Dead and Breakfast

by David Crossman

  Amber’s expression was that of a spirit overwhelmed.

  “The moat wasn’t the only time the body, your body, was seen. They did it again, night before last. Joanna found you hanging from a hook on her closet door.”

  “Oh, my God,” Amber gasped. “The poor woman! How do you know all this?”

  Caitlin told her story in a nutshell.

  “It’s good to know she’s had a friend,” said Amber. “So many times I’ve wanted to give up this masquerade. She’s been through so much. I don’t see how she’s managed to stay sane.”

  “That’s the whole point. She wasn’t supposed to.”

  Amber hung her head. “No. I suppose not.”

  A thoughtful silence enfolded them.

  “I thought you were the body at first.”

  “Me?” said Amber.

  “It was perfect. The way I had it figured, you and Gayla had concocted an elaborate plan – to fake your death . . . Gayla’s death, actually, and then drive your stepmother mad by haunting her with your ghost. Simplicity itself with you traveling incognito.”

  Amber shuddered visibly. “Yes. I can see why you would think that. No. We didn’t fake my drowning, That was meant to happen, and it’s only a miracle that it didn’t.”

  At that moment the garden door swung open on its ancient, cast-iron hinges, announcing Mr. Piper’s return. “Damn thing was wedged under the back seat,” he proclaimed, holding the Panaflex case aloft like a pioneer returned from the hunt with the entree for the evening’s menu. Further comment died on his lips when he realized the he had interrupted the women in conference – and that Miss Tichyara had abandoned both her dark glasses and her blindness.

  “Miss Tichyara,” he said unsurely, dropping the camera case on the sofa as he passed by, “your glasses . . . ”

  “She knows,” said Amber.

  “Knows what, my dear?” said Piper, an actor whose stage mate had suddenly gone up on her lines.

  “Come, sit.” Amber patted the chair beside her. “She knows as much as we do . . . or soon will.”

  Piper took his seat. “Do you think that wise?” he asked, casting a very doubtful look at Caitlin.

  “Piper is a bodyguard,” Amber continued.

  That explained the curious traveling arrangement, Caitlin thought. One very minor puzzle cleared up. “You think you’re in danger?”

  “Oh, notmy bodyguard. Joanna’s . . . ”

  Piper gurgled some noises of protest.

  “It’s all right,” Amber assured him.

  “Whatever you want,” he said. “Plow on. I just hope you know what you’re doing.”

  Amber took the measure of Caitlin’s trustworthiness. “I think I do.”

  Caitlin was struggling to catch up. “Joanna never said anything about a bodyguard.”

  “She doesn’t know.” In response to Caitlin’s look of bewilderment, Amber hastened to explain.

  “I haven’t been much use, I’m afraid,” said Piper sheepishly. “I just thought I could kind of keep a watchful eye on Joanna, Gayla, and Mrs. Wagner and everything would be fine. I didn’t realize others were involved. I’d’ve needed more eyes than a potato!”

  “I think you’ll understand,” said Amber, applying a forgiving pat to the back of Piper’s hand, “if I back up a little.”

  “As far as you like,” Caitlin suggested hopefully.

  “As you’ve observed, I didn’t drown that day on the lake, of course, but I would have had Gayla and dear mother Wagner had their way.

  “I’ll explain that later.

  “We were canoeing, as you know,” Amber began. “We came upon a buoy of some kind, and just then Gayla tipped the canoe. It didn’t come as much of a surprise, we’d both done that a thousand times as kids, and I remember thinking as I swam back to the surface that she’d ruined the sandwiches.

  “Then something grabbed my leg and before I knew it, I was being pulled . . . down.” She drew a sharp breath and seemed to be struggling against a visceral memory.

  “Are you all right?” Piper asked solicitously, concern evident on his face.

  Amber let out her breath slowly. “Yes. I’m all right, Mr. Piper. Thank you.

  “Someone tied a rope around my waist,” she continued, with resolve that Caitlin couldn’t help but admire, “and I was anchored to something . . . and left to . . . to die.”

  “How horrible!” Caitlin blurted out. “Gayla did that?”

  “She shoved me down, yes. But there was someone else. The water was too murky to see much, but I did make out white scuba tanks.”

  Caitlin was incredulous. “There just happened to be an accomplice at that particular spot?”

  “The buoy,” Amber reminded. “It had all been planned. I didn’t suspect who the accomplice might be until you told me about Brianna. She could do that. She’s an athlete – a competitive swimmer. Very strong.”

  “And wildly reckless, as well,” Caitlin editorialized. “Just the kind of girl who’d have been fascinated by the wife-killer she found in the barn. A kindred spirit.”

  Amber nodded, responding to Piper’s blank expression with a brief résumé of her conversation with Caitlin regarding the second assault on Joanna’s sanity.

  “Then Farthing was right,” said Piper. “They really were helping that murderer!”

  Amber continued. “I couldn’t imagine it had been mother Wagner. Not that she doesn’t have the temperament . . . but there had been no other explanation ‘til now.”

  “What happened. How did you get away?”

  “The miracle I mentioned. I quickly realized I couldn’t go up, so I swam down. I suppose I thought I could get to the other end of the rope and untie it. I wish I could take credit for such cool-headedness, but I really don’t remember why I did what I did. I just reacted.

  “Anyway, there was a dam nearby. The water was too deep and the current too strong, and I couldn’t pull myself against it. I was flailing around madly, when my hand hit upon a can. I cut myself on the lid.” She held up her hand and stared with reverent fascination at a long, purple scar that Caitlin could see clearly, even in the relative darkness of the dining room. “So sharp.”

  “You used it to cut the rope?”

  “Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. I suppose I knew I was only seconds from drowning, but, in some odd way, I think I had the feeling I was going to survive. That somehow I had all the time in the world.

  “The rope, being so taut . . . and not much of a rope to begin with . . . cut quite easily, and I broke the surface in the reeds near the dam. I choked and coughed a good bit, of course, but couldn’t be heard for the rush of the water. Besides, by this time I was a hundred feet away from Joanna and Gayla, who had just righted the canoe and were trying to climb into it. Both of them screaming.”

  “But, why did your mother . . . why did Joanna think it was Gayla who drowned?”

  Amber smiled at a private irony. “Identical twins have a perverse sense of humor, sometimes. Often, for no particular reason, we would exchange identities. Sometimes there were reasons.

  “Once when Gayla had been grounded for sneaking out with a boy of whom father didn’t approve, she convinced me to swap so she could be with her boyfriend. It seemed very romantic at the time.

  “Anyway, it was a game with us. We called it ‘Switches’ and would carry on for days sometimes. We’d bet on who would be first to discover us. That’s what we’d done that morning. I thought we’d outgrown it, but Gayla was insistent. ‘Once more for old time’s sake’, she’d said. ‘To see if we can still do it. She said she wanted to see if we could spend the whole day with Joanna without her tumbling to the deception.

  “The actual switch itself is simple. We have very different tastes in clothes, so all we had to do was wear one another’s outfits. I even agreed not to wear a life jacket, which I usually did, because Gayla wouldn’t wear one.

  “Speaking was the hard part.”

  “You sound just the sam
e to me,” said Caitlin.

  “We sound the same, yes. But we speak differently. Gayla is much less . . . I’ve been told I sound old-fashioned,” she revised.

  “So does . . . she,” said Caitlin, who had been about to say ‘the other Amber.’

  “That’s because she’s pretending to be me. It isn’t easy for her. She hates the way I speak.”

  “It’s likeThe Parent Trap.” Caitlin nodded, but her mind was leaping on to other things. “But much more sinister. With you dead, as Gayla, she could just assume your identity and inherit everything.”

  “It was all about the will, of course,” said Piper. “Capshaw had intended it . . . of at least the threat of it . . . to be a safeguard, of sorts. Best of intentions.”

  “Father didn’t trust Gayla,” Amber said without emotion. It seemed she took no satisfaction in the fact. It was simply an explanation.

  “Why? I understand she was, is, a bit on the wild side, and he wanted to use the will to bring her ‘round. But she wasn’tthat much different than a lot of girls her age, was she? Especially girls from wealthy homes with too much time, no responsibilities to speak of . . . I don’t mean to be . . . ”

  “Think nothing of it. I know what you mean,” said Amber. She lowered her eyes and began tracing rings on the table with her forefinger. “There was something,” she said, hesitatingly, “I’ve never told anyone this . . . even Joanna doesn’t know.”

  “What is it?” Caitlin urged gently.

  “It was when we were fifteen, or so. She swore me to secrecy. Threatened me, actually, if I ever told anyone.”

  “That was a long time ago,” said Piper, patting her hand. Nodding, Amber looked up briefly. There were tears in her eyes, which she wiped away with the back of her hand. “I should have told, I know. It was a terrible thing to do to him. He’d always been so good to us.”

  Caitlin and Piper exchanged glances. They were both impatient to hear but, sensitive to the girl’s evident emotions, let the silence speak for them.

  Finally she spoke. “They’d had a terrible fight over a boy she was seeing. Dad laid down the law, and said she couldn’t date him anymore. Period.

  “She ran to our room, where I was doing my homework, and slammed the door. I knew what it was about, but didn’t want to get involved. The guy she’d been seeing, Jonathan Procter, was a real creep, and I agreed with dad . . . which would have just made things worse.

  “Anyway, she fumed for a while – she was madder than I’d ever seen her – but I could see the wheels turning, and knew that she was scheming. She had her headphones on and was listening to rap. That wasn’t a good sign. That kind of music always brought out the worst in her. Still, I just assumed she was just planning to sneak out and meet Jonathan somewhere. She’d done it before. But when she finally came out of her funk and told me what she was going to do . . . and that she’d kill me if I ever told anyone . . .

  “You should have seen the look in her eyes.”

  Tears were flowing freely down Amber’s face now, and she no longer made any attempt to wipe them away. Composing herself with great effort, she proceeded. “She said she was going to make him pay. That she was going to accuse him of trying to . . . of sexual abuse.”

  She looked at them quickly in turn. “He’d never done anything of the kind! He was the kindest, most gentle and giving man.” Once again she hung her head, her bones seemed to turn to jelly. “I should have told him what she was up to.”

  “Did she?”

  Amber nodded. “Not publicly. But she told him that if he didn’t let her see Jonathan again, that’s what she’d do. She said she’d tell her teachers.

  “I think that broke daddy’s heart. I know it did. He loved us. He and Nancy had chosen us because they couldn’t have children of their own, and they gave us everything.”

  “Was this while Nancy was still alive?”

  Amber nodded. “I don’t think he told her. She would have been crushed to think Gayla would do such a thing.”

  “He was trying to protect her,” said Piper.

  “He was like that. Of course, an accusation like that would ruin any man, whether or not it was true,” said Amber. “And no doubt that must have panicked him . . . I can’t imagine . . . but, knowing him, I can’t help but believe it was the break in their relationship that really hurt him most.

  “And did she get her way?”

  Again, Amber nodded. “From then on, she pretty much did whatever she pleased. She told me she had him wrapped around her little finger, and I guess she did. I tried to reason with her, to make her see what she’d done . . . what she’d given up . . . and that she’d betrayed someone who had nothing but her best interests at heart, but she’d have none of it.

  “The two of them drifted apart after that, and daddy sort of gave me all the love he’d have given her. Gayla saw that, and it made her furious . . . she always called me Daddy’s lapdog. But that’s only natural, isn’t it? She couldn’t see . . . or wouldn’t admit . . . that it was her own fault.

  Amber looked at Caitlin. “That’s why, as a last resort to get Gayla to come to her senses, he told her she’d been pretty much cut out of his will, and that it would stay that way unless she shaped up. She told him he’d be sorry some day.”

  “He didn’t, you know,” said Caitlin.

  “Pardon?”

  “He didn’t cut her out of his will. A . . . friend of mine has seen a copy. All his estate is divided unevenly between you, and Gayla, and Joanna. There were stipulations, but . . . ”

  Amber almost laughed at the irony. “I’m not surprised.” The puzzle pieces had been dumped on the table and, to Caitlin, seemed to be magically arranging themselves into an identifiable picture; a ghastly portrait of greed and madness.

  “So Gayla exchanges identities with you,” she reasoned aloud, pointing at Amber, “so that when you drown, everyone thinks it’s her, and she’s arranged to have Joanna there to substantiate the fact. Then, once that’s accomplished, she brings Joanna on this trip, which is just the kind of thing Amber would have done, but with the intention of making it seem she was not mentally responsible.”

  “Or driving her to suicide,” Piper speculated. “That’s more likely, given . . . ” He sought approval from Amber but, receiving no visible indication one way or the other, revised his testimony. “Well, that’s neither here nor there. The point is to get her out of the picture so Gayla, as Amber, can control the company in time for the next board meeting.”

  Caitlin realized, suddenly, the planning that had gone into the conspiracy. Often, she had been overwhelmed by the simple task of coordinating a pleasant experience for eight or ten people at a time, but this . . .

  “I can’t imagine anyone so . . . cold,” she said. A more descriptive word eluded her at the moment, “so possessed by greed that she would concoct such a scheme; to kill her own sister – her identical twin. It would be like killing herself!”

  “Oh, it wasn’t Gayla’s plan,” said Amber. “I mean, she’s clever, and she’s cruel.” She lowered her head. “I’ve been a victim of that cruelty all my life, but she reacts to events as they unfold. On the spur of the moment. She’s not a long-range planner.”

  “You’re saying someone else put this all together?”

  “Mrs. Wager,” Amber said without expression. “Our mother.” Caitlin was too aghast to speak.

  “She came back into our lives three and a half years ago,” Amber began with a sigh. “Since then, my adoptive mother has died,” she folded the index finger of her right land with the index finger of her left. “My adoptive father has died. I was meant to have died . . . in a freak accident at a train station . . . ” In each instance, another finger folded.

  “Train station? This is the first I’ve heard of that. What happened?”

  “I’ll get to that in a moment.”

  “And Joanna is supposed to be next,” said Piper in summation.

  “And Evelyn Wagner’s behind it all?” said C
aitlin, unable to sheathe her skepticism entirely. Surely she could attribute avarice, even murder, to the woman, but crediting her with criminal genius was something else. She looked sadly at Amber, and another thought supplanted her doubts: How must it be to know your own mother had wanted you dead? “Her own daughter?”

  Amber’s line of sight drifted to the fire. “The irony is that it was all my fault.”

  Piper took her hand and, in his all-purpose sign of compassion, patted it.

  Caitlin waited.

  “I was watchingOprah one afternoon. I was sixteen. The topic that day was women who had found their birth mothers.”

  “And you decided to find yours?” Caitlin nodded solemnly. “Did the Capshaws know?”

  “No,” Amber stated quickly. “I didn’t . . . I was afraid it would hurt their feelings.” She flashed tear-filled eyes at Caitlin, then back at the fire. “They were wonderful parents. I’d never have done anything to . . . it’s just that I was suddenly possessed by this notion of finding my birth mother.” She sniffed back a tear. “It had never occurred to me before that day. I’m too much of a romantic, I suppose.”

  Caitlin proceeded tentatively. “So, you found Mrs. Wagner.”

  “The Wicked Witch of the West,” Piper editorialized. “Imagine jumping through all the hoops you have to go through to find your birth mother – and she turns out to be Lucretia Borgia.”

  Amber wiped her eyes. “Gayla and I went to meet her at an outdoor cafe in Cambridge.

  “The two of them hit if off from the start; they shared a way of looking at things that . . . ” she forced herself to complete the thought, “that made me realize they were kindred spirits. After that, they met quite often, and I was not . . . well, I felt distinctly unwelcomed, so I stopped tagging along. Though I continued covering for Gayla – helping her invent stories when she wanted to be away.

  “I took a little comfort, at least, in the fact that she was as determined as I to keep the discovery of Mrs. Wagner from the Capshaws. I assumed it was because she cared for their feelings.

  “Since then, it has become obvious that there were darker reasons.”

  “Mr. Wagner’s not your father, though,” Caitlin prodded gently, fully convinced that she would have collapsed under the weight of such rejection. She knew the answer.