by Lisa Jackson
Martinez had talked to the King County Sheriff’s Department and had sent them information on the case via e-mail. An officer with the sheriff’s department had been assigned the unhappy duty of informing the next of kin, who in this case was her mother, a woman of eighty-three who lived in an assisted care facility in Kirkland, Washington.
Settler had done a quick check on the victim, but in her first sweep of information about Karen Upgarde, there wasn’t a single thing about the woman that linked her to Didi Storm or anyone associated with her. The only reason the police had IDed her was because of her priors. She’d been fingerprinted and was in the national database. Upgarde had also attempted suicide twice during her short-lived marriage, both times with pills that had been pumped from her system in time when her husband discovered her barely conscious. She worked as a waitress, had loved drinks and karaoke, and had been known to wear flamboyant clothes, though she’d never been an impersonator, at least at first look. Tomorrow, the police department would dig a little deeper and get to know the victim. According to police records, the last time she’d been convicted of a DUI had been eleven years earlier; since then she’d been clean. No other run-ins with the law had been found.
Yet.
There was still plenty of time, Settler thought, as she heated a leftover taco she’d picked up from her favorite food cart located between her apartment and the station. The microwave dinged and, gingerly, she carried the steaming-hot plate from her galley-style kitchen to the narrow living room where Earl waited, wiggling his tail in anticipation of at least one bite.
“Glutton,” she chided as she sat in her favorite chair—a recliner she got secondhand in college—and picked up the TV remote to click on the news. Her apartment was small, but functional, decorated with hand-me-downs, as rent in this city was sky-high and Settler was saving for her own condo, which she figured she could only afford if some rich unknown relative bequeathed her a small—or, better yet, large—fortune. Nearly burning her lips on the melted cheese, she watched the TV with half an eye and dug into the slightly soggy tortilla.
Earl gave a sharp bark, his bulbous eyes fixated on her plate. She told him, “When I’m done, okay? You can lick the plate.”
She’d had the pug a little over two years. While jogging one autumn evening, the chubby little dog, with his curled tail, had nearly barreled into her. She’d tripped, recovered herself, then worried he’d dash into the street, so she’d grabbed hold of him, and he’d licked her face as if they were already fast friends. She’d tried to find his owners, going door to door, checking with local vets and nearby rescue organizations, searching online, at the pound, through the police station, everywhere she could think of, but no one had come forward for him. With no tags and no microchip, the dog was an orphan, and he’d claimed her as his, settling comfortably into her apartment, burrowing his way into her heart. He now slept with her. She’d sworn she’d never own a dog—too much responsibility—and she’d seen firsthand how much work they could be, as her stepmother raised service dogs.
Nonetheless, Earl was definitely her dog now.
As the news switched from national to local, her cell phone chirped. She snatched it up and checked the screen. Las Vegas Police Department. She answered to find Detective Lucretia Davis on the other end of the connection.
“I’m sorry to call so late,” Davis said after introducing herself, “but I’m going out of town and saw that you needed some information on the Didi Storm missing person case.”
“Yes, anything you’ve got.”
“Okay. The case about her is old and cold, and I would love to see it finally solved, as I worked it with Detective Kendrick, who retired a few years back. I’ve already asked that the case files be brought out of storage, and when I get back in a couple of days, I’ll send you anything you need. Most of the information is in computer files, though, as we’d just converted to computer data back then, so I’ll send you everything I have digitally tonight.”
“That would be great.” Dani set the plate on the floor, and as Earl started licking any remaining crumbs, she grabbed a notepad and pen from a drawer in the side table nearest the couch.
“The whole thing had us hamstrung. It was a mess. The long and the short of it was that a night or two before she was reported missing, there was a fire, a big explosion in the desert. It lit up the sky, let me tell you. I’d never seen anything like it. Anyway, after the fire department put out the inferno, all we were left with was a burned-out shell of a car—a Mustang—and it had a body in it. Male, probably an inch over six feet, no dental work we could match, never identified. No missing person report that filled the bill.
“The car turned out to be a rental from a small shop in Victorville, a mom and pop operation, but I can’t remember the name. It’ll be in the file. It was rented to a Brandon Hall. He had a California driver’s license and a credit card issued to him—Visa, if I remember right—but other than that, he didn’t exist. And the rental car company didn’t have cameras at that time.”
“That seems strange.”
“Yep, a little, even for back then. Maybe it was the reason he picked that rental company.”
Settler made a note.
“We found where he’d rented a room, here in Las Vegas, at a hotel months before. The hotel was just off the Strip, and a Brandon Hall using the same ID had been there for a few weeks, and that’s where, as far as we can tell, he would have hooked up with Didi. The ID didn’t pan out, was phony. The hotel did have cameras, but he kept his back turned and was always wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses, which isn’t all that unusual here—no red flags were raised.”
“Purposely hiding his identity?”
“That’s what we decided. His address was listed as somewhere in L.A., and it was the same address on the fake driver’s license. When we checked, it turned out no one by the name of Brandon Hall had ever lived there, and the picture on the license, as I said, didn’t match with anyone who’d gone missing. A dead end. But then, the whole case was made up of dead ends. If this Brandon Hall was the body in the car, we could never ID him.”
Settler scratched the alias onto the legal pad while Davis continued talking. Losing interest, Earl padded off to his water dish in the kitchen.
Davis said, “So that was mystery number one.”
“There were more?”
“What happened to Didi was the biggest one. According to her kid, she took off the next night, or maybe the next—again, it’s been a while, and I don’t have the details right here, but the kid said her mother was ready to have it out with someone because she thought she’d been scammed. Big-time.”
“I heard,” Settler admitted. “I talked to Remmi Storm today.”
“So she told you about an exchange of money for a baby?”
“And the switch of the babies. The girl for the boy.”
“Well, that’s just the thing,” Davis said, “There was no record of two births, only one. The boy: Adam. Filed with the state by Didi Storm and her attendant, a woman who was supposedly a midwife, Seneca Williams. No second baby was listed or ever reported that we could find. No female named Ariel. Ms. Williams vanished, too, a day or so later, after Didi disappeared. According to Remmi Storm, Seneca Williams took the second baby with her—the boy, Adam—though that’s always been a question as we only know of the one. Did Didi really have twins? Did she take the one with her that first night? If so, what happened to the kid? And what about Seneca Williams? What happened to her? She wasn’t in any of our records, no driver’s license or Social Security number that we could find. Was she an illegal? Or did she have an alias? Witnesses claimed to have seen her, but we couldn’t find anyone really close to her, so who knows?”
“And there wasn’t evidence of a baby in the car that burned?”
“Nothing to confirm that a kid was even there. Which throws more than a little doubt on Remmi’s entire story. Kendrick pointed this out, but Remmi Storm wouldn’t back down from her insiste
nce that she was telling us the truth, and she knows what happened, or most of it, because—get this—she was hiding out in a specially equipped cargo space in Didi’s Cadillac, a space between the trunk and back seat Didi used to hide props for her act. Didi was a showgirl who impersonated, sang, danced, and did a little magic, I guess. I never saw her. Never met her. Didn’t even know about her until Remmi came in and made the report.”
“You didn’t believe her? Remmi?”
Davis paused for a second, and Settler heard the distinctive click of a lighter and a long intake of breath, indicating she was lighting a cigarette. “Not completely. I remember we went ’round and ’round about it back then, trying to figure out what was real, what wasn’t. We might have had one witness, a kid who was riding a motorcycle in the desert that night and got shot, but he left the hospital before we could interview him. His name was Scott something or other . . . no wait, the last name was Scott. And he was in the wind, too. Never found.”
“But he was shot?” This was news to Settler, and she wrote his name down and circled it, to remind herself that Scott would be another witness, just as Earl returned to the living area and cocked his head at her.
“He was lucky to have survived, real lucky. We think he was shot point-blank in the neck.”
Dani’s attention sharpened. This was serious stuff. “By who?”
“Good question. Still unknown. We think whoever shot him also shot the Mustang and ignited the gas tank or something, which caused the explosion. Shell casings indicate as much. It’s all in the report.” Frustration edged into her voice as she talked. “To this day, we’re not certain what really happened that night or who the real target was. The guy in the car? The kid on the bike? Didi? Maybe even someone knew that Remmi was inside the big car, but, according to her, Didi’s Caddy was unscathed, no bullet holes, which, of course, we can’t confirm as no one but Remmi saw the car after that night.
“Anyway, that’s about what I remember about it. When Didi’s daughter came in to report her mother missing, we listened to what she had to say but were never able to connect all the dots. Couldn’t tell how much of the truth she was relating and how much she was holding back. Both Kendrick and I had the feeling she knew more than she was saying, but we couldn’t get her to open up. Then there was the fact that she was underage, her mother gone. Social Services put her together with someone in her family, an aunt who lived in California, I think, even though Remmi had never met her.”
Another audible drag on the cigarette, then Davis continued, “We checked with all of Didi’s acquaintances, the ones we could catch up to. A couple of friends, a few people she worked with, her boss, who said that Didi had hinted she was going to come into some money. Big money, and when she did, he could take her job and shove it, or something along those lines. I take it their relationship wasn’t all that great.”
“Romantic?”
“He said not, but I think he’s the kind who could lie to his own mother. At least that’s the impression I got.”
Settler could tell by her cold tone what Davis thought of the man whom Didi had worked for. “He still around?”
“At the same club. It’ll be in the report, too.”
“What about romantic interests?”
“Didi Storm had plenty. Men liked what they saw, and all reports suggest she liked them back, though she had trouble sustaining a relationship. Both her marriages were rocky, according to people who knew her. We were hoping to find the father of the baby or babies, but struck out. Her two exes seemed to be out of the picture, but you never know. Anyway, eventually the case went cold. Ice cold.”
“Until now.”
“Maybe until now. That remains to be seen. As I said earlier, the male body in the car was never identified and to this day remains a John Doe. Four or five people went missing, depending if you believe there were twins: Didi Storm, Seneca Williams, the Scott kid, and at least one baby, Adam Storm. And what was stranger still, or at least an odd part of it, supposedly, according to her daughter: Didi took off in that very unique car. It, too, was never seen again, and a Cadillac built in the fifties—they were immense by today’s standards. It would be hard to miss a car like that.”
“Or dispose of it,” Settler thought aloud.
“Right,” she agreed, then, wrapping up the phone call, said, “So, listen, unless you have any other questions, I’ve got to run. I have a couple of other calls to make before I even start packing, but I’ll send you what I can tonight and get the physical evidence to my desk. When I get back, I’ll give you a call.”
“Sounds good.” Settler hung up, and Earl took it as a sign it was okay to hop onto her lap. “This is a tough one,” she said, scratching his ears. “But we’ll figure it out, right?” The pug cocked his head again. “Okay, I’ll figure it out.” She picked up her plate and was halfway to the kitchen when she heard the ding on her phone, indicating she was getting new e-mail. A glance told her Detective Davis was as good as her word and digital files had been transferred from Las Vegas.
From the size of the file, it looked like she had her evening’s reading cut out for her.
* * *
Three hours after picking up and reading Greta’s copy of I’m Not Me, Remmi snapped the book closed and climbed off the couch. A lot of the narrative was factual, could have been taken off of the Internet, but that part was mostly in the ten or so years before Didi disappeared. Didi’s earlier history as Edwina Hutchinson from Anderstown, Missouri, a small farming community ten miles off of I-44 about midway between St. Louis and Springfield, was sketchy, though some blanks had been filled, including the name of the school, Anderstown High School, home of the Terrific Titans; the school colors were scarlet and white. This was old information to Remmi, in a way. She’d just never explored much of her mother’s history before she became Didi Storm. Living with the Gibbses had destroyed any curiosity she might have had.
But now, armed with details of Didi’s youth, Remmi carried the book into her second bedroom, which she used as an office. There was a daybed pushed under the window, but it had never been used, and her desk, tucked into a corner, was surrounded by books and ledgers, office supplies in baskets and boxes on open shelves, and a desktop computer with a wide monitor. Currently, the screen was obliterated by the hulk of Romeo, a huge Maine Coon cat, another one of Greta’s babies. Perched in front of the monitor, his long tail dangling to the keyboard and twitching slightly, he stared at Remmi, tufted ears cocked.
“So who do you think you are?”
He knew who he was: the man of the house. And he wasn’t moving. He stretched and yawned, showing his pink tongue and sharp teeth. “Yeah, right, I get it. You’ve got to go be the boss somewhere else, okay?” She carried him over to the window seat and plunked him on a faded cushion. “Your own private view of the city and . . .” The words got lost in her throat as she stared down at the street and saw, positioned away from the nearest streetlamp, a dark vehicle, some kind of SUV.
Her heart clutched.
She knew the cars that regularly parked in the area, and this one was different. She cut the light behind her and stared, trying to determine if anyone was sitting in the vehicle, but she couldn’t see into the darkened interior.
You’re paranoid. Why do you think someone’s following you?
Nevertheless, gooseflesh broke out on her arms.
The house is safe, she reminded herself. No one can enter without a key.
Still, she walked to the exterior door that opened to the converted fire escape and tested the lock.
Secure.
The cat, who had followed her down the short hallway past her bedroom, let out a low, warning growl, making the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. “It’s okay, Romeo,” she said softly, and in response, the cat stared at the door and hissed, then quickly turned tail and slunk toward the main stairs.
After checking that lock as well, Remmi went back to the study and looked out the window to scan the street
again.
The dark SUV was gone.
And somewhere she thought she heard the strains of the same old song she’d heard at the Montmort Tower as the woman had leapt to her death.
This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.
Her blood turned to ice.
Where was it coming from?
But no. She couldn’t hear it now. The song must’ve just blossomed in her brain randomly. A memory. An earworm. Nothing had triggered it.
But as she stared out the window at the dark, lifeless night, her reflection a pale wraith of her own image, the tune lingered, the refrain repeating and echoing in her mind.
CHAPTER 17
When Remmi got up the next morning, she opened the blinds and checked. No SUV. The space the black vehicle had occupied was empty, dry pavement showing the outline of where a vehicle had been parked. But it could have been occupied by anyone. She stared through the window. Had the driver returned?
“Stop it,” she said aloud. She wasn’t going to let her nerves get the better of her. She had too much to do.
The day was cloudy and dark, no promise of blue skies, but the rain had stopped for the moment, and Remmi watched a few boats sailing into the bay. Cars were already clogging the bridges as she stretched and told herself today would be a better day.
It had to be.
She’d slept poorly, had had dreams of women dressed in garish clothes, clownish versions of Didi in overdone makeup and ripped, sequined dresses plummeting through the air and whispering, “I’m not me. I’m not me,” but never hitting the ground. Instead, all the women dressed as different characters in Didi’s repertoire floated, pirouetting, diving, and ascending in the misty air over the bay and Golden Gate Bridge. Didi as Cher or Madonna or Marilyn Monroe, spinning over the tallest buildings and then breaking into that little song she’d heard as a child, all in Didi’s high soprano voice, louder and louder, their mouths working choppily, as if they were marionettes.
