The Blue Room Vol. 5 Page 6
My heart leaps.
“She was so bruised and banged up, though, I'm not sure it was her. Her face wasn't exactly in pristine condition. But I think there's a chance – yes, yes – that girl did come in a while ago.”
“Can I see her?” I'm tripping over my own words. “Please, I need to see her. It's really important. I've been looking for her for a long time.”
I lean over the counter to look into the woman's eyes, trying to make her understand how important it is that I talk to Rita: and that I talk to her now.
But she isn't smiling.
“Sorry,” she says. “I wish I could help you, really I do. But the girl I'm talking about died a few days ago.”
For a second I don't understand what she's saying. Sounds are coming out of her mouth, but they aren't words. They have no meaning.
Then, word by word, syllable by syllable, my brain pieces the facts together.
Rita. Dead. A few days ago.
A few days ago.
That's all.
This whole time, she's been here, so close, right under my nose. This whole time, I could have found her.
And instead I left her to die in this place alone.
“What happened?” I'm trying to hold it together, trying not to cry.
“Her injuries were just too bad, I guess. Internal stuff. She just...didn't wake up one day. That's all.”
I don't let myself cry. I can't cry. I can't even process this. Not here, not now. But the tears must stream down my cheeks anyway, because the woman behind the counter pats my shoulder and says; “It's good that someone's here who can care for her. We've been searching for her relatives but I can't find anything. We have some of her possessions, you know. Belongings that normally go to the family. You might as well have them – we don't want to throw Virginia's clothes away...”
Virginia's? Where have I heard that name before.
She leads me into a back room.
“There,” she says. “Everything Virginia had. It's yours.”
No wonder I hadn't been able to find Rita. She went by Virginia here.
I look at the objects Rita has left behind. A stack of clothes. Some jewelry. A couple of books. All that's left of my dead best friend.
I could have saved you, Rita, I think, trying to stop the tears from falling. Oh Rita, if I could have only saved you.
Then I see the note. Written in Rita's hand. Some numbers. A key, taped to the paper. And a single word: Bayview.
Rita's bank.
What could it all mean?
Unless...
Then it hits me. The numbers, the key. It all makes sense. Rita's directing me to a safe deposit box at Bayview bank?
But why?
There's only one way to find out. There's only one way to get to the truth.
I head straight to Bayview Bank in Los Angeles. It's only a ten minute drive from the Blue Hotel. I hold the key in my hand, fingering it until it's warm with my sweat. These mysteries just keep getting curiouser and curiouser. I'm like fucking Alice in Wonderland, I think. Always going deeper down the rabbit hole. Never able to find my way out again.
What could Staci be hiding? Money? Jewelry?
My fingers shake as I open the safety deposit box.
But to my surprise, the box is empty.
Almost.
There, in the back of the box, is a small box topped with an envelope: so thin I almost missed it altogether. I pull out the envelope with trembling hands.
There, written in Rita's familiar handwriting, is one word and one word only: STACI.
A note for me? My eyes fill with tears as I take the note and open it, hungry to read Rita's every word, hungry to read the last thing my best friend would ever say to me.
My dearest Staci, the note began,
I'm so sorry that you're reading this note. If you're reading this, it means that something has happened to me, that I was never able to explain all this to you in person. If that's true, then I want you to know how much I love you. You were more than a friend to me. You were a sister. But if something happens to me, I know that I can't let you go on living without knowing the truth about me and who I really am.
I'm not what I seem to be, Staci. To you I was a yoga teacher, a friend and a patron. But I was more than that, I knew who you were long before the day I appeared outside your car. I'm a private investigator, one of the top undercover investigators in the country. And your father asked me to keep you safe.
Your father had heard rumors of your existence. Long after you were born, he started to piece together the truth behind the disappearance of the woman he loved: that she had escaped him and his family to start a new life with the child that was all that was left of him. And he realized that if he knew you existed, so would his family.
I befriended you. I followed you. I looked out for you every step of the way. I did my very best to keep you safe: or at least as safe as I could
Remember that person you said you thought was stalking you? The “hunch” you had the first year we knew each other that you were being followed? We laughed and dismissed it as a crazy feeling. But it wasn't, Staci. Someone was following you: taking pictures, trailing you.
And I traced that someone back to the Blue Room.
I wanted to know more. But I couldn't – the security there was the tightest I've ever seen. I realized soon that the only way I'd be able to get information at the Blue Room was to become a Blue Girl myself.
It was an unorthodox job, to be sure. And for anybody else, I'm not sure I'd have been willing to do it. But by then I'd come to really care for you, really love you. Like a sister. And I knew that I'd do whatever it took to keep you safe.
I'd used the skills I gained as a PI – spying, secrets – to start my own internal investigation at the Blue Room.
Here is what I know.
The Blues cannot be trusted. Follow the money, and it goes all the way back to the Tannenbaums. Your paternal grandmother recently lent an enormous sum of money to Clarence Blue: the man she has always taken an interest in. They've been financially entangled for years. Beware of them, all of them. They're financially dependent on the people trying to kill you.
The man who was following you was my main client as a Blues Girl. Mr X. I never learned his real name. He might be in the family himself; I wouldn't be surprised. Be careful, Staci, be very careful. And never go anywhere near the Blue Room.
In the family? Did she mean a Blue or a Tennenbaum?
I'm so sorry not to be able to protect you, Staci. If I lied to you all these years it was only out of love. I leave you one more object with which you can use to protect you.
Stay safe, my love.
Your best friend,
Rita
I open the box automatically.
Inside, shining up at me, there is a gun.
Chapter 10
I can't believe what I'm seeing. I can't believe anything is real. The past twenty-four hours have been a whirlwind.
Rita is dead. Rita is not really my best friend. Rita was a PI, sent by my father, a Tannenbaum. The whole time I've been infiltrating the Blue Room, I've been thinking that I'm doing it for Rita's sake: to find out what's happened to her. But now I realize that the truth is far more insidious than that. Rita was only ever at the Blue Room at all because of me. And so it's my fault she's dead.
I don't even know what to feel. Part of me is devastated: mourning my best friend. Part of me just wants to give up now, to curl up and die right here on the bank floor. The girl I loved more than anybody else in the world is gone for good. I've spent so much time and effort trying to track or down: and now I know I'm too late. If I'd only found her sooner – only a couple of days sooner – everything could be different. I could have saved her. I could at least have said goodbye.
But what would she have said, then? Would she have lied to me?
Because along with my pain there is another emotion coursing through my veins. Anger. Rage. That Rita lied to me. For years
, my best friend, my soul sister, was essentially living a fantasy with me. She was pretending, the way I pretend with my clients, when really she was taking a paycheck to be my bosom buddy. Sure, she said in the letter that she came to truly love me, but can I even believe her anymore? Can I even believe anything? I've given up my whole life, my independence, my dignity, to get justice for a woman who never needed it.
How could Rita lie to me like that? I trusted her. I think of the nights we spent together, sitting and talking until dawn in our pajamas, trading stories and secrets nobody else knew about. Those nights I thought I knew her down to her core. Those nights I thought I knew her soul. But now I see how wrong I was. Now I see that the intimacies we shared were no different from those I share with Xander or with Terrence: a role that two people play when one person wants something from the other, when money changes hands. My best friend was a prostitute, I knew that already. But what I didn't expect was that I was one of her johns.
I'm so angry with her I want to kill her. Then I remember that she's already dead. Then I think I'd do anything, anything at all, to have her back with me again. I'd give my life for hers. Even now. Even in my fury, I mourn her. As long as I didn't know where she was, I had hope: hope that we would find one another, hope that one day we would at last be together again. But now all that hope is gone: and with it my last shred of innocence.
Fuck them all, I think. The Blues. The Tannenbaums. They can all rot.
All I want is revenge.
I want to leave the Blue Room altogether. But now that I know my own family is connected with the Blue Room, making that decision is harder still. Do I cut and run, the way my mother did twenty years ago, assuming a new name, a new life? Do I run and hide from the Blues, the Tannenbaums, this whole world of the global elite that seems to exist purely to destroy those who stand in their way?
But then I think of my mother: lying there on the floor among the disheveled remnants of her life. I think of her among the broken glass, the overturned furniture, terrified. I think of her spending twenty or more years terrified because the mother of the man she loved threatened to kill her – and her child – for daring to bear a child that the family didn't want.
Of course a woman like that would be in league with Roni Taylor.
It's what I'd always expected of people like them. Never trust the rich. Never trust anybody.
Don't trust the Blues. That's what the letter said. Well, I won't make that mistake again. I won't trust Xander. I won't trust Terrence. After all, they're financially beholden to the people who want me dead. For all I know, one of them could be behind Rita's death.
One of them could be trying to kill me, too.
Wave after wave of realization crests over me. I feel so tired, sick, overwhelmed. All I want to do is lie down. But I have to get back to the Blue Room. I have to get back to my life so I can figure out what to do next.
I take Rita's gun. I finger it slowly, running my hand over the cold metal. It feels so good in my hands. Heavy. Strong. Powerful. Right now, this gun is the only means I have to keep myself safe.
And there are so many dangers out there.
Mr. X. – but who could it be? Could it be Xander? Or not? Could Xander be playing me and trying to lead me off course? Mr. X. is the one who killed Roz, whom Rita was seeing, whom Rita was tracking down. For all I know Rita could have been one of his victims, too. Didn't the nurse say Rita had been banged up beyond recognition when she arrived at the clinic? But did Mr. X. do the banging?
I arrive back at the hotel. Immediately I notice something is wrong. My door is open.
Terrence?
He's snuck up on me before. But Terrence said he'd be gone for a few days – he can't be back early...or can he?
I tighten my fingers around my gun in my purse as I slowly open the door.
“Staci!”
I gape in shock.
It's my father.
I keep my hand on the gun.
“What do you want?” I'm shaking a little, but I don't want to let him see. “How did you get in here? How did you know I was here?”
“Staci...” my dad rises.
“You've got a hell of a lot of explaining to do, you know that? Your manipulations, your lies....I know about Rita.”
“Staci...”
“I know who she is. I know who hired her. But someone hurt her. Someone killed her. Did you betray her?”
“Staci, I would never...”
“Rita died at the Blue Room. The same institution that apparently your family's been funding for decades. And you mean to tell me you and your sick family weren't involved? Do you even know what happened to Mom? How she had to flee the hospice, only to come back to find her whole house ransacked. She doesn't feel safe anywhere – and who knows how long she has left?”
I take out my gun. I point it directly at him.
“You'd better start talking, Dad. If that's even who you really are.”
“Put the gun away, Staci, let me explain.”
“How about you explain now and I'll keep the gun where it is, thanks?”
He sighs. He puts his head in his hands. He looks weary. Old.
“Staci,” he begins “I'm so sorry. I know what you must be feeling right now. This is a difficult time for you – I should have been honest with you from the beginning. I see it now. I was just so concerned for your safety. Let me explain how things really happened. Yes, I'm your father – of course I am. And I loved your mother so much. I didn't know about you until so much later...and even then I was afraid to go near her. My family is a ruthless one. We have rituals, ways.
“My family was never happy with me falling for your mother. They had other visions for me. Other plans. They wanted to set me up with appropriate women from families of similar standing and wealth: my marriage was supposed to be a business deal. A child outside of marriage would have been devastating for me. I was far less “marriageable” if it was known I had a child already – a child who could rival any heir I had with a woman from a family like the Rothschilds. And so my mother did anything she could to keep me away from Genny. I had no idea...no idea...” He looks so sad I almost feel sorry for him.
“But something's happened now that changes everything, Staci. My mother, Gloria Tannenbaum, passed away a couple of weeks ago. That's why I wasn't with your mother these past couple of days. I had to take care of her estate. And that's when I found the will. My mother wanted to pressure me to get married and have children, so she put in the will that I could only inherit the Tannenbaum fortune if I'd shown that I had an heir. It's a Tannenbaum family tradition that my mother never changed. And so: now I must come forward to show the world you. That you are my child. My heir. My only offspring.”
I gape at him. Heir to a fortune – me? That can't possibly be right. And yet...
Then everything goes dark.
The sound of a door opening; the lights plunge everything into chaos. I see a dark figure coming towards me, a black gloved hand reaching for my gun...
Then someone else is there: the door opens a second time; someone shoves me so violently I see stars and fall to my knees.
“Staci!” My father is crying my name.
But then I hear a woman's voice in my ear: low, strange, and yet uncannily familiar.
“Go!”
That's the last thing I hear before something knocks me out.
When I wake up, a few minutes later, my father is gone. The assailant is gone. The mysterious woman is gone.
Only one thing remains. A smell I could recognize anywhere. A smell that fills me with nostalgia, with longing, with confusion.
Rita's perfume.
*****
Well, that’s it for Part 5
Thank you for reading
The Blue Room Vol. 5.
I hope to have Part 6 ready by the end of next month (fingers crossing!)
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*****
Also, The Blue Room Series features some characters from The Never Knights Trilogy
For 17 and Up
The first book, Never Say Never,
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