Fatal Identity

by Joanne Fluke

  After parking her car in the faculty parking lot, she’d switch to her boots for the icy trek to the front entrance of the building. Once she was inside, she’d switch back to her shoes, and carry her boots to the rug in the closet of her classroom. This was Marcie’s winter morning ritual. When school was dismissed for the day, she had to do the same thing, in reverse, until she was back in her apartment again.

  Marcie sighed. Winter in Minnesota was exhausting. Just getting to work could be an ordeal. With her heavy wool coat, scarf, gloves, ski sweater, and moon boots, she carried around at least twenty extra pounds all winter long. No wonder every Minnesotan was delighted when spring finally rolled around. It was like finding a crash diet that worked overnight!

  As Marcie walked down the carpeted hallway of her apartment building, she tried not to clump in her heavy boots. Her next-door neighbor worked the late shift at Franklin Manufacturing, and she didn’t want to wake him. The Langers, in 103, were already up. Marcie could smell bacon frying, and she wondered how Bonnie Langer got the energy to cook breakfast every morning. She worked two jobs, and so did her husband, Tom. They were newlyweds, and they’d told her they were saving up to buy a house.

  As Marcie passed the end apartment, she heard Sue Ellen Dubinski’s baby crying. But no more than a second later, the crying abruptly ceased. Sue Ellen must have popped a bottle in his mouth. This was Sue Ellen’s sixth baby, and she’d told Marcie that motherhood was easy, once you got the hang of it. She could heat a bottle, feed the baby, and get the older kids off to school without ever really waking up.

  Marcie opened the door at the end of the hallway and went down three steps and across a small landing to the back door. Double doors were practically a necessity in Minnesota to keep out the winter cold.

  There was a small window in the back door, and Marcie lifted the curtain to peer out at the world outside. It was dark, the sun wouldn’t rise for another half hour, and the lights in the yard were still on. Icy snow pelted against the thermal windowpane, and Marcie shivered. It had snowed all night, and the winds were blowing even harder this morning. She was glad she lived only three and a half miles from Technical High School.

  Marcie turned up the collar of her coat and tugged her red stocking cap down over her ears. Then she pulled on her gloves and opened the heavy back door of her apartment building. A blast of frigid wind almost knocked her off her feet as she struggled down the walkway to the garage. There was an outdoor thermometer mounted on the trunk of the elm tree, but Marcie didn’t bother to look at the temperature. It was so cold her breath came out in white puffy clouds, and she knew the mercury would be huddled down near the base of the thermometer, too sluggish to peek out above zero.

  The door to her one-car garage stall was stuck, and Marcie had to give several hard yanks on the handle to free it. The metal door creaked as it rose upward, protesting the bitter weather. The space inside seemed slightly warmer, but perhaps it was only because she was out of the wind. Marcie opened the door to her old VW Beetle, and performed the first switch of the day, from boots to shoes.

  The old Bug started on the first try. It was a great car for the winters in Minnesota, heavy enough to plow through snowdrifts, and very stable on the icy roads. She backed carefully out of the garage, and groaned when she heard something snap. She’d forgotten to unplug the dipstick heater again.

  Marcie opened the driver’s door, switched to her boots, and got out to examine the heavy-duty electrical cord. She was lucky. The plug had pulled cleanly out of the socket, and the cord was still intact. She wrapped it around the bumper and pulled down the garage door. Then she switched to her shoes for the second time, turned on her windshield wipers to do battle with the blowing snow, and drove down the icy alley to the street.

  Her radio was tuned to KCLD, a local St. Cloud station, and Marcie sighed as she listened to the weather report. Another two inches of snow predicted, accompanied by winds from the northeast at fifteen to twenty miles an hour. The temperature was expected to drop to minus sixteen, a record low for this date. The announcer sounded much too cheerful as he reminded the “good folks out there in KCLD land” that if you added in the wind chill factor, the total would be a frigid thirty-seven degrees below zero!

  Marcie shivered and turned her heater on high. The Valentine’s Dance was scheduled for tonight, and she was one of the faculty chaperones. It wouldn’t be canceled. Minnesotans knew how to take bad weather in their stride, but the kids would be required to drive on the buddy system. Cars would team up, and if one driver got into trouble, the other would pick up the stranded passengers. Minnesota teenagers knew how lethal the freezing cold could be. With a wind chill factor of thirty-seven below, no one would take any foolish chances.

  As Marcie turned onto the Tenth Street bridge, she mentally reviewed the contents of her trunk. She had a twenty-pound bag of kitty litter for ballast, an extra can of gasoline, a spare windshield scraper, two wool blankets, an old Army parka she’d picked up at a yard sale, and a pair of fur-lined gloves. There was also an empty three-pound coffee can, which contained a candle and a pouch of waterproof matches, an effective way to warm the interior of a stalled car until help arrived. It was a standard Minnesota survival kit that wise motorists carried throughout the winter. All those items definitely took up space, but the trunk wasn’t used for much else in the winter months. If groceries were loaded into the trunk, soda cans would freeze and pop open, plastic milk cartons would expand and shatter, and a head of lettuce would shrivel up and turn as brown as a walnut.

  “This tragedy just in on our newswire.” The announcer no longer sounded cheerful. “Local authorities have just recovered the body of a university coed who attempted to walk home from a party shortly after midnight last night. Preliminary medical reports indicate that her left ankle was broken in several places, and she was apparently unable to crawl for help. Her name will be released, pending notification of relatives in Arizona.”

  Marcie pumped her brakes lightly and slowed to a careful stop, as the light on Fifth Avenue changed from green to yellow. Even though visitors from other states were cautioned about the severity of Minnesota winters, some of them disregarded those warnings. Just last winter, a businessman from Texas had suffered extreme frostbite while jogging in shorts in the early-morning cold. There were times when the temperature was very deceiving, especially when there was no wind. On a still, sunny day, fifteen below zero might feel almost the same as fifteen above. But there was a huge, thirty-degree difference. Any carelessly exposed patch of skin could be flash-frozen in seconds.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sakes!” Marcie spotted a familiar figure walking gingerly down a rut in the road, and rolled down her window. “Donna Hunstiger! Where are your boots?”

  “I left them in my locker, Miss Calder.”

  Donna looked very sheepish, and Marcie did her best not to laugh. Donna’s mother would have had a coronary if she’d known her daughter was walking to school in tennis shoes. “Climb in, Donna. I’ll give you a ride.”

  “Gee, thanks, Miss Calder.” Donna slushed her way to the passenger door and got into the car. “I’ve got another pair of shoes in my locker, honest. These are my old ones.”

  “Don’t worry, Donna. I won’t squeal on you. Put your feet up by the heat vent.” Marcie showed her where, and pulled out into the street again. “You got a ride home with Dennis yesterday, and it wasn’t snowing then. You completely forgot you left your boots in your locker, until you got ready for school this morning.”

  “That’s right! But . . . how did you know?”

  Marcie laughed. “I did the same thing when I was in high school, but my sister saved me.”

  “Is that your famous sister, Miss Calder?”

  “That’s right.” Marcie noticed the rapt expression on Donna’s face, and she knew her story would be all over school by the end of first period. “Mercedes said I could use her boots, if I pulled her to school on the sled.”

  “Gee, Miss C
alder! Mercedes sure was smart!”

  Marcie nodded and pulled over to the curb to let Donna out at the entrance of the school. As she drove around to the faculty parking lot, she laughed out loud. Mercedes had been smart, much smarter than Marcie had realized at the time. Not only had she gotten a sled ride to school, she’d also made Marcie promise to do the dishes for a month!

  By the time fourth period rolled around, Marcie was exhausted. Mr. Metcalf, the principal, had asked Marcie’s art classes to decorate the school gymnasium for the dance. Her first-period sophomore class had spent the entire hour making giant, poster board cutouts of hearts and cupids, and sticking them up on the walls. The freshmen in second period had strung ropes of red and white streamers to form a canopy over the dance floor, and her third-period juniors had set up the tables and decorated them somewhat artistically with bouquets of silver hearts and red candles that couldn’t be lit because of fire regulations. Now Marcie’s fourth-period seniors were decorating the platform where the Valentine King and Queen would hold court.

  “Careful, Dennis!” Marcie winced as Dennis Berger almost sideswiped Tina Jensen with a six-foot-wide roll of silver paper. “Jim and Gary? Move the two thrones to the side. Now, Dennis . . . put the roll down right where the thrones go, and tape the end to the floor. Then trail it down the stairs, and let Tina and Debby tape it to the steps.”

  “You mean right here?”

  Dennis looked confused and Marcie hurried over to help. She’d just finished helping him tape the end to the floor with a roll of gaffer’s tape, when the loudspeaker crackled into life.

  “Miss Calder?” It was Harriet Scharf’s voice, Mr. Metcalf’s secretary. “Please report to the principal’s office immediately. There’s a telephone call for you.”

  Marcie frowned. A telephone call? How odd. On the few occasions someone had called her at work, Harriet had always taken the number and informed the caller that she’d return the call during lunch or her free period.

  “Donna?” Marcie motioned to Donna Huntstiger. “I have to go to the office, and I’m putting you in charge. Make sure Dennis doesn’t tear that paper. It’s our last roll. And when you finish the platform, start putting up the backdrops we painted last week.”

  Donna gave her a big smile. “Okay, Miss Calder. We know what to do. You don’t have to worry.”

  “Right.” Marcie walked to the door and turned back for one last look. Tina and Debby were tossing the roll of gaffer’s tape back and forth, and the end was flapping. If one of them missed, which was almost a certainty, the strip of tape could land sticky side down and pull the silver backing off the paper. “Donna? There’s another roll of tape under the basketball hoop. Give it to Debby so the girls each have one of their own.”

  The hallway was deserted with the exception of Tim Meister, who was hanging up his coat in his locker. He flashed her his excuse slip and tried to smile, but his grin was lopsided.

  “You’ve been to the dentist?”

  Tim nodded and mumbled something. Marcie managed to catch the words Novocain and speech class. She certainly hoped this wasn’t Tim’s day to give a speech!

  As Marcie hurried down the corridor past a series of classrooms, she heard fragments of the class activities inside. Tom Jenkins, the math teacher, was demonstrating incomplete quadratic equations, and his whole class looked stumped. Next door, in American History, Dale Goetz was mapping out the path of the Confederate Army in the Civil War. The business class was typing, under the watchful eye of Shirley Whitford, and Lois Weick’s English class was reading Julius Caesar aloud.

  The blackout shade was pulled on the science lab door, and Marcie knew that Alvin Tideman was showing another movie. It sounded like Our Mr. Sun. Al had several standbys for the days when he couldn’t face another lecture. Our Mr. Sun, directed by Frank Capra, was the best of them. There was also Phun With Phylums, The Amazing Miss Molecule, and A Conversation With Your Pituitary.

  The principal’s office was at the end of the corridor, and Marcie opened the glass door and stepped inside. Harriet Scharf was stationed at the long table next to the office Xerox machine, her tight gray curls bobbing as she stapled packets of papers together.

  “Hello, Marcie.” Harriet turned and gave her a nervous smile. “Use my desk. Your call’s on line two. It’s your sister’s lawyer, and he said it was urgent.”

  “Thank you, Harriet.” Marcie sat down behind Harriet’s desk, and took a deep breath. Why would her sister’s lawyer be calling her? She hoped nothing was wrong. Her hand was shaking slightly as she punched the blinking button for line two. “Hello. This is Marcella Calder.”

  Marcie listened carefully, but nothing he said seemed to make any sense. She felt dizzy and weak, and there were swirling black spots in front of her eyes. She gripped the receiver so tightly, her knuckles were white, but she couldn’t seem to stop shaking. Sam Abrams. She remembered meeting him once, a tall man with brown hair thinning on top, and the voice of a nineteenth-century orator. But now his voice sounded faint and tinny, as if it had stretched thinner with each passing mile of telephone wire, until it arrived in St. Cloud, Minnesota, a mere shadow of its former self.

  His voice asked a question, the same question over and over. But there was no way she could answer. She looked up at Harriet, who was staring at her, and held out the phone.

  Dimly, she heard Harriet’s responses. Yes, they’d make all the arrangements. Someone would drive her home and help her pack. They’d personally see to it that she got on the plane. It was the least they could do, under the circumstances.

  And then the phone was back in its cradle, even though she hadn’t seen Harriet place it there. And Mr. Metcalf was bringing her a cup of coffee, and awkwardly patting her shoulder. It had to be a dream. Principals didn’t bring coffee to teachers. It just wasn’t done.

  Someone helped her into her coat and boots, and guided her across the parking lot. Not her car, and it felt like her boots were on the wrong feet, but none of that mattered. And then she was inside her apartment, sitting on the couch with Shirley Whitford, while Harriet packed her suitcases.

  The two-hour drive to the airport seemed to take only seconds, and then the stewardess was buckling her seatbelt. Moments later, she heard the pilot announce that they were flying over the Grand Canyon. There was a dinner tray on the pull-down table with roast beef, a baked potato, and some vegetables she didn’t recognize. The clear plastic glass of red wine looked like blood, and she was glad when the stewardess took it away.

  And then she was walking down a carpeted ramp, and Sam Abrams was there to hug her tightly. Only then, as the tears poured down her cheeks, did she finally believe that Mercedes was dead.

  CHAPTER 3

  The restaurant in the center of the airport complex was beautifully decorated in her favorite colors, but Marcie barely noticed. She felt as if someone had wrapped her in a shroud of gauze, dulling every one of her senses. She’d nodded mutely when Sam Abrams had suggested they have a bite to eat while they waited for her luggage to arrive. His voice filtered through her cocoon of gauze, explaining that her bags had been delayed at the airport in Minneapolis, and they were coming in on a later flight. He’d taken her arm to guide her along the path to the restaurant, but she’d barely felt his touch. And when he’d commented on the heady scent of the night-blooming jasmine that bordered the steps, she’d caught only a faint, faraway scent. Insulation was one of the defense mechanisms. Marcie remembered that phrase from one of her college psychology classes. Withdrawal was one way of coping with things that were just too painful to accept.

  Marcie watched as the waitress poured her coffee, a rich brown stream from a silver pot, filling the bone white cup. She wasn’t sure why she’d ordered coffee, since she’d preferred tea, but it was the first thing that had popped into her mind when the waitress had come to take their order. Perhaps it was an unconscious wish to bring Mercedes back.

  Mercedes had been a coffee drinker, even in high school. When they�
�d double-dated, she’d insisted they go to Perkins in the Pines, where the waitresses always left a full carafe on the table, and refilled it whenever it was empty. Mercedes had claimed that coffee was a gift of the gods, since it had no calories and lots of caffeine. And just a year ago, when Marcie had come out to visit, she’d noticed that Mercedes drank at least two pots a day, steaming hot and freshly made. Rosa, her housekeeper, bought a special kind of coffee bean, French roast or espresso, and ground it fresh for each pot she made.

  Marcie took a sip of her coffee and sighed. She hadn’t liked it when Mercedes was alive, and she wasn’t sure she liked it any better now.

  “It’s terrible, isn’t it?”

  The smile on Sam’s face was sympathetic, and Marcie nodded, even though she wasn’t sure whether he was referring to the coffee, or what had happened to Mercedes. It didn’t really matter. Everything was terrible, now that Mercedes was dead.

  Her hand was shaking, and she set her cup down very carefully in its matching saucer. Then she raised her eyes to look at Sam. The layers of gauze were lifting, and she wasn’t sure she wanted that to happen. With the return of reality, would come the pain of loss.

  Sam reached out and took her hands, holding them in both of his. Warmth began to come back to her fingertips, and Marcie sighed. Everything was coming back into focus, and she could see him clearly now. He was tall, but not quite as thin as she’d remembered him, and his curly brown hair was beginning to recede. Marcie wasn’t certain how she knew, but she was sure that Sam’s receding hairline didn’t bother him in the slightest. He looked strong and capable, the image of a successful lawyer, a man that most people would immediately trust. And his eyes were the same brown as her coffee, deep and dark, with natural warmth.