Liar, Liar

by Lisa Jackson

  With each step, her heart sank a little further, and when she went to the room Seneca used when she stayed over, the daybed had not been slept in. “No,” Remmi whispered, “no, no, no! Seneca?” She yelled more loudly as she ran through the empty rooms. “Seneca! Are you here?” Of course, she wasn’t, and when Remmi went out to view the driveway, the green hatchback was missing, not parked where it had been the night before.

  Remmi tried to tell herself that it was all right. Seneca had just needed to run an errand, go to the grocery store, pick up a prescription, buy diapers, whatever, and rather than wake Remmi, she’d taken the baby with her and . . . and . . . It was no use. No matter how she tried to buoy herself, Remmi felt totally abandoned.

  She looked for a note, found none. Just some soup that had been congealing in a saucepan on the stove overnight. She went to the phone, frantically dialed Seneca’s number, but before the midwife’s answering machine clicked on, she knew in her soul that there would be no answer.

  Then she noticed the blinking light on her own answering machine. She hit the button and heard a series of ever-more anxious messages from Seneca.

  “Remmi? Didi? Please call me.”

  Three audio messages, each sounding more panicked than the last.

  So at least she didn’t lie about that.

  How do you know? It’s not as if the calls are date- or timestamped.

  Stomach in knots, she waited.

  For two days.

  Nothing.

  Just another three harassing calls from Didi’s boss. Remmi thought once more about calling the police. She’d even walked to Seneca’s house and hadn’t been surprised when she, Adam, and her car were missing. She’d walked to Noah’s house and had intended on knocking on his door, but when she’d spied the police cruisers, lights flashing at the small ranch, she’d left.

  The only good news was that Seneca had left her with all the items she’d packed hastily into the Toyota on the night she’d fled to the Star Vista. She had money, credit cards, and supplies. And the car, too, was returned from the tow shop, a mechanic friend of Seneca’s explaining that the temperature gauge had been shot and he’d replaced it. He dropped the car off, said the bill had been “taken care of,” and then had gotten a ride with a coworker who had followed him to Remmi’s house.

  She took it as a sign.

  So, disheartened, but burning with a quiet, smoldering rage, she’d repacked the Toyota, this time including the bulky computer as she didn’t have need of a car seat, and with her meager possessions and Didi’s credit cards and money in her pocket, she drove away from Las Vegas.

  PART 2

  CHAPTER 11

  San Francisco

  Now

  Sick, Remmi stared at the scene in horror as the thick San Franciscan night seemed to close in on her. The world tilting, she heard the frantic voices as if from a distance. Screams of the crowd and shouts, the whomp, whomp of a helicopter’s blades as it hovered over the buildings, honks of traffic. People rushed and pushed, some to get away from the horrific, gory scene where the fragile space between life and death had been shattered, others to edge even closer. Remmi forced herself forward, peered over a man’s shoulder to the broken body of the woman, and saw that she’d missed the fountain by inches, her wig askew, a dark stain pooling beneath her frothy skirt.

  “Oh, God,” Remmi whispered as a policewoman ordered the crowd to move away. Remmi was jostled and fell back; she shouldered and elbowed away from the Montmort Tower, now strobed in the lights of fire trucks, emergency vehicles, and police cars. A man, a police officer probably, was ordering everyone to “Get back. Move. Back up! Let us do our job here.”

  Cameras and phones were clicking, footsteps echoing, and the dull roar of excited voices pounded in her head.

  Had she really just witnessed her mother’s suicide? After all these years of not knowing what had happened to Didi, had it come down to one last, desperate, and flamboyant act?

  Oh. Please. No.

  She stumbled away, her boots slipping on the steep, wet sidewalk, her insides nearly frozen. Not paying attention to where she was going, she seemed almost swept away by the throng that crossed the street, some people babbling in excitement, others shocked into silence, one man already wearing a red and white Santa hat. Everything seemed out of sync and discordant, surreal.

  When she finally looked up at a street sign, she realized she’d walked blocks away from where she needed to be, which was the parking garage where she’d left her car. Shaking, she wondered if she could drive; as her head cleared, she decided she had no other choice.

  It may not have been Didi. It probably wasn’t. There are tons of Marilyn Monroe impersonators, even here in the city. Don’t freak out. Remain calm. Didi’s probably still out there.

  She was walking toward the parking structure now, breathing more deeply, as the incline was steep. From the corner of her eye, she caught a movement, and for a second she thought someone was following her. She glanced quickly over her shoulder, saw no one lurking in the shadows, but sensed hidden eyes observing her.

  You’re imagining this!

  Swallowing back the stupid paranoia, she felt her heart knocking a little faster, her skin prickling in apprehension.

  There’s no one following you. There never has been. For God’s sake, Remmi, get a grip.

  You’re just freaked out because of the tell-all book just published about Didi’s life and disappearance, the interest it’s stirring up.

  The book . . . It had just landed in stores and on the Internet. Why anyone would want to publish a book about a small-time celebrity impersonator, Remmi didn’t understand, but there it was, and surprisingly, people were interested in the mystery surrounding her disappearance. Somehow, Didi Storm was achieving the fame she so desperately wanted now, twenty years after she’d walked out the door, never once looking over her shoulder.

  Had she died that night?

  Been kidnapped?

  Or just decided she didn’t need the responsibility of a teenager and infant son?

  Remmi didn’t know, even though she’d asked those very questions of herself a million times over. There were other questions that kept her awake at night, that burrowed into her brain with tiny painful claws.

  Why did Seneca leave?

  What did the midwife/nursemaid want with Adam?

  Did she know where Didi was and return the boy to her?

  Were she and Didi in cahoots?

  Why—

  “Stop it!” she said aloud and startled herself as well as a woman jogging in the other direction. Cell phone in hand, earbuds engaged, eyes flashing a quick anger, the woman made a wide arc around Remmi and breezed by without breaking stride.

  Remmi watched her disappear around a corner, then did a quick sweep of the steep sidewalk and street behind her. No one looked out of the ordinary. No one ducked into a doorway to avoid being seen. No one was following her.

  She started hurrying uphill again. She had to think, to reason, to figure out if she should go to the police. At that thought, she felt herself shrink inside. Her history with the cops wasn’t exactly stellar. Far from it.

  She remembered finally going to the police three days after Seneca had left her. She’d hung out at the house. Waiting. Hoping. Praying. But no one had returned. Not her mother, nor Seneca, nor her infant siblings. She was alone. She’d broken down and called Noah again, and that time, she’d gotten his stepfather on the phone.

  “He ain’t here!” Ike Baxter had growled. “But if you find him, tell him I’m lookin’ for him, the worthless piece of thievin’ shit. And when I find him, he’d better watch out. I’m finally gonna give that kid what’s been comin’ to him. Lyin’ little prick.” Then he’d slammed the receiver down.

  Remmi had never called back.

  She’d found addresses and phone numbers in her mother’s small book and called a number that was just listed as M&D—Mom and Dad, she figured, and dialed, but the number was out of
service, and what would she say to the grandparents she’d never met anyway? “Hi, I’m your long-lost granddaughter.” What would be the outcome? To move someplace over fifteen hundred miles away with strangers? People who would force her to go to a new high school and try to blend in with kids who had known each other all their lives? No way.

  She’d considered her original plan to head to San Francisco, but scrapped the idea and finally, hating herself, had walked into town and to the police station, where she’d found herself talking to Detective Bud Kendrick, who didn’t believe much of her wild tales about her mother—not that she could really blame him. If she was being honest with herself, she had held back parts of the truth, though she’d admitted to what she’d seen in the desert through the slit in the back seat of the Cadillac.

  Kendrick, a tall man with a shock of coffee-brown hair, thick eyebrows, and a nose that looked as if it had been broken, was built like a football player, and a plaque on the wall had indicated he’d been “All League” at a high school in Idaho. His office was neat, a computer monitor taking up a lot of real estate on his desk, and he surveyed her with cool, calculating eyes as his partner, Lucretia Davis, a thirtyish black woman in a slim skirt and pressed blouse, had hovered near the doorway, as if she expected Remmi to bolt, and listened while Kendrick fired the questions. For some reason, he seemed to have it in for Remmi from the start of the interview. Or maybe he was just one of those perpetually angry men like Harold Rimes, her mother’s employer, the kind of guys with a chip on their shoulder that only got bigger as they aged. Whatever the reason, Kendrick seemed to think Remmi knew more than she was telling, which, of course, she did.

  “You heard shots and an explosion and saw a ‘fireball’ from a hiding spot in the back of a specially equipped old Cadillac? That’s what you’re saying?”

  “Yes.” She’d already explained, saw no reason to go over it again. Tired and worried sick, she glared at Kendrick. “You know that happened. The police and the fire department went out there. I know that. I heard the sirens. So, please, tell me. Did they find a baby? Or a . . .” Her throat had closed. “The body of an infant.” Her heart had ached at the thought.

  “No baby’s body,” Davis had interjected, and for the first time in days, Remmi had felt a glimmer of hope. Maybe Ariel had survived. But how? And where was she?

  “But you were there in your mother’s car?” Kendrick again.

  “Yes! You can ask me a million times, and I’ll always tell you the same thing. Because it’s the truth.” And that part was. Still, she went over her story one more time, told him about hiding in the back of the big car, watching in horror as Didi met another car and she and a man exchanged a baby carrier for a briefcase full of money that turned out to be filled with phony bills. She told him how Didi, feeling cheated, had torn off to go somewhere, but Remmi had no idea where or how far. “She just said she was going to an appointment at a ‘private residence.’ ”

  “Whose?” Kendrick had asked.

  “I told you, I don’t know. She didn’t say.”

  “And she didn’t give any indication of how far away it was?”

  “No. Just that it was ‘out of town,’ not here in Las Vegas, and that she’d be back in the morning and we could go shopping or something.”

  She’d seen a movement in the doorway as Detective Davis had walked out of the office and down the hallway, her footsteps barely audible. Obviously, she’d decided Remmi wasn’t a flight risk. Finally. But that meant Remmi was stuck with the hard-nosed, disbelieving senior partner of the duo. Great.

  “And she didn’t come back or call?”

  “No.”

  “And she left you with a kid, only a few months old, after trying to sell the other one.”

  “Yes!” Remmi bristled at his tone and what he was saying. She almost came out of the molded plastic chair in which she’d been told to sit, but she forced herself to remain seated. “She . . . she acted like she would get Ariel back.”

  “After she figured out she was paid in counterfeit bills?”

  “No–I mean . . .” What did she mean? “I don’t know.”

  “Now I believe you,” he said with a snort.

  Footsteps returned, and thankfully Davis walked in and dropped a can of Coke and a wrapped sandwich on the desk. “Here,” she said to Remmi. “Ham and cheese. Not great, but trust me, it’s the best we’ve got in the machine.” Then she shot Kendrick a “back off ” look and hitched her chin toward the hallway. Frowning, his desk chair creaking in protest, Kendrick met his partner outside the door that remained ajar, and they got into a heated, but muffled discussion. Remmi, popping the tab on the soda and unwrapping the sandwich, had listened hard, but over the crinkle of the plastic unfolding and the partially shut door, had managed to hear only snatches of the conversation.

  Davis’s voice: “Back off. Bud . . . she’s just a kid.”

  And the response: “Doesn’t matter . . . lying. I’d bet my pension on it . . .”

  Davis’s answer was low, but Remmi had caught. “. . . scared, and, sure, her mother . . . major flake. Owes money all over town . . .”

  “What the hell’s all this about selling a baby? Jesus H. Christ, now I’ve heard everything.” Then he’d lowered his voice, as if he’d realized he might be overheard. Remmi’d wanted to walk to the doorway but didn’t dare, and so, over the beat of her heart, she’d strained to listen. “. . . probably dead . . . No body, though . . . knows more than she’s saying . . .”

  “. . . give her a break. She’s fifteen. Remember what you were like at that age?”

  “Oh, hell.”

  “Yeah, I know . . . don’t press too hard. All I’m saying.”

  Remmi had started nibbling the sandwich, but a bite of bread, cheese, mayonnaise, and ham had stuck in her throat, a glob she had to wash down with the Coke. She should never have come here. They didn’t believe her. Maybe they’d arrest her for . . . what? Withholding evidence? Lying to a police officer? They might even think she was some kind of accessory to the crime. And who were they talking about who was dead? Ariel? The babies’ father? Maybe even Didi?

  Her mind racing, she heard Kendrick say, “. . . need a smoke.”

  “Don’t we all?” had been the reply just before Detective Davis had come into the room. Alone.

  “This is gonna be okay,” she said with a kind smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes.

  The smile is fake. She knows it won’t be okay. It never will be again.

  Davis had rested her slim hips against the edge of Kendrick’s desk. “Is there anyone else we can call for you? The number for the woman you told us about, Seneca Williams? It’s been disconnected. Do you have any relatives?”

  Remmi’s heart had frozen. Seneca had bailed? Left her for good? Nervously, she’d licked her lips. She had to come up with a name. Someone. Anyone. Or else she’d have to go through Social Services, or whatever it was called, and be put in foster care with strangers.

  “What about your father?”

  That again. “I told you, I don’t know who he is. I never have. I know that sounds lame, but it’s the God’s honest truth. My mom never told me. And may—” she swallowed hard and whispered a truth she’d always feared, “Maybe she didn’t know who he was.” Remmi had always suspected that her mother had been eager to please men, and there was a good chance that she’d had more than one lover at a time and so . . .

  “Okay,” Davis had said without any sign of emotion or judgment. “How about an aunt or an uncle? Older cousin?”

  Remmi had been sweating, and her palms were slick as she’d considered her options. In the end, she chose to go for the truth. “All I know is that Mom’s from somewhere in Missouri. That’s what she said. I don’t know exactly where. She would never say. Like it was some big, bad secret or something, you know, really bad had happened there. I don’t know.” Remmi had thought hard. “But I think she mentioned St. Louis a couple of times, and she maybe grew up on a farm. She knew farm
stuff, y’know. Like ‘bucking’ hay, that’s what she called it, and ‘slopping the pigs,’ stuff like that. The kind of thing you don’t hear in town.”

  Davis had nodded, making notes. “Anything else?”

  “Just that she was a cheerleader for the high school. I found her old uniform once, a long time ago. Red and white sweater. For a team called the Titans. Her name was Edwina, but the name embroidered on the sweater was ‘Edie.’” She met Davis’s interested gaze. “I never heard anyone call her either of those names. She always went by Didi.”

  “Middle name?”

  “She never used it, but it was Maria. Edwina Maria Hutchinson . . . but she went by Didi Storm even when she married.”

  “What are her husbands’ names?”

  “Leo Kasparian, the magician, Kaspar the Great, was her second.” Davis’s eyebrows had elevated at that. “Ned Crenshaw was the first. He moved away. Montana or Colorado. Cowboy. A horse guy. Rancher,” she’d said, and she felt a little bad. She’d always liked Ned. He’d been kind to her, taught her how to ride, about horses, how to appreciate a sunset. Even how to handle and shoot a rifle, a skill he’d told her he’d learned on a ranch in Wyoming. He’d been a firm stepfather, forcing Remmi to do “chores.” He was decent enough, mostly even-tempered, but when he did get mad, it was a slow, smoldering fury that was mainly directed at his flirtatious wife. She’d thought Ned and Didi might actually come to blows once or twice, but they never had, as far as she knew. Remmi remembered him calling Didi “bat-shit crazy,” right before she filed for divorce.

  Remmi added, “Mom divorced them both.” Remmi had never much liked Leo, but he had showed her some tricks and sleight of hand that she thought now might come in handy. Leo had always been out for Leo, first and foremost. As Didi had said on more than one occasion, “Leo could as easily slide a knife between your ribs as make love to you. He could probably do both at the same time and not think a thing about it.”