16
Stevie stayed up most of that night looking over the material she had gotten from Helen’s apartment and trying to work out
what it all meant. (She assured herself several times that printouts weren’t valuable. Whoever cleaned out Helen’s apartment
eventually was going to throw them away. She was helping, really.)
There was a small line of text at the top of all the pages indicating when they had been printed out. Stevie arranged them
chronologically.
December 12:
Gluten-Free Lemon Drizzle Cake with Buckwheat Flour
How to Use Aquafaba in Baking
December 14:
20 Things Doctors Won’t Tell You About Heart Disease
5 Foods You Need to Eat to Promote Heart Health
Side Effects of Lisinopril
How to Entertain Your Bird When You Are Not Home
How to Use the Senso A874 Talking Toy for Birds
Free Legal Forms: Will Template
December 23, 9:30 p.m.:
All the articles about Stevie, one after the other.
December 24, 11:00 a.m.:
Lady Darling’s Tarot Time: The Tower Reinterpreted
December 24, 11:21 a.m.:
CNN: DNA Reveals Identity of Remains Found in 1998
This was a timeline of Helen’s thoughts.
She had been thinking about baking a few weeks ago.
Then her concern switched to her health.
Lisinopril, a quick search on her phone revealed, was a drug prescribed for heart failure.
The will template, though printed, was blank.
The Senso A874 was a toy you could record thirty minutes of your voice on and leave for your bird to tap and listen to when you were not at home—but Arthur said that Helen never went out.
It was the kind of thing you might do if you were preparing to die.
Then came the printouts about Stevie.
Then the Tower:
Lady Darling’s Tarot Time: The Tower Reinterpreted
When the Tower appears in our spread, we often panic. We fear this image of the Tower, this structure built on unstable ground,
being hit by lightning, two people falling headfirst from the windows to their sure peril . . .
Stevie looked up pictures of the Tower card. Different decks had different images, but she soon found the one that matched
the one she had seen at Helen’s. There were the two people, going headfirst toward the ground, except they were almost as
big as the building itself.
The crown is blowing off the top of the building.
The Tower means that the time for games is over.
The Tower is the card you need, not the card you want.
Whatever bullshit exists in your life, now is the time to get to the bottom of it.
This is about the change that must occur.
Things have gone on too long. The Tower has been allowed to grow higher on unstable ground.
It should never have been built and was always going to fall.
It is the end of the relationship that needs to end.
It is the loss of the job that doesn’t aid your life.
It is the move you need to make. Things must be made right, even if it hurts. It is the end of lies.
The end of lies. Or, as Helen had put it, when shit got real.
Immediately after printing this out, Helen had looked up an article about human remains being identified.
These things had to be connected. And there was one thing here that connected Helen to Ellenville, where Melissa had been—the
Rolling Thunder Co-op.
This search took a while. She found only three hits, all tied to old newspapers. Most of the references were single lines,
but there was one small picture, copied and indistinct, of two people standing by the back of a pickup truck loaded with boxes
of fruits and vegetables. The caption: Ralph Fisk and Loretta Sandies have opened the Rolling Thunder Co-op, which promotes healthy eating and macrobiotic foods.
Okay. Now she had two names. She could work with that.
The searches for Ralph and Loretta turned up multiple hits on the sites that scrape personal information and offer all anyone
could want to know for $9.99 a month. She got a trial subscription (she would have to cancel that later), and there it was—a
phone number for Loretta Sandies, who apparently still lived in Ellenville.
This is where Stevie had stopped, because she couldn’t make the call at three thirty in the morning. It was bad enough that she was about to cold-call a stranger to ask them about someone from fifty years ago. Plus, Janelle and Vi would be here in a few hours.
Stevie required coffee, a lot of it. Nate’s door was closed. She sent him a text saying where she was going, grabbed the printouts,
and went downstairs to the Sunshine Diner, taking a booth by the window. After ordering coffee and lemon ricotta pancakes,
she took out her phone. Stevie didn’t like talking on the phone—it seemed so restrictive. She shook off her hesitation, gulped
back a mouthful of the bitter coffee that had been placed in front of her, and dialed the number. A woman picked up after
two rings and Stevie stumbled through her own introduction.
“Who’s calling?” the woman said. “I don’t want these spam calls.”
“My name is Stevie. I’m a friend of Helen Jesperson. I have her photo here in the calendar for the Rolling Thunder Co-op.
Helen . . . she was a baker? She had a blue bird tattoo on her hand . . .”
“Hang on a minute, hang on a minute. A baker with a bird tattoo? On her hand? You’re talking about Blue. From the group up
on the hill. But . . . you said she’s your friend?”
Friend was stretching things a bit, but you did what you had to do.
“Yes,” Stevie said. “I’m Helen’s friend. We’re trying to . . .”
“I don’t understand. You have the voice of a very young woman.”
Loretta had issues with age in friendships, apparently.
“We just . . . liked to talk. And she needed help looking things up. Which is how I found your number. Helen just passed away.
I’m sorry. We’re trying to find out—”
“What do you mean?” Loretta said. “She just passed away? When?”
“Around Christmas,” Stevie said, tapping her knuckles on the table in discomfort. “I’m so sorry.”
“This Christmas?”
“I’m really sorry . . .”
“Blue was alive until last week?” Loretta said. “I’ll be damned. I just assumed she died with the others.”