Cracked

by Barbra Leslie

  Without saying so directly, it was obvious that they thought we might be targets as well.

  But Fred was still in custody. DNA is DNA, and due to the sensational nature of the crime – beautiful Newport Beach matron murdered in a no-tell motel on the wrong side of the tracks – and Fred’s wealth and profile, all testing had been rushed. The police believed that the woman who took the boys could be Fred’s accomplice. He was being questioned.

  No matter how angry at me Fred had seemed the night before, I simply couldn’t believe that he was capable of a crime of passion, especially against Ginger. But the police were right, if the phony suicide note was addressed to me, and somebody had bothered to pose as me – fake I.D. and all, and an elaborate enough network to pull off pretending to be police detectives in one of the wealthiest areas of the world? I was pretty certain that somebody wanted to get my attention. But other than to break the hearts of everyone who loved me, I couldn’t figure out why I would be anyone’s target. I had nothing anyone could want. I was a divorced crack addict on the verge of bankruptcy who rarely left my crappy apartment. Even I could see that my life was pathetic. I might have had some illegal habits, but I doubted that the bank that had issued my Visa card was going to go to these lengths to fuck with me.

  I leaned against Darren. I knew that I needed food, and I needed a shower and probably some caffeine, if my body could handle it. I needed my sister to come into the room and tell me that this was all a bad dream, some kind of drug-induced psychosis. I closed my eyes, willing the cravings to pass. I needed crack. I needed a new life. I needed my sister to be alive. I needed Matty and Luke to be brought back here, safe and sound and without anyone having touched them. Because if anyone hurt those boys, I didn’t think I’d be able to manage. I’d lost my parents and my twin sister, and my husband – whom I still loved, and always would – was following the demons living in his brain. If my nephews were lost, my twin sister’s twin sons, all I could imagine was losing any humanity I had left in me, and turning into a killing machine. Then I could let myself disintegrate into a million tiny pieces and disappear into the ether.

  I needed to talk to Gene. Regardless of how fucked up he was, he was my best friend. Outside the family, he understood me better than anyone in the world. At least these days, since Jack and I were no longer, and I had nose-dived into druggie oblivion.

  I excused myself from Darren and Miller, mumbling something about a shower. There was a phone on the bedside table. I hadn’t bothered to bring my ancient cell phone with me down here; it was a 90s-style flip phone and I doubted it would even get service here. I was old school, used a landline. I sat up in bed and dialed my own number. He was probably still there. As crummy as my place could be, especially after one of our benders, it was still better than Gene’s. He had keys, and usually spent most of his time there.

  I let it ring until the voicemail picked up, then hung up when I heard my own voice. I tried again with the same result. Then I called Gene’s number and let it ring ten, twelve times before giving up. He didn’t have a machine. He never wanted to be found. True addicts, people as far along as Gene was – which was even worse than I had gotten, despite my best efforts – only wanted to be found by their dealers. When, of course, they didn’t owe them money.

  “Fuck,” I said out loud.

  I stepped into the shower and the blood seemed to seep back into my veins. Sleep in the best bed ever constructed, hot water, and the prospect of anything that Marta might have to eat in the kitchen brought me around enough to make coherent thinking a little more possible.

  I threw on a short black jersey skirt and a sleeveless black silk top. It was the closest I had to anything that fit me. Somewhere in the back of my head, I was thinking that this outfit could take me from whatever dive bars I might have to hit to look for the low-lifes my sister had apparently been associating with, and also not be out of place when – when, not if – we found the boys. I had no intention of staying in the house all day. And I was pretty sure they couldn’t prevent me from leaving. If they did, I’d call Chandler. I was pretty sure he liked me, and might throw me a bit of legal advice at the family rate. I threw on an old pair of sandals – with a pang, I realised that they were probably Ginger’s – that I found sticking out under the bed. It made me wonder if Ginger hadn’t been sleeping with Fred anymore. I liked wearing them.

  Before going downstairs, I went into the bathroom, made sure the sink counter was dry, cut a couple of quick lines of coke and snorted them with my last twenty.

  I went down to the kitchen.

  “Wow,” I heard a voice behind me say. Officer Miller appeared behind me in the kitchen. With a shower under my belt, I noticed that he looked a little less rumpled than he had the night before. He must have gone home and gotten some sleep as well. “You look… different.”

  “No shit, Sherlock,” I said. “I don’t have puke in my hair.” I wasn’t in the mood to get all Flirty McFlirty-Pants with this guy. Last night, maybe for half a second, when my defenses were down and with Grey Goose in my system, I might have looked at him differently. Today, he was another suit. And he had one function: to find my nephews and lead me to my sister’s killer, or killers, so I could do what I had to do.

  “How did you sleep?” he asked, pulling up a stool at the big island in the centre of the room.

  “Let’s see, what other meaningless comments can we make,” I replied, opening cupboards looking for a mug. Coffee was on. “How about, are you an alcoholic? Did your father spank you? Did you have eggs for breakfast today?” I knew I was being a shit. I couldn’t seem to stop myself. “Please tell me there’s news of Matthew and Luke,” I said. I found a mug and looked down into it. Tears were leaking out of my eyes. Dammit.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Cleary,” Miller said. “We got a BOLO out on the car that this woman drove away in with the boys, but we only got a partial licence from the video surveillance.” I looked at him. He took an apple out of his pocket and took a small bite. “As happens after any Amber Alert, we have had dozens and dozens of calls, and a team of officers sifting through them.”

  “Most of them crazies, I suppose,” I said.

  He nodded. “But it only takes one real lead,” he said gently. “Everyone in the state is looking for those boys.” I nodded. I didn’t trust myself to speak.

  Marta bustled into the room. “Coffee,” she said, pointing at the pot. “Con leche?”

  “Um. Sí. Thanks. Lots of leche,” I said, patting her on the shoulder as she very kindly pushed me away from her work area. Detective Miller grinned at her.

  “Marta,” I said, taking a seat three stools down from Miller. “Can I please get some food? Um? Breakfast?” Even with coke in my system, I wanted to eat. It was either grief, a crack replacement, or a bone-deep knowledge that I would need my strength for whatever lay ahead.

  “Sí! Sí!” Marta swiped at the back of her face with her hands and wiped them on her apron. Very slowly, she said, “This morning, I make churros.” She pointed to a large, fragrant basket sitting right in front of me. My sense of smell wasn’t what it used to be, and I wasn’t used to food just sitting around, unless it was an open bag of stale popcorn spilling onto my carpet at home. Suddenly, the smell of deep-fried dough with sugar slammed into my brain and I thought I would faint from the sheer joy of it.

  On the plane, I’d eaten because it was there, and once it was in front of me it tasted good. But this? This was heaven. A plate appeared as I was shoving my second churro into my face, washed down with coffee. I could hear Darren arguing with someone in the living room, and I was aware of Miller watching me eat, but at that moment, all I could do was consume. Food as crack. Huevos rancheros, fresh pineapple and two more churros filled the gap. In the minutes it took me to eat Marta’s breakfast, I thought of nothing else.

  “Wow,” Miller said again. “Never, and I mean never, have I seen any woman eat that much, that fast.” He was looking at me with something approaching awe. />
  “Whatever,” I said, adding to my feminine appeal by belching. Loudly.

  Marta smiled and patted me on the back as she refilled my coffee.

  “Marta,” I said. “Thank you. Thank you so much. That was the best food I have ever had, ever.” My eyes filled with tears. My God. What was happening to me?

  My tears, of course, set Marta off again, and she hugged me like I was her little girl. Which set me off even more. Still sitting on my stool, I rested my head on her sturdy shoulder and cried.

  “Go,” Marta said over my shoulder, waving Officer Miller away. “Vamoose.” I heard him leave the room, clearing his throat.

  I kept crying. For losing my parents three years ago, so suddenly and horribly. For giving up on Jack. For the mess I’d made of my life, from which I wasn’t sure I could ever recover. Or ever wanted to. And for Ginger. And Fred and the boys. Do people ever recover from loss like this? At that moment, I was sure the answer was no.

  The only answer, then, was revenge. Swift, brutal revenge on whoever had done this to my family. And then, if I got away with it, I could escape, go back to Gene, the rock and the pipe, and live my life my way. Until I died.

  And if I didn’t get away with it? I was in jail anyway.

  But there was no way, I decided, pulling away from Marta gently, that I was going to let Darren help me. He had a good life. He wasn’t like me, and there was no way I was going to let him spend the rest of his life in jail. And even if that didn’t happen, I knew it would change him so profoundly that he would never be himself again. No way.

  “Beanpole,” Darren said, coming into the kitchen and taking in the scene of me cleaning up my swollen red face at the sink, with Marta patting my back and cooing in Spanish. “You okay?”

  “Never better,” I answered drily.

  “Good point,” he answered. He sat down on one of the stools and grabbed one of the last churros from the basket. “Can you fucking believe how good these are? I’m going to get fat if we stay here.” His voice was too loud, distracted. He was trying to put a brave face on this nightmare, and I loved him for it. I turned and leaned against the sink, looking at him. Marta patted me one last time, smiled brightly at Darren, and left us alone.

  “So what the fuck is going on,” I said.

  Darren took a deep breath. “Okay. The good news is, there’s a security tape of Fake Danny getting the boys into a minivan outside the home,” he said. “They have her license plate, or some of it, and they’re running down leads.”

  “Running down leads,” I repeated. “Yes, Miller told me.”

  Darren looked tired. “I heard Miller say something about Fred maybe having an affair. Maybe he wanted to take the boys and start a new life, and this Fake Danny is his girlfriend. I don’t know,” he finished. It all seemed so implausible. Fred?

  “Why? Why would they kill Ginger? Why not just get a fucking divorce if that was the case?”

  “Money. Fred’s rich. It’s California. Ginger gets half of everything. Would have gotten.” Darren wiped his hands clean of sugar, over and over, obsessively. He shrugged. “I don’t believe it either, in case you’re wondering. But I don’t know.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Oh.” We were quiet for a minute. I felt a wave of nausea, and waited for it to pass before I spoke.

  “But, Danny,” Darren said. “They have Fred’s DNA. In her,” he finished.

  “I know.” I felt sick. “But he was her husband. They must have had sex before she went off to meet her killers. They must have.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Right, and in the absence of any other suspects…”

  “The police really had no choice but to arrest Fred,” I said. “I think somebody must be framing him. And they kidnapped the kids to get more money or something.”

  “And taking the boys from the house would have been a lot harder than taking them from a setting where they’re all together, and no one knows them,” Darren continued. “This place is always crawling with people.”

  “I noticed,” I said. Other than Rosen and Marta, there was Driver Derek, and a gardener was buzzing around out back.

  Something else was bothering me. Too many pieces didn’t make sense yet, but there was something bigger that was just out of my reach. Crack brain. Too many integral synapses which no longer fired.

  “And the fake suicide note to you, they figure—”

  “Yeah,” I interrupted. “I already thought of that. Anyone knowing them would know that Ginger loved her family. And if anybody did research on us, I would be the easiest target to be involved in something messy. Maybe they’d think I had something to do with it, put them off the scene for a bit. Or something,” I finished.

  Darren stood and stretched. He really did look done in. “Probably, Beanpole. Likely. But still, it doesn’t make total sense.”

  “No,” I agreed. “I mean, not to be too, you know… self-aggrandizing…”

  “Self-aggrandizing,” Darren said. “Good one.”

  “Thank you.” Thank God for cocaine and food. I marvelled that I could sound almost normal. Inside, I was howling in pain. “Anyway, really, aside from being a fuck-up and all, why me? I mean, you’re a musician. You’re – I mean, you were – close to Ginger. Musicians get up to all sorts of shit.”

  Darren shrugged. “Have you fucked anybody over recently?”

  “Other than myself?”

  “Obviously.” Darren did a couple of jumping jacks, one of his staying awake tactics.

  I thought. “No. Not other than a couple of pissant drug dealers to whom I owe pocket change.”

  “Pocket change?” Detective Miller was standing in the doorway, probably having stood outside listening to our whole conversation.

  “Arrest me,” I said, pouring myself more coffee. “You must have known I was an addict.”

  “How much money do you owe?” Miller wanted to know. He grabbed the last churro. Bastard.

  “Couple grand?” I said. I wasn’t sure. “About fifteen hundred to one guy, a few hundred to another. Nothing major.”

  “That’s relative,” Miller said.

  “It would cost more than that to plan this sort of shit, let alone carry it out,” I said. “Jesus. My guys are scumbag drug dealers, not evil criminal masterminds. This isn’t Pablo Escobar we’re talking about here.”

  Miller grabbed a little notebook out of his inside suit pocket and slid it, along with a pen, across the counter to me. “Their names, numbers, and anything else you can tell me about them.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Excuse me?” Darren said. “Why not, Danny?”

  Good question. “Because,” I said. “Because I know they didn’t have anything to do with this; it’s absolutely ludicrous. And I won’t rat these guys out.”

  “Honor amongst thieves?” Miller said, eating his churro calmly.

  “Fuck you, Detective,” I answered. “I’m a lot of things, but a thief isn’t one of them.” Inappropriate emotion, perhaps, but nothing made me more crazy than the world’s assumption that all addicts are depraved and degenerate.

  He shrugged. “You know what they say? About how you can tell an addict is lying?” He swallowed the last bite. He looked at Darren and me, who were staring at him. “His lips are moving. Or in this case, hers.”

  “Go fuck yourself, Detective. Or better yet, stop hanging around here and do your job. Find our nephews.”

  He stood up and grabbed his notebook, shoved it back into his pocket. “Are you telling me that you are not cooperating with this investigation?”

  “No,” I answered honestly. “I just don’t want to rat out my only sources. Toronto will be pretty dry when I get back there, if I do.”

  Miller started out of the room. “Wouldn’t that be a shame,” he said over his shoulder. Darren got up from his stool and gave me a sad, disappointed look, then followed Miller out of the room.

  Whereupon I took my coffee mug, poured the dregs into the sink, and smashed it as hard as I could
onto the tile floor. Marta came running.

  “Sorry, Marta,” I said to her. “Sorry.” She looked at me, then down at the floor.

  “You sad?” she asked me, getting the broom. I hadn’t moved.

  “Yes, Marta, I am sad,” I answered. “But now I’m something else. I’m mad.”

  I hugged her one more time, whispered another apology into her ear, and left the room.

  6

  I snuck back up to my room to grab my purse. Detectives Miller and French, along with two other men in plain clothes who I could only assume were also law enforcement of some variety, were talking very seriously with Darren. They didn’t seem to notice me pass the doorway on my way to the stairway. Upstairs, I grabbed my purse and checked my wallet. Great. Nothing but two credit cards that I just hadn’t gotten around to cutting up. When collection agencies are after you for non-payment, credit card companies tend not to let you use their cards much anymore. And my debit card. It was possible that my monthly support money from Jack had gone into the bank. I couldn’t remember the date. I could never remember the date.

  I definitely needed some cash. A girl needs her walking-around money, my mother used to say. Pin money, she called it. Except in this case, it was my money I was going to need to get around and start doing what I had to do. I couldn’t sit around here any longer, waiting for something to happen. Ginger had died at a motel called the Sunny Jim in Santa Ana. As far as I was concerned, this was the place to start. I knew there would be cops swarming the place. But if the woman who had kidnapped the boys was impersonating me, then I was going to jump in. Bad enough that Ginger had been killed. Bad enough? The worst thing I could imagine happening had happened, and in some moments I felt as though I was sleepwalking through a nightmare.

  But now Ginger’s boys had been taken, and my name had been used to do it. It had to be up to me. I owed it to Ginger. On a million different levels, I owed it to her. She loved me so much she had, if Fred was telling the truth, travelled some distance down the path I was on, to know what I was going through. To feel my pain better, to help me? I would never really know. Maybe when this was all over and if I didn’t make it through whatever happened, I would see Ginger again, and I would know everything. I hoped so. I hoped that would be the outcome, at that moment – find the boys, kill the people who were doing this, and whether in that act or from continuing on the trajectory I was on, I could die too. And just maybe Ginger would be there, waiting for me.