the bed and looked at her phone, reading through the string of concerned text messages from her colleagues asking about the food poisoning. Mira was never sick, never missed a day of work. Ignoring the texts, she went to her contacts list so she could call Matthew. She’d tell him she’d returned early and wanted to talk. With her thumb hovering over the Call button, she found herself reciting Ayat al-Kursi, the only Muslim prayer she knew, taught to her by her grandmother who had come to live with them in California for the final years of her life. She hadn’t thought of the words in years—she barely even knew what they meant anymore—but she spoke them now, the simple act of recitation causing her body to somewhat relax. Opening her eyes again, she noticed that the closet door was swung all the way open. It wasn’t alarming that it was open, but it was unusual. Except for the morning when they were getting ready for work, the closet door was usually shut. She walked into it, running her hands along the hung clothes on either side. Everything seemed normal, but when she looked up at the shelving above Matthew’s side, she noticed a shoe box hanging over the edge. He’d been up there, clearly looking for something. Mira, standing on her tiptoes, wasn’t even able to touch the shelf, let alone anything on it. She immediately thought of the wooden chair in her craft room. She walked out of the bedroom to the landing and pushed through the door into the sloped-ceilinged room.
The chair was under the window, and Mira was halfway into the room before she noticed the body on the floor. She screamed out loud, more like a sharp bark of panic that she cut off instantly. It was definitely a body, lying diagonally, its feet just under her sewing table. There was no way to know who it was since the body had been entirely wrapped in duct tape, from the feet all the way to the head, so that it looked like a silver mummy.
Trembling, Mira took two quick steps to the body, lowered herself onto a knee, and pressed the palm of her hand against the chest of the body. It was a man—she could tell that much by his size and the flatness of his chest—and there was no movement in his body and no heartbeat. Close up, she could see that blood had seeped out between the folds of duct tape around the head. Call 911, she told herself, thinking of her phone back on the bed. But she had to know who was under the tape. She had to know if it was Matthew.
Her fingers found the sticky edge of the end of a piece of duct tape plastered across the center of the dead man’s face. And she began to pull the tape away.
Chapter 37
Richard Dolamore pulled into the liquor store parking lot. It was late afternoon, the air cold in his nostrils as he walked across the lot and through the automatic doors. He loved this liquor store, as big as a warehouse, full of suburban boomers filling carts with gallons of trendy gin and cases of wine with names like “Mommy’s Best Friend.” Before it became a liquor store it had been a movie theater, years ago, a cheap independently run place with one screen that had been converted to two by putting up a shabbily constructed wall. Richard had come here as a teenager, mostly alone, but sometimes with dates, and he remembered that during quiet moments of whatever movie you were watching, you could hear what was happening on the other screen.
But the theater had been gutted, and now it was filled with row after row of colorful bottles. Richard wandered up and down the aisles looking at all the labels, designed to sell you a little something more than the alcohol inside. Dad had been a liquor rep, selling mostly down-market brands—vodkas with names like Romanov, and whiskey called Old Scotsman or Gold Rush—at bulk discount to chain restaurants and hotel bars. These types of brands still existed, always on the bottom shelf. You could stand in an aisle at the liquor store and run your eyes from the top to the bottom shelf, and you’d see bottles trying to attract a whole spectrum of customers—from the asshole who bought barrel-aged rum for a hundred dollars a bottle to the alcoholic on disability whose rum