The homeowners’ insurance guy gets one whiff of the burnt laundry room and offers to put us up in a hotel until he gets us “sorted out.” I want to stay on the Strip because of the security. Vegas is twenty minutes away, but my mom isn’t going anywhere. She hands me a can of room freshener—which is like trying to subdue a rhino with a toothpick—and says, “Spray.”
The only way to get this sorted out is if I work something with Don. I have to tell him yes, and he has to get the fire-starter to stop. But you can’t drop in on a guy in prison when it’s not visiting day unless you’re his lawyer. Showing up twice on one visiting day was pushing it.
I’m left praying, white-knuckled, that Don doesn’t screw up and lose his Thursday phone call privilege. I’m banking that whoever expects me to do this thing is smart enough to let the acrid smell of melted plastic bring me to my knees. I don’t need Yeager’s minions showing up in Summerlin with flamethrowers before I have the chance to tell Don I capitulate.
All I can think to do in the meantime is cyber-stalk Nicolette.
I wasn’t the guy who could hack into INTERPOL during recess in third grade, but in five minutes online, I can tell that Nicolette leaped off the grid the exact moment Don says Connie got stabbed. The next day, Nicolette was gone.
Her friends’ posts read like a collective panic attack. There’s a week of Nicky! Where are you????? followed by a bunch of cheerleaders praying for her speedy recovery. From what, her homicidal tendencies?
Her private messages from her friend Olivia are more promising, as in:
What’s going on? Steve says he signed you into rehab. For one night of jello shots at Glen’s?!?!? Is he insane?
He is insane. He says you can’t talk to anyone outside the program or you’ll lose your resolve. WHAT PROGRAM????
Please if you get this I’m begging you tell me where you are.
I take from this that Nicolette is tight with her fellow cheerleaders, Mendes says she’s in rehab, and she has a best friend who loves her and is amazed about the rehab. Rehab? Well, we know she does Jell-O shots, but that’s a long way from round-the-clock slurred speech and blackouts.
This is my one idea about how to find Nicolette Holland: get to Olivia.
At least she’s easy to locate. Olivia’s mom has been tagging pictures of her and Nicolette since they were in seventh grade.
Nicolette cheers in a group photo with blue-and-gold pom-poms.
Olivia takes a red ribbon at a science fair in Columbus.
Nicolette cheers some more.
All these albums of Nicolette and Olivia and this Disney-princess–looking girl named Jody rocking prom dresses ought to be captioned Typical Teen Girls. I get how people always say, “He was a nice neighbor. He liked gardening,” about guys who turn out to have dungeons in their cellars. But there’s nothing about Nicolette that screams “heading to death row.”
Also, if Esteban Mendes is nothing to her like Don says, someone should tell Mendes. Because he shows up at a lot of track meets and fund-raiser car washes, where he can be seen draping a towel over Nicolette’s body to cover her smaller-than-small bikini. He looks intense—not a shocker for Karl Yeager’s accountant.
There’s no bimbo mom in sight. You have to figure that, practically speaking, Nicolette is Esteban’s daughter. Judging from all the church bake sales he’s attended with her (Olivia’s dad, Mr. Pastor, is a pastor), Don’s idea that Mendes would be fine with his kid lying dead on the altar won’t fly.
I wonder if anybody else is coming on here like me, pretending to be “Nicky,” looking for hints of her location. For all I know, her log-in info is carved into the bathroom wall at Yucca Valley Correctional.
When I can’t stand looking at her anymore, I google Connie Marino.
On a video from a Detroit local news station, her mother’s voice cracks as she begs anyone who knows where Connie is to bring her back. Seeing her like that—not knowing that Connie is never coming back, and that this crazy, normal-looking Nicolette did it—by the second time through, anticipating the moment when she covers her face with her hands, I’m choked up.
• • •
What the fuck, Nicolette, WHY?