Dead Head db-3

by Rosemary Harris

  “So you are watching your weight,” I said, starting with a safe subject. He did look a bit slimmer since we’d first met, but I wasn’t sure if that was weight loss or my own revised notion of what an average body type was since my move from the city.

  “Just a bit. It’s mostly an increase in exercise. My dad’s doing better, so we’ve been trying to get out for the odd walk after I get home from work.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  We chatted so pleasantly all during lunch that when the waiter came to clear our plates, I realized I hadn’t surreptitiously slipped in any of the questions I’d wanted to ask.

  I let Mike babble on with mildly amusing anecdotes about the new guys on the force, particularly the one who had nearly shot himself with his own gun. It was going well. I hadn’t gotten to my agenda yet, but I was getting there. I persuaded him to stay for espresso.

  “I guess things have cooled off for you in Springfield,” he said, twisting a strip of lemon.

  The phrasing was strange. “What do you mean?”

  “If you’re reduced to having lunch with me, the rest of the natives must be giving you the cold shoulder.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short. I’m fine. In fact, Becka Reynolds and I have actually gotten closer since this whole unfortunate business with Caroline. I may work on her garden next season. She’s got bamboo—challenging but beautiful. She also warned me to watch out for the speed trap on Chesterfield.” Now I was babbling, but gently steering the conversation in the direction I’d wanted it to go.

  “She said you sent the rookies there to write their first tickets—that way they were no longer virgins. Is that true?” Inwardly, I was beaming, proud of the smooth transition I was making to the first question on my list. “I got a speeding ticket once in Virginia. I was driving to Florida with a pal on my birthday. The road was so wide and empty, I didn’t realize how fast I was going. I was certain the cop would let me slide when he looked at my license and saw what day it was. He didn’t. What do you guys really do with all that information when you check someone driver’s license, anyway?” The speeding ticket was the first thing to go wrong for Caroline. Maybe Mike would reveal information that I could use.

  I was feeling pretty clever about how I’d slipped that in so naturally. Mike was less impressed with my subtlety. He gunned his espresso, his smile vanishing with the hot liquid.

  “You could have been honest and just asked me outright. You didn’t need to spend eighty dollars on lunch—because I am going to leave you here with the check.” Clearly it was not as subtle as I’d thought. O’Malley was pissed. He thought we were picking up on his food-as-foreplay conversation from the diner and instead I was pumping him for information like one of the reporters we’d all been avoiding.

  He pushed away from the table and stood up, wiping his mouth with the cloth napkin and tossing it on the table. The waiter rushed over to see what was wrong.

  “She’ll take the check. Will you excuse us for a minute?” The waiter backed away. He’d witnessed scenes in the restaurant before.

  “If we have any suspicions, we run it through the system to see if the driver has any history—frequent violations, arrests, outstanding warrants, convictions. We can even see if the person has done time anywhere. In Caroline’s case, she would have just gotten a ticket. Since officially there is no record of a Caroline Sturgis before her marriage. Had we looked, we would have found nothing. Which in and of itself might have sent up a flare. But we didn’t look. Any other questions or have I earned my lunch?”

  With that, he pointedly said good-bye to the maître d’ and not to me. The waiter brought the faux leather folder with the check. O’Malley was right. Seventy-eight fifty, not including the tip. I pocketed the receipt and shook my head, wondering how my strategy for a nonconfrontational exchange with O’Malley had gone so horribly wrong. Unlike real estate, location had nothing to do with it.

  Unless I could talk to Caroline herself—if she’d even agree to it—my plan to help the Sturgises and clear my name would be hopeless. The scraps of information I was picking up seemed to be leading nowhere. May be the newcomers were involved, but may be not. Chances are I was playing P.I. and investigating a man of the cloth and an Eagle Scout, neither of whom had anything to do with Caroline Sturgis. But Caroline was scheduled to be extradited to Michigan some time today; for all I knew, she’d already left.

  I’d dropped the data plan on my phone to save a few bucks, so I needed a computer and the latest Caroline news ASAP to help me decide whether to drive to Bridgeport or just go home, where I’d console myself with a large tumbler of cheap but cheerful wine.

  The Paradise was the closest place I knew of with a computer I could use, twenty minutes closer than my house and near the highway if I did decide to make the trek to Bridgeport. Two long semis blocked most of the parking spots but I was able to slide in between them, trusting that the drivers were so skilled they wouldn’t squish my Jeep when pulling out.

  Babe wasn’t there. Eyebrow Girl told me she was on a break, and motioned to Babe’s den behind the diner. I sprinted around to the back door and knocked.

  “Babe, you in there?” I called.

  “Over here.”

  She stood, arms folded, wearing elbow-length rubber gloves, behind a lattice fence near the Dumpster. She was up to her knees in garbage and papers. “This better not be Countertop Man again. Otherwise, when I find him I’m going to douse him with waste vegetable oil, strap him down, and let the raccoons get him.” Babe had a vindictive side—or at the very least a vivid imagination.

  I offered to help clean up but told her I needed to use her computer first.

  “This isn’t a home-shopping jones, is it?” she asked, unlocking the door, peeling off her gloves, and flopping down on one of the sofas. “Because there are support groups for that.”

  I assured Babe it wasn’t.

  She logged on and then I searched both Caroline Sturgis and Monica Weithorn. Pages of the inevitable before and after pix loaded—Caroline at a charity function, Monica’s class picture. Caroline at the Historical Society gala, Monica’s mug shot. There she was, side by side with her doppelgänger. Frisky, yes, maybe even a little slutty for a teenager, but a drug kingpin?

  Caroline/Monica already had a Wikipedia page. Astonishing. Who had the time to do this stuff? There was also a Free Caroline page started by a cannabis club that admitted it had nothing to do with her or her family; she’d quickly become a symbol to people on both sides of the drug issue. I scrolled through the rest of the junk items until I saw a article posted a few hours earlier on WTIC, the local news radio’s Web site: Fugitive Mom Returned to Michigan. Caroline was gone.

  Eighteen

  How I disappeared. The last driver took me for a runaway, escaping an abusive stepfather. She looked me up and down and decided she knew my story the way people do all the time. I’d done it myself. She assumed my gaunt face was the product of mistreatment at home, not bad prison food, and she thought my calloused hands were the result of punishing household chores, not the harsh chemicals in the prison laundry. I let her think that. For the previous two days nothing I’d said was the truth, and I was getting better at lying. She gave me a bag of trail mix, a pair of woolen gloves, and the best advice I’d gotten in my young life, certainly better than anything from that jerk lawyer.

  She said it wasn’t enough just to hope that someone couldn’t follow you, you had to actively feed misinformation into whatever system you thought they’d use to track you. I had to stay away from everything and everyone I formerly knew or loved. She sounded as if she knew what she was talking about. Maybe she’d left an unhappy marriage or a difficult past. Who knew? But she had me thinking about what I could or couldn’t do next.

  There could be no tearful late-night calls to my brother, no showing up on old friend’s doorstep. No registering for school or doing anything that required me to give my social security number. It was easier back in the eighti
es. I don’t know how someone would do it now.

  I was afraid to throw away my driver’s license and passport for fear of leaving a trail, so I kept them. Besides, maybe I could use them. I’d already toughened up and learned a lot, but I needed a plan. First and foremost I needed to clean up. I’d been on the road since that first night at the motel in Michigan and I stank.

  The ladies’ room at the Port Authority wasn’t as disgusting as I thought it would be. When I saw my reflection in the cloudy mirror, I teared up but didn’t let myself cry. The washroom attendant didn’t seem surprised when I took a poor man’s bath in the sink with my stolen washcloth and a sliver of soap that had all the weight of a matchbook. I dried off with the hand dryer. The attendant warned me to keep my bags close and wear the shoulder strap across my chest so there was less chance of its getting ripped off. I must have looked like Alice in Wonderland, the only thing missing was the pinafore.

  I took my time lingering in the bathroom, because I hadn’t a clue as to what I’d do next. Near the diaper changing table there were stacks of flyers—social service agencies, suicide prevention hotlines, employment opportunities from an escort service, and a flyer from St. Ann’s Community Kitchen. I took one of each and shoved them in my bag.

  “St. Ann’s is four blocks south of here. Make a left when you get outside,” the woman said. “You don’t wanna go to that other place. Go to St. Ann’s. They got chicken stew on Fridays.” As if I knew what day it was.

  The sign on St. Ann’s said the kitchen was open from 7 to 10 A.M. , 12 to 2 P.M. , and 5 to 8 P.M. It was 3 P.M. I heard the rain before I felt it, pelting my brother’s cheap nylon duffel that held everything I owned and was already starting to show signs of fabric fatigue from having been dragged on highways and thrown into the backs of trucks. I was showing signs of fatigue, too. Then it really started to pour and I figured no one would mind if I ducked into the church to wait out the storm. Isn’t that what they were for? Sanctuary?

  A priest was rearranging items on the altar, moving candlesticks or something. I didn’t want him to see me still there two hours later, so when he went behind the altar, I crept into the confessional booth and pulled the carved door closed behind me. Then I fell asleep.

  There was no anger or judgment in the priest’s voice when he woke me two hours later.

  “You look troubled. Would you like to talk?” The same words that other priest had said to me at the stable in Connecticut.

  The priest at St. Ann’s led me to the church basement, where dinner was being served. I took a tray and waited in a line that reminded me of a school cafeteria, albeit one with a down-at-the-heels student body. I was starving. I loaded up on sides and tried not to be too piggy with the meat, which didn’t look that appetizing anyway. Then I sat at a long table opposite a girl about my age. She had a choppy haircut and wore a lot of makeup, and I could see a pack of Marlboros sticking out of the pocket of her denim jacket. Again I felt like a child. We shoveled in the food in silence. She put a cigarette in her mouth but knew the rules well enough to not light it. Finally she spoke to me. “Need a place?”

  Nineteen

  I suppose only the wildly optimistic in Springfield were surprised. I saw Les Mis. Turn your life around? It doesn’t matter. Maybe it shouldn’t. I’d never really thought about it before. I just knew Caroline Sturgis and couldn’t see what purpose it would serve to have her making license plates in the big house for the next fifteen years.

  I turned off Babe’s computer. It was time for that drink, and Babe Chinnery obliged, pulling a bottle of Jack Daniel’s from a small wooden cabinet under the window in her office. I’d had a Jack night once a few years back. All I remember was that I forgot where I parked my car, and it was a damn good thing, since driving would have been suicidal.

  “What do you have for lightweights?” I asked.

  “How about a dark and stormy—rum and ginger beer?”

  “Maybe just coffee for now.”

  Babe locked up her office and we took our time walking to the diner’s front entrance. If I hadn’t spent the time going to Mossdale’s and blowing eighty dollars on lunch, maybe I could have driven to Bridgeport and convinced Caroline to see me, but it was too late to speculate.

  “Something happened that day,” I said. “She got a ticket, saw the priest, and then came here. However startling those first two events might have been, they didn’t put her out of commission. She was pretty happy when she got here.”

  “Yeah, she came in to see you, you talked, she started to leave, and the trucker hit on her,” Babe said. “That long-haired guy who tried to help Terry?” I didn’t know who she was talking about, then realized the waitress with the bolt in her eyebrow was Terry.

  “She flung a tray of coffee cups and nearly decapitated someone? You were there, remember?”

  “Right. The guy who said Caroline looked familiar,” I said, trying to dredge up a mental image.

  “Please, I hear that ten times a day. It only registers when it’s one of my regular customers and I’m worried that it’s early stage Alzheimer’s.”

  “Maybe he wasn’t throwing her a line. Maybe she looked familiar because he knew her back in Michigan when she was Monica Weithorn. Maybe she was upset because he looked familiar to her.” Could be. It was right after that that Caroline made her hasty departure, giving some phony excuse to her friends outside.

  All I remembered was that the trucker had long hair and wore a baseball hat, but Terry had spoken with him. He’d even gotten a laugh out of her, which was the first time I’d ever seen her teeth. Maybe something about him stuck with her.

  “He was with another driver, someone you knew, wasn’t he?”

  “Retro Joe,” she said. “No one knows if that’s his real name—that’s just what everyone calls him. One of the long haulers. I can almost see the truck, red logo, two letters interlocked. I’ll get it but it may take some time. But those guys don’t always drive with the same partners.”

  Inside the diner, we escorted Terry to a booth and sat her down to ask her a few questions.

  “What is this, the Spanish Inquisition? You guys are worse than my parents. I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention. I dropped the tray and he helped me clean up until Babe came over. It was two seconds. No great meeting of the minds.”

  I went into schmooze mode. “Come on, Terry. You’re an observant girl. And sensitive. You write songs—you notice things about people.” She looked down, working hard to live up to my flattering assessment of her powers of perception and conjure up his image. All three of us were.

  “He had long hair and a baseball hat. He said something that made you laugh,” I prompted. “What did he say?”

  “It was nothing. Something stupid, like I had a nice wrist move. He was a champion Frisbee player when he was in college, so he would know. It just seemed like a dumb thing to say at the time, but it was perfect. Better than asking if I was okay. I hate when people ask me that.”

  (Note to self: When we’re finished, don’t ask if she’s okay.)

  “Did he mention where he went to school?” I asked.

  “Man, it was all of two minutes. It wasn’t a date. He said it was cold and they jumped around a lot to keep warm.” She ratcheted down and gave it some more thought. “His friend called him JW—he was with Retro Joe.” Then she made an up-and-down motion with one hand, almost as if she were playing a washboard. “And he had something strange about his lip. You could barely see it because of the facial hair. A scar—like the guy who played Johnny Cash in that movie.”

  “He had a cleft lip?”

  “I don’t know what you call it. It’s kind of cute, like a little line. And his hat had an ornate D on it.”

  “D like in Dodgers?” Babe asked.

  A voice over my shoulder said, “No,” and three heads turned in its direction at the same time. It was one of the truckers.

  He peeled off a few bills and left them on the counter. “D like in Tigers. Detroit
Tigers,” he said.

  Twenty

  Detroit was big, but Caroline/Monica’s hometown wasn’t. The papers had said she was from Newtonville, one of the smaller specks on the MapQuest page, and a Google search made me think people probably didn’t go there unless they were visiting relatives or were passing through to get to somewhere else. Blue-collar residents commuted to jobs in the bigger cities or simply packed up and moved when their jobs did. The ones who stayed were rich or old, or just didn’t have any other place to go. It seemed like a lot of other towns—nice enough, maybe even wonderful forty years ago, but now still lovely on the surface but quietly dying.

  I’d start my Internet research with Caroline’s high school. The papers had said Caroline had been a senior at Newtonville High in 1981. How many kids could have been in her graduating class in a town that size? Or were enrolled during the four years she attended? And how many of them could have had a cleft lip? Wasn’t that pretty rare?

  I found the school online and ordered yearbooks from all four years that Caroline attended. If I wasn’t successful, I’d have to eat the cost (and the cost of my eighty-dollar lunch with O’Malley), but if I found out who the tipster was, I knew Grant would reimburse me. And I had my fingers crossed that a pretty and popular girl like Caroline would be in lots of pictures and I’d get a handle on who some of her friends were. There was no guarantee our trucker who talked to Caroline even went to high school with her, but it was the only lead I had from Michigan.

  Who knew how long the yearbooks would take to arrive? In the meantime, I took the plunge and said yes to one of the biggest time suckers on the Internet, highschoolmemories.com. I signed in pretending to be Monica Weithorn.

  For free, I got the tantalizing “Old friends are trying to find you” page with the names strategically blurred. Of course they are. All those people who ignored you or made your life miserable when you were sixteen really wanted to find you. Why? To make sure that they were still cooler than you? For more specific information, I’d have to upgrade my membership. Fifty bucks got me the whole enchilada and a bag of chips. Every classmate’s name in alphabetical order for the four years Caroline had been enrolled, even the old varsity team schedules and records. And updated background info on everyone who’d been dumb enough to enter their current coordinates.