My head turned red inside. Really. Red and raging and full. All the obnoxiously familiar traits, the fleeting sense of features long-ago burned onto my retina returned and flashed. That sick feeling upon sighting her. My gut had known all along. “Jessica,” I said softly.
It didn’t matter what the former Jessica-turned-Cookie had become, that everything bright and compelling about her had deserted her. It didn’t make anything better. “Jessica,” I repeated out loud. “Jessica…Meyers?”
She shook her head. “Meyers was my second husband. There was a third, but it lasted such a short time it seemed wrong to keep anything of his so I—”
How was I to establish the truth subtly? “All the way back, when people called you Jessica, your last name wasn’t Branch, was it? Like mine?”
She removed a hand from the steering wheel to wave away the very suggestion. “Wouldn’t that have been a kick though?”
“It’s not a common last name,” I said.
“Guess not. Never have met anybody else with it,” she answered.
Then maybe it wasn’t her. She couldn’t have forgotten me so completely. As if she’d never even noticed me while all the time tormenting me?
“On the other hand,” she said, nattering on as usual. “My name was as ordinary as you get. It was Smith.”
Jessica Smith. Here in the night in the car. Jessica Smith who had obliterated me in school. Jessica Smith who didn’t even remember the girl she’d ignored and scorned. Jessica Smith had done this to me. All of it—the TV interviewer who called me a crone, the man in the seat next to mine, the newspaper reporter and her derivative profile, the spirit-draining daily round. She’d done it. On purpose.
Where do I get my ideas, indeed! This was barely an idea at all. This was impulse, history, the delayed arrival of wishes dormant for decades.
I looked around. We were in the quiet tree-lined recesses of a residential area, but I’d seen a cabstand two or three blocks back. I’d plotted enough stories to think this through. I had my bad-hair-day turban in the big bag. Plus makeup and emergency changes. I’d paint on dark eyebrows, pop the glass out of my sunglasses, add an enormous scarf that covered a multitude of sins and jewelry, every piece of it, all at once, become an eccentric turbanned, bespectacled crone. And I wouldn’t have the cab take me to my hotel. I’d get a second cab midway. Say I stopped for a midnight snack, if anybody asks. And they wouldn’t. Crones are invisible. And when they become garish, people want them out of their eyesight, simply want to get away from them.
I pulled my bag up front with me and extracted the scarf.
I slid two of the books off my lap and held onto the third, a fat collection of greenshades. Including olives. That felt appropriate. “I need a cigarette,” I said.
“Now? Really?”
“Now.”
She sighed and pulled over. If you spare me the tobacco lecture, I silently announced, I’ll make this as painless as possible, even though you don’t deserve leniency.
“You shouldn’t smoke, you know,” she said as she opened her car door and swiveled around so that her feet were on the ground even though she still sat in the driver’s seat. “The Surgeon General says that smoking is bad for—”
Being bopped on the head with a scarf-wrapped fabric-sample book is even worse for your health than a smoke. Several bops can be fatal. And were.
You might not expect a decorator’s sample book to be that heavy, so chock-full of fabric that they have to bind it with rock-hard boards and long grommets, but it was demonstrably lethal. Still, I had to be certain. I reached into my always-helpful emergency travel bag and pulled out my compact for the mirror to the mouth business. First time I’d tried it outside of my fiction, and it worked. The mirror was clear. I used it to apply crimson lipstick and to check the effect of the turban, glasses and jewelry I put on.
I left Jessica-Cookie that way, half-in, half-out of the car. Let the jogging suburbanite who’d find her speculate about who and how and why on earth.
Not surprisingly, things went pretty well as planned. After all, thinking through a killer’s pitfalls and snares is my business. I caught two separate cabs, one from an all-night restaurant not far from where I’d left Jessica Smith, and where I had a quick snack. Neither cabby ever connected me or my route with the dead woman in Kings Commons.
The next morning, I called the publicist. “My driver has not shown up,” I said. “I’ll miss my plane if I wait any longer, so I’m taking a cab to the airport. Get me someone competent next time!” And I slammed down the phone.
She wasn’t found till I was in my next city, in my next hotel room. A detective called and asked some routine questions about my media escort and my whereabouts the evening before, and when I explained about being dropped off at the restaurant, opting to take a cab home from there, he thanked me. “And may I say, ma’am,” he said, “I’m a huge fan of your show. And so is my mother.” Some things don’t change.
I’m sure this is precisely the method whereby the other Jessica has come to seem like such a whiz, and I admit that in this case, she got there first. It’s a great formula: commit the crime, then solve it. There are so many deserving victims out there, you never have to worry about where you’ll get ideas.
Pure genius. I have to hand it to her. I’m no longer so hostile about her. It caused me to overlook a good thing for too long. My new philosophy is: if you can’t conquer the other Jessica, join her.
My publisher says my attitude’s improved.
I see better days ahead.
The Old Wife’s Tale
I cry at weddings. All weddings, even for people I don’t know. Even for weddings I don’t attend. Even for weddings that haven’t happened yet.
Opening the paper and looking at the list of people applying for marriage licenses is enough to start the waterworks. In a world this evil, with so many people doing such terrible things to each other, the idea of two people innocently and with all their hearts and souls promising to be true to one another forever, till death parts them—I mean, how can a person not weep at the pure beauty of that?
But also, how can we not weep in a different sort of way, knowing the dangers ahead, the serious difference between a wedding and a marriage?
The poor brides and grooms are like innocent and idealistic recruits being sent to battle by seasoned warriors who know the odds are stacked against them. That, in fact, they’re doomed.
George—George Edward Alexander, a man of three first names—and I made our death-do-us-part vows years ago. Even thinking about that day makes my eyes tear, but not completely with joy. George is the love of my life. He always was, he still is, and he always will be. I’ve made sure of that. Love is not the problem.
Marriage is.
The vows are strong. If only men were, too. Consider yourself as modern as you like, but I say some things don’t change. I am a liberated woman, a woman of her times, but I can be any kind of woman I decide to be, and George will still be a man, and there’s pretty much only one kind of that.
That’s another reason I cry.
Things were okay the first three years, when George was in law school. Maybe not entirely okay, but like they say, the wife is always the last to know, and ignorance was bliss. We were a team, both of us working hard for the sake of our future, of our marriage. I abandoned my dreams of the stage—too risky when we desperately needed funds. Instead, I taught elementary school art. I was a traveling “specialist,” which meant I drove all over the district to scrape out a living. By the end of the day, I didn’t have the energy to wonder if George actually needed to burn as much midnight oil elsewhere as he did.
Besides, classmates could help him in ways I couldn’t, so he studied with them, late into the night. It wasn’t completely his fault if some of them were attractive.
And the studying was worth it, because George became a brilliant attorney, ask anybody. Say his name and you’ll hear nothing but lavish praise for his skill. Okay, maybe y
ou shouldn’t ask just anybody. Maybe he’s not universally adored, but who is? His specialty is one that most lawyers don’t want to touch—criminal law. And he’s so clever, his nickname is “Loop-de-loop” for all the legal holes he finds. Some people say it’s really “loup,” French for wolf, but they’re wrong.
I appreciate the idea that everybody is entitled to a fair trial even if it seems that maybe sometimes the trials aren’t all that fair. Odd things happen. People on the other side from George, that is, people on the wrong side, change their mind, forget what they said, disappear, but George says it is all in the name of justice. I say justice is sometimes really, really blind, not to mention deaf and brain-dead.
I wish he’d upgrade his criminals to the ones in corporations. George laughs when I say that. He says it’s part of my being a good housekeeper—I like things to be in order, neat, clean and tidy. He says I like white collar crime because it sounds as if it’s been laundered. George is famous for his sense of humor.
George says you make your living however you can, and since he isn’t murdering people, and he isn’t committing the crimes, he doesn’t get to choose what kind of person he represents. He takes whoever needs him.
Thanks to those thugs and killers (those accused thugs and killers) and George’s legal skills, I long ago stopped driving from school to school, smiling at dumb dried noodle collages and pathetic drawings. Thanks to a lot of (alleged) murderers and rapists, we live well beyond anything I ever imagined. Our children had every advantage and now both are in college, and I am understandably proud of the job I did in raising them. I say “I” raised them because, in truth, George wasn’t around much.
The last to know, that’s what they say. I believed him when he had those late meetings, even though most of his clients were behind bars, and prisons don’t keep the same hours as cocktail lounges. But, like he said, I wasn’t a lawyer and I didn’t understand.
It was a long time before I put two and two together and knew that George was usually one of the two.
The first time it dawned on me that maybe George wasn’t telling the complete truth about his whereabouts and with-whomabouts, I took it slow. I am not a lawyer, true, but I’d watched how George built up a case. I knew it would be stupid to make accusations I couldn’t back up, to appear weak or ill-informed. Instead, I observed, and I collected data, and then we had it out. Actually, it wasn’t angry like that sounds. I merely pointed out the fact that his activities were endangering the sacred vows of marriage, and he was in danger of losing me and his children.
I didn’t have to say that he was also in danger of losing half of every penny he’d ever made and everything he owned. He knew that part himself.
George cried. He said she meant nothing. He said he was weak—as if I needed to be informed of that—and he said it was over. He said he loved me now and forever. He bought me a diamond wedding band with eighteen square cut diamonds ringing my finger. He said it would never happen again.
It happened again.
He bought me a Jaguar convertible.
And again.
He bought me diamond earrings. Large diamond earrings.
A second home.
A bleached gold mink full-length coat.
A new, enormous house in the best neighborhood.
I wasn’t thrilled with the status quo, but the all-important thing was that the marriage remained intact, even if the particulars weren’t exactly what the wedding vows had in mind. It was obvious that those women didn’t matter to him in any big way. That didn’t mean I didn’t keep watching and making notes—and telling him about what I knew, but we’d reached something like a silent agreement. In fact, after a while, I didn’t have to tell him a thing. I’d just maybe sigh, or be in a mood, and like that—another fabulous gift, and I knew another one of them just bit the dust.
It was almost as if George wanted to play around—and wanted to be caught. Wanted to have an excuse to end the game, to toss away the woman of the hour.
That was how it was and how I thought it would be forever, or as long as George could manage it. But that was before Lili Beth Warsaw. Not that I knew her name at that point, but I knew there’d been a frightening change in George. He stopped being sloppy about his whereabouts. He stopped leaving suspicious matchbooks around, never came home late enough to start me going, didn’t have cryptic initials (“R”—3p.m.) in his Palm Pilot. His clothing was never stained with lipstick, nor did it smell of another woman’s perfume. He came to the kids’ school events. In short, he behaved like an upstanding, marriage-vow honoring, faithful man.
I knew it for what it was: Upgraded cheating. Serious cheating. Don’t-want-to-be caught cheating.
I had always been vigilant, but now I had to become even more so. Quietly, I tracked his whereabouts and schedule, his times, his computers and calendars and most of all, I watched and listened for careful lies of omission, overly detailed explanations of absences, all the careful “proofs” of where he was and when.
It wasn’t easy. He was hiding this one, because with this one, he didn’t want me to cry foul and end his fun. He wanted to keep on playing with her for keeps—which would mean I’d be retired from the game.
What he wasn’t remembering was that I’d vowed to be with him until death—not Lili Beth Warsaw—did part us.
His sudden interest in real estate clinched it. We’d lived in the house that guilt bought for only two years. I’d shopped for it solo—George wasn’t interested in houses then. He’d said, “Just tell me the new address so I’ll drive to the right house after work.”
It wasn’t like George to be so obvious and so stupid, but of course, the man wasn’t thinking with his brain, so one Sunday, he looked up from the papers. “This house is going to be too big for us when the kids go to college,” he said.
“That isn’t for years,” I answered.
“No harm thinking ahead, is there? I heard about a good-sounding house, smaller, pretty, and it’s open today. I think I’ll take a look. Get a feel for what’s ahead.”
Pathetic, isn’t it? A grown man acting like a junior high school kid who needs to see the love-object, and needs to announce it with an unnecessary cover story. I almost felt sorry for him.
“You’re right,” I said. “Good idea. Hold on and I’ll get my coat.”
He looked surprised, then he looked pained. “You’re right,” he said. “It won’t be for years. Silly to—”
“Fine,” I said. “You stay here. I’m going. I want to see what you think is perfect.” That last part was true, but it had nothing to do with a house.
He decided that he’d go with me, after all.
She was there, house-sitting or whatever they call it when the realtor hangs around while people troop through. She was covered with shiny makeup and smiling so much and for so long, she must have had cramps all around her mouth by day’s end.
It was a nice house. A perfect place to start all over with a new wife and a new life. Not too large and, as the realtor, Lili Beth Warsaw, said with a big wink at my husband, very sexy, and she would know.
George paid so little attention to her I knew it was for real. Never before had George not stared at something that pretty and fresh. He was either dead or this one mattered to him. This one was making plans with him.
I had no choice but to take action, although I didn’t rush into anything. I played along, even about the house we’d seen, talking seriously about whether it would be a good idea, maybe as an investment for the future, because both of us acknowledged that it was too soon to downsize.
“It’s always a good idea to see what’s out there,” he said.
I controlled the urge to say that I knew what was out there—and it was named Lili Beth Warsaw.
If I say that the real-estate woman haunted my every thought from then on, it is no exaggeration. Life went on, and my act was as good as George’s. I worried over the kids and the house, as always, and I followed my routine and monitored George�
�s, but all the time, she was in my mind about as much as she must have been in George’s, and, perhaps like George as well, I was making plans that involved her.
In early spring, George had to go out of town on business. This was real, not monkey business, but as usual, it didn’t get written down in his appointment book. George was never eager to leave a record of having contacted some of the types who were a part of his negotiations.
It wasn’t difficult getting Lili Beth where I wanted her. I knew a lot about her already: knew she’d had one brief marriage—a Las Vegas elopement kind of thing—and she’d been single for a while and didn’t like it. How would I know such things? Easy. Realtors these days, at least where we live, act like they’re celebrities. Not enough to just list a house and say how many bedrooms it has. Now, the real estate personality has emerged, and so I had the opportunity to read about who Ms. Warsaw was in cutesy-pie notices in the paper. I also, of course, had the opportunity to find out about dozens of other “friends and neighbors” with my best interests at heart.
The single-for-too-long thing was part of a Valentine’s Day “profile” that ran mock personals for the entire staff of her company.
Then of course, I had looked her up every other way I could without attracting attention, through rosters of the kind of civic booster groups realtors join, through small news items about charity events she’d attended or hosted. God bless the internet for collecting trivia like an electronic janitor jabbing scraps with one of those sticks. You get a scrap here, a tidbit there until you wind up knowing a whole lot.
Not that I needed much. It quickly became obvious that Lili Beth was a determined woman who wanted two things: lots of home sales and my husband.
Which is why it was easy to get her precisely when I wanted her. As my good luck and even better planning had it, while George was away, the kids were both on overnights, too. That left me and the cat, and a cat knows when to hold its tongue.
It took one phone call which I placed while she was sitting at an open house. I wanted the call to be to her cell, not her office. I used a throw-away cell, myself. I said I was thinking of selling the house and was interested in a professional’s view of what it was worth. I offered my first name. She didn’t ask for more, but said she’d be over as soon as the inspection tour was over.
Murder, She Did Page 16
