He was like a scraggly dog, her brother. He’d been doing his twelve steps, staying off the booze and pills for the most part, but what Laura had discovered was that her brother was still an asshole even when he wasn’t drinking and getting high.
“Can I get those names?” Laura asked the woman, grabbing a pen and pad of paper courtesy of Courtyard Marriott. Sometimes she brought toilet paper or fresh towels home from work too. She’d stopped taking the mini shampoos when her friend, Rosie, almost got fired for doing the same thing.
There were three options she’d have to call before her shift at the hotel started.
The woman explained that the funeral home would handle transferring the body.
“So I won’t have to call here again?” Laura asked.
Terry flopped onto the faded navy sofa and turned on the television. It blared one of the local channels, which had a morning show on. Two women in soft pastels and matching glossy haircuts sat chatting at a table. And then Dermot’s face was smiling back at Laura from the screen. It was the picture they’d taken when they went hiking together at Blue Falls Creek.
“No, honey. You won’t.”
“Okay, thank you.” Laura hung up, slipped the phone into her back pocket, and stood at the back of the sofa watching as the morning show cut to another reporter holding a microphone in front of a building.
In front of the Marriott.
“The body of a young man was found dead in one of the hotel rooms at the Courtyard Marriott on Sunday. The police are saying little about the case, but it has been reported that the man’s name is Dermot Carine, a twenty-five-year-old social worker from Beacon Hill. Sources indicate foul play appears to be involved. We’ll be keeping you updated on this story as more information materializes.”
“Who the hell were you talking to? And either sit down or fry some eggs up for me. You’re making me nervous just standing back there.” Terry took a huge swig of coffee.
“They’re talking about Dermot.” Laura couldn’t believe she needed to explain this to her brother.
“Who the hell is Dermot?” Terry gave a thin smile.
“Stop it.” Laura’s instinct was to reach out and slap him, but she still had bruises from their last fight, and she didn’t have the time or the endurance to do it again.
“I’m glad he’s dead,” Terry said.
“Stop it.” Laura forced herself to walk away. She pulled the accordion door for the bathroom and flipped the lock. She made it to the toilet before the sob leaked out of her body.
Dermot was too young, too kind, too handsome to be dead. She’d just seen him Sunday morning, smiling over her at the diner in town where they liked to meet for lunch or sometimes just a milkshake.
Another image of Dermot popped into her mind, but Laura pushed that one away. She couldn’t handle that. Not now, not with Terry shouting at her like some wench and nothing to look forward to other than her cigarette break after cleaning up other people’s piss off toilet seats.
She’d call the funeral homes on her break from work today. Laura had a little money saved up in an account at the credit union Terry didn’t know about. She’d been stupid after their parents died and put Terry as joint account holder on her original savings and checking account, which he’d drained to buy booze and pot.
Laura couldn’t stand to think about Dermot’s body being burned up into ash. Or worse, burned up and mixed with other unclaimed dead people at the county morgue.
She let the sob come again, hard and fresh through her body. She’d had plenty of practice learning how to make her pain silent. The TV blared on in the living room, some happy jingle wrinkling the air in the trailer.
The reality landed on Laura for the first time. Dermot wasn’t just dead. He’d been murdered. Burying him wouldn’t be the end of it.
The police would be coming, asking questions. Sniffing around the trailer, judging her life.
She had to get her story straight.
Terry shouted from the living room. “What’s wrong? Do you have the shits? And where are those eggs?”
“Coming.” Dermot was supposed to be her ticket to a better life.
Laura flushed the toilet. The cheap mirror above the sink made her look old, her skin dishwater grey.
All of this was so incredibly awful, because Laura was fairly certain of one thing more than any other: Dermot Carine could hurt her more now that he was dead than he had when he was alive.
CHAPTER SEVEN TRINA
Trina poured herself a tumbler of vodka and slugged it down, the liquor a hot flash in her throat. Her phone sat in the container of rice on the counter. A satisfying sprinkle of grains tumbled over the counter as she pulled it out. She powered her phone on, the screen brightening after a few seconds of indecision.
The notifications came accordioned, one on top of the other. Two calls from Simon. Five texts from him. Nothing from the police.
Trina scrolled through. She had a voicemail from Monica.
“Call me as soon as you get this. It’s not good.”
They’d met at a tedious wedding that was trying way too hard to be classy—a jazz band and chocolate cheesecake instead of wedding cake and cookies. No one was dancing, and the bar was only white wine and lite beer. Monica spotted Trina leaning on the bar and sidled up to her like an old friend, whiskey on her breath and her dark tendrils pulled into a half-up chignon with a dragon-tipped spike thrust through the knot of hair. The dragon had fake ruby eyes that glowed under the fluorescent lights of the hotel ballroom. “Want to get out of here?” she’d asked Trina, and when Trina demurred, explaining that she wasn’t into women, Monica laughed hard and loud, explaining to the surrounding guests desperately trying to get drunk on room temperature Coors Light that neither was she, “but she’d gladly try if it meant leaving this corpse of a party.” Monica liked to search out parties, too, although she was braver than Trina with seeking out bar mitzvahs and retirements, anniversaries and family reunions. She worked in insurance, somewhere beige and bloodless. That’s how she’d described it when Trina asked her over tequila shots at the bar they went to after the wedding. That’s why she went out to parties: Looking for blood.
Monica picked up on the second ring.
“Where have you been?” Her voice sounded stretched. “This is crazy.”
“My phone broke.” Trina looked at her empty glass, and then shoved it and the bottle away from her. The glass skidded along the counter and fell onto the kitchen tile, smashing as it hit the floor. Trina stood still, aware of small shards of glass near her stockinged feet. “I just got back from campus. Two detectives cornered me while I was walking after class.”
“They called me at work. I have no clue how they even know we’re friends.”
“What were they asking you?”
“About your weekend. About what you usually do on Sunday nights. They wanted to know if you drank, if you did any ‘recreational’ drugs.” Trina could hear the quotes as Monica said the word “recreational.”
