The door stopped shaking. She could hear Helen panting on the other side. The sound of their two bodies taking in air was all that could be heard for a few moments.
“Why did you have to kill him?” Florence finally asked. “He was just a sweet, simple boy.”
Getting Helen to talk was the best way to buy time until Idrissi’s arrival, but more than that, Florence simply wanted an explanation.
“Kill who?” Helen asked innocently.
“You know who. Nick. Why did you kill Nick?”
Helen’s tone changed. “If you’re pointing fingers you might want to look in the mirror, Florence. You killed him. The moment you told him your name was Florence Darrow. You ruined the whole thing. You should have just kept up the ruse. It was a good one. You wanted to be Helen Wilcox? Great! By all means, take her. But you can’t have both. You can’t have Helen and Florence. That’s just greedy. I’m Florence Darrow now.”
“I didn’t even tell him my name was Florence Darrow!” Florence cried. “I told him that my real name was Florence but now I go by my middle name, Helen. I never said my real last name. I’m not stupid.”
“Florence, you told me that he knew your real name. I had to assume you meant your full name. I couldn’t take any chances. You should have been clearer. It’s a shame, but again, that’s on you, not me.”
“He was just a sweet boy,” Florence said again, more softly.
“Oh, bullshit,” Helen spat. “He was an overgrown stoner who acted like a boy to get women into bed.”
Florence didn’t respond.
After a beat, Helen said, “Hang on—I’ll be right back.” She added with a manic, trilling laugh, “Don’t run off!”
Florence heard Helen’s footsteps recede quickly. She waited a few seconds and cracked open the door to peer out. Helen wasn’t in the room. Florence hurried to the window and looked down into the driveway. Still no sign of Idrissi. She turned around. Where should she go? She could already hear Helen coming back up the stairs. She retreated back into the bathroom and locked the door again.
“Now, where were we?” Helen asked.
“Helen, please just tell me what’s going on. The truth this time.”
There was silence for a moment. Then Helen said, “Here, take a look at this.” A folded piece of paper was slipped under the door. “This will explain everything.”
Florence eyed the paper warily. What could it possibly say? She put her hands on the rim of the bathtub and pushed herself up to standing. And then there was a dull crack and the door splintered at hip level. The sound was unmistakable. Helen had fired a gun at the door, and the bullet had lodged midway.
“Helen!” shouted Florence. “Are you insane?” She heard the sound of muffled laughter on the other side of the door.
“Worth a shot.”
From inside the tub, Florence reached for the plunger beside the toilet and used it to draw the paper toward her. She unfolded it. It was blank.
There was an interlude in which both women were silent. Helen tapped what Florence assumed was the gun lightly against the door, as if bored. Florence pulled down a towel from the heavy brass rack on the wall and folded it underneath her in the tub.
“Amira must have heard that,” Florence said. “She’s probably calling the police right now.”
“I sent her home.”
Fuck.
It was time to show her cards. “Well, I called the police,” Florence said. “Before lunch. They’re on their way as we speak.”
Helen paused. “Bullshit.”
“It’s true. Call Dan Massey at the embassy. Ask him.”
“No, you’re lying. I can tell when you’re lying. I’m going to stay right here, Florence, and wait for you to come out. You will have to come out eventually, you know.”
Florence shut her eyes tightly. Idrissi would be here soon. Then he’d find her being held hostage with a gun. Everything would be clear.
“You staged the crash,” Florence finally said. “So I would die and you could steal my identity.”
“Oh, bravo,” said Helen.
Florence realized, absurdly, that her feelings were hurt. All she’d wanted these past few weeks was for Helen to like her. And instead Helen had tried to kill her. That was not generally something people do to people they like.
“How?”
“Jesus, Florence, haven’t you ever seen a movie? I drugged you; I put the car in neutral; I pushed. Fin. Well, no, not fin. That was the problem, wasn’t it? That fucking fisherman. What was he even doing out at ten at night?”
“But why didn’t you just let me be Helen Wilcox?” Florence asked. “If you knew that that was what I was doing anyway? Why’d you come back at all?”
“The money, of course.”
“What money?”
“My money. I made you the beneficiary of my estate. Helen Wilcox has to die for Florence Darrow—that’s me now, remember—to get the money.”
Florence begrudgingly admired the elegance of the plan. Helen could live as Florence Darrow and still get her money through standard legal channels.
“But why did you involve me at all? Couldn’t you have just bought a fake passport or something?”
“Where do you do that, Florence? At the fake passport store? Do they sell social security numbers too? And credit histories? I haven’t a clue where people get false papers.”
“You were really just going to kill me?” Florence asked in a quiet voice. “No qualms whatsoever?”
A sigh. “Florence, I thought I’d been clear with you. We’re all in this alone. We just do what we can to survive.”
Florence said nothing. It was true; Helen had been clear.
Helen’s voice softened somewhat. “In the beginning I wasn’t necessarily going to kill you. If six months had passed and Jenny’s body had decomposed, I would have just fired you and gone on with my life. But after that visit from Detective Ledowski, I had to presume it was all going to come out. We had to get out of the country. And then I watched them find the body on my Nest cam, and I knew I needed to put the plan in motion.”
“Your what?”
“My security system. There are cameras all over the property. The police discovered the corpse the day after we got to Semat.”
“Why are we even in Semat, by the way? It’s obviously not to research your new book, which is just a Paul Bowles rip-off.”
“You caught that, did you? Well, you couldn’t expect me to write a whole new novel just for you to have something to type up. Anyway, we came to Semat for Rue Badr. Google ‘most dangerous roads in Morocco.’ It’s the first one listed.”
Florence remembered the manuscript she’d recovered from Helen’s computer. Iris had checked and rechecked the route to Dar Amal—via Rue Badr—on her phone. “I found your new novel,” she said. “The real one. The Morocco Exchange.”
“It’s good, isn’t it?” The pride in Helen’s voice was unmistakable.
Florence ignored the question. “I finally understand. You don’t write fiction. You probably can’t write fiction. Every word of Mississippi Foxtrot was true—you killed that man and let Jenny go to jail for it even though she’d done nothing.”