“Nothing’s out of place,” Death said after a quick sweep of the rooms.
“You’re sure?” Casey immediately ran to the air conditioning vent where she’d hidden her duffel bag. The vent itself looked undisturbed, and a quick check of her stash convinced her it hadn’t been found. But just the idea that someone could have found her ID—that someone was even looking in her apartment—turned her cold. She rubbed her arms, trying to rid herself of goosebumps. “What do you think the person wanted?”
“Whatever you’ve gotten hidden there. Proof you aren’t who you say you are. Proof that you killed Andrea.”
Casey strode through the rest of the apartment, her unease growing. Nothing was damaged or stolen. But things were just a little off. Her toothpaste at a different part of the sink, a drawer that wasn’t quite closed.
“You going to tell the cops?”
Casey sank onto her bed. “I tell the cops, I’m going to have them digging into things that aren’t relevant to Andrea’s death. I’d have to hide my duffel bag somewhere else, and they might get a little too curious about where I came from, and why I don’t have a history.”
“So you’re stuck.”
“Completely.”
A doorbell tone sounded in Casey’s pocket, and she yanked out her phone. Who would be calling her? She hadn’t told anyone her number.
It was the phone company, texting her to suggest she back up her contact list.
Death snickered. “Like you have any contacts to back up.”
“I will. Someday. Maybe.”
“Right.” She looked at her phone, longing to punch in Ricky’s number and hear his voice.
“Go ahead,” Death said. “What could it hurt? He won’t know this number.”
“Is your head full of rocks? As soon as I call him this number will be stored in his phone.”
“So? You can ask him not to tell anyone. He can put it in his phone under an alias.”
“And then if I lose my phone, or someone just glances at it, they’ll get his number and my new identity is blown. You know, sometimes I think you’re brain really isn’t up to the task.”
“Fine. You want to be alone and miserable? You got it.” And Death was gone.
Casey clutched the phone, fighting the urge to call her brother. Her mother. Her lawyer, Don. Finally, she shoved the phone under her mattress, where she wouldn’t hear if the phone company called to suggest anything else.
She was able to grab a few hours of dream-filled sleep before her alarm went off at five-thirty. She rolled out of bed, thought about and decided against breakfast—she wasn’t even close to hungry, after Del’s gourmet spread the night before—and was down in the aerobics room before anyone else arrived. By the time women began trickling in she had picked out music and set up her cordless mic. The group was quieter today than it had been the last time, but that gradually changed as people arrived. The class was also a lot smaller than it had been two days before, and Casey figured a lot of them weren’t sure how to act. Do they go against Krystal and attend class? Or do they take another look at Casey for themselves before they made a decision? Casey knew they were talking about Andrea, and about the fact that Casey had found her during her first day on the job, and she could sense the surreptitious glances sent her way. She stood quietly at the front of the room, trying to look both innocent and confident.
Casey waited for Krystal to make a grand appearance, waving around her petition and her outrage, but by start time, she still hadn’t shown. In a way, Casey was disappointed. It might’ve cleared the air to have a confrontation in front of the group. Instead, Casey would just have to go on as if she were free of both guilt and suspicion.
The women followed her instructions faithfully, and at the end of the hour were less hesitant to look her in the eye. A few of them even thanked her, and said they’d look forward to class the next morning. None of them stayed to chat, and none of them went anywhere close to the locker room door.
Casey toweled off and headed over to the weight room for her personal training appointments. Both were again young men, neither as charismatic nor suggestive as Dylan, which might have been more proper, but wasn’t much fun. Neither showed any interest in the whole Andrea scandal. They just wanted to do their workouts