Never take life too seriously; no one ever gets out alive anyway.
seventeen
“She didn’t exist,” I told Jane over the phone. “I’m going into the office so I can access the census and Social Security databases.”
“What can I do to help?” she asked.
“Know anyone at the IRS who will tell you if Ellen filed taxes before 1988?”
“Maybe. But it’s Saturday. I might have to wait until Monday. Are you okay from your night in jail?
“As good as I’m going to get. At least Steadman and Grimes weren’t on duty.” I’d had a brief but memorable encounter with those detectives, and even though it all ended well, they still held a grudge.
“How’d you get out? Liv and I were already pooling our resources to cover your bail.”
“Thanks, but Tony and Liam got the charges dismissed. The guy from Lawson’s declined to prosecute if I paid him five hundred dollars.”
“Liam and Tony. This is getting way too interesting.”
“Are you sitting down?”
“No. Why, should I?”
“Yes and yes. The reason the tow-yard people caught me had nothing to do with security.”
“Then how did they find you?”
“A call into Crime Stoppers even before anyone knew there was a crime.”
“Some clairvoyant with a hunch?”
“No. I listened to the tape. It was Becky.”
“That’s great, right?” Jane said on a single breath.
“Yes. Proof of life is good. Or so Liam tells me. But the call to Crime Stoppers can mean only one thing.”
“Which is?”
“Someone is following me. I didn’t tell anyone I was going to the tow yard. Hell, I didn’t even know I was going until I was halfway home.”
Jane made a tsking sound. “You really need to stop this. You could have been hurt. I’d bet Lawson or whoever had a nice collection of guns.”
I told her all about Becky’s purse still being in the car. “It looked as if nothing was disturbed.”
“Were her keys inside?”
“No.”
“Phone?”
“No.”
“Then it does seem more plausible that she just took some time away. Remember last year when she went to the Bahamas with nothing but her ID and passport?”
“But things were slow at the office, and she knew no one would care if she took three days off. And she did tell the three of us. This feels different. Besides, why would she turn me into the police when she has to know I’m worried sick?”
“I’ll call Liv and cancel lunch.”
“Oh, that’s right!” I slapped my forehead. “No, no, don’t cancel. I’ll be at Thai Jo at one.”
“Want me to come by and pick you up?”
It did feel a little creepy knowing someone had probably been following me. “No, thanks. I’ll spend some time at the office and then meet you at the Thai place. But Jane?”
“Yes.”
“Call me on my cell every fifteen minutes. I don’t want to end up like Ellen and Becky.”
The place was dead. It didn’t used to be this way. Ellen and Becky usually worked on Saturdays, and often Vain Dane would come by to get some things done. But this Saturday morning, I was the only one in the building. Which is why I was super careful to lock the door and reset the alarm code the minute I’d stepped inside. Even after taking all those precautions, I still felt like Janet Leigh walking into the Bates Motel.
Following my standard procedure, I made myself some coffee and then hunkered down to business. Checking the census records was tedious, but in the end, I was satisfied with my results. Ellen Lieberman was not counted until after the 1990 census. The woman was a ghost, but why?
My mind immediately went to something sexy like a spy, or a material witness in some big trial. But then I remembered Ellen—nothing sexy about her. “So what are you hiding?” I thought aloud.
In order to continue my search, I’d have to go to the Human Resources office. One of the perks of being a paralegal was that I’d been entrusted with a master key. The key was supposed to be used in emergencies—like if one of the partners forgot to sign something or I needed to retrieve a file from one of their offices. I considered finding Becky an emergency.
HR was on the first floor, an area I try to steer clear of. It’s usually occupied by Maudlin Margaret’s minions, who share her resentment over my salary. Most of the ladies had worked for Dane-Lieberman a decade longer than I had, but they were administrative assistants, so of course we had a pay inequity. This made Margaret nuts. She’d been seated at her post for nine and one half hours with an hour for lunch for more than twenty-five years.
I slipped my key into the lock of the HR office. There was a small waiting area with a desk and a few chairs. The second door led to the actual office, where all employee information was safeguarded.
I yanked on the cabinet marked with the letters “L” through “P,” but it was locked. I tried all the other drawers with the same result. Time to go hunting. I checked the obvious places first—the desk, the credenza behind the desk, then even ran my hands under the three chairs, all in the name of thoroughness.
I was about to give up when I noticed a plant atop the file cabinets. The room had several potted plants in it, but this one was fake. A really bad plastic fake of an African violet. I went over, felt the bottom, and realized I’d found the prize. I removed the small silver key from the bottom of the flowerpot.
I had only to unlock the top vertical file for the others to open. I pulled out the drawer and easily found Ellen’s file. I took it over to the desk and sat down. Flipping through the pages, I learned that she was a graduate of Yale Law, after having completed her undergrad work at Harvard. I scrutinized the college transcripts. Something didn’t seem right.
Then it hit me. Either I couldn’t count or Ellen had gotten her bachelor’s and her JD all at the same time from two different universities. Everything was dated May or June, 1988. And Ellen’s Social Security number didn’t match up with her credentials. Doing trusts and estates for eight years had made me somewhat familiar with the portion of a Social Security number that identifies state of issue. Based on the first three digits of Ellen’s number, hers had been issued in Massachusetts on her transcripts, but she had one assigned in South Carolina as well. The numbers didn’t match. There was no way she could live for twenty-plus years without a Social Security number, and the Social Security Administration didn’t just hand out numbers on a whim. The only thing that made any sense was that Ellen had, for whatever reason, had her Social Security number changed. Legally, by the looks of her transcripts.
“What else are you hiding?” I thumbed through her file, stopping on the page listing former employers. None. Nada. According to this, Ellen hadn’t worked a day in her life until joining Dane-Lieberman. And that didn’t make sense, either. Lawyers always had summer internships or they clerked for judges, something to garner experience before they went out into the real world. But not Ellen.
Reading through her personal information, I found what might be a clue. She’d grown up in South Carolina. I instantly remembered the Department of Corrections letter that had the letters N-A. “Were you a bad girl in South Carolina?” I asked.
That would explain a lot. So long as there was no fraud involved, anyone could change her name and Social Security number with a simple request to the court. Maybe she was some sort of witness in some big case. Or a parolee—naw, too much time had passed. The possibilities were endless, and they also lifted my spirits.
It would be just like Becky to help Ellen out of a jam. Now I felt a glimmer of hope that my trusted friend was off doing whatever it took to save Ellen’s muumuu-covered ass. And it would make sense that Ellen went for a new Social Security number, harder for anyone to trace her that way. Although there were a zillion sites on the Internet that could find a person in no time. But for me, she would now be known as Secret Elle
n.
I was careful to place the file back in the drawer just as I had found it after I’d copied down some important dates and places she’d lived, her college information, and the conflicting Social Security numbers. No sense in working the HR director into a frenzy. She’d have a fit if she knew someone had rifled through her things.
I needed to make an Ellen flowchart. After carefully taping the key back under the flowerpot and locking the doors so that nothing looked disturbed, I went back to my office. I got out a large file folder and proceeded to create smaller files for the different aspects of Ellen’s life. I was intrigued by her lack of identity, so I put that one in one folder. The conflicting Social Security numbers went into another. I stopped long enough to send Jane a text with the two numbers to see what, if anything, her Social Security buddy could find.
She texted back:
Cooprting w me. Callng him @ home now. Will give updt soon.
The text reminded me of something weird in Becky’s e-mail. She’d specifically said she was working on things from Ellen’s drawers. When we’d jimmied them open, all we found was personal files and the torn letter from the Department of Corrections. It was worth checking out.
I logged into LexisNexis and did a search for Ellen Lieberman. I couldn’t find any record of her in the South Carolina database. I tried checking Florida. Same result. I tried Massachusetts. Same result. I was frustrated. I was missing something, but what?
Lacing my fingers behind my head, I leaned back and looked at the screen. I guess I wanted it to magically spew out answers. I wanted something to make sense.
“What else was in those drawers?” I thought back and recalled labels like STORAGE, BANKING, HEALTH INSURANCE, VEHICLE INSURANCE, and a few other completely normal folders. Since I wasn’t getting anywhere on the computer, I went up to the fourth floor and walked directly to Ellen’s office. If Vain Dane showed up, I was totally screwed.
I opened the top drawer and found pens, pencils, small legal pads, and the torn envelope from the Department of Corrections. I held it up to the light but there was no ink transfer. I reasoned it had to be important or Ellen wouldn’t have kept it.
Switching to the larger file drawer, I ran one finger over the neatly typed labels. BANKING held banking information. CAR INSURANCE held car insurance information. And on and on. The only thing that seemed to be the least bit unusual was the file labeled STORAGE. Inside I found a contract for a storage unit in Hobe Sound. The reason it attracted my attention was that Ellen had saved every annual lease agreement. She had first rented the space in 1988, the year Ellen Leiberman had first appeared. It was a five-by-ten-foot unit, roughly the size of a walk-in closet. What? Did she have an excess of muumuus she saved for special occasions? More likely she’d moved from a larger place and, like a lot of people, rented storage instead of just getting rid of things.
Not me. I’d much rather have new. I thought of my stunning cottage on the beach and couldn’t imagine dragging any of the furniture from my condo into the gorgeous new house. I’d donated everything to Faith Farms at Sam’s strong urging. He was right; my condo did look more like a dorm room than a home.
At the bottom of the STORAGE file I found a key. It wasn’t exactly a Mensa moment to deduce it was a spare key to the storage unit. I slipped it into my pocket, not sure if it was relevant, but I copied down the address and unit number from the rental agreement.
I sat in Ellen’s chair and looked at every item in her office. The walls were painted dull celery green. The furniture was teak, very IKEA looking. Everything on the walls was generic. Several paintings of the beach. Even though I’d been in Ellen’s office, I never paid much attention to the details. Now I was, and I realized that one of the paintings was not like the others. One was a lone beach chair and umbrella looking out on a brownish ocean. Unlike the others, which clearly portrayed the clear, turquoise Florida oceans, this one was different.
I went over to the painting and took it off the wall. Penciled on the backing were four words: Folly Beach, South Carolina.
“A tie to South Carolina? Definitely.” But why?
I rehung the painting and left Ellen’s office. I went to my office and did a quick computer search for Ellen Lieberman, Folly Beach, and South Carolina. Nothing popped. I got results for every mention of the name Ellen, but I wasn’t going through a thousand useless entries. Besides, I didn’t have time. I needed to get to the Thai place to meet Jane and Liv. Jane would be relieved since she was probably tired of dialing my number just to hear me say “I’m good” every fifteen minutes.
As I left the office, I noticed the traffic enforcement blonde lurking around the corner of Australian and Clematis. Maybe that’s how Becky’s car got towed, I reasoned. While she was at my place dealing with Tiara64, the tow company grabbed her car. Maybe she took Tiara64 to my place, and her unattended vehicle was spotted by the Palm Beach Police. It would explain why she had her keys and her phone.
I was the last one to reach the restaurant. Liv and Jane were sipping pomegranate mojitos and had one waiting for me. “Sorry, I got hung up by a train,” I explained as I took my seat. In Florida it wasn’t uncommon to get stuck for several minutes at a railroad crossing. Nor was it unusual to start counting cars as they chugged by. My train had 107 cars and took nearly seven minutes to clear the crossing.
Jane had on a cute sundress, a pretty salmon color that highlighted her dark complexion. Perfectly coiffed Liv was wearing a Lilly Pulitzer sheath dress from the new summer collection. I had dress envy. I couldn’t wait until that one popped up on eBay.
“So what’s the deal?” Liv asked.
I took a sip of my refreshing, red mojito. “There’s something freaky about Ellen.” I went on to explain the dual Social Security numbers; the lack of a work history; the painting of Folly Beach in Ellen’s office; the degrees bestowed in the same year; and the storage unit she’d been renting since Tracy Chapman topped the charts with “Fast Car.”
“So should we check out the storage unit?” Jane asked.
“I think we should check her condo first, and then go down to Jupiter Island Marina and Storage. I’m not looking forward to checking out a place that will reek of boat diesel,” I answered.
Liv said, “Here,” as she reached into her purse and pulled out a CD. “Liam got this copy from someone he knows at Crime Stoppers. I guess he just wanted us all to be comforted hearing Becky’s voice.”
“Did you two listen to it?” I asked.
They both nodded, then Jane said, “It’s definitely Becky. There’s not much in the way of background noise, so I don’t think it has any clues as to where she is.”
We all ordered pad Thai and a second drink. “I’ve crawled all over the life and times of Ellen Lieberman, and I can’t find anything,” I lamented. “What about your IRS guy?” I asked.
“Waiting for him to text me,” she said, patting her phone as it rested next to her utensils.
“How does a person get two Social Security numbers?” Liv asked.
“You can’t,” Jane suggested. “Unless you do something ghoulish like search a cemetery to find a child who died around the time you were born.”
“Why go to all that trouble?” Liv asked.
“To change your identity.”
I tapped my fingernail on the table. “Technically, that’s not true,” I explained. “You can do it all nice and legal for cause. What if Ellen is in the witness protection program or something?” I suggested. “Or maybe she’s been living one big sham since 1988. But she really doesn’t strike me as the type.”
“But why would she go to all that trouble?” Liv asked again.
“If we figure that out, then I think we’ll find Ellen, and if we find Ellen, we’ll find Becky.” I hoped.
“Shouldn’t we call the police?” Jane asked.
“And tell them what?” I asked. “That Ellen has a storage unit? That she has two Social Security numbers? Remember, they’re only investigating—and I us
e that term loosely—Becky’s disappearance. And after the Crime Stoppers tape, they are more convinced than ever that Becky disappeared intentionally.”
“I still think I’ll stop in,” Liv said. “Maybe I can light a fire under them.”
“Speaking of fire,” I said, as three bowls of pad Thai were placed on the table. We all switched to water, then dug into the stir-fried rice noodles with eggs, fish sauce, tamarind juice, red chili pepper, and, in my case, bean sprouts and shrimp. The garnish was crushed peanuts, lime juice, and coriander.
Jane had just captured some noodles on her chopsticks when her phone vibrated toward her bowl. “It’s Justin,” she said. “According to him, the Massachusetts Social Security number definitely belongs to Ellen Lieberman and was issued in 1988. The one from South Carolina was issued in 1977 to thirteen-year-old Ellen Marie Becker.”
“I recognize that name!” I said enthusiastically. “It came up when I Googled Ellen.”
I have a hard time deciphering the difference between danger and imminent death.
eighteen
Once I was back at my place, I powered up my laptop and began to search for any and all information on Ellen Becker. There were a few mentions about an Ellen Becker being a homecoming queen and a prom queen and Miss Low Country, but I skipped all that. No way was Ellen a beauty queen.
I finally found a reference to an Ellen Becker who was involved in a car accident. Unfortunately, the driver was killed after lingering in a coma for three weeks. I kept digging and it paid off.
“Holy shit!” I exclaimed. It was grainy and twenty-two years old, but it sure looked like Ellen. And she was wearing the Miss North America crown. How did someone go from beauty queen to frump?
4 Slightly Irregular Page 22
