Help Me Read online

  The loft-style window was open and I discovered the source of the noise I’d heard. A breeze blew in and made a set of wind chimes hanging from a pipe ring out.

  “Damn it.”

  I finished dialing and raised the phone to my ear.

  “911, what is your emergency?”

  Emergency. Just hearing the calm voice use that word threatened to push me over the edge. “My sister is missing.”

  “How long has she been missing?”

  “I-I’m not really sure. I was supposed to meet her about two hours ago…”

  “How old is she?”

  “Twenty-six. Almost twenty-seven.”

  “And she’s only been gone for a few hours?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have reason to believe she’s been injured?”

  “Well, I’m not sure. Her apartment is a mess, but I don’t know if she-”

  Before I could finish the sentence she interrupted. “You need to contact the local station. I’ll give you the number.”

  “Wait, I-”

  But again, she was rattling off digits before I could say anything, and then she hung up. Moved on to a real emergency I guess.

  I shook my head and dialed again. This time I was on hold for a while before getting a receptionist who then put me on hold again.

  Wandering back out into Kat’s living room I noticed something. The furniture, while mostly destroyed, was really nice. I didn’t know much about it, but the pieces seemed fancier than anything I’d ever owned. The wood thicker and heavier. The fabrics softer and richer.

  I was about to right an upended bar stool when I snatched my hand back. The police would want to collect fingerprints and photographs. Everything had to be left as it was. I could be contaminating evidence, something that might tell us where Kat was. I stayed frozen in place, trying not to touch anything while I waited.

  Finally, an office came on the line. “How may I help you?”

  “I need someone to come out to my sister’s apartment. I think she’s in danger.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “She was supposed to pick me up from the airport, but she never showed and I can’t reach her.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “Her place. I have a key and it’s a mess. I mean, it looks like something terrible happened here.”

  “Any signs of a struggle?”

  “I…I’m not sure. There’s no blood or anything like that. But everything is torn apart. Every room looks ransacked.”

  “I see. Address and your sister’s name, please.”

  I gave them both.

  “Hold on for one second, please.”

  “Okay.”

  He came back quickly. “There’s nothing in the computer. No records of calls from that address recently.”

  “Oh. Is that good?”

  “Perhaps. It just means no one called to report something going on.”

  “Oh. So, how long will it be? And should I go outside so I don’t damage the scene?”

  The office chuckled. “No, Miss. This isn’t television.”

  “So when are you coming?”

  “We’re not. You can come to the precinct to file a report. Someone will follow up within twenty-four hours.”

  “But what about her place?”

  “Is this your residence?”

  “No.”

  “Then you can’t file a vandalism report. Unless there’s a sign of a break-in?”

  “No, it was locked when I got here.”

  “In that case you’ll have to come down to the station.”

  I sighed. “Okay.”

  “Don’t worry, Miss. Most cases like this are nothing. Your sister probably just forgot she had to meet you. Maybe she had a little too much fun last night and is sleeping it off. Does she have a boyfriend?”

  “I…I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  “Well, see if she does. Make some calls.”

  “All right.”

  “Is there anything else I can help you with?”

  “No. Thank you.”

  When I hung up I felt more lost than ever. Was it possible he was right? That Kat had just forgotten? But if so, that didn’t explain her apartment. She’d never leave a place in such a mess.

  I looked around and spoke to her, hoping that somehow, wherever she was, she would hear me. “They don’t know you like I do, sis. I’m going to look around and then go down to the station like he said. I don’t care if they think I’m a silly fool.”

  Part of my reason for not going immediately was I was scared. Filing a police report seemed too real. So serious. I wanted it to be nothing. A misunderstanding. Kat was all I had. I couldn’t even begin to face the idea of losing her, too.

  Fortunately, I had the perfect distraction all around me. If the cops didn’t care about checking her apartment, I’d do it myself. I waded through the mess back to her bedroom and sat down on the floor next to a particularly large pile of papers and began to read.

  At first, I was only shifting things around. Running my fingers over her electricity and cable bills. Tracing her signature on tiny photocopies of checks on her bank statements. But the more I sorted though, the more a depressing realization sank into me. Reading through her lease on the apartment, it dawned on me that I didn’t know anything about my sister’s life. Kat was living in a nice place and spending more money on bills than I could have ever imagined. A hundred and fifty bucks for cable. Her credit card statements left me breathless.

  How the hell was she affording all this along with the last four years of my expenses? What kind of cocktail waitress buys shoes that cost five hundred dollars?

  “Kat, what the hell?” I asked the empty room. But then, a twinge of guilt hit me. I wasn’t there to question her. I was there to find her. With doubts roiling in the back of my mind, I stood up and went into the living room. There had to be someone I could contact who knew her, who might be able to at least tell me where she’d been recently, or places she frequented.

  I tried to remember the name of the bar she worked at, but came up with nothing. Why hadn’t I paid closer attention? I’d been so wrapped up in my own life that I’d missed hers. For years. And now that self-centered behavior could be the thing that kept me from finding Kat and bringing her home safe.

  While I was riffling through a drawer on the floor, full of takeout menus and other random flyers, I had to smile. Kat, always so organized, had even made ordering dinner into a project. She’d circled everything she ate from each place and wrote a grade next to each dish. A veggie calzone from a place called Mario’s got a “D,” but their spaghetti with hot sausage earned a “B+.”

  Underneath the pile of menus there was a notepad. It had five different phone numbers on the top sheet, but no names. They were all local numbers. I flipped through the menu pages and found no matches, so they weren’t likely to be restaurants.

  Heart pounding, I grabbed my phone and typed each number in the search box. I thought about dialing them right away, but I wanted to have some idea who I was dealing with, first. Unfortunately, none of the numbers returned any results, which I thought was weird. Google is supposed to know everything.

  I got up and walked over to the kitchen counter and leaned on a clean area before calling the first number. I wasn’t sure what I’d say, but I had to do something.

  A few minutes later I was putting the last number in my phone and frowning, dejected. All of the other numbers had been out of service and I didn’t have high hopes for anything different. Until the call went through and I heard the phone on the other end ringing.

  “You’ve reached the Eden Club,” a recording of a woman’s voice said in a smooth, and warm, yet professional tone. “Please leave a message.”

  At the beep I gulped and hung up. What was I going to say, “I don’t know who or what this place is, but have you seen my sister, Katherine Devlin?” Sure, that would work very well.

  Eden Club. Maybe that was
the place she worked? Or it could’ve been somewhere she met a friend. It could be anything.

  I groaned and shoved my phone and the slip of paper into my pocket. Standing here speculating wasn’t going to do any good. I went back to searching the apartment.

  So intent had I been in sorting through my sister’s possessions, I didn’t notice how late it was getting until I couldn’t see without turning on a light. That too was more work than it should have been. A line of a dozen switches next to the front door powered the overheads and things I didn’t even see.

  Under the bright lights, my frustration and fear grew. I hadn’t found anything that might help me find Kat. She’d filed away every bill for the past three years but nothing for her cell phone, which struck me as odd. And annoying, since it would at least contain more numbers I could try calling.

  But there was nothing anywhere. Unless I came up with a way to teach the beautiful dresses in her closet to speak, I was on my own. Checking my phone again reflexively, an idea came to me. When I’d searched for the phone numbers I found nothing, but maybe the name Eden Club would lead me somewhere.

  I typed it in and clapped my hands together as a map result appeared. The Eden Club was apparently a private membership club, whatever that meant. The address was fairly close by, in an old and very expensive part of the city. That didn’t surprise me. Anyplace that secretive and vague had to be for rich people.

  After casting one last glance around the apartment I made the decision. I was going out. But two steps from the door I realized I couldn’t just stroll in looking like I’d spent a day traveling and digging through the rubble of Kat’s apartment. If this was where she worked and for exclusive clientele, I had to look presentable enough for them to let me in the front door.

  Not wanting to waste too much time, I hopped in the shower quickly and then put on the nicest thing I had in my suitcase. Something of Kat’s would have been more appropriate, but her tall, willowy frame was the opposite of my short, curvy one.

  So, in the dress I’d planned to wear for our planned graduation dinner, I swiped a bit of makeup on my face and twisted my damp hair up into something approximating a chic something or other. I was as ready as I was going to get.

  I was downstairs and about to find a cab when I remembered I had no money at all. From the map, the club was too far to walk to, especially in heels and no jacket. I walked a couple of blocks and then hailed down a taxi. I had my “for emergencies only” credit card, and this certainly qualified.

  Within minutes I was deposited on a lovely cobblestone street lined with beautiful old-style rowhouses. There was a group of ten or so people heading up the stairs to the door I wanted, and I hurried to join them. They were a strange collection of people, to be sure. Most of the men were pretty old. Gray hair and wrinkles, but clad in beautiful suits even I could tell were expensive. The women were of various ages from mid-twenties to forties, but all of them were beautiful in different ways. I wouldn’t really fit in with them, but I had to try. I wanted to at least get inside to ask about Kat.

  A man in a tuxedo opened up and waited expectantly. One of the men in the group showed him a small card that was apparently some kind of invitation, and after the butler or whoever he was muttered something into a headset, we were all ushered inside without any problem. I was careful to not make eye contact with anyone lest they realize I didn’t belong there. Once inside, I almost forgot the reason I came.

  The place was stunning. Like something out of an old movie. Marble floors and dark gleaming wood. Chandeliers twinkled and the air smelled like roses.

  Most of the people in “my” group scattered quickly, as if they knew the lay of the land. But a few other stood with me in the entranceway, gawking.

  A tall man with salt and pepper hair and piercing blue eyes slung his arm around my waist and spoke into my ear so close his breath tickled. “Welcome to paradise, darling.”

  I froze at his touch.

  He chuckled. “Don’t worry. It just looks fancy. It’s the same as wherever you worked before, just dressed up prettier.”

  I smiled weakly, trying to gracefully slide out of range of his grasp. “Thanks. I need to uh, go find someone.”

  He laughed again and turned away. “Your loss, darling.”

  I muttered, “Gross,” and headed in the opposite direction, into a room full of light and laughter, figuring that would be a good place to stay as invisible as possible while I figured out what to do next.

  As I stepped in, once again, I was stopped dead in my tracks by what I saw. The room was a living room like none I’d ever seen before. Probably called a salon or something fancy. There were sofas covered in ornately embroidered fabric on delicately carved wood legs. Every surface gleamed – glass tabletops, marble counters. Candles glowed all around, casting reflections off of the expensive crystal glasses that everyone held.

  But it was the people who really shone in the soft light. More men in suits and tuxedos of all ages and sizes. All surrounded by stunningly beautiful women. The majority of them looked like models. Not the high-fashion weird looking ones. Like fancy underwear models. All long limbs, long manes of luscious hair and gently feminine curves.

  Everywhere I looked was a vision of loveliness dressed in something amazing. Soft, draping silk. Clingy sequins. Sleek satin. All colors of the rainbow. And they were clearly having a wonderful time. Laughing and tossing their hair. Grazing the lapels of their companion’s jackets with perfectly manicured fingers.

  Perhaps pretending to belong here was going to be harder than I thought. Next to these goddesses on Earth, I felt like a troll. Watching them all for a while, I marveled at a world I’d never seen, and probably never would again. I wondered what it would have felt like for Kat to work around people like this all the time. Lonely. Isolating. Like pressing your nose against a window in the snow, watching people hang out by a warm fire inside. So close, but so unreachable.

  One man in the room in particular was getting a ton of attention from the women in the room. His back was turned to me so I couldn’t see his face, but his tall, strong body and way of standing told me he was probably pretty cute. He had short dark hair styled – from what I saw – like most of the other men in the room. Appropriately professional and clearly recently trimmed. He stood next to a shining black grand piano. Two young women, close to my age, sat on the bench behind it, looking up at him adoringly as he let out a boisterous laugh that floated around to fill the large space. It was a low, throaty sound that a corpse would have found appealing, which probably helped explain his popularity. Most of the other men in the room seemed to switch between serious and leering without much fun in between.

  Just then a waiter passed me and offered a glass of champagne from his tray. I smiled thankfully and grabbed it. Even he was dressed better than me. I downed half of the glass in one graceless gulp. I was going to need the liquid courage, to say the least.

  I was starting to finally calm down a little when I noticed a man staring at me. He was in the corner of the room. Dressed in a black suit like most of the others, but something about him was different. Well, he was young, for one thing. And huge. The suit fit well, but didn’t hide the fact that he was all muscle. The serious look on his face didn’t help. He reminded me a bit of the man I’d seen at the airport and I panicked.

  Spinning on my heel, I rushed out of the room, not caring how obvious I was being. I just needed to get away from him. Past the entrance hall in the other direction was a hallway. I headed down past a few open doors and barely registered the small groups of partygoers inside each.

  There was a noise behind me and I hurried on, hoping to find somewhere quiet to hide for a minute. I hadn’t thought this out well enough. I needed to figure out who to ask about my sister without getting tossed out by security. And it occurred to me that the frowning man had almost certainly been a security guard. It made sense. He was dressed to keep from calling attention to himself, but standing away from everyone, not
drinking, and clearly had a good eye for figuring out who didn’t belong. I needed to stay out of his line of sight as long as possible.

  So, when I saw an alcove leading to a short set of stairs, that’s the way I went. If the guard was behind me he wouldn’t be able to see if I’d continued down the hall or slipped past a shut door. Hopefully that confusion would buy me a little time to find a kitchen or a waitress who could help me.

  Down the stairs I went, and found myself in front of a door. It was open a crack and there was light and noise coming from the other side, so I pushed it open and headed in.

  About two and a half steps.

  Until I saw the bed. And the couple on it. Naked. Having sex.

  Chapter Three

  I froze, mortified. But luckily – sort of – for me, they were too wrapped up in each other to notice I was even there. After a horrible second, I backed out of the room and went back upstairs. Getting thrown out was better than getting arrested for peeping, I figured.

  I didn’t see anyone at the top of the stairs so I headed on down the hall, knowing my face was red with embarrassment. It’s not like it was the first time I saw people getting it on at a party. But I expected it in college, not a fancy place like this.

  Shaking my head, I kept walking. The house was like a maze, with twisting corridors that all looked the same. The only way I kept my bearings was I could still hear music from the front of the house, muffled, but audible enough for me to have an idea of which direction I was heading.

  Eventually I did find a kitchen. But the only person in there was a guy washing dishes. He was listening to music through earbuds and didn’t notice me until I tapped him on the shoulder.

  He jumped and I jumped in response. We both laughed uncomfortably. He pulled his headphones out and wiped his hands on his apron. “Can I help you?” he asked in accented English.