Mommy's Little Girl (2 page)

“I'm sorry, ma'am. I'm not at liberty to do that. You know, unfortunately, this is a business. It's not a particularly pleasant job sometimes, but it is a business, you know, that's in business to make money, and we don't give discounts.”

Unhappy, but seeing no other alternative, Cindy agreed to pay. Nicole filled out the paperwork, got verification of ownership on line, accepted payment and issued a receipt. Simon asked, “Do you have the keys?”

George said he did.

“Okay, no problem, then. I'll come around and get you.”

As Simon and George walked to the vehicle in the pouring rain, George apologized for his wife's aggressive manner. “We'll probably get divorced over this. The daughter is telling us crap, a bunch of lies.”

“I'm sorry about your situation,” Simon sympathized.

“I just need to see my granddaughter. You know, she won't let us see our granddaughter,” George complained.

“I'm sorry about your situation, sir. You know, I'm sorry your car got impounded, but this is what it is,” Simon said.

When they got within three feet of the white Pontiac, George smelled a distinctive unpleasant odor. He'd once worked in law enforcement. He knew that smell, and it filled him with dread. He thought of his daughter and granddaughter.
Please don't let this be what I think it is.
He walked around to the driver's side and inserted the key. He noticed his granddaughter's car seat in the back and pulled open the door.

“Whoa, does that stink!” Simon exclaimed. The stench reminded him of another car that had been impounded recently. Before they towed it, the vehicle had sat for five days—with the body of a man who'd committed suicide inside.

George sat down in the driver's seat and reached over to the other side, opening the passenger's door to ventilate the car. As he breathed in the odor, his horror increased. He turned the key in the ignition to start it, but then he paused.
No, George
, he told himself.
If there's something wrong, you got to find out now. You can't take it away.

“Will you please walk around to the back of the car and look inside this with me?” George asked.
Please don't let this be my Caylee.

“Well, here, let me. Give me the keys and we'll open the trunk up. There's something like garbage in here.”

“Yeah,” was all George could find to reply.

When the trunk opened, flies buzzed out, and both men rocked back on their heels from the pungent odor. “Puff!” George exclaimed. “That's rotten!”

Simon knew with certainty that rotting garbage did not smell like that, but he kept those thoughts to himself.

The men saw an imperfectly round, basketball-sized stain in the middle of the trunk. To the left, by the taillight, was a trash bag. “Let's just make sure there is garbage in here,” Simon said. He pulled the bag toward the edge of the trunk, surprised by its light weight. Unfastening the tie, he spread open the top. They both peered down at papers, dryer lint, Arm & Hammer laundry detergent, a pizza box and other assorted trash.

“Well, here, I'll take care of this. I'll get rid of it for you,” Simon said. He walked toward the front of the car, where a Dumpster sat on the other side of the fence. He heaved the bag over. While Simon disposed of the trash, George stepped into a corner, hunched over and heaved up his most recent meal.

George pulled himself together, slid into the front seat and tried to start the car again, but he couldn't get the
engine to turn over. Simon looked over George's shoulder at the control panel and saw that the gas gauge pointed to empty. “Oh, it's out of gas,” he said.

“Okay,” George said. “Well, I brought gas with me.”

Together they walked back to George's car. George reiterated his complaints about his daughter's lies along the way. He pulled a small, round, battered metal gas can with chipped paint out of the trunk. On the way back to the Pontiac, George apologized again for his wife's attitude.

“I totally understand, dude,” Simon said. “We get it all the time. It's no big deal.”

With a gallon of gas in its tank, the car started right up. George drove it out of the fenced lot to the front of the business, where he got out and approached Simon again. George offered his hand and said, “Thank you. I'm sorry.”

Simon shook his hand and said, “Yeah, no problem. No problem. Have a good day now.” He turned away and went inside as George approached Cindy's car.

“This car stinks so bad,” he told his wife, “I don't know how I can drive it home.”

He wanted to roll the windows all the way down, but the rainfall made that impossible. With the windows cracked less than an inch, he could not get enough fresh air, and gagged all the way home. He pulled the Pontiac into the garage.

Cindy walked in and came to an abrupt stop. “Jesus Christ!” she shouted. “What died?”

George stood in silence, not daring to voice his darkest fears.

“George, it was the pizza, right?” Cindy asked in a voice tinged with desperation.

“Yeah,” George lied, “it was the pizza.”

Nonetheless, the sight of Caylee's car seat in the back, along with her white backpack, adorned with brown monkeys, and her very favorite baby doll, cinched up Cindy's anxiety another notch. The couple removed the battery from the car to foil any plans their daughter Casey might have to remove the vehicle from the garage. They thought about going through the car in search of answers, but Cindy saw the rising level of anger in her husband and knew they both needed to be at work. “I'll take care of everything with Casey,” she told her agitated husband. Cindy left home to finish her day as a managing nurse at Gentiva Health services in Winter Park. George reported for security duty at the Premiere Cinema in the Fashion Square Mall.

When Cindy returned home, she walked straight to the garage. She thought it very odd that Casey had left a purse in the car. She picked it up and found a piece of paper beneath it with the phone number for Amy Huizenga scrawled on it. Cindy had never met Amy, but knew she was her daughter's friend. She stopped her inspection of the car to call.

Cindy caught Amy at The Florida Mall where she was
hanging out with her friend J.P., who was shopping for a cell phone. “Amy, this is Mrs. Anthony, Casey's mom. Have you seen Casey in the last few days?”

“Well, Mrs. Anthony, she picked me up at the airport a few hours ago. I just got back from Puerto Rico.”

“Really? How did she pick you up?”

“I had lent her my car for the last week because her car was in the shop.”

“Do you have your car now?” Cindy asked.

“No, I'm at the mall with a friend.”

“Well where is your car? Does Casey still have it?”

“No, I dropped her off at Tony Lazzaro's. I believe that's where she's at. My car is at my apartment.”

“How long will you be there? When do you think you'll get back to the apartment? I'd like to meet up with you and talk to you.”

“I don't know,” Amy said. “We might be here for a little while.”

“Amy, I don't know where Casey is, and I don't know if Caylee's with her or not. I'm a little concerned. Do you think I could come pick you up? 'Cause I'm not that far. We live close to the airport. It would take me twenty minutes, maybe half an hour.”

When Amy paused, Cindy explained about the car in the impound lot and said that she needed Amy's help. “If we don't find Casey, she'll end up in jail,” Cindy pleaded, sounding as if she were on the verge of tears. If she didn't locate her granddaughter soon, someone would certainly call the police.

Amy hesitated. “I could meet you somewhere, but I need to make a phone call first.” She disconnected the line and thought about the panic in Cindy's voice, the strained tone of an emotional parent who was concerned and not sure what to do. Cindy's willingness to drive all the way to the mall compelled Amy to help her. She called J.P.'s cell and asked him how much longer he thought he'd be in line, waiting to get the new iPhone.

“An hour or more,” he said.

Amy told him she was getting another ride. She returned Cindy's call and agreed to the pick-up.

 

Amy was the visually opposite of her petite, olive-complected friend Casey—half-a-foot taller, with blonde hair and an athletic build. On the ride over to Tony's apartment to find Casey, Cindy related every detail of the impounded car story, from receiving the initial letter to bringing the vehicle home from the wrecker company. “The car smelled like something died in it,” Cindy confided. “We were terrified that either Caylee or Casey was stuffed in the trunk until we got it open.”

“Oh, yeah,” Amy said. “Casey told me she had run something over with her car.”

“Really? Well, we didn't know that.”

Amy decided not to expand on the story. Actually Casey had said that her dad ran something over with the car, but she knew Casey often lied.

Cindy continued her story about the smell in the trunk of the car. “The impound lot didn't have the keys, so they couldn't open the trunk. When we opened the trunk, there were pizza boxes with maggots inside. We're assuming that's what the smell was,” Cindy said.

Amy didn't contradict Cindy, but she was certain that Casey had told her the smell came from the engine.

Cindy continued, “But I'm worried about Caylee. I haven't talked to her. I haven't seen her for over a month. Casey keeps telling me, ‘She's fine. She's with the nanny.' But I'm worried. I think Casey is an unfit mother. She parties all the time. If this goes on much longer, I'll sue for custody of Caylee if it comes to that. Do you know where Casey works?”

“Universal?”

“I'm not even sure she has a job,” Cindy said, and then outlined Casey's history of stealing money from her parents. “She even stole money from her eighty-year-old grandmother by using the routing number on a birthday check.”

“I loaned her eighty dollars to get the car towed,” Amy said. Then she told Cindy about another mystery. According to Casey, Amy had sleepwalking problems. Casey said that recently Amy, in a semi-conscious state, had pulled out a wad of bills, counted it out—$400 altogether—and tucked it away for safe keeping. Amy believed the story because of an incident a couple of weeks earlier. “I don't remember doing it. I don't know why I did it, but I woke up in a different pair of pants.” Amy tore the house apart looking for the cash, but never found it. She thought she must have hidden it a little too well.

“No, honey,” Cindy said. “That money is gone. You'll never see it again.”

Amy wondered how deep Casey's lies went. “Has Mr. Anthony been sick at all lately, or been in the hospital?”

“No, not at all,” Cindy answered.

So the story of the stroke was a lie. “Alright, this is a little personal, but I need to know how far this thing goes. Are you and your husband having any, you know, marital trouble right now?”

“No, not at all.”

Casey's story of her father's two-year affair was a lie then, too, Amy thought. “Are you selling your house to Casey?”

“That was never even a thought in my mind.” Cindy went on to explain that she'd once considered Casey's request to buy the house, but her daughter could not afford the mortgage.

Amy led Cindy up the stairs to Tony's apartment. Cindy hung back in a corner, out of view. When Amy knocked, a voice shouted, “Come in.”

Amy opened the door, saw Casey, and motioned her over. She then turned to Cindy and urged her closer. When the two came together, Amy remained trapped in a corner while they squabbled.

Beneath slick, dark chin-length hair, Casey's face radiated sweetness, warmth and a fun-loving nature when she smiled. But at moments like this, when she was angered,
all of that washed away in a cold deluge, making her look hard, harsh and unforgiving. “What are you doing here?” Casey snapped at her mother.

“Where is Caylee?” Cindy demanded to know.

“She's fine. She's with the nanny,” Casey said without any attempt to disguise her irritation.

“You're going to take me to her right now,” Cindy insisted.

“You don't need to see her.”

Amy wriggled out of the corner and went a ways down the stairs to get out of the line of fire while she waited for her ride home.

“I have to see her and make sure she's okay,” Cindy pleaded.

“She's with the nanny. She's good. We needed some space.” Casey's angry tone increased with every word she spoke.

Twenty-two-year-old Casey displayed an attitude that reminded Amy of a petulant sixteen-year-old girl caught violating curfew and lashing out at her mother.

Cindy's voice hardened. “I want to see my granddaughter. I want to be selfish. You are taking me to see Caylee now.”

Cindy remained unrelenting on the subject. Finally, after half an hour, Casey gave in. “Fine,” she said. “We'll drop off Amy and we'll talk.”

“We can talk, but you're taking me to Caylee. I want to see my granddaughter.”

Casey stormed back into the apartment. Unaware of the conversation outside of the apartment, Anthony and his roommate were surprised by the intensity of her angry entrance. Cindy waited in the doorway. “Get your things,” Cindy shouted as Casey rushed away. “You're coming with me.”

“Okay, but I'm coming back,” Casey snapped.

“No,” Cindy insisted. “Get all of your things.”

“No, I'm coming back,” Casey retorted.

While Casey gathered a few items from the bedroom,
Cindy stood rigidly at the door. Tony felt awkward, having never met Casey's mother, but he tried to be courteous. “Hello,” he said. “You can come in.”

Cindy stepped inside and said, “I hope you're rich, because Casey's going to take all your money and leave you high and dry.”