Dead Ringers: Volumes 1-3

by Darlene Gardner

  She’s not Maia. She’s Constance Hightower, the Black Widow. The Ringer.

  My stomach pitches and rolls. I’ve got no choice but to accept that Max was right all along. Body switching is not only possible, it’s already happened.

  “Leanne, this is Jade Greene.” Maia—no, the Black Widow—says. “Jade, this is Leanne, my father’s girlfriend.”

  Nice try, but I don’t think so. She told me yesterday that Maia’s father took his girlfriend to the Bahamas. My stay-and-fight instinct wars with the one that yells at me to take flight. If I run now, though, I’ll be doing Maia a disservice. I might never figure out what happened to her.

  But if I don’t run, who knows what will happen to me?

  The cell phone I keep inside my shorts pocket vibrates. It’s a lucky break that I forgot to turn the ringer back on after I switched it off at Maia’s house. My idea’s a long shot, but it just might work. As unobtrusively as I can, I fiddle with the phone and pray I got the right setting.

  “Leanne and I met the night of the bomb scare, Maia.” I speak as loudly as I dare. “I’m surprised she’s here at your father’s house.”

  “Like I said, Leanne’s my father’s girlfriend,” the Black Widow says tartly, “I know I told you they were in the Bahamas, Jade, but they came back early. The vacation wasn’t—”

  “There’s something you need to know.” It’s Leanne’s turn to interrupt. She puts the strawberry daiquiris down and turns to the Black Widow. Her hands flutter. Her lips tremble. “I wasn’t honest with you about what happened on the pier.” She worries her bottom lip. “I told Jade and that guy she was with about the body switch.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the Black Widow says.

  “The body switch, Connie. She knows.”

  “Well, she does now, Leanne. Honestly. You are terrible at keeping a secret.” The Black Widow’s sigh turns to a laugh when she shifts her attention to me. “What’s the matter, Jade? Cat got your tongue?”

  The random thought pops into my mind that Roxy’s cat isn’t really a cat. Just like Maia is no longer Maia.

  “You can’t be that surprised,” she continues. “You and Max figured out most of it. Otherwise, that roller coaster accident, well, it wouldn’t have been necessary.”

  Think, Jade.

  “We need to get the cops out here to sort this out,” I declare. “Right now.”

  “Oh, come on, Jade.” The Black Widow doesn’t even sound like Maia anymore. Her voice is harsher, less melodic. “You really think that’s going to happen?”

  “You just told me you tried to kill me!”

  “I did not. Someone tried to kill you, but it wasn’t me.” She fluffs the back of her hair. “I don’t do the dirty work. Well, not usually. I’m a paying customer, after all.”

  “You paid for a new body?”

  “Exactly. My lawyer told me there was no way I’d beat the rap for killing my husband in court so I found another way to go free.”

  “Who’s behind this?” I fire the question at her. “It can’t only be Roxy.”

  “Roxy?” The Black Widow smiles, like that strikes her as funny.

  “You should stop talking, Connie,” Leanne cuts in. It looks like there are drops of blood on her white one-piece bathing suit, but I realize it’s actually spilled liquid from the daiquiris. “What if she tells someone?”

  “Relax, Leanne. I’ve got no intention of telling her how the switch is done. And it’s not like anyone will believe her if she blabs. Everybody thinks she’s nuts, her and her mother.” The Black Widow gestures to the table. “Can you hand me one of those daiquiris, Leanne?”

  Leanne obliges, and the Black Widow delicately licks the rim of the glass. “Ah, this is the life. Your late friend Maia should have appreciated it more.”

  Maia’s dead. The truth slams into me like a brick to the head. She had faults, like her love of gossip. But she was basically a good person. And this woman is responsible for her death.

  “You think you’re so smart, but you overlooked something,” I say slowly and clearly. “I found the rat poison in Maia’s closet next to the photo collage of Hunter. You know, the one with the black marker crossing out his face.”

  “What is she talking about, Connie?” Leanne asks. “Who is Hunter?”

  “Hunter’s the guy who jilted Maia,” I answer. “Before your sister stole Maia’s body, Maia tried to poison him.”

  “You really don’t get it, do you? I gave you too much credit for being bright.” The Black Widow wears a self-satisfied smirk. “I poisoned Hunter. Your cowardly little friend Maia would never have had the courage.”

  “I don’t understand.” I’m still afraid, but I’m also curious. “Maia had a motive. You don’t.”

  “You need to understand I’m not a monster.” The Black Widow takes another sip of her strawberry daiquiri. “I’m... grateful to your friend for the use of her body. The least I could do is punish the guy who did her wrong.”

  I’d never heard that version of the story from Maia. “But Maia told everybody she broke up with Hunter.”

  “She lied about who dumped who to save face,” the Black Widow says. “Hunter was just like my late husband, running around with other girls, not a faithful bone in his body. Maia should have given him the axe first, but she didn’t.”

  “How do you know all that?”

  “Come on, Jade. You’re not that stupid. Surely you can figure it out.”

  “You have Maia’s diary?”

  She makes a scoffing noise. “I have her residual memories. Body switching probably isn’t the best description of the, uh, procedure I had done. Mind switching is more accurate.”

  “Connie,” Leanne says, her voice cracking. “I really don’t think you should be telling her any of this.”

  “It’s sweet of you to worry about me, Leanne. But it’s not like the cops will come after me. Hunter’s just fine.”

  “Stuart Bigelow isn’t fine.” I know I don’t imagine the sudden tension in her body. I’m not sure how, but suddenly I can picture what happened. “You tried to poison him, too.”

  It’s not such a wild guess. The Black Widow had to be in the vicinity of the hotel when Bigelow died. Otherwise, she wouldn’t know Max and I had been there. The memory of all the blood in that room assaults me. I’d even thought I stepped in some, but it hadn’t been blood on the carpet. It had been coffee.

  “You put the poison in his coffee, didn’t you?” I guess. “Did he taste it? Smell it? Figure out what you were trying to do?”

  She glares at me with a hateful expression unlike any I’d seen from Maia.

  “Explain something to me.” I continue talking. “If you’re not a monster, why is Bigelow dead?”

  “I didn’t put enough poison in his drink to kill him,” the Black Widow scoffs. “I was only trying to get him to back off from his threats to expose me. But when he came after me, of course I defended myself.”

  “Expose you? Bigelow knew you took over Maia’s body?”

  “Oh, come on. He wasn’t Woodward or Bernstein. But he did figure out I poisoned Hunter.” She’s revealing so much that beads of sweat trickle down my face. My stomach rolls. The Black Widow is already responsible for the deaths of two men. Would she really hesitate to get rid of me?

  She drains her drink, stands up and slips an expensive-looking silk cover-up over her bathing suit. Then she picks up the bag at her feet and reaches into it. I’ve seen so many slasher movies I expect her to pull out a knife. Instead, she produces a small, black gun.

  “Too many bodies are piling up in Midway Beach.” I will my voice not to shake. Showing fear would not be good. “If you kill me, the cops will find you.”

  “Connie, put down the gun!” Leanne wails. “Don’t shoot her!”

  “Would you stop that, Leanne,” the Black Widow says on a sigh. “I only took out the gun so she’d give me her phone.”

  I’ve been surrounded by so much lying, I don
’t quite believe her. The estates are far enough apart that she just might risk firing a shot. I gulp back the panic in my throat and play dumb. “What phone?”

  “The phone in your pocket you’ve been using to record our conversation.” The Black Widow aims the gun at my forehead. “Hand it over this instant. Unless you want to find out how far I’ll go to protect what I’ve got going here.”

  Anyone who would pursue a body switch doesn’t have limits. Wordlessly I reach into my pocket and hand over the phone.

  She grabs it and tosses it into the pool. The phone breaks the pristine surface of the water with a soft splash and disappears into the blue depths. The Black Widow puts the gun back in her bag. She doesn’t seem to notice that her sister is hyperventilating.

  “There goes your proof,” the Black Widow says. “If you repeat anything I said, Jade, I’ll deny it.”

  Finally, coming around the side of the house, I see evidence that my gamble has paid off. Officer Wainwright, for once without his partner, strides toward us with ground-eating steps. Maia’s back is to him. Because of the waterfall in the pool, she doesn’t hear him coming.

  “You can’t keep me here!” I’m impressed with the volume of my shout. “I don’t care how much you threaten me.”

  “Threaten you?” the Black Widow asks. “Who’s threatening you?”

  “What’s going on here?” Officer Wainwright demands. Both the Black Widow and her sister Leanne turn toward him with twin looks of surprise that are almost comical. “I got a call that Jade was being held against her will.”

  “Well, you can see that’s ridiculous, Officer.” The Black Widow is suddenly cool and poised, qualities she probably perfected on the beauty pageant circuit. “Who would say such a thing?”

  “Max Harper.” I’d been pretty sure when my cell phone rang that Max was on the other end since he’d been calling non-stop all day. “You were wrong. I wasn’t recording us. But I did have an open line to Max.”

  I’d worked into the conversation where I was, who was with me and what was going on. When I declared that we needed the cops to sort things out, I’d been hoping Max would get the message to call them. Thankfully, he had.

  “It doesn’t look like you’re being held against your will, Jade,” Wainwright said.

  “Check her bag. There’s a gun in there. She said she’d kill me if I told anybody what I found in her closet.”

  “I did not!” the Black Widow retorts, her poise cracking. “Leanne, tell the officer I did no such thing!”

  “She didn’t threaten anyone, Officer,” Leanne says dutifully.

  Wainwright picks up the Black Widow’s bag.

  “Wait!” she protests. “You don’t have permission to search my bag.”

  “With reasonable suspicion, I don’t need permission.” Wainwright rustles through her bag and lifts out the gun, his expression turning dark. His gaze zeroes in on me. “What did you find in her closet, Jade?”

  “Rat poison. And photos of Hunter Prescott with his face crossed out.”

  “She’s lying!” The Black Widow shouts. “Everybody knows she’s crazy!”

  “There’s an easy way to find out if I’m telling the truth,” I tell Wainwright. “Get a search warrant and look in her closet.”

  “No!” The Black Widow launches herself at me, her nails poised to rake my face.

  Wainwright intercepts her before she can do damage, hooking her around the waist with one muscled arm.

  “Let me go!” she screams, struggling wildly. She’s no match for Wainwright. He pulls out a pair of handcuffs and cuffs her hands behind her back.

  “You’ll want to get a toxicology report on Stuart Bigelow.” I’m careful to stay out of kicking range of the Black Widow. “That rat poison in her closet, she used it on him before she killed him.”

  “You bitch!”

  “And here I thought that was you,” I say.

  She ignores me and addresses Wainwright. “This is all a big mistake! If there’s anything in my closet, Jade planted it there.”

  “We can sort it out down at the station,” Wainwright says. “If Jade’s lying, we’ll find out soon enough when we search that closet and process the fingerprints.”

  “Leanne! Do something! Convince him to let me go.”

  “Hey, wait a minute,” Wainwright says before Leanne can say anything. “Aren’t you Constance Hightower’s twin?”

  “She sure is,” I answer for Leanne. “Why don’t you ask her why she’s hanging out with Maia?”

  “Don’t tell him anything, Leanne,” the Black Widow orders. She turns to me, fierce hatred shining from her eyes. “I’m not telling you a damn thing, either. You’ll never figure out how we did it.”

  I get as close to her as I dare. “Why not tell me? Once the cops find that rat poison, it’s all over for you anyway.”

  “If you think you’ll be safer with me behind bars,” she hisses, “you couldn’t be more wrong.”

  “Enough with the threats,” Wainwright says and starts to lead her to his squad car.

  “Watch your back, Jade,” the Black Widow yells over her shoulder. “I’m not your only enemy. The others are still out there.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Red, purple and yellow chrysanthemums float on top of the salty ocean water as dawn breaks, the current gradually taking the petals out to sea. I’d kept my composure as I scattered them, but now tears stream silently down my cheeks.

  Max puts his arm around me and gently rubs my shoulder. “I’m sorry about Maia.”

  “Me, too.” My lip quivers. “You know why Maia started wearing chrysanthemums in her hair? She read somewhere they’d bring her love and happiness for years to come.”

  A sob rises in my throat for the girl who was shuttled back and forth between parents more interested in themselves than in her. Gossiping was Maia’s way of getting the attention she craved. A full minute passes before I can say anything else. “The good things about Maia outweighed the bad. It’s not right that we’re the only ones who know she’s gone.”

  It’s been two days since I discovered the Black Widow was hiding out in Maia’s body. Since then, the police searched the Shelton house and found the evidence in her closet linking her to both Hunter Prescott’s poisoning and Stuart Bigelow’s murder.

  “The Black Widow knows Maia is gone,” Max says. “She’s probably cursing Maia right now for leaving those photos of Hunter in her closet. You’d never have put it together without them.”

  “That’s something, I guess. But there is one thing I still don’t understand. Why was the Black Widow at that hotel with Bigelow in the first place?” I make a face. “You don’t think...?” I can’t bring myself to finish the thought.

  “No, I don’t think they were getting it on,” Max says. “I think she was the anonymous source who told him she saw somebody move Constance Hightower’s body.”

  “I don’t get why she’d do that. It was her body.”

  “What better way to throw Bigelow off track? The Black Widow couldn’t let him figure out that she was inside Maia’s body.”

  “I guess not. But nobody would have believed Bigelow if he’d reported that, anyway.” My sigh is heavy. “I didn’t even fully believe it until the evidence was right in front of me.”

  Unlike Max, who came up with the impossible theory that turned out to be true.

  “I keep thinking about what Constance said about watching my back.” I’d already told him everything that went down at the Estates at Ocean Breeze. “There’s so much we don’t know. I mean, how is this mind switching even possible?”

  Max doesn’t have an answer, of course.

  This early in the morning, the beach is nearly deserted. In the distance is an elderly man with a metal detector who’s been combing the sand of Midway Beach for years. A few weeks ago I asked what sort of things he comes across. Mostly loose change, he answered, but he hasn’t given up on finding treasure.

  “We have to keep trying to fig
ure out who’s behind this,” Max says. “Not only for our sake, but for Maia’s, too.”

  “Agreed. But if we’re going to keep working together, that means no more secrets.”

  He nods but says nothing. Since the Black Widow’s arrest, we haven’t discussed his lying.

  “I’m serious, Max. No more telling me one thing and doing another. Like the other night when you said you were turning in and stayed out past midnight.”

  “I get it.” He looks out at the water rather than at me. “We need to trust each other.”

  “Then tell me what you were doing the other night.”

  “Driving around thinking.”

  I want to believe him, just like I wanted to believe he didn’t know anything about Hunter when they met.

  But I can’t.

  Becky’s right. I don’t know enough about Max. A single call to the Greensboro police to check out his story about being a missing person isn’t enough.

  After Max drops me off at my house, I get on my laptop and look up the name of the single mother who raised Max. If anybody can get rid of my doubts, she can. Before I can change my mind about calling her, I punch the number into my new cell phone. While I listen to the rings on the other end, my palms start to sweat.

  If she answers, I have no idea what I’ll say. As the phone rings and rings, it seems like I won’t get the chance to say anything at all.

  I’m about to hang up when a harried-sounding woman picks up. “Hello?”

  “Oh, hello. Mrs. Harper?”

  A pause, and then, “Who’s asking?”

  “I’m sorry. This is Jade Greene calling from Midway Beach.”

  “Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

  “Sorry.” I realize I’m repeating myself. “I guess I thought you’d know of Midway Beach because of the carnival.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Max works at the carnival with me,” I say to complete silence. The quiet stretches for so long that I add, “Max Harper, your son.”