Stunner (12 page)

I’m not really surprised. “What do you mean?” I probe.

“You know, trying to better the way she spoke, her manners, her grooming. Plus, she was really good with people,” Linda adds. “She was a quick study and reliable. It paid off for her.”

“How so?” I finish my second cup of coffee.

“First, she auditioned to portray one of the Disney Character Look-alikes—”

“You mean one of the fairy tale characters around the Cinderella Castle?” I think back to earlier, watching Snow White surrounded by a gaggle of girls.

“Yes. I don’t remember which character, but she did that for a while. I guess a couple of years.”

“After that, she must have been about twenty,” I interject.

“I guess that would make sense. Then a spot opened up at the front desk of this hotel. Terry applied and got the job,” Linda says. “I remember she worked at the desk for four or five years and did great at it.”

I do some quick math and realize Teresa/Terry could have been working the front desk while I visited here with my kids and their friends. “So, Terry did that job until she was around twenty-five?”

Linda shrugs. “I don’t really know much about Terry’s life then, because I was in night school studying the hospitality business and working in reservations by day. So at that point I didn’t see as much of her as I did during our years together in housekeeping.”

I try to pay for our coffee, but Linda intercepts the bill and quickly signs for it. “I do remember a man once showed up at the front desk and started hassling her. He was bad news. Somebody from home, I think,” she says. “Come to think of it, she showed up one day with several large bruises on her arm.”

“You think he pushed her and she fell?” I ask.

“I remember they looked like hand imprints as if someone might have grabbed her,” Linda says. “We were having lemonade, sitting outside in the sun during a break. She took off her jacket, and I saw the marks on her arm. You could see she had forgotten about them for a moment, but then she quickly put her jacket back on to cover them up.

“Did he get her fired?” I ask.

“No. I don’t know how Terry got rid of him, but, as I said, she was tough. She figured out a way,” Linda tells me. “After that I kind of lost track of her.”

I’m dying to show Linda the picture of Juliana at the cocktail party, but then my story about why I’m here would totally fall apart. I’d have to explain too much, and she might caution Carmela Suarez not to talk to me.

I thank Linda for her help as we walk out of the restaurant. In the lobby, she pulls out her cell phone, speed-dials a number and asks if Carmela Suarez is working today and where. She clicks off.

“Just as I thought. Carmela’s taking pictures near Cinderella’s Castle. She’ll be easy to find, and I’ll call and tell her to expect you. Maybe she can fill in some blanks about what’s happened to Terry.”

We say goodbye, and Linda leaves. I stand a moment and watch two young women working behind the front desk of the hotel. They’re dressed stylishly and professionally, and they’re beautifully groomed, with understated make-up. One has her hair pulled back sleekly, and the other has a great shoulder-length haircut. Most importantly, they handle themselves well with the guests at the front desk.

I imagine Teresa Gonzalez, now Terry Jones, in their shoes more than fifteen years ago. In the span of four years, from age sixteen to twenty, she’d already substantially pulled herself up in life from the group home in Scranton as a juvenile offender. What a turnaround. Kind of like her cousin, Joe Taylor.

I stroll around the plaza in front of the castle and spot a stocky, jowly brunette in blue shorts, white shirt, and a khaki photographer’s vest, snapping pictures of a family sitting on the castle steps. She finishes, and I call out, “Ms. Suarez.” She walks over to me with her camera, looking worried.

“Hi, I’m Ronnie Lake. Linda Alvarez at the Contemporary Resort told me I’d find you here.” I reach out my hand to shake.

She does so hesitantly. “I’m Carmela Suarez.” Her face still shows concern. “Linda says you want to know about Terry Jones.”

Well, OK, let’s not waste any time with friendly get-to-know-yous. “Right,” I say and come to the point. “I understand you two came down from Scranton twenty-plus years ago and that she stayed with your family in Orlando for a while. I’m hoping you might know where she is these days and can help me find her.”

Carmela’s body language is closed and tense. “Before I talk about Terry, who are you?” she asks. She’s not hostile, just concerned. “I mean besides your name.”

“I live in New Jersey, and there may be a connection between Terry and my family,” I say, trying on purpose this time to keep things vague. Plus, I’d rather not concoct some farfetched story if I can avoid it.

I make sure my tone is friendly. “It sounds as though she turned her life around when she worked here at Disney—”

“I hope you did
not
go into detail with Ms. Alvarez about Scranton, you know, Terry and me,” Carmela interrupts. “I’ve worked here almost twenty-four years, and I have a perfect record—”

“Hold it—”

“We both wanted a fresh start—”

I put my hands up to signal her to stop. “I didn’t tell Ms. Alvarez anything about your history back in Scranton. That’s in the past, and it seems you’ve been a good employee at Disney. Terry, too, when she was here.” I smile. “Do you have time to talk for a few minutes?”

Carmela exhales. “I can take a ten-minute break.” Her body relaxes noticeably. “First, Ms. Lake, Terry and I weren’t friends or anything up in Scranton. We didn’t do this run-away-to-Disney thing together. I left a month before she did when I aged out of the system there.”

“Please call me Ronnie,” I insist.

She sits on the castle steps and motions for me to do the same. “Terry heard me talking about my aunt in Orlando when we were still stuck in that group home. I moved down here the minute I turned eighteen, just wanting to stay out of trouble. All of a sudden she shows up one day at my aunt’s apartment with a black eye and a fat lip.”

“Oh my god,” I say. “What happened to her?”

“The last ride she hitched, the guy who drove her into Orlando…well, it turned out it wasn’t a free ride.” Carmela shakes her head. “She resisted, and he beat her up, but she got away. Next thing, she’s at our front door asking if she can crash with us until she gets on her feet.”

Carmela looks at me with exasperation written all over her face. “Terry was just a kid, and she had no money. If she got picked up by the police, I was worried my name would come up, and that would cause trouble for my aunt. We took her in.”

She fiddles with her camera and continues this amazing story. “Her beautiful face healed, of course, and she got a job at Disney in housekeeping. Actually, except for the attack when she first hitched down here and then Bobby Taylor turning up at the front desk some years later, Terry pretty much led a charmed life in Florida.”

Carmela stops and quickly corrects herself. “Don’t get me wrong, Ms. La—I mean, Ronnie. Terry worked hard. Even when they gave her the grubbiest jobs in housekeeping that everybody gets when they first start, she put a smile on her face and did what was asked of her. Terry earned every promotion she ever got.”

“Carmela, you said
except for Bobby Taylor turning up
.” I lean in. “What did he want?”

“Money, and who knows what else,” she says. “I guess he always tried to copy Terry. So if Terry wanted to live in Florida, then he did, too. At least that’s what she told me.” She pulls a cloth out of her vest and wipes a smear off the camera’s viewfinder. Then she looks at her watch. “In the beginning, Bobby worked for a while on a fishing boat until he got fired, of course. Then he disappeared. We didn’t see him anymore for years. Good riddance. What a loser that guy was.”

Not just a loser, but a bully, or so he seemed to me. “She must have been shocked to see him turn up again,” I say. “How’d she get rid of him the second time?”

Carmela shakes her head. “Don’t have a clue, but then one day he stopped coming around. You know, in the beginning she was a rough street kid, even the way she talked. She scared most of us in the group home in Scranton.”

Carmela sort of snorts and giggles at the same time. “So even though she was polished by the time she worked at the hotel front desk, I’m sure she could still handle Bobby and convince him to leave town.”

She pauses a moment glancing away, and then she looks back at me. “Even though I’m pretty certain he knocked her around sometimes. But don’t quote me. I never actually saw it. And she never admitted it, maybe because he was family—you know, his being her cousin, and all.”

“What do you mean—knocked around—and why do you think that, Carmela?” I steeple my fingers and tap my chin.

“Like when she first turned up on my aunt’s doorstep with that fat lip from the guy she hitched with—well, she acted as if it was no big deal. She went straight for the ice for her lip and eye, as if she was an expert on getting beat up or something.” Carmela’s expression turns to one of disgust. “She made some comment that this guy wasn’t any worse than Bobby. So, you know, it sounded like Bobby had hit her, too, but that was all she’d say.”

“Anything else about Bobby that made you suspicious?” I sit back on the steps. Carmela was opening new vistas on Teresa for me.

“Well, after he turned up that second time, I remember seeing black and blue marks on Terry’s arm.” Carmela shrugs. “I don’t know. He may have been physically stronger, but my impression was that she was mentally tougher than Bobby. You know, like she could apply some kind of psychological pressure and force him to leave.”

I think back to Linda Alvarez’s similar notion about Terry, and I nod. Then I look around the plaza in front of the castle and watch chance encounters between kids and Snow White and Belle from
Beauty and the Beast
turn into photo-ops for the parents. “I understand Terry first moved from housekeeping to working as a Disney character, so she must have done a good job cleaning up her act,” I finally say.

“Yeah, she did, and she landed the Snow White job.” Carmela smiles for the first time. “She really wanted to be Cinderella, but she was happy playing Snow White for a couple of years. She also moved out of my aunt’s apartment and got her own place with two roommates. Then she applied for a front desk job at the Contemporary Resort, and she landed it.”

“She did well working that new job?” I ask.

“She did more than well.” Carmela gestures toward an adorable, tousle-haired three-year-old girl tugging on Belle’s costume, and she quickly snaps several candid shots.

“Be right back,” Carmela says to me and waves to the smiling parents of the little girl, who is now hugging Belle. The photographer takes a few more shots and then scans the parents’ Disney’s PhotoPass ID number so they can access the pictures later. As they scoop up their daughter for the next fun adventure, Carmela returns and picks up where she left off.

“What you have to understand about Terry—remember, she
was
the leader of the Scranton Gang—is that for such a tough kid, she loved this Cinderella Castle, because she wanted a Cinderella story for herself.”

“How so, Carmela?”

“First, she wasn’t waiting for any Prince Charming to come around. No, Terry was going to make her own Cinderella story. Second, she couldn’t pay for school, but she read books and newspapers all the time and took classes whenever she could at the Disney World learning centers here.”

Carmela’s expression is now one of admiration. “Terry studied fashion magazines and changed her look to be more like a lady even though she didn’t have much money to spend.”

“That’s quite something,” I say.

“She even worked on the way she spoke by listening and copying other people, so that she would sound more polite.” Carmela chortles. “To look at her and listen to her a couple of years after she got here, you would have never imagined her as some tough juvie kid out of Scranton.”

An image of Juliana comes to mind. “I wonder where she got that urge to improve herself.”

I notice an adorable set of toddler twins with their slightly older sister trying to herd them toward Minnie Mouse. I nod at Carmela. “Photo op,” I say and gesture toward the kids.

She raises her camera, clicks away, and then walks over to the dad to scan his Disney’s PhotoPass ID number. Carmela comes back and sits on the steps. “Terry told me somebody when she was very young inspired her to reach for a better life.” She rests her camera in her lap. “She never told me who it was.”

“Hmmm. An inspiring mystery person who changed her life.” Who could that have been, I wonder. “So where’d she go after the front desk? Another job here?”

“No. After about five years at the front desk, Terry decided to move to New York.” She catches my look of surprise and laughs. “I know. She grabbed me for coffee one day to tell me she was leaving. This woman who used to bring her kids here every year and always stayed at the Contemporary Resort was impressed by how well Terry did her job at the front desk.”

“She offered her job as a nanny?” I ask.

“No way,” Carmela says. “Turns out this woman ran a private club in Manhattan that a lot of big-shot businessmen, athletes, and celebrities belonged to. She watched Terry handle a very difficult VIP one morning and noticed how calm she stayed.” Carmela again checks her watch. I guess we’re okay. She goes on. “This lady was amazed by how Terry turned around what could have been an embarrassing situation for the hotel.”

Carmela then snaps a few more pictures of kids and Disney characters. “The lady thought Terry had a lot of potential, and with some training would be great at handling difficult celebrities. So she gave Terry her card and told her to call if she needed a job in New York City. And the rest is history. After giving two months’ notice at the hotel, Terry went north.”

“How old was Terry, when she left?” I ask, doing a quick calculation on my fingers.

“Twenty-five,” Carmela answers. “I remember, because she said she was celebrating her quarter-century birthday by moving to the Big Apple.”