Chapter 37. Jasmine
CHAPTER 37
Jasmine
In the Hotel Room
Glenn’s face is what came to mind first. I imagined that the person under the pillow was him, a weak, pitiful version of him, and I was the physically strong one.
Then I pictured Allison. Her words from the party flew through the air at me in Stephanie’s hotel room like tiny swords:
What a pathetic cat outfit, Jasmine.
You crazy bitch.
You are so fucked up, Jasmine.
My mother floated to my brain next. Her telling a friend she never should have had a third child. Her calling me “Little Piggy” and making me wear pigtails. That final card with the words “Have a very Merry Christmas.”
This trio of people taunted me as slowly, slowly I brought the pillow down and covered Stephanie’s face, pressing as hard as I could.
Within a few seconds, I heard her coughing and fussing about. I pressed harder. She began to flail. She was stronger than I thought, and I had a sudden fear that she might overpower me. The angle I was at was not going to work, so I kept pressing and climbed onto the bed, straddling her waist for a firmer position.
I thought of only Glenn again, and renewed strength came into my limbs as I pressed down.
Stephanie’s arms and legs thrashed wildly, but I was winning. I heard her gasping for air, The Golden Girls’ laugh track offering a sickly ambient noise.
My breathing was ragged, but my limbs felt electric with adrenaline. Sweat popped out on my forehead.
Slowly, her movements got lighter and less frequent and then stilled. I kept the pillow on her face for an extra sixty seconds, counting carefully to myself.
Lifting the pillow a few inches, I took a peek around the edge, ready to restore it if she moved at all.
Her face was frozen in a state of shock, mouth and eyes open, a single tear falling from one eye toward her temple. Seeing her dead made my stomach curdle, and I raced to the bathroom and threw up the beef jerky and Diet Coke.
I had just killed someone. For a second time. What. The. Fuck. Like murder, real premeditated murder this time. A woman I barely knew, a woman who had woken up in her home in Madison that morning without a clue that she would be gone within twenty-four hours in a hotel room in San Diego.
But it needed to be done, I reminded myself. There was no other way. She’d had a way better life than mine for however old she was. It was my turn to have a way better second half of life.
OK, now I had to focus.
Her face was disturbing me, so I got the pillow and placed it back over her head. Picking up my phone, I used it to google “rigor mortis.” It would set in about three to four hours after death. OK, I had to get her scrunched into the giant suitcase before then, but I had a tiny bit of time. Grabbing her laptop, I flipped it open.
There was a yellow Post-it note stuck to the screen. It said “Phone and laptop passwords: EvanFred0503.”
What? How could anyone be so stupid as to advertise their passwords? I felt like I had just hit a bull’s-eye in darts, cranked a home run out of the park, or earned a gold medal in figure skating. I mean, WTF?! This had to be yet another sign from my grandma that I had just done the right thing. There was simply no other explanation.
“Thank you, Gram,” I muttered, bringing my hands into a prayer motion and looking up at Stephanie’s hotel ceiling.
I had no time to waste in celebration, though. Logging in, I started opening all of her pages and scrolling through to see what I could learn. She had tabs across the top for work email, personal email, something called LinkedIn (which I had heard Anna talk about but had never tried myself), Facebook, Twitter (or whatever it was called now), Google Docs, and TikTok. First, I took a quick peek at her personal email. There was a back-and-forth with some female friends about tickets to Florida for a girls’ trip.
“Bring on the vacay—I need it! Strawberry margs are definitely calling my name! I booked us a super cool Airbnb on the beach!” Stephanie had written in the last one. Another richy-rich privilege the rest of us didn’t get to have. Weekend getaways, Airbnbs on the beach. Not going to happen now, spoiled bitch , I thought as I glanced back at the bed.
Next I went to the files under the desktop icon. Scrolling through ones with boring titles like “Taxes,” “San Antonio trip photos,” and “New friend, Diana,” I finally spotted the one I was looking for: “Passwords.” This was it, the holy grail.
Clicking it open, she had everything neatly laid out by category, and I spotted the one I was hoping to see: banking. It listed all of her passwords for her online bank accounts. They were variations of “Evan” and “Fred” and numbers, sometimes with an exclamation point or some other sort of punctuation at the end.
I had done it. I had hacked into exactly what I would need to drain her money.
Next I looked at LinkedIn. It was some sort of professional work site, and I checked her profile, hoping to learn more, to memorize details so that I could spit them out in the morning when I attended the conference.
I had to make an appearance as her, I knew that, to make my story believable. She couldn’t just not show up at the conference at all. Someone would question her absence, maybe call back to her station. No, her name tag had to be picked up, her presence visible at least for a bit. A day was my plan. She had told me on the plane that she had never met any of these people, that there were thousands of news directors across the country and this group was all new to her. I felt confident I could pull off being her for a day, but to be sure, I needed more info.
Her background on LinkedIn was laid out to me clearly in a résumé-style list: went to DePaul, was from Indiana originally, had worked in Chicago before Madison. That was easy enough. Just in case, I looked up the mascot for DePaul (Blue Demons) and the names of the freshmen dorms so that I would sound authentic if anyone said they also went there. I scribbled these all down on my paper.
OK, Jasmine, what have you forgotten? I picked up her phone, and the password let me right in and I started looking through her texts. Who did she converse with? There was a chain with her son, Evan; a chain with what maybe was a sister named Renee who called her “Little”; a chain with someone named Robert; and a chain with someone named Bruce. Those were all at the top, the most recent. Based on the conversations, I surmised that Bruce was a coworker and Robert a friend, maybe a neighbor. My plan was to try and buy time with all of them until I could get the money that I needed. Make sure they weren’t suspicious.
It was only Wednesday night now, so I knew I had some wiggle room. If I faked being her at the conference tomorrow and then spent Friday dealing with bank stuff, it seemed that it would all work out perfectly. I would find some excuse to extend her trip via text with friends and family and then just stop texting at some point and ditch the phone. They would never know. They would think she just disappeared into the night and would never find her.
As for the body… my eyes flitted back to the bed… I had to get moving. I needed to fold her limbs into the giant suitcase before rigor mortis overtook her, and then I had to wait. I couldn’t take her out of here now—the same desk clerk would be on duty, and it would be weird for me to leave with the giant suitcase so soon after checking in.
No, I would have to do that in a different shift, and I had a plan. This close to the ocean, there had to be out-of-the-way spots to dump a body in the water. I would need weights, of course, so that she didn’t float to the top. I bit my fingernails and thought. I should have gotten those at Walmart too. Damn it, my first misstep.
Then a thought thumped its way across my temples. I was in a hotel! There had to be a gym, the kind with lots of hand weights all lined up and ready for use. My eyes darted to Steph anie’s rolling suitcase. I could take that bag to the weight room at an off time, fill it with some weights, and wheel it back here, where I could put the weights in the big suitcase with her. My only concern was that the body not smell in the meantime. I could wheel it out during the day even, or the evening, after the conference tomorrow, but I couldn’t do it right now. I might need some ice to keep her cold. First, though, getting her into the suitcase.
Going to the bed, I started to pull her toward me. She was damn heavy. Not an overly large woman but heavy nonetheless. I grunted and groaned as I twisted her this way and that. Positioning the suitcase next to the bed, I let her drop into it with a thud, hoping it didn’t wake other hotel guests; then I folded her up into the smallest size I could make her, pushing her limbs. She just barely fit. Testing out closing the suitcase, I was thrilled that it worked. No one would have a clue if I rolled her out right through the lobby. But the smell? I went back to my phone and googled: It can happen within twenty-four hours. There must be an ice machine down the hall. Just to be safe, I could pile some ice around her, but not just on its own—that would melt and make the suitcase wet and gross. I needed some bags.
Looking around, I didn’t see an ice bucket, but in the closet there was one plastic bag clipped to a clothes hanger and labeled LAUNDRY . In the bathroom I saw a couple of hair ties. Those could help to keep the bag tight.
Taking the bag and slipping out of the room and down the hall, I peered around for the ice machine. But it was not on one end of the hallway, not by the elevator, and not on the other end of the hallway. What the heck? Every motel I had ever worked in had an ice machine and soda vending area. As I walked back to my room, it hit me. The few really fancy hotels I had been employed by never had them. You had to call housekeeping for ice. Damn. A miscalculation. What to do now? I guess I had twenty-four hours to figure it out before she really smelled.
When I returned to the room, it was almost 2:30 a.m., and I surmised the conference was starting in six or so hours. In order to be Stephanie, I would need to wear her clothes and act like a news director. I couldn’t start transferring any money or making any rash moves in the middle of the night. That would be suspicious. No, it had to look as if Stephanie herself had just decided to skip out on life after this conference. That would have to happen during the day.
Going to her closet, I surveyed her clothing, feeling the fabrics with my fingers. Most of my clothes came from Goodwill, but hers were clearly many notches up. A green shirt was so buttery to the touch that it felt almost magical; a pink blazer had a thickness to it that showed it was made well; a navy sweater looked and felt cozy. We were close enough in size that I wasn’t too worried about the fit but decided to try everything on anyway. I didn’t want to show up at the conference looking odd.
Stripping down to my underwear and bra, I started trying on each piece, turning this way and that and looking at myself in the mirror. The green shirt was just a bit too baggy for my liking. Her pants were roomy in the waist. Either I would be hiking them up all the time or I needed a belt, which I didn’t see. She had a cute little black dress, though, and that looked good on me. I loved the way the soft material felt on my skin and admired the flowiness of the skirt. Twirling in satisfaction, I grabbed the pink blazer and put it over the dress. Pretty. The blazer fit me well.
Now for shoes. I picked up a pair and looked at the size. Damn, she was one size larger than me. The tan-and-cream flats she had in the closet wouldn’t work then—they’d be falling off. My best bet was a sort of a high-heeled tennis shoe thing. I could wear two pairs of her socks inside those if need be. I went to the drawers of the dresser to hunt for socks, and that’s when I saw her pretty bras and underwear. Even her practical-looking underwear was nicer than anything I owned. She also had a bunch of Spanx in there and a multitude of sock options. I couldn’t help but try on a black lacy bra and a pair of bikini underwear. It felt so good to have nice clothes on. I decided to wear those the next day too, not my old ratty pair.
Next I moved to the bathroom and inspected her makeup and smelled her perfume. So nice, so well-made. The names on the sides of the makeup were brands I knew you couldn’t find at a drugstore. The perfume had an Italian-sounding name. Spritzing some on my wrist, I took a satisfying whiff. It was like a bouquet of flowers, very different from the patchouli I usually wore, but this was the new me now. I was going to be keeping this perfume, that was for sure.
Out of things to do and with several hours yet to go, I changed into her workout clothes, since her pajamas were still on her, then got into the king-size bed where Stephanie had just been but moved to the side away from where her body had lain. That was too creepy. I had a big role to play the next day, so I needed some sleep. Looking at her iPhone to see when she had her alarm set, I kept it that way and put her phone next to me on the nightstand. Finally, I clicked the TV off, The Golden Girls flickering to darkness, and I shut my eyes.