The Immaculate Deception (35 page)

I felt the wave of shame wash over my body. I stammered out about the accident and how I did come for her but she had been released. Her bitter expression showed she didn’t believe me.

We both downed our drinks.

I asked, “How did you get to Miami with no money anyway?”

“
I called a friend.”

“
Who?”

“
The only man who ever loved me.”

“
Who?” This story was getting wilder by the second.

“
That’s none of your business.”

“
None of my business.
You leave me in a mess because of this guy, whoever he is, and it’s none of my business? You have to come home to get things sorted. I need you there.”

“
Don’t even get me started. You need me. Ha. I haven’t even seen you since Christmas Eve. You live your big life and ignore your poor mother.”

The waitress brought a new little silver tea light. She grabbed the spent one and white wax slopped out on the mahogany coffee table and onto her hand. She gasped.

I said, “Are you all right?”

The waitress said, “I’m very sorry. I’ll clean it up.”

Momma creaked as she jumped up. She grabbed the waitress’s hand and said, “Come on. Let’s go to the kitchen. I’ll make a paste out of corn starch and get it on that burn.”

“
Really, I’m fine.”

“
I’m a nurse. Let’s go.”

And so they did.

I waited forty-five minutes. Momma didn’t return. The waitress came back, bandaged. She brought hot water and a cloth to scrub the wax off the table.

“
Where’s my mother?”

“
She administered first aid to my hand and left.”

“
Left?”

“
I watched her walk out through the revolving door.”

Well, she told me. Momma obviously didn’t want to answer all of my questions and come clean. She had been living a double life and I was not welcome in it. I signed the tab, charging it to my room. I rode the elevator up to the seventh floor. My room was just three doors from the elevator. I inserted my key into the lock and slipped it out. The little green light blinked. I opened it. I turned the light on and immediately closed the door behind me. Switching on the bathroom light, I checked the shower. Empty. I slid the mirrored closet door and checked inside. All clear. I checked under the beds and then peeked behind the drapes. Okay, Donna. No boogey boos. And no Momma.

Perhaps it was too much for Momma. All my questions. But I needed answers. She couldn’t just disappear like that. Not again. It wasn’t right. But…my eyes burned with tears. She was right too. I had avoided visiting her all year. Because I didn’t want to get cornered by Daddy. He just upset me too much. He always had a terrible tale of woe and always found an opportunity to get me aside and whisper horrible things about Momma. That she needed to be put in a nursing home. That she was crazy. That she was dying of lung cancer. If Momma had lung cancer, she’d, at the very least, be coughing. I point-blank asked her once and she denied being ill.

But none of this was any excuse. No excuse for staying away from Momma. And no excuse for Momma to just run off and leave me to sort out her mess of a life.

I tried to process it all. Momma had been carrying on an affair with a man who truly loved her—once a year. She told us she was in California but she really was in Florida. I guess she didn’t want Daddy to find out. Why did she stay in a loveless marriage if she had a wonderful man? Maybe he was married too.

My dream man had told me about some of this. Something about the Secret Service not allowing marriage in the ranks. Hey…that old bellhop mentioned he had retired from the Secret Service and had fallen in love with another agent on Make Believe Island. The old geezer could be Momma’s boyfriend. Annulled husband. Secret lover. Mike Taurus. That’s why he looked familiar. I now recognized him. No wonder I had dreams and made a beeline to this hotel. I was predestined to meet Momma’s special friend. Perhaps he was my real father? After all, my mate had told me I was supposed to find out about my origins.

Could Momma be right and Daddy staged his so-called murder? I bet Perry helped him. Did that make sense? Was Tammy in on it? Was that why she had him quickly cremated? No… There were a whole lot of things I didn’t like about my sister but I didn’t believe she would knowingly help frame Chloe for murder. I bet she just did as told by Perry after the fact, without being let in on the master plan.

Now what could Perry’s motive have been for framing Momma for murder? Right, how silly of me. So he could inherit the house and everything. Greed. He never liked her anyway. But would he really do that? He was my brother after all and Momma had always been kind to him. Maybe this was all in my mind and I was trying to get back at my siblings for being complete narcissists.

I shuffled into the bathroom and wiped my eyes on tissues. I quickly undressed. I still had the Band-Aid on my shoulder. Farts had told me to take it off today. I yanked it off forcefully. That made me cry even harder. Then I went to bed. I tried crying myself to sleep. Almost succeeded. And then I heard the piano.

~♥~

Aquamarine waves. Midnight blue stars. The wind roaring through the surf. And the music. “Who’s Sorry Now?” Great. So appropriate. A song about cheating on your spouse. I could almost hear the singer Connie Francis. The irresistible momentum propelled me forward. I opened my eyes. And there he was. Making tea in Vera Blandings’ kitchen. I didn’t say anything.

Mr. Jones said, “Well, aren’t you gonna invite me in?”

“
I don’t care.” The tears were choking me.

“
You’ve gotta invite me in, Cinderella.”

“
I…can’t.”

“
Invite me in,” he insisted.

“
Fine. Stomp on into my living nightmare.”

And so he did. Bearing a soft white handkerchief and a big strong shoulder to rest my head on. He wiped the deluge from my eyes and then turned the cloth and smothered my nose. “Blow.”

I did. I took the cloth and fumbled it to another corner. And I blew again. That felt better. At least I could breathe. I carefully folded it, eight times. I offered it back to the dream weaver.

“
Keep it.”

I tossed it on Vera’s white marble-like countertop with stainless steel edging. He hugged me. I buried my face in his big strong chest. Everything about this guy was super-sized. He rubbed the top of my head, stroking my hair. “There, there, love. You’ll get through this. Honest, you will. Just believe.”

“
I found Momma.”

“
Wonderful.”

“
Not really.”

“
I’m listening.”

“
I thought if I found Momma, we’d hug and kiss and everything would be bucolic.”

“
But?”

“
Butt is right. I’ve been a regular butt hole to Momma. Over the past few—oh God, might as well admit to all my forty-two years.”

He kissed my forehead. “Go on.”

I blew a big breath out of my lips as I drew away from him.

He used the opportunity to serve tea. I tasted a sip. And another. It was warm and soothing.

“
If I can find Momma again, I’m going to have to invite her to move in with me. Oh that sounds horrid! Why am I so damned selfish? It’s not like Momma would cramp my style. I mean what life do I have? None. Zip. Zippo.”

Mr. Jones lifted my chin. He stared into my eyes and waited for me to meet his. They were a beautiful brown color. So safe looking.

He said, “No one can hurt you more than your family can.”

“
And apparently I do a pretty good job at hurting them back.”

“
It’s not you, Donna. Don’t you understand? You do the best you can given the circumstances you are surrounded by. And everyone makes mistakes.”

I shuddered out a whimper. Snuffling up the last runny mucus, I said, “Come on. Let’s get this over with.”

“
Thanks a lot.”

“
Oh you know what I mean. Nothing personal but I haven’t had any fun in these dreams for a while now.”

“
It’s all in the execution.”

I huffed, “Now you sound like an editor. Are you trying to say I’m the one responsible for my parents’ history?”

“
Hey, that would be an interesting twist. Ever thought about writing a paranormal romance?”

“
New York won’t buy anything set in the twentieth century. Not from me anyhow.”

I paced around the kitchen. I picked at some breadcrumbs on the countertop. “Momma never baked. Vera had many talents, evidently.”

Dream boy said, “Don’t eat that!”

I rubbed my hands together until they were all brushed off me. “I wouldn’t eat crumbs from a stranger’s counter. Besides, I don’t do bread. Not on my diet.”

A young Dick Fiddler passed by the kitchen with a paper sack. He couldn’t see us. He carefully brushed the crumbs into the sack and wiped the countertop. And then he left through the kitchen door.

Dream boy said, “All right, where to, Cinderella?”

“
Is that it? That’s all we needed to see? The murderer returning to the scene of the crime to clean up? You have shown me this already. Poison bread. The party with no name. Dick Fiddler murdered Perry’s mother via poison bread.”

Dream boy winked. He wrapped his arms around my waist and nuzzled my neck. “Sorry to have brought you back for a redundant piece of history. I just wanted an excuse to be with you again and also to make very sure you know to stay away from Dick’s baked goods.”

He kissed me full on the lips, tickling the roof of my mouth with his tongue in a way that made me intoxicated. All too soon, my dream lover pulled away and took me by the hand.

We stepped out the front door and stepped into a surrey with the fringe on top. I giggled. “Hey, can I pedal?”

“
You’d better. It’ll take both of us to get you to Mars.”

And so we pedaled. I felt like ET from the movie.

Mr. Jones said, “So what did you learn?”

“
That Dick Fiddler would do anything to get the counterfeit money. You know, he put it in the trunk of Daddy’s Chrysler and then kidnapped me. He disappeared and left me stranded on the bus. Thank God, otherwise I might be in worse trouble now.”

My mate said, “He wanted to retrieve the money but first he had to get you out of the way. I wouldn’t let him hurt you, ever. You know that, right?”

I nodded and smiled.
Shoot
. I heard the “Donna” song. “Quick, kiss me!”

~*~

Too late. I opened my eyes. I focused on the red light of a ship anchored out in the Atlantic. All alone in my hotel room. Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream, merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream. Ain’t that the truth? Or dare? Dare I dream again?

No worries there. I couldn’t fall back to sleep. The clock indicated it was early Friday morning, so I went down to the health club and spent the thirty-minute limit on the elliptical machine. An attendant brought me a thick lavender towel. Service with a smile and all that important stuff.

The abdominal roller had weights on it. Mine didn’t. So I pried all of them off that would come off and positioned myself on my back, head on the ab roller, knees bent and feet on the floor. I rolled up and felt the burn. Oh yeah, babe. I varied my leg and arm positions for a total of a hundred reps. I downed three little paper cups of water from the cooler.

Oh shoot.
That was a really stupid thing I did. Yesterday, checking my answering machine messages using the hotel phone. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Donna, what got into you? Well, I wasn’t exactly schooled in running from the law. Now they could track me down. Who knew what other traps Dick had set for me and how many cops were dirty on this? He and Fawn had probably made sure that the police were looking for me as the prime suspect for the arson and the counterfeiting. And who would believe me? I should probably get out of here as soon as possible.

I rode the service elevator up to the seventh floor and entered my room. I had to take a shower. Who knew when the next one would come? It didn’t take long to pack. I wrote “Thank you, Maid” on a note and folded it over two one-dollar bills. I placed this on the desk along with the room key. I followed the video checkout instructions on the TV and shut it off.

I thought about slipping out the back door around the pool and out to the boardwalk. But darn it, I still wanted to find Momma. And that meant I had to find the old geezer hop. He’d told Momma where to find me. He was her annulled husband and lifelong lover, so he more than likely could lead me to her. That was, if she hadn’t told him to ignore me. I trotted down seven flights of stairs and made my way to the lobby.

Oh man. This was like a stupid predictable TV show. There were two uniformed coppers at the registration desk. They were asking for Chloe Payne. That was the name I used to check in under since I had her credit card. So they were looking for Momma. They thought Momma was registered here and that she called my house last night.

Well, I wasn’t a tall eighty-three-year-old, so I would just mosey on out. Oh dag nabbit. The cops turned around. Okay, good it was not the same desk clerk that had checked me in. I smiled at the fellas and then proceeded over to the bell stand.