Liar, Liar

by Lisa Jackson

  As Didi Storm.

  Why?

  She turned her gaze to the base of the hotel, where potted plants had been decorated with festive garlands and lights. Cars, vans, and taxis pulled into the curving drive in a steady line, moving around the fountain to drop off or pick up patrons of the Montmort. And on the pavement, just to one side of the illuminated, bubbling water feature, Karen Upgarde had given up her life.

  Remmi felt cold inside as she remembered the horrid fall and then the body crumpled on the pavement.

  The suicide leap would have been the kind of splashy, front-page exit so like her mother, except that Didi Storm had never had a death wish. No matter how bad times became, Didi always worked up a way out. If Plan A doesn’t work, then go to Plan B.

  Ending her own life didn’t seem like either.

  But could Didi really still be alive? Would she have existed twenty years and never so much as contacted Remmi? The same cold sense of abandonment she’d felt as a teenager wrapped an icy blanket over her heart. She’d almost come to grips with the fact that her mother had died somehow, that whatever she’d planned to do to the father of the twins had backfired and she’d disappeared without a trace.

  How odd that Didi’s ghost was rising now. First that damned book—I’m Not Me—and now this? A stranger dressed in Didi’s things to look like her leaping to her death? If she were a God-fearing person, she might think she was being given a sign. Surely, her aunt would believe that God was talking to her . . . well, or maybe Satan. For a second, she stopped in her tracks to stare at the fountain and hotel doors where people were going about their lives, unconcerned about the tragedy that had unfolded only steps from this very spot.

  “Excuse me!” A woman in knee-high boots and a long coat that billowed behind, quickly stepped around Remmi. She was holding an umbrella and shot Remmi a perturbed look. A man in a business suit and raincoat, his collar turned up against the persistent precipitation, followed after her, and only then did Remmi realize she was standing in the middle of the sidewalk, caught up in her thoughts, holding up pedestrian traffic. Hastily, she continued toward the parking structure where she’d left her car, the same garage she’d used before.

  She spent the rest of the day waiting for Detective Settler’s call while running errands and checking on two of Greta’s rental properties. The first was in Sausalito, across the Golden Gate Bridge, and as she drove over the wide span high above the neck of water linking San Francisco Bay to the Pacific, she thought about her half brother and sister, wondering if they were alive and where they might be. She’d registered years ago on several websites that were supposed to connect people with missing loved ones, but so far, she’d had no responses, which was not surprising. She’d known the chance of finding either Ariel or Adam was a long shot. If they had survived, they probably knew nothing of their birth or family.

  From the bridge, through its cables, she caught a glimpse of the island of Alcatraz, its famous prison and lighthouse visible, a ferry churning toward its rocky shore. Usually the drive was uplifting—freeing, somehow, as she left the city behind, but not today. The weather was as gray as her mood, and by the time she’d stopped at the triplex, a sprawling older home that had been converted into three large apartments with water views, she couldn’t shake the feeling of doom that had been with her for the past two days. She found a PowerBar in the console, unwrapped it, and ate the stale mixture of oats, peanuts, chocolate, and God-knew-what-else just before she pulled into the short driveway of the rental.

  The property was in good shape, but one of the tenants had reported a water leak in the bathroom, so Remmi met with the single mother who lived there and saw that, sure enough, the ceiling in the bathroom showed water damage. She promised to have a repairman out to fix it. The second property was a six-plex, basically a shoebox of a building with three units up and three down, located in Berkeley, not far from the university, where Remmi had eventually gone to college. (Even with her scholarships, she still had the debt to prove it.)

  One of the six-plex tenants had quit paying. When she arrived at the apartment, she found that the front door was unlocked, the unit empty and smelling of filth. Leftover trash littered every room, and the plumbing was obviously not working, the sinks, tub, and toilet filled with garbage. Remmi was completely disgusted. “Not going to get the security deposit back,” she muttered grimly, as if the delinquent renter could hear her. She locked the mess up for the moment. The neighboring tenant didn’t answer the door, so Remmi called the handyman she used and explained the situation. Once he’d agreed to clean, disinfect, and paint the apartment, along with making repairs to the triplex in Sausalito, she wiped her hands with sanitizer she kept in the car and backed the Subaru out of the shared, oversized driveway to join the traffic heading south toward Oakland and the Bay Bridge on her way back to the city.

  Detective Settler contacted her just as she reached the western shore of the bay. Remmi took the call through her speakers via Bluetooth, so she could keep both hands on the wheel as she exited the freeway.

  “Got your messages,” Settler said. “I assume you heard that the victim was IDed.”

  “It’s all over the news.”

  “Do you know of any contact your mother would have had with Karen Upgarde?”

  “No,” Remmi said, having trouble hearing Settler over the sounds of her car’s engine, tire noise, and the road noise from the other vehicles crowded around her. “I’ve never heard of her before. And I tried to go to the Reliant Agency today. It doesn’t exist, not like you’d expect. It’s just a mailbox.”

  “Yeah, we checked that out, too, but we’re looking for the owner.”

  “Jennifer Reliant.”

  “Maybe.” Settler didn’t seem convinced. “Did you ever hear from the author? Osgoode?”

  “No.”

  “Huh.”

  “I told you, she’s a phony.” Remmi was following a delivery truck that was gearing down for the steep hill. Hoping for a way around the lumbering behemoth belching diesel smoke, she glanced over her shoulder. The cars in the neighboring lane were inching forward bumper to bumper, headlights glowing, as dusk had already descended.

  “Okay, so then who would write the book? Who would know everything in it? Some of those details were pretty specific.”

  “Anyone could find out, I suppose,” Remmi said as she, too, had wondered how the author had gotten her information. “But they’d have to talk to someone from Missouri who knew Mom.”

  “Someone in Anderstown.”

  “I suppose. Or nearby, and we’re talking, what? Fifty-some years ago?”

  “What about your aunt? You think anyone talked to her to get the info on your mom?”

  “Maybe.” She’d already been considering the possibility of Aunt Vera being somehow involved. She would have loved being able to tell someone about her semi-famous sister with her loose morals. There was a break in the lane next to her, and she nosed the Subaru into the open space, only to hear an impertinent beep from a red Toyota when the driver looked up from her cell phone and realized Remmi was squeezing her. You snooze, you lose, Remmi thought and gave the blonde a quick nod. For that she was rewarded with another sharp honk and a rude finger gesture.

  Too bad.

  Settler was asking, “You talked to her?”

  “Vera? Not in a while.” Not since leaving at eighteen, to be exact.

  “Do you have a number for her? Address?”

  “Old information, but when I get home I’ll send you what I have,” Remmi promised and hung up. She thought of the address book she’d taken when leaving Las Vegas, the names and numbers her mother had written in her strong, loopy handwriting. Maybe she should turn it over to the police. Over the years, Remmi had called every number in the book and reached about half of the people listed; the other half of the numbers had been disconnects or had been reassigned. She doubted many of them were good now, as people used cell phones to communicate. But still, the police might be
able to find something in the notebook and the remainder of Didi’s things that might help. Remmi had been so paranoid about dealing with cops she’d never confided in any, and now she was pinning her hopes on the idea that Detective Settler could help her find her missing mother and siblings. What were the chances of that?

  “About zero,” she told herself, then took a call from Greta, asking her to pick up a couple of prescriptions and groceries. The rain had started again, and her wipers began slapping away the cold drops as she drove to a market next to the pharmacy off Clayton, lucking out by getting a parking spot in the nearby lot.

  As she was climbing out of her car, a dark SUV passed on the street nearby. She thought again of the vehicle that had been parked on the street in front of Greta’s house the night before. This one looked identical, but it was out of sight down the hill before she caught any numbers on the California license plate. A tiny frisson of anxiety slid down her spine, but she ignored it.

  There have to be hundreds, more probably thousands, of them in the Bay Area. Dashing through the rain, she stepped inside the brightly lit store just as the automatic door was closing.

  The market was busy, and it seemed no one was inclined to hurry. As she swept down the aisles, she was invariably stopped by a cart clogging the passageway, its owner caught in the dilemma of which product to purchase and totally unaware anyone else might be in a hurry. She did manage to grab a pre-made tuna salad at the deli without too much trouble but was hung up again at the pharmacy, having to wait impatiently in line as all the clerks at the prescription counter were dealing with customers who chatted with the clerk and asked either about their medications or the possibility of getting a flu shot.

  By the time she had carried her bags to the car, nearly an hour had passed, and the rain was coming down in a torrent, wind snatching at the hem of her coat as she threaded through puddles to her car. The windows were fogged, making visibility difficult; her wipers streaked the windshield as she backed out of the parking spot. The lot was crowded, and two cars were vying for her space. She eased around a white Chevy Impala that was forced to wait, and before she put her own car into gear, a Mini Cooper darted into the spot she’d vacated, causing the woman at the wheel of the Impala to pound on her horn and shake her fist.

  The whole ordeal only added to her tension as Remmi melded her Subaru into the flow of traffic. Turning on the radio, she heard Burl Ives warbling “A Holly Jolly Christmas.” She hated that song. She changed stations only to hear:

  Rockin’ around the Christmas tree

  At the Christmas party hop—

  She snapped the radio off even though the lyrics echoed through her brain. Ugh!

  “You’re just a grinch,” she told herself, fogging the windshield as she turned onto Stanyan Street. Then she glanced in the mirror. Her fingers tightened over the steering wheel. For just a second, she thought she noticed a dark SUV a few cars back.

  Don’t. Be. Paranoid.

  But paranoia had seemed to be Remmi’s middle name in the last week or so, and though she kept one eye on the mirror, nearly rear-ending an older Volkswagen in the process, she didn’t catch a glimpse of the vehicle again.

  For the first time in her life, she wondered if Aunt Vera had been right after all. Maybe Satan really was always close by.

  CHAPTER 20

  Settler stood up and stretched, cracking her back. The department was quieter than it had been earlier, many of the employees already having left for the day. She’d been at her desk for hours. Lunch had consisted of a California wrap sandwich that had been primarily avocado, tomatoes, and sprouts and a Coke, consumed while she stared at her computer monitor and tried to piece the case together.

  She hadn’t discovered any links between Didi Storm and Karen Upgarde other than the obvious—Upgarde had been dressed in Storm’s clothes and makeup when she jumped. Nor had the book publisher been forthcoming on the author of I’m Not Me. Yet. But even vague threats of abetting a killer or impeding an investigation had gotten the powers that be at Stumptown Press to scramble around. She expected a call from someone higher up, or an attorney, soon.

  Though she had located some of the people associated with Didi, she wondered if she was spinning her wheels. There was a chance that Upgarde’s leap to her death had not much more to do with Didi Storm than a wig the impersonator had once worn.

  As she raised her arms over her head and bent over, she caught sight of Ted Vance as he walked by carrying several reports and, as ever, wearing a crisp suit, white shirt, and tie, the only person in the department who took the trouble. He looked over the top of his half-glasses and thankfully didn’t say a word, just radiated disapproval with his tight-lipped expression.

  So what else was new?

  She returned to her desk chair, where after rotating the tightness from the back of her neck, she settled back to work. She’d located several people associated with Didi. Didi’s first husband, Ned Crenshaw, and his wife lived on a ranch just outside of Sacramento, less than two hours away. Her second husband, Leo “Kaspar the Great” Kasparian, divorced from wife number two, had moved to Reno, where he now performed his act in one of the casinos. Reno was around four hours distant. As for Harold Rimes, who had once employed Didi, he now lived near Lake Tahoe, just east of the state line, so still in Nevada, where gambling was legal. Rimes had a club there, even seedier than the one he’d owned in Las Vegas years earlier. None of them were all that far from San Francisco.

  Did any of these men know Karen Upgarde? she wondered. So far, she hadn’t found a connection, but the phone records from Upgarde’s cell were on their way, and the lab had cracked into her computer, so links, if there were any links to the people in Didi Storm’s life, were about to be uncovered.

  “Good,” she told herself.

  She heard someone approach and saw Martinez round her desk. “Take a look,” he said, “I just sent you a picture you need to see.”

  “Okay.” She clicked into her e-mail account and saw the new message from her partner. She clicked on the attachment, and a grainy picture came into view.

  “Right there, see that?” Martinez said as he stood next to Settler at her desk. Martinez pointed at her computer screen, which showed a somewhat fuzzy image of the window from which Karen Upgarde had stepped out onto the ledge of the Montmort Tower. The window was open, a curtain inside visible, Karen seeming to teeter upon the ledge. “There, behind the curtain.” She saw a dark shadow evident behind the gauzy fabric. Was it just a trick of light, or was a man standing just beyond the focus of the camera’s lens?

  “I see it. Kind of. Can’t the lab enhance this any more?” She used her mouse and enlarged the photo, but it only became more blurry and pixilated.

  “They’re working on it,” he said, “but there’s only so much you can do. This was just from a bystander’s phone.”

  “I can’t tell if there’s anyone in the room or not.” She moved her mouse around, studying the image from different angles before bringing the picture back to its original size. “Damn it.” She glanced up at Martinez. “Any other pics?”

  “None any better than this one. At least none that have been sent in. The PD has made pleas to the public through the local news stations, and we’ve received tons of shots, and videos, too. The lab is sorting through them.”

  Once more, Settler tried to increase the clarity of the image, but it didn’t work, so she still wasn’t certain what she was seeing.

  “We have no footage of anyone in the hallway going in or out of her room or the rooms that connected to hers.”

  “But the camera wasn’t functioning properly,” Martinez reminded.

  “I know. But what are the chances that someone walked into her room, convinced her to jump, or somehow helped her along somehow, then fled off camera before rescue workers got the hotel staff to let them in?”

  “I’m saying it’s possible,” Martinez said, straightening and scratching absently at his goatee.

  “Well,
yeah.”

  Her cell phone rang, and she glanced at the screen: King County Sheriff’s Department. “Gotta take this,” she said. It was likely her ex-partner, Rosamie Ugali, who was returning the call she’d made earlier in the day. She traded places with Martinez, who took over the mouse and tried to enhance the computer image while Dani walked several feet away.

  “I did some checking on your vic, Karen Upgarde,” Rosamie started in after identifying herself. “There’s not a lot I can tell you that hasn’t been sent down via e-mail. Upgarde’s tried to commit suicide a couple of times already. I interviewed the ex-husband, who was here in Seattle when she leaped. Seemed pretty broken up about it. Talked to her mother, too. Her response was ‘I’ve been expecting this for years’ when she heard about Karen, I was told.”

  “Okay.”

  “Karen was never all that mentally steady, that’s what her ex said. She was always up and down, possibly had some kind of condition that was never diagnosed. The mother, Irene, said she was grateful Karen didn’t take anyone else with her and, when questioned, wouldn’t elaborate, but the upshot was that Karen wasn’t stable. No current boyfriend or roommate, not tight with any girlfriends. Her boss said she was a ‘capable’ waitress. Not friendly but could do the job. Didn’t hang out with other workers, and that’s it. Said she’d been at that restaurant for four years, before that a diner that went out of business.”

  “Was she a drinker?”

  “No record of it—no evidence of bottles in the home, no drugs, no suicide note. Nothing. Her apartment was a little messy, but I’ve seen a lot worse. I looked for more celebrity paraphernalia and clothes, but there wasn’t anything that I could label as belonging to anyone but her. She wasn’t a conservative dresser. She was kind of edgy—for a woman her age, you might say on the flashy side. She did karaoke down at the local club near her apartment, but we didn’t find anything out of the ordinary. And no wigs. You asked if she had anything with Didi Storm’s name inscribed in it. Nothing. Nada. Not even a picture of the woman, so it doesn’t appear she was obsessed with her.”