Dead Ringer

by Ken Douglas

He found the house without trouble. Striker always gave precise directions. He pulled a pair of surgical gloves out of the inside pocket of his bomber jacket, put them on. A light knock on the door. Calm, not even a foot tap to the music in his head. Bruce Springsteen again.

  No answer to the knock. Maybe she was hard of hearing. He tried the bell. The door opened. She was old, like Striker said.

  “Can I help you?” She had a thin lipped smile, happy grey eyes. She probably never had a bad day in her life. Well, she was about to have one now.

  “Yeah.” Horace stepped into her, pushed her back into the house, closed the door. He had the Beretta in her face before she had a chance to think. “Where’s the children?”

  “They’re not home.” She had panic in her eyes now.

  “Here’s the deal, lady. You swallow these pills and if you’re dead before they come back from wherever they are, they get to live.”

  “Why?”

  “My boss needs to distract your son.”

  “How do I know you won’t harm them?” she said. Horace had to admire her. She was worried about her grandkids, not a care for her own safety. She was a plucky lady. She wouldn’t whine.

  “There’s no reason to do the kids. Besides, alive they’re a bigger distraction, but I’ll do them if we don’t get on with it.” He held up the bottle.

  “How long will it take?”

  “It’ll be quick.” Horace didn’t know what the pills were. But Striker had said she’d be out of it fast.

  She stared at the bottle. For a second he thought she was going to resist. “Don’t scream.”

  “I wasn’t going to.” She held out her hand, took the bottle, opened it. She swallowed the pills.

  “If it means anything, I don’t feel good about this,” he said.

  “How could you?” She backed up, sat on a wing chair that was covered with a quilt. Kind of like something Ma might have made.

  Horace took a seat on a sofa that looked like it had been around forever, curly wooden legs, some kind of Frenchy design, he didn’t know about that kind of stuff. He looked around the room. It was a grandma’s house, no denying that.

  “What’s your name?” she said.

  “Why you want to know?”

  “In case someone asks.”

  “Who would?”

  “God.”

  “No such thing.” Horace shook his head. She was as nuts as Ma, trying to lay a guilt trip on him like that.

  “Then tell me your name.” She was starting to nod off. Those pills were fast.

  “No.”

  “It doesn’t matter. He’ll know you when it’s your time.” She closed her eyes. Her head slumped to the side.

  In a hurry now, Horace found the bathroom, put the plug in the bath, ran the tap. He adjusted the water to warm. It had to be done right, it was the details that would keep it a suicide and not murder. No one about to kill herself would climb into a cold bath.

  Back in the living room, the woman was breathing like she was in a deep sleep. He glanced around the room. The old lady was a neat freak. He walked around the house, checking it out. Everything had a place, even the shoes were lined up in a row in the closet. In the hallway he found a hamper. Now he knew how to do it.

  “Gonna handle you with care,” he said, and he meant it. She deserved that much. He undid the buttons on the woman’s blouse and pulled it off. She was wearing a camisole under it and he pulled it over her head. Her bra was next. Old lady tits, Horace tried not to look. Then he pulled off her shoes, jeans and panties.

  “Gotta make it look real,” he muttered. He put the shoes in the closet, lining them up like the others there. Then he dropped the clothes in the hamper before he picked her up and carried her into the bath.

  He laid her out in the tub. She looked so peaceful. He ran his eyes over her old lady body, tits all but gone now, waist he could wrap his hands around, legs no more than sticks. But she was made up nice, hair cut short, styled neat, professional. A lady with money, class.

  He fished the blades out of his shirt pocket, took the cellophane off. He picked up a wet hand, used her thumb to slide out a blade. Squeezing the blade between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand, he drew the blade down the inside of her right arm, from wrist to elbow. Then he repeated the procedure with the other hand, letting the blade fall into the tub when he was finished.

  She was breathing peacefully as she bled out.

  It looked real.

  He opened the medicine cabinet above the sink and put the blade dispenser on the top shelf, next to a bottle of aspirin. A neat lady like this wouldn’t leave them lying around for the kids to get hurt with.

  An hour later, he took off. The sky had cleared and he could see Long Beach Harbor from over Catalina. He popped Mozart back into the player. The French horn he loved so much filled the cockpit, but it brought him no peace. He took it out, shoved in the Springsteen.

  “Born in the USA!” He’d be hearing that damned song for the rest of his life.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Wake up!”

  Maggie opened her eyes, met Gaylen Geer’s stare. “What time is it?”

  “I didn’t think you knew who I was.” Gaylen put her hands to her hips. “How come you never said anything?”

  Maggie rubbed sleep out of her eyes. From her position on the couch, Gaylen looked formidable. She pushed herself up. “How long have I been asleep?”

  “Three or four hours. We kept checking on you. You must have had a hard night, because thunder wouldn’t have wakened you.”

  “You wanna sit?” Maggie said.

  “Sure.” Gaylen took one of the chairs opposite the sofa. Maggie had admired Gaylen Geer since high school and now she was sitting right across from her. And Gaylen thought Maggie was Margo Kenyon. What further proof did she need? Margo had been her twin, no matter what that driver’s license said.

  “Are you going to keep staring at me?” Gaylen said.

  Maggie didn’t know what to say. She was still in kind of a sleep fog. Should she tell her? Could she not? Just a short time ago, she’d been thinking about stepping into her dead twin’s life. Was her own life so bad she’d leap at the chance to get out of it? No, but it was a chance to keep her baby. She’d been weak, about to get rid of it. As Margo she could keep it, would be able to support it. But she couldn’t do it alone. If Gaylen could help.

  “Come on, say something.”

  “Margo’s dead.”

  “What?” Gaylen threw her hands to her breasts as if she’d been struck with a mallet.

  “I’m her sister. Her twin.” Maggie clasped her hands in her lap and her thumbs went to war with themselves. She was powerless to do anything about it.

  “I didn’t know she had a twin sister.” Gaylen barely got the words out.

  “She didn’t either.”

  “How?”

  Maggie told her everything, starting from when she saw Virgil and Horace in the Safeway and finishing with her seeing the story about her own murder on television.

  “So, you were going to take over her life, like a pod person from the Body Snatchers?” Gaylen said after Maggie had finished.

  “No, not initially. I didn’t know she was dead till after I got here. Not till I saw on television that I’d been murdered.” She paused. “I thought about how Jasmine was afraid of her father and the idea sort of came to me as I was dialing 911.”

  “So, why tell me?”

  “I used to worship you. I wanted to be like you. You’ve got that strength most of us are missing, so I guess I thought if you helped me, maybe I could pull it off.”

  “I think you might have taken me a little too seriously. I know I did.”

  “You helped change history. Things are better because of you.”

  “What you’re asking is wrong.”

  “How well did you know Margo? Can you tell me about her?”

  “Didn’t you just hear me say it’s wrong?”

  “If you don’t
help me, that horrible man’s going to take away that frightened child. She’s my family now. I can’t allow that, so I’m asking for your help.” She paused again, met Gaylen’s eyes straight on.

  “I can’t do it,” Gaylen said.

  “Maybe I’m asking the wrong person. The Gaylen Geer I used to see on television all those years ago, the one who said there was supposed to be a brass ring for everybody, regardless of color or sex, that Gaylen Geer would help me.”

  “That Gaylen Geer’s gone.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I’m Gay Sullivan now.”

  “You’ll always be Gaylen Geer. You can’t change what you are.”

  “I did.” A whisper. Gaylen broke eye contact, looked down at the carpet. She seemed ashamed.

  Maggie decided to back off a little. “I promised Jasmine I wouldn’t let that man take her, ever. I need your help to keep that promise.”

  “Oh my God!” Gay said.

  “What?”

  “Margo’s car. It’s in the lot. She’d been gone for a week. I’ve been watching Jazz. She must’ve come home last night.”

  “There were groceries in the kitchen when I got here. I put them away.”

  “This is scary,” Gay said.

  “The killer must have grabbed her here. Then dumped her behind a bar I’d been in earlier. That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I just thought of something.”

  “What?” Maggie said.

  “She saw a murder.” Gay told her about Frankie Fujimori and how Margo was in the store when he was shot and about how Margo’s ex was Fujimori’s lawyer and how he was there too, hoping to catch Margo harassing the child killer, so he could get a court order against her.

  “The guy sounds like a sleazeball.”

  “He was. The world’s better off with him dead.”

  “I was talking about the ex, Bruce Kenyon.”

  “Oh. Yeah, well I guess he is too.” Then Gay told her about the long-haired cops, the albino and the Mexican, and how the girls called the albino one the Ghost. “They had Margo up at the Long Beach PD looking at pictures. She was supposed to go again, but in typical Margo fashion, she left Jazz with me and took off for a week without telling them a thing.”

  “Typical Margo fashion?”

  “She didn’t want to find the killer’s picture in any book, so she took off on a writer’s retreat. That’s why she left, it’s just like her. Out of sight out of mind.”

  “Was she afraid of the killer?”

  “Heck no. She thought he’d performed a public service. No way would she have turned him in. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d seen the shooter’s photo in one of those mug books and passed over it.” Gay clutched her hands together in her lap. “I think the killer saw you in that store and thought you were Margo. I think he followed you to that bar, then chased you on the beach. When you got away, he came here hoping to catch you and got the real Margo instead. Then he killed her and dumped her behind that bar, God knows why. But I think that’s what happened. Frankie Fujimori’s killer got her, so she wouldn’t talk.”

  “But you said she never would.”

  “The killer didn’t know that.”

  “Those guys in the Safeway thought they knew who I was. One said he’d seen my picture in the paper. He was slow. But the other one, the guy who looked like a ferret. He wasn’t slow and he had a gun.”

  “Still want to take over her life?” Gay said.

  “I promised Jasmine,” Maggie said.

  “I still think it’s wrong and it’s probably not safe. I mean if the killer finds out Margo’s still around, still breathing, so to speak. He’s going to try again.”

  “He’s going to try again anyway, because I saw him in the supermarket, then on the beach. If I come forward as Maggie, he’ll know I can identify him. So I think we should leave him out of the equation, at least for now.”

  “Even if she would’ve died of natural causes, even if the killer wasn’t out there, it’d still be wrong,” Gay said, but not with her earlier conviction. She was wavering. “If you want to care for Jazz, then you should come forward and fight for her.”

  “Do you really think they’re going to give a child to an aunt who popped out of the woodwork the day her mother was killed? I don’t think so.”

  “What would you tell Jazz?” Gaylen was whispering, but Maggie saw something in her eyes. A spark.

  “The truth.”

  “No way could she keep it secret. She tells my daughter everything. Now you’ve got four people in on your secret and two of them are eight years old. How long till they slip and tell someone else? If you to do this, I don’t think you can tell Jazz, at least not yet.”

  “So, you’ll help me?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “But you will. How well did you know her?”

  “As well as anyone, I suppose, but she was a hard person to get to know. Most of what I could tell you, I’ve learned through Jazz. She practically lives at my place.”

  “Then I’m going to have to tell the children.”

  “Children?”

  “If Jazz is going to tell your daughter anyway, she might as well hear it from me.”

  “You wouldn’t tell Jazz to keep it from her?”

  “I couldn’t ask her to do that. Not if they’re as close as you say.”

  “You’ve got that bump on your head. You could tell them you had an accident and you’ve got some kind of amnesia that makes you forget stuff. You could say you need their help remembering. You could even tell them if they slipped up and told anyone, the police would think you’re not able to take care of Jazz and they’d take her away to live with her father. That way if they do screw up and blab, you won’t have the cops descending on you.”

  “No one’s going to believe a story like that.”

  “The girls will. They’re eight. It’ll be a grand secret adventure.”

  “Thank you,” Maggie said.

  “For what?”

  “For helping me.”

  “I think I’m doing it as much for me as for you. I kind of miss the old Gaylen. The last ten years have been happy, except for the bad time when I lost my husband. He was a big Irish man with a smile to die for and a heart the size of Chicago. But he was a man, you see, and he was white. I was the ultimate feminist, what would the world have thought if Gaylen Geer got married? A black guy would have been bad enough, but a white guy? Nobody would have listened to me anymore. So to avoid the humiliation, I dropped off the face of the earth. At first I hated myself. It was like I was selling out, but then one day I found out I was pregnant and a whole new world opened up.

  “Were you gay?”

  “Is that what you thought?”

  “No, I saw a photo of you last night. Harvey Milk had his arm around you. You had that Afro.”

  “Ah, Harvey. I haven’t thought about him in a long time. All he ever wanted was for everybody to get along.” She sighed. “God, he had that dopey smile. So courageous. Most people don’t know.” She sighed again. “I was just a kid, but I believed in Harvey and what he stood for.”

  “So, what do you do now?”

  “I work at a beauty shop up on Main Street. My sister-in-law and I run it. Own it actually. None of the customers know about me. I’m just one of the women they give a ten dollar tip to if I do a good job on their head.”

  “I’ve never tipped ten dollars in my life.”

  “Then you haven’t been to Huntington Heads.”

  “Huntington Heads?” Maggie laughed. It felt good.

  “Best head job on the Coast. That’s our motto.” Gay laughed too.

  “Then you could cut my hair. And I bet you’ve got black hair dye in your medicine cabinet.” Maggie stopped laughing.

  “Why would you want to cut your hair?”

  “Anybody who sees me as Margo will notice the haircut and a dye job, but anybody from my old life might pass over me. They think I’m dead, so if they s
ee a woman with short dark hair, they might not give her a second look, might not take the trouble to notice the resemblance.”

  “I’ll get my stuff.” Gay got up. “And I’ll order a pizza for the girls. That and a video should keep them entertained for a few hours.”

  “So, what don’t you remember?” Jasmine was sitting in one of the rattan chairs next to Sonya. Both girls stared with saucer eyes, blue and brown pools of wonder at Maggie’s new hair. The once shoulder length blonde hair was now cropped close and it was as black as Gay’s.

  “I don’t know,” Maggie said. “But I remember you and Sonya and Gay. That’s enough for starters, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah,” Jasmine said. “I guess so. Then, “Your eyebrows look funny.”

  “What?”

  “Your hair’s too dark for them.”

  “Eyebrow pencil,” Gay said.

  “Good idea,” Maggie said.

  “So, I understand how you can forget stuff because of the bump on your head, but why’d you change your hair?” Jasmine said.

  “I needed a change,” Maggie said. “Besides, I think it makes me look younger, more like a college student, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe.”

  “No, it does,” Maggie said. The shock of the hair cut and the new color was wearing off. When the girls first saw it, all they could do was gape.

  “You don’t want to look like an old lady when you go to class,” Sonya said.

  “Right, exactly,” Maggie said. “I felt uncomfortable with all the kids.” She hated lying. She wanted it to stop.

  “So, you remember about school and that kind of stuff?” Jasmine said.

  “Some,” Maggie said. “Not enough, but enough to know I want to blend in more.”

  “But you guys have to remember something,” Gay said, rescuing Maggie. “If anybody finds out Margo has amnesia, then Jasmine’s dad is going to swoop down here like white on rice, and he’ll scoop Jazz up and take her away, and she might never be allowed to come back, even after Margo gets all her memory back.”

  “Swoop and scoop,” Sonya said. “We won’t tell.”

  “Yeah, we can keep a secret,” Jasmine said.

  “Just not from each other,” Sonya said.