“It has to be here,” she said, the queasiness in her voice having nothing to do with me or my injury. It was the thought that a search anyplace other than on Victor Flowers’s property was probably fruitless.
“What does?” I made myself ask. She ignored me, but when one of the birds cooed again, Ellen glanced up at the birdcage. She kept watching it and went closer. Julius was pecking at a small silver object hanging from the top of the cage by a length of twine.
Not a bell. A small disco ball.
She muttered to herself and turned to me. “Where’s a flashlight?”
“I don’t think I have one.”
She removed her phone from her pocket and was out the door and outside again. She began to search with the flashlight from her phone—first the stoop, then the walkway, slowly retracing her steps to the street.
“What’s that, Natalie? I didn’t hear you?”
Harley was kneeling down beside me. Time had skipped. I’d lost a couple of seconds. The afghan wasn’t thick enough. My face felt clammy, but I was shivering hard. I didn’t realize I’d said anything aloud.
“She never needed a partner,” I said.
“What are you talking about?” Harley asked. “Tell me what happened.”
It had all been misdirection. Every single moment since she drove me to that Flemington café. All our practice. All our planning.
“We were partners,” I told Harley, “but she never planned to win the game.”
The whole time, it was the bell she was after.
“I don’t understand.” Harley knelt down closer to me. “What happened to your hand?”
Ellen got them all watching the TV screen, staring at it at the exact same time. They wanted to see my false deal. They were dying to see it. No one would dare look away for even an instant. The bell was hidden in the room. While everyone stared at the TV screen, she stole it.
“She told Victor Flowers I was a cheater.”
“Wait. Victor Flowers? She knows him?”
“She tipped him off, and he recorded me.” I was her misdirection. Me. “She set me up.”
“Listen to me, Natalie. I’m going to call—”
Her words got interrupted by the commotion outside: “Son of a—what the fuck are you doing?”
Even from in here I could see what Calvin was doing. He was dumping snow onto the wheels of Ellen’s car. Oh, Calvin, Calvin, I thought. She’s dangerous. Let her go. But he was blocking her in because he didn’t like her and there was no readily available dog shit to set aflame in all that fresh powder.
“Stop fucking doing that!” Ellen spat.
He didn’t even grace her with his gaze, just quietly scooped up another shovelful of snow and deposited it by her front tire. He turned the shovel over and patted the snow into place. Then he did it all again. Finally, she went over to him. “I said get the fuck away.” She gave him a shove.
Still he said nothing. Just gave her a bored teenage half-glance and made a slow, shuffling retreat toward his own apartment building, dragging the snow shovel behind him on the unplowed road.
Ellen searched her car again—the back, the front, the seats, the floor, the dim beam from her phone’s flashlight darting around the car. This time she was making sure, and she took her time about it. Then she froze. For ten, fifteen seconds, nothing happened. But everything was happening. It was all changing for her. Clicking into place. Then the flashlight beam moved again. I should have told Harley to lock the door, but I couldn’t imagine it would have made a difference, and I was still hoping for Ellen to depart without ever thinking I knew anything. But in those quiet seconds, Ellen had decided that I knew more than I was letting on. And so while I couldn’t see exactly what she was doing in the car when that flashlight’s beam began to move again, she must have been opening and closing the glove box. That’s where I assume she kept the gun, which she held in her hand when she stomped back into my apartment.
Her expression was different now. Or maybe it looked different because she was holding a gun. I saw less fear, more fury. She looked—and there is only one way to say this—murderous.
“You have it,” she said, “so don’t even bullshit me.”
5
Harley took several steps backward, nearly knocking into my bookshelf. “Is that real?” she asked.
“What are you doing?” I said.
“Where is it?” Ellen wasn’t pointing the gun at me, but holding it was enough. The handle was black, the rest of it silver. It wasn’t large—it could have been a kid’s toy—but I knew it wasn’t a toy, just as I knew the bell wasn’t a toy, just as I knew that Ellen wasn’t my friend and had never been my partner. My face was sweating, I was trembling, my hand screamed, and hovering above it all was the understanding that the world I thought I knew was an illusion. I had been fooled, and I had been a fool. But I wasn’t a fool now, and the gun she carried wasn’t a toy because one thing I knew for certain was that Ellen didn’t play games.
I turned my head toward her. “Where is what?”
She told Harley to empty her pockets.
Harley turned her pockets inside out.
“Empty that bag,” Ellen said.
Harley stayed frozen a moment, then took a tentative step toward the first-aid kit. She dumped everything out.
“Back up again,” Ellen said. She reached down and felt around inside the bag. Then she pointed the gun at Harley, whose eyes widened. “What do you know about this?”
Ellen was losing it, and she held a gun. I didn’t doubt for a second it was loaded, or that she would use
