“Control and adoration,” Latoya said. “Always. You know the strange thing? Rayna didn’t even like Angelo. I think she staged the whole thing so she’d be seen as the victim and Marielle would break up with him.”
“And then it backfired because Marielle dumped both of them?”
“Exactly.” There was a note of triumph in Latoya’s voice, and I sensed she was pleased to finally get this off her chest. “It backfired big time because Rayna’s lease ended, so she was staying in Marielle’s spare bedroom, and Marielle wasn’t even charging her rent. Boom, she was homeless.”
Ari and I looked at each other. Who could afford to be so generous in New York? Even a rent-controlled apartment didn’t come cheap.
“Did Marielle own a house?” she asked.
“Inherited it from her parents. A big place on Long Island.”
Ari scribbled on a piece of paper. What happened to the house?
I shrugged. I didn’t know, but I was going to find out.
“Is anyone living in the property now?”
“Who knows? I haven’t been out there since she left. You should try talking to Angelo—maybe she did call him?”
“Do you have his number?”
“No, ma’am. But his family owns Capelli’s Hardware on East 29th—he used to work there, and he probably still does.”
“Everything was great between us until she came along.”
“You’re talking about Rayna Bishop?”
An assistant had answered the phone at Capelli’s and put Ari through to Angelo without even asking why she was calling. If anyone did that to me, I’d fire their ass.
“Who else?” He sucked in a breath. Let it out. “That’s in the past now. Why did you say you were asking about Mari again?”
Ari hadn’t said, not yet. “I’m a private investigator working out of California. Rayna’s name came up in connection with another case, and that led us to you.”
“Whatever you’re investigating, she did it, no doubt about that. Case closed. Whose life did she ruin this time?”
“I can’t say too much due to client confidentiality, but the case is still open, and Rayna’s a suspect. The thing is, for a long while, we thought she was Marielle. It’s only recently that we’ve become aware of her true identity.”
“Are you serious? Why would you think that?”
“Because she’s calling herself Marielle Marten. She even has a driver’s licence in that name.”
“That’s bullshit. Mari can’t even drive. She took one lesson years ago and had a panic attack. Did you know her parents died in a car wreck?”
“Someone told us about that.”
“Did they tell you Mari was in the back seat? She gets flashbacks and freaks out.”
“No, they didn’t mention that part.”
“Oh, man. What did Rayna do? Steal Mari’s birth certificate and social security number?”
“That’s possible. We’re not sure.” But it was likely, seeing as Rayna’s photo was in the DMV database. Creating a fake record wasn’t impossible—I could do it, and there were always employees willing to turn a blind eye for a few bucks—but did Rayna have those kinds of connections? “Do you know where Marielle is now?”
“Peru? Colombia? Brazil? Someplace like that.” Which matched the answer Latoya had given. “She was seeing some quack therapist who told her she needed to cut out the negativity in her life, which she interpreted as ‘go teach kids to speak English in a hut somewhere.’”
Had he even been to South America? I suspected not. More people lived in urban areas than in the countryside, and although favelas and barrios were a thing, did he have to sound so judgmental? I reminded myself that just because Rayna was a psycho, it didn’t mean Angelo was a good guy. Mostly, I felt sorry for Marielle.
“Have you spoken with her since she left?”
