Keeping Secrets in Seattle

by Brooke Moss

  Betsy elbowed her. “Hey. We’re on a covert operation. You’re gonna blow our cover.”

  “It’s okay. The Von Longorials apparently want to live an anonymous life.” I held out my coffee mug for the waitress to fill. “We were trying to find someone’s family. She is marrying my best friend, and I was trying to—”

  “Catch her in the act?” The waitress gave me a sly wink.

  “Yeah.” I blushed. “It’s sort of crazy.”

  “Not really.” She poured coffee in each of our mugs. “I mean, if your best friend is marrying a liar, you’re doing him a favor.”

  I slapped my hand down on the countertop. “That’s right.”

  Betsy took a sip of coffee. “Regardless, we can’t find any trace of her around here, so we’re not helping anyone out today.”

  The waitress wrinkled her nose. “You sure she’s from here?”

  “Absolutely sure she is. I mean, she said that she went to South Summit high school.”

  “No kidding?” She put the coffeepot back on the burner.

  Betsy’s eyes lit up. “Did you go there?”

  The waitress adjusted her blond ponytail. “I did.”

  “You did?” Kim grinned at me.

  “Sure did.” The waitress moved to grab a plate under the hot light. “I’m Hannah. So what’s her name?”

  “The family name is Von Longorial. Er, Long, I guess.” When no sign of recognition crossed her face, I added, “They supposedly own most of the waste management facilities in the area.”

  Hannah looked at us with a perplexed expression. “Doesn’t the city own them?”

  “Could the city rent or lease the buildings and lots from a private land owner?” Betsy asked.

  “I don’t know…possibly. Hey, Hal?” Hannah cut a slice of pie and put it on a plate for an old man at the other end of the counter. The old man reluctantly raised his eyes off his paper. “Who owns the waste facilities?”

  “The state owns the main waste management facilities. But the private one? Portland Waste? Well, the city bought those properties a few years ago. Before that, they were leasing them from some Portland bigwig. What was his name?” The old man spoke in a raspy smoker’s voice, and the front of his shirt was streaked with oil. “West. It was Blakely West and his family. That guy who owns stock in some damn computer company, and now his family owns half the city. Damn Republicans.” He went back to his paper, and started in on his pie.

  Kim raised her water glass at Hal. “Hear, hear.”

  I focused back on Hannah. “So now the city owns all the facilities?”

  She shrugged. “If that’s what Hal says, I would trust him. He’s worked on darn near every truck in this city, including the garbage trucks.”

  Betsy craned to look at Hal again. “Excuse me? Hal?”

  He looked up with a scowl and a speck of pie on his lip. “What?”

  “You work on the city’s garbage trucks?”

  “Most of them. City’s got a contract with my boss.”

  My eyes widened. “Then do you know anybody by the name of Von Longorial. Er, Long?”

  “Von…long….go…what?”

  “Von Longorial,” I pronounced slowly. “But that’s her stage name.”

  “Ain’t nobody driving a garbage truck around here with that crazy ass name.” He went back to his paper with a grunt. “Stage name. Huh.”

  I looked back at Hannah, my heart sinking. “I think I’m looking in the wrong place. Maybe I misheard where she went to school.”

  Hannah went to check on some tables, and Kim began messing with my hair, murmuring, “I think you should sit in my chair this week and let me lighten your hair a bit more. You’ll look hot if you go to a cool white blond for the wedding.”

  “Heaven forbid I mess up Alicia’s wedding photos with my crazy hair.” My voice was lackluster.

  “Did you say Alicia?” Hannah came back around the counter.

  “Yeah.” I took a sip of my coffee.

  Hannah covered her mouth and cracked up. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Alicia Long? I should’ve put two and two together.”

  Kim and Betsy both sat up straight. “What? Why?” Kim asked.

  Hannah folded her arms across her chest. “Because everyone around here knows her.”

  “How?”

  Hannah’s smile grew tight. “Alicia Long, or Von Longorial, or whatever she calls herself these days, is a celebrity in her own mind.”

  “Give us the dirt on her,” Betsy demanded.

  “First off, her name isn’t Ah-lees-ee-uh. It’s Uh-lee-shuh.” Hannah washed the counter as she spoke. “She changed the pronunciation when we were in high school. Started making the teachers call her that during her sophomore year. And her last name isn’t even Von…long…whatever the crap she calls it…”

  “Von Longorial,” I said.

  “Yeah, what’s up with that stupid name?” Hannah laughed dryly and wiped a napkin dispenser. “That didn’t change that until she graduated and moved away. When she was here, she was plain old Alicia Long. Her parents are Joyce and Roy Long.”

  “Roy Long?” Hal grumbled from behind his paper.

  “You know him, Hal?” Hannah grabbed a stack of paper napkins and began rolling them around clusters of silverware.

  “Yeah. Good guy. Drives truck twelve. Doesn’t talk much, but he’s not bad.”

  Kim gasped. “Dude, he’s a garbage man?”

  Hal frowned at her. “There somethin’ wrong with that?”

  I looked up at him. “No. Not at all. I’m just…surprised.”

  Hannah glanced back at us. “See? That’s Alicia Long. She was a year ahead of me in school. She got a few local modeling jobs during our senior year and decided to chase her big modeling dreams right out of town. She’s been doing local stuff in Seattle for the last few years, because nobody in L.A. or New York wanted her.”

  My eyes were bugging out of my head. “What? Are you kidding?”

  Hannah nodded and found our plates, which had been set under the heat lamp behind her. She placed them in front of each of us before moving on to collect the ketchup and mustard bottles. “I guess she got a rich old man to be her boyfriend a couple of years ago, and he paid to fly her to both cities for a few months so she could get signed. But there were no takers. Rumor has it, she cursed out an agent in one of the agencies, and they blacklisted her in a bunch of L.A. agencies. Alicia always was a real bitch.”

  “Sounds like our girl.” Kim dug into her grilled cheese sandwich.

  “Yeah, and I heard that when she went to New York, she told all of the agents that she wouldn’t work for less than what the big-time models earn.” Hannah laughed. “She said she was the next big face, and that they would regret it if they didn’t represent her. But from what I can tell, her modeling career hasn’t exactly taken off in Seattle, because my friend Tracy saw her in a restaurant there. She’s a waitress.”

  “Hostess.” My voice came out hoarse.

  “Right,” Hannah quipped. “Anyway, it won’t matter, eventually.”

  “Why not?” Betsy dipped one of her fries into some ketchup.

  “Because she just has to settle down with the right rich guy, and then her working days are over. That’s always been her plan.” Hannah refilled Hal’s coffee cup. “She’s never been shy about telling everyone around here that she was going to marry up.”

  I nearly choked. “Who says shit like that?”

  “Alicia Long does.” Hannah gave us a pointed look. “She was always very forthright with her plan. And she had the beauty to make some poor schmuck fall for it.”

  “But what about the volunteering, and the soup kitchens, and the reading to the elderly in her grandma’s nursing home?” I put my head in my hands. It was confirmed. I was officially right about Alicia all along.

  Hannah gave us a sideways glance. “I was the head of the humanitarian committee in school, and Alicia Long did not lower herself to do charity. And her grandma lives w
ith her parents.”

  Kim paused, her sandwich an inch from her mouth. “What made her so rotten?”

  “Alicia always resented her folks for being poor. Well, they weren’t exactly poor, by my standards. My parents are poor. My dad hurt his back at work in the paper mill ten years ago, and he’s been unemployed ever since.” Hannah went back to wiping down the countertop. “Alicia’s parents have a house over on Dakota Avenue, and other than needing a new front porch, it’s a decent place. Alicia was always bent out of shape because they didn’t buy her a car when she turned sixteen. She had to borrow their minivan, just like we all had to do when we were kids. But Alicia punished her parents for it.”

  “How so?” I asked.

  “Well, she stopped letting them come to school functions. She called them ‘Joyce’ and ‘Roy’ for a while, too, and made them say they were her aunt and uncle. Her dad was injured in the Army way before he got married, so he walks with a limp. She used to make fun of him behind his back when he came to any school function.”

  Betsy grimaced. “She was the exact type of girl I hated in high school.”

  “I know, right?” Hannah topped off her coffee cup. “Alicia called him ‘gimpy.’ And she hated the fact that her dad was a garbage man. She used to say he stank like trash all the time, even after he showered.”

  I felt a pang of sympathy for Roy Long. The poor guy was hauling trash every day, then had to come home to an ungrateful teenage Alicia. I pushed my plate away. “I can’t believe Gabe is marrying someone like this.”

  Hannah grimaced. “I would be upset if my best friend were marrying her, too. She’s a gold digger. Big time.”

  “That’s just it. Why is she going after Gabe?” I rubbed my eyes. “I mean, I guess his parents make a decent living. And Missy and Darcy and her husband make good money, too.”

  Kim looked at me. “Gabe’s bringing in bank for someone our age.”

  Hannah refilled our coffee cups. “If it were me, which, of course, it’s not…I would warn him. Anyone who is marrying Alicia Long probably doesn’t have a clue what he’s getting himself into.”

  We finished our lunch, thanked Hannah, and set off to find Dakota Avenue. We drove up the street slowly until we’d finally spotted the name “Long” on a mailbox. An older redheaded woman, every bit as beautiful as Alicia, was loading groceries out of a dented sedan parked at the curb of a faded yellow house, which was in desperate need of some masonry work on the front porch.

  “That’s enough. Let’s go home,” I told the girls after watching Joyce Long tromping back and forth with bags for a few minutes.

  We found the highway again easily and headed north toward home. There was a part of me that wanted to be wrong about Alicia. I couldn’t bear the thought of Gabe taking the vows with someone so vile and self-obsessed that she would make up an entire existence just to impress people.

  The brick in my gut melted into a bubbling cauldron of anger. Gabe needed to know the truth about Alicia, and it was my job to tell him. I’d loved him for damn near twenty years; I wasn’t about to let him throw his life away now.

  “You okay?” Kim called from the front seat.

  I looked at her and shrugged weakly. “I just need to talk to Gabe.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  September 16, 2003

  Flashes of those ugly twenty minutes haunt me. While I have breakfast with Curtis before he leaves for work. While my mother is on the phone with her clients. While I watch for Gabe to walk past my house on his way home from school. I start to shake. My knees buckle, and I break out in a cold sweat. My mom and Curtis would stay up all night, arguing about whether or not I should see a shrink. That pisses me off. I don’t need one. I need my life back. I need to sleep a full night without waking up screaming. Hell, maybe I do need a shrink…

  Gabe let all of my calls go to voice mail for a full week after the almost-kiss at his apartment.

  Beep.

  “Hi, it’s me. Gimme a call back. Later.”

  Beep.

  “Hi, it’s Violet. Hey, I need to talk to you. Call me.”

  Beep.

  “Me again. I need to speak to you. Gimme a call as soon as you get this message.”

  Beep.

  “It’s me. Call me, all right?”

  Beep.

  “Dude. You never ignore my calls. Call me back; it’s important.”

  Beep.

  “Call me back. There’s been a terrible accident. Please…”

  Beep.

  “Okay, okay, there was no accident. But I really do need you to call me. It’s important.”

  Beep.

  “Seriously. Call me back. I’m not calling about what you think I’m calling about, okay? That almost-kiss in your kitchen is already forgotten. So…call me back. Soon.”

  Beep.

  “You suck. You suck suck, suck, and then suck some more.”

  Frankly put, by the time seven days passed, I was spitting fire. The fact that we almost kissed shouldn’t have shaken him up. It wasn’t like Gabe to be so rattled by something like that. He’d kissed more than his fair share of women over the years.

  My frustration with him was starting to leak into other aspects of my life. Lizzy, my boss at The Funky Fox, sent me home early when I mistakenly gave a client eggplant lowlights instead of royal blue. When I tried to explain my way out of the mistake, Lizzy had just patted my head. “Go home and cry it out, kiddo. No man is worth this much thought.”

  Kim and Betsy tried to cheer me up as best they could, but no amount of pedicures and reality TV could perk me up. It was impossible for me to forget everything that was weighing on my mind: Gabe’s fast approaching wedding; the fact that I would soon be seeing Cameron Hakes again; that delicious almost-kiss in Gabe’s kitchen; my relationship with Landon that seemed to be on hyperspeed; and, of course, all of Alicia’s lies and deceit. I was completely overwhelmed.

  Even the ever-cheerful Landon took notice of my darkening mood as we sat across from each other at an Indian restaurant.

  “What’s your deal?” he asked. “You’ve been sort of distracted the last few days.”

  “No deal.” I popped another bite of naan, the Indian flatbread we were dipping in sauce, into my mouth.

  He just laughed. “You’re a terrible liar.”

  My cheeks burned. I thought I was doing a much better job than that. “Whatever. How’s your paneer?”

  He held out a bite for me to try. “You’ve been this way since that day you hung out with Gabe. What’s wrong? Talk to me.”

  I put down my fork and looked at Landon. “Okay…so you know that Gabe and I have been best friends for years and years, right?”

  “Right.” He smiled pleasantly. “Hey, when am I going to get to meet this Gabe?”

  I swallowed my mouthful of food. “Why?”

  Landon’s mouth pulled down. “I want to get to know this guy you spend so much time with. I need to know if I should let you keep hanging out with him.”

  Red flag, red flag. “I…um…what?”

  “He’s obviously important to you. I should get to know him.”

  “Well, I guess you’ll have to get to know him soon, then.” It felt weird to talk about Landon and Gabe meeting. Talk about a collision of two worlds that I purposefully kept separate.

  His brows lifted. “Well, since I’m in love with his BFF, maybe we should all go to dinner sometime?”

  “Right.” My voice was weary.

  “We could make it a double date. You and me, Gabe and…what’s her name?”

  I choked on my bite. “Alicia.”

  “That’s it.” Landon took a swig of his drink. “We could all get to know each other better.”

  “Sure.” I was getting nauseated.

  He looked at me strangely. “What’s up?”

  “I’m not exactly his fiancée’s biggest fan. And I don’t think she’s a fan of me, either.”

  “Why’s that?”

  I took a deep bre
ath. “Um, well, I don’t like her for a multitude of reasons, but I think she dislikes me because she’s jealous.”

  Landon just chuckled. “Jealous of what?”

  “Of Gabe and me.”

  “But, you and Gabe are just buddies.” He tore off a piece of naan.

  “Right. Exactly.” I glanced down. “Except that we were more than just friends at one time.”

  Landon froze, mid-bite. “Huh?”

  I was having a hard time looking him in the eye. “Um, yeah. We, you know, dated for a while.”

  Landon’s tone deepened. “Gabe? The one who’s wedding you’re going to be in?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So you’re going to be the best man for your ex-boyfriend?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And that’s why this Alicia chick hates you?”

  “Well, I’m assuming so.”

  “And you don’t find this at all strange?”

  “What, that she hates me? Yes, it’s strange.”

  “No, that you’re the best man in your ex-boyfriend’s wedding.”

  “Um, no. Well, it’s a little unorthodox, but I think the simple black dress will look good, and…”

  “No, I mean that you are this close to your ex. Close enough to be his best man.”

  “He was my friend long before we ever tried to date.”

  “So you’ve said.” Landon looked down at his plate for a minute.

  “It’s not strange. We met when we were six years old. Our families are neighbors. We grew up together.”

  He wiped his mouth with a napkin, his movements jerky. “But you also dated?”

  I nodded.

  “So when did you two date?”

  It felt like I was confessing to something dark and wrong. “When we were sixteen.”

  He looked relieved. “I was afraid it was recently.”

  I let a burst of air out of my lungs. “No. It was when we were teenagers.”

  “Well…” Landon watched me for a second, then went on. “How serious was it?”

  I grappled for a beat. I didn’t want to lie to Landon, but I also didn’t want to scare him away. I didn’t want to rock the boat any more than I already had.

  “I guess…somewhat semi-serious…but not really serious at all…kind of.” I rubbed my eyes and sighed.