Forget to Remember, page 22
At the second house, nobody was home, although there was a car in the driveway. Carol copied the license plate information. She went to the house next door, gave her spiel, and after the woman had told about her own family, Carol asked how many people lived in the house she had just been to. The answer was a man, a wife, and a child.
Back in the Jeep, Carol reported to Ivan. “I’m certain Michael doesn’t live here with a wife and child since he’s never been married although, you can check the car ownership if you want to.”
“I’ll do it just to cover all the bases. I’m sure it will show the car is owned by…” he glanced at his pad “…Stuart Jackson, the director. That won’t tell us anything new. Let’s get some lunch and figure out what we’re going to do next.”
***
According to Ivan’s GPS, Katherine Simpson’s home was on a cul-de-sac at the end of a one-block street. They followed the directions of the imperious female voice, which led them to the subdivision where they cruised slowly along the street in question and spotted the roomy, two-story house with vinyl siding and many windows. The two garage doors were closed, and no cars were in the driveway.
Ivan shook his head. “We obviously can’t park here. We’d stick out like burqa wearers at a nude beach. The highway is on the other side of that sound-suppression fence. Maybe we can come in from there.”
Carol could hear the traffic going by on the other side of the fence. The tall wooden structure, painted brown, had been built, as Ivan said, to muffle the sound and also to isolate the residents from the rest of the world.
They unwound their way along several streets, back to the entrance to the subdivision, and parked where the volume of traffic wouldn’t bring undue attention to the Jeep. They got out, and Ivan retrieved a small backpack from the backseat. He led the way as they walked along a combination bike path and walking path beside the highway. They were now on the other side of the fence. The noise of the almost continuous traffic made it difficult to carry on a conversation.
Carol followed Ivan to the end of the fence. They went around it and found themselves on a bank, sloping gently downhill and overgrown with bushes and small trees. Ivan stopped behind a short bush and pointed over it.
“That’s Katherine’s house.”
It took Carol a few seconds to adjust to the different perspective. They were facing the side and back of the house instead of the front. However, they could see where the driveway was. Anybody coming or going would be visible to them. She was glad she was with Ivan. He was an expert at this sort of thing.
“What do we do now?”
Ivan grinned at her. “This is where you find out the private detective business isn’t all fun and games. We wait and see who comes and goes. If our assumption that Michael might be living with Katherine is correct, maybe he’ll show his face.”
“Or maybe he won’t. We could be here all night.”
“We won’t stay all night. Listen, if you want to opt out, I’ll take you back to your car and you can go to your motel.”
“No.” Carol shook her head vigorously. “I want to nail Michael. Do we have to stand? The ground is damp and muddy and covered with branches and dirty leaves.”
It had rained recently. Ivan opened his pack. He pulled out a thin tarpaulin, unfolded it, and spread it on the ground. He also took out a pair of binoculars. Carol knelt on the tarp. This was marginally better than standing. Ivan sat down beside her.
“I’m worried about your bare legs. They’ll get cold.”
She had jeans at the motel, but that was too far away. She’d just have to tough it out. Ivan had put on an old sweatshirt. He also had a moth-eaten sweater in the pack. He lay on his stomach and had her do the same. Then he covered her legs with the sweater. He was a gentleman.
“How do we go to the bathroom?”
“Well, that isn’t much of a problem for a man, but I can see where it could be for a woman.”
Carol wanted to wipe the smile off his face. “In today’s world of equality, that is by far the biggest disadvantage of being a woman—at least outdoors. Is there a reason for starting the stakeout now when we know Katherine isn’t here?”
“Michael might be here. Even if we don’t see him, we may learn something when Katherine comes home.”
Carol wondered whether Michael was a ladies’ man. She couldn’t remember anything about her brother. He’d have to be pretty sharp to have Katherine for a girlfriend, judging by her picture. He had probably promised her they’d take the inheritance once the foundation received it and split to some exotic part of the world.
To while away the time, she asked Ivan about himself. He had been in the military. He was wounded during Desert Storm in 1990 and discharged. He had recovered enough to become a policeman, but the remnants of the old wound plus a more recent one had left him disabled, at least as far as police work was concerned. He had gone into business for himself. Carol was certain he’d been wounded in the face and wondered where else. He didn’t say, and she didn’t ask.
She told Ivan about her amnesia and went over everything she remembered. She mentioned the four times she thought Michael had tried to kill her. Ivan said Michael was demented, and he ought to know because he’d seen a lot of demented people in his life.
She eventually gave up her resolution to play camel and said she had to pee. She moved away from Ivan along the inside of the fence to do it. He didn’t show any interest. In fact, he barely looked at her at all. She wondered if he were gay like that scam artist, Beard. Or maybe his injuries had made him impotent.
Ivan focused the binoculars, which would come in handy if a person appeared. There were no windows on this side of the house, so seeing the interior wasn’t a possibility. They had eaten a big lunch, but when the hunger pangs started to gnaw, Ivan pulled energy bars out of his pack. He also had a couple of water bottles. He had obviously done this before.
The sun was setting when a car drove into the driveway and stopped. Ivan looked through the binoculars, but Carol could tell with her naked eyes that the woman who got out of the car was Katherine. All that blond hair. She disappeared from their view and presumably went into the house. It was anticlimactic. They had learned what they already knew.
Carol turned toward Ivan who was still looking through the binoculars. “What do we do now?”
“Chances are she’s going out again since she parked in the driveway. We’ll wait a little while longer.”
Five minutes later someone walked along the far side of the car and then down the rest of the driveway to the mailbox. It was a man with long hair. Carol grabbed the binoculars from Ivan and tweaked the focus as she looked through them. As the man left the mailbox and started back toward the house, she had a good look at his face and his red hair, lit by the last rays of the sun.
“That’s him. That’s Michael.” She forgot to keep her voice down, but the noise of the traffic behind her drowned her out. “Let’s go get him.”
Ivan grabbed her shoulder as she started to get up. “Let him go. He’d see us coming long before we got to him. Besides, we can’t just grab him.”
“What, then?”
“We know where he lives. Now we have to make a plan to entice him out of there.”
CHAPTER 37
At nine o’clock the next morning, Carol met Ivan in his office. It barely qualified as an office. It was cramped and dingy with plentiful quantities of dust and grime. There were stacks of books and papers everywhere, not in any meaningful order. Some had obviously been in the same spot for years, having taken up permanent residence. Carol wondered how Ivan could find anything.
He did have a computer in working order, a requirement for a detective in the digital age. The first thing they did was to call Paul on a speakerphone and fill him in. He wasn’t surprised to hear they were together and was happy they’d spotted Michael.
“Good work. We’re going to nail that bastard. He killed two people, and he tried to kill Carol. It’s too bad we can’t just have him arrested. Since his crimes are scattered, and we don’t have any direct evidence except for Carol and others being able to ID him at the Hillsborough motel, it’s going to take time. Faking his own death isn’t enough to hold him unless he’s using it for a fraudulent purpose. I’ll talk to the authorities here, but they’d have to get him extradited, and that might give him a chance to disappear again. Aarrggh.”
Ivan said, “What if we can shortcut the process? What if we can lure him out of his house and get a recorded confession from him?”
“I’m not sure I like the word ‘lure.’ Are you going to use Carol as bait?”
Carol spoke up. “We’re going to do it in a way that’s not dangerous. Ivan will be here to protect me. He’s got a gun.”
“I’m glad you two are hitting it off, but Ivan isn’t invincible. Michael has used a gun, too, upon occasion. He winged you once, Carol. The next time you may not be so lucky.”
They discussed a plan, going over the pros and cons. Finally, Paul gave reluctant approval but said he was also going to the local district attorney’s office to attempt to get them to start the process of extraditing Michael to North Carolina for attempted murder.
After they completed the call with Paul, Carol and Ivan talked about how they should proceed. Carol found Ivan to be very thorough. He had purchased two disposable cell phones with numbers that couldn’t be traced. He used one to call the home number he had for Katherine Simpson.
As he expected, nobody answered the phone. The answering machine switched on, and Katherine’s voice asked the caller to leave a message, promising the call would be returned as soon as possible. There was a beep. Ivan winked at Carol and assumed an extreme southern accent.
“This call is for Jake Zimmerman, the director of the Weatherford Foundation. You don’t know me, but we have a common problem. It’s the young lady known as Carol Golden. I have it on good authority that Ms. Golden is looking for you, and her intentions are not honorable. It would not pain me to see the problem of Ms. Golden, uh, taken care of, if you follow my meaning. I happen to know where she’s staying.”
Ivan went on to give the name of a motel—not the one where Carol was actually staying. He gave a room number and said that through connections he had obtained a card key to her room. He would leave this in an envelope behind the bushes at the corner of the motel. He suggested Mr. Zimmerman use it to enter the motel through one of the back doors and go into her room before eight p.m. He could wait for Carol there.
“Won’t he suspect a trap?” Carol was trying to figure out how she would react to that kind of phone call.
“He might, but I think his desire to get rid of you will overcome any misgivings he may have. Remember, he’s not playing with a full deck, and he has the power to delude himself into thinking the world is the way he’d like it to be.”
“Where did you learn that bullshit?”
“I was a psych major in college.”
***
“The fish has taken the bait.”
Carol’s heartbeat ramped up another notch from the high plateau it had already achieved. Michael had found the hidden card key for the motel room. Ivan was watching his movements from his car parked outside the motel and passing them on to her.
“He’s entering the motel.”
The manager of this motel was a friend of Ivan. They’d taken two rooms. The one Michael was headed for was located just inside the back entrance on the first floor. Carol was safely ensconced in another one known only to the manager and Ivan.
She pictured what Michael would find when he entered the room. She and Ivan had written a note, computer-printed it, and left it on the bed. It read like this:
Mr. Zimmerman: I have just been informed that Carol Golden has taken another room at this motel, but I have been unable to find out which one. However, while speaking with her earlier in the day (I pretend to be her friend; she is unaware of my animosity) I discovered that because of her memory loss she doesn’t think of you as being dangerous. This will work to your advantage. I suggest you call her and entice her to come to your room.
The note contained a cell phone number for a disposable phone. Carol’s hands shook as she disconnected from Ivan so she would be ready to receive Michael’s call. She couldn’t sit still. She paced around the room, holding the phone in front of her, waiting for it to ring and yet dreading the call.
She jumped when the ring came in spite of her preparation.
“Hello.”
Silence for several seconds. Was he going to speak? “Cindy.”
Cindy? Short for Cynthia.
“Who is this?”
“Your brother—Michael.”
“Michael? Michael, is it really you? I heard you were dead.” Feigning excitement and pleasure.
He laughed. “It’s really me.”
“Oh, Michael, how wonderful. Where are you?”
“Right here at your motel.”
“How did you know I was here?”
“Don’t worry about that. The important thing is we found each other. Let’s get together. Tell me what room you’re in.”
He was a fast worker. Carol had to make sure he stayed where he was because everything he said was being recorded, and Ivan was listening. She pretended she hadn’t heard him. “Tell me how you survived the plane crash.”
“It was just luck. I was supposed to fly with Dad and Mom, but something came up at the last minute.”
“But then you disappeared and everybody thought you were dead.”
“I was paranoid. I thought somebody had sabotaged the plane and they were out to kill me too.”
“Who would do such a thing?”
“You.”
“Me?” Carol couldn’t believe the direction this was taking. “I was in England.”
“You are the one who disappeared. I had no idea where you were. You could have come back to the U.S. Anyway, now I know I was wrong. What did you say your room number was?”
“Help me remember, Michael. After the crash I did come back, but Mrs. Horton—Grandma—says she didn’t see me. I can’t remember what I did. All I know is that I ended up in California in a Dumpster.”
Silence on the line. Was she pushing too hard? She waited for him to speak.
“Cindy, Cindy, fat and windy.”
The phrase triggered something in Carol’s head. “Cindy, Cindy…” That’s what she must have been called, at least by Michael. She had a vague mental picture of coming back to the farm in a taxi from the airport after the crash. It was getting clearer. She hadn’t called Mrs. Horton and told her she was coming, thinking it would be less stressful on the old lady to reunite with her in person. She must have spotted Michael at the farm. No, it couldn’t have been there, because he was playing dead.
Somewhere. Maybe he was staking out the farm, waiting for her, knowing she would go to their grandmother’s. That was it. His car was parked at the entrance to the dirt road that led to the farm. He was out of the car, clearly visible. He must have grown tired of sitting in his car, waiting for her for hours—perhaps days.
He had seen her, too. Frightened because he was alive, she had the cab driver take her back to the airport. She panicked and bought a ticket for a flight to California. Then the picture became fuzzier. Had Michael followed her, taken a ticket on the same flight—maybe in first class while she was in the back and didn’t know he was on the plane?
In Los Angeles he followed her in a taxi, found out where she was staying, and then abducted her in a rental car. He tied her up, and they drove around Los Angeles for hours... The image ended. Michael was speaking.
“Let’s let bygones be bygones.”
“I want to, Michael. Believe me, I do. But it’s hard. After all, you shot at me in California and then tried to kill me at the motel in North Carolina.”
“Who’s been filling your mind with that crap? It’s Grandma, isn’t it? She’s poisoned your mind against me.”
“No, no.” This was taking an ugly turn. “Grandma likes you. She didn’t say anything bad about you. Besides, she thinks you’re dead.”
Carol hoped Michael would believe Grandma hadn’t told her about the phone call from him. Michael’s voice became soothing.
“I’m in room one twenty-five. Come to my room and we’ll get this straightened out. We need to talk face to face.”
“I’m scared, Michael. You’ve tried to kill me four times.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. The motel—that was a misunderstanding. I just wanted to explain everything to you. I wasn’t going to hurt you. You ran off before I had a chance.”
“So you admit that was you at the motel.”
“What? Are you trying to trap me?”
She had to calm him down. If Ivan heard anything incriminating, he said he was going to call the police and have Michael arrested. He might be calling the police now. Carol had to keep Michael from getting too suspicious and bolting.
“Maybe you’re right. I want to believe you were just trying to explain everything to me. You’re also right that we need to talk face to face. What if I come to your room?”
“Room one twenty-five.” A pause. “What did Grandma tell you about me? Did she tell you I was still alive? Did she tell you I was trying to take over the estate?”
“No, of course not. Grandma would never do a thing like that.”
“That lying old bitch. I knew she’d turn against me. First you, then Dad and Mom, and now Grandma. I’ll take care of her.”
The connection was broken. Carol didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t leave the room and risk running into Michael. She couldn’t call Ivan. He had heard everything and would be trying to stop Michael from escaping. She would have to wait for a call from Ivan.
