The affair was slotted into the back of Javi’s brain as an item of interest for later. It would put Ruth on the defensive to push at it now, and he wanted as much information from her as possible first.
“We haven’t been able to track down much information about Janet,” he said instead and left Ruth’s confession to grate on her conscience. “Do you know anything about her that we could use to track down her next of kin?”
“No,” Ruth said. She shrugged under Javi’s frown. “Janet never talked about the past—her family, her old name, where she grew up? I asked her sometimes, but she said that was ‘BFNY,’ Before New York, and it didn’t matter. For her, life started when she became who she wanted to be, the person I met.”
“That was when she transitioned?”
Ruth pulled a sour face. “I suppose that’s public knowledge now,” she said. Her chin dipped in a sharp, resentful nod. “But yes. It was a year ago or a bit more now. Not long before we met. It was—and this is genuinely the one thing I know about her from before—after her mother died. Janet came into some money, enough for everything and a plane ticket to New York, and never looked back.”
“No idea where she lived before New York? She didn’t have an accent or a favorite food?”
“Educated,” Ruth said. “She’s better spoken than I am. And she…. New York was a fetish for her, Mr. Merlo. She didn’t love anything that wasn’t made in the city.”
The impression Janet Morrow had left on the world remained translucent. All they knew was that someone had brutalized her. It didn’t seem fair. Whoever tried to kill her shouldn’t get to define her.
“Do you have any idea why she came to Plenty?”
“We hadn’t spoken for a while,” Ruth said. Before Javi could feel more than an itch of disappointment, Ruth went on. “She came to talk to me two weeks ago, though. Not about Plenty—she never mentioned that—but… about the future?”
“With you?”
A wistful look softened Ruth’s face. She looked down at her hands, which were still laced together between her knees as though she couldn’t trust them.
“No,” she said. “She loved me, but Janet was her one true love. It was her idea, her plan, for what her life would be like once she couldbeJanet. She wasn’t going to pine over me when she still had ambitions. That’s what she wanted to talk about—her future as a designer. It was always something that she wanted to do—we met at a fashion show my wife had put on—but now she just seemed to want it tomorrow.”
Javi raised his eyebrows. “And she had the money for that?”
Ruth pursed her lips. “No. She didn’t. That was the thing that made it stick out, because I knew she’d been down on her luck recently. She’d lost her job, and the friends she was staying with threw her out over… something, I don’t know what exactly, and she’d been sleeping in her car. That’s why we hadn’t spoken in a while. I wanted to help, but she told me that I didn’t get to do that anymore. Janet could be prickly like that, not about money, exactly, but about help?”
“And?” Javi pressed delicately. “What changed?”
Ruth finally unlaced her hands so she could shrug with them. “I don’t know. I thought, at first, that she was going to try and blackmail me for the money—not that I had it. That wasn’t what she wanted, though. She said that she could get the moneyifshe could get to California. There was someone there who owed her money or would give her the money.”
“A debt?”
“I don’t know. She was cagey about it, tight-lipped, but confident that she’d come back with enough. I loaned her the money for the flight and a car. I hoped that would be the last I heard of it. Maybe I hoped she wouldn’t come back, that she’d stay out here. That was the last time I spoke to her, and I don’t know anything else. I’m sorry. Can I go to the hospital now? I’d like to see Janet.”
Ruth looked at him hopefully, unburdened of her secrets. Javi considered it for a second, but he believed she’d told him what she knew… or at least what she knew that she knew.
“Of course,” he said. “I’m sure Lieutenant Frome will arrange for someone to take you up to spend time with her. If you plan to leave town, let me know? Just in case we have any other questions.”
Ruth nodded with relief. “Of course.” She stood up and tugged at her clothes to smooth the lines. Then she extended her hands to Javi. He stood up and accepted the clasp of her fingers around his. “I hope you find who did this to her.”
“I will.”
She squeezed his hand one last time and let go. There were tears in her eyes, and she wiped them away with her knuckles before they could go anywhere. With one last awkward, snotty nod for him, she went to leave. He leaned over to pick up his phone, the counter still at work as it totted up the minutes of terse conversation. At this point Javi didn’t see how it would do any damage if Ruth got defensive.
“Did your partner know?”
She turned abruptly to give him a sharp look. It would have been angry if she weren’t still clearly uncomfortable about being interviewed by the FBI. “Bonnie knows I… I messed up,” she said. “And she knows I picked her—her and our son, our life. But if you’re implying she was involved in this in some way—”
“The doctors don’t know when, or if, Janet will regain consciousness,” Javi interrupted. He saw the flash of grief behind Ruth’s eyes as she looked away… and the guilt. In Javi’s experience, lies died hard, but guilt died harder. It was also an excellent lever. “Janet can’t help me find who did this to her. So I have to ask you these questions. There’s no one else.”
“You want to know who did this?” Ruth snapped. “That’s your question? I don’t know. I don’t know why anyone would hurt Janet. Whatever she wanted to be, right now she’s a janitor who had to sleep in her car because she ran out of friends and couches to crash on. Maybe it was a bigot. There’s enough of them around. I can tell you that it wasn’t Bonnie. She’s not like that.”
“People can surprise you.”
A bitter smile twisted Ruth’s mouth. “If Bonnie still surprised me, I wouldn’t have slept with someone else,” she said. “Bonnie was the one who met Janet first. She liked her. She felt sorry for her. She….”
