by Jeff Soloway
I looked again at the bar. Grant was now leaning against a stool, grinning. I thought I heard Jeannette insist that he buy a round for them. Brian was seconding her motion.
I checked the dates attached to the Tusayan locations. What was odd was that the Grand Chalet was listed as a frequent location for the last few days, but only once before in the previous month. That had to be wrong. Victoria had said that Grant had been going back and forth constantly to deal with PR crises—hence Victoria’s availability for meetings with me. But Grant’s phone claimed he had been in New York City all that time, except for this weekend and one other. I had to be missing something.
I tapped back to the previous screen. I saw something I’d overlooked in my initial excitement—the user name listed under Location Services was [email protected]. That wasn’t Grant’s email address. It was Victoria’s.
Now I understood.
Grant had his Location Services set to her phone’s locations, not his. Since they shared an account, he could access them at any time. He could track her in the past as well as in real time, as he had at the Union Square Barnes & Noble. He was jealous, just as she’d said. She might be through with him, but she hadn’t yet extricated herself from their shared cellphone account.
I looked up again. Grant had one arm on Jeannette’s shoulders and the other on Magda’s. Brian was tipping back another shot. Peace was restored. I didn’t have much time.
I now knew that the phone was displaying Victoria’s recently visited locations, not Grant’s. I didn’t know that she’d been to Tusayan before in the past month. Why would she stay at the Best Western and not at the Grand Chalet? I found the dates of her visit to Tusayan—April 12 through April 14.
April 13 was when Jewel died.
Grant was on his way back. He stopped to toss some parting joke back to his new drinking buddies. I hit the lock-screen button on the phone and slid it back on the table, facing away from me.
The morning Jewel died Victoria had been in Tusayan. She had never told me that. She had, in fact, told me the exact opposite of that. She had clearly said that she was in her apartment in New York when she heard the news. She had lied to me.
As soon as Grant sat down, I told him I was drunk enough for one night and left.
Chapter 25
In the lobby, I called Marlene’s room. She had heard of Grayson’s arrest but wouldn’t tell me if she’d spoken to him. She met me by the abandoned concierge desk. No one had seen Pierre in several hours. I could hear the guests left in the lobby muttering about canceled musical performances, garbled restaurant reservations, massive nightly turndown failure. It seemed only the bars were still functioning properly.
“You think you can save him?” Marlene asked. It didn’t occur to her to ask why I would want to. Grayson’s ever-redeeming charms were all too apparent to her.
“I can help him,” I said.
“Thank God! I knew he didn’t hurt you.” I wondered how much she knew about what had happened.
“He tried to hurt me.”
“They made him. They’d kill him for refusing an order. What would you have done in his place?”
“I would have taken a different job.”
“We were planning to leave. We were saving money. Give us a chance! You’ll see. All you have to do is not press charges. It’s easy.”
“I need your help. I want to know who killed Jewel Rider.”
“Not him!”
“I think you’re right. But the rangers disagree.”
“Then tell them.”
“Better to give them some proof. I need to see some security videos from the morning Jewel died. You told me you work the security desk. Do you have a key to the video room?”
“I’m not allowed to let anyone in there.”
“There’s nobody left to stop you.”
She surveyed the lobby. Guests were slipping away, either to the bar or to bed. No concierge, no security guards. The animals mounted above would have stolen away too if they weren’t attached.
“That ranger already saw the security videos,” she said.
“She was looking at the wrong videos.”
She bent her head as she considered, her red hair tumbling over her face, a little avalanche of flames. Why had this man’s terrible decision become her tragedy? Why can’t people cut themselves loose?
She finally looked up. “You promise you’ll help Grayson?”
“I won’t lie for him. They know he fired his gun at me.”
“It was a warning shot! If he was trying to hit you, he would have.” So she had always been led to believe.
“If you help me, I’ll tell them he wasn’t shooting to kill.”
“Tell him he was shooting at the other guy, Miguel. He creeps me out. Or at a snake. Why not? It doesn’t matter to you. What’s the point of ruining our lives?”
“Marlene. Am I really the one ruining your life?”
“You never liked him.” She looked up at the bobcat, perpetually on the verge of snatching its prey. Marlene was the bird.
“Last night,” she said, “after you told me to leave him? I couldn’t sleep for thinking about it. Were you already afraid of him? Did you know what he was going to do?”
“Aren’t you ever afraid of him?”
“I should be. But you know what? He’s more afraid of me. Can you believe that? A man like him! All right, I’ll trust you. I guess I have to. And, hey, Victoria does.”
—
In the back hall, I glanced at myself in the reflection of a dark office window and saw my unusually compliant hair, still a little damp from my recent shower. I had been afraid my dirtiness would turn Victoria off. What if she had been suppressing disgust, not at my odor, but at me? What if everything she had done, even with me, had been for the purpose of protecting Grant? I had always assumed she lived in fear of Grant—of his recklessness and his appetites. But maybe, like Marlene, she couldn’t fear what she’d lived with for so long. Maybe she admired his faults, as we all admire boldness and passion, especially in our lovers. What if sleeping with me had just been a repulsive but necessary sacrifice? It hadn’t seemed like it. Her attitude had been all affection and delight. That’s harder to fake than an orgasm. Or is it? Any actor can fake a delighted attitude. Lots of lovers too, in addition to their orgasms. Haven’t we all, at some point, successfully pretended in bed to be having more fun than we really are? But to lie so consistently, from the very first time we met—surely that was impossible.
We entered an office. Three dead monitors stood in a row.
“I sat here for three months,” Marlene said as we waited for the system to boot. “We have cameras in all the swanky retail stores. But mostly I caught people in the cheapo gift shops. If the lifter was a guest, we’d let him off. If he was some tourist staying down the road, we’d show him the tape and chew him out. But if we caught a local—no mercy. I hate security.” She sat down at the keyboard. “Okay, I need the date, time, and the camera number.”
“April thirteenth, starting early. Let’s say six A.M. It’s the camera by the second-floor fire door on the eastern side of the building, I think. I don’t know the number.”
Marlene called up a plan of the hotel. Together we figured out the camera number. That is, I pointed and she figured.
She typed quickly, with just two fingers of each hand, two little guys clog-dancing. Suddenly I could see, in grainy black and white, Grant’s outdoor smoking terrace and the empty gray sky behind it. She fast-forwarded through actionless frames. Only the sky changed, bleeding color as time leapfrogged forward. At around 6:45 A.M., a man entered the image. Marlene slowed time to almost-normal speed. He was short and wore the overalls of a maintenance worker. He hunched over in the wind and lit a cigarette; sucked on it a few times, the tip flaring white instead of red; flicked it away half-smoked. He scratched his balls vigorously a few times before he ducked back inside. He had no idea the camera was recording him.
Just before 7:3
0 A.M., another man stepped onto the terrace. He wore a dark knit hat tugged down over his ears and most of his forehead. He also lit a cigarette. He leaned over the railing as if he was looking for something in the parking lot below. He straightened, smooshed the cigarette against the underside of the handrail, popped on a pair of sunglasses, and exited the screen—but in a different direction. There was no sound on the video, but in my mind I could hear the banging of his feet against the metal stairs.
“Do you know who that was?” I asked. I wanted her to confirm what I’d seen.
“Grant. What was he doing?”
“What do you mean?”
“When he leaned out over the rail?”
“He was looking for his ride to the Grand Canyon.”
I could even guess who was driving. I hoped I was wrong.
“I need one more thing,” I said.
I can’t,” she said after I explained it.
“You have to,” I said. “Grayson needs you.”
—
Back in the lobby, I texted Victoria:
Grant was lying. He left the hotel the morning Jewel died. I have proof. He was going to the trail to kill her. I’ll tell Doby in the morning.
I went to my room to wait.
Chapter 26
Would she come to plead for her husband? To persuade me that I had misunderstood the evidence? The best would be if she didn’t come at all, just abandoned Grant to his fate. Maybe it was someone else who had driven Grant to the trail. He could suffer for his lies; she didn’t have to.
But if she did come, would I have to tell her that I had discovered her lie as well?
I heard a knock. If only it was Magda, here for the story I’d promised her before. Or even Grant.
But it was Victoria. She shut the door behind her, walked past me without a glance, and sat on the bed. I was unable to move. I remembered how, as I child, I used to try to rip myself out of a nightmare by screaming into it. Being an adult, all I could do was speak.
“He left out the fire door, so he wouldn’t be seen in the lobby. Marlene showed me the video. He left his car in the lot. Someone else came to pick him up and take him to the trail to meet Jewel.”
“Why would Grant meet her on the trail? She was supposed to be meeting Freddie Bridgewater. You showed me the email.” As if she had caught me in a lie.
“It’s easy to fake an email. The map and the notebook page were real, but Grant could have found them easily enough—either in her room or in his. The clever thing is he planted the papers where only I would find them. That way I’d be convinced they were all genuine, including the email. Jewel must have told him where she hid her notes. Something only her boyfriends knew.”
But then I remembered that on the plane I had told Victoria the secret about where Jewel hid her notes. Had Grant learned it from Victoria?
“Why do people trust Grant?” I asked. “Why do you?”
“I’m married to him. I can’t speak for everyone else.”
“It must get exhausting forgiving him every time he lies.” I sat on the desk so I wouldn’t have to sit next to her. There was still a chance she could explain everything away.
“It’s what you do to get through the weeks. You keep forgiving. Everybody does it. God never answers prayers, and people still keep coming back to church, don’t they?”
“Have you lied to me?”
“Not yet.”
I knew she had. But maybe she had left herself a way out. Some lies are always just at the state of becoming. Liars can tell themselves their lies don’t yet count because they plan to own up later and tell the truth. People are so hopeful when it comes to their honesty.
“Grant killed Jewel,” I said.
“Why would he do that? He loved her.”
“He loved you more. Maybe that’s why he did it.”
“He wouldn’t have asked you to come here and investigate if he was the one who killed her.”
“His plan was to blame Freddie Bridgewater for the murder. Everyone knew that Greenbaum’s men were looking for Freddie. Grant figured Freddie would have to either stay underground or come out of hiding and get killed. Grant also knew that Jewel and Freddie were spending lots of time together on some mysterious investigation. He was the perfect scapegoat. He even looked a little like Grant. All Grant had to do was feed the story to me.” And Grant even had an ally who could help him plant it, but I couldn’t say that yet.
Did Victoria guess that I suspected her as well as her husband? I slid off the desk and walked to the window, though I didn’t open the curtain. I didn’t want to see my reflection. Victoria twisted her body to follow my journey across the room. The tendons in her neck bulged, taut and straining. But what if her mind was calm? What if she was just scrolling through her best options for managing me?
I refused to believe it. Even now, I didn’t distrust her completely. For example, I believed that she’d never slept with anyone but Grant and me. I believed that, during certain moments, such as earlier in her room, she loved me. The way her fingers had moved so nervously and so eagerly over me, the way she’d held my face with both hands to kiss me goodbye—no, she couldn’t be so talented a liar.
“But all that stuff about Silver Bell Spring,” she said. “Wasn’t that real?”
“I think the map is. It has Jewel’s writing on it, and probably Freddie’s. It has Silver Bell Spring marked on it.”
“Were they planning to go there or not?”
“They might have been. Meat said Jewel and Freddie had hiked to a lot of springs, to check their water meters. That was one they meant to find.”
“Then how can you be sure she met Grant that day? I don’t believe Grant faked the email and stole the map. So what if you saw him leave out the fire door? He was probably just going for a smoke.”
“Maybe. Marlene’s saved a copy of the video. We’ll show it to Doby and let her decide what to do. It’s enough to at least prove Grant’s been lying to her. It’ll buy her more time for the investigation. She says she has more witnesses coming forward. Now she can put Grant in a lineup.”
“Getting arrested would ruin his career.”
“If he’s guilty, it could ruin his life.”
“In that email you sent this afternoon, just before you went on the trail, you said you had another theory. That Freddie was lying about the meters and that Jewel planned to expose him. That’s why Freddie killed her.”
It had seemed a plausible theory then, but it didn’t explain Grant’s lies or her lie either.
She stood up from the bed. Her hands were fisted at her sides.
“Let’s go tomorrow,” she said. “Just you and me.”
The room’s fake fleshy walls now seemed to close in around me.
“To do what?”
“To see the meter. Find out whether it’s fake or not.”
“Okay. We’ll convince Doby to come.”
“No! Doby works for the Park Service. She’s friends with the people who installed the meters. And she’s always hated Grant. I don’t trust her.”
“I hate Grant. And you trust me.”
“You have a reason—you know him. Come with me down the trail. Let’s find out which story is real before we tell Doby. Don’t you want to know? The Greenbaums might be gone, but someone will take over the Grand Chalet. Developers will keep building. They’ll keep pumping up water the same way. What if this place really is sucking the Grand Canyon dry? No one but us has seen the map, right? No one else knows how to find this meter. We’ll go in the morning.”
“Just the two of us.”
“Yes.”
I felt I’d have to let her face thaw in the desert sun for a week to discover what she was thinking. But how could she miss the distrust in my face? I was sure I wasn’t hiding it.
“Can I at least tell Doby what we’re doing?”
“No. She’ll make us take her along. I told you, I don’t trust her.”
“So nobody but us. Is that really”—
my voice, to my ears, sounded distant, kindly, like an old memory of a favorite teacher—“the safest way?”
“I know what you’re thinking.”
I said nothing. Of course she knew. Of course she had an explanation for her weird proposal. Why hadn’t I asked for it at the start?
“You’re thinking,” she continued, “that I’m giving Grant a chance to run away.”
I looked away to hide my disappointment. “Are you?”
“Even if I was, he wouldn’t get far. He’s not rich like the Greenbaums. But that’s not it, Jacob. I hope the meter’s real. That would mean that Freddie was lying, that Freddie had the reason to kill Jewel, not Grant. I hope it’s true, but I know it might not be. So let’s go tomorrow, you and me.”
“And Doby?”
“When we get back, we’ll go see her. We’ll tell her together.”
A secret trip into the Grand Canyon, just the two of us. I was now reasonably certain. She was planning to murder me.
“You made me promise once never to lie to you,” I said. “I never have.”
“I know. Oh, Jacob, I can’t think of any better idea. Now you think I’m disgusting. You think I’m a murderer’s wife.”
“Will you do one thing for me?”
“Of course.”
“Go back to your room, but stay up for a while. No TV, no phone, no book. For an hour, or as long as you can, as long as you need, do nothing but think about yourself and this plan. Make sure this is really what you want.”
She opened her mouth and shut it again, as if swallowing some angry burst of logic.
“All right,” she said at last.
“It might take more than an hour,” I warned. “It might take all night. That’s okay. Think until you fall asleep.”
“You’re speaking so softly, like you hate me. A little while ago, we were lying together in my room. Now we’re frightened of each other. You don’t trust me. I know why. Whatever happens, I want you to know that what we did made me, for one moment, the happiest I’ve ever been.”