Silver Zombie

by Carole Nelson Douglas

Chapter Eleven

   

  ALL THE SUNSET City “retirement” homes had the owners’ customized look and a matching mailbox with their name out front. Security was constant and universally electronic, no visible gates and guards needed.

  Despite the open look to the curving streets, no one quite knew what kept these elderly residents “living” on. Rumor was that a good part of their physical presence was virtual and expensively maintained by only the very wealthy, as cosmetic surgery used to be.

  Caressa Teagarden, who’d either moved to the Las Vegas Sunset City about when I’d left town, or had followed me there, was a Golden Age film actress originally named Lilah, who’d had a twin, Lili, she was estranged from long before I was born.

  I had been an abandoned infant named after my foundling location. Delilah Street. Not in Wichita, Kansas, thank you. No biblical bad ladies name streets here. I also had a double, if not a twin. Lilith Quince was my sister shadow, glimpsed in my mirror after I’d seen her on TV. Lilith. Delilah. Yeah. Do the word game. Lili and Lilah all over again.

  I was curious to see if Eddie’s “Lili West” really lived here and would somehow fit into the complex crossword puzzle of my life and times.

  Caressa, formerly Lilah, was unusual for this post– Millennium Revelation era in that she actually allowed herself to look old. That was a choice nowadays, and I don’t know if I’d have the starch to make her decision forty years hence. Assuming I had another forty years. After anonymous docile years in Wichita group homes and educational institutions, I was suddenly finding the long, curved life-line in my right palm facing serial, sudden-death overtimes. The left-hand lifeline is the one you inherit. The right line is the one you make.

  Speaking of sudden, I glimpsed an ornate wrought-iron “Lili West” on a mailbox pillar formed from pebbled stones in concrete.

  Dolly eased to the opposite curb like a well-trained greyhound, hardly requiring my hand on the steering wheel. And why not? Any superior automobile would be privileged to park outside 240 Knot Way.

  When you didn’t know whether you’d been born in a house or a hospital or just next to the nearest Dumpster, you tended to fantasize about the perfect residence. Mine were always vintage, and this was a lovely 1920s creation, not a squat bungalow like I’d actually rented in Wichita, but a two-story brown stucco affair with a pine-top-high pointed roof promising numerous lofty attic gables to explore, and a towering brick chimney to match.

  My home-longing imagination was already decorating this giant dollhouse.

  Inside would be built-in glass-fronted bookcases flanking a tiled fireplace, cozy window seats in every bedroom, a mirror-topped built-in buffet in the dining room, which was big enough to seat twelve, many cozy closets under stairs and in gables for the inventive child to hide in.

  It would be so different from the bland, one-story group homes I’d called prison.

  I got out of Dolly and slammed her front door shut, knowing that solid, secure sound would be echoed here by the big wooden front door with the giant black wrought-iron hinges.

  I could almost smell warm apples and cinnamon, the Realtor’s favorite lures, wafting down the curving walk as I headed for the massive front door. Every town in the country had a neighborhood of homes this vintage— except Las Vegas.

  True, I lived in the Enchanted Cottage on Hector Night-wine’s estate, but that was a 1940s movie set made real. This house was another twenty years older, and, although not enchanted, it mesmerized me. Caressa’s Sunset City residence near Las Vegas was so lakeside cottage compared to this.

  I waltzed forward until I was eye-to-eye with the big iron knocker, paused, picked up the heavy striker in the shape of a W and let it fall back with a thump like thunder. I’d grown up in Wichita hoping to be invisible, but I no longer would be unheard here, that’s for sure.

  Spiderweb leading supported the door’s frosted glass round window. It was too high off the ground for me to see into, even on tiptoes. And I so wanted to peek. I felt like a kid again, with an actual neighborhood to explore besides suburbia.

  The door opened to showcase a petite woman who only came up to my shoulder.

  I searched her forever-forty features and found the symmetrical bone structure she shared with her aged twin sister. Her hair was a vibrant, almost statically fluffed ginger color, neither red nor brown. No wonder Eddie had called her “foxy. ” It wasn’t just for her perfect figure in miniature. Caressa must have been a knockout in her day. How could she have let herself wrinkle and whiten when she could be preserved in vibrant, living amber, like her sister Lili?

  I pictured Lilith and me doing the “portrait of Dorian Gray” thing, with her image in the mirror puckering and melting and me not knowing if she was my reflection or a fading life force.

  “I hope you’re not selling anything door-to-door, young lady,” the resident warned. Her voice was sharp and scratchy, the only thing “old” about her. “That’s not allowed here and the penalties are severe. ”

  Her raw, suspicious tone startled my undercover reporter instincts into coming up with a plausible story for just being curious.

  “No. Of course not. I’m … writing a web piece on your sister Caressa’s film career. My name is Delilah Street. ”

  Her amber-brown eyes blinked alert at mention of her sister. “You may know your name, but my sister apparently still doesn’t know hers. It’s Lilah West. I won’t talk about ‘Caressa Teagarden’ and that stupid so-called film career of hers, but I will discuss Lilah. Will that do?”

  “Of course. ”

  I sensed odors of potpourri and perfume swirling inside and heard tinkling chimes. The furnishings emitted metallic and glassy winks from the room behind her. I was dying for a house tour.

  “Then come in,” she invited, sweeping the huge door wide as if it weighed as little as a feather.

  I studied her as I passed through a tiny entry hall into a huge main room anchored by a carved gray stone fireplace tall enough for Frankenstein’s monster to reach for the sky in.

  This was the dramatic ambiance I’d expected for a vintage movie queen like Caressa, not the cottage she inhabited in the Las Vegas Sunset City.

  Lili spun to face me on her dainty red high-heeled mules. Louboutins, I’d bet. I didn’t surf the discount designer websites in vain. She was wearing an aqua micro-fiber top and genie-styled capris, tight at the ankle but swagged at the hips.

  “How did you find me?” she asked.

  “WTCH did a recent feature on you. ”

  “Film at ten. A minute-thirty. Hardly a feature, my dear. I hope you’re going to deal with my poor sister in greater detail. ”

  “The Web allows for unlimited content. ”

  “Yes, doesn’t it? Pity. Brevity is the soul of substance. Sit. ”

  Quicksilver wouldn’t have bowed to that spat command, but I was a reporter in search of facts that could affect my personal future. I sat.

  Goodness. What was at the back of my knees was a large blue ottoman brocaded in an Asian cloud pattern. Every piece here was an exotic rarity, including the lady of the house. Her ego was as large as her body was trim. It was time to go gaga girl reporter, an easy role to slip into.

  “I can’t believe I’m still in Kansas,” I bubbled, quite honestly. “Your house is so fascinating and so are you. ”

  Lili’s complacent smile as she sat on a giant brown leather wing chair confirmed my instincts.

  “Actually,” Lili said, “I was far more able to express myself wherever I was than Lilah. She needed the medium of film. I thrived on the direct effect. ”

  “So she became a film actress and you became—?”

  “A performance artist. Surely you can sense the temperament in my house alone?”

  Invited to ogle the interior, I did. High against the coffered ceiling, I finally spotted Plexiglas fan blades slowly turning, turning, turning. That’s what made the scene sw
irl around and cooled the interior.

  Now that my eyes were adapting to the dimness, I spotted lots of museum-style pedestals holding rare artifacts.

  Like the gold and black head of Anubis. That’s when my spine decided to do the paso doble.

  And … a rare green geode bristling with rectilinear green-glass towers.

  One of those freaky glass globes holding lightning in a jar that Sharper Image used to sell when it was solvent and we were still the champions of the world.

  A severed tattooed arm floating in what appeared to be lime green Jell-O.

  And … a pair of silver tap shoes from a nineteen-thirties chorus line.

  “I have quite a collection,” Lili said. “Perhaps I could interest a sharp young lady like you in working as my assistant. I plan a biography as well. ”

  “Really. You’d have a lot to tell. I mean, I can tell you’ve lived a fascinating life. ”

  “Unlike Lilah. She withered. Literally and figuratively. She was booted out of this Sunset City, you know. ”

  “Booted?”

  “We can’t have the wrong sort of people ruining our ambiance. ”

  “Your own sister?”

  “Sisters are overrated, my dear. Live longer and you’ll see that. Not trustworthy. ”

  I nodded.

  “She gave up and got old,” Lili said. “I remain active. In fact, I have my own lucrative business going. ”

  “Wonderful. What is it?”

  “Ecology,” she said. “Going green is quite the thing these days, and right up my alley. I was always interested in formulas and scientific effects on our world. The wind, the weather, the warming globe. I’m particularly fond of globes. You may notice that many, many decorate my home. ”

  I’d spotted the spherical glimmer of glass everywhere.

  “Snow globes,” I said.

  “Some. I do not limit my horizons, dear girl. Ah. I’ve forgotten to offer you tea and sympathy or at least scones. ”

  “Thank you. I’m not hungry. ”

  “Growing girls are always hungry,” she growled at me.

  I was beginning to feel like Alice at a mad tea party with the Red Queen.

  “Just a nibble, perhaps. ”

  “Fine. I’ll go toss something tasty together. ”

  She clipped off on her petite red spikes.

  While she was gone, I got up to do a polite but thorough inspection of her main room.

  I smiled and shook up a globe of downtown Wichita. Over there was Manhattan, of course. Wait. Manhattan, Kansas. Letdown.

  And … Augusta, not in Georgia, but the nearby community with the old downtown and its restored movie palace.

  They were really up-to-date … in Kansas City and environs, and there weren’t just snow globes, but rain globes and fog globes and sleet globes. And so fanciful. One even had the Emerald City of Oz inside it, with a tiny broom-riding witch shooting fog across the sky reading: Surrender Dorothy.

  “Oh, you’ve found my specialty globes,” Lili said, clicking back into the room with a tray.

  “Can you duplicate The Wizard of Oz scenes without permission?”

  “Oh, my land, girl! Of course I got permission. I told you I headed a big corporation. Now sit down and drink this lovely, local tallgrass tea and have some homemade gingerbread scones. ”

  Ah … no.

  But I’d be willing to sit in front of them and ask some questions. I didn’t have to. Lili was pleased to chatter about her sister.

  “Kansas wasn’t good enough for Lilah. I told her the center of the country was best for us West girls, but she had Hollywood dreams. She blew off the family business and went”—she rolled her eyes—“really west. And what did she have to show for it? A few minor roles in third-rate films. At least she changed her name so as not to embarrass us. ”

  “What was … is … the family business?”

  “Nothing glamorous like motion pictures. Heating, plumbing, air-conditioning. ”

  “That was … available when you two were young?”

  “Gracious, child! Of course. In fact, it was air-conditioning that seduced Lilah from Wichita to the Wild West. ”

  I sipped a little tallgrass tea, and tried not to spit it out. It was chili-flavored!

  “You’re right,” I said when I could speak again. “Air-conditioning doesn’t sound very seductive. ”

  “It’s a fascinating field, with unlimited growth potential. ”

  “Didn’t the early movie theaters have it?”

  “Exactly right. Those Roaring Twenties were also purring with Willis Carrier’s rival air conditioner. He was a city slicker who sold the idea to the Rivoli movie house on Broadway in 1925. Our father, Weatherbee West, leaped into the business at the new Augusta film palace near Wichita and captured the central U. S. market. Alas, Lilah fell in love with the movie palaces and the silent films inside them, instead of the mammoth pulsing machinery cooling them. She made the oddest remark when she took the train to California against all our family’s wishes, when she left the heating and air-conditioning factory for the film factory. ”

  “What was that?” I asked, sniffing a terrific quote. Not that an investigator needed one like a reporter did. Great quotes, and recognizing them when you heard them, was a reporter’s lifeblood.

  She said, “The heart lies between the hand and the head. ”

  “That is a great quote. ” I’d heard it before, but where or when I couldn’t say.

  “I didn’t say it was great,” Lili snapped. “I said it was odd. ”

  I studied her petite curvaceous figure and momentarily frowning face.

  Caressa Teagarden was a funky old lady, but at least she looked her age, unlike her so-called twin. What was really odd was how different they had become.

  “Really, I must go,” I said, standing. “You’ve given me so much insight into your sister. Thank you. ”

  “I haven’t said more than a couple paragraphs about the bitch, all you’d get in a mediocre obituary for a mediocre film career. ”

  “So much insight,” I repeated, backing toward the door. “I can’t wait to do a double profile on you two, kind of like the John and Yoko famous fetal-twin photo. ”

  The reference so confused Lili that she stopped stalking after me on my hasty exit.

  By the time I got down the sidewalk to the curb, Dolly’s engine was already running. I’d been so taken by the charming house exterior, I’d left the keys in the car.

  So now Dolly was taking matters into her own … gears? Talk about initiative; she had ignition.

  Right on, sister, Irma chortled.