Dial H for Hitchcock (15 page)

I
walked back down the stairs. The woman on stage was peeling off a skin-tight red suit that looked a lot like mine. ZZ Top was roaming the floor like a desperado.

It was definitely time to go.

I was pushing my way through the crowd when somebody grabbed me by the waist and pulled me down onto his lap.

“Let go of me!” I protested. But nobody could hear me over the music.

“It’s just you and me, gorgeous,” the man whispered into my ear.

“I said get your hands off me!”

“Why? My money’s as good as anybody’s. You got a problem with it? Maybe you need somebody to set you straight.” He wrapped his arm tighter around me, pressing down hard on my rib cage.

“That isn’t what I meant,” I gasped. “It has nothing to do with you. It’s me. I don’t belong here.”

“What makes you so special?”

“I’m not—”

“That’s enough,” said a voice.

I looked up.

Chastity had taken off the crown, but she could still command armies. The man released me instantly.

“There’s obviously been a bit of confusion,” Chastity said. “This young lady is not an employee. But I’d like you to meet Strawberry.”

Strawberry tipped her hat. Prince Charles gave a low growl.

“Quiet!” Chastity said. Prince Charles buried his head in the crook of her arm. Then she turned to the man. “Strawberry here can take you somewhere a little more private and buy you a drink, if you’d like. That’ll be our way of apologizing.” She turned to me, and there was no mistaking her message. “Goodnight, Anita.”

“You Can Keep Your Hat On” was playing as I walked through the door.

My car was parked at the far end of the lot. The rain had stopped, but the ground was still wet. I walked as fast as I could without slipping, hugging the box to my chest. Then I heard steps behind me.

It was him.

I picked up the pace, clasping my car key between my two middle fingers so I’d be ready to plunge it between his eyes if I needed to.

“Wait!”

A woman’s voice.

I turned around.

Mystery stood in front of me. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

I could see her tattoo now, a bunch of terrified little yellow chicks running from a bloody cleaver, with the words “Meat is Murder” inscribed on the blade.

She followed my gaze. “I used to be a vegan.”

“What do you want?” I asked.

“I need to talk to you.”

She opened her hand. A rubber band circling her fingers held a wad of bills. She counted out forty of them.

“Sorry they’re all ones.” She handed them to me. “That’s how they tip you at Hello Kitty. You get fives at the Teaser Pleaser, but not everybody makes it to the big time.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Gloria loaned it to me. I would’ve given it to you in the club, but Chastity has this thing about money. Thinks everybody’s trying to rip her off. Didn’t you notice the cameras? She watches the whole night’s footage when she goes home. I don’t think she ever sleeps. Anyway, would you give this to your sister when you see her next?”

I pushed the money back at her. “I don’t know when that’s going to be. Look, I just want to get out of here. Please.”

Mystery nodded. “You don’t trust me. Why should you? You’ve gone to hell and back. I know what you’ve been through.”

“How would you have any idea what I’ve been through?” I could still feel the man’s hands on me.

“Gloria talked about you a lot.”

“She did?”

Mystery nodded. “Yeah. Her big sister and all.”

I’d always wanted a sister. “What did she say?”

Mystery leaned against the hood of a parked car. “Oh, I don’t know. How you were always there for her. How you’d had this piece of shit life and never believed anything good was going to come your way. And all of a sudden you were getting the wedding you’d always dreamed of, and a real honeymoon, and this great guy who thought you were the sun and moon and stars combined. She was afraid you might mess it up.”

“I’m not going to mess it up,” I snapped. “And if I do, it’ll be because I want to.” Then I bit my lip.

“Don’t get angry,” she said softly. “That’s not what she meant. Gloria’s just worried about you. She told me you haven’t been alone since you were a kid. That you pick bad men. That you sell yourself cheap.”

I leaned against the car alongside Mystery. “I’ve changed.”

“Sounds like it. And I admire what you’re doing. Sounds like a lot of people got hurt. But it must feel good not to be a victim anymore. To be in charge of your own life. Finally.”

I didn’t understand. I needed more information. “You and Gloria must’ve spent a lot of time together.”

“Yeah, we did. We trusted each other. We told each other everything.” Mystery looked both ways, then lowered her voice. “She even told me about your name.” She hesitated a second. “How you had to change it. How it’s not really Anita.”

She and I locked eyes. “What is my real name?”

Mystery’s voice fell to a whisper. “Cece.”

I stood up so fast the box fell to the ground. Mystery bent down and picked it up for me.

“I have to go,” I said. “Right now.”

“Are you okay?”

“Fine.” I took a deep breath. “I’m just tired.” But I didn’t need sleep. Just the opposite. This was a nightmare and I needed to wake up.

“Take the money,” Mystery said one last time.

I shook my head. “Gloria told me to tell you to keep it. And to give you some advice.”

She looked at me hungrily. “What?”

“To change your life while you can. To start over.”

If only Anita had had a chance to do the same.

T
he box was lighter than air. Was it empty? Or full of secrets?

I didn’t want to be alone when I found out.

I sped down Buck Owens, looking for signs of life. Anything but Denny’s. Here was something. Zingo’s. Open twenty-four hours a day. Famous for their cinnamon rolls. I chose a booth in the back and sat facing the door, like a mob enforcer.

No more surprises.

The menu was not exactly heart-healthy: chicken fingers, chicken-fried steak, zucchini sticks, batter-dipped onion rings. On the back cover was a picture of the famous cinnamon rolls, which resembled the ziggurat Richard Dreyfus builds in
Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

I tried to catch the waitress’s eye, but she was behind the counter chatting with the cook. Fine. I guess I wasn’t all that hungry. That trail mix eight hours ago really filled me up.

I turned back to the box. Heart pounding, I grabbed the knife and slit it open, then peered inside.

There was a single piece of paper there, crumpled into a ball. Maybe this was Chastity’s idea of a joke. I pulled it out and flattened it with my hand, but the ends kept curling up, so I used the salt and pepper shakers as paperweights.

“Ahem.”

I looked up, startled.

“You ready?” The waitress dropped a glass of water onto the table.

“Yup.”

“You’re not from around here, are you?”

“How could you tell, Betty?” Her name was sewn onto her pink uniform in purple thread.

She clicked open her pen. “Your bloomers.”

“They’re harem pants,” I said.

“You work for the circus?”

“Is that a rhetorical question?”

“Listen, hon, why don’t I take your order? We’re real busy tonight.”

There were five people total in Zingo’s, and Betty and the cook were two of them. I ordered a Monte Cristo and a glass of milk. When in Rome.

Once she was gone, I studied the piece of paper.

It was a list of names and phone numbers. I counted. Nineteen. Men and women. There were small red checks next to all of them.

Blackmail.

It seemed like the obvious explanation.

But was Anita the perpetrator, or one of the victims?

None of the area codes were familiar except one. 661. That was somewhere around here.

Unfortunately, I’d lost my hot pink cell phone, somebody had stolen the other one, and a Hummer had run over my BlackBerry. I slid out of the booth, found a pay phone by the bathroom, and dropped in some change.

A man picked up on the second ring. He sounded old and tired. I glanced at my watch. It was almost ten. I’d probably woken him up.

“Sorry to disturb you,” I said, “but I’m looking for”—I checked the list again—“Dorothy Johnson.”

“She don’t live here no more.”

Damn it. “Do you know how I can reach her?”

“Sure, but I can’t give her phone number out to a stranger, not after everything she’s been through.”

So she was another one.

Just like Anita.

“I understand. That puts me in a bit of a bind, though. I’m an attorney here in Bakersfield, and we’ve been trying to track Ms. Johnson down for some time. It’s nothing bad, don’t get me wrong. Ms. Johnson has come into some money, and we need to get it to her.”

The moment the words came out of my mouth, I regretted them. Now I was going to be another thing Dorothy Johnson had to get through.

“Well, that is good news,” the man said.

“Good news? It’s great news! When Dorothy hears what I have to say, she’s going to be jumping up and down!”

He was quiet. One more push would do it.

“No one would want to miss an opportunity like this,” I said. “At least no one in their right mind.”

The old man’s chair scraped against the floor. “Dorothy could sure use a break.”

I was going straight to hell.

A minute later, I dropped some more coins into the slot. This time a woman answered.

“Dorothy Johnson?”

“She’s not here. This is her daughter. Can I help you?”

“I’d rather speak to her directly. Do you know when she’ll be home?”

“Not until tomorrow. Give me your number and I’ll have her call you then.”

“I’m going to be hard to reach. When tomorrow?”

I heard ice clinking in a glass. “Who is this?”

“I’m an attorney. It’s about some money she inherited.”

“Nobody we know has any money.” Dorothy’s daughter wanted to be convinced otherwise.

“It’s someone your mother worked with a while back. She may not even remember her. I can’t say much more. When tomorrow will she be home exactly?”

“Late.”

“Can I catch her someplace during the day?”

“Don’t take no for an answer, do you?”

“Never lost a case.”

“Fine. She’ll be at work tomorrow. In Wasco, near the 155.”

I jotted down the address and took my seat just as Betty arrived with my sandwich and glass of milk, which radiated a
strange kind of blue-green light. But maybe that was the fluorescent light here at Zingo’s.

Hitchcock concealed a light in the glass of poisoned milk Johnny (Cary Grant) brings to Lina (Joan Fontaine) in
Suspicion.
The eerie glow was meant to underscore the menace the handsome ne’er-do-well poses to his rich and very naive wife. Unfortunately, the effect was undermined when the head of RKO insisted on tacking on a happy ending. He was convinced nobody would believe Cary Grant a murderer. But Hitch knew he could make anybody believe anything.

There’s nothing more seductive than the impossible projected in Technicolor.

“What’s the matter?” asked Betty. “You wanted nonfat?”

I peered into the glass, then sucked down the milk.

It was ice-cold and delicious.

As for the Monte Cristo, it was like what the divine Cary Grant said about working with the egomaniacal Joan Fontaine.

Never again.

R
oom 10 was like a cave, warm and dark. I’d been planning to sleep until spring, but was startled awake by the sound of a key turning in the lock.

I jumped up, gathered the sheets around my naked body, and was fleeing for the nearest closet when a small gray-haired woman appeared in the doorway pushing a cart piled high with sheets and towels.

The new day was filled with surprises of both the pleasant and unpleasant variety.

Maid service at the E-Z Nights, to begin with.

Followed by cinnamon rolls at Zingo’s, which were moist and flaky at the same time.

The sun was shining brightly, another happy surprise. After breakfast I went back to the room and changed into my version of lawyerly attire, which consisted of a black silk shantung suit, matching faux fur stole, and large gold envelope clutch.
My blond hair, however, undermined the general effect, so I tucked it into a military-inspired beret.

Wasco was thirty-five miles away. I threw my bag into the car and took off.

It was Sunday. Everybody must’ve been in church because there was nobody around. Even better. I took off my dark glasses and sped with impunity.

Within twenty minutes, I was in the middle of nowhere. Golden fields of rural nothingness, stretching as far as the eye could see. The occasional tumbleweed, drifting in the wind. A blackbird. A corn maze. Some of these are incredible. If you see them from above, they make patterns, like a map of the United States or a butterfly in its larval stage. But this one was closed for the season.

I put down the window and took a breath of fresh air. That was when the chugging began.

One minute you’re driving along, minding your own business, taking in the sights. The next minute, your Camry is making odd noises and refusing to accelerate before churning up a cloud of dust and rolling to a dead stop.

Running out of gas was the first surprise of the unpleasant variety.

I sat there for a minute in shock. Then for another minute, willing a tow truck to appear. When that didn’t happen, I opened the glove compartment and flipped through the manual, looking for the chapter on what to do when your life is falling apart, but they’d left that chapter out.

I got out of the car and walked over to the shoulder. Then I saw somebody coming. A minivan. My kind of people.

“Hey!” I screamed, waving my arms frantically as it zoomed past me.

I waited another ten minutes, but not a single car drove by.

I was marooned.

With no cell phone.

I had to find a gas station.

But where?

I’d gone probably twenty miles already, so it was no more than fifteen until Wasco. Could I walk that far in the midday sun in high-heeled black mesh ankle boots without risking dehydration and possible death?

First things first: I had to move the car over to the shoulder.

I got back in the car and hit the hazard lights, then shifted into neutral. Then I got out, leaving the wrecked driver’s side door ajar. With my left arm on the door frame, I summoned every ounce of strength I had in an attempt to push the car forward. But I couldn’t get any traction because the soles of my boots kept slipping, so I took them off and tried again in bare feet, keeping my right hand on the steering wheel so I could guide the car as it rolled.

You know how they say a mother can lift a car off of her baby when it’s a life-or-death situation?

It’s a lie.

I put my boots back on and started down the road. At least I had money. I was going to bribe the gas station attendant into driving me back here. If I found a gas station, that is.

Another car whizzed past me without so much as slowing
down. A damsel in distress didn’t mean what it used to. People are so suspicious these days. God, it was hot. I whipped off my fur stole. My feet were hurting already.

Only fourteen and a half miles to go.

I passed a roadside shrine, piled with dead bouquets and a teddy bear wearing a faded red ribbon.

Too bad I believed in omens.

I turned around. I couldn’t see the car anymore. Had I remembered to leave the hazard lights on? That probably wasn’t a good idea, anyway. What if a cop drove by? I had no idea whose plates Jonathan Tucci had given me. They could be another ex-con’s. Maybe somebody who’d done a lot worse than fleeing a jurisdiction. But I couldn’t dwell on that now. What I was going to dwell on instead was the fact that I’d had a full tank of gas last night.

Somebody had wanted this to happen.

Then I tripped on a pebble and just missed falling flat on my face.

“Oh, shit!” I cried out loud. “Why me?”

In the vain hopes of alleviating the sudden intense throbbing in my ankle, I sat down for a minute by the side of the road. At least silk shantung is washable. I had Advil but nothing to drink, and I’m not the kind of person who can swallow a pill without water. I stood up, put a little pressure on the ankle, then a little more. All right. I’d live.

Five minutes later, I’d reached some kind of intersection. And what was that sign? I half-sprinted, half-limped toward it.

A bus stop!

I was saved!

I slowed my pace, put my stole back on, straightened my skirt. Now all I had to do was wait for the bus to show up, then ride it to civilization, where I could find somebody to drive me back to my car and fill it with gas. Maybe give me an ice pack.

I was in front of the sign now. The schedule was posted. The bus to Ellerbee came through every fifteen minutes. No, that was Monday through Friday. On Saturdays, it came once every thirty minutes. But today was Sunday.

The day of rest.

No bus service on Sunday.

I sat down by the side of the road and explored my options.

That didn’t go well.

Then my luck took a 180.

I’m talking about Jean-Claude.

The only Frenchman within hundreds of miles of here.

He’d stopped because of my beret.

Jean-Claude hailed from Lyon. He’d come nine years ago to visit the Mojave Desert and had fallen in love with the area. He’d settled in Joshua Tree and opened a
patisserie-boulangerie,
which had proven surprisingly popular with the Marine Corps wives stationed in Twentynine Palms. He was on his way to Fresno, the aforementioned raisin capital of California. Business trip. He’d be delighted to drop me at the next service station.

Jean-Claude’s Ford truck was spotless. He gave me a bottle of Fiji water to wash down my Advil and a
tarte au citron
to take the edge off until lunch. After promising to come visit him someday, I bid him a grateful adieu.

Phil’s Fill ’er Up was a humble establishment. There was a kid working the pump. I explained my plight. He filled up a bright red five-gallon gas can and handed it to me. I almost sank under the weight. There was no way I could walk back with that. The kid offered to drive me, but he wouldn’t be available until the end of his shift. At six o’clock. Which would be too late. Dorothy Johnson would’ve left work for the day.

I started with fifty, and went up to two hundred, but he was unwilling to desert his post. So I called a taxi.

Dmitri showed up twenty minutes later.

Dmitri was Russian and didn’t speak a word of English, but when we pulled up to my car and I pointed to my gas tank, then to him while smiling encouragingly and waving a twenty, he seemed to understand.

But then Dmitri got a call on his cell phone and much screaming ensued, following which Dmitri threw his cell phone on the ground and stomped on it. Then he picked it up, shaking his head sorrowfully at me, and got back into the taxi and zoomed off.

Fine. I’d seen people do this a million times on TV.

But they’d had funnels.

I crawled into the back seat of the car and found an old piece of newspaper. Then I dug through my purse and found a piece of Bazooka bubble gum, which I unwrapped and popped in my mouth. When it was nice and chewed, I rolled the newspaper up, then secured the ends with the wad of gum.

Now I had a funnel, too.

I took off my jacket and stole to allow for sufficient freedom of movement.

There was a long tube attached to the cap of the gas can.
I removed it and inserted it into the gas tank. Then I stuck the funnel into the end of the tube, hefted the heavy can into place, and started to pour, as slowly as I could.

When the can was empty, I pulled out the funnel and the tube, put the cap back on, sat down in the driver’s seat, and turned the key in the ignition.

Incroyable.

I turned the car around so I could return the tank to the kid at Phil’s Fill ’er Up.

And that was when I heard it.

Inside the car.

In the back seat.

A phone was ringing.

I pulled over, killed the engine, and slowly turned around, afraid of what I might see.

A hot pink cell phone.

Oh, no.

How had it gotten here?

I didn’t have to pick it up. Not this time.

It was still ringing.

Damn it.

I reached back and flipped it open.

“You shouldn’t leave your car unlocked,” said the person on the other end of the line. “It’s dangerous, Cece.”

Cold as ice.

Hard as a stone.

My hand flew up to my blond hair. So much for the security measures.

“Where are you?” I asked. “How’d you find me?”

“We’ve had this conversation before, haven’t we?”

“What do you want from me?”

“It’s too late for that. I’m just checking in, that’s all.”

“Leave me alone,” I said.

“Is that an order?”

I squared my shoulders. “It’s a threat.”

He laughed. “You’re threatening me?”

“Yes. I’m going to find out who you are, and you’re going to pay for what you’ve done. Good-bye.”

I hung up. I was shaking all over. But I also felt strangely liberated.

Then I looked at the phone.

It was my phone. The one I’d thought I’d lost. It must’ve been in the car all along. How had I missed it?

I hadn’t missed it.

He’d put it here.

When I was getting gas?

When I was at the E-Z Nights?

When it was parked in the driveway of my house?

I had no way of knowing.

But I did know one thing.

He wanted to be able to reach me.

He knew I’d pick up.

I couldn’t be sure I wouldn’t.

I started up the engine and pulled back onto the road. Once I was going sixty, I opened the window and felt the cool rush of air against my skin. Then I hurled my cell phone as far and as hard as I could.

Then I closed the window and turned on the radio to drown out the voices in my head.