Philadelphia Noir - Carlin Romano [44]
Nothing had changed about the Belgravia except the bright wreaths now festooning the front doors.
“Chloe,” the doorman said, then nodded at Beth.
Passing through the marble lobby and under the chandeliers, Beth tried to imagine herself back into the first time she came here, but couldn’t.
They entered the apartment and Chloe began looking for her checks.
“They must be in the bedroom.”
Beth felt pressure build behind her eyes. She imagined telling everyone the trip to Paris had been canceled. She imagined Leah and her mother looking at her, thinking she’d screwed things up or gotten too emotional. Again. She imagined her grandmother telling her she shouldn’t waste time feeling sorry for herself if she wanted to meet another nice young man.
Her head throbbed and her mouth was dry. She noticed an Air France ticket on the coffee table for the flight she was supposed to have taken. The ticket had Chloe’s name on it and a receipt confirmed its purchase by Alex two days prior. How could he? But Beth had trouble blaming Alex. Perhaps he was trapped—all the “family stuff” he mentioned. And here she was, sitting in his apartment, allowing his stepsister to send her away with a check. What would Alex think when he found out she’d accepted a paltry sum—nothing compared with the fortune the two of them could make—instead of opting for a life of love and adventure with him? Her mind reeled. It made no sense to let Alex down. She loved him too much. He loved her.
There, on the table, a silver letter opener with a filigreed handle caught her eye. It wasn’t sharp, but it might do. She stepped on the Oriental runner in the hallway to avoid making noise as she came up behind Chloe, who was searching a drawer beneath the bed. Before Chloe could turn around, Beth plunged the letter opener into her neck. Chloe gasped and collapsed over the drawer.
But something was wrong. The weapon wouldn’t go deeper and Chloe was still alive, trying to move. Beth withdrew the makeshift knife, causing Chloe to scream and blood to gush out of the wound onto her white cashmere sweater. Beth forced the weapon into a new spot in Chloe’s neck. More blood, more gasping, but Chloe still breathed. Her eyes were open and her mouth twisted with pain. Focus, Beth told herself when she started to tremble. Find an actable objective: to kill Chloe in order to live a life of happiness with Alex. She scrambled to the closet and found a plastic bag, then lifted up Chloe’s head by the hair and fastened the bag tightly around her neck, squeezing with her hands to speed things up. Tremors wracked Chloe’s body, her arms and then legs. Then nothing.
Beth stood up, sweating and weak. She didn’t have much time. She found Chloe’s passport first. They both had brown eyes but Beth’s hair was dark. To play a convincing Chloe and make it to the airport by six-fifteen, she’d need to leave the Belgravia, visit a hair salon, and return to pack. She didn’t want to take any chances and decided to leave and come back as Chloe in case the doorman was paying attention. Finding scissors, she slit open the bag around Chloe’s head, then cut off all the blond hair not covered in blood. She tied up her own hair, then used clips to fasten Chloe’s to the edges, hiding the jagged line between the two with a winter hat. It looked amazingly natural. She hustled into Chloe’s coat, grabbed her purse, and ran out.
The afternoon became a series of tasks: she was Chloe, rushing to finish errands; she was Beth, discarding hair in the restroom at Liberty Place and washing flecks of blood off her wrists; she was whichever one’s credit card she used, stopping by Liquid Salon, explaining she was about to go to France to meet her fiancé and wanted to surprise him by going blond. Could a colorist do that in the next two hours?
She was Beth, but with honey-colored hair, anxious to get things from her apartment, then suddenly aware of a police cruiser parked on Pine and 19th, so she was Chloe again, walking past Beth’s apartment, no