In the morning, I checked the cars on my street. No unmarked now, no one surveilling the place. If Lou was right and had seen someone, he or she was long gone by now—but I was also pretty sure they’d be back. I thought of the slipped bangle, lodged in the side of Carrigan’s car. I wondered how quickly I could call and ask to retrieve it.
I was about to head inside, call a taxi so I could pick up my car from Sole del Mare, when I heard her.
“I see you didn’t sleep at Jackal’s.”
I whipped around. Lou was leaning against her car door, smiling at me. She didn’t seem pissed, or suspicious—just waiting.
“No,” I said, stepping toward her. “What are you doing here?”
“I went to Jackal’s first,” Lou said. “He said he hadn’t seen you.” She shook her head at my complex. “This place is such a dump.”
“It’s beachfront,” I said automatically. “Really, Lou, what are you doing here?”
Lou’s smile faltered. She looked tired. I wondered how much sleep she’d missed last night and who she’d been missing it with. “I haven’t been sleeping,” she admitted. “I wondered how you were doing.”
“That’s why you haven’t been in the office?” I took a step toward her. Lou nodded. Bullshit. Across the hot car, glittering in the morning sun, Lou was tapping her hip against the open car door. Fidgety. That worried me. Drop-in visits weren’t her style, not at all.
“Lou, about Chinatown—”
“Forget it, Jo,” she said. “Really, forget it. That’s not why I’m here, anyway.” The corner of her tongue darted out and touched her very pink lips. I closed my eyes for a moment, trying not to remember the feel of those lips pressed against mine. Trying not to think of her face, bone white, in the moonlight, Ellen’s body between us.
“Let’s play hooky,” she whispered. Up close, her eyes looked smeary and her lips were twitching. “Let’s forget everything that happened, today only. Okay? We’ll forget her and we’ll go somewhere else, and then tomorrow, it will be like it happened, but for today only, we’re not going to talk about it or think about it or anything. Okay?”
I squinted into the morning sun. Put Ellen aside for the day. In theory, it sounded wonderful. But it would also mean a day of drinking with Lou—it always meant a day of drinking with Lou. I wasn’t sure I could handle that. I wasn’t sure that two drinks in, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from reciting all the little details I was barely keeping a handle on now—Ellen’s favorite color, the plasticky feel of the shower curtain around Klein’s body, the candied smell of the drugstore perfume she always wore.
Not to mention Carrigan.
But there was also Lou in the morning sunshine, so still and calm and smiling at me, not moving even when a plane roared overheard. Her eyes trained on me like I held the key to every problem she’d ever had, like there was no one else she wanted to see.
“Where should we go?”
Lou dimpled. “Leave it to me.”
Halfway there, I realized. We were headed for Santa Monica. In the direction of Sole del Mare, in fact, or, at the very least, of my abandoned car. If we passed it on the street, Lou might recognize it. Then there would be questions I didn’t know how to answer.
“Where are you taking me?”
“It’s a surprise,” Lou hollered over the sound of the air rushing by, the radio cranked all the way up. She wouldn’t answer me when I asked again, kept singing along to the radio. Every so often she’d pause and turn to me and smile, a big one, showing all her teeth. Whatever feelings she’d had outside Tarantula Gardens, she was good at setting them aside. A new thing to marvel at, her ability to compartmentalize.
For once, I wished that we were stuck in our city’s most well-known natural disaster, gridlock traffic, so I’d have more time to work on my cover story. I hoped I was wrong, but I knew I wasn’t—Lou hated Santa Monica. There was only one reason she’d willingly brave the well-intentioned yogis and tourists.
“The Sole del Mare,” I said, pretending surprise. I watched Lou from the corner of my eye as she pulled the car into the lot. It couldn’t be pure coincidence that she’d brought me here, today of all days. But I couldn’t figure out the angle, either.
“They have a brunch menu,” Lou said happily, throwing the car into park in front of the valet stand.
“Since when do you brunch? Since when do you pay for valet parking?”
“Since”—Lou willowed her body into the back seat for her purse, brushing against me—“today, my friend. Since today.”
My feet were lead, and I didn’t bother trying to catch up to her. She was practically skipping into the restaurant ahead of me. At the door, she turned and held it for me, and I smiled at her weakly. She grinned at me and ushered me through, trying to get me to move faster.
I heard Lou tell the maître d’, “Two for brunch,” but I couldn’t stop staring around the restaurant. It was busy, even considering it was a weekday. The curse of Santa Monica. There, the corner where Carrigan had been seated last night. Across from the bar where I’d whiled away some time. Behind it, a woman with a lot of dark curly hair pulled away from her face. Sleeves of tattoos disappearing beneath her T-shirt. I squinted. A gap in her teeth you could lob a tangerine through. Christ. Same bartender.
“Do you have a reservation?” The maître d’ frowned and tapped at the computer screen ahead of them.
“We’ll sit at the bar,” Lou offered.
Shit. “Let’s go somewhere else, Lou,” I said, my mouth dry.
Lou waited until she’d thanked the maître d’ for escorting us to the bar to respond. “I should be able to let it go,” she said, leaning close to me. “But I can’t.”
“What? You mean . . . Ellen?”
Lou glared at me. I was ruining her buoyant mood. “I mean Carrigan,” she said.
I started to sweat. I wanted to order a drink, desperately, wanted the fuzz that would cloud my mind and make everything feel less sharp and bitter, but I didn’t want the bartender to get a good look at me, either. Don’t be silly. She doesn’t remember you.
“It would’ve meant something to me,” Lou said. “You see that name everywhere. It would’ve been big for us. Toppling the patriarchy and all that,” she said, adding air quotes to try to convince me she was teasing, but her smile didn’t reach her eyes and she coughed gently into her hand after she said it, like the words had bruised her throat on their way out.
“Can I get you ladies something to drink?” The bartender leaned forward on her elbows on the glossy redwood-slab bar. Her T-shirt hiked up an inch, revealing the cluster of bumblebees on her biceps. I looked down at the menu, studying it like she’d quiz me later.
“Coffee,” Lou said.
“Make it two,” I replied, not looking up.
“Really? Wait a second,” Lou said to the bartender, then turned to me, eyebrows raised. “No mimosa, no Irish coffee?”
“I meant it, I’m taking a break from alcohol.” At the Sole del Mare, anyway.
Lou smiled at me, a megawatt dazzler, and I felt a little warm glow in my chest—the first I could remember since Ellen died. The bartender stared at me for a moment before she turned away. Maybe trying to place me. Maybe curious why Lou had pushed it.
“Anyway, I thought it would be good to come here. I’ve thought about it since that woman mentioned it. We would’ve been here tonight anyway, for Carrigan’s happy hour.”
“Last—” I caught myself before I got the sentence out. Jesus, Jo. But that was unlike Lou, too, to forget a detail that would’ve been so important to the case. I coughed, started over, picking my words carefully. “Last I heard, his campaign isn’t going well anyway. Less incentive to pay us off,” I lied. The last poll still had him up a hair’s breadth in the polls. A perfect setup for our type of sting.
Lou shrugged. “Yeah, maybe.” She didn’t sound convinced.
The bartender set the two coffees down in front of us and asked for our orders: Lou picked waffles. I stuck with yogurt, thinking that would be quick to eat. The sooner we finished, the sooner we could leave. Lou thanked her. I didn’t say anything. The bartender moved away to put our orders into the kitchen.
“So you didn’t go to Jackal’s last night after all,” Lou said.
I drummed my fingers on the bar. Maybe she hadn’t forgotten the standing date for Carrigan’s happy hour. “You’re very nosy about how much time I spend in Jackal’s bed. It’s starting to make me wonder.”
“Wonder what?”
“Are you jealous of him, or me?” The best defense, and all that.
Lou’s fingers froze on the rim of her glass. Her big green eyes met mine—she would’ve never said it, but I know she liked the question, the challenge of it. I held her gaze for a long beat. She looked away first.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Lou said. She slurped her coffee.
“I’m sure you do.” I tried to catch her eye again, but the fun of the challenge had gone out of it for Lou; she wouldn’t look at me.
Instead, she unfolded her napkin, placed it over her lap. She let the pause grow long. Then: “You said you went out to eat. Where’d you go?”
“I . . .” I had no answer. My mind was blank, still wishing for an answer from her. Lou stared at me, eyebrows raised.
The bartender saved me.
“Here you are, ladies,” she said, pushing the plates forward on the bar top. “Enjoy.”
“I went back to that tiki bar,” I blurted. “Like you said I would. I guess . . . I guess I wanted to go back to a moment before everything with . . . you know who.” Back to the moment when the only thing I had to worry about was the money I owed the Lady. Back to the moment when Ellen was still a living pain in my ass.
For the first time that morning, I let myself think of her, really think of her, and it was too much. I knotted my fists into my abdomen, hoping the pain would keep me from sinking back into that Ellen place.
“You lied to me,” Lou said, a faint trace of surprise—or amazement—in her voice. She dropped the fork onto the plate, flipping it upside down.
I licked my lips, feeling the pang in my stomach get worse. “I didn’t—”
“You said you weren’t drinking.” Lou shook her head, staring down at her coffee. Like the sight of me disgusted her. She jabbed at the waffles on her plate with the fork tines. “Stupid me. I actually believed you.”
She started in on the waffles in silence, drowning the fluffy grids in syrup and hacking away at them with her fork. I stared down at the yogurt, its white clotted texture like scooped marrow. My stomach cramped. I pushed it away. Funny how nothing affected Lou’s appetite.
Even if I could work it out with Carrigan—and I wasn’t at all sure that I could—slide the money to the police, tie up all those loose ends without Lou or the Lady ever knowing, I’d still be in the Lady’s debt. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to train another girl without seeing Ellen’s face, her bruised neck, her little blue lips. Even if I worked it all out right, it wouldn’t change the fact that I’d killed someone.
That we had killed someone.
I took a deep breath. “The Lady has to know by now,” I said. Lou stopped with a forkful of waffles halfway to her mouth. The bartender had her back to us, racking clean glasses. “About the last case. What’d she say?”
Lou set her fork down carefully, busied herself with unfolding her napkin. “She wasn’t happy,” she admitted. “She wondered if there’d been something we’d missed with Ellen, something we should’ve caught earlier.”
I bit my lip. The bartender dropped a washcloth and bent over to pick it up, revealing a hamsa on her lower back. If it had been a different day, I would’ve scoffed, pointed it out to Lou. “And me? What’d she say about me? She was impatient for the rest of her money a week ago. It’ll be longer, now.”
Lou wiped her hands on her napkin and turned to face me. I caught a whiff of lemons. “A little more time will be all right, under the circumstances. She said she understood.”
“What? But you said the Lady wanted to . . . retire me.”
Lou rubbed her eyes, fidgeted in her seat. She didn’t want to talk about it. “Extraordinary times. She’s willing to push the debt on to Carrigan, once this all blows over. Really, she does want what’s best for us, Jo. She’s looking out for us. And I don’t know about you, but no one’s ever done that for me before.”
I frowned. “She turned awfully understanding all of a sudden. Not how you made the situation sound at the tiki bar.”
“Maybe I took a little creative license with her words,” Lou said carefully.
That didn’t make sense. “A little creative license? To threaten me on behalf of the Lady?” I chewed my bottom lip. For some reason, I saw the look of skepticism on Jackal’s face as Lou gave the cease and desist orders on Carrigan. “Lou, what do you mean you—”
“Excuse me,” the bartender leaned into us again. “Can I get you ladies anything else?”
“No,” I snapped. I made the mistake of glaring at her. Instead of being offended, she smiled at me and made a finger gun, snapping it at my head.
“I didn’t expect you back so soon,” she said.
I glanced at Lou, who was looking between the two of us. “I think you have me mistaken for someone else,” I said. “We’ll take the check.”
“I’m sure I know you,” the bartender said. She reached up and pushed a curly lock of hair behind her ear from where it had escaped her ponytail. She grinned at me, stuck her tongue in the gap between her teeth. “I remember that pretty face.”
My breath caught in my throat. “Nope, sorry. Not me,” I said. “The check, please.” I turned to Lou, who was still staring at me with narrowed eyes. But she had something to answer, too. Had it been the Lady or Lou who had threatened me? And if it had been Lou, why had she done it? It didn’t make any sense. “Lou, what did you mean when you said—”
“Jo, I think that was a backhanded compliment,” Lou said, sliding her eyes to the bartender. Freckles dancing across her nose as she crinkled it. “She remembers your pretty face, only it wasn’t you.”
“Honest mistake,” I said.
At the same time, the bartender said: “Can’t blame a girl for trying.” She winked at Lou.
“What about my pretty face?” Lou leaned across the table. “Would you remember me?”
I watched them flirt, and it was like watching sand drain through my fingers as the promise of our fresh day of hooky together slipped away. Lou was laughing, giving me the full cold shoulder—still pissed about the “lie” I’d told her, no doubt—tossing her hair. At one point, she reached forward and grabbed the bartender’s hand, tracing her fingers over the tattoos on her wrist.
I stood up and made my way to the bathroom. I tried to focus, tried to get back whatever thought had been on the edge of my brain before Lou’s flirt fest, but when I closed my eyes, all I could see was Lou’s open mouth, laughing, her face lit up by someone else, and then, even worse, Ellen’s smeary eyes, her twitching white shoulders, the sound of a car door dinging.
When I rejoined them, Lou had a glass of rosé in front of her and the bartender was snagging it with a fingertip to sneak a sip.
“On the house,” she offered. “If you’d like to join us.”
Join us. “Thanks,” I said, “but, Lou, I thought we had plans today.” I turned to the bartender and bared my teeth, a smile if you squinted. “Our boss is kind of a demanding bitch.”
Lou ignored the bait. “She’s not drinking,” she answered for me. Not done punishing me yet. “In fact, maybe you’d better go home. It’s probably too tempting for you to be here right now. Mischa can call you a cab.”
“Don’t bother,” I said, and grabbed my purse. At the door, I turned and stared back at the two of them, the dark head and the auburn bent toward each other, a little coven of two. I felt a twinge in my heart as I imagined Lou intertwined with her, whispering sweet Lou nothings into the seashell of her ear. I dug my nails into my hand so sharply I started to draw blood. I couldn’t make her choose me, I thought, and that has to be okay. But then I thought: Bullshit. Bullshit.
The sound of her laughter chased me out onto the street, where I turned the corner to my car, the windshield cluttered with parking tickets.