Liar, Liar

by Lisa Jackson

  “Oh, honey . . .” Aunt Vera had taken the time to glance pityingly over her shoulder. “Maybe you should face the fact that she’s not—”

  “She will!” Remmi had insisted, fighting the sting of tears. She wouldn’t break down with her aunt. Wouldn’t allow herself. Nor would she think for an instant that Didi might be dead. That horrid thought had seeped through her brain often, but she’d ignored it, wouldn’t dignify it. Even at night, when the oozing seemed darker and more foreboding, breeding nightmares that were dark and brutal—explosions rocking the still desert, fireballs climbing into the starlit heavens, blood drizzling over the tufted seats of the white Cadillac, and a baby crying somewhere in the darkness, sobbing loudly, while Remmi, her legs leaden, couldn’t find it.

  So far, she’d managed to stuff her sorrow and fears deep inside and vowed never to reveal them. Not even when she woke up soaked in sweat from those hellish nightmares, a scream dying in her throat.

  “She’ll be back,” Remmi insisted, repeating herself.

  Aunt Vera had sighed over the steaming pot. “I suppose,” she’d allowed, though there had been a distinct lack of conviction in her tone. “But what I meant was that Edwina never thought beyond the materialistic, the here and now. Whether you want to face it or not, your mother was a narcissist, her head in the clouds. Where was she when Mom came down with cancer? Hmm? And when Dad was struggling, trying to make ends meet, in danger of losing the farm, was Edie around? No. She wasn’t about to give up her wild, showgirl life now, was she?” She stopped to blow her bangs from her eyes and mop a drop of sweat that ran from her hairline to her chin. “Not that your uncle was any better. You didn’t know him, of course, but your Uncle Billy was as bad as Edie, always carousing in high school, and then, the minute he got out, he joined up. The army. Ran away from his family. Barely came home when he got leave, let me tell you. Not until he got shot up in Iraq and came back with shrapnel in his hip. Then he was interested in the family, or at least what was left of the farm. It nearly killed Mom, let me tell you.” With a snort, she added, “Edie and Billy, not a lick of sense between them, and certainly not a drop of spirituality either!”

  Remmi had jumped to Didi’s defense. “She goes to church on Christmas and Easter, and she even went to a psychic a couple of times.”

  “Oh my Lord,” Vera declared, lips pursed, the silver cross dangling from a chain on her neck, glinting against her cleavage, her skin glazed with a sheen of perspiration. She’d been wearing a sleeveless blouse and shorts, her blond hair pulled into a short ponytail, her feet in flip-flops on the tile floor.

  Earlier, Remmi had suggested they wait until a cooler day, and Vera had barked at her, reminding her the peaches were “ready” and that she couldn’t risk any of them rotting. “Waste not, want not,” she’d lectured Remmi, and the canning had begun.

  Remmi had helped by peeling the dozens of peaches, but Aunt Vera was in charge of the water bath, filling the jars with syrup and peach halves, then placing the filled jars carefully on a rack in the huge canner.

  She must’ve realized what she sounded like, so as soon as the jars were settled into the bath, Vera had turned to face Remmi. “I shouldn’t have been so harsh. It’s amazing to me how you did it—you know, got good grades and held a job—with Edwina as your only parent and her . . . different lifestyle. Even with the babies, you’ve managed to land scholarships and stay out of trouble.”

  This was as much of an apology as Remmi was ever going to get, but she hadn’t known how to respond. Before she could mutter anything like “It’s okay” or “I know you and Mom didn’t get along,” a loud roar thundered through the open window. A dusty old Jeep with huge tires had careened into the driveway. Half a dozen teenage boys had been stuffed into the open-air Wrangler, all laughing and talking. Her cousins, Jensen and Harley, had been standing in the back of the rig and hanging onto the Jeep’s roll bar.

  “Oh my,” Vera whispered as both of her sons leaped from the back of the vehicle. The second their bare feet hit the ground, the driver rammed his Jeep into reverse and, tires spinning, engine thundering, backed into the street and roared away.

  Bare-chested, jeans hanging low on their hips, Jensen and Harley ran into the house, the scents of smoked cigarettes and guzzled beer clinging to them. Blond Jensen was a string bean with peach fuzz beginning to chase away his acne. Harley, a year and a half younger, was built like a spark plug and had wild, curly brown hair, a too-big nose that he might grow into, and squirrelly deep-set eyes that made him always look like he was hiding something, which he usually was. The two teenagers tried to act sober as they walked quickly through the kitchen, but Jensen wove and Harley careened into a cupboard and giggled, then followed his brother down a short hall to the bedroom they’d shared ever since Remmi had moved in. Jensen was right on his heels, yanking the door shut behind him.

  “You two, get out here!” Vera yelled. She was still holding the pair of tongs she used to move the jars in the water bath. “You hear me?”

  But, of course, they hadn’t as the beat from heavy metal music was already thudding from behind their closed door. “Just wait until their father gets back here,” she said through tight lips. “He’ll skin them alive!”

  The timer had then gone off, and after sending one last, withering look down the hallway, Vera squared her shoulders and returned her attention to the jars in the water bath.

  “They won’t get away with this,” she muttered beneath her breath as she reached into the canner with the tongs and touched the side of her hand along the rim of the hot pot. “Ouch! Dear Lord. Oh. Oh. Oh!” Sucking in her breath, she’d dropped the tongs, and they slithered into the steaming water. “Oooh.” She’d cradled her burned hand in the other. “Oh, for the love of Saint Peter, Remmi, get those jars out now! Now! You’ve seen me do it a thousand times!”

  Before Remmi had been able to respond, Vera turned to the refrigerator, yanked open the freezer door, and pulled out an ice tray. Her face contorted in pain, she managed to twist some cubes out of the plastic tray. They fell into the sink, and she snagged a couple to hold against the injured side of her hand.

  “I’m not sure—,” Remmi said, on her feet.

  “Just get them out! Hurry, or they’ll be ruined.” Tears were filling Vera’s eyes, and Remmi didn’t know if it was from the pain or from frustration that all her afternoon’s work would be wasted if her niece didn’t pull through.

  As quickly as she could, Remmi found a wooden spoon, fished out the tongs from the boiling water, and, after wrapping them in a kitchen towel, worked to pull out the jars without dropping or breaking any.

  “Hurry!” Vera said.

  Just then a door opened, an ear-blasting guitar riff screaming down the hall before it closed again and Jensen appeared. “Hungry,” he mumbled as he made his way to the refrigerator, then for the first time really looked at his mom. “Hey—you okay?”

  “Do I look okay?” she threw back at him. “No.”

  He’d opened the refrigerator. Peered inside. Called over his shoulder, “What happened?”

  “Burned myself. It was stupid.”

  “Oh. Uh. Why didn’t you wear gloves?”

  “I just said it was stupid. Oh, for the love of Mike! Because I didn’t think I’d get burned!” She rolled her eyes and grasped the slippery ice cube even more tightly while Jensen, seemingly unconcerned about Vera’s injury, continued rummaging through the laden refrigerator shelves. As Remmi finished removing all the jars intact, he found some lunch meat and jars of mustard and mayo, then located half a loaf of bread on the counter and, with a knife he discovered in the sink, proceeded to make three sandwiches. He slathered mustard and mayo over all six slices of white bread, then plopped several rounds of bologna onto the thick glob of condiments.

  “Don’t spoil your dinner.” Vera dropped the melting ice into the sink.

  Fat chance of that. Remmi had kept the thought to herself. Aunt Vera could bad-mouth her husband and son
s all she wanted, and that was just fine, but if Remmi even dared to agree with her, Vera would turn on her with a vengeance as swift as a rattler striking. Remmi had learned to hold her tongue as much as possible, and it nearly killed her as she was used to speaking her mind.

  “You and your brother are in deep trouble,” Vera told Jensen.

  “Yeah? Why?”

  “You were supposed to be home two hours ago, and you were supposed to be swimming, right?”

  “We were.”

  “Yeah, swimming in alcohol and tobacco.” She spat out the words as if they alone were vile.

  “Nah, we weren’t.”

  “Then . . . then pot.”

  “Pot?” Jensen’s face split into a grin.

  “Weed. Whatever you call marijuana or, um, reefer these days.”

  “Oh, Mom, you’re so . . .” He shrugged his shoulders as he slapped the halves of the sandwiches together. Yellow mustard oozed brilliantly against the crusts. “Melodramatic. Calm down. Chill.”

  “Are you kidding me?” she somehow shrieked through clenched teeth as Jensen, all three sandwiches stacked in one hand, sauntered down the hall and escaped to the bedroom.

  “It’s just not fair,” Vera moaned, throwing a hostile glance at her niece. “Not fair.”

  And she’d probably been right, Remmi thought now. But then, what in life was? All that BS parents teach their children about “being fair” didn’t add up to much in the adult world, which everyone eventually learned. Remmi was just thankful she’d escaped with most, if not all, of the money she’d saved and squirreled away. Since that time with the Gibbs family, she’d lived in dumps of apartments through college and during her early years after school, sometimes with roommates, mostly without. She’d hated explaining herself, or talking about her past, and as the weeks, months, and years had stacked up without any word from Didi, her hopes of ever seeing her mother again had shriveled and died. Until now. Here, in San Francisco.

  How odd. All of the old feelings of abandonment, fear, and anger over having been left had resurfaced. She told herself to push them aside. For now. Since there was interest in Didi’s case again, she needed a level head so that she could find out what had happened to her mother, if Didi were alive or dead, and solve the mystery that had clung to her like a shroud.

  She glanced around the apartment that was now her home with its fantastic view. It could be drafty in winter and hot in the summer, but it was the nicest place she’d ever inhabited, thanks to Greta Emerson.

  Remmi had met Greta years before when Remmi had been a bookkeeper at a small accounting firm where Greta was a client. At the time, Remmi had still been going to college, and over the years, she and Greta had grown closer. Which was a little odd, but Remmi had rationalized it with her absence of a family and Greta having never had children or grandchildren. Sometime after Remmi had received her degree, the accounting office where she worked had changed hands, and “The Judge,” as Greta had called her husband, had passed away after years of battling heart disease. Greta then decided she didn’t want to manage the upkeep of the house and the rental properties they’d owned, so she’d hired Remmi as her personal assistant. Greta didn’t want to be bothered with finding and keeping housekeepers and groundskeepers, so she offered Remmi the job, paying her a salary as well as offering her free rent. Remmi’s duties had expanded after Greta’s stroke to include finding caretakers and a driver for her, to see that Greta was never alone and could stay in this house she loved. It had worked out well for both of them, and things had gone along quietly until, well, the book and now this suicide . . .

  It was unprecedented.

  And what about this book? Why were its publication and author cloaked in so much mystery? Did the author want desperately to remain anonymous and hide behind a pseudonym? Or was this some kind of publicity ploy by the publisher to drum up interest in a long-dead unsolved case? And how about the coincidence of the woman jumping just as Remmi passed by the building?

  Remmi would force herself to read the book tonight. Greta was right, it might hold answers, a clue to who had written it or why that person had felt compelled to stir up a twenty-year-old mystery, or why some person would pretend to be Didi, even register with the name of D. Storm, then kill herself?

  She wondered if going to the police had been the right call.

  Possibly not, but she’d had to know if her mother had leapt to her death.

  Didi hadn’t.

  At least not today, in San Francisco, from a ledge on the Montmort Tower. But that still didn’t answer the question of where she was. Alive? Dead? Remmi checked the meager contents of her own small refrigerator and settled for a dinner of cheese and crackers. She carried the plate into the living room, poured herself a glass of wine, and settled onto the couch with I’m Not Me: The Untold Didi Storm Story.

  CHAPTER 16

  Rain drizzled from the hood on her jacket and down her face as Dani Settler ran up the final two blocks to her apartment, a small one-bedroom unit on the second floor of a building built sometime in the middle of the twentieth century. Beneath the streetlights, the pavement shimmered, and lights glowed from the windows of the surrounding buildings, warm patches of illumination climbing to the sky, some already twinkling with Christmas lights.

  She was breathing hard by the time she unlocked the front door of the building, but once inside, still she took the stairs, two at a time, keeping her heart rate up until she reached the second floor, before walking briskly to her front door.

  A sharp yip greeted her as she slid through the door, and her dog, a less-than-slim pug, greeted her enthusiastically. “Hey, slow down. Yeah, I love you, too, Earl.” The little dog was whining and twirling in circles. She took the time to tell him what a “good boy” he was and petted him before feeding him. Once he’d gobbled every bit of kibble in his bowl, she found his leash hanging by a hook and snapped it, along with his camo-designed halter, over his broad chest. “Now, you’re lookin’ good,” she said, and they set off again, this time on a brisk walk through the neighborhood to a small park; it was over half a mile and enough distance that the dog got his exercise and she could cool down from her run.

  “Let’s go,” she said at each lamppost, tree, or fire hydrant he deemed it necessary to sniff and/or mark by lifting his leg. Usually, she loved this part of her exercise regimen, the time she started breathing normally again, with Earl trotting at her side. The routine was calming after a long day of dealing with death, paperwork, lying witnesses, and coworkers like Ted Vance. However, today, because of the new suicide case, she hadn’t been able to leave the job at the office where it belonged.

  Well, really, when had she ever? She lived and breathed to be a detective.

  Face it, Dani, you’re a workaholic with a dog to come home to instead of a husband and 2.5 children.

  She didn’t even have a steady boyfriend, hadn’t since college. Maybe she never would. That thought was a little depressing, but she didn’t mind living alone with Earl. At least she didn’t have to pick up his boxer shorts or wash the residue of whiskers down the sink. She’d wondered if her lack of being able to hold onto a committed relationship was due to the fact that she’d been kidnapped by a real whack job when she was around twelve—fearing for her life daily, going toe to toe with a killer. Maybe it had molded her into someone who kept serious relationships at bay. Or maybe it was because her father, Travis, who had been single at the time, had ended up marrying Shannon and having a couple of kids with her. Dani had always wanted a sibling, but rather than draw her close, the new family had almost seemed to distance her. At fifteen, she’d been into herself, hadn’t been interested in a two-year-old or a new baby.

  So she’d never married and had broken off every relationship she’d ever had before it had a chance to get too serious. She knew what the problem was, though. She’d taken enough psychology classes in college to self-diagnose and realize she had trust issues. So, big effin’ deal. Ever since she’d been abduct
ed, she’d wanted to become a cop and had focused on a career in law enforcement. Her venture into psychology had been only a temporary diversion during her second year at a junior college.

  So here she was, living with a pug who had literally leaped into her life and her heart.

  “It’s okay,” she said aloud, her breath steaming as she glanced down at Earl, who was already gathering himself for the final run up the wide stairs to her old apartment building. He shot forward, jumping up each step, and she had to rush to keep up with him. Then the race was on, up the interior steps, along the short hallway, and through the door to her unit as Earl, little black ears flopping, galloped at the thought of a treat. Once inside, she kicked off her wet running shoes, toweled off the dog, and gave him a biscuit before she stripped down and stood under a hot shower.

  Ten minutes later, with the pug’s nose visible against the shower stall’s glass door, she toweled off and pulled on her pajamas, hoping she was in for the night. With her job, she could never be certain, as many of the crimes she investigated were committed and discovered in the middle of the night.

  Though she tried to turn off from work, the suicide case stayed with her. Why was the victim at the Montmort Tower dressed as Marilyn Monroe, or, if Remmi Storm could be believed, as her mother? Why did she jump?

  At least the question of who had leaped to her death had been answered. And no, it wasn’t Didi Storm. Just before Settler had left the office for the day, the police department had gotten a hit through the fingerprint database. The victim had been identified as Karen Upgarde, forty-seven, of Seattle. A waitress/bartender who had never done an impersonation in her life, as far as anyone knew, Upgarde was divorced, with no kids or siblings, and she had two DUIs on her record.