by Susan Kandel
“Yes,” I said, handing the license back. “This is what I’m talking about. This is Anita.”
Dorothy shook her head. “This isn’t Anita.”
“I don’t understand. Who is it, then?”
“This is Cece.”
I felt my stomach lurch. “Cece Caruso?”
Dorothy nodded. “You know her?”
I sighed. “I am her.”
Chapter 34
Cece Caruso turned up one day like the proverbial bad penny.
She was a tall, willowy blonde in some kind of crazy wraparound kimono dress. Big eyes. Looked like a movie star.
Yeah, Dorothy said, remembering. She was some kind of actress.
It had been close to nine o’clock in the morning. Dorothy was late to work. She was in a hurry. She’d been reprimanded twice the week before. Her job was on the line.
Not to worry, Cece said. I’m going to make it worth your while.
She worked for a Hollywood studio.
Flashed a fancy business card.
Said they were shooting a movie in the area, and her job was to scout locations.
Cece needed a house just like Dorothy’s. A house with a white picket fence and an American flag and a couple of bikes in the driveway and a rose garden that could maybe use a little pruning.
The house was where the family lived. Dad worked for the city and Mom stayed home with the kids and baked cookies. On weekends, the neighbors came over for barbecues. Then Dad got laid off and Mom stopped baking. Dad started drinking. And late one night, after a delicious pot roast, he waited until everyone was fast asleep, knocked back a fifth of Scotch, stumbled out to the garage, and blew his brains out.
But that was getting ahead of ourselves, Cece said. She promised Dorothy a copy of the script. It had Oscar written all over it. Then she pulled out a contract. Her boss would be by the next day. He’d pick up the paperwork and go over any questions Dorothy might have.
They were going to pay Dorothy ten thousand dollars for the first week, and an extra five for every day after that. Cece anticipated it would be twelve to fifteen days’ shooting time, meaning Dorothy was going to get close to fifty thousand dollars.
Fifty thousand dollars? Dorothy asked where to sign.
Cece laughed, then asked if she could peek inside for a minute. Dorothy invited Cece into her home. And that was when she did it. Found something. Some piece of mail or some old bill or some loose check or something with Dorothy’s private information on it. Dorothy still didn’t know what it was. But whatever it was, Cece found it and took it and tore Dorothy’s life to pieces. Not that Dorothy knew that yet. That was back when she still thought she was lucky.
Cece’s boss showed up the next day to pick up the signed contract. He was a handsome fellow. Said that he liked what he saw. That Cece had picked the perfect place. He shook Dorothy’s hand and promised the check would arrive by messenger within the week.
The check never arrived.
Dorothy called the number he left, but it was not in service. Dorothy looked up the production company, but couldn’t find it. She figured they’d found another house with a white picket fence and roses that maybe needed pruning and promptly forgot about her Hollywood dream.
The trouble started six months later.
When the phone rings at three in the morning, it’s never good news.
It was somebody from a collections agency. They said Dorothy’s account with some bank she’d never heard of was four months in arrears. If she didn’t immediately make a payment of $9700, they were proceeding with legal action. When Dorothy tried to protest, the man on the other end of the phone started yelling, then hung up.
When Dorothy arrived at work later that morning, she had a note on her desk saying her supervisor wanted to see her. Dorothy was nervous. The supervisor had a bad temper. Her name was Mary Alice. Mary Alice said that they were doing a routine check on their employees and had learned that Dorothy had several delinquent accounts, a judgment against her, and a warrant out for her arrest. Mary Alice fired Dorothy on the spot.
On the way home, Dorothy stopped for lunch. After she’d finished her burger, she put down a credit card. The waitress took it with a smile, then came back frowning. The card was declined. So were the rest of them.
Dorothy paid cash.
When she got home, she had four messages on her machine. The first was from the collections agency. The second was from the bank. The third was from the mortgage company. The fourth was from the police.
Dorothy put her head in her hands, and wound her fingers around her long silvery hair. She couldn’t go on.
She didn’t have to. I handed her a tissue and put my arm around her. I was starting to understand.
Which meant the nightmare was almost over.
Chapter 35
Dorothy lived in a trailer park not far from Sugar Beet Amusement Park. On the way there, we stopped at the grocery store and picked up steaks, baking potatoes, lettuce, and a bottle of Cabernet.
“Special occasion?” asked the checker, taking the hundred-dollar bill out of my hand.
“Could be,” I said.
“Somebody’s birthday? Don’t see no candles.”
“Better,” said Dorothy. “The day of reckoning.”
The checker handed me a bag and sixty-seven cents’ change. It’d better be the day of reckoning. I was down to eighteen hundred dollars. If I’d been thinking, I would’ve taken that forty from Mystery.
Dorothy’s trailer had flower boxes in the windows, wall-to-wall carpeting, and wireless Internet access.
“The resident manager set it up,” Dorothy said, flipping through her mail. “She’s constantly on eBay. Collects owls. Owl salt and pepper shakers, owl cuckoo clocks, owl brooches. I have no idea where she keeps them. When I lost my house, I threw everything away. Didn’t stop until I’d filled ninety-seven garbage bags. Jesus. Don’t you hate junk mail?” After tearing the whole stack in half, she reconsidered and threw it up into the air. “Look. It’s confetti.”
Somebody was in a party mood.
“You can sit over here.” Dorothy picked a folding chair off a hook on the wall and carried it over to a wooden desk wedged into the narrow space opposite the bathroom. A daisy had been carved into the desk with red ballpoint pen. “I’ll be right back.”
The tiny space was a miracle of organization. There were twin Murphy beds, a Lilliputian kitchen unit with a pop-up Formica table, and a leather loveseat with swiveling armrests that doubled as TV trays.
“Do you take anything in your tea?” Dorothy asked.
“Black is fine.” I pulled Anita’s list out of my purse and laid it down next to the computer monitor.
There were eighteen names and phone numbers besides Dorothy’s. Ten of them had the same area code: 785.
Dorothy’s screensaver was a mystical gazebo, complete with unicorns, fairies, and tinkling wind chimes. I killed the fantasy and opened Safari.
Area code 785 stretches from the Colorado state line on the west to the Missouri state line on the east, but does not include the Kansas City metropolitan area. The largest city covered by the area code is the state capital of Topeka.
Kansas.
That must’ve been where this had all started.
Kansas?
Something rang a bell.
My best friend, Lael, grew up outside Topeka, but that wasn’t it.
Kim Novak’s character in Vertigo is from Salina, but that wasn’t it, either.
It would come to me.
Back to the list. I decided to start at the top.
Elaine Harris, from New Haven, Connecticut.
I typed the name into Google.
After reading through most of the thirty-plus hits, I pieced together Elaine’s story from articles in the New Haven Advocate, the New Haven Independent, and the Yale Daily News.
Elaine had met him at the mall. Her mother had always warned her not to speak to strangers, but this man was different. Soft-s
poken. Professional-looking. He gave her his card. It was on nice paper stock. Heavy. Expensive.
As one of the principals of A-1 Celebrity Management, he was always on the lookout for girls with that special something, and Elaine had it in spades.
He bought her lunch. They talked about everything under the sun. He told her she was not only beautiful, but also smart. The world, he said, was her oyster. Right there and then, he prepared a contract for her to sign. Exclusive representation for a year.
Elaine spent much of her savings having her hair straightened and her lips plumped. Then she had head shots taken and sent them to a post-office box, as instructed.
Two days later, he called. He’d gotten her an agent and a paper towel commercial. She was going to be a young housewife whose marriage is saved by double-ply double rolls. All he needed to process her advance was a social security number.
Schuyler Kramer of Sandy Point, Maryland, met him while she was walking her dog, Lucifer, an uncommonly attractive Afghan hound.
He told Schuyler he ran a company that represented animal actors, who were always greatly in demand. Had she ever thought of registering Lucifer? She could make a tremendous amount of money.
From Schuyler, he got a bank account number.
Joe Schwartz, from Tampa, Florida, was an aspiring science fiction author. His hero was Philip K. Dick.
There were two of them this time.
Joe met them at a reading he gave at the community center. A good-looking man and a nondescript woman. Dishwater blonde. Big, staring eyes. That’s how he’d described her to the police.
During the Q&A, the woman had asked a lot of questions—how he’d gotten started, what inspired him, where and when he did his best writing. The man with her was quiet, but took copious notes.
Afterwards, they approached the podium. Asked Joe if they could take him out for a drink. Said they ran a publishing house based in the Midwest, and were interested in putting out a small run of his short stories.
The man and the woman accompanied Joe back to his apartment. They had another drink while Joe printed out his life’s work. The woman asked if she could use the bathroom. Joe and the man stood at the door, chatting, while she freshened up.
After they left, Joe waited to hear from them. When he didn’t, he assumed they hadn’t liked the stories after all.
The call from the collections agency came eight months later.
I looked up from the monitor, aghast.
Who could do such things?
Taking people into their confidence.
Preying on their vanity.
Leaving them with nothing.
Never worrying about the trail they’d left behind because it would be cold by the time anybody could put two and two together.
“More tea, Cece?” Dorothy asked.
I rubbed my eyes. “I’m fine. The steaks smell great.”
“They’ll be ready in ten minutes.” Dorothy had draped an oilskin cloth over the pop-up table and was setting it with plastic utensils. “I’m sorry about this. It’s going to be hard to cut with plastic.”
“It isn’t easy to start over,” I said. “I admire you.”
“Drink your wine,” she said, bringing it over.
“Here’s to.” I clinked my glass against hers.
Then I typed in the words, “identity theft.”
Identity theft and fraud.
Identity theft prevention.
Surviving identity theft.
Fighting identity theft.
The last one was a news item.
In New Mexico, Wells Fargo Bank was inviting people to bring up to fifty pounds of paper documents to their local branch for free shredding.
I suddenly remembered the stack of preapproved credit-card solicitations on Anita’s desk drawer. She’d gone through other people’s trash to get them. No wonder she had all those pairs of rubber gloves under her sink.
And the change-of-address forms. When she got sick of going through other people’s trash, she’d simply rerouted their mail.
Anita was guilty. That seemed fairly evident now. But she wasn’t working alone. There were at least two of them.
She wanted out.
He wanted to keep things as they were.
Maybe she blackmailed him, thinking it was her only option. Maybe not. In either case, he decided to kill her. But he didn’t want anybody asking questions. He had to make it look like an accident. For that, he needed a witness.
It was dark now. I looked out the window. I couldn’t see anything except my reflection in the glass.
I was the witness.
But why me?
Why had Anita been using my name? Was she the only one? Were there other Ceces out there wreaking havoc on innocent people’s lives?
“Anybody here?” somebody called out.
Dorothy’s daughter was home. She resembled her mother, except for the hair. Hers was straight out of a bottle, a glossy blue-black, and hung down on either side of her pale face. She had a Bettie Page tattoo on her forearm. The girl took one look at me, then turned to Dorothy. “We rich now, Mom?”
“Erin,” Dorothy began.
“Didn’t think so.” Erin tossed her purse on the couch.
“I’m afraid you don’t understand,” I said.
“Oh, I understand plenty.” She pulled a Coke out of the refrigerator. “Nice steaks. She buy those for you?”
“It’s not what—”
Erin grabbed her mother by the shoulders. “You said you were going to teach her a lesson. And now she’s in our house, and on your fucking computer! It’s happening all over again. Wake up, Dorothy! You’re not in Kansas anymore!”
Kansas.
Kansas.
Jesus.
Now I remembered.
Chapter 36
I leapt to my feet.
Dorothy frowned. “Everything alright, Cece?”
“Can I use your phone for a minute?” I asked. “It’s a California number.”
She was tossing the salad. “But we’re just about to eat.”
“I don’t want any croutons, Mom,” Erin whined. “They make me sick, as you very well know.”
“It’ll only take a minute,” I said impatiently. “It’s extremely important.”
“Give Cece the phone,” Dorothy said to her daughter.
Erin grudgingly handed it to me, and I dialed Annie’s number. When she picked up, I said, “It’s me.”
I could hear the relief in her voice. “Mom? Thank God. Somebody named Detective McQueen called me today. She wanted to know if I’d heard from you. Where are you? What is going on?”
I had to keep it short. “Is Vincent home?”
“Who’s Vincent?” Erin hissed.
“Quiet!” her mother commanded.
“Are you in trouble, Mom?” Annie asked.
“Everything’s going to be fine if I can just talk to Vincent. Please. Then I have to hang up.”
I heard her call him into the room.
“Cece?”
“Vincent. I have a quick question. Remember the other day when you emailed me the images that were on my phone?”
“Yeah.”
“You only sent me seven. I think there were more.”
“There were. I downloaded them onto my computer. But you only wanted the nature shots. For your Christmas cards.”
“I need all of them. Right now.” I looked at Dorothy. She wiped her hands on her apron, then scribbled her email address on a piece of paper and handed it to me.
“No problem,” Vincent said. “I’m sitting at my computer. Tell me where to send them.”
That was one of the many things I loved about my son-in-law. He didn’t ask a lot of questions. Not because he wasn’t curious, but because he respected a person’s privacy.
A minute later, the pictures turned up.
A dry hillside.
Scattered leaves.
An abandoned truck parked on the trail.
The Ho
llywood sign.
The Hollywood sign again.
More dead leaves.
Dirt.
Those I’d already seen.
I was looking for the two pictures I’d taken the previous night.
In the parking lot of the Orpheum, right after Bachelor Number One had rear-ended my Camry.
And here they were.
A blurred shot of the back of my car.
And a crystal-clear shot of the front of his.
There were California plates on his black Mercedes. Just what you’d expect from an agent who grew up on a cul-de-sac in Tarzana and swore he’d never been anywhere near a prairie.
But the frame surrounding the license plate told a different story.
I stared at it for a minute, just to be sure.
It wasn’t from California, the Golden State.
It was from the Sunflower State, the place Dorothy is desperate to return to after her ill-fated trip to the Land of Oz.
Dorothy wanted to go home.
Home was Kansas.
Chapter 37
I got back to the motel at nine. Roy was in the front office playing solitaire.
“Boo!” I said.
He looked up from his cards and glared at me.
“Just getting into the holiday spirit,” I said. “Halloween is tomorrow, after all.”
Roy pointed to a sorry-looking candy dish filled with Necco wafers, Smarties, and those unspeakable circus peanuts. “Help yourself, but watch out for razor blades.”
I gave him a look. “Key, please.”
“Have you decided when you’re checking out?” Roy put a five of hearts on top of a six of spades.
“Tomorrow. Can I get my key?”
“I heard you the first time.” He turned around and plucked the key to Room 10 off its hook.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Thank you, Roy.”
“Sorry, Roy.” I headed for the door.
“Anita.”
I turned around.
“You sure you wouldn’t like to stay a little longer? Just to talk?” He pulled a stick of gum out of his pocket, and folded it in half and then into quarters before popping it into his mouth.