An Inconvenient Woman
Page 21
“Is there something else, Sloan?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“Not at the moment.”
“Well, don’t worry, we’ll bring Simon Miller to justice,” she assured me.
I wanted to give Claire the same confident assurance. I reached for my phone and dialed her number.
Claire
AS I DRIVE, I think of that final night with Melody. I see her once again on the rainy deck, peering out over the darkly churning water as I approach her. I hear our conversation, my last words to her still the most searing: I don’t believe you.
The circle is complete.
I didn’t believe Melody, and now no one believes me.
Except for Sloan.
Which no longer matters.
It’s up to me. Only me.
I compare my life to Emma’s.
She is a child, with everything before her. I am forty-four. Childless. Alone. The life I’ll lose is nothing compared to the one she’ll lose if I don’t act.
I look all around. Everything is distant and silent. Los Angeles has been reduced to a static background, like a projection in film, a mere image on a screen.
Time, too, has stopped. It’s as surreal as a Dali painting. All the clocks have melted.
My cell phone rings, but I don’t answer it.
I’m no longer just a woman. I’m a bullet hurtling toward its target.
Sloan
WHEN CLAIRE DIDN’T answer her phone, I looked at my GPS.
She was on the road, as she usually was, driving from one client to another.
But as I followed the blinking light that located her on the LA street map and watched as she made one turn, then another, I saw exactly where she was headed.
Simon’s house.
I snapped up my phone and called her again.
No answer.
I looked at the GPS map.
She was only a few miles away.
Simon had mentioned a gun. I immediately visualized it in her hand.
I knew I’d put it there with my talk of murder. She was following a direction I’d given her.
I glanced again at the GPS. There was no doubt that she was trained on Simon. I had no time to think or plan.
I rushed for my car. Stop, Claire, I thought desperately. You don’t have to do this.
Claire
MY CELL RINGS again as I pull into the driveway of Simon’s house.
I have not been here since my breakdown.
It looks the same as it did that day.
I tuck the pistol into my handbag and head for the door.
On my way, I envision myself reaching for it, firing it, Simon’s body stumbling backward and falling heavily in the foyer.
I cannot imagine anything after that.
I arrive at the door and ring the bell.
When I hear footsteps, I place my finger on the trigger.
I’ll say nothing to Simon.
I won’t give him time to say anything to me.
The instant the door opens, I’ll kill him.
The footsteps halt.
He is just behind the door.
I hear the latch.
The door opens.
Sloan
I CHECKED CLAIRE’S tracking.
The little blue ball that was her car had stopped.
She was at Simon’s house.
I swerved to the right and weaved through the traffic, honking madly as I pumped the accelerator.
It was LA. Cars were everywhere, blocking every route, clogging the veins of the city.
My only weapon was my horn, so I pounded it mercilessly, as if expecting Claire to hear it and realize that I was coming to save her from doing something no longer necessary.
I heard Candace’s voice again, assuring me that Simon Miller was going down. It was over for Claire. Her long nightmare.
I picked up the phone and dialed her number again.
Claire
MY PHONE RINGS, but Charlotte gives no indication that she hears it.
She stands rigidly at the door.
“Hello, Claire,” she says.
Her voice is steady, without fear. There is none of the panic or anger of our last meeting. She makes no move to close the door.
“I came to see Simon,” I tell her. “I’ll come back another time.”
With that, I turn to leave.
“He’s here,” Charlotte says.
She steps from the doorway to let me in.
“Come in.”
There is a strange, indecipherable look in her eyes.
I shake my head. “No, I’ll—”
“Come in, Claire,” she interrupts commandingly.
I fear I’m the victim of an ambush she and Simon have set for me.
I reach into my bag and grip the pistol.
“He’s waiting for you,” she says as she motions me inside.
My phone rings again as she escorts me down the corridor.
I expect it to stop after a few rings, but it’s still pealing through the air when we enter Simon’s office.
Sloan
THERE WAS STILL no answer.
I saw a break in the traffic and sped forward.
I was in Simon’s neighborhood now. Wider streets. Less traffic.
I pressed down hard on the accelerator and my car bolted forward like a racing horse at the bell.
I glanced at the GPS.
Arrival time: 10:37.
It was 10:34.
Claire
“THERE’S SIMON,” CHARLOTTE says as I follow her into the office.
I expect to see him seated grandly behind his large mahogany desk, but instead Charlotte nods toward the floor.
Simon is lying on his back, like a body floating faceup in water. There is a hole on the right side of his head, and his hair is soaked in blood.
Charlotte gives me a few seconds to stare at Simon’s body.
“Something was wrong with Emma,” she begins. “I noticed it when he brought her home last night.”
She folds her arms over her chest and presses back against the wall as if in need of its support.
“I asked her about it, and she told me that Simon made her feel . . . uncomfortable.”
She has been staring at Simon’s body. Now her gaze drifts over to me.
“I came here to talk to him,” she continues. “He said it was all in Emma’s mind and I was stupid to listen to her.”
She draws in a deep, trembling breath.
“ ‘You’re just like Claire,’ he said. ‘As insane as she is.’ ”
Her eyes drift to Simon.
“He took a gun out of his desk. This was for our protection, he told me. Because he was afraid of what you might do.”
“What I might do?”
Charlotte nods. “To me or Emma.”
Her voice goes cold.
“He took the pistol and put it in my hand and pressed the barrel against the side of his head. He said, ‘If you believe your daughter, shoot me.’ ”
This was the Simon I knew. Always the star of his own big show.
He tightened his grip on my hand and pressed the barrel of the pistol even harder against his head. ‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘Shoot.’ ”
I can see Simon enjoying every minute of it.
“He put my finger on the trigger,” Charlotte goes on. “He said, ‘Well, do you believe Emma or not?’ ”
She stares at me plaintively. “I couldn’t move.”
I imagined a triumphant glint in Simon’s eyes. He was winning, and he’d known it.
“When I didn’t move, he said to me, ‘Don’t ever accuse me again, Charlotte.’ His voice was really hard. He was a king giving orders to a servant. ‘And don’t ever stand in my way. Because I always get what I want.’ ” She looks at me appreciatively.
“That’s when I remembered the last thing you said to me, Claire: ‘Believe your daughter.’ ”
She glances at Simon’s body before her gaze returns to me.
“I believed my daughter. I pulled the trigger.”
For the first time Charlotte seems almost to crumble.
“I don’t know what to do now, Claire.”
I’m about to console her when I hear another voice.
“I do.”
I turn toward the door. Sloan is standing there. It’s clear she’s heard everything.
“I know what to do,” she tells us. “You can both leave. Don’t ever talk about this to anybody. And never contact me again.”
She looks at me directly.
“Goodbye, Claire,” is all she says.
THREE MONTHS LATER
Claire
MY FIRST CLIENT of the day is a retired engineer named Mike. Both his parents were victims of Alzheimer’s. By the time they were in their midsixties, they no longer recognized him. Mike is now fifty-nine and fears that he will soon be stricken, too. He has read that learning a language reduces the chances of contracting the disease.
He wishes only to memorize, so my lesson is designed to test and extend this particular skill. I say a French word and give him the English meaning. I do this five times, then test him. When he gets all five, he breaks out in a huge smile.
After Mike there is another and another, each a separate beat in the rhythm of my day.
By early evening I am back at home. I turn on the television. I have no interest in watching the Femme Fatale Network anymore. I no longer have anything in common with those movie-mayhem women.
I live in a very different world.
More open to possibility.
A world without Simon.
It’s a life composed of nothing more dramatic than the carrying out of routine chores—preparing lessons, tidying up, cooking. I teach my clients, have lunch with Ava and dinner with Ray and Jade.
It’s a simple life.
Precious.
I sometimes have the impression that I am living in the epilogue of my own story, quietly observing the final tying-up of its various threads.
Three days after Simon’s death, the girl in the water was identified as Lily Robinson. An autopsy revealed that she’d died of a drug overdose. Vicki Page immediately came under suspicion, because by then Destiny was talking to the police, telling them that she’d taken Lily to Lolitaville. She’d also seen Lily’s painting on the wall near McDuffy’s. Her clear suggestion was that Vicki had ordered Lily’s murder because she’d seen it, too. In response, the authorities put the squeeze on a number of Vicki’s hired thugs. One of them confessed.
Lily was fifteen years old, an orphan. There were no known relatives. Her paintings now hang in the foyer of my house.
I don’t see Destiny anymore, because she is in some version of protective custody. She was granted immunity in exchange for her testimony against Vicki Page, who has since been charged with Lily’s murder as well as child trafficking. She is awaiting trial in the Los Angeles jail. Destiny has identified two men as having gone to Lolitaville, but Vicki, because she is facing life imprisonment and is now angling for a lighter sentence, has named many more. Almost by the week others are arrested. Doctors. Judges. Actors. Producers.
Because several LAPD cops were connected to Vicki’s desert brothel, the press has dubbed the entire matter the “Lolitaville scandal.” Several police officials have been exposed for protecting it over many years. The most prominent of them is Monroe Wilson.
I saw Sloan only once after Simon’s death.
By accident.
I was with Jade on Santa Monica Pier, waiting for Ray to join us.
Sloan was at the far end, leaning on the railing, peering out to sea. What a lonely warrior she seemed. I wanted to go up to her, but I remembered her stern warning and turned away.
Goodbye, Sloan.
The small exhibition Ray gave of Lily’s work opened to a modest group of gallery regulars, along with a few of his friends.
Ava came, as did a couple of people I’d met during my time at the auction house.
The only real surprise was Charlotte, who wisely kept her distance most of the time, though just before leaving she’d felt it safe to approach me.
“Emma’s doing fine,” she said. “I wanted you to know that.”
We gave no indication of the secret we shared.
“Are you okay, Claire?” she asked.
“Yes, I am.”
I thought of the “suicide” Sloan had competently staged, removing the surveillance tapes, arranging Simon’s body, placing the pistol at just the right distance and angle for a self-inflicted wound, even providing the motive, which was that Sloan, who was, after all, Simon’s sin eater, had informed him of an impending investigation into a desert brothel known as Lolitaville. Simon had reacted calmly, she’d told the first LAPD cops to arrive, and so she’d left him in his office, quite convinced that he was fine. She’d nearly reached the front door of the house when she’d heard the shot, then rushed back to find him dead. As a story, it was airtight.
Toward the end of the evening, I walked into the room where Ray had hung Lily’s paintings. The sign at the entrance read: LILY’S WORLD. The paintings were framed in black and illuminated by a subdued light.
Ray came in and stood beside me. “Do you like the exhibit?” he asked.
“It’s beautiful, Ray.”
“Do you want to have dinner tonight?”
“I’d love to.”
“Okay, I’ll pick you up after I close the gallery.”
“Is that too late to bring Jade?”
Ray shook his head. “No, it’ll be the three of us.”
The three of us.
How simple it now seems—happiness.
After leaving the gallery, I drove back home with the windows open. The warm rush of night air reminded me of an art festival I’d come across several years before. I’d noticed the portrait of a woman. She had been bound, but she was pulling free of her chains. Her head was tilted skyward and her arms were outstretched, feathers sprouting from them, becoming wings, lifting her from struggle, betrayal, doubt, pain, fear.
If it were that easy, we would all be soaring birds.
But just because it isn’t easy doesn’t mean it can’t be done.
Copyright © 2020 by Stéphanie Buelens. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address Scarlet, 58 Warren Street, New York, NY 10007.
Distributed by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
FIRST EDITION
Interior design by Charles Perry
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020902664
ISBN 978-1-61316-190-6
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