I sat back in the booth. The cold from the vinyl seeped through my cotton shirt, and I shivered. “I still don’t get it.”
He pulled off his leather jacket and handed it over the table to me. “I don’t have the whole story because the real Linda Snider didn’t have it. She and Linora are casual friends. They worked for the same company in Seattle and became acquainted when people kept getting mixed up.”
“Okay . . .” It still wasn’t clear.
“This is what Linda told me. She and Linora were called Lin One and Lin Two at the company where they worked. To keep things straight as I tell this confusing tale, keep in mind that Linda is the real Linda Snider, my Seattle contact, and Lin is Linora Snider. They were only six months apart in age and, as you can see by the photo, fairly similar in appearance. They had remarkably similar lives, down to being only children with both parents dead. They even retired within a month of each other. Linda said they lost touch for a few months while figuring out their new lives. Linda did some traveling, visited her nieces and nephews who live around the country. The real Linda Snider never had children.” He paused for dramatic effect. “Lin has one daughter. Her name is Tessa.”
The girl in the photograph. I felt myself start taking short, shallow breaths. Stop it, I told myself. You’ll pass out. Breathe normally. “Okay. What else?”
“After they retired, they went almost a year without seeing each other, though they did send a few postcards and had a telephone conversation or two.”
His food arrived, and Hud stopped talking while he messed around with it. “You can talk and play with your food at the same time, can’t you?” I said impatiently.
He tilted his head and took a French fry, calmly putting it in his mouth. “The longer I know you, the less I envy Gabe.”
“Trust me, Hud. You don’t want to tease me right now.”
He pushed the plate of French fries to the middle of the table. “Help me eat these. Okay, where was I? So eventually they had lunch together. Linda said that Lin seemed a little quiet and troubled. It was over lunch that Lin asked Linda for a favor.”
I took a French fry, contemplated it, then put it back. “What?”
“Now, pay attention here. Linora asked Linda if she could borrow her identity.”
Nervous, I picked up the French fry again and bit it. “Why?”
He lifted his shoulders. “Got me. Linda didn’t know either. Lin wouldn’t tell her but assured Linda that she wasn’t going to do anything illegal. Lin implied that it was to throw someone off who she’d once known. Still, Linda felt funny about it. She was an accountant by trade and by nature. She liked things to be in their proper place. When she tried to find out more about why Lin needed her identity, her friend was too vague. So she turned her down.”
“This is getting too weird and convoluted for me. How did Lin get Linda’s identity?”
“She bought it, I’m guessing. Easy enough to do, especially since she’d worked in payroll and knew Linda’s important numbers like her driver’s license and Social Security number. Even her license plates are copies of Linda Snider’s. Believe it or not, they have the same car. Phony documents are way too easy to buy.”
“But why? I still don’t get why.”
“That part, unfortunately, Linda couldn’t help with. When I quizzed her more thoroughly about Lin’s life, she was not that forthcoming. She was still a little suspicious of me and protective of her friend, despite her friend’s mysterious request. Until, of course, I showed her my badge.” He took a big bite from his cheeseburger, groaning with pleasure. After he swallowed, he said, “It’s amazing how accommodating people can be when I flash that baby.”
“Can you stop patting yourself on the back long enough to tell me the rest of the story?”
“Testy, testy. Linda told me what she knew about Lin, which, surprisingly, fits a lot of the story our Lin told you. Lin didn’t borrow Linda’s entire life. She didn’t have to. Both were only children. Both of them have lost their parents. However, there was one little thing Lin left out of her history. I’m guessing it was probably the reason she borrowed Linda’s identity, in case someone did do some checking. Someone like you . . . or Gabe.”
I leaned closer, feeling my stomach churn. “What’s that?”
“Before Lin was an accountant, she was a nurse.”
I slowly closed my eyes. “She served in Vietnam.”
“Well, shoot, you took away one of my surprises.”
I opened my eyes and asked, “Her daughter, Tessa. How old is she?”
“Twenty-eight, according to her birth certificate. She was born . . .”
“In Los Angeles,” I finished. “In 1970.”
He took a long drag from his chocolate shake. “So, you know most of this already. Why did you need me?”
“I didn’t know it. I guessed it.”
“When was Gabe over there?”
My words came out in a whisper. “1968 and ’69.”
His lips tightened for a minute. “What’re you going to do?”
I stared at my hands. “I don’t know. It’s . . . right now isn’t the best time to spring something like this on him. But I might not have a choice. I want to tell him before Lin does.”
“What can I do to help?” His face was open, nonjudgmental.
“Nothing, except what you’ve already done. Thank you. I’m sorry if I was snappy with you.”
“Forget it. If you weren’t snapping at me, I’d have to check your temperature, make sure you didn’t have malaria or beriberi or something.”
“Finish your dinner. I need some time to think.”
Hud silently ate his cheeseburger while I played with a plastic straw, bending it around and around my finger. It started to get dark around us; the café started to fill up. It was a cold night, and this was probably the warmest spot for miles.
“I fell off this pier once,” I told him, tossing aside my tortured drinking straw.
“You did? When you were a kid?”
I turned my head to look at my reflection in the window. “No, as an adult. Not that long ago. When Gabe and I were first dating. A murder suspect pushed me.” On the edge of my reflection, I could see the lights from the fishing boats start to sparkle on the black ocean.
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
I looked back at Hud’s boy-next-door face. “It was around this time of year, and it was one of the scariest moments of my life. All that dark, freezing water. My clothes were so heavy. I thought I was going to die. I saw my mother’s face. And Jack’s. At least I thought I did. Then Gabe’s face replaced both of theirs, and he told me to swim toward him. So I did. And I was saved.”
Hud smirked at me over his coffee mug. “Okay, I’ll admit your husband is a good-looking son of a gun, but he’s not God.”
I rested my chin in my hand. “I don’t mean that way. I was literally saved. I was pulled out of the water.”
“By Gabe?”
I gazed out through the window into the darkness. “No, by a guy named Clay O’Hara. An old boyfriend of mine. He lives in Colorado. He was in love with me. Or thought he was. Gabe proposed to me that night, and I accepted. We were married three days later.”
“So some old boyfriend who has the hots for you saves you from drowning and you marry the chief? Doesn’t sound fair.”
“I guess life mostly isn’t, is it?”
“I guess not.”
I glanced over at the yellow and black Felix the Cat clock over the cook’s pass-through. “It’s almost six thirty. I need to go home. Scout’s probably chewed off his front paw in hunger.”
I slid out of the booth, pulled off Hud’s jacket and laid it on the seat next to him.
He grabbed it and threw two twenties on the table.
“That’s a big tip,” I said.
“Someone may as well have a happy night.”
At my truck, he gave me a hug and whispered, “Call me if you need anything. Even just to talk. Promise?”
“Thanks.”
On the drive home, I worried the information about Lin Snider as if it was a piece of tough steak. A part of me wanted to confront Gabe right off, ask him if he’d had an affair with a nurse when he was in Vietnam. An affair that might have resulted in a child. But was that my place? What if I was wrong? What if Lin Snider had absolutely nothing to do with Gabe?
My gut and the facts told me that wasn’t the case. But my gut had been wrong before. Still, there were all these facts. What I needed to do before anything was talk to Lin herself. I needed to confront her with what I had discovered and ask her flat-out what she was doing in San Celina, what she wanted from Gabe, from us.
The trouble was I couldn’t even imagine how I’d begin.
CHAPTER 18
IT WAS PAST SEVEN P.M . WHEN I ARRIVED HOME, AND POOR SCOUT was starving. In penance, I gave him an extra scoop of canned food along with a sprinkling of cheddar cheese, his favorite treat.
“I promise to never be this late again,” I said, stroking his broad, shiny back. He ignored me and kept eating. He knew I would likely break my promise and he would forgive me. It’s what dogs do best, forgive with grace, a lesson straight from God.
The minute Gabe walked through the door an hour later, I heard the thump of his briefcase when he dropped it on the entryway floor. Muttered Spanish curses followed seconds later. I didn’t ask him if there’d been any progress. His defeated expression told me there hadn’t been. I heated some chicken soup, made him garlic toast and left him to eat dinner in front of the television.
Upstairs, I puttered around the bedroom, folding clothes and straightening my dresser drawers. It was busywork, but I needed something to do while I mulled over what I should do about Lin Snider. By the time Gabe came up to shower, I’d made my decision. I was going to call her tomorrow, tell her I knew her real identity and that I wanted to talk face-to-face. Before Gabe found out, I needed to know what she wanted. I knew that he’d be annoyed when he found out that I’d not come to him right away. But one look at his face when he came in tonight told me that one more emotional problem would send him over the edge. A fierce part of me wanted to protect my husband. If this child were his, we would deal with that. But before I’d let this woman turn our lives upside down, I wanted to know all the facts. It was a lesson I’d learned from Dove from the time I could understand her words.
“Learn all the facts you can about a problem,” she would tell me. “Then wait a day. If you apply that to everything you do in life, you’ll end up being a lot better off.”
When I was old enough to see the disparity in her advice and her own living, she’d cut me off with, “Do as I say, not as I do. I am a wise woman, but not wise enough to follow my own advice.”
I never quite knew how to answer that.
“Going to bed early?” I asked Gabe, when he opened the dresser drawer.
“Thought I would. I’m beat.”
“I’m going to walk down to Emory and Elvia’s house. She has something I need to give Dove tomorrow.” It was a totally manufactured errand. What I was going to do was call Lin Snider and demand to see her tomorrow. That was almost waiting a day, right?
“Be careful,” he said.
“I’ll take Scout. He can use the exercise.”
Fortunately, I’d not cleaned out my leather backpack in the last week. Lin Snider’s cell phone number, carelessly written on a crumpled Post-it, was at the bottom under a half-eaten package of M&M’S. With Scout on his leash, I walked toward Emory and Elvia’s house, turning at the block right before their house, and headed downtown. I found a quiet spot on a low brick wall in front of a closed nail parlor and dialed Lin Snider.
“Hello?” Her voice was tentative.
“Lin? This is Benni Ortiz.”
“Benni!” Her tone grew warmer. “How are you?”
“Fine. Look, I won’t waste your time. I know who you are and I know about Tessa. We need to talk.”
“Oh.” The word was part sigh, part exclamation.
For a moment, I felt like a jerk. Then I remembered that she was the one who came into town under false pretenses, she was the one determined to mess up my life. “Whatever you have to say, I want to hear it before Gabe does. He’s under tremendous pressure right now, and he doesn’t need any added stress. His health is my primary concern.”
“I agree. This might be hard for you to believe, but I don’t want him hurt either. I care about him deeply.”
Her words were an arrow through my heart. “When can we meet?” “How about tomorrow?”
“Morning?”
She hesitated. “How about early afternoon? One p.m.? I’ve not been sleeping well. Mornings are sometimes hard.”
“One p.m. is fine. Shall we meet at your hotel?”
“Yes. I’m staying at the Spotted Pelican in Morro Bay. Do you need directions?”
“I know where it is. See you then.” I hung up and sat on the brick wall for a while watching Cal Poly students wander up and down the street, laughing and goofing off, clueless to the complex adult world that lay ahead of them.
After a few minutes, I started back toward home. Halfway there, I realized that Gabe might notice that I didn’t bring anything back from Elvia’s, my excuse for leaving. I’d wing it, come up with some reason I returned empty-handed. It ended up not being an issue because he’d already gone to bed.
“I’m home,” I said, sticking my head through the guest room doorway. He lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. “Everything’s locked up tight, Chief.”
“Good night,” he said without turning his head.
“Are you okay? Dumb question, I know . . .”
He patted the mattress next to him. “I have something I’ve been thinking about lately, and I want to talk to you about it.”
I sat down beside him.
“I’m considering turning in my resignation.”
I stared into his eyes, the pupils black dots against a blue-gray as unfathomable as the ocean. “How long have you been thinking about this?”
“A little while now. You know I love the work. I love my officers, but the politics”—his jaw turned to steel—“I hate the politics.”
He was considering something that I’d often silently wished for, that he leave the police force, become a civilian. But, to be honest, now that it was an actual possibility, I struggled to imagine what would come next.
“What would you do? I mean, for a living. What . . .”
“Good question.” He bent his head, rubbing his temples with his thumbs. “I don’t have any idea.” He looked up, his face intent, as if dissecting my reaction. “I need to know one thing. Would you stay with me? Would you go with me? I mean, if we have to leave San Celina?”
“Of course,” I said, though I could not imagine leaving my home. But, still, I said it.
The lines of his forehead smoothed out. “It’s not something we have to decide tonight. It’s just that my life has gotten so complicated. More than I ever dreamed possible.”
“No, we don’t have to decide anything tonight.” I moved toward him, kissing his lips, thinking, Complicated? Oh, Friday, you have no idea how much more complicated your life might be getting.
CHAPTER 19
THE NEXT DAY WAS COLD AND GRAY, MATCHING THE SOMBER ATMOSPHERE around our house. Even Scout, normally a cheerful dog, seemed morose. Right after his breakfast, he slunk over to his bed in the corner of the living room and buried his nose under his fuzzy blanket.
“Scooby-Doo, that’s exactly what I feel like,” I told him, stroking his smooth back.
Gabe left for work at his normal time, but I could tell he was dreading whatever the day had to bring.
“Something is bound to break soon,” I said, hugging him. His crisp white dress shirt felt cool and familiar against my cheek. “Something good,” I felt compelled to add.
“I’ll call you when I can,” he said, kissing the top of my head.
Once he was gone, I dressed in jeans and
a sweatshirt, then decided to do the human equivalent of Scout’s canine escape of burying his head under blankets—watching daytime talk shows with my front window blinds closed.
When the doorbell rang a half hour later, I considered ignoring it. But Scout bounded off his bed with his tail wagging, which meant it was someone we knew. I turned off the television and answered the front door.
“I could use a cup of coffee,” Aunt Garnet said, standing on my front porch, leaning on her new cane. “I have maple bars.” She held up a white bag with a tiny grease stain on the front. “Dove said they are your favorite.”
“You are my favorite aunt of all time,” I said, gesturing for her to enter. “I’ll put the coffee on.”
“WW is getting a haircut,” she said, following me into the kitchen. “He loves his time at the barbershop. He’s made some friends there and I want to encourage it, so I’m looking to kill some time. Dove’s over at the historical museum. We’re all going to Emory’s chicken place for lunch. It’s Free Wing Day.”
I scooped coffee into the coffeemaker’s basket, poured water in the top and flipped it on. “Free Wing Day?”
Aunt Garnet opened a cupboard and pulled out a dinner plate. “Anyone who buys a sandwich or a meal gets an order of free hot wings with their meal.” She placed two maple bars and two jelly doughnuts on the plate.
“Yum, jelly’s my second favorite.”
“Yes, I know. I don’t really like wings, but we figure we’ll help fill some seats, make Emory’s place look busy. Shills, I think they’re called in Vegas.”
That made me smile. “You’re getting downright hip, Aunt Garnet.”
A small frown darkened her face as she scratched at a place on the plate. “Just trying to help out family.” She looked up. “You might need to change your automatic dishwashing soap.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Emory’s chicken restaurant was doing just fine, but I thought it was sweet of her and Uncle WW to care. “Maybe I’ll join you for some wings. My schedule is wide open until one p.m.” And I knew I’d only mope around the house and brood if I was alone. Right now, thinking too much about what to say to Lin Snider might not be a good idea. The more I tried to plan my words, the more awkward they sounded in my head. A distraction from my thoughts would be good.
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