confused, terrified, and exhausted. Fortunately, all of this trouble and effort would be worth it, in the end.

  How much had he left me? Thousands—he knew I needed thousands. Several thousands. Maybe a cool mil. It was obvious that Phillip was rich—he’d paid for all of us to come here. He hadn’t charged me his full rate—I could’ve never afforded him. Wallace had called me a Groupon guest. Ha. He was right. Compassion—that’s what I’d speak about at the memorial. Phillip Omeke was the most compassionate man I’ve ever known.

  I zipped up my suitcase, then rubbed my eyes. They crackled like dried leaves beneath my fingertips. They were still a little swollen from the poppy-allergy attack, from crying, from lack of sleep, and from not drinking enough water.

  I’m gonna be all right. It’s gonna be okay.

  I was ready to go home. Ready to start this New Start. To see my daughter and to plant the sunflower and wildflower seeds I’d bought last week. I missed Morgan so much that my heart and my gut ached. I missed her failed attempts at baking homemade cupcakes from scratch. I missed her rummaging through my clothes and picking out a neglected sweatshirt and making it new again. I missed her eye rolling and her impatient breaths and her actively ignoring me. Even the digital pictures of her on my phone had dog-eared and faded because I looked at them so much. She was my North Star.

  Too much time had passed with her hating me, and that had been my fault. Jealousy and revenge had stolen away chunks of time, time I should’ve spent loving her and laughing with her. I wasn’t perfect, but now I wanted to be—for her. I had tomorrow, and my tomorrow would beat out the sun and the sea as wondrous things. My tomorrow would inspire poets and pastors. The tale of the prodigal mother and her modern-day road to Damascus, her “blind but now I see” moment. I would deal honorably with Detective Hurley and the McAllisters and anybody else who had picked a fight with me. An expensive endeavor, but now that Wallace had volunteered to be my sponsor, I could afford it.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald had it wrong. There were second acts in American life. Ask Robert Downey Jr. Ask Martha Stewart. And coming soon: ask me!

  Who needed Valium? Not this girl.

  Yes, Artemis was a remarkable house, a modern castle that I’d always dreamed about. As a place of relaxation, though, it had been useless. There’d been no time to enjoy the sauna or the tennis court. The walk-in freezer had become a high-traffic morgue and my neighbors here were worse than the dopehead and serial shoplifter who lived across the street from me back in L.A. As a place of reflection, though, Artemis had been a gift, a guru that had helped me find and see, feel and witness. Artemis was church. I’d learned my lesson, and now it was time to leave this place. And I could do all of this, thanks to Phillip Omeke.

  I took in the magnificent chandelier, the soft green walls, and the view of the jungle beyond the windows. On the vanity, Desi’s blue scarf sat bunched against Javier’s silver flask and Eddie’s cheap gun—Wait …

  Where’s Eddie’s gun? It wasn’t sitting where I’d left it, right by the—

  By the …

  Shit. While I had guarded Eddie’s room, I’d fallen asleep and the gun had slipped out of my hand and … I left it upstairs in the hallway on the carpet—

  A memory flashed in a corner of my mind. I saw it, that fuzzy memory. Then, I remembered more and saw all sides of it and what I saw made my stomach plunge to my feet. I squeezed my throat and groaned. “No. No. No…”

  This morning, a scream had pulled me out of sleep. Eddie and I had searched the second floor, and had found nothing. On our way back down to the first floor, we’d bumped into Evelyn standing at the base of the stairs. She’d stood there, and she’d said to Eddie and me … she’d said …

  Desi’s dead.

  That’s what she’d said.

  But the door to Desi’s room had been locked. That’s why Eddie had to kick in the door.

  How would Evelyn have known, though, that Desi was dead unless…?

  Unless …

  She couldn’t have known Desi’s state unless she had been in Desi’s locked bedroom. The locked bedroom … the open window …

  Shit.

  Evelyn killed Desi.

  Oh, hell. Evelyn …

  But who could I tell? Would Wallace believe me now that he and I had called a truce? Eddie—he was crazy, sure, but he was also a cop, and he’d understand my logic. Frank, the last of the living, would believe me just to deflect suspicion off him. Yes. They would all believe me now.

  Tell them. Right now!

  I rushed over to the door and flung it open.

  No!

  A noose sat on the carpet, right at my feet. It had been crafted with silk scarves, just like the noose I’d fashioned for Brooke McAllister. She’d taken that noose and had used it …

  A white note card sat beside the noose. A message writte
n in thick black letters took up the center space.

  I DON’T NEED THIS ANYMORE. YOU SHOULD TRY IT.

  All feeling left my face, and tears burned in my throat and in my already-irritated eyes. I threw a frantic look up and down the hallway. No one was around, yet I felt that disturbed emptiness again, like phantoms chasing ghosts.

  Doesn’t matter. Grab your bag and go!

  I grabbed the handle of my suitcase and shouldered my tote. Screw it all. I’d skip the memorial and wait at the dock. Let them figure out who did what.

  I’d stepped across the threshold and over that noose and note card when a man up on the second floor shouted, “Stop!”

  It was Wallace shouting.

  Oh, no.

  THE

  JOKER

  24

  I was standing in the doorway of my bedroom, luggage in hand. I crumpled against the wall, so dizzy that my legs were crisscrossing on their own. Eddie’s gun had disappeared from the vanity, and someone had left this noose and this note—I DON’T NEED THIS ANYMORE. YOU SHOULD TRY IT—at my door. Wallace had shouted, “Stop!” and then Evelyn had screamed, “No!” and then Wallace had shrieked, “What are you doing?”

  That’s when I tore my eyes away from the noose on the floor. That’s when I pushed myself away from the wall. When Wallace started shouting. Because Wallace never shouted.

  My mind careened away from all of this—the noose, the note card, the two bodies in the walk-in freezer—and raced into the wilderness, across the Sea of Cortez.

  I kicked the noose away from my foot and ran, leaving my tote and suitcase in the room. I dashed down the hallway and hurtled up the stairs to the second floor, racing down the hallway and those framed photographs of Artemis in fog and Artemis beneath summer skies. A wedge of sunlight shone from Frank’s open door and gleamed across the hallway carpet. Hands lost in her hair, Evelyn paced and trembled in the spot that Wallace was supposed to be occupying. Her fear stunk up the hallway—musky and musty and solid.

  “What happened?” I shouted.

  She didn’t speak. Just waggled her head.

  I could hear water splashing and rubber soles squeaking against a wet floor in Frank’s room. My stomach dropped—I didn’t like those sounds, especially made together.

  Impatient, I charged into the room. This bedroom was a poor Italian man’s idea of how a rich Italian man would decorate. It was bright and well lit, gold and glass—from the pillows and tables, chandelier and fixtures, to the furry rug on the floor. Nearly every object boasted a lion or a Baroque cross—the dresser, the closet door, the curtains. If it couldn’t shatter, then it had been mined from the earth, cut from ancient trees or woven on a flaxen-haired damsel’s loom. Frank’s broken eyeglasses and a small case of cigars sat on the carved walnut credenza alongside his Rolex watch and gold cuff links. Clothes were strewn everywhere, flung from the empty piece of luggage in the closet.

  “I told you,” Eddie roared from the bathroom, “get out of the tub!”

  Water splashed. Those rubber soles squeaked.

  I hurried to the bathroom and froze in the doorway. Lavender-scented fog hung in the gold-colored room. Wallace, standing near the toilet, was almost invisible in the steam that had whitened the mirrors.

  Eddie stood over the spa tub’s bubbling water, now tinted pink and brown. Frank was in the tub and Eddie’s enormous hands were wrapped around his neck.

  Seeing that chokehold made every hair on my body bristle. “What the hell are you doing?” I shouted.

  Eddie startled and released Frank from his grasp.

  “You killed him!” Evelyn shrieked from behind me. “You killed him. I saw you.”

  “I found him like this,” Eddie was shouting over the roar of the tub’s frantic bubbling. He was trying to stand, but he kept slipping. “I found him like this and I didn’t touch him until … This is his fault. See, this son of a bitch—”

  “Shut up.” I edged toward the tub, trying not to slip on the wet tile. “We need to get him out.”

  Wallace blushed. “Are you certain you want to…? He’s naked.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m not Evelyn—I’ve seen a dick before.”

  “Can somebody find the clicker and turn this damn thing off?” Eddie shouted.

  I hit the power button on the tub’s inner wall. Calm. Quiet. Oil slicks gathered atop the steaming pink water.

  “Let’s get him out,” I said.

  Wallace didn’t move from his spot near the toilet.

  “Are you gonna help,” I snapped, “or do you plan to just stand there and take notes?”

  Wallace waited a beat, then crept over to the tub.

  Eddie ducked his hands into the water and winced. “It’s hot as hell. We should wait until it cools down some.”

  “Yeah, let’s let it cool down some,” I said. “That way he can be nice and real dead when we pull out his corpse.”

  Eddie growled, then dunked his hands back into the water. He scooped out Frank’s feet as Wallace and I each took one of Frank’s arms. After several minutes of trying to lift slippery, dead weight out of the damn-hot water, we finally succeeded and laid Frank on the bathroom floor. Eddie glared at me. “There. He’s out. Satisfied? Cuz now my hands are frickin’ fried.” He was a big man, an angry man, who now stood over a naked, unmoving black man. 1717, 1817, 1917, today … This was a timeless American image.

  Frank’s nose was swollen as though he’d been hit in the face. Oh. Yeah. He had been hit in the face—in Desi’s room by Eddie’s flying fists. His skin was red and blistering. His feet were bleeding. The skin that had shed now floated, with a cigar also bobbing in the oily water. All of him had bloated like a frog trapped in a kettle of hot water. Just beneath the scent of lavender oil, there was also another smell. Boiled flesh.

  I gagged and tasted stomach acid. Keep it together, keep it together. I took deep breaths, in, out, in, out. My nausea ebbed but my head still spun, and I knew I’d never enjoy the scent of lavender ever again.

  Wallace kneeled beside Frank, then bent over to listen to the man’s chest. He whispered, “His heart’s still beating. It’s faint, but it’s still…” Wallace tilted back Frank’s head to open his airway. Then he placed his open palm against the man’s slippery sternum.

  Eddie placed his hand atop Wallace’s. “Let me do that. I’ve been trained—”

  I slapped Eddie’s hand until he snatched it back and tucked it beneath his armpit. “You’ve done enough,” I spat. “Try calling for help again or go run down to the dock—it’s almost two thirty, and the boat should’ve been here hours ago.”

  Eddie stuck his swatted paw beneath his damp Red Sox cap, then jammed out of the bathroom.

  Wallace placed his left hand on top of his right. “Here we go.” Then he started compressions to Frank’s chest. Push-push-push … another one bites the dust … push-push-push … another one bites the dust.

  I held my breath and prayed that Frank’s heartbeat grew stronger, that he sat up, that he did something other than what he was doing now, which was … dying.

  One hundred beats later, Wallace’s face was glistening with sweat. He stopped, then bent over again to listen to Frank’s chest. This time, he frowned, shook his head, and sat back on the slick bathroom floor. “He’s gone.”

  Wallace, Evelyn, and I sat in silence, for hours, it seemed. Finally, I heard something boom and clap around me. Not thunder. Just my heart pounding at its new speed.

  Wallace scooted away from the body and balled up near the toilet. His wig had slipped farther back on his scalp to show more liver-spotted skin and tufts of white hair that had survived cancer treatment.

  And we sat and said nothing as Frank’s body cooled.

  Footsteps pounded up the stairs and down the hallway. Not enough footsteps, though. There were not enough footsteps. Eddie, just Eddie, slammed into the bathroom. “No boat.”

  “What do you mean, no boat?” I demanded.

  He caught his breath, av
oided looking at Frank down on the tile. “The boat that was supposed to be here isn’t here.”

  Wallace covered his face with his hands and groaned. “No, no, no.”

  “Could it still be on its way?” I asked, hearing panic in my voice.

  Eddie shrugged. “I didn’t see anything. Maybe they’re running late cuz of the storm and all.”

  “Yes, that’s right,” Wallace said, light returning to his face. “It’s sunny skies here, but they may be getting weather again on the mainland right now.”

  I blinked away my tears and squared my shoulders. Swallowed the nausea and bile swirling in my stomach. Forced calm into my voice before asking, “What happened, Eddie? With Frank?”

  Eddie paled, and his eyes went wide, and his hands clasped and opened, clasped and opened. “All’s I know is … he was in the … the tub … and he … I found him … He was trying to … And I … didn’t … I tried to pull him out, but … he was heavy.”

  “He killed Frank,” Evelyn whispered. “He was holding him down in the water. He was killing him—”

  I held out a hand to shush her. It was hard enough trying to listen and think and breathe at the same time while listening to her bleat.

  Eddie shook his head. “No. No, I—”

  “I saw you,” Evelyn brayed. “Your hands were around his—”

  “Wallace,” I said, “what happened?”

  Wallace kept his eyes closed as he said, “I’d just awakened from my nap, and … and … I don’t … I can’t…” He covered his mouth, then hid his face in his lap.

  In tears, Evelyn stood from the wet floor. “Murderers and death all around me. Murderers and death and I’m going to die, too, I know it, it’s coming. Why should I live, why am I here?” She gazed down at me with those blue and gray eyes. “You see me—I am a waste of space, a bag of bones, not good for anything.”

  I frowned at her. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “If God let Frank and Desi and Javier die, then why does He spare me? You said so, you hate me and wish I was never born.”