Dead Dreams (24 page)

Sarah had never confirmed what she was planning to do with her green Jaguar Coupe. I’d actually brought it up and she’d given me vague answers. Gift it to Keith, perhaps? Although red was more his color. Still, the Jag would fetch quite a sum. It might be her sick idea of a parting present for him, her way of saying sorry if she never meant to see him again. If I could get the paperwork, maybe I could sell the Jag. But, time was not on my side. What car dealer was open at this hour, anyway? I wondered about the red truck. Had Keith been driving it? He was always partial to hot colors. Yellow. Red. Or, was it Sarah’s second boyfriend? I could call Keith—confront him, tell him I’d seen him in a red truck. Then I could at least know what I was dealing with.

Calmer, I was able to remember the spare screwdriver in the kitchen drawer we’d always used to pop the doorknob lock open when we’d accidentally locked our bathroom doors from the wrong side. I inhaled deeply and slowly made my way to Sarah’s bedroom. The safe was still in the closet that smelled of her perfume. The fragrance, a soft lilac and vanilla scent still lingered in there. The safe sat in the back, where her clothes had once hung. The safe door was slightly ajar, and when I pulled the heavy door open, I saw it was empty. At least a few million dollars’ worth of stock certificates were gone. They could either be on route to London, or Sarah might have deposited them in the warehouse.

If I took them and sold them, could the cops trace everything back to me? I was eighteen and had never even bought stocks. I didn’t know the ins and outs of the stock exchange rules.

A buzz in the LV on my shoulder jolted me. Someone had texted or left a message on one of the cell phones. Which, I couldn’t tell. I went to Sarah’s drawers first to look for anything that could throw light on my dire situation. Nothing. Everything was already packed in her suitcases. Perhaps the key to the warehouse was in her luggage, too—in one of her ridiculous, old-fashioned suitcases I’d laughed at when I’d first seen them as she’d rolled them into the apartment on Mrs. Mott’s dolly that day she’d moved in.

“These aren’t suitcases,” I’d teased her that evening. “Who uses these carriage chests with leather bindings and heavy buckles, nowadays? You need a footman.”

Those were some of the most expensive suitcases, she’d boasted—vintage Louis Vuitton that only the best auctioneers could get a hold of, since they had been discontinued decades ago. The cases bore leather hand-stitching all around to reinforce the edges and sold for about ten thousand apiece.

I could sell her antique suitcase, if I got desperate. Of course, lugging them around would be conspicuous for they didn’t even have wheels.

For now, I needed to see what loot lay inside them. After staring at the brown checkered design for too many precious minutes, I took a deep breath and heaved both cases to the living room. As I fiddled with the locks I wondered how the perpetrator would have carried Sarah’s body out of the apartment. Slung over a shoulder like a worn carpet, or dragged by the arms? I hadn’t noticed the hallway carpet smeared with anything that resembled blood. I walked back to the scene of the crime and looked about. The rug in front of my bed was missing! It was only a four-by-six but it was big enough to roll a person in. I stared at the patch where the rug used to sit. My dream came back to me. What if the rug was meant for
my
body?

I went to the front door and peered through the peephole. At this hour, it was unlikely any of the neighbors down this hallway would be up. The apartment didn’t even have security cameras I could depend on to clear my name. And, where were those keys for the suitcases? I thought to pry the locks of the bags open with the screwdriver I’d used earlier, but I might have need for them intact. They were impossible to pry without breaking the entire lock mechanism.

I had tarried too long. The criminals could return. Especially if they found they’d done away with the wrong girl.

Hurriedly, I opted for the only choice I had. Her car keys were exactly where she always kept them—in a kitchen drawer still filled with silverware that was now meant for Mr. Yamamoto’s next tenants. I gathered my luggage together with Sarah’s things and took the four suitcases to her Jag.

After two trips to get all the bags squeezed into the back, I huddled in the driver’s seat, grabbed her cell phone, and checked the newest message. Who’d have texted her at this unearthly hour?

“Ready? Wait 4 U near car. ETA 5. C ya,” the text read.

It was from 650-558-9922. Keith’s number.

Was that five as in five minutes? Or at five o’clock? Was he in the garage already? Spying on me struggling with all those suitcases, wondering what I was up to? But the text meant he expected Sarah to meet him. Something had gone awfully awry for him, too. If I went to him and begged him to help would he forget our differences, and be my alibi? But could I trust a snake?

In our original plan, Sarah and I weren’t supposed to leave till nine thirty. She’d stressed that was the earliest we could scoot out of the apartment. San Francisco Airport was only twenty minutes away, and that would have given us more than a couple of hours to check in and seat ourselves comfortably in our Air Mexicano flight to Mexico City. It was certainly possible that Sarah had been planning to ditch me. That I was not even meant to be on that flight because she had known all along that a hit-man was supposed to do me in. It was certainly possible that she was to leave with Keith. And I was not supposed to be in the picture because I was supposed to be dead. Dead. She wanted me
dead
. I pressed the heels of my palms deep into my eye sockets.
Stop wasting time!

I stared at the two airline tickets in my hand and turned them over to inspect them. Were these fake? If I tried to use the one for the fake me would I trigger the alarm? Only one way to find out.

That was when I resolved my future. I would gather my things, just as previously planned by Sarah, and make my getaway. I would run away, at least for a while. Take that flight to Mexico City at noon and think things through once I was airborne. Figure out who I could call for help.

My phone buzzed, and I almost suffered a seizure from it. My turn to get a text this early. What if it was Keith demanding I explain myself as he watched me like a vulture eyeing its dying prey from a far corner in the underground lot? I looked about but saw no movement. Only other parked cars. Every vehicle seemed vacant. The jag’s digital clock said 4:55.

Something about my older brother had made me uneasy when I’d met him at the hospital. His skimming around the edges of my questions, as if he kept a dark secret. I’d never imagined, of course, it would involve his girlfriend. His dead girlfriend, maybe. And me.

He might have orchestrated the entire plot, right up to the bank scheme. Planned for Sarah to move in with me. Keith knew I had a clean record, never traveled—something I always bemoaned to him since he’d made so many European trips—and I had no passport. Nobody would ever suspect Keith was in the sidelines. If Sarah planned to be me and not include me in the final take, that could only mean one thing, one horrible thing I couldn’t bear to contemplate. I wiped my eyes with my sleeves. I’d thought she was my friend. Maybe even my best friend. But, what if she’d planned for me to get killed instead? All along?

She must have been driven to despair. To keep herself free from her uncle—whom she claimed wouldn’t give her any peace until he got his hand on some of her money—and to make him think she was gone for good, she must have wanted to make it look as if I’d murdered her. She must have hired some thug to break in and hurt me while I lay asleep. Maybe the same thug who’d broken in that first time. That, too, could have been a ruse. That could explain why she hadn’t wanted the authorities alerted in any way—had insisted upon it, even though she’d seemed scared stiff. This could explain why the thug never actually hurt her—just some scratches on her forehead, which could have been self-inflicted.

If her uncle, or her brother, was deceived into thinking she was dead, or at least deemed dead, what with all that blood found in the bedroom, either one might not persist in searching for Sarah. Instead, searching for Brianna O’Mara might occupy their waking hours—the girl who’d conned Sarah into switching identities with her and then done her in and escaped with the loot. They would search, but probably never find “Brie O’Mara” because once she was out of the USA and living in the Bahamas or some remote country with lax laws she could access the inheritance and they might never locate her amongst Earth’s seven billion population. They could pass pictures of Brie around and Sarah could go back to looking like herself.

To make more sense of what had gone on, I continued to theorize.

Posed as someone else, Sarah was to escape with Keith, or another bf, and people would think I had committed those atrocities; Brie O’Mara had killed her roommate, after fooling her into bequeathing her fortune, just so she could live out her own dreams. The cops wouldn’t be looking for a dead Brianna O’Mara but a criminal.

The horror hit me once again. Sarah wasn’t supposed to be mutilated.
I
was. The longer I sat there staring into the steering wheel, the more convinced I became. The missing dead body should have been mine, I was certain of it. Even if I couldn’t prove it.

Yet, Sarah had gone through elaborate details to get the fake credentials for me. And, how was she going to fool the cops? Make them think it was her, if my blood was all splattered over the bedroom?

Then, I recalled how she had gone to the hospital or the doctor’s. She’d come home with a patch on her arm and dismissed it as a blood test she had to take. What if she’d been having her blood drawn? Blood meant to be used to trick the cops? Two weeks was the limit for blood banks before the cells began to break down, my father had explained once a long time ago. Tests for falling nitric oxide levels could determine how old blood was but within a fortnight the blood stayed fresh. It was only a few days ago that she’d had her blood drawn. The intruders could have kept the blood good as new for her till the night of the crime. Till they had to sprinkle her blood on my bed.

But, what if, instead, she’d stored the blood close by, like a refrigerated safe, so it could be used to fool the authorities? She’d been upset when she couldn’t have my bed dismantled. And when I’d offered my bed she was reluctant to sleep in my room. I’d thought it was because she was being thoughtful. But, what if, it was because she was afraid the blood was not going to stay acceptable out of the refrigerated safe for an hour or so?

Again my heart couldn’t accept this. It couldn’t be.

And what about DNA? Hair evidence that would have shown it was mine if I were killed? Easy—they’d just have to be thorough like when they broke in the first time. They could have easily planted Sarah’s hair and skin cells. And besides we visited each other’s rooms.

Fingerprints? Of course, now my fingerprints were even on the knife. And the walls outside, over the ledge, if the cops ever looked there.

What had gone wrong that had made the hit man mistake Sarah for me? The note on the table had been missing. Could my message for Sarah have misled them? At this point, I couldn’t imagine this being a one-person job. Perhaps once in, and reading the note, they had assumed Sarah was in her bedroom, and having checked that door was locked, had gone to my bedroom, believing Brianna O’Mara was sleeping in her own bed, with her yellow duffel by the side of the bedside table, and her LV with all her personal belongings next to it. That alcohol-sleeping pill combo before she’d crashed on my bed must have knocked her out.

After minutely detailing the plot, she must have not realized the thugs would not think to check it was me first before their attack. Sarah must have slipped up in this—perhaps her fatigue and the stress contributed to this mistake. The fact that I had her phone further testified to this. She’d never bothered to tell anyone she’d had to sleep in my room. Maybe they’d even G.P.Sed her phone to confirm she was not in that bedroom.

I peeked at the text on my cell. I recognized the number, even though I hadn’t added it to my contact list and probably never would, for I needed to excommunicate myself from my past.

The text read: “Know u r an early bird, so didn’t think u’d mind. Glad u visited yr dad.” Pastor Perry.

Maybe I should call Pastor Perry. Perry Mason, I should call him.
He’d dreamed of me disappearing. And then, those warnings for me from God? If I had heeded the warnings from my own bizarre nightmares, would I be in this mess? I wanted to tell him the dung I’d dug myself into. But, I couldn’t justify all I’d done. He couldn’t save me. I clung to the passages he’d shared about God warning Joseph to flee Egypt. Was it possible God wanted me to flee? If I told Pastor Perry, would he report me?