Sally looks at him like the answer is obvious. “She’s a Yank. Toni’s a Yank. It made sense for her to do it.”
“How do you know Yasmin wasn’t being genuine trying to hold off for a few days?” says Julia.
“I think there was some bad blood between Yasmin and Toni. When I heard her yesterday telling you they were bosom buddies, all teary-eyed, I could have puked. They were friends at first, it’s impossible not to like Toni, you know that, but something happened out there on the road. I don’t know what, but something definitely went down. They were barely talking to each other at one point.”
“You must have some idea,” pushes Julia.
Sally shrugs. “Nothing I can prove.”
“Humor us,” says Leo.
She pauses. “Maybe Toni got too close to Daniel.”
“Yasmin’s boyfriend Daniel?”
“Don’t get me wrong, Danno’s a nice guy, but he has a tendency to go for the injured bird thing and Toni had injured bird written all over her.”
Julia feels herself tense. “You think Toni was sleeping with Daniel?”
Sally shrugs. “I don’t know for sure. But if she was, you can bet your boots that Yasmin would be spitting about it. I’m not sure if you noticed but she’s a little possessive when it comes to her darling Daniel.”
Julia tells herself to relax, but there’s no denying the anger she’s feeling for Toni right now.
“But you have no proof, right?” says Leo, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. “What you’re saying is just a guess?”
Shut up, Leo, Julia wants to say. Just shut up and don’t make it worse.
Sally exhales. “Like I said before, I don’t know for sure.”
Julia puts down her coffee cup and looks at Sally. “So your thinking is that Yasmin may have had something to do with Toni’s disappearance because Toni was having a relationship with Daniel behind Yasmin’s back?”
Sally places her hands on the table and spreads them out. “Look, I want to be straight with you guys, I’ve never got on with Yasmin. I’ve always thought she was a stuck-up rich bitch. Daddy is some academic bigwig at Brown University, Mommy’s a judge, and I’m pretty sure there’s a mansion in Rhode Island somewhere in there, too. But Yasmin likes to pretend she’s just one of the gang, eating instant noodles, scraping a few dollars together for a bed, getting down with the peeps, but everyone knows her parents pay her AMEX every month. There’s something in her past, too. I remember Toni telling me that Yasmin was involved in some incident in college and left America right after.”
“Did Toni say what it was about?”
Sally shakes her head. “Toni felt bad for even telling me that much. She didn’t like to stab people in the back.” Sally shoots them a smile. “As you can see, I don’t have that particular problem.”
“Was Toni on drugs?” Leo asks suddenly.
Julia stiffens. “Jesus, Leo.”
Sally shakes her head. “Toni didn’t touch the stuff. She told me about being hooked in the past. She didn’t even smoke weed anymore. Which is no mean feat in the backpacking lifestyle.”
Sally gets to her feet. “That’s all I got. I just wanted you to know before I left.”
Julia’s startled. “You’re leaving? But you need to tell the police what you’ve told us.”
Sally shakes her head. “No way. I don’t do cops. Besides, I need to grab my gear at the hostel before my bus leaves for Egypt.”
“Come with us to see Christine Fletcher from the embassy then,” implores Julia. “We’ll make sure you’re back in time for your bus.”
Sally holds up her hands. “Sorry. No can do.”
“Please, Sally. We’ve got so little to go on.”
Sally gives Julia a sympathetic look. “I really hope you find Toni. I like her. But I’m not getting involved.” She shoulders her bag. “Good luck.”
With that said, she walks out the door.
24
Google is the obvious choice so both Leo and Julia return to the hotel business center, a room the size of a broom cupboard housing two ancient desktop computers complete with tube monitors.
“Can’t you just use your phone?” says Leo, blowing dust off the keyboards.
Julia shakes her head. “I hate doing internet searches on such a tiny screen. It hurts my eyes.”
Thankfully, the desktop still works and it’s not long before Julia has success.
The first link is to a newspaper article about Yasmin mother’s election as a state supreme court judge. Accompanying the article is a photo of Yasmin and her mother and father, taken in an exquisite rose garden outside what could only be described as a mansion.
Leo whistles. “Not short of a buck then.”
The second link is about Yasmin’s father, a dean at Brown University, receiving some prestigious medal for his work in physics. There’s a small photo of Yasmin and her mother sitting in the front row of the ceremony.
“Providence, Rhode Island, country club all the way,” says Leo. “No brothers and sisters, just Yasmin and her four-poster bed and wisteria balcony.”
Julia scrolls down the page. She stops when she sees a link. Dean’s daughter implicated in freshman’s suicide.
“Huh,” says Leo, peering at the screen over her shoulder. “That looks interesting.”
Julia clicks on the link and they sit reading. Yasmin had outed a nineteen-year-old freshman as a lesbian. As a result, the Idaho native, who came from a devout Christian family, had thrown herself off the fifth floor of the chemical lab. The article included vitriolic Facebook postings about the young woman’s sexuality all traced back to Yasmin and her sorority sisters. What was worse, though, was that Yasmin, the head of the sorority, had deliberately befriended the young woman only to later expose her in what Yasmin had described in reports as a “prank.” Yasmin had secretly filmed the young woman in an encounter
