by Mia Thompson
She froze, half in and half out between the two booths, staring up at an overweight lady putting on a two-piece swimsuit that was five sizes too small. The lady looked down at Sapphire, her mouth forming an O. “Can I help you?”
“Er … you mind if I cross your booth to the next?” Sapphire whispered.
“I kind of do, yes,” the lady whispered back. “Why are we whispering?”
“Eh … you see that guy sleeping on the island?”
The lady stood on her toes and peeked out, nodding.
“It’s my…my ex and he is… mean. Very mean. Abusive, some would say and he’s stalking me.”
“You want me to go call security?”
“No…because…because…” Sapphire looked around the booth for inspiration. There was none. “Because, there’s a part of me that still loves him and I don’t want to send him to jail?”
The lady stared at her blankly for a few seconds, then looked as if she was going to break out in tears. “Those damn men; we’ve all been there,” the lady said. “You run, honey. Run.” She gestured toward freedom and one of her boobs popped out.
“Thanks,” Sapphire whispered and crawled to the next empty booth.
At the last dressing room she stood up, opened the door, and snuck out. Aston would still have been able to see her, had he been awake. She slid behind the clerk and took off to the escalators.
* * * * *
“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” Aston shouted as he drove down the freeway slamming his hand on the dashboard.
When he had woken up, he had no idea how much time had passed. He waited for a little while and then decided to knock on her dressing room. “Hey! Are you done soon or what? I’ve had five gallons of coffee and I need to take a leak!”
No answer. He’d knocked again—feared the worst—and opened the door to the empty booth. Had someone snuck by and taken her? He was the lightest sleeper in the world and normally he would have woken up if somebody passed by that close to him. He had even stretched out his legs so no one could get past him. He scanned the booth for any evidence of what might have gone down. Then he saw it. The clothes that she had brought in were hanging on the hooks and the tag of a flower dress was staring back at him with two big letters. XL.
Aston may not have been an expert on women’s sizes, but he knew Sapphire was not an XL; she had never intended to buy any of the clothes. She had duped him.
Aston left the dressing room, got slapped by a crazy fat lady buying a bikini, and went to the parking lot. Sapphire’s car was gone. He cussed out loud at people passing by while he located his car and took off after her, without any idea where she might have gone.
* * * * *
Sapphire got to San Diego in record time. She sped down the 405, barking commands to her voice-controlled phone. Immediately, it googled the McCormick family, then read back the information it found to her, like any good assistant. However much she hated it when Chrissy and her mother pushed new “have-to-have” things on her, she had to admit that the newest iPhone had come in handy more than once.
Soon, the iPhone connected her to Mr. McCormick’s business upon Sapphire’s approval, from where she managed to con his personal secretary into giving Sapphire their home address and did so by pretending she was a scatterbrained art collector who was dealing with Mrs. McCormick but had lost the address. It wasn’t too difficult; the secretary was a blabbermouth and seemed to thrive on other people’s business.
“Did you hear about their daughter?” she asked Sapphire. “It’s terrible; she’s probably dead. They are still hoping. Mrs. McCormick is crushed. Hasn’t gotten out of bed since her daughter went—”
Sapphire hung up. She didn’t want to hear about how the mother felt. She had a hard enough time coping with how she felt. All she wanted to focus on was finding the guy who did this, and in turn finding Shelly before any other body parts arrived.
Around noon, she found the house and parked down the street from it. She scanned the McCormick’s beautiful manor. It wasn’t a mansion like Vivienne’s. It was a home.
The father was still at work and if the secretary was right, the mother was in bed. Now all she had to do was find Shelly’s bedroom and break into it.
Sapphire hunched down and ran along a gray wall leading to the backyard. She scanned the windows, looking for anything that would signal a college girl’s taste. In one window there was a cat staring at her as if it knew her intentions. Another had roses planted along the edge and in the glare of the third she thought she could see a poster of Zac Efron. Not really her age group’s normal taste, but she wasn’t one to judge. The room was on the second floor, and to Sapphire’s delight the window was cracked open.
She found a ladder behind a shed in the backyard and set it up in front of the window, but it was about three feet too short for Sapphire to climb in. She jumped to reach the windowsill, and her legs accidentally kicked the ladder out from under her, crashing to the ground.
She stopped and listened. No voices or footsteps checking on the noise. She unlatched the window and tumbled inside.
The room was bright, covered with High School Musical trinkets, a scent of cookie dough lingered throughout.
Sapphire looked at the size of the bed and then at the easy-bake oven sitting in the corner. Shelly apparently had a little sister.
She peeked out into the hallway and could see another room across from it. Through the open door, she could see high school memorabilia on the wall. Sapphire raised up and tippy-toed across the hall noticing a row of pictures of the happy family framed along the wall. Sapphire stopped at one of Shelly with a sparkling smile standing with her family outside Magic Mountain. Why had he chosen her to get Sapphire’s attention? They had a few things in common, sure. They both came from rich families and they were the same age, same body type. They looked like they could probably be related. But Shelly had something that Sapphire didn’t: a normal life and a family who loved her. A family that Shelly, at least as it appeared in the photos, loved back.
That was when Sapphire realized she wasn’t alone. Mrs. McCormick was in the bedroom just five feet from her, and Sapphire was standing in front of her open door.
She peeked in to make sure Mrs. McCormick was actually sleeping and noticed the tissues…the mountains of tissues throughout the bedroom…and two jars of what she assumed to be sleeping pills on the nightstand.
Sapphire couldn’t even imagine what the mother was going through. The stabbing guilt in her chest grew and she let it, as she deserved to feel every bit of it.
When she got to Shelly’s bedroom, the more she saw of Shelly’s life, the guilt grew stronger. For the most part, her bedroom was like any other rich girl her age. She touched a stack of books on a bookcase. Most of them were law books. One labeled pro bono. Plenty of kids that came from wealthy families wanted to become lawyers. The job came with money, status, and a chance for politics. Someone who chose pro bono was someone who wanted to be a lawyer because they actually wanted to help people.
Wonderful, Sapphire thought almost annoyed. She was not only responsible for the girl being taken away from family and friends, but now she had also deprived the world of a freaking saint.
Sapphire looked at a collage of pictures of Shelly with a group of friends from childhood to college. This girl was loved, happy, and based on a college curriculum filled with advanced classes, smart. She was perfect and she didn’t belong in Sapphire’s world.
Sapphire went through everything, but it led nowhere. Photos, notes, teachers, friends: nothing out of the ordinary. Then she found Shelly’s iPad stuffed in her bookshelf.
She sat down on the bed knowing she should never ever, under any circumstances, get comfortable. Getting comfortable got you caught. Sapphire had never been caught, and she assumed it was because she never got comfortable.
She clicked her way to Shelly’s journal and went to the last posting:
November 18.
Got an A on my final essay. Took Miriam t
o Applebee’s to celebrate and some sister time. Then class, then practice.
Sapphire looked around and saw a cheerleader outfit neatly folded on a cushy chair facing the window to the street.
Didn’t want to go with Emma and family on Sunday, but had no good excuse (Sorry, Emma). After a 45-minute ride, it was boring like I expected. Don’t think her family wanted me there. Only thing her mom said was that I wasn’t Catholic, since I wasn’t born Catholic.
Blah, blah, blah…something about a smelly guy sitting next to her. Sapphire scrolled to the end.
Short conversation with the father or whatever he’s called. Pretty nice. Asked if I liked it. I said no—didn’t want to lie to a holy person. He said well it’s a boring crowd and laughed. Father O’Riley was actually kind of funny.
Sapphire stared at the page. Father O’Riley. There were at least five billion Father O’Rileys in the Catholic community; it couldn’t be hers. It couldn’t. She had come to San Diego to search for the common denominator between herself and Shelly. Now that she found one, she wanted nothing more than to look away.
She did some quick math in her head. Her Father O’Riley was about two hours away from L.A. and Shelly’s was forty-five minutes away from San Diego. Their churches would be in the same town. Most small towns did not have two Father O’Rileys, no matter how many Catholics they had. Then there was the angel. The angel sent to her in the severed hand.
The iPad slipped out of Sapphire’s hands and hit the floor.
“Miriam? Is that you?”
Shit! Sapphire leaped toward the window. As she opened it, she heard Mrs. McCormick getting out of bed.
In her peripheral vision, she could see Mrs. McCormick come out of her bedroom and stop in the hallway.
“Shelly!” Mrs. McCormick panted.
Sapphire scampered out the window without looking back.
She could hear Mrs. McCormick running toward the window. Luckily, Shelly’s room was right above the garage and Sapphire could use the roof to get down.
“Shelly! Come home!”
Sapphire’s feet hit the ground and she took off. Mrs. McCormick’s sobs followed Sapphire to her car, even after she was out of earshot.
* * * * *
She didn’t even notice that her fists had started bleeding as she pounded on the door. She was too pissed, too filled with rage.
“Come out! Open the door!” Sapphire backed away from the church door, out of breath and with a throbbing migraine. She had been clenching her jaw since she left San Diego.
“Where is she!? Where are you keeping her!?”
She was furious. Furious with Father O’Riley. Furious at herself for putting everything at risk, including an innocent person’s life, by opening her mouth to anyone. She kicked on the door and could hear it echo throughout the vast space inside.
She grabbed a broom and went for the window just as an old man, the janitor, opened the door. He looked at her with big eyes.
“What on earth are you doing?”
Sapphire froze broom in hand and caught her breath. “I need to see the father.”
“Well, he usually doesn’t respond well to being struck with a broom, so why don’t you put it down.”
Sapphire dropped the broom on the ground. “It’s an emergency.”
“Well, the church is closed. The father, however, you can find at home.”
“Where does he live?” Sapphire asked so rapidly she was surprised the words came out at all.
The janitor raised his eyebrows and tilted his head slightly. “Not his home, your home. Pray from wherever you would like and he will hear you.”
“Not that father, your father!”
“My father’s dead.”
“Father O’Riley!”
“Ooooh. That father is on vacation.”
“Where?”
“He’s at a monastery. Just left a few hours ago.”
“What monastery?”
“He didn’t say.”
“Fuck! Fuck! Jesus Christ, son of a…”
The janitor looked at her, snorted, and closed the thick doors shut.
“No, wait! I’m sorry! I’m…” Sapphire leaned her head against the closed door.
Of course it was Father O’Riley. He hated what she did. He knew what she did, and he was bound by his position not to expose her. This was what he had done to stop her, to teach her some sort of lesson.
She had no recollection of the drive home whatsoever. Her mind was in a complete haze.
It was over. Father O’Riley took a vacation, which meant one of two things; he had killed her and took a vacation to take care of the body, or he was moving her somewhere to finish her off. Without a doubt, it would be someplace that was sacred to him.
Either way, Sapphire was too late and the realization stole her breath away, sending her into hyperventilation.
In the middle of trying to find a bag to breathe into, Sapphire’s phone rang; it was Julia. She let it go to voicemail and played the message on speaker, hearing an annoyed Julia say they were waiting for her at the restaurant.
As soon as the initial spike of the profuse panic settled down and became more of an intermediate panic, Sapphire was able to take a deep breath and turn her car around.
Chapter 13
Sapphire veered right on Olive, past Walt Disney Pictures’ humongous studio as she made her way toward downtown.
Today the drive to downtown Burbank annoyed her. The choice of restaurant annoyed her. It wasn’t Julia’s favorite, but Antonio’s. Julia didn’t even like sushi. She liked burgers and greasy Chinese food; ironically she wasn’t big on Mexican food.
When Sapphire walked into Tomo Sushi, the chef raised his knife straight into the air and smiled.
“Welcoooome!” He held the smile and the knife, waiting for her to reply. She didn’t.
She scanned the restaurant for Julia’s face. The place was small and intimate. The walls were caked with taped-up dollar bills featuring handwritten greetings from happy customers: Ginger+Tom=Love, Tomo Rocks, Happy B-day Chuck.
Julia was smiling at Sapphire, waving her over to the table at the far end, though Sapphire made no effort to rush over there.
Antonio looked like a normal guy: average height, average built, average face. Nothing special about him as far as Sapphire could tell. In fact, he was kind of un-special-looking. Perhaps Julia needed glasses. Sapphire, however, didn’t need glasses; her vision was twenty-twenty.
Little pieces of white napkin were spread all over the table…which meant Julia had been ripping them apart…which meant Julia was nervous.
“I ordered a bottle of sake,” Julia said as Sapphire sat down. “Es okay, no? Something else? Wine? Cerveza?”
“It’s fine, Corazon,” Antonio said, his accent almost American, then placed a calming hand on top of Julia’s. Her shoulders sank down a bit, and her body lowered a little more comfortably into the seat.
Antonio turned to Sapphire, gave her a shiny smile as he pushed out his chair, and stood halfway reaching his hand out.
“Sapphire,” he said overly delighted. “You’re all Julia ever talks about. It is so nice to finally meet you. Put a face to the name.”
Screw you. “Likewise.”
Sapphire smacked her hands together, impatient to get the night over with. “Should we order?” She waved at the waiter.
“Antonio already ordered; he says we have to try the special rolls,” Julia said and shook her head to the confused waiter.
“Hmmm.” Sapphire raised her eyebrows disapprovingly and pretended to scan the menu.
“Is something wrong?” Antonio looked from Sapphire to Julia, unsure.
“No. Nothing. I just thought men stopped ordering for women in 1920 when we got the right to vote. That’s all.”
Julia’s smile faded drastically and she looked over at Antonio. Antonio, however, broke out in laughter. He sounded like a horse when he laughed. Did Julia really want to deal with a man for the rest of her lif
e whose laugh sounded like a horse?
Antonio wiped a laugh tear from his cheek.
And he’s a crier.
The waiter put down a small bottle of cold sake along with the rolls. Julia went for the sake first. She poured herself a shot and took it in record time.
“So, Sapphire, I heard you like Britney Spears,” Antonio said.
Sapphire looked over at Julia and frowned. Yes, she had pretended to like Britney Spears…when she was ten. It seemed like the correct thing to do. Ever since then, every Christmas and every birthday, Julia would get her the latest CD or a poster. Even at the age of sixteen and well past the Britney Spears stage, Sapphire would smile and fake a happy thank you.
“I do grip work at the studios and last week we had her on a show.”
Antonio pulled up a small crumpled up napkin with coffee stains on it and handed it to Sapphire.
To Sapphire, Love Britney Spears
“Sorry about the coffee stains. I didn’t expect to run into her and when I did, I had to wrestle my way through four bodyguards to get to her. The napkin was all I had.”
Sapphire didn’t want to like him, but the gesture was so sweet and he was so excited about it that she couldn’t hate him a hundred percent anymore. The hate meter dropped to a solid ninety-two percent. The look on Julia’s face told her that she hoped the autograph would seal the deal.
“Thank you. It’s great,” Sapphire said reluctantly.
The rolls were good…really good. Probably because Sapphire hadn’t had time to eat that day. Also, it was nice to sit there having dinner and pretend like she wasn’t responsible for the torture and death of an innocent woman. Antonio ordered a second set of rolls, a few pieces of sushi, and sashimi. Julia turned to Sapphire and smiled as the food arrived.
“Sapphire, we have something to ask you.”
“Mhmm,” Sapphire said, cramming a piece of squid into her mouth.