Dead Weight

by Ragan, T. R.

  Andrea gestured again for Lizzy to come inside and then quickly shut the door behind her. “I sent you a check yesterday. The money should arrive at your office by tomorrow.”

  “I didn’t send you an invoice,” Lizzy said, confused.

  “Oh, please don’t send me an invoice. No paperwork if you don’t mind. I believe I told you that my husband can’t know about our exchange.”

  “I don’t recall, but why is that?”

  “He works in finance. He watches every penny.”

  “Your sister is missing. I would think with all of this,” Lizzy said, motioning with her hands at the fifty foot ceilings and expensive statues, “he might see it as money well spent.”

  “He never liked Diane. He wouldn’t understand. Why don’t you tell me why you’re here, so we can get this settled.”

  Get this settled? The woman clearly didn’t like Lizzy being here. Lizzy looked around and saw no sign of life. No toys lying around. No big teenager shoes near the door or any sign at all that anyone else lived here. “Usually,” Lizzy explained, “I meet with my clients once or twice a week to keep them apprised of what’s going on with their case. The reason I came to see you, Andrea, is because following Anthony Melbourne is not producing results. I don’t mind keeping an eye on him for a few hours every day, but I don’t see any point in following him around twenty-four seven.”

  “Do you know where he is now?”

  “As in right this very minute?” Lizzy asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Well, then, it doesn’t seem to me that you’ve been doing your job.”

  Okay, now she was starting to piss Lizzy off. “I told you from the start that I have other work to do. Your missing sister is not my only case. Today I had other things that needed my attention, and then my car broke down. Thankfully, Melbourne’s assistant happened to be driving by and she sat with me while I waited for a tow truck. Thus the rental car and here I am.”

  “Jane helped you?”

  “Yes, and she mentioned that you used to work out with Anthony Melbourne.”

  Andrea looked down her nose at Lizzy. “That’s not a secret. I told you that I worked out with Anthony, remember?”

  Lizzy scratched her head. Had she completely lost her memory? She couldn’t remember Andrea ever saying anything about working out with Melbourne. “He trained you?”

  “Yes.” Andrea lowered her voice as if they weren’t the only two people in the house. “The truth is I used to be as big as Diane. My husband insisted I lose the weight. He doesn’t like Anthony Melbourne.”

  “Does your husband like anyone?”

  Andrea ignored her. “Ever since I lost the weight, he’s been jealous of other men, especially Anthony since he and I worked together for months, hours at a time.”

  “Did your husband have any reason to be jealous?”

  “No, of course not. I love my husband dearly.” Andrea looked at her gold Cartier watch. “You really do need to go. My husband should be home any minute.”

  Lizzy tried to talk fast. “I wanted to let you know that I’m not going to work out with Melbourne at the gym any longer. I’m going to cancel my membership tomorrow.”

  “Fine.”

  Surprised by Andrea’s quick agreement, Lizzy said, “Andrea, is there anything else you’re not telling me?”

  She was wringing her hands again. “There is one thing. I’ve been receiving a lot of calls, day and night. When I pick up my phone I hear breathing and then the caller hangs up.”

  “And you think it might be Melbourne?”

  She nodded. “After I got to my goal weight, I worked part-time for Anthony, but I’m afraid he was upset with me when I had to quit for the sake of my marriage. I think he might have done something to my sister to get back at me.”

  “I see,” Lizzy said, but she didn’t see at all. Andrea was acting strange. Although she had planned to tell Andrea about the photo she had found and that she thought she was being followed, she suddenly decided to keep it all to herself. “Okay, then,” Lizzy said, feeling tension between them, “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Andrea sighed. “Since you’re here, you might as well tell me about your weekend in Tahoe. Did Melbourne ever leave the retreat?”

  Lizzy shook her head. “I had a direct view of his car from my room. He never left the lodge except to take us on a hike. If he had left, where do you suppose he might have gone to?”

  Andrea sighed, clearly exasperated. “I’ve already told you. I think he’s hiding something. He has secrets and I hired you to find out what those secrets are.”

  Alrighty then. Lizzy clasped her hands together and nodded. For the first time since she’d met Andrea Kramer, though, she wondered what exactly the woman was up to. Was this some sort of wild goose chase?

  “I guess we’re finished here. Thank you for the update,” Andrea said, clearly ready for their talk to end.

  Lizzy headed for the door. “If I learn anything about your sister, how would you like me to contact you?”

  Exasperated, Andrea turned about and walked quickly to the sprawling kitchen with the two refrigerators and two ovens. She jotted down a number and came back to hand Lizzy the scrap of paper. “If you learn anything new, call me at this number and leave a message if I don’t answer.”

  Lizzy held up the paper. “Will do.”

  “Oh, and I wouldn’t believe anything that Jane woman tells you.”

  “Why is that?”

  “She’s a little cuckoo, if you know what I mean?” Andrea made the little cuckoo motion people tended to do when they said the word, spinning her slender, well-manicured finger next to her ear.

  Lizzy thought it was a little cuckoo that Andrea would bring up Jane at all.

  Andrea was holding the door open and Lizzy was afraid if she didn’t get the hell out of there, she was going to feel the tip of Andrea’s expensive shoe in her backside.

  Glad to be leaving, Lizzy made a quick exit.

  After clearing the gate at the bottom of the driveway, she waited for one of Andrea’s neighbors to grab a ball that some kids had thrown into the middle of the road.

  Lizzy rolled her window down so she could talk to the woman. “Which of those kids over there belong to Andrea Kramer?”

  “Do you mean Andrea Smith?” the woman asked, pointing to the house Lizzy just left.

  Lizzy nodded.

  “Are you friends with Andrea?” the woman asked.

  “We just met. She said her kids were playing at the neighbors and I was just curious if maybe those were her kids over there.”

  The woman came closer to Lizzy’s window. “I don’t know if it’s my place to tell you, but her husband left her recently and took the kids with him. I heard through the grapevine that he even went so far as to get a restraining order against her.”

  Lizzy was too stunned to say anything at all.

  “I’m sorry if I said too much.”

  The kids across the street were yelling for their ball.

  “No, not at all,” Lizzy said. “It’s good that I know. Next time I see her, I’ll be able to tell her how sorry I am for all she’s going through.”

  The woman nodded, but before she could get away Lizzy had one more question. “Do you have any idea what kind of car Andrea drives?”

  “She drives a silver jaguar, but every once in a while I see her in the Expedition,” the woman said before she ran back to the kids and handed them the ball.

  Before Lizzy could let that information sink in, her phone rang. Hoping it was Jessica, she answered on the first ring.

  “Lizzy Gardner?”

  “This is her.”

  “It’s Debra Taphorn. I think we should talk.”

  “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  Chapter 34

  A Very Long Day

  Boredom seeped into every crevice of Hayley’s being. For most of the day, she had played with the cat, watched a movie, and po
ndered on Brian’s last moments in this world.

  At the moment she wondered what Lizzy had been doing all day since she usually checked in at least twice a day. Hopefully Lizzy wasn’t driving around breaking and entering just for the hell of it. Lizzy had looked as if she’d enjoyed the process entirely too much. Maybe she was in jail and had already used her only call. Except Hayley knew that that’s not how it worked. Back when she thought Brian was an okay guy, he’d gotten a DUI and she and her mom had gone to the jail to pick him up. They had to wait until morning when they could hire a bail bondsman to put up the money to get him out. He’d called at least six times, which had cost her mom a pretty penny considering she had to give the voice recorder a credit card number before they would connect Brian from his cell. He said there was a payphone inside the holding cell.

  Hayley sighed, figuring she might very well find out how all of that worked soon enough. Her next thought was about Jessica. Jessica had been on surveillance duty yesterday and Hayley couldn’t help but wonder how that was going. Jessica was smarter than many, but she wasn’t even close to being the shiniest tool in the shed. Sure, she had a few clever ideas every once in a while, but that was about it.

  And then there was Brittany Warner. She thought of Brittany as a sister. After being abducted by Spiderman, Brittany’s newfound fame had helped to make her dreams of becoming a cheerleader come true. Suddenly she was popular and everyone wanted to be her friend. Nobody else knew about all of the confusing thoughts running through Brittany’s head. The mind was a powerful thing; it tried to control people with random thoughts throughout the day.

  Hayley had read Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth. She tended to memorize whole passages without trying, which had always made school easy for her. Eckhart Tolle was a spiritual teacher and a thoughtful thinker. One of his ideas that Hayley had latched onto was that her thoughts were not who she was. The passage she liked the best and reassured her the most was: “….the newfound ability of rising above thought, of realizing a dimension within yourself that is infinitely more vast than thought. You then no longer derive your identity, your sense of who you are, from the incessant stream of thinking that in the old consciousness you take to be yourself. What a liberation to realize that the ‘voice in my head’ is not who I am. Who am I then? The one who sees that. The awareness that is prior to thought, the space in which the thought—or the emotion or sense perception—happens.”

  Hayley sighed.

  All good feelings were swept away as she went over a mental list of what she needed to do to take care of Brian once and for all.

  1) Find a way to distract bodyguard camped outside Brian’s house

  2) Get syringe into Brian’s house without him seeing it

  3) Make Brian believe I miss him

  Her cell phone rang, breaking her concentration. It was the woman she’d talked to about Burning Man. She asked the woman to hold while she went to the desk in Lizzy’s bedroom. Then she sat down and wrote down the names of the people on the committee in 1989. After thanking the woman for her help, she hung up the phone. There were six names in all.

  She turned on Lizzy’s computer. She would try to find out where they lived and hopefully get a phone number. If she could talk to anyone on the list, her first question would be whether or not they ever owned or drove a Buick.

  While she waited for the computer to warm up, her gaze fell on the pile of papers and journals that Lizzy had stolen from Vivian’s apartment. After she researched the names on the Burning Man list, she figured she could help Lizzy out by reading Vivian’s journals. Suddenly, she had a lot of work to do.

  ***

  The drive to Debra Taphorn’s apartment building was surprisingly nice. The seat in the Cadillac was cushiony and the air conditioner worked a little too well, making Lizzy shiver despite the fact that the temperature outside was still in the nineties.

  She wasn’t used to being comfortable while driving. Her hair wasn’t stringy and wet, no sweat dripping down her spine. She could get used to this.

  She made a right into the same parking lot where she’d been left a warning last time she was here. Parking close to the building, she hoped that would stop someone from scribbling another note on her windshield.

  Had that been a random warning?

  Lizzy got out of the car and headed for Debra’s apartment. If Andrea drove an Expedition, she thought, that would mean she was more than likely the one who had been following her. What was Andrea up to?

  Debra Taphorn opened the door on the second knock. Her greeting was friendlier than Andrea’s, but despite being the one who had called Lizzy here, Debra didn’t look thrilled to see her either.

  “I’ve fixed us some iced tea,” Debra said. “It’s all set up in the living room.”

  Without bothering to remove her shoes, Lizzy followed her inside. She took a seat on one end of the couch, glad she wasn’t hot and sticky. “What’s going on?”

  Debra poured the tea, complete with lemon wedge, and handed Lizzy a cold glass.

  The iced tea tasted lemony and refreshing. “This is very good. Thank you.”

  Debra took a seat on one of two cushiony chairs facing the couch. “You’re probably wondering why I called you here.”

  Lizzy nodded and waited.

  “I couldn’t sleep last night. I have no interest in having the feds get involved, but you must understand that I signed a confidentiality agreement with Anthony Melbourne when I signed up for his Extreme Exercise Program. I lost over one hundred pounds and I’ve never been happier. The regimen was difficult and even scary at times. I would never recommend it to friends. Even if I wanted to recommend the program, I’m not allowed.”

  “He doesn’t want recommendations?” Lizzy asked. “He never promoted you as the poster child for before and after?”

  “No,” Debra said. “It’s not like that at all. He hand picks the people he thinks he can help. He’s a very passionate man. He truly cares about his clients. Every once in a while he checks up on me to see how I’m doing.”

  “Really. Melbourne calls you to check up on you?”

  “Anthony has called me once or twice. Sometimes his assistant will call.”

  Jane certainly got around, Lizzy thought.

  “Before I can tell you much more I need a guarantee from you that I won’t be sued. I run a very lucrative weight loss center. My clients can find me in my office twelve hours a day, ready to help them reach their weight loss goals.”

  “Like Weight Watchers?”

  “No, not exactly. I don’t offer meals. I am considered a consultant. My clients can call me at any time. I get calls in the middle of the night and sometimes I need to talk them down from the ledge, in a sense. Many times they call when they’re tempted to binge.”

  Lizzy nodded.

  “I can’t afford to have my story get out to the public. I would lose my reputation if my clients knew what I had to do to lose the weight.”

  “What did you have to do exactly?”

  “Are you willing to sign a document stating that you will not go public with what I am about to tell you?”

  Lizzy nodded. “I’ll sign anything you want.”

  Debra had already typed up a one-page agreement. Lizzy wasn’t worried about signing it. She had no plans to go public with anything Debra told her. Her lips were sealed. She signed and dated the agreement. “Okay,” Lizzy said, “now what?”

  “Now I’m going to tell you about Anthony Melbourne’s well-kept secret. The morning he and Jane picked me up, I had a small suitcase packed with my favorite books, CD’s, iPod, anything I might need for a long vacation.”

  “How long were you planning on being away?”

  “I knew it could be anywhere from two to four months.”

  “That’s a long time.”

  Debra nodded. “They told me to dress comfortably. I wore shorts and a T-shirt. It was summertime, not quite as hot as it is today, but the point is I didn’t need to bring much. It wasn�
��t long before we stopped for gas. At that point, which was about an hour into the trip, Jane asked me to put on a blindfold. I didn’t like the idea because I’m claustrophobic, but she said if I didn’t cooperate we would need to return home.”

  That didn’t surprise Lizzy.

  “The tone of Jane’s voice, and Anthony Melbourne’s sudden inability to speak, caught me off guard. I began to worry about what I had signed up for, but I put the blindfold on and I did whatever I was told. It all seemed suddenly very serious.”

  “Did they ask you to do anything else?”

  She shook her head. “I’m almost certain I was drugged.”

  “How?”

  “Jane must have switched my water bottle because suddenly she was telling me I needed to drink more water or I was going to get dehydrated. She hadn’t told me to drink water until after the blindfold was on.”

  “That is strange.”

  “I must have dozed off within fifteen minutes of drinking the water,” Debra went on. “I never fall asleep in a car while someone else is driving. But that day—I passed out immediately.”

  “So you never saw where they took you?”

  “Funny you should ask. Right before I dozed off I had the sensation of going in circles. I don’t know if Anthony Melbourne was actually driving in circles or if he had made a U-turn. I have an inkling that he was trying to throw me off. You know, as to which way we were headed.”

  “They thought of everything,” Lizzy said.

  Debra nodded. “While I was sleeping, though, my blindfold must have slipped to the side in such a way that I could see out of the corner of my left eye. Just barely. Enough to see a sign for a lodge as I was coming to.”

  “At that point do you know how long you had been in the car?”

  Debra shook her head.

  “Do you remember the name of the lodge?”

  “No, I’m sorry. It was a wood sign and there were flowers painted on it. Daisies, I believe.”

  “Can you draw a picture for me?”

  “Sure. After seeing the sign, we made a right turn. It was all windy uphill from there on. I remember feeling nauseous before I passed out again. If you think any of that was weird, wait until you hear the rest.”