Follow the Dotted Line

by Nancy Hersage

  The ebbing barbiturate began to mix with the stomach acid Andy’s eldest child always induced.

  “This is over the line! Mitch has really done it this time!”

  “It’s not, Mitch. Believe me. It’s The Impresario. And it’s just for a couple of weeks, Andy. She told me to tell you he’s safe and warm.”

  “Safe and warm? What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know. But Mitch swore to me that Harley’s not in any danger. And he wants you to know . . .” Lorna held up her hands in surrender before finishing the sentence. She hated being the messenger when Mitch was the sender and Andy the receiver. “That Harley will return a better man.”

  With that bit of news, Lorna had inadvertently placed the olive into the

  mood-altering cocktail currently floating around in Andy’s body chemistry. Shaken and stirred, the dam broke, as a full-fledged flood of tears and pent-up emotion gushed forth.

  “Oh, Lorna, my life is so out of control,” Andy croaked between sobs. “I feel like I can’t do anything right. I just wanted to, you know, give the kids some closure about their father. And I wanted to help Pam with Harley. But nothing’s turned out the way I thought it would. I’ve screwed up everything.”

  Post-traumatic trunk syndrome, Lorna concluded. Andy was not normally a blubberer.

  “Why don’t I give you that hug now, Andrea?” Lorna said, urging the blubberer into her arms. Andy did as she was told. “And after you’ve had a good cry, I’ll go out and get us a Reuben sandwich.”

  Chapter 33

  The Non-answer to Your Unasked Question

  The question of who had thought to call the IRS about Tilda Trivette troubled Andy for the rest of her stay in the hospital and the weeks that followed. When she finally hit on the answer, it seemed so simple. And so obvious. And yet she had no official way to confirm that her suspicion was correct. Today, however, Andy was presented with a unique opportunity to find out who the whistleblower had been. Asking someone to violate the laws governing tax privacy was probably a dumb idea, but Andy had been trafficking in dumb ideas for months, so why stop now?

  “This is kind of fun, isn’t it?” Lil asked.

  Andy looked at her elder daughter a bit surprised. “Driving to the airport? You really don’t get out much, do you?”

  “Not the airport. The funeral. I mean, everyone getting together like this.”

  Andy groaned. “If you like the four horsemen of the apocalypse all in one room at the same time.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. I just find that having all of my children together, as adults, is a little—I don’t know. Daunting.”

  The 405 near Santa Monica was cramming up at the intersection with the 10. Lil slammed on the brakes and started up again slowly, all without missing a beat in the conversation.

  “Daunting? Really? Come on now, Mom. You’re the one who raised us.”

  “Which only makes it more painful. I become the butt of your jokes, Lil. Some of it is deserved, I grant you. But none of you—well, except maybe Ian—knows when to stop. And he’s laughing louder than anyone else.”

  The six veins of cars in the southbound lanes were now so clotted that traffic was barely moving.

  “We don’t really make fun of you all that much, do we?” Lil asked.

  “Yes, you do.”

  “So you’re pouting about it already?”

  “I am pre-pouting, hoping to finish before the festivities begin.”

  “Good. I’m proud of you. And this is going to be fun,” Lil reassured her mother. “Wait until you hear what’s on Mitch’s memorial mix. It’ll knock your socks off. And he’s making enchiladas for the wake.”

  “Wake?”

  “Or shiva. Or repass. Whatever. For the after-party. The boys can’t wait. Graham says Mitch’s green salsa alone is worth the trip from Edinburgh.”

  The midday sun bounced off the grooves on the concrete freeway, along with the chrome on the cars, giving Southern California its uniquely grimy sparkle. Andy sat back and enjoyed the glistening urban jungle, delighted to live where she lived and secretly euphoric to have all of her children back home and together again. Right on cue, whatever was clogging the artery in front of them broke loose for no apparent reason, and they were suddenly doing 60 mph, approaching Century Boulevard.

  “What terminal?” Lil wanted to know.

  “American,” Andy instructed. “Odd, isn’t it?”

  “What’s odd?”

  “That Dad’s the one bringing us all together.”

  Lil reached over and squeezed her mother’s hand. “One of the nicest things he’s done since he left us. We are great kids,” Lil pronounced, with the familiar and obnoxious confidence that Andy so loved in her offspring. “Too bad he missed his chance to see just how fucking-tastic we turned out.”

  “Don’t be so modest, honey. It doesn’t suit you.”

  Lil grinned impishly and pulled into the parking ramp.

  Annabelle Sakar looked very small and dark and nearly porcelain, as she walked into the LAX arrivals area. On the other hand, she felt wiry and warm and downright effervescent, as she held Andy in her grip of greeting.

  Good god, thought Andy, Ian’s found himself a Bengali version of his siblings; there’s a jetpack right behind this hug!

  Born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Annabelle immigrated to Atlanta with her parents when she was three. A good student and even better soccer player in high school, she’d been recruited by Cornell, where she abandoned soccer for field hockey and accumulated very impressive grades. After graduation, she took a job with the IRS and was rapidly making her way up the bureaucratic mountain, with stops in various field offices along the way, currently in Nashville.

  “Hello, hello!” Annabelle bubbled, as she moved from Andy to Lil. “How wonderful to meet you. Ian’s told me so much—well, actually, he hasn’t told me nearly enough about you. Any of you. Which, of course, is why I’m here. Along with the funeral, of course. Should we get my bags?”

  Andy was momentarily speechless. Lil, as always, held her own.

  “Not until we know what to call you,” Lil said. “Anna? Annabelle? Annie?”

  “Didi. Call me Didi. That’s what my parents call me. It’s Bengali for sister.”

  “Are you offering us a term of endearment already?” Lil asked, with a twinkle.

  “Of course,” Annabelle smiled.

  “Then this must be serious,” Lil cheered.

  For the first time, Annabelle looked off balance. “Hasn’t Ian told you it’s serious?”

  Andy reached out and took the young woman’s hand and started toward the carousel. “Oh, yes,” Andy assured her. “As only Ian could.”

  Andy’s younger son was scheduled to arrive later that day on the band bus in preparation for another concert, this time at the Greek Theater in the Hollywood Hills. He was the only family member still outstanding. Andy knew that once she and Annabelle and Lil arrived at Mitch’s house, she would have to fight for a chance to get a word in edgewise with her future daughter-in-law, so she needed to make her move soon. As the car approached the intersection with the 10 on its return trip to Santa Monica, Andy couldn’t contain herself.

  “Didi,” she began, “I want to ask you something.”

  Annabelle was sitting in the front seat and turned to look back at Andy.

  “About your job,” Andy continued.

  The exuberance on Annabelle’s face immediately dissipated.

  “It’s nothing, really,” Andy said, trying to minimize things. “Just something I wondered.”

  “About the tax code?” she said, flatly.

  “Sort of.”

  “I am an auditor, you know.” It sounded vaguely like a warning.

  “Yes. Ian told me.”

  “And the privacy laws at the IRS are very strict. I can not discuss his case, you understand.”

  “I do. And I’m not really asking about his case.”

  “That’s good,” sh
e said. “Very good.”

  Andy had never been adept at treading lightly. She felt like she was walking into this wearing army boots. But she didn’t know what else to do. “It’s more about his father. That is, his father’s wife.”

  “Ah, yes,” said the auditor. “Yes. Yes.”

  “You know about her then?” Andy asked.

  “I do because Ian told me.”

  “So I wonder if you could tell me something about that case.”

  The young woman said nothing. Her chocolate eyes had turned uncomfortably professional.

  Andy knew the answer, but she asked anyway. “Can you tell me something about that case, Didi?”

  “No.”

  The silence was beyond awkward. It was the kind of silence that sounded like it might threaten their future relationship.

  Lil looked in the rearview mirror and sensed that her mother was about to open her mouth again. “That’s enough, Mom. It’s time to take ‘no’ for an answer.”

  “Okay,” said Andy, retreating into her seat and offering up an embarrassed smile. “Sorry.” She looked out the window, hoping Annabelle would turn away, too. Instead, the brown eyes held their position.

  “Now,” said the auditor, “since you didn’t ask, I am quite happy to give you the non-answer to your unasked question.”

  Andy panned back toward the front seat. “You are?”

  “Yes. And the answer is, it was me.”

  “I knew it! I knew it,” said Andy.

  “And that is, of course, all I can’t tell you about the IRS investigation.”

  “Of course,” said Andy, satisfied she’d gotten her answer.

  “But there’s always the matter of the FBI inquiry,” continued the Cornell grad, still sounding officious. “And since I am not, at this time, privy to or part of that investigation, I am free to gossip at will about what they’re up to.”

  “You’re kidding,” said Andy, excitedly.

  “Not in the least!” bubbled Didi. “I’ve been dying to fill you in.”

  Andy liked this girl. A lot!

  “To begin with, it’s a jurisdictional free-for-all,” Annabelle continued. “Fiji. The Bahamas. The Canaries. You can imagine the bureaucracies involved in putting the case together. But word is that you did an incredible job tracking Tilda. And they can’t believe you broke into her cabin to photograph her passport.”

  Lil’s countenance was now back in the rearview mirror. “You didn’t mention that little detail to any of us, Mom.”

  “Not really that important, Lilly,” Andy said, trying to get off the subject as fast as possible.

  “Au contraire,” said Didi. “It’s what broke the serial killer thing wide open. Your mom is a woman of hidden talents, Lil”

  “The operative word being hidden,” Lil pointed out.

  “If Andy hadn’t wondered about what happened to your father,” Annabelle said, “we would never have known about any of this. And Tilda would be sitting on a beach in Mexico sipping mojitos right now.”

  “Mexico?” asked Andy.

  “The plane ticket they found in the glove compartment of Tilda’s car was to Puerto Vallarta. We think she might have been heading to a little village up the coast.”

  “Why there?”

  “She had a reservation, from earlier in the summer, at a small hotel in Sayulita.”

  Andy had never heard of it. “Sayulita?”

  “It’s a tiny village off the beaten path and right on the water.”

  Water, thought Andy. She sat up like one of the furry sentinels on Meerkat Manor. Right on the water. Fiji. The Bahamas. The Canaries. And Sayulita. Four husbands. Four destinations. Maybe Tilda wasn’t just making an escape. Maybe she was on her way back to Mexico to pick up her latest death certificate, so she could lay claim to the cabin in Big Bear. Had she killed Mark in Sayulita?

  By the time Lil pulled into Mitch’s driveway, Ian had arrived, and the guest list was complete; everyone was there. It was the moment they’d all been waiting for, and now that it had arrived, Andy couldn’t wait to leave. After her discussion with Annabelle, she had convinced herself that Tilda’s plane ticket to Mexico was the first genuine leading indicator of what had happened to Mark. She knew, at last, where to find the body—or ashes—of her ex-husband, along with his elusive death certificate. And she was going to go there and get her hands on the truth before her children went through with this funeral-in-absentia. They deserved to know what happened to their father, and by god, she was going tell them, whether they liked it or not.

  “Oh, no. You’re not going to get Dad’s death certificate without telling us what this is all about,” announced Sam, summing up the general reaction to Andy’s vague request to ‘go to Mexico and finally finish the job she’d started two months ago.’ “We want the full story. All this prevaricating of yours is over, Mom.”

  “I don’t have time to explain it now,” said Andy, prevaricating on cue.

  “Well, you’ve had months to explain it and haven’t bothered,” said Lil, sounding like the Mother-of-All-Mothers. “This time we’re not letting you out of this house until you fess up to exactly what you’ve been doing.”

  Andy hated it when her children issued what they called a ‘kid pro quo,’ refusing to give her what she wanted until they got what they wanted.

  “Spill it,” demanded Mitch.

  Thirty minutes later, Andy was seated with her four children and assorted partners at the dining room table. Mitch had seamlessly rustled up an assortment of chips and crackers for the pow-wow, while Lil provided a guacamole dip she’d been making for everyone since she was ten. Coming together over a bowl of fried tortillas and mashed avocados was one of the scattered family’s rare rituals, and it bound the siblings to one another in a way their DNA could not. Mystified, they listened in unprecedented silence, as Andy recounted the unvarnished details she had glossed over since the arrival of the Styrofoam burger box. When she finished, she sat back in her chair and waited for the verdict.

  “I can’t believe you did all that without telling us,” Mitch began, with predictable indignation.

  “Yes, you can,” Andy said, justifying herself, weary of all the explaining she had to do. “It’s exactly the kind of thing any of you would have done without telling me.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Ian whispered to himself.

  “Exception noted,” Andy agreed. “But Didi would have done it.”

  “Your mother’s right,” proclaimed Annabelle. “I would have done exactly what she did!”

  “The point is,” Andy ventured, “I want to finish what I started, and I’d like to do it before we have the actual funeral.”

  “But it’s Friday,” said Mitch. “You’re not going to get a death certificate or anything else before we have the ceremony on Sunday morning.”

  “I could reschedule the funeral cast for later in the day, if you think you need more time,” said Melissa, who was wearing a gold choke chain and matching gold studs on her fingerless gloves. “No problem, really.”

  “The cast?” asked Andy’s Scottish son-in-law.

  Samantha leaned over and whispered in her husband’s ear. “Everything in my family is performance art, Graham. You just have to go with it.”

  “No, please, don’t reschedule anything, Melissa,” Andy said. “I’m sure I’ll be back by Sunday.”

  “Mom,” Mitch pronounced, soberly, “you’re not listening. It’s the weekend. You’re not going to get any documentation—”

  “I’m not looking for documentation!” Andy shot back, with more firepower than she realized she was carrying. “I’m looking for closure. I want to know what happened to your father. And I don’t need a death certificate to find out.” The words were barreling out like automatic rounds. “If Mark drowned in Sayulita, somebody in that little town will know about it. I just want to go down there and ask!” She could feel each of her children take an emotional step backward. Unnecessarily, she fired again. “Is that so ha
rd to understand?”

  For a horrifying moment, Andy feared she might burst into tears. Fortunately, for all of them, she didn’t. She removed her finger from the verbal trigger. “I’ll be back by Sunday,” she repeated, with a tentative calm. “I promise.”

  In the stunned hush that followed her outburst, Andy left the dining room and headed for the shelter of the nearest bathroom, where she called Lorna.

  “Can you get me a ticket from LAX to Puerto Vallarta ASAP?” she whispered, after telling Lorna about Tilda’s reservation at the little hotel in Sayulita.

  “I’m doing it as we speak,” said the accountant. “You really think she killed him in Mexico?”

  “An out of the way village? Right on the water? Don’t you?”

  Then, without any of the enthusiasm that had accompanied their discovery of the other locations where Tilda’s victims had died, Lorna sighed, “Yes. I do, Andrea. It certainly fits her M.O.”

  For some reason, Lorna’s matter-of-fact answer made Andy feel unbearably sad. Not angry or indignant. Just sad. “And can you help me figure out how to get from the airport to Sayulita?” she finally asked.

  Lorna’s fingers worked the keyboard. “TripAdvisor says to take a taxi. Fifty bucks.” With that, the typing suddenly stopped, as Lorna called an unexpected halt to their forward momentum. “Andy . . .”

  “What is it?”

  “You want me to go with you? You know, for moral support?”

  “No,” said Andy, feeling surprisingly grateful for the offer. And then wondering why none of her children had offered. “I want to do this by myself.”

  “You don’t speak Spanish.”

  “I know. But it’s a tourist area. I’ll find someone who speaks English. I’ll start at the hotel.”

  “Okay. Good,” Lorna said, without her usual conviction.

  “What are you thinking?” Andy asked.

  “This is not going to be pleasant. We both know that. We’ve known it from the beginning.” Lorna paused, just long enough to let the inevitable outcome sink in. “Are you sure you’re up to it?”

  Andy wasn’t sure. But she was sure it was time to put an end to all this. She would do this one last thing, and then she would let it go.