With a shudder, I shut the lid, my fantasies of taking Ben and Jerry to bed officially ruined by the crime scene that had once been my washing machine.
The dryer, thankfully, contained nothing of Carl. I reached inside, dragged out a wrinkled T-shirt and pulled it over my head, then scraped a few crumpled dollar bills from the lint catcher. A small plastic disc slipped out with them. It was thinner and smoother than the ones in Delia’s game. I turned it over, squinting at the logo in the dim light of the dryer—THE ROYAL FLUSH CASINO HOTEL.
I frowned at the poker chip in my hand. Vero said she’d checked the forum over Thanksgiving weekend from a business center in a hotel. And she hadn’t spent the weekend with Ramón. Was this where she’d gone? If so, why hadn’t she told me?
Creeping into Delia’s room, I tucked the stiff bills under her pillow. It wasn’t the two hundred dollars she was expecting, but it was better than an IOU for a cash advance from my broken credit card. I paused beside her bed, toying with the black chip from the casino as I watched my daughter sleep, remembering what she’d said about Vero losing a marker and making someone mad. Those words had resonated with the same ominous tone as Vero’s hushed conversation with Ramón that morning, when he’d told her someone had gone to her mother’s house looking for her.
A seed of worry planted itself inside me as I wondered what it all meant. Brushing back Delia’s hair, I placed a kiss on her head before tiptoeing to the hall.
I paused in front of Vero’s bedroom, standing at her cracked bedroom door, listening to the house.
You’ve got some stranger you met less than a year ago living under your roof … What do you really know about her?
Quietly, I nudged her door open. It hadn’t been locked, I told myself. And this was my house, after all. Vero had more than once admitted to snooping around in my laptop and my nightstand. I was only going to leave the casino chip on her desk, where she’d be sure to find it.
I switched on the small lamp on her desk. The surface was piled with accounting textbooks, the nightstand stacked with self-help manuals she’d checked out of the library, about smart goal setting and thinking big. The wall beside her bed was covered with pictures Zach and Delia had drawn for her.
I set the plastic chip on her desk. My hand slid down to the drawer and drew it open. Pens, pencils, notebooks, and calculators were neatly arranged inside, and I quietly slid it shut. I turned toward her nightstand, peeping through one eye as I opened that, too.
A framed photograph rested inside it.
I lifted it out, angling it toward the light. A young Vero and Ramón smiled back at me, along with two women who, based on obvious resemblances, could only be their mothers. The glass in the frame was clean, the stand intact, a tiny crack in the wood carefully glued back together. This photo was clearly precious to Vero, and I couldn’t help but wonder why she kept it in a drawer.
I returned it to its place, standing beside her neatly made bed as I turned a slow circle around the room, hungry to learn more about her. To understand why she’d kept so much of herself hidden when she knew everything there was to know about me. The closet was open, her endless supply of trendy brand-name clothes neatly packed to fit on the rod above a row of brightly colored shoes. A stack of books perched on a high shelf: probability and statistics, odds and profits, algorithms for winning, the mathematics of chance … and a photo album. I pulled it down, careful not to disrupt the rest of the stack.
Sitting on the edge of Vero’s bed, I thumbed through the early pages of her baby book, skipping ahead toward the more recent photos at the back. There were dozens of pictures of Vero and her mother, her aunt, and her cousin. Several of her extended family. Even a few of her friends from high school. I flipped through photos of her homecoming, prom, and graduation, noting the honor society adornment on her gown. I turned the page. A loose piece of paper stuck to the clear plastic film.
Congratulations! You’ve been accepted to the University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business.
Along with a full-tuition merit scholarship for all four years.
The last name on the letter wasn’t one I recognized.
Veronica R. Ramirez.
Not Veronica Ruiz.
If Vero had earned a full ride to a major university in Maryland, what was she doing taking community college classes here in Virginia? Why had she agreed to help me dispose of a body for money, claiming she needed it because she was buried in student loans?
The best place to hide a dirty secret is across a state line.