“Odessa, haven’t you learned anything from me?” she asked, shaking her head. “Don’t waste money on silly things.” She stuck out one leg and wiggled her foot. “What’s the point in having feet if you don’t use ’em?” Without missing a beat, she scooped her belongings on the bathroom counter into her hat and crammed it all into the aptly named hobo bag slung across her body.
She leaned in for a quick hug. “See ya at work,” she said. She dropped her set of keys on the counter.
Then she was gone.
“Your friend Izzy seems nice,” Aunt Melanie said, stifling a yawn, as soon as the door shut behind my friend. “It’s such a comfort being back in my own home after so many weeks of hotel rooms and train sleeper cars.”
“I’m sure,” I replied, perching on the low coffee table in front of the couch. “And I’d love to hear all about your adventures. Starting with what happened to your foot.”
“It’s silly. We were walking around Stonehenge right before sunrise, and I took a bad step. The doctor said it’s just a hairline fracture, but I’d rather see my own physician and get a second opinion.”
“Personally, considering England’s socialized health care, I would have stayed there.” Then again, if my aunt could afford this enormous apartment in an upscale building, paying insurance premiums and huge co-pays was probably the least of her worries. “I’m sorry you got hurt. Can I get you anything? Something for the pain maybe?”
“I wouldn’t turn down an aspirin. Oh, and a package arrived for you.” She gestured at a box on the coffee table. It had the familiar logo of a retail giant emblazoned across the cardboard, but I didn’t remember ordering anything.
I jumped up and prepared a glass of water, disappointed in my poor manners for not offering it sooner. I handed it to her, along with a bottle of aspirin. “I wish you’d given me a heads-up that you were coming home early. It would have caused less . . .” I tried to think of the best word for my aunt hobbling around on a walking cast, pinning my best friend to the wall with her crutch. “. . . drama.”
“What do you mean? I texted you last night. Or was it today? I’ve never been good with time zones.”
“I didn’t get a text,” I replied.
She dug her phone out of her carry-on bag, which rested beside me on the coffee table, and tapped through the screens. “Huh, look at that, I never pressed send. Sorry. Then again, the painkillers they gave me at the hospital were quite a wonder. I wouldn’t have been surprised if I’d gotten on the wrong plane and ended up in Queensland or something.”
Aunt Melanie shifted slightly so she was lying across the couch cushions. “A little help, please?”
I got up and helped her arrange the heavy boot on a stack of pillows at the end of the couch. “Can I get you something to eat? We’ve got some leftover vegan pizza on cauliflower crust in the fridge, and I’ve got a flyer for a new Thai place that just opened down the street.” When she didn’t answer, I glanced at my aunt. She was already sound asleep.
At the end of her bed there was an antique wooden trunk that held extra linens. I pulled out a thin blanket and spread it across her, careful not to wake her before turning off the lights and retreating to her bedroom.
Now what was I supposed to do? I wasn’t sure if I should sleep in her bed while my aunt, my elder at that, snored softly on her couch, but if she’d wanted the bedroom she would have crashed there instead. Besides, no matter that my aunt had lived in New York since fleeing Louisiana a few days after high school graduation, she still had Southern manners instilled in her. By that logic, I was a guest and guests don’t sleep on the couch. It was the same reason that Izzy had stayed in the bedroom while she was here.
I grabbed the package off the coffee table and went to the bedroom, closing the door as softly as I could. I kicked off my shoes and sat cross-legged in the middle of her soft mattress, where I could examine the box. The original packing tape had been cut and resealed with clear plastic tape, and the return address was Piney Island, Louisiana.
My mom hadn’t been quite as enthusiastic as I was about me coming to New York. She was afraid the big city would chew me up and spit me out. Or, more likely, she was afraid it would seduce me like it had her sister Melanie and I’d never come home again. We talked on the phone or Skype at least once a week. But even when I’d first arrived, and I was nervous and homesick, she hadn’t sent any care packages.
Until now.
I peeled back the tape and opened the box. Inside a Walmart bag was a disposable food container, which held the broken remains of what looked like a dozen snickerdoodle cookies. I picked up one of the larger crumbs and popped it into my mouth. It was still soft and delicious.
Besides the container of cookies, there was a local Piney Island newspaper. I flipped through it, wondering if there was a story she wanted me to read, or if she just wanted me to get nostalgic. In the back, she’d circled several Help Wanted ads in red. That’s my mom for you, real subtle. She knew as well as I did that my old job at the Crawdad Shack was still waiting for me, but she thought I was wasting my potential. Sure, waiting tables didn’t pay all that well, but I enjoyed it, and shouldn’t that matter, too?
Underneath the paper was a shoebox. It wasn’t any old shoebox, though. It was at least twice as big as a sneaker box, and was well-worn around the edges. I peeled the box open and nearly squealed in delight. Cowboy boots! One of my own pair, black and silver leather, perfectly broken in, and as comfortable as they got.
Ever since I’d lost my boots—the only pair of shoes I’d brought to Brooklyn—in an unfortunate seagull incident a few weeks ago, I’d been trying to convince myself that a pair of secondhand orthopedic loafers was a fair substitute. Sure, they were comfy, but they weren’t my style. Cowboy boots were. I hugged my boots to my chest.
Then a thought struck me. I’d always known that my adventure in the big city had an expiration date, but I’d planned on being in Williamsburg for another six weeks. How would that work now that Aunt Melanie was back early? I couldn’t stay on her sofa indefinitely. She didn’t need an apartment sitter or cat sitter anymore, and sooner or later she was going to want her privacy back.
Unlike Izzy, I didn’t have an alternate place to stay.
How many things had I not done yet, thinking I had plenty of time in Brooklyn? I’d eaten at almost every food truck, but there was a new one every day. I’d spent a day at the Met and had a picnic lunch in Central Park. I’d toured the observation deck of the Empire State Building. I’d eaten real knishes at Katz’s, ordered New York–style pizza by the slice, and even had an authentic Coney Island hot dog on the boardwalk. I got to experience outdoor concerts, went to gallery openings, and spent Saturdays at the Brooklyn Flea. I’d even faced my fears and ridden my aunt’s bike across the Williamsburg Bridge and back.
But that was just the tip of the iceberg that New York had to offer.
Just thinking about leaving my friends at the café, a lump formed in my throat. Sure, I’d been a little homesick when I first arrived. It hadn’t helped that I was a complete fish out of water. But now I had friends and, to my surprise, I didn’t want to leave.
I didn’t want to go back to living with my parents.
I didn’t want to go back to the tiny town I’d grown up in, only to watch my friends move away and start lives elsewhere.
I didn’t want to go back to slinging jambalaya and Coors Light at the Crawdad Shack.
I didn’t want to go back.
Period.
8
Melanie Tuckerman
60 Min
Guess who’s home? Long story, but I’m back in NYC early. Amazing trip, can’t wait to catch up with everyone. Got lots of pix (will post later!) and inspiration. Gained at least 10 pounds in Paris—OMG the bread! The cheese! THE WINE! Oh, and broke my foot, so there’s that.
I’d never personally experienced
jet lag. I’d always wanted to travel the world, but until a few months ago when my aunt had called and invited me to apartment-sit for her in Brooklyn, the farthest I’d ever gotten from Piney Island, Louisiana, was a little over two hundred miles to Dallas. Whether it was from the jet lag, painkillers, or sheer exhaustion, Aunt Melanie was still sound asleep on the couch when the sun streaming in through the bedroom curtains woke me.
Sunrises and sunsets in New York were my favorite, when the vivid colors reflected off literal miles of glass and steel. Don’t get me wrong, Manhattan at night was spectacular, especially from the Williamsburg side of the river, but all the man-made light shows in the world couldn’t hold a candle to nature.
Change my mind.
Not that I was a huge fan of being up this early, but as long as I was awake, I might as well appreciate it.
Normally, I would brew a cup of coffee and take it to the balcony, enjoying a rare moment of peace and quiet before the rest of the city woke up and resumed the constant cacophony. This morning, I didn’t want to disturb my aunt, so I slipped in and out of the bathroom, fed the cat, and headed out without waking her.
On weekends, Untapped Books & Café opened at eight but I wasn’t scheduled until eleven, so I had time to kill. Sure, I could go into the café and sweet-talk myself into a free plate of Parker’s cinnamon apple French toast, but the moment I stepped foot inside, Todd would likely put me to work rewiring the kitchen or scrubbing the dumpsters out back or something. Unpaid, of course.
Instead, I bought a cup of coffee at the corner bodega and took my time strolling in the shadow of graffiti-covered buildings. Although in Williamsburg, graffiti was street art, and some of it was spectacular.
The day was going to be a scorcher. The sun beat down on dirty sidewalks without so much as a hint of a breeze. Overhead, the whir of dozens of air-conditioning units hanging from windows sounded like a chorus of drones. A bicyclist whizzed past, fearlessly weaving in between traffic and cars parked along the curb. Horns beeped and somewhere in the distance an ambulance siren whined. The cowboy boots my mom had mailed me made satisfying clunks on the pavement as I walked.
New York was dirty. Loud. Dirty. Crowded. Dirty. Expensive. Did I mention dirty?
But there was nowhere on Earth I would rather be.
I paused at the corner long enough to gauge a break in traffic and then dashed across the street. The light turned red, and a blue and white NYPD car blurted its horn and sped through the intersection anyway. Then the cruiser made an illegal U-turn in the middle of the street and angled over to the curb several feet in front of me.
The passenger-side window slid down and I heard someone say, “Odessa, jump in.”
I bent down to look through the open window and recognized Detective Castillo behind the wheel. “Vincent, what’s going on?” I asked.
He made a vague gesture at the window. “The AC in this thing is barely clinging to life support as it is, get in before it gives up the ghost.”
I did as he said. Or was it ordered? It was hard to tell. Castillo was a friend, but he was also a cop. Sometimes I wasn’t sure where to draw the line between the two sides of him.
“Seat belt,” he said as he pushed a button and my window slid up with a faint whine. He hadn’t been kidding about the air conditioner. It was, at best, a few degrees cooler in the car than out, and it was still early.
“What’s with the blue and white?” I asked. Usually, he drove a rotating selection of generic, dark-colored, American-made sedans that came equipped with four extra antennas and dashboard lights. Frankly, I wasn’t sure who they thought they were fooling. Unmarked cop cars might as well be more visible than an on-duty yellow cab.
“It’s what was available,” he replied. A grinding noise came from the dash and the tepid air coming out of the vents slowed to a trickle. “You seen Izzy this morning? She’s not returning my calls.”
“I thought she stayed with you last night,” I said.
He shook his head.
“When I see her, I’ll let her know you’re looking for her,” I promised, trying to not let it show that I was worried about her. If she wasn’t at my aunt’s place or Castillo’s, where had she slept? I knew that Izzy was a big girl. She could take care of herself better than anyone else I’d ever met, but her idea of home and mine varied wildly. It wouldn’t surprise me if she had a hotel room at Four Seasons or was setting up camp under a bridge somewhere. Either option was equally likely, and in Izzy’s eyes, equally acceptable.
“You do that. I have some questions for her.”
“About Vickie Marsh?” I asked.
He nodded curtly. “Inconsistencies have cropped up, and I need Izzy to clarify a few things.”
“Inconsistencies? Like what?”
“Just give her the message.” He pulled over behind a double-parked delivery van. “It’s important.”
“Got it,” I said.
“Be careful, okay?”
“I’m ducky,” I insisted. “I know how to take care of myself.” That much was an exaggeration, at best. But I was getting there, and that had to count for something.
“I just need to know you’re staying out of trouble.”
“You don’t have to worry about me,” I said, and let myself out of the car, careful not to slam the door. I was half tempted to ask for a ride for a few more blocks, but considering the state of the cruiser, I wasn’t sure it would have made it.
As I trudged toward the river, I called Izzy. Her phone went to voicemail. Not a surprise. No one I knew used cell phones for phone calls anymore. I hung up and sent her a text message to check in instead of leaving a voicemail.
My phone vibrated and I glanced at my screen, expecting a response from Izzy. Instead, it was a text from an unknown number. Hey, beautiful. I blocked the creep and kept walking.
I ended up at one of my favorite hidden gems in Brooklyn. Nearby Domino Park drew tourists and families with its manicured grass, delicious taco bar, and well-maintained fountains. It had a great dog run and several picturesque Instagram spots. It was also crowded, even at this early hour, especially on weekends. But just a block away was a smaller park also along the river, tucked away behind a copse of trees.
Little more than a strip of land not much bigger than a suburban backyard, Grand Ferry Park consisted of a handful of benches overlooking enormous boulders that separated Brooklyn from the river. This morning, I was alone except for a man tossing a tennis ball to an off-leash Labrador retriever near the water’s edge.
I chose a bench in the shade and sat cross-legged on it, sipping my coffee while I watched the river slap against the rocks. There was a podcast on my phone calling my name, but I wasn’t feeling it this morning. Instead, I listened to the sounds of the city, somewhat muffled by the park, and marveled at the view of the Manhattan skyline rising up from the brownstones of the Lower East Side. Or maybe it was Alphabet City. The lines between the neighborhoods were blurry from this side of the river.
I didn’t want to think about all the nooks and crannies of New York I would never get a chance to explore now and instead wondered what Castillo wanted from Izzy. He said there were inconsistencies. Izzy might have left something out—by accident, of course—but she wouldn’t have lied. Something new must have come to light since yesterday. I wondered what it was, not that Castillo would share such things with me.
Vickie and Izzy had gone to high school together, so that meant we were all about the same age. It was hard to wrap my head around the fact that Vickie had a successful career and I was still waiting tables. Then again, I was still able to enjoy a relaxing morning in my favorite park and Vickie would never again have that pleasure.
It wasn’t fair.
Any time a life was cut short, it was tragic. But when she couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, it was somehow worse. Even if she hadn’t been a particularly ni
ce person.
I barely knew Vickie. I’d met her, what, an hour? less? before she was murdered. To be completely honest, I didn’t even know that I liked her that much. She was kinda rude to me. Bossy. Stuck-up.
Behind me, the now-familiar sound of a siren sped along the street. It was such a constant noise that it almost faded into the background. There were always emergency vehicles racing here or there. Fire trucks. Ambulances. Police cruisers.
Contrary to what I’d thought before arriving—I’d assumed that all of New York City was a hotbed of crime and murder—Williamsburg was relatively safe. It actually had a crime rate much lower than the national average. Even so, with so many people, that still equated to some danger, mostly from pickpockets and fender benders. Believe it or not, the murder rate in Williamsburg was close to null despite being a bustling neighborhood just a stone’s throw from Manhattan.
Sure, there was the Williamsburg Slasher, but that had been the exception, not the rule. I’d followed his arrest, trial, and conviction closely on my favorite true crime blog. While the case gave me a serious case of the shivers, I knew the Williamsburg Slasher wouldn’t be causing anyone trouble ever again.
Most deaths in this neighborhood were the more banal car-vs-pedestrian variety, or plain old age. But in the last two months, I’d met not just one but now two murder victims.
Talk about rotten luck.
I knew the full attention of the Brooklyn police force would be focused on solving Vickie’s murder. Okay, maybe not the full force. But Detective Vincent Castillo, certainly. And he had a ton of resources at his disposal. A lot more than I did.
He certainly didn’t need my help.
And yet, I couldn’t seem to stop thinking about Vickie. She didn’t deserve to die, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had missed something.
None of us were in the library when she was killed, at least as far as I knew. Izzy and I were in the kitchen, along with Gennifer. Or maybe it was Amanda? I’d been concentrating on finding clues, not who was where. Marlie had lagged behind the whole time, so I assumed she was in the billiard room, but I don’t remember seeing her when Izzy and I backtracked to the library. Then again, I wasn’t looking for her. I hadn’t even noticed that Vickie wasn’t with us until we found her body.
No Memes of Escape Page 7