by Chassie West
“Sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “This is my first season here. I’d ask a few old-timers but they’re getting ready for the matinee. Your snaps won’t copy all that well—they’re really grainy—but I could make a set and show them around between performances. I mean, being that you’re a friend of Beverly Barlowe and all.”
I expressed my appreciation, let her Xerox the photos, left my phone numbers, and returned to the parking lot.
No Caddy. No Janeece.
A blast from a horn announced her approach from Sixth Street just as a reedy man with a Dennis the Menace cowlick jogged toward the theater from the opposite direction.
Waving, he shouted, “Shelly? Long time no see.”
I turned and peered at him. “Excuse me?”
He blinked, then flushed as he slowed to a walk. “Sorry. Thought you were someone else. Is this your ride?” He jerked his head toward the Caddy, which had purred up behind me. “Have a nice day.” Legs pumping, he backed away and disappeared behind the building.
“Who was that?” Janeece asked as I got in.
“Don’t know. He thought I was someone else. Where’d you go?”
“Around the block to see if I spotted anybody tailing us. Any luck in there?”
“Not yet, but the woman I talked to copied my photos and will show them to people who’ve been there longer than she has. I’ve just discovered something. Panties for a size ten don’t fit over size fourteen hips. I might as well be wearing a thong.”
“Deal with it, because you look fab.”
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” I growled. “I’m sweating under all this stuff. Might as well be having hot flashes. And my feet are killing me.”
“Bitch, bitch, bitch,” she said, grinning. “Let’s go get us some fancy wheels.”
She meant it literally, turning into an agency that handled upscale models. I began to sweat even more. I’d intended to reimburse her for the rental, since she was doing it as a favor to me. Fortunately, she decided on the fanciest Mercedes on the lot, at which point she relieved me of all responsibility by insisting on footing the bill. I wasn’t about to argue with her.
“Hell, girl, this will be a test drive for me,” she said, smiling sheepishly. “I’ve always wanted a Mercedes, and this will give me a chance to see how it performs. Take good care of my baby,” she said, and sped away.
I settled behind the wheel of the Caddy, adjusted the seat and mirrors, and pulled into traffic, driving like a very senior citizen in unfamiliar territory. Gradually I became accustomed to the smoothness and the power, and wondered if I’d ever be satisfied with my own plain-vanilla vehicle again.
Thackery was waiting for me at the First District station, his desk as neat as if the Merry Maids had just left. He didn’t recognize me. “Good morning. Can I help you?”
“It’s me. Leigh Warren. Sorry about the disguise, but I figured it was one way to prevent our perp following me.”
“Jesus,” he said, scanning me head to toe. “If it doesn’t work, it won’t be for lack of trying. Kennedy’s message says our girl got in touch with you last night and you’ve figured out who she is?”
“I figured out where I met her, what she does, and why she’s been after me, but not her name yet. She’s an actress and—”
“An actress?” He blanched, eyes widening.
“What’s wrong with being an actress?” I asked, curious about his attitude.
He flushed. “Nothing. So how did you meet her?”
I managed a fairly succinct narrative of my encounter with her during the gas leak evacuation, my reunion with Beverly and company, noting the twitch of Thackery’s eyebrows when I mentioned Helena and Debra’s names, which he obviously recognized. I gave him a verbatim recitation of the telephone call and her threat, as he scribbled furiously on a lined pad.
“She was sorry about the old lady,” he repeated. “Which could mean anything, but definitely puts her in the picture. Good. Go on.”
I finished with a description of my conversation with her in her teenage persona in front of my building, the connections we’d made with the aliases she’d used thus far, and how adept she must be at what she does.
“No one decorating the tree realized that she and the middle-aged woman with the West Indian accent were one and the same. And I took her at face value. She looked, talked, and acted like a sixteen-year-old. And I feel like a first-class fool. I didn’t even recognize her.”
He rubbed a finger over his top lip. “Well, at least we have someplace to start. I’ll have someone type this up and print it out for you to sign. She’s piling up a list of things we can charge her with, but I have to be honest. Whether this belongs to Violent Crimes still depends on the results of the autopsy, and after the deaths in last night’s fire, the M.E.’s may not get to Ms. Hitchcock as soon as we hoped.”
“What fire?” I asked, feeling very much out of the loop. If I’d been in uniform, I’d know, if only courtesy of station house chitchat.
“A catering company out in far Northeast late last night, definitely arson, perhaps homicide too. A couple of bodies turned up, so far unidentified, at least not formally. But that’ll probably take precedence over Ms. Hitchcock. We know who she is.”
I felt a pang of sympathy for Clarissa and wondered how this development would affect her plans for a memorial service. Tina wouldn’t be pleased either, but she knew the drill. This would definitely come first.
My statement arrived sooner than I expected it and I read it over, corrected a typo, and signed it. Outside, I debated what my next stop should be and decided to go see Plato, wishing I hadn’t promised his mother that I would, since considering where I was and where GW University Hospital was, it would take me a year to get there in lunchtime traffic. Now I was obligated.
It only took three-quarters of a hour. It was also the first time I’d been to this hospital since they’d moved into their new digs in 2002. I was impressed and, by the time I found Plato’s room on level four, relieved that he had been brought here. It was bright and airy enough to ameliorate his claustrophobia. Knowing him, however, it had probably ramped up his agoraphobia instead. Plato’s phobias were legend, genuine, and debilitating.
There was a “No Visitors” sign on his door. Anxiety coursing through my veins, I stared at it, wondering if his condition had worsened since his parents had left.
“Can I help you?”
A sleepy-eyed young man in a white lab coat and a stethoscope around his neck stood at my elbow.
“I’m here to see Mr. dePriest but . . .” I jerked my head toward the sign. Hoping to make him a little more free with information, since it was obvious I wasn’t family, I said, “I’m a close friend. How is he?”
“He’s got them?” Nurse or doctor, whatever he was, he seemed genuinely suspicious, one brow arching cynically.
“Them what?”
“Friends.”
I couldn’t help it. I burst into laughter.
“LEIGH? THAT YOU OUT THERE? HELP!” Plato.
Mr. Lab Coat rolled his eyes and pushed the door open for me.
Plato, in the bed nearest the door, was propped on one elbow, his right leg suspended in a metal frame held aloft by yet another frame attached to the head and footboards. His curly, dark hair, unkempt at the best of times, was more so than usual. He stared at me. “What’s with the braids and stuff? You’ve gained weight. Never mind. GET ME THE HELL OUT OF HERE!”
“Mr. dePriest.” The lab coat had followed me in. “For the hundredth time, you’re in a hospital. Please keep your voice down.”
“I’m not a cretin,” Plato snarled. “I know where I am, a TORTURE CHAMBER!”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Plato, can it,” I snapped at him. “Just shut the hell up. The man’s right. There are sick people up here.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” He shuddered. “All those germs!”
It was my turn to roll my eyes toward the ceiling. “Thanks,” I said
to the nurse/doctor. “I can handle him.”
“Want a job?” he asked me. He glared at Plato, then left the room.
I shed my coat and draped it over the back of the chair by the bed. The other bed was vacant; I could guess why.
“You’re being a pain in the ass, aren’t you? Plato, these people are here to help you. It’s not their fault you broke your leg. How is it?”
He flopped back, tears in his eyes. “It hurts. How’d you know I was here?”
“I went by your house. You didn’t answer, so I called the number you gave me and talked to your mom.”
“They left to go feed the damned cats,” he grumbled. “I hate Siamese cats. Do you know what it’s like to have yowling Siamese cats as brothers and sisters? They used to climb me like I was a jungle gym.”
“I assume they wouldn’t have if they hadn’t liked you,” I said, hoping he didn’t know I hadn’t the slightest idea what I was talking about. Cats in general, I know. Siamese, I don’t. “Tell me how you broke your leg.”
That, at least, diverted him long enough to forget about his fur-bearing brothers and sisters. His fall had happened about as I’d envisioned. Plato had enough computers to open a store. Normally the floor of his workroom was clear so he could scoot from one workstation to another in his rolling chair. But he’d had to move a desktop to make room for a new one, had left the old one on the floor, had forgotten it was there, and had tripped over its monitor.
“Two months I’ll have to be in this damned thing,” he said mournfully. “I can’t be away from my computers for two months, Leigh. I’ve got my laptop but I’m going nuts here. And I’m sorry, but I fell before I was able to finish tracing your e-mail. What’s with that, anyway?”
I’d lost track of how many times I’d gone through it but did it again, in case he saw something the rest of us had missed.
“Sorry I let you down,” he said. “I’d already written off the computers in the libraries. Too much traffic. But I might have been able to get somewhere with the church. Perhaps the other places too. A community center, and some sort of private club.”
“How could she have gotten permission to use a computer in a church? It’s not as if they’d be that accessible.”
“You wouldn’t think so, would you? Saint Something in Northeast—”
“Saint Something?”
“One of the apostles, and New Gospel in Mitchellville. Don’t remember the name of the community center but it was in Columbia. And the private club was in Gaithersburg.”
I wrote all that down, even though some of it was a waste of ink. Saint Something certainly was. And Columbia had almost as many community or neighborhood centers as it had people. But Marty had lived in Gaithersburg before she’d married Jensen, so perhaps she could give me a line on the private clubs.
“This woman certainly gets around,” I said, seeing no particular pattern in her movement. “New Gospel and Gaithersburg will probably be the easiest for me to check out. I might not be able to pinpoint the exact date she used their computers, but at least I have a time frame to work with.”
“Come to think of it,” Plato said, shifting his weight awkwardly, “what set her off?”
“I already told you. She missed an audition—”
“That’s not what I mean. She missed the audition back in the spring, right? This just started fairly recently. Why? What triggered it? Why’d she wait until now?”
I hadn’t thought of that. “Maybe it took her that long to find me. After all, she didn’t even—” I stopped, reconstructing my confrontation with her. “Well, duh.”
“What?” He pushed the button that controlled his pain medication.
“I was going to say she didn’t even know my name, but she did. I gave it to her. When she flipped out, she said she was going to lodge a complaint against me. I was about sick of her by that point, so I told her to be sure and get my name right. I gave it to her, name, rank and badge number. Jeez, what a dunce I am.”
“That still doesn’t answer the question,” Plato insisted, “especially if she’s had the information all this time—and that’s assuming she remembered it. Why wait until now to get back at you? What triggered it?”
It was a good question. I tossed it around all the way back to the condo, even during the fifteen minutes I spent in Home Depot looking for a welcome mat to replace Janeece’s.
I’d have to power up the laptop and check the date of the first message she had sent, I was thinking, as I stopped in the lobby of the building to check Duck’s mailbox. It was empty, as was the lobby itself, the TV in the corner, silent. Mrs. Luby and her Gang of Four had other things to do, since there were no soaps on Saturday.
Upstairs in the hall, I wondered why I hadn’t had the foresight to leave the welcome mat in Janeece’s car. It was heavy, practically cutting off the circulation in the wrist the bag was dangling from, and hampering access to the pocket I needed to reach to get to the door key. I did some juggling, found it and had it in the lock when the whole of the Baltimore Orioles whacked me on the back of the head with every bat they had, and a voice yelled, “Got you!”
17
“OH, JESUS!”
I didn’t pass out. There’s no way you could see as many stars in as many galaxies as I did if you’re unconscious. I did, however, wind up on my fanny on the floor, probably about the time Orion’s Belt flashed past, the back of my head throbbing in time with my escalating pulse.
“Oh, Jesus, oh, Lord,” someone mumbled again and, after the ringing in my ears lessened a bit, I recognized the voice.
“You hit me.” I squinted up at Mrs. Luby, which only added pain behind my eyes to the equation. Her sweat suit was a shriek of carmine red. Thank God she wore no shoes. I’d seen them. They were American Beauty rose.
“I’m so sorry, Leigh.” A tenpin-shaped dumbbell rolled across the carpet and stopped at her door as if pointing a finger of blame. “Did I hurt you? I didn’t mean to.”
“Couldn’t prove it by me,” I said. “In fact, I get the impression you meant to knock my block off. Congratulations. You just about succeeded. Mind telling me why?”
“I thought you were her,” she wailed. “Heard you out here. I looked through the peephole and thought she’d come back. I wasn’t going to let you . . . her, I mean, get away again. I was exercising, so I just opened my door and . . .” Reaching down, she helped me to my feet. “What have you done to yourself? Why in the world would you want to look like that awful woman?”
The key was still in the door so I opened it, walking on eggs, and beckoned her in. “Mrs. Luby.” Heading for the couch, I lowered myself onto it slowly, and stretched out. “When you saw her in the elevator, you thought she was me. If, as everyone I’ve talked to today, insists I don’t look like me now, how could you think I look like her?”
“Because I saw her earlier,” she protested, closing the door behind her.
“Today?” I forgot the manic drumbeat in my head for a moment.
“Yes. That’s what I’m trying to tell you! About an hour ago, I was out on my balcony. You know how I love watching planes make their approach to the airport. I noticed this woman cross the street. I think she’d just come out of our garage.”
“What was she driving?” I sat up. Slowly.
“Nothing. She was walking. Fast. And she reminded me of you and I thought, Luby, it’s that woman again. I had my binoculars with me to spot the planes so got a real good look at her. I could see the difference then. She’s bustier and has more hips than you do and she was wearing dreadlocks, but that didn’t fool me. I called the police but by the time they got here and checked the garage and nearby streets, she was gone. But she had on a white coat. That’s why I thought you were her when I saw you from the back. I’ve never seen you in a white coat before.”
“Remind me to warn you when I wear it again,” I said, taking it off. “I’ve got to find some aspirin. And an ice bag.”
“I’ll get the ice out for you.
I’m so sorry, Leigh. Think you should go to the hospital? You might have a concussion.”
“Been there, done that, concussion-wise,” I said, rising very, very gingerly. The room rocked for a moment, then settled down. “I’m all right.” An exaggeration, if not an outright lie, but I was fairly certain she hadn’t done that much damage. Granted, I had a first-class localized headache and a small lump back there, but my memory was intact, my surroundings had ceased all seismic activity, and besides, I’d had enough of hospitals for one day. Thank God for Janeece’s wig with all these braids and the cushion they’d provided. It lay on the coffee table looking like a strange, sandy-colored octopus.
Mrs. Luby helped me get comfortable on the sofa again, aspirin down my gullet, an ice bag chilling the goose egg, and my laptop within arm’s reach. After another dozen apologies from her and my assurances that I would live, she left and I sat back up—again, slowly—and turned on the laptop. There were new messages from me to me, in other words from the hellion, all of them today’s date. The first had been sent a little after midnight, the second at four this morning (didn’t the woman ever sleep?), the last a half hour ago.
It was obvious she was still foaming at the mouth when she’d written the first of them. She hadn’t even bothered with caps.
you scheming, conniving bitch! i started out meaning to let you know somebody out here didn’t think you were such hot shit just because you wear a uniform and a badge, but that was before i saw you hugging that blond heifer. i told you how important that audition was that day. i had olivia down pat, she was in my soul! i could have been a lady macbeth and a portia no one would ever forget! i had studied for almost a year to be ready to handle any part they gave me! but you had to make sure that fat sow got into the shakespeare company instead of me. sisterhood means nothing to you! she’s not even black! now that i see how things are don’t bother replacing that crappy suit you were going to get married in. i’ll make sure your man gets it back so you can be buried in it. you ruined my life and i’m going to ruin yours—permanently.
