“Oh my God,” she said. “Please pretend you didn’t hear that.”
“Hear what?” He cupped a hand to his ear. “I didn’t hear nothing.”
He shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other. She sensed he was waiting for something. Like an invitation to join her. Part of her desperately wanted to let down her guard, invite him to stay and share a glass of wine. But to what end? Better not to encourage him.
“Thanks for this,” she said, gesturing at the plate. “You’re a lifesaver. I’m just going to put it inside for now, because it’s still a little early for dinner for me.”
The last thing she saw as she closed the door to her room was the baffled, hurt look on his face.
16
LETTY PICKED AT THE FOODon the paper plate. The barbecued chicken had a tangy-sweet sauce, and the lukewarm macaroni and cheese reminded her of Mimi’s, cheesy and buttery with a thick oven-browned crumb topping, and the vinegar-brined coleslaw made a nice contrast to the chicken. She tapped at the dinner roll with her fingernail. Rock-hard.
She glanced over at Maya, who was asleep in the middle of the double bed, on her tummy, with both arms and legs spread out, pajama-clad rump in the air. Her gaze traveled to the window, where she was hoping to catch one last glimpse of the sunset. But the sky had turned plum-colored. The moment was gone. She pushed away the plate of half-eaten food and picked up her phone.
It was surprisingly easy to find the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s website, which included a helpful dashboard to search the state’s criminal-record database. All she had to do was type in her sister’s name, age, date of birth, sex, and race. She left blank the spaces for Social Security numbers and aliases.
There was a price for all this efficiency, she discovered—a twenty-five-dollar processing fee, payable only by credit card. She chewed on her bottom lip as she debated the problem. She had Tanya’s American Express card, but didn’t dare use it. Finally, she fished her billfold from her bag and extracted the Visa debit card she’d bought at a nearby convenience store. She typed the credit card information into the payment field using the address of one of the units she’d managed for Evan, and hitSUBMIT.
The speed of the search took her breath away. In an instant the phone screen lit up with the damning details.
Letty looked away from the phone. She got up, bent over the bed and listened to Maya’s steady breath, kissed the damp ringlets at the base of her neck, then pulled the sheet up over her shoulders.
Then she went back to the official State of Florida Criminal Records report. She didn’t want to know. But she needed to know, if not for herself, then for Maya.
Tanya Michelle Carnahan, age twenty-five, a.k.a. Tanya Cole, a.k.a. Michelle Carnahan, a.k.a. Tanya Rooney, had been arrested in Pinellas County, Florida, in February 2015, on charges of criminal fraud, theft by taking, and operating without a business license. There was an official-looking stamp on the document.CHARGES DISMISSED.
Letty scrolled down the report until she was staring at the booking photo. She hardly recognized her sister. This woman had wild red hair that fell past her shoulders and hollow eyes that glared sullenly back at the camera. She touched the phone screen with a trembling finger, this image of a stranger who was her sister, yet not her sister, a chameleon with a talent for transforming herself into whatever the occasion demanded.
And that was it. There were no other details. For twenty-five dollars, Letty thought ruefully, she hadn’t gotten very much, except for the unwelcome affirmation that this time Tanya had apparently gotten in over her head.
And yet, once again, she’d managed to walk away relatively unscathed.CHARGES DISMISSED. Joe said that Ava’s ex-boyfriend and Declan Rooney had escaped, and that his accomplice had worked out a deal to avoid prosecution.
AFTER SHE’D ANSWEREDher sister’s distress call, Letty tried pumping Tanya for details about her relationship with this Rooney, but her sister had been maddeningly vague about the man.
On one of her first nights in the city, they’d stayed in and binge-watchedTrue Blood.Tanya was fascinated with vampires.
Tanya was wearing a pair of jeans and a new sweater Letty had bought her—“an early birthday gift,” because Tanya had few clothes of her own, and because she’d been living down south in Atlanta, and certainly owned nothing warm enough for February in New York. And Letty had loaned her the money to visit an expensive hair salon and get her hair cut and colored back to her natural blond.
“Tell me again what happened with this guy Rooney?” Letty had prompted.
“He just… left. Ripped me off. Everything I owned was in that condo. I went to the store and when I came back an hour later, he was gone.”
“Did you report him to the police?” Letty asked.
“Call the cops on Rooney?” Tanya scoffed. “What were they gonna do? Make him come back, hand over my clothes and stuff, and the money I loaned him?”
“I don’t understand how you keep getting mixed up with creeps like this,” Letty had said.
“He didn’t seem like a creep when we met,” Tanya said. “He had the most gorgeous eyes, this amazing deep blue, like a mountain lake you just wanted to dive naked into, and long, dark black eyelashes. He reminded me a lot of a young Pierce Brosnan. And oh my God, was he funny. He’d tell these hilarious stories, in that Irish accent of his, and you never knew if they were true or not, but it didn’t matter, because that was Rooney.”
“Where’d you meet him?”
“I don’t really remember,” Tanya said airily. “He was just around. And one day, he asked if he could buy me a drink and I said yes, and the next thing I knew, we were a couple.”
“Did he have a job? Friends? Other people you knew in common?” Letty pressed.
“Yes, he had a job,” Tanya said, clearly pissed off. “God! Do we have to talk about this right now? I came up here to forget aboutRooney, and it doesn’t help when you want to interrogate me like I’m on a witness stand or something.”
