Chapter 22
Atlanta was a nightmare. Everybody in the city must have run out of food at the same time because they all had come out for a late supper and were thronging the restaurants on either side of O'Hara's Tara.
Jennifer pulled the oversized cardigan close around her, as she pushed her way through the masses. The sweater was too loose to offer much protection from the cool, evening air, but she couldn't wear a Jennifer Marsh coat. It wouldn't be fair. She was in disguise, just as a real killer would be. She was Sophie—an unwed, pregnant, visually impaired waif and Mrs. Walker's latest adoptee.
Her mind wandered to her bedroom in Macon where she'd left Sam in a deep, sonorous sleep. She'd stayed longer than she had intended, watching over him, making sure his breathing was strong.
But she couldn't think about Sam right now. She was a woman on a mission, and nothing—nothing and no one—was going to distract her. She had to see if her plan would work, if she could pull it off, if she could actually get as far as Penney Richmond's door and then somehow get her to open it.
The reading glasses slid a little further down her nose, and she silently cursed as she jammed them back into place. She'd have to make a mental note: all villains using glasses as a disguise had to have plain glass for lenses even if they had to run the risk of special-ordering them. She could barely see.
She adjusted the tote bag slung against her hip. Her dad's old revolver was inside, wrapped carefully in a soft, cotton T-shirt. Six bullets were packed next to it folded into the toe of a sock. She assumed they went with the gun although she'd never actually tried to load it. Not that it mattered. If she were really going to shoot Penney Richmond, she'd probably need a silver bullet to keep her down. The woman was not a nice person.
Ernie held the door as Jennifer ducked into O'Hara's Tara.
"In to see your aunt?" he asked after her. "She forgot to tell me you were coming."
Jennifer put her finger over her mouth in a silent shhhh. She wanted to shush him loudly, to order him out of her way, not to deal with him at all. But Ernie wasn't going anywhere, and causing a scene was the last thing she wanted.
"I didn't tell her I was coming," Jennifer said. "It's a surprise."
"Oh, yeah? What's the occasion?"
Occasion? Did a person have to have an occasion to surprise someone? And since when did doormen have to get so involved in their tenants' lives?
"Uh…" Jennifer searched her mind. "Tiger's birthday."
"Ya don't say. I didn't think that little mutt had birthdays. Just between you and me, I thought maybe he was cooked up in some lab. Whatcha got in the bag?"
Jennifer felt the heat rise in her cheeks. "A doggie cake made out of rawhide," she fibbed.
Ernie's eyes narrowed, and Jennifer prayed he wouldn't ask to see it.
"It's got these cute little candlelike things that stick up from the center and the lacing looks like part of the icing." She was talking too much, far too much. She clamped her mouth shut.
"Yeah? They make stuff like that? You need help getting it up the stairs? It looks a little heavy." His eyes were focused on the bag's heavy droop.
Jennifer cupped the bottom of the tote and grinned foolishly. "Oh, that. That's the… pickles."
"Pickles?"
"Tiger loves pickles." She should have opted for something more believable—like a shrunken head.
Ernie chuckled. "So it's Tiger, is it, that loves pickles?" he said, pointedly staring at the bulge that her towel made under her misshapen dress. If she showed up in that getup one more time, Ernie would be taking up a collection to get her a new wardrobe. Fortunately, she wouldn't be coming back to O'Hara's Tara, at least not as pregnant Sophie.
"Whatever," Ernie was saying. "You have yourself a nice visit with your aunt. And if you get any twinges, you just let old Ernie know. I'll see you get the care you need."
Jennifer practically ran to the elevator. She pressed the button for the eleventh floor and waited for the doors to close. Then she took a tissue from her sweater pocket and wiped the panel clean. Even the most inexperienced murderer knew better than to leave fingerprints.
The doors opened and Jennifer stared at a young, well-dressed couple waiting in the hall. She pulled a few strands of the coarse, black wig across her face as she traded places with them, but she needn't have bothered. The woman's stare held a horrified look that seemed glued to Jennifer's misshapen clothes, and the man's only interest was in the slinky evening dress of his companion.
Why couldn't she have invented a persona that allowed her to wear dresses like that? That character would have been so much more fun to impersonate. Jolene Arizona would be in a long, blonde wig, a short sequined gown (to show off her legs), and dripping with rhinestones. Her name would be something exotic like Babette DuBois—not Sophie McClannahan. And inside her bra would be a tiny, jewel-handled, single-shot derringer. Of course, she'd have to contend with Ernie because she would have slept with him, and he'd be so enthralled with her that he could hardly let her get past the entranceway without… The Sophie persona was looking better and better.
"I'm calling the management first thing in the morning. Some of the people Ernie lets—" the woman was saying as the doors thumped shut.
Mercifully, the hallway was empty. Now if she could only find apartment 1129 and somehow get Penney Richmond to speak to her. That's all she needed, like touching base in a game of tag. If that door came open, it would be proof her plan had worked.
Jennifer walked the full length of the corridor, but she couldn't find any number over 1115. And then she remembered: Mrs. Walker said something about Penney Richmond's apartment being in the other section of the building.
Jennifer trudged back to the elevator bank, pushed the down button, and slipped inside when the doors parted. Real-life murder—even a walk-through—was far more complicated than the stab'em, shoot'em, choke'em-from-behind stuff she wrote. Actually, she hardly ever wrote the murders. They had already happened before the book opened or they occurred neatly offstage somewhere. She'd never given much thought to how difficult it was.
For the first time since she'd started writing, she was beginning to feel sympathy for her villains, especially Marcus, that disgusting creature who heard voices whenever he opened his refrigerator. (A great argument for ordering takeout.) The man had an overwhelming task coming up with a dead body every month. He must have worked hard at it.
The elevator popped open on the ground floor, and a clown in full makeup with a curly rainbow-colored wig, a billowing polka-dotted costume, and a half-dozen balloons pushed past her. Too bad Miss Slinky Evening Gown missed that one.
Jennifer snuck across to the other bank of elevators. Fortunately, Ernie was well out of sight.
The elevator doors opened and a bevy of black-clad yuppies spilled forth. They seemed to be all together and far more intent on where they were going than on noticing some frump. She sighed her relief, stepped inside, and pounded the eleven button with the side of her fist. Within two minutes she was staring at the door to apartment 1129. Somewhere behind it, in the bowels of Penney's lair, was the dragon lady herself.
A ball of panic began to rise from her stomach and inch up her esophagus. One hand flew to her belly and the other to her mouth. Oh, great! All she had to do was be sick all over the carpet. She swallowed hard and kept up those short, little gulps that had worked to keep her steady in the past. Some of the nausea began to pass, but the electric charges that scampered through her muscles left her in no better shape.
How did real-life murderers do it? Just the thought of looking Penney Richmond in the eye had her digestive system in somersaults. She had to get away from the door.
She slunk down the hall and pulled open the fire door to the stairwell. She slumped onto the top stair and pulled her bag into her lap, the towel bunching at her waist, the towel that shouldn't be a towel at all, but Jaimie growing, thriving, comfortably happy in his/her mother's belly. Sweet little Jaimie, her confida
nt, her legacy, her future.
"Everything is all right," she whispered, foolishly patting the stupid towel. What did she think she was doing slinking around some woman's apartment building, stalking her like some lunatic. And for what? Research for some book?
She needed to get a grip. Why had she ever thought walking through some idiotic plan would give her some secret element that would finally make her books sell? Was that all she wanted out of life?
She'd left poor Sam drugged and sleeping for this? Sam didn't deserve what she'd done to him—nobody did, but especially not him. He'd believed in her. "It'll happen for you," he'd said, and he had meant it—and that was before the drugs hit his system.
And Jaimie would happen for her, too. Isn't that what Dee Dee had said, if only she'd give some poor guy a chance, some silly, dark-blue-eyed guy who just might be different from the Steve Moores of the world, who just might share her dreams with her.
Jennifer let out the breath she'd been holding. She wanted to be published more than almost anything in this world, but this charade was not the way to do it. She'd never know how a murderer felt. She couldn't conceive of it.
No more tricks or games or gimmicks. She'd write like she always had, tell the stories she wanted to tell. And she'd wait, wait to be discovered like everybody else. She'd look up agents' addresses on the Net first thing Monday morning and create an email blizzard with her queries. Somewhere out there was an agent who would someday see the value of her work.
She stood, readjusted her "baby," tugged open the heavy door to the hall, and ran to the elevator. She couldn't get out of the building fast enough. She wanted to be back in her own apartment, out of her Sophie clothes, making sure Sam was all right. She'd let him sleep through the night, make him a wonderful breakfast, tell him the whole ridiculous tale, and assure him nothing had happened between them—at least, not yet.
The elevator doors parted, and the rainbow-wigged clown, still holding the balloons, stared at her in that eerie, unfriendly way that clowns have when they're not smiling. She stepped to one side, and the clown dragged his helium bouquet past her. She slipped into the elevator, pressed the down button, not caring this time if she left fingerprints, and breathed a sigh of relief as the compartment started to move. A freedom she hadn't felt in a long time washed over her. She had a lifetime to fulfill her dreams, and nothing was standing in her way.