The Third Twin (10 page)

“Awfully fancy for a Saturday afternoon,” Ava says as I pass by her room.

“You’re always after me to make an effort,” I say, walking quickly into my room as I unzip the dress.
Please, God, let her stay there.
I don’t want to explain this right now.

No such luck. “Where’d you go?” she asks, leaning against my doorway.

I turn my back to her and pull on my yoga pants. When I turn back around, the bag I borrowed from her is open and she’s pulling out a folded program.

“The funeral?” She looks at me like I’m an idiot. “You went to Casey’s funeral?”

I pull my head into my sweatshirt, wishing I could just hide in here for the next few days. “So?” I finally ask, wrapping my hair up into a bun.

“Way to go keeping Alicia out of this,” she says.

“I didn’t go as Alicia,” I say. “I went as me.” Although, when I think about it, it didn’t seem to matter much. “Why are you being so weird about all of this? I wanted some closure, that’s all.”

“Closure? Why do you need closure? Did you go to the after-party too?”

I stare at her. “You mean the reception? No. I just came home.” I don’t want to tell her about stopping at the Cheesecake Factory, because I know she’ll only hassle me about that too. As shaken as Casey’s death has left me, she seems mostly untouched.

“Good.” She seems to calm down some. “Do you feel better now?”

“Not really.” I grab the bag she loaned me and walk out of my room, with Ava following.

“So, what was it like?” She almost looks eager to hear.

“The funeral?” I ask. “Big. Sad. You know—funeralish.” I pick my backpack up off the couch and put my wallet and keys from the bag into it.

She wrinkles her nose. “Was it an open casket?”

“No. Seriously, maybe you should have come with me.”

“That would have blown their minds, two of us together at once. Alicia
au deux.
”

I remember the gray-haired woman at the front of the funeral home. “I thought you said you’d gone out with Casey only a couple of times.”

“I did,” she says, distracted by her phone. “Why?”

“So when did you meet his family?”

Ava looks up at me and shrugs. “His family? I never met
anyone in his family. Every time we went out, I met him somewhere. Alone.”

“Well, they sure seemed to know who Alicia was,” I say.

As I hand her the empty bag, I notice the message light blinking on the phone in the living room. I don’t know why Dad still has a house phone—almost nobody ever calls. I reach over and press
PLAY
. There’s a beep, and then a woman’s voice comes through the speaker. “
This is Kate down at Leon’s Hair Salon calling for Alicia Rios. We got your message about rescheduling your appointment to Thursday at four, and it’s no problem. We’ll see you then.
”

“That’s weird,” Ava says, shaking her head. “They must have looked up a different Alicia Rios and got this number by mistake.” She reaches over and presses
DELETE
.

“But there is no Alicia Rios here,” I remind her.

“I don’t know. People make mistakes all the time!” She sounds impatient. “Kind of funny, though.”

“Not so funny,” I say, my mind racing. One mysterious Alicia Rios sighting is a coincidence. Two is something else. “First the ticket and now the phone message. Someone’s screwing with us.”

“You’re just being paranoid.” She’s about to say something else when the front doorbell rings. “Cecilia’s out visiting her sister,” Ava says. “I’ll get it.”

I start to worry that it’s Eli. I had a good time last night, but I don’t want to admit that to Ava. Not yet anyway.

A few seconds later Ava comes skidding down the hallway. “You’re not going to believe who it is!” she stage-whispers.

“Is it Eli?” I ask, following her down the hall.

“Why would it be Eli?” she says, staring at the closed door. “It’s the cops.”

I pause as I reach for the knob. What are they doing here?

“Don’t get it!” she mouths.

“You’re being ridiculous. What if something happened?” I ask, thinking of Dad so far away as I pull the door open.
Please, God
, I pray quickly,
don’t let it be Dad.

“Sorry to bother you,” the one in the black suit jacket says. “Are your parents at home?”

“No,” I say, my voice surprisingly shaky. I clear my throat. “Is everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine. We’re just here to ask a few questions,” says the one in the green uniform.

“The department is investigating the death of a young man last weekend, and we’re following up on some leads,” the other guy says. My eyes wander to the big black gun that’s in the holster at his side. He glances down at a small screen as if checking his facts. “I’m Detective Naito, and this is Officer Lawrence. We need to speak to Alicia Rios.”

I open my mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. Ava giggles uncomfortably and says, “Alicia? There’s no Alicia Rios here.”

“This says otherwise.” Officer Lawrence pushes some buttons on his tablet and then turns it to us. It’s a copy of the license Ava got. The one with her picture and the name Alicia Rios on it.

He taps the screen. “And this is the correct address, isn’t it?”

“Well, yeah, but—” I start.

“Okay, okay,” Ava interrupts. “Alicia does live here, but she’s not home right now.”

“What? Come on, Ava—” I can’t believe she’s actually going to lie to the cops. She was right—everything really is on their cop computers.

She puts a hand protectively on my arm and squeezes in the universal sign for
Shut up.
“It’s okay, Lex. We don’t have to cover for her, because she didn’t do anything wrong.” She sends me a look, and at this point she’s taken it so far that I don’t have much of a choice.

The cops share knowing looks. “Do you know when she’ll be back?”

Ava shakes her head sadly. “I couldn’t guess. Alicia spends a lot of time in LA. With her acting career taking off, she’s not here all that much anymore.”

Acting career? We never discussed an acting career. Ava is going way off script.

Officer Lawrence checks his screen and then back up to us. “You girls look a lot like Alicia does in this DMV photo.”

I decide to let Ava handle this one too.

“We’re her sisters,” Ava says. She glances at me. “Triplets.”

“
Identical
triplets? You don’t see that very often.” He looks surprised and not entirely convinced.

“One in five hundred thousand,” Ava replies without missing a beat. I can’t believe she actually did some homework.

Officer Lawrence nods like he’s impressed. “So you’re one of only fourteen hundred sets. Congratulations.”

I study him carefully. He’s obviously not an idiot. I hope Ava knows what she’s doing.

Officer Lawrence smiles. “Well, if you don’t mind, can we see some ID?”

“No problem, Officer,” she says. “I think our bags are in the family room. We’ll go get them.”

Detective Naito takes a step forward, and I can feel the mood shift. What was a friendly exchange has just become a little more serious. “Why don’t we have just one of you go?”

“Okay.” Ava seems unfazed. “Lex, can you bring my wallet too? It’s in the Juicy bag.”

I rush back down the hall, wishing we’d just told the truth. I fumble around in Ava’s bag and find her gold wallet right away, grab mine, and run back to the front door. Ava is chatting with the cops, who are still standing on the porch, and if I didn’t know better, I’d think she was enjoying herself. I wonder what other career choices Alicia made while I was gone.

“Here,” I say, handing her the wallet. My hand is visibly shaking.

Ava doesn’t look nervous at all. She opens her wallet and flashes her license at them.

“Do you mind taking it out of the wallet?” Detective Naito asks.

“Not at all,” she says, and takes it out to show it to him. It says “Ava Rios.”

“Thanks,” he says, and she shoves it back into her wallet. “And yours?” he says to me.

As I hold my wallet, I suddenly realize that Alicia’s license is sitting right in the little plastic window. I didn’t take it out
when I got home last night. “Right,” I say, struggling to pull my real license from behind it.

“That’s okay,” he says, putting a hand out. “You can leave it in there.”

“No,” I say, tugging even harder until my license finally pulls free. “I’ve got it.” I’m sure the detective must notice me close the wallet quickly, but he just glances at the name and my photo and then hands it back. “Thank you, ladies.” Detective Naito leans forward and hands me a card. “Will you please have Alicia call me as soon as you get in touch with her? It’s important.”

“Can’t you just tell us what you want to talk to her about?” Ava asks. “Then we can give her a message.”

“I’m sorry. I can only talk to Alicia.” He taps the card. “But it’s important, so please let her know we came by.”

“We will,” Ava says, waving.

I can’t get the door closed fast enough. I lean against it and stare at the little card with a tiny police shield and the name of the detective on it. “Why the hell did you start that in the first place? It would have taken two seconds to clear up the whole Alicia mistake.”

She looks at me like I’m an idiot. “Because they had the license,” she says. “Someone must have known that Casey was out with Alicia, and they found her in the system. I don’t need to get busted for getting a fake ID.”

“So you’d rather be taken in on suspicion of murder?”

“Oh, come on,” she says. “Who said we had anything to do with Casey’s murder? I’m sure they’re just tracking his
acquaintances, trying to find out where he’s been, stuff like that.”

I try to hand the card to Ava, but she puts her hands up. “Nuh-uh. You’ve got the ID. I don’t want anything to do with this.”

“Wait a second.” I look closer at the ID. “I thought you said you got this from a guy on the Internet.”

“Yeah. So?”

“But it’s not real, right?”

“Of course not. I gave the guy a photo and paid him a hundred and seventy-five bucks.”

I wave Alicia’s license in her face. It does look real, even to me. “If this is fake, then how did the cops get it on their computer? It shouldn’t be in the system anywhere.”

“How the hell should I know?” she says a little defensively. “They’ve got everything on their computers these days.”

“Something’s wrong.…”

“Jeez, Lex. Let it go.” Ava puts one hand on my shoulder. “Look, I’m sure it’s no big deal. Stop worrying. It’ll all blow over. I doubt they’ll be back.”

I put the cop’s card into my pocket. “Right,” I say, knowing that, like a killer showing up at a funeral, these things rarely, if ever, blow over on
CSI.

The drums are so loud, I can feel them through the soles of my boots, and I’m sweating so much that drops of water roll down my back. The music cascades into a wave that washes over all of us up in the front, arms pulsing, bodies writhing, and up onstage Eli is controlling it all.

My eyes are closed as I let the beat move through me, but I can feel the heat and vibrations of the crowd as they press toward the front of the stage, some people singing, others jumping and pumping fists in the air as the guys ram their instruments harder and faster, building to a crescendo that suddenly drops off a cliff to a momentary silence, before the deafening applause and whistles fill the small club. I’m so glad I caved and agreed to see Eli again. This is just what I needed tonight. An escape. From Stanford pressures. From the cops. From Ava.

The bass player plucks the intro to the next song, and many people in the crowd whistle in anticipation. Eli stands at the front of the band, looking back at the drummer, his guitar slack in front of him, one hand on the microphone, waiting for his turn to join in. His skin is glistening with effort, and I can see the glint of euphoria as he turns back to the crowd, momentarily locking eyes with me and flashing a quick smile. There’s always a hum of energy around him, like something special could happen at any second, but now I can see how truly alive he is when he’s up onstage, orchestrating the emotions of hundreds of people at the same time. He licks his lips and leans toward the microphone, and I realize that I’m standing completely still in the middle of the pulsing bodies, the desire I feel for him at this very moment threatening to overwhelm me.

I feel a hand on my arm and turn to hear a girl shouting into my ear. “I’m going for a drink. You want to come?” For a second I can’t remember her name, but then it comes to me in a rush—Linzey, the drummer’s girlfriend.

I glance back at Eli, wanting nothing more than to stand here and marvel at the change that’s come over him, but I’m not so far gone that I don’t recognize an opportunity when I see one. “Sure,” I say, taking one last look at Eli as I turn away. She and the other band girlfriends were nice enough when I met them before the show, but there’s a general wariness that hangs over all of them, and I’m guessing I’m not the first girl he’s brought to a club. As she grabs my hand to lead me through the crowd toward the bar, I wonder what’s suddenly changed to make her actually want to talk to me. We push
through and get two tight spots against the wooden counter, and she pulls out a few crumpled bills from the pocket of her jeans and tries to straighten them out on top of the bar.