Look Again - Lisa Scottoline [89]
Ellen glanced at the top of the screen, which showed the time the text had come in—9:15 P.M. “She sounds happy.”
“Yeah, mos def.” Melanie pressed a few more buttons. “Here’s another one, from earlier that day, around five o’clock.”
Ellen and Melanie put their heads together, and read the previous text, which said:
$228 in tips, my best day ever! going to the mall 2 celebrate! see u soon! xoxo
“That’s so random.” Melanie shook her head. “It doesn’t sound like she was thinking about using.”
“It sure doesn’t.” Ellen thought about it. “Recovering addicts get sponsors, right? Did Amy have a sponsor?”
“Sure, Dot Hatten. She was here this morning. I don’t know if she got a call from her that night. I was too much of a wreck to ask her, and she might not say anyway. They keep everything confidential, like lawyers or something.”
“You don’t think she’d talk to me?”
“I know she wouldn’t.”
“Do you have her phone number, anyway?”
“No.”
“Where does she live?” Ellen could get the number online.
“Jersey, but if you want to know more about Amy, you should ask Rose. She was here before. She’s another friend of ours. She’s older.” Melanie wrinkled her nose. “She was in rehab with me and Amy.”
“Great, can I have her phone?”
“I have her cell number right here.” Melanie pressed a few keys on the phone, found a number, and rattled it off.
“Hold on, I have to get a pen.” Ellen rooted around in her purse, but Melanie dismissed her with a wave.
“You don’t need one. Give me your cell number, and I’ll text it to you.”
“Of course,” Ellen said, a reminder of her age, as she stood on the front step of mortality.
Chapter Sixty-seven
Rose Bock turned out to be a middle-aged African-American woman with oversized aviator glasses and a sweet smile. She wore her hair cut natural and had on a blue-checked Oxford shirt underneath a navy suit, looking every inch the accountant. Ellen had reached her on her cell phone, and she was in Philly, so they’d met at a burger joint full of noisy students near the Penn campus.
“Thanks so much for meeting me.” Ellen took a quick sip of a Diet Coke. “My condolences about Amy. Melanie told me that you two were close.”
“We were.” Rose’s smile faded quickly. “So how did you know her? You didn’t say on the phone.”
“Long story short, I adopted a baby that I think was hers. At least that’s what the court papers say.”
“Amy had a baby?” Rose’s eyebrows rose, and Ellen grew officially tired of the reaction.
“Hi, ladies.” The waitress arrived with a cheeseburger in a blue plastic basket, set it down on the table, then went off. Rose picked up the burger and smiled sheepishly.
“I can’t resist the double cheeseburger here. I traded one addiction for another.”
“Enjoy yourself.” Ellen managed a smile. “If you don’t mind my saying so, you don’t look like the typical drug addict.”
“Yes, I do,” Rose said, without rancor. “I was addicted to prescription drugs, Vicodin and Percocet, for almost nine years. I started with a back injury and never stopped.”
“I think of Vicodin as in a different category from heroin.”
“You shouldn’t. They’re both opiates and they work the same way. I might have been in a different income bracket from Amy, but we’re both junkies. It could just as easily have been me, lying there today in a box.” Rose picked up her heavy burger and took a bite in a way that looked almost angry to Ellen, but she wanted to stay on point.
“I’m trying to learn about Amy’s death. The family told me she overdosed accidentally, or that it was bad heroin, street heroin.”
“She didn’t overdose.” Rose shook her head, and laughter burst from a nearby table, a group of caffeinated undergraduates. “More likely, the junk was bad. Street junk gets cut with strychnine.”
Ellen shuddered. “Poison.”
“Yes.”
“Melanie told me that Amy still had her Subutex on her, which she didn’t take, and we both read her last texts, which were upbeat. Amy didn’t mention to Melanie that she was looking to start doing drugs again. Had she mentioned anything like that to you?”
“No, not all.