Chapter 14 Lily #4
“I don’t know if that’s her real name. I guess it’s not, but she’s got this tattoo on her chest of a peach and it says Peaches in big cursive letters on top.”
The woman from the valet. The prostitute who mocked me. “Her. Yeah, I’ve seen her around.”
“Wait—where? I need to find her. I was too surprised to even ask her any questions. Like when she found the bag, and what road she was on, and maybe if she saw anything else nearby.”
“She hangs around at the casino. Sometimes she’s at one of the bars at the end of the day when I’m there. I saw her once early in the morning. I guess she had spent the night. She gave me the finger.”
That got a smile from Clara. “She doesn’t come into the spa, does she?”
“No. Or at least she hasn’t since I’ve been there.” She stared at the poster, tracing her fingers over the phone number at the bottom. “Clara. Why did you ask me to come here?”
She blew a puff of air out of her cheeks. “I guess I didn’t want to carry all this around by myself anymore. I wanted someone else to know what I see.”
“But why me? Why not Des?”
“Des doesn’t give a shit about anything as long as there’s money coming in.
She believes in my gift and all, but if I tell her that I’m seeing things that don’t make sense, the first thing she’s going to worry about is whether I can still work.
You know when you came in earlier this month?
After I took your bracelet? I could tell, when I first met you, that you believed me.
That you would listen to me. And I felt that way even though you were mad at me.
Some people, even when I tell them things, about what I see, they don’t believe it.
They think I’ve cheated. That I’ve looked them up online or something, I don’t know what.
You’re not like that. I think you want to tell yourself that I’m crazy because what I do is weird and scary to people.
It’s weird and scary to me sometimes, too. But you’re still sitting here, right?”
I wondered if it was my father’s superstition that let me believe in what Clara said.
When you grow up believing in lucky dollar bills, maybe you’re agreeing that there are things about the universe that you can’t know or control.
Maybe, maybe that’s what Clara’s gift was, too.
Something I couldn’t rationalize or explain, but that existed.
And whether or not I believed her story, I believed in her distress. “So, what do we do?”
“Well, that’s what I thought you could help with.
Can’t you see things at the spa? You have all of those cameras Emily is always threatening me with.
And so does the casino. Can’t you see the videos?
Maybe you could watch the footage, see if Peaches has been hanging around.
Or you can at least see who has stayed in the hotel, right?
Can you check to see if she’s come in lately?
Maybe we can find her and warn her … just tell her to leave town.
She might not believe me, but she will probably believe you. If you tell her you agree …”
I cut her off. “You have to be a supervisor to access the security system. Emily might be able to, but I can’t.
” I didn’t want to tell Clara that it would probably be impossible to find Peaches that way, that the sheer number of hours and angles that the security cameras represented created an insurmountable amount of footage.
Because, of course, I had had the same thought already, about finding my father somewhere in all that tape.
“Well … can you get her password? Figure out how to get in there?”
It was strangely revealing what glimmers you could see of someone’s life in seven to ten characters. I would have loved to know what little scrap of herself Emily used for hers. “I don’t know about that either.”
“Please, Lily. At least try? I’m worried about Peaches. I gave her a reading, and it was dark.”
“That seems to be your specialty. But sure. Fine. I’ll see what I can do, but I’m definitely not making any promises.”
“Whoever sees her first can ask her about the purse, what day it was that she found it, and where it was. Maybe that will clarify what happened to the other woman, the first one. I wish I knew her name.”
“What about Julie?”
“I don’t know what to do about her yet. Let’s just start with Peaches and see where we get.
” She pulled out one of her business cards and scribbled a number on the back.
“I just added minutes to my phone, so you can text me if you find out anything. Here, give me yours. Oh, and what do you think about that guy you work with? The janitor?”
“You mean Luis?”
“Yeah. I see him around a lot. He gives me a bad feeling. Something’s up with him.”
“I mean, he’s mute and deaf, so I guess I don’t really know him well? He’s a little strange but no more than you’d expect.” Luis? What did Luis have to do with any of this?
“Well, that at least explains why he didn’t rat me out, I guess.”
I was about to ask her what she meant when a shadow crossed the shop and we both turned: a man stood in front of the window. Clara’s posture sagged. “Shit. You should probably go.”
“What’s that about, Clara? Another date?”
“It’s complicated. Let’s just say fortune-telling doesn’t pay the rent anymore.”
“How do you find them?”
“Can we talk about this another time?”
“I mean, you’re worried about Peaches, but look at you. Also, how do you know that these guys aren’t cops?”
She laughed, a cynical chortle. “Some of them are cops. But most cops prefer the Asian massage parlors.” I knew the kinds of places she meant.
The ones decorated with cheap bamboo screens and thwarted-looking bonsai trees.
“We’re not the only ones. Take a look next time you go for a walk around here—every single one of them has the same door in the back.
I’m sorry. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.
But right now I really do need you to go.
” Every nerve along my body tightened when I stood to leave, but what else could I do?
Instead of walking to my car right away, I stood across the boardwalk and waited.
I remembered what it was like, to be thirteen, fourteen, and notice that men started looking at me in a new way.
Like they understood something about me that I didn’t know yet.
But I wanted to see what kind of man would walk into that shop and arrange to buy someone that young.
Who had no qualms about doing it so openly.
A man who felt like he had nothing to fear.
A man in a suit who had been standing against a light pole looked at his watch, glanced over his shoulder, and went into the store.
Clara came out a moment later, picked up the chalkboard sign, carried it inside.
I watched as she switched the hanging sign on the door from Open to Closed and drew the curtains across the window.
I listened to the tick-tick-tick of the Crazy Mouse crank up the tracks.
I wondered if she was making up everything else.
Was all this about the missing girl and the inexplicable visions, the strange sensations, the bad dreams, a way to ask for help without having to talk about the other things that were really going on?
I could tell her fear was genuine, even if she was masking it behind this search for these women.
And I even believed that she saw things sometimes.
But this, with the women, could it be true?
I sat on a bench, rubbed my temples. My life here was supposed to be simple, even dull.
And now here was this girl—a thief, a con, a prostitute, and maybe a psychic—insisting she needed my help.
I didn’t know what Clara could actually see or not, but either way, I didn’t want to fail anyone the way I had failed Steffanie.
I stayed like that until I had the sense that I wasn’t alone—that I was being watched.
I looked up and scanned the boardwalk, and the loose, loping gait, the narrow shoulders.
Luis. He had already turned his back on me, but I was sure it had been him.
What was he doing here? It wasn’t strange that he might come to the boardwalk, but why, when I lifted my face to look at him, had he turned away?
Was there something off about him, something I should be worried about?
A sense of dread bloomed in my gut, souring the evening’s beauty: the light on the ocean, the creamy-looking sand.
Across the boardwalk, the sign on Clara’s door still said Closed.
The curtains remained shut. I lingered for another twenty minutes, but nothing changed, except the steady sense of worry that crimped my shoulders and my neck.