Chapter 14: The Little Half-Sister
Chloe clutched the phone to her ringing ear. "You set off a bomb to get my attention?"
"So it worked," The Bull said. "Good."
"What the fuck is wrong with you?"
"Little girls not doing what I tell them is what the fuck is wrong with me," The Bull said. "I specifically fucking tell you not to stick your nose into other peoples' shit, and what happens? One of my boys tails you to a hotel, and not five minutes later, Denise Leonard comes out. That sounds like the opposite of what I told you to do."
"Care to comment on your relationship to Denise Leonard, and how she fits into all this?"
"Fuck you," The Bull said.
"Understand," Chloe said, not really caring that she was getting further and further on the wrong side of a violently unstable drug lord. "You and Denise come to me on the same day asking for favors. She paid me. You blew a cop's brains out on the floor right in front of me. Gee, I wonder which one of you two I like more."
Out of the corner her eye, Chloe saw Max with a disapproving look on her face. Chloe decided to wait until the conversation was over to address it.
"What fucking favor?" The Bull asked. "I ask you to do nothing. Literally fucking nothing! I'm supposed to pay you to do what a potato does for free?"
"Bull," Chloe said. "Any other week, I'd have followed your instructions. But not this week. Not now. Not ever. All you've done is piss me off."
In truth, Chloe felt a lot more badass before she said that than after. The ensuing seconds of the aftermath, during which she could hear The Bull's breathing over the phone, she teetered on the edge of panic.
"Listen here, bitch," The Bull said. His voice was barely above a whisper. "I've had my whole life to come to terms with the fact that I am one dramatic motherfucker. I am the kind of man who would blow up a car to make a point. This is my second warning to stay out of my way. You will be in no position to tell a soul about my third. I will snatch your spine out through your scrawny ass, do you hear me? Don't make me show you how bad for your health fucking with me really is."
And with that, The Bull hung up. Chloe put her phone back in her jacket and looked at Max.
"That was The Bull?" Max asked.
Chloe nodded.
"He sounds charming."
"He wants me to stop snooping."
"Oh," Max said. "Will you?"
Chloe looked at Max again and noticed something. She stepped towards her and reached out.
A piece of glass from the window had lodged itself in the flesh over Max's cheekbone. It wasn't a large one, no bigger in size than the tip of a ballpoint pen. Chloe gingerly removed it from Max's face. It wasn't in very deep, but she could see a small bit of blood start to bead in the wound. The mark left by the bit of glass would be gone in a day or two, but one irrefutable fact was foremost on Chloe's mind…
The Bull had spilled the blood of Max Caulfield.
Chloe hoped that the look of absolute biblical fury on her face answered Max's question.
After they had hugged a second time (and Chloe held her breath again), Chloe and Max were back in the Land of Ex-Girlfriend Weirdness. The two got on to the elevator and made their way down to the lobby to see if there was any way they could help. They found no wounded, but rather a gaggle of the hotel's guests, milling about confusedly and trying to get the ringing out of their ears.
"Walk you to The Beast?" Max asked. Considering the police would be here any minute and she wasn't feeling up to lying to them, Chloe thought that was for the best.
Chloe pulled The Beast in at the Blue Cove parking lot, waiting until her ancient truck stopped sputtering before getting out. She made her way into her apartment and, without so much as turning the lights on after she shut the apartment door, got down to nothing but the boxers she had on, leaving jacket, jeans, shirt, bra, beanie and boots on the living room floor. She walked through the darkness to her bedroom…
…and just stared at the bed, illuminated a grungy orange form the streetlight outside.
Another Chloe's memories were coming to her, and they had a way of coming in while she was dreaming. Chloe thought that laying her head on that pillow was a dangerous proposition, and the nightmare of Other Chloe's memories pushing out her own came back briefly. If only she could pick and choose. So I have to have these new memories? Fine. I'll trade you my knowledge of all the state capitals for whatever fun times with Max I had in that other reality.
Chloe kept staring at the bed until her eyelids got too heavy for her to be afraid anymore.
The shimmer of light and water danced on the ceiling.
Max shed her shirt at poolside and Chloe, already in the water, drank her body in.
The fade in Chloe's mind from Max-as-Friend to Max-as-More-Than Friend was gradual to the point of being imperceptible. Her thoughts roamed along Max's body, sending Chloe's mind into a chasm of What-Ifs and How-Tos, questions and wonders of the prelude. Theories of Max's hair under her nose. Max's earlobe between her teeth. Max's thigh beneath her lips.
And as they came, Chloe consigned them to the murky vault in which she put all shameful thoughts. She steeled herself against them like a silent, celibate monk.
I can't. Rachel's waiting for me.
She tore her eyes away.
Chloe opened her eyes in the light of the early morning, the dream still fresh. It wasn't a nightmare, but it had left her unsettled as though it were. She threw the covers back and put her feet down on the floor.
She felt old. Wizened. She was a twenty-four year old woman with the regrets of someone in their fifties.
Over the past couple of days, Chloe had resigned herself to the fact that the existence of the universe was not an undeviating straight line, but rather a bloom with unruly petals jutting out at odd directions. A coin coming up heads here would come up tails in another reality. Those who go left go right elsewhere.
But in every universe, in every timeline, Chloe Price would fall in love with Max Caulfield.
And in every timeline, fate, circumstance, coincidence, the weather, or Chloe herself would find a way to fuck it up.
I can't win 'em all, Chloe thought. But can't I win just one?
Whatever calamity befell her in timelines unknown, it pressed down on Chloe that she was in the last universe standing, and death and storms couldn't break up Chloe and Max, but she could. All the sacrifices and turmoil were for nothing, as Chloe left Max without saying a word because…
Chloe didn't want to think about it, didn't want to justify her walking out to herself, under the towering fear that her reasoning would collapse, and she'd feel more like an asshole than she already did.
Chloe finally got up to find her phone and call the woman who made her so, so happy and so, so sad.
"Last night you said someone was shot in front of you," Max said.
Chloe called Max and they met at the Two Whales. After breakfast (and more dirty stares from Vivian), the first order of business, they decided, was to check out the house of Margarita Newman, Justin's mysterious brunette girlfriend.
They were on their way there now.
"What?"
"On the phone with The Bull last night," Max said. "You said he shot someone in front of you? A cop?"
"Well," Chloe said, "it was a dirty cop, if it makes you feel any better."
"It doesn't," Max said. "Good Lord, I'm so sorry. How did you hold up after that?"
"I think you'd have held up better. Didn't you see me get my head blown off in the other reality? You'd have handled this dude's head exploding like a champ."
"Don't sound so impressed when you say that," Max said. "Kinda the worst day of my life."
"I will say this, though. I'd rather have nightmares about Detective Finch getting capped than the dreams I've been having."
"Did you have another one last night?" Max asked. "Another memory?"
Chloe felt a twinge inside her. It… was not altogether wholesome.
"I'll tell you about it later," Chloe said.
They pulled up to the address for Margarita Newman that Max found. It was called Renoir Court, and was an entire suburban block that consisted of one main house up front and five smaller houses in the back, no bigger than mobile homes. According to the address, Margarita Newman lived in one of the smaller houses.
"What's the relation between Margarita Newman and Jennifer Healy?" Chloe asked. "There are pictures of the two of them on Instagram, but, what, are they friends? Related?"
"Picture," Max said. "Singular. And I don't know. All of Jennifer Healy's accounts are set to private. We're just going off of one picture. The connection might be thin, but there's no way of knowing until we ask her."
They knocked on the door of House 3, which was shedding white paint chips like a Chihuahua shed fleas. There was no answer. Chloe and Max looked at each other.
"Landlord?"
"Landlord."
Landlady, as it turned out. She looked to be in her late sixties, by Chloe's estimation, with thick glasses and thin white hair. The fact that Christmas was well over a month away didn't stop her from having a thick Christmas sweater on. She didn't move from the frame of the front door of the main house.
"Who are you?" asked the Landlady.
Chloe closed her eyes and took a quick breath. Let's hope this doesn't sound as stupid out loud as it does in my head.
"Ma'am," Chloe said, "I'm a private investigator, and I was hoping to speak to Margarita Newman about her boyfriend's death? His name's Justin Williams, I don't know if you know him…"
"I met him," The Landlady said. "Who hired you?"
"You know, the word 'private' is just as important as the word 'investigator.' I wouldn't be at liberty to say."
The Landlady shrugged.
"You wouldn't happen to know where Margarita is, or when she'd be back?"
"She's on vacation," The Landlady said.
Chloe and Max looked at each other. "Really?" Chloe asked. "Does she know her boyfriend's dead?"
"Damned if I know," The Landlady said. "She's been gone a week. Left a note and paid her rent a month in advance. In cash, too."
"I see," Chloe said. "Would it be alright if I saw this note?"
The Landlady silently damned Chloe with her eyes as she trudged into the house to look for the note. Max looked at Chloe and grinned.
"'Private investigator?'"
"I… It… Your freckles are dumb!"
Max laughed.
The Landlady returned a moment later, note from Margarita in hand. Chloe looked it over, and… it said exactly what The Landlady said it did. Although Chloe found it curious that the letter didn't say where Margarita was vacationing to.
"Thank you," Chloe said. "Do you mind if we have a look around Margarita's house? It's not like we could take anything. You know what we look like and it's not as though we're hard to spot."
The Landlady looked Chloe up and down. "I run a respectable place, here," The Landlady said. "I don't let anyone have their way around my residents' homes."
Chloe fished two of Lenny Diehl's fifties out of her jacket pocket and held them out to The Landlady.
"Lucky me," Chloe said. "I'm not just anyone."
Inside the small confines of Margarita Newman's house, Chloe took the bedroom on the right, Max took the living room on the left, and they vowed to search their way to the middle. Both were very conscious of the fact that what they were doing was very illegal, and tried to put everything back as best they could when they were done.
Chloe's search of the bedroom wasn't bringing her the success she wanted. Nothing was in any of the drawers or under the bed. The only pictures she found were copies of those in Justin's hallway.
Chloe called out to Max. "Find anything?"
"I found her laptop… Fuck, it's password-protected."
Chloe went into the living room. Her intentions to say something to Max were stifled by the green leather-bound photo album that she spotted on the entertainment center underneath the TV.
"You check this yet?" Chloe asked. Max looked up and shook her head.
It only took two page-flips for Chloe to find sweet, delicious paydirt.
"Max!" Chloe said. "Get over here!" Max did so.
Not only had Margarita Newman known Jennifer Healy, they'd known each other for years. Little wonder as Margarita and Jennifer were all over the album, in a variety of Christmas pictures, birthday celebrations, family vacations…
"They're related," Max said. "They could be sisters."
"With different last names?" Chloe asked.
"Half-sisters, maybe? There's only one set of parents in these photos. That kinda leaves out any aunts or uncles for them to be cousins."
Chloe rubbed the back of her beanie up and down, hoping the friction would scratch the back of her head.
"It doesn't make any sense," Chloe said. "Her boyfriend's dead, her half-sister's missing for how long?"
"A month, according to the flyer we got at Blackwell."
"And she decides to go on vacation?"
Something occurred to Chloe. It wasn't a pleasant something. She stormed to the kitchen. Max put down the photo album and followed her.
On the refrigerator door was a grocery list, reminding its writer of their need for milk, flour, double-A batteries and baby oil. Chloe took the vacation letter she had gotten from The Landlady and held it up next to the grocery list.
"Wowser," Max said.
"Yup," Chloe said. "Different handwriting." Chloe held the vacation letter up in front of Max.
"Someone else wrote this letter and gave cash to The Landlady to make her think Margarita Newman was on vacation."
"But she isn't," Max said.
"No. Margarita was taken. And if she was taken, so was Jennifer Healy. It's the only thing that makes sense."
Max looked at her shoes and sighed. "Can't we get a mystery where things get less complicated?"
