Dead Body Language (13 page)

I smiled. I guess I had understood what he’d said after all. I just wanted to see him say it again. As I waved good-bye, he gave me the “fuck you” sign. I hoped he still thought it meant “Have a nice day.”

I had just pulled up to the post office in my good-as-new-thanks-to-Visa vintage muscle car when I caught a glimpse of the Party On store across the street. Not wanting to wait around another whole day for my victim, I ducked into the store. In a matter of minutes I had bought a bouquet of helium balloons and was headed for the Whiskey Slide newspaper office down the street.

“Excuse me,” I said to the woman at the front desk. “Could you tell me where a woman named Risa Longo lives? I have this balloon bouquet to deliver for her birthday and I’ve lost the address. I expect she’s a subscriber.”

The woman looked me over. I tried very hard to look like a balloon person.

“I’m sorry, we can’t give out our customers’ addresses.”

I shrugged, wished her a nice day, and moved on to the next store. Surely one of these shops would have an address and a free-information policy. At the seventh shop I got lucky. Risa Longo was a regular at the Naughty Lingerie Boutique.

“She’s out on Buzzard Road. Go left out of town and follow the road until you get to Buzzard. She’s down at the end.”

I thanked the woman profusely, bought myself an irresistible pair of silkies, and handed the balloons to a little kid as soon as I was out of sight of the store. Just as I was backing out of my parking space, I spotted Risa’s car.

All that trouble to find her and she practically taps me on the shoulder.

I drove right behind her down the main street determined not to lose her. The traffic was light, and I had no trouble keeping up. I followed her around a winding road
until we were a good ten minutes out into the countryside. She turned onto a dirt road with a hand-painted street sign, decorated with small blue-and-white flowers, that read Buzzard Road. I pulled over and watched as she drove the car around a bend and out of sight.

It was time for Plan C.

P
lan C was right up my alley. Go up to the front door, ring the bell, and lie. The hard part was coming up with the premise. That took me all of the walk to her front door.

As a newspaper reporter, I’ve had lots of experience ingratiating myself into places I don’t belong. Since I’ve never really felt I belonged anywhere, it comes easily. If I take on the stance, facial expressions, and gestures of the people I’m with, I can fake myself into financially troubled hospitals, closed political meetings, poorly run schools, suspect public offices, even crooked senior bingo games.

My desktop publishing software adds the finishing touches to my chameleon act. I’ve become somewhat of an expert in creating bogus letterheads, phony business cards, and official-looking but absolutely artificial documents with my little P.C. With over five hundred fonts and two thousand graphics, I can create fake birth certificates, brochures, even personal correspondence that look authentic.

Still wearing the denim skirt and not-so-white top, I made my way to Risa’s front door. I pulled out a business
card from my wallet collection and flipped open a page of official-looking documents on my leatherette clipboard.

The house was a lengthy, rambling adobe affair, nestled behind red-barked manzanita trees and framed by an expansive lawn. Parked in the circular driveway and blocking the front door from my sight was the tan BMW I had followed from town. The trunk lid stood open. I peeked inside and spotted several full grocery bags.

As I reached for the bell, the carved oak door swung open, startling both the opener and myself.

“Goodness! You scared me!” The woman slapped a hand on her ample chest. She was wearing a long V-neck top and tight stirrup pants in baby blue. Casual but expensive, youthful but discreet.

“I’m sorry!” I said, as my racing heart slowed. “I was just about to ring the bell. I’m … Connor Westphal. From the agency?”

“Oh, we’re not interested in selling the house.” She started out of the doorway to retrieve more groceries, but I stood in her way and didn’t move.

“I’m not a real estate agent. Didn’t anyone call to tell you I was coming?” I opened my notebook. “You are Risa Longo, aren’t you?” If I just kept talking, she wouldn’t have time to think.

The woman frowned, rested her hand on her chest, and backed up slightly. “No one called me about any agency. What agency?”

“Adoptions and Records,” I said, still leafing through my notes on Frog Fricassee. Luckily they were illegible to anyone but myself. “I’m representing a client who was adopted at an early age. She’s been searching for her—” I checked my notes, “—adopted sister for several months now and your name was referred to us as a possible link to the missing sister’s whereabouts.”

I pulled out my phony business card and handed it to her. It read: “Calaveras Consultants. Connor Westphal.” The generic but nonexistent company had come in handy on a number of occasions. The card included a phony number, fax number, E-mail, and snail mail address. As a
Roadrunner fan, “Acme” would have been my second choice.

I looked up to read the woman’s face, but it was blank. Not a wince or a twitch or a ripple on the whole canvas. Was I not convincing as an adoption counselor or did she have a hearing problem, too?

“I realize this is a delicate matter and that you may have obligations to shelter someone’s privacy, but I have to ask, for the sake of my client. She’s quite anxious to discover more about her heritage. She’s … hoping to become pregnant and … needs a medical history.”

“I don’t know anything about any adoptions. Who is this person you’re representing?” Her eyebrows formed a kind of check mark across her forehead—one sloping down, the other up. Luckily her red-outlined lips were easy to read, even if her face wasn’t so clear.

“I’m not at liberty to say. I’m sorry. The truth is—and I hope this doesn’t come as a great shock to you—my client indicated that you might be her biological sister.”

“What!” The woman slapped her chest again, making a red mark above the low-cut V. “Me? Adopted? You’ve got to be kidding!” She laughed as she spoke, thoroughly entertained by the bizarre suggestion. “I used to hope I was adopted every time I had a fight with my parents. But I haven’t fantasized about being an orphan since adolescence. I’m sorry, your client is mistaken.”

I pretended to check my notebook for my next question. It gave me a moment to think.

“Would it be possible that you were adopted at such a young age you weren’t aware of it, and your parents never told you?”

“No, it’s not.” The laughter faded. She was beginning to show a little irritation in her face—pinched lips, increasing frown, tight neck.

“But how can you be so sure?”

“Because I am.”

“But—”

“Listen. My father had cancer. I was one of the few people who matched for a bone marrow transplant. We were about as close as two people could be for the compatibility
test. He’s definitely my father. And if you think my mother isn’t really my mother, well, come here. I’ll show you.”

Risa Longo swept open the door and led me to a sunken living room filled with an eclectic collection of memorabilia from what must have been a well-traveled life. Money can’t buy you happiness but it can buy you a lot of trinkets. She pointed to an ornately carved ivory table where a number of photographs were mixed in with some Asian, African, and South American art objects.

“Look here,” she said, holding up a picture of herself several years younger. Next she picked up a picture of another woman who could have passed for her twin sister. Neither resembled Lacy Penzance.

“This one’s me, taken ten years ago with my first husband. He died last year. That’s my mother there, about the same age as I was then. Now tell me I’m adopted.”

She was right. I couldn’t. They had the same drooping eyes, the same sculptured nose, the same puffy lips, the same romance novel cleavage.

I set the pictures down carefully. Lacy Penzance said she wanted to track down her adopted sister. But Risa Longo was obviously not related. Had she been a link to Lacy’s real sister? Or could Lacy have been adopted out of Risa’s family?

“Did you have any brothers or sisters, Ms. Longo? Could it be that my client was put up for adoption by your parents before or soon after you were born?”

Risa Longo shook her head. Her chest danced. “My mother had three miscarriages before I was born. She was desperate to have a child. It took them ten years to finally have me. My mother died six months after having me. Who is this client you’re representing? Maybe if you’d tell me her name I could help you in some way.”

What did I have to lose? There really wasn’t an issue of client confidentiality any more.

“Her name was Lacy Penzance. Did you—?”

I didn’t need a course in reading face language to comprehend her immediate reaction. Before I could finish my sentence the woman had visibly paled, her mouth pulled
back into a grimace, and her eyes narrowed. Her hands began to tremble. She grasped her elbows as if to calm and protect herself at the same time.

“Who are you? What do you want? I don’t know anything about this Lacy Penzance, but I’d like to know what’s going on. Are you from the police?”

“No, Ms. Longo. I’m not from the police. And I really don’t have much to tell you. I’m just trying to locate Lacy Penzance’s sister. That’s what I was sort of hired to do. Did you know Lacy’s dead?”

“Yes,” she mouthed gently. She glanced away and shook her head as if to clear her mind.

“They were calling it a questionable suicide at first. But the sheriff suspects …” I didn’t finish the sentence. Instead I said, “Have the police contacted you?”

She shook her head again, still not looking at me.

“If you have any connection to her at all, they may want to talk to you. She … may have been murdered.”

“What?” The woman grew considerably more shaken. She sank down into a silk-covered ottoman. I sat in the chair opposite her. “She was just here.… I—”

Risa Longo turned her head away and I didn’t catch the rest of her statement.

“What did you say?” I moved so I could read her lips.

“She was here, the day before yesterday, in the evening. I didn’t know who she was when she came to the door. She wouldn’t give her name. Just said she needed to ask me some questions. She was really agitated and making these wild accusations.”

“About being your sister?”

“No! Nothing like that! She asked about my husband.”

I blinked. “Your husband? What did she want? Was she—”

“She asked to see a picture of him. I didn’t know what she was talking about, but she seemed frantic. A little incoherent really. She started pleading with me to show her a photograph of Larry.”

“Did you show it to her?”

“I wasn’t going to. She was starting to scare me a little. My husband’s gone a lot and I’m out here by myself
most of the time. When I started to close the door on her, she pushed me aside and ran in. She kind of looked around as if searching for something, then made a beeline for my photographs here. She grabbed the only picture I have of him, taken in Las Vegas at our wedding last year.”

“She actually took the picture?” I asked, surprised at Lacy’s odd behavior.

Risa Longo nodded. “Yes! Just stuffed it into her bag and ran out the door crying and muttering things I couldn’t understand. I called the sheriff right after she left, but I didn’t know who she was—she never said her name—so they couldn’t do much. Then I saw her face on the TV and recognized her as the woman who had taken off with my wedding picture. And she was dead!”

“Did you call the sheriff?”

“No. What for? I didn’t think—”

“Ms. Longo, what does your husband say about all this? Does—did he know Lacy?”

The suddenly tired-looking face drooped even more. “To be honest, I haven’t talked to my husband for a few days. I haven’t been able to reach him. He’s an archeologist, so he’s away for long periods of time. Maybe she had something to do with his work. Sometimes they make remarkable finds, you know, valuable. Worth a great deal of money …” she drifted off for a moment. “I wish he’d call. I’m a little worried about him. I’ve been wanting to ask him about her, but now, well, now I’d just like an explanation.”

I stood up and walked back over to the photo gallery, trying to make some sense out of Lacy Penzance’s activities.

“You don’t have any other pictures of your husband?” It seemed odd to me that there was only one photograph.

“No. We’ve only been married for six months. And he’s gone so often. It’s hard enough getting him to take the garbage out, let alone take a picture of him.”

I picked up a picture of Risa Longo with another man, fiftyish. It was one of those photos where you put on old-fashioned clothing so the picture looks ancient. I held it up for her but she was looking at me inquisitively.

“Did you say something?” I asked. I recognized that look.

“I just said I wish I knew what this was all about.”

“Who’s this?” I held up the picture again.

“My first husband. He died over a year ago.”