Spirited conversations blossom around her, but Elena isn’t listening. She looks out the window, wishing she could see anything beyond the glass of this monstrous house. Still, there’s nothing but her own reflection. It’s not as if they couldn’t have found out about Quinn online if they looked, she tells herself. It’s not like she revealed a secret. But she feels an intestine-twist of guilt anyway.
She has just crossed a line.
21Joey
Joey really doesn’t want to be wiping coffee splatters off the wall.
She wants to be cornering Tom Winter, shoving him into a chair, and yelling into his face.Why did you kill her?This detective drama fantasy isn’t new. She’s imagined herself doing it to the right person over the years. The problem is, she never found the right person. Now, they have him dead to rights, but there are still questions. Why would he keep evidence in his spare bedroom for anyone to find? And why did the police, the coroner, or anyone who examined Quinn’s body after her death not mention the stab wounds? Something isn’t adding up. She resists the urge to pull up the photo of the sweatshirt on her phone. When she gets home, she’ll check the notes she’s examined a hundred times, in case there’s something she’s missing.
She wipes the wall, then dips her rag back into the bucket and wipes again. When she finishes with that, she goes after the floor, where something sticky has formed a solid puddle. She may need a mop for this one.
Zach doesn’t do a great job closing up. There were cups in the sink when she came in a couple of hours ago, and she’s almost certain hehasn’t bothered to clean the espresso machine grates. He’s fantastically reliable at showing up for work, and that’s about it. But he’s all she’s got, and she feels like she owes him for taking off early today and yesterday. The influx of customers over the past few days has strained day-to-day operations, and she wants to blame the film, but she can’t. This is on her.
A faint sound makes her look up. The door is closed and locked. She can’t see anything out there, though she has the sudden sensation that there’s someone there, just beyond the sidewalk where the light reaches. Her pulse vibrates in her throat.
But after a few seconds of silence, she sees no one and doesn’t hear the sound again. She does her best to shake it off and gets back to wiping the floor. Being in Tom’s house felt like crawling barefoot through a dumpster, and it sparked in her a sudden, irrepressible need to clean something. Besides, no one but her is going to make sure this place is ready for the morning rush. So even though she feels uneasy being here alone tonight, here she is.
A knock on the glass.
Joey jumps, sending water tumbling out of her bucket and bleeding across the hardwood. She rights the bucket.
A vaguely familiar woman bundled in a furry pink coat salutes her hand over her eyes and peers through the glass. In a moment, she spots Joey and throws a palm to her heart in anoh, thank godgesture. And then she smiles and mimes opening the door.
It’s Nicola Bianco. The actress. Joey has no idea what she’s doing here, but she guesses she’s about to find out. She stands, peels off her rubber gloves, and cautiously walks to the door. When Joey cracks open the door, Nicola makes a face like she’s just been saved from oncoming traffic. “I am dying for a coffee,” she says with a barely detectable European accent that Joey assumes is Italian.
“It’s ten o’clock at night,” says Joey, glancing at theClosedsign that hangs from the door.
“Oh, it’s fine. I’m a night owl.” Nicola looks at Joey expectantly.
Joey presses her lips together, hoping to convey that she doesn’t negotiate with entitled movie stars, but in the end, she doesn’t have the energy to put up a fight. She opens the door wider and gestures for her to come in. Nicola, with no self-awareness whatsoever, saunters inside, shivering and pulling her coat tighter around her.It’s fifty-five degrees out, Joey thinks,and at least seventy in here, but she says nothing. Resigned, she ducks behind the counter and fires up the old espresso machine. Zach has left beans in the grinder, she notices, and just as she suspected, the grate beneath sloshes with murky brown liquid. She places a mug down, sees that it’s chipped, and replaces it with two unchipped mugs. If she’s going to the trouble, she might as well have one too. Then she gets out the mop and quickly cleans up the spilled water.
“You work here?” Nicola scrapes a chair across the floor and watches while Joey finishes mopping and begins to make the drinks.
“I own it.”
She looks around appraisingly. Joey guesses what she’s thinking. It’s the same thing she’d think if she was in Nicola’s shoes. Suddenly, she feels defensive. “We’re updating the decor soon,” she says.
“Ah,” says Nicola politely.
They fall silent as the machine whirs.
“How is the inn?” asks Joey. She doesn’t really care, but she figures making conversation is better than sitting in silence. She’s trying to get a read on Nicola, and she can’t. She appears girly and petite, and the request for coffee after dark from a closed café fits the entitled cliché. But she also seems candid. Almost likable.
“It’s great,” Nicola says, surprising her. “To be honest, I thought I would hate it here. But everyone is so nice. And no paparazzi.”
Joey finds herself laughing. “Don’t be fooled. We have our own version of the paparazzi. They’re named Ingrid and Jasper Hardy, and theylive on Third Avenue. They run the local online paper. I’m sure you’ve already been featured in Tuesday’s ‘Around Town’column.”
“Oh,” says Nicola, reluctantly smiling. “I guess I don’t mind a little paparazzi now and then. It means I’m still relevant.”
Joey can feel herself softening to the low-stakes conversation. In the hours since Tom’s house, she’s felt trapped by her own thoughts. For years, she has known that Quinn didn’t just fall off that crag. She’s known it like she’s known her own name. And yet, after finding the sweatshirt she was wearing when she died, stained with her blood and slashed seven times over, she can hardly bear to think about it. For the moment, Joey appreciates the levity of sitting with another soul who has no idea about Quinn or Tom or any of it. She almost doesn’t mind that she’s making coffee this late at night for someone who, she just has a feeling, has no intention of paying.
“How’s the filming coming along?” Joey asks as she brings the drinks over. She hands one to Nicola, who takes a desperate sip.
“It’s awful. A toxic working environment. The director is…” She trails off. “He is a bully. I have never worked with him before this film but have heard rumors. Well, the rumors are not as bad as the real thing. Two crew members have quit because of his little tantrums.”
“That’s… Yikes,” says Joey. She tries to recall the name of the director. She knows Elena mentioned it, but she can’t fish it from her mind.
Nicola rubs a thumb along the side of her mug. “Men like him are everywhere. Especially in this business. But I suppose they’re not all like that. There are some good apples.”
