Broderick Tennyson was a police officer who got sent to jail. I didn’t ask what happened to him.
Samuel Gruen never did call me back.
* * *
Anne opened the door to her new apartment, a sublet in Santa Monica. Over her shoulder I could see most of the apartment: tiny living room, tiny kitchen and dining area, tiny hallway leading back to what was probably a tiny bedroom. She didn’t even greet me. She just stared at me for fifteen seconds. “How did you —”
Ah. It was going to be that kind of conversation. Where, if one thing seems weird, everything seems suspect.
“You told me the apartment number. Someone had propped open the front door. Happy housewarming.” I handed her the bottle of Shiraz Stevie had picked out for her.
It slowly seemed to dawn on Anne she should let me in, since she’d asked me to come here. “Come on in. Belongs to my friend Don. He’s headed to Europe for a long contract and needed to sublet this place for at least six months. Lucky timing for me.”
Lucky wasn’t the word I’d use. After my interaction with Sabo, Anne needed to get some work done on the house and had decided to remodel while she was at it. She wouldn’t live there for a while. If ever again.
“It’s a totally illegal sublet, so don’t tell the landlord.”
The living room was no more than three meters by two meters, and the main wall of the living room was taken up by a three-cushion sofa. There were a few framed prints by Ansel Adams on the facing wall. None of the decorations or furniture were Anne’s type of thing. The place must have come furnished. I took a seat on the far end of the sofa. “Anne, are you okay?”
Anne didn’t sit. She stood somewhat awkwardly by the wall decoration that marked the division between the living room and dining room. She pushed her glasses up on her nose. “With all the excitement recently—”
Oh, to hell with this. “Come on. Cut to the car chase.”
“Now I know the worst thing you’ve done for money,” she said.
I shook my head. “I wouldn’t do something like that for all the money in the world.”
“There’s so much information about people out there.”
Two sentences in and I already did not like where this was going.
“Then you...at my house. You know. With Sabo. You said it didn’t bother you whether he lived or died.”
“I remember.”
“You were telling the truth.”
“Anne, listen, I was—”
“You were telling the truth,” she said, loudly, right over me. “You didn’t care one way or the other. And I thought, where did she learn to be like that?”
Oh, fabulous. Psychoanalysis 101. Although in my case, most of my problems can in fact be traced back to my parents. “And what did your Google search tell you about that?”
She shook her head. “People can hide stuff from Google if they know how. Someone who can do the things you can do can probably hide stuff on the Internet. Or your sister could. She’s good with computers. I asked a guy to see if he could find anything. About you, I mean.”
“A guy,” I prompted.
“That private investigator. From the magazine. He never did help me with Sabo.”
She must have used her own funds and hired him on her own. She’d wanted some answers. “And?”
“So Drusilla Thorne isn’t your real name.”
“I would have told you that if you’d asked. Doesn’t even sound like a real name, does it?”
She took another drink. “You’ve never filed taxes. The only job you’ve ever had was in Vegas with Colin. You’ve never—”
“Is this going somewhere?”
“Your social security number is real and it was issued over a decade ago, but it was never used until last year.”
Until shortly before Stevie and I arrived in Las Vegas and I met Colin Abbott. True, all true.
“Who are you?” Anne said.
“My own sister calls me Drusilla. Don’t sweat the name.”
She smiled nervously and gave a short, repetitive, hysterical chuckle. “He couldn’t find anything about Stevie. There’s no one named Stevie Thorne. It’s like she’s never existed. She told me once that she’s British, but he couldn’t find any record that she’s ever entered this country.”
What kind of search had this man done? I wondered. “You checked our fingerprints.” The idea that she had come into my house—Gary’s guest house, whatever, the place where I was showing her hospitality—and taken things with Stevie’s fingerprints on them made me very angry. I could take care of myself. But she had brought my sister into this. “You did, didn’t you? You checked our fingerprints.” I allowed myself a few seconds to worry about the implications of our fingerprints showing up somewhere, and then I pushed it away. This wasn’t the time.
She didn’t answer.
“Oh, sorry, let me be more exact. What did he find when he checked our fingerprints?”
“Are you in witness protection?”
Would it make my life easier or harder to say “Yes”?
“No, Anne, I’m not with the Mafia. I have met some people in the Russian Mafiya, but they probably just want to kill me, so I avoid the Hollywood Farmer’s Market for a reason.”
“What?”
“Haven’t you noticed how many Russians live around Hollywood? Look, you can either trust me when I say who I am doesn’t matter and accept that you’ll never know, or we can be done being friends and you can accept that you’ll never know.” I shrugged. “I’m good with either decision.”
She stared at me through her cat’s-eye glasses and her jaw started to tremble. Anne was about to lose it.
I don’t let myself get too caught up in friendships for a reason. Generally the reason is I need to move to a new country and get a new name, but there are others as well. Know thyself.
“Why did you go with me?”
“To interview Courtney?” I asked.
“All of those things we’ve done recently. Like…Baldwin Park.”
“They were fun. Outside the norm of my everyday life. Spending time with my mate, Anne. And of course, you were paying me. That’s always a nice add-on.”
“Friday. At my house. I was so scared. Were you?”
There was absolutely no way I could answer that truthfully and make her understand that what scares me is pretty basic stuff, like losing someone I care about. “Yes,” I said. “That wasn’t reason enough to stop.”
“Would you do it for other people?”
Was this an interview? Was she working on a story? I stood up. “Anne, you asked me to come by and talk. I hope you’re recovering from what happened with Sabo. Tennyson. Whoever. But I’m not doing this.”
“Would you be willing to help a friend of mine with a problem she’s having?”
I opened the front door. “The answer is you’re not recovered, because you’ve clearly gone insane.”
Anne ran to me and grabbed my hand. “Have I ever mentioned my friend Maisie to you?”
I shook my head. “No and I don’t care.”
She clutched my hand. If she thought that was enough force to keep me from walking, she was sorely mistaken. “She needs help. Just one day of help, nothing big or illegal, and she’s willing to pay you. A lot.”
I removed my hand from her grip and took her by the shoulders. “Much as I appreciate your trying to help me financially —”
Anne blurted out a number. A rather large number. In dollars. How much Maisie was willing to pay me to help her. For one day.
“Come again?” I said.
She looked sheepish. “I may have exaggerated how much I was paying you.”
“Does ‘nothing big’ include murdering someone?” I asked. “Because she can hire some professionals for less than that.”
“Her ex-boyfriend has some of her stuff. He’s a total dick and she’s scared of him. She needs someone to go with her to get it. When he’s out of the house. I didn’t even mention half the thin
gs you can do and she’s like, Oh my God, can I talk to her?” Anne began to giggle. “You come with a great personal recommendation.”
Holy Zeus. That amount of money would pay for a lot of therapy. That would pay for a few months of an apartment for Stevie and me. That would make me less needy in my dealings with Roberto.
On the other hand, there wasn’t a chance there wasn’t something very, very dodgy about this setup. Few things are worth that much money.
Six of one, half a dozen of another. Keeps life interesting.
“Half up front,” I said. “Cash.”
* * *
About The Author
Diane Patterson has an MFA in Film from the University of Southern California and a BA in Linguistics from Stanford University. She’s been a shill in a magic act, a production assistant on a science-fiction TV show, and a tech writer at Apple. She lives with her family in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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Books By Diane Patterson
The Sound Of Footsteps
You Know Who I Am
Everybody Takes The Money
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Everybody Takes The Money (The Drusilla Thorne Mysteries) Page 25