“I understand,” I said, quietly. “That’s fine.”
“Want to get comfortable?”
Even if I’d wanted to, the apartment wouldn’t have made it easy. It was tiny, even for a studio. There was just room enough for a massage table and a single folding chair, barely any other furniture; the phone was on the floor under the table.
But that was fine. I wasn’t here to get comfortable. I sat in the chair.
“Sharon,” I said. “A woman you used to know suggested I contact you. She calls herself Rodeo. I don’t know if that’s what she called herself when she worked here.”
“Sure. I remember Rodeo. She’s a good kid.”
“She told me you might remember another woman who worked here. A friend of mine. Her name was Dorrie Burke. You might have known her as Cassandra.”
As I said this, Sharon’s hand crept up to her mouth and she backed away. She couldn’t go far, not with the massage table behind her.
“I’m not here to get anyone in trouble,” I said, “I’m just trying to help, trying to find out what happened to —”
“You’re John Blake, aren’t you?”
Damn. “Listen, whatever you read in the paper, it’s not true. I swear.”
“The paper?” she said. “What paper?”
“The
“I didn’t read your name,” she said.
“Then how do you know who I am?” I said.
“Dorrie told me,” she said. “She said you’d find me.”
“She what?”
“You’re the detective, right? She told me...oh, man.” She walked around to the other side of the table, bent over to open a small cabinet wedged in next to the radiator. When she came into view again, she was holding a laptop computer in one hand and a handbag in the other. The laptop was connected to the wall by a phone cable. She set it down on the massage table and reached into the handbag, took out a slightly creased envelope. The envelope had something written on it in blue ink. I couldn’t read it because Sharon’s hand was shaking.
“She told me she was going away. She said you might try to find her, and that when you were looking for her you might find me. And that if you did, I should give you this.” She held the envelope out to me. I could read what was written on it now. It was my name. The handwriting was Dorrie’s.
“You know she’s dead, right?” I said it softly. I’d have said it that way even if she hadn’t told me about the neighbors.
“Yes.” It came out almost like a sob. “I know.”
“How long have you had this?”
“Since Saturday,” she said.
“Why didn’t you get in touch with me? Why didn’t you tell me about it?”
She shook her head, back and forth, kept shaking it as she spoke. “I tried. Your phone number’s not listed.”
“You could have tried up at Columbia.”
“I did. I went there on Monday afternoon. I waited for more than an hour. You weren’t there.”
“You could have left a message for me.”
“I
I thought of the pile of pink message slips I’d seen on my desk. None had looked obviously urgent or important. “What did you write?”
“My name and number,” she said, “and that it was about Dorrie.”
All the messages had been about Dorrie. Everyone had been calling with condolences. Another name, another phone number—it hadn’t stood out.
“I’m sorry, Sharon” I said. “I didn’t realize—”
“It’s okay,” she said.
I took the envelope from her. As I ran my thumb under the flap to break the seal, I thought of Dorrie licking it shut. This envelope must have been one of the last things she’d ever touched. It was probably the closest I’d ever be to her again.
There was a single sheet of paper inside.
I folded the page, tucked it back into its envelope, then saw the look on Sharon’s face and took it out again. Reading it wouldn’t make her happy, but not reading it would be worse.
She handed it back a moment later.
The desperation in Dorrie’s voice, the fear—I could hear it as if she were standing next to me speaking.
“Sharon, I need to know exactly what she told you,” I said. “When she said she was ‘going away.’ Did she say where she was going? Why was she going?”
Sharon was shaking her head again. “I don’t know. She didn’t say. She just said she was going somewhere far away. But isn’t it obvious what she meant?”
“What?”
“Well...” Sharon stopped. “You know. She killed herself. That’s where she was going. Far away.”
“That’s very poetic,” I said, “but there’s one thing wrong with it. She didn’t kill herself. Someone made it look that way, but that’s not what happened.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” I said. “Really. And based on what you’re telling me and what she wrote, she obviously knew she was in danger. That’s the only reason she’d leave in a hurry and not tell anyone where she was going.” What I meant was: not tell me. “The question is who she was in danger from. Did she say anything at all...?”
“No. Nothing.”
“When did she say she was planning to leave?”
“Right away. That’s why she had me forward her mail for her.”
“Her mail?”
She pointed to the laptop. “She asked me how to set it up so that all her mail would come to my address. I showed her how to do it, from the Options screen. Yahoo makes it pretty easy.”
“You’re talking about her e-mail.”
“Yes.”
“Show me.”
She opened the machine, brought up a Web browser. The familiar Yahoo mail page appeared, the same one I’d looked at in Michael’s storeroom. I couldn’t see the password Sharon typed in, but the address was “hotsharon85.” She angled the screen toward me.
“See?” She pointed. “I made a folder for her mail, showed her how to set it up so her mail would get forwarded. This way each time someone sends a message to her, Yahoo sends it here instead. She’s gotten, let’s see, ninety-six messages, all since Saturday. I haven’t deleted any of them.”
I glanced through the list. Lots of spam, lots of unfamiliar addresses. But in the middle of the list a familiar address stood out. Mine. I clicked on it and my message came up, the one I’d sent on Monday.
