The Immaculate Deception Read online

  He glared at me. “Now we don’t allow that type of young ladies around here.”

  “No! I-I mean that I just got into town late tonight and I haven’t made arrangements yet.”

  He pointed with his pencil. “Right across the street is the Young Women’s Christian Association. They’ll take good care of you there, my dear.”

  “Right.” Whatever will get me away from you.

  “Do you know this brute?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have any idea why he attacked you?”

  “He said he wanted to find my mother.”

  “Who is your mother?”

  “Chloe Lambert. I think that’s why I’m here. To find out about her life.” I couldn’t very well tell him that I was dreaming all of this and that he was just a figment of my own imagination. Just like my Mr. Jones was just a figment. Not real…or? He’d told me to trust him and I couldn’t do otherwise, even if it probably meant joining Momma at the cuckoo’s nest.

  “Chlo-e…Lam-bert. Chloe Lambert.” He rolled Momma’s name on his tongue, looking up at the sky. “Oh yeah, there’s an APB out for her arrest. Where is she?”

  “Here in Miami? At this time? I dunno! Why is there an APB? Must be some mistake. A horrible mistake.”

  “She’s wanted for counterfeiting and murder one.”

  “What? No! My momma is no murderess…or counterfeiter. She doesn’t even pick up pennies from parking lots.”

  “The information we received from the Secret Service indicated Chloe Lambert was a dirty agent, she made a counterfeit money drop in Bermuda.”

  “No. That’s wrong. You must be mistaken.” I returned to the fountain and perched on the rim, sticking my legs in. I’d just wait here for my mate. Perhaps he’d have some answers for me. He’d come and make everything better. Please come back quickly. I need you with me now.

  “That’s my brief, Miss. Chloe Lambert is still a fugitive.” He slapped the cover on his notebook shut. He stashed it in his pocket, along with the pencil. Walking over to me, he took me by the hands and glared into my eyes. His were gray and bloodshot. “Get outa there now. Making wishes in a fountain never solves nothin’.” He helped me out of the water.

  “Thanks,” I begrudgingly said.

  “Don’t leave town, Orpha Payne.”

  Orpha. Nobody calls me Orpha. People at dentists’ offices call me Orpha. But they screw it into Oprah, like Oprah Winfrey, the talk show host. It’s so embarrassing. And poor Oprah’s real name was supposed to be Orpha, from the Bible, but someone wrote it down wrong. The cop said, “I’ll be around tomorrow to take a statement from ya. I’ll call for ya at the YWCA. You be there now. And if you find your mother, ask her to turn herself in now.”

  I could still feel the effects of the medication I took. I was groggy and feeling a little loopy. I giggled. YWCA? Like the Village People song, “YMCA”, where it’s fun to stay? I broke into disco dance moves spelling out the letters with my body, mouthing the words.

  The cop said, “Miss, what’s wrong? Are you having a seizure?”

  I giggled and giggled.

  “How much have you had to drink this evening?”

  “Drink? I had a diet soda and some tap water to wash down the aspirins and Benadryls.”

  “Diet soda? What in carnation is that? And you say you did Bennys? Oh lordy. Let’s get you a room before you… No wonder all these men are taking advantage of you.”

  He escorted me into the YWCA. The matronly gargoyle behind the desk was reading the racing page of a newspaper. She barely cast an eye our way.

  The cop said, “Evenin’, Mother Mary. I have a wayward young woman in need of a safe place to sleep off some narcotics.”

  “I did not take narcotics! Benadryl is just an allergy medicine that helps me sleep. It’s readily available at lots of stores. No prescription is required.”

  He said, “Maybe after you come down from your high, you and I should have a little talk about which pharmacists are selling you the Bennys. I’ll be around on my shift tomorrow evening. Now, Mother Mary, would you please show this young lady, Orpha Payne, to a room and be sure to lock the door. She’s already been molested by two men that I know about.”

  Mother Mary Gargoyle eyeballed me with her bulging ones. “What happened, child, you fall into a swimming pool?”

  “No. There was an incident at the Lincoln Road fountain… Oh never mind.”

  Mother Mary waddled up four flights of stairs.

  I limped along behind, my ankle smarting. Some cover story dream boy made up. I didn’t even hurt my ankle but now it does. And where is dream boy?

  The cop took up the rear and made sure the desk clerk escorted me to a room and locked the door.

  Good, they were gone. Some room. More like a closet. I thought about the closet under the stairs at my parents’ house. That one was much bigger. It was stifling hot in this one. I shuffled to the window and heaved the sash. It flew up and then right back down, smashing my hand. “Oww!”

  I tried opening it again, this time quickly putting my hands under my armpits as soon as I launched the pane upward. It slammed back down. Great. The counterweight must be broken. I glanced around and found a Holy Bible to prop the window open with. Before I placed it in the sill, I realized that wasn’t very nice. So I scouted around in the dim light of the lone bulb. It had a brown shoestring for a pull chain, just like the big walk-in closet in my childhood home. I spied a brown rubber doorstop on the dusty hardwood floor. Yes. That would do. I raised the sash and positioned the doorstop vertically against one side of the window.

  A tiny breeze flitted in. I knelt on the floor in front of the window and crossed my arms on the windowsill. I laid my head on them. I felt flakes of paint crunching under my arms. I heard helicopters. Loud, louder, quieter, gone. The neon lettering on the building buzzed. I could see it sideways, without moving. Pink neon letters, YWCA.

  I heard a noisy motor. It looked like a green pickup truck. A really old classic one. It parked under the streetlight in front of the bakery across the street. Paddy Cakes Bakery. Hey, this is where Momma used to live. I couldn’t wait until they opened in the morning. Maybe they could give me some answers. I sighed. I started to get up when the door opened on the truck. A bearded man, dressed in a gray suit, emerged from the vehicle. I recognized him. He was the cute guy in the sepia photo with Momma that I was looking at before I had my first special dream. I called out to him but he’d already disappeared inside the building. Oh well. At least I must be on the right track finally. I just had to wait until the morning. The fresh air felt good on my heated skin but my jumbled mind was still racing. That pirate boy had said Momma had his money. What money? And what was with his eye?

  I shut my own eyes. Very grateful to have mine intact. It was finally cooling off. The wind rustled through the street trees. I heard water gushing through pipes in the wall. Other tenants. Or occupants or renters or, wait, I knew, other “wayward girls” like the cop called me. If only he knew exactly how respectable and honorable and what a good girl I really was. Back in the twenty-first century where I belonged.

  Where I belonged? Oh how I wished I didn’t belong there. I didn’t, did I? In the Payne family. How I came from them, I had no idea. I was nothing like them. Maybe I was adopted? That would be great. No, my birth certificate was black and white. I was begot from Chloe Lambert and Nathan Payne. The all-American couple. Sure, they clothed and fed and sheltered me, kissed my booboos, sent me to public school and drove me to church. But they always treated me like the odd girl out.

  Tammy and Perry were always more important. And they were invariably in trouble. Nothing Momma’s money couldn’t remedy. Chirping hatchlings devouring the regurgitation.

  I wished I belonged here. Right here. If here was real, that is. I would have had a much more glamorous job in the forties. Maybe I could’ve been a switchboard operator? That would’ve been fun. I heard men used to dial the operator just to have a girl to talk to. M
aybe I could’ve made dates with some classy guys. Yeah, perhaps switchboard operator was not much better than being a file clerk in the peon job category but, hey, it would’ve been more enjoyable. I knew it would have.

  Or maybe I’d have been a girl newspaper reporter. War correspondent. No, not that. Dangerous. How about covering the gossip scene in Hollywood? Yeah, that’d have been great. Interviewing Cary Grant and William Powell and hey, why not, Vera Blandings. At least that way I’d have known what the first love of my father’s life had been like. I wonder why they broke up.

  And I’d write Pulitzer Prize-winning articles for the front page, on important issues of the day. Wouldn’t I be something? And I’d be respected. And I’d have friends. Witty, intellectual friends. We’d go to parties and premieres and jet set. Not just an email relationship with a roommate that I’d never actually seen face-to-face. I didn’t even know what Ashley looked like. Probably heavy, with short hair. Taller than me though. Everyone was taller than me.

  It would have been fun living in the forties with my dream man. He wouldn’t have let me miss our wedding. Mr. and Mrs. Jones. Mrs. Donna Jones. I couldn’t wait to drop my maiden name. I wasn’t going to hyphenate. Speaking of my Mr. Jones, where did he evaporate off to? He’d said I would meet someone from Momma’s past. Check. Been there, met Bill Blandings. Now I was done.

  The wind roared in. I heard music. Oh no. Not that one—yep. The darned “Donna” song again.

  ~*~

  I blinked my eyes open, shielding my face with one hand. An annoying bell rang out. And rang and rang. I opened my eyes all the way and focused on the canopy of my queen-sized bed. Big Ben blared on the nightstand. Six o’clock. Thursday morning. Exactly a week since my accident. I have to go to work. I reached for the wind-up alarm and smashed the little pin in the back to shut it off.

  But I didn’t want to go to work today. I didn’t want to ever go to work again. I knew Cynthia didn’t delegate my filing to anyone else in my absence. There were probably a hundred and seventy baskets of Place-In-Files to pigeonhole. I hated PIF-ing. The sallow blue computer pages were so uninspiring. I moaned. I pictured her telling me she wanted me caught up by the end of today.

  I’m not going in. Not today. Admittedly, it was a good union job and it paid my mortgage. I’d been there so long that I was at the top pay step, on the peon scale anyhow.

  Bet Cynthia would make me bring a doctor’s note, explaining my absence. Even though they had the inpatient bill by now. Not that it would even be opened for eleven weeks. The mailroom was that backed up. All the time. In my nineteen years there, I’d actually caught up on my PIF’s around six times. Maybe eight? And Cynthia always found me more work in another letter to do. Usually the pink C’s. They always had trouble keeping regular employees in the C’s. It was the punishment letter, being right in front of Cynthia’s glass-walled office. Talk about working under a microscope. I shuddered, remembering feeling incompetent under her piercing scrutiny.

  I currently had forty thousand files that I was responsible for. Everybody whose last name began with the letters T, U or V had goldenrod-colored files. Crammed into industrial bookshelves. Metal and two feet taller than I was. I had to kick around a three-wheeled stool and step up and down on it. Except that one wheel had always been missing. So it didn’t kick well. Cynthia had had me on the T-U-V’s for two years now. The bitch knew that I was the shortest girl in the file room.

  It was pretty mindless work. We filed by order of the insured’s last name, first initial, middle initial and then the last four digits of the Social Security number. Occasionally we had to take it deeper, to the first three numbers. We rarely got down to the middle two. A monkey could do it. And very possibly did. My colleagues were all right. Although we were not quite sure what species, sex or IQ level Angel on the green M’s had. Short butch hair. Heavy but not morbidly obese. Couldn’t really see defined breasts or a waist or hips or a male bulge. Androgynous gray or brown clothes. But Angel did plod along and got the job done.

  There was a major cut-through hallway in the aisle of my last two rows. So I got interrupted and distracted a lot. Even though I had to admit that the biggest distraction was Scott, the really cute mailroom guy. When I saw him, I automatically lost track of my alphabet. Well, the job did have some perks.

  I decided I would not be returning to work today. I swung my legs over the bed and shuffled to the bathroom. I turned the shower on and peed while waiting for the hot water to come through. Hey, I know, I’ll call in now and leave a message. I don’t have to talk to Miz Cynthia. I shut the water off and found the phone. It was still off the hook, where it landed on the floor beneath the window. I hung it up, set it on the nightstand and plugged the cord back into the wall. I picked up the handset. I had a dial tone.

  I dialed, listened to Jean-the-receptionist’s recorded message and then pressed six–six–nine, Cynthia’s extension. I listened to her screechy voicemail message. At the beep, I cleared my throat and said, “Cynthia, this is Donna Payne. My father died. I will be taking my three days’ bereavement leave as listed in my union contract. His name is Dr. Nathan Payne and he will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.” I hung up.

  I was required to reveal those details because they always checked. Nice, compassionate company that I worked for. I should have included the date of burial but I couldn’t remember what Tammy told me. Did she tell me? I didn’t think so. Oh I didn’t wanna call her. Or Perry. I didn’t even wanna see them. I shouldn’t have to see them again. I was gonna bust Momma out of the loony bin and get her set up in a nice retirement campus. The kind with ballroom dancing, ceramics, internet classes, a beauty parlor, bank, doctor and field trips to Atlantic City. And an intercom in her cottage, to call for help, just in case. And staff to check in on her every day, just in case. And then an assisted care unit to step up to and then a full-scale nursing home for her final days.

  She couldn’t come and live with me. She pushed my buttons, masterfully, like only a mother could. I couldn’t stand being witness to her doling out the dough to my siblings while I paid all of her living expenses. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to hold my tongue and I didn’t want to break my momma’s heart. No, I wouldn’t tell her off. Tammy? Oh yeah, babe. Been there, done that. Told her off good. Felt marvelous. At the time. But then I missed her.

  I loved the beast. She couldn’t help that she was a narcissistic bitch. She was still my sister. I wished she could be nice to me. Take an interest in my life. Be proud of my little accomplishments and be concerned if things weren’t going well for me. I just wanted a sister like other people had. Normal families.

  I couldn’t let my mother move in with me. Momma would drive me crazy and then I’d be just like the rest of them. That was my big fear. Plus I had stairs and Momma was in her eighties now. And she was kind of lazy about stairs. Always her excuse for letting the laundry back up, she didn’t like jogging up and down the basement stairs.

  Okay, what was I doing today? Hmm… I had no idea. Just thinking of cohabitating with Momma blew my mind. Think, think, Donna, think. Oh yeah, I needed to take a shower and get dressed, in case the funeral was today.

  So I turned the water back on and held my hand under the spray. It warmed up quickly. I stepped in and closed the clear shower curtain. It let lots of light in and the way it draped, the view was opaque. I always got totally drenched first. I closed my eyes and let the warm water run down my hair and face. I adjusted it as hot as it would go. I leaned down and grasped the bottle of shampoo from the shower floor. I knew it was the shampoo bottle without opening my eyes because the lid popped open on the top. The conditioner, in contrast, opened at the bottom. I squirted hydrating curls shampoo into my hand, closed the top and set the bottle down.

  I rubbed my hands together and then massaged my scalp. I had shampooed last night but since I didn’t dry it, I might as well start over if I was to look at all presentable. I worked the slithery soft foam through my shoulder-leng
th hair. Suds trickled down my face. I noticed a sensation on my right foot. Something was not right. It felt like…a tongue.

  I screamed.

  Chapter Five

  My eyes flew open. Suds seared the corneas. I spotted a hazy brown form crouched down on the other side of the shower curtain. Adrenaline surged through me. I grabbed the left and right edge of the shower curtain and pounced down on it. The curtain ripped right off the rings since I had never bothered snapping them shut because that always hurt my fingers. I flipped over the creature, struggling against its brute strength. I wrapped it up in the curtain. It screamed. A howling primal scream. We rolled around on the cold white ceramic-tiled floor. I immobilized it.

  I lay there, wondering what to do next. Then I felt it. On my face. Its tail was wagging. Its tail was wagging? I untangled the shower curtain and unrolled a Great Dane. I’d captured a dog. He shook his head, rose up and began licking the water off my face.

  I squirmed away from his long pink tongue and scrambled to my feet. He resumed licking them. On closer inspection, make that she. Where did Scooby Doo-ette come from? The dog suddenly stopped licking. Her ears perked up. She barked and charged out of my bathroom.

  Donna, are you dreaming again? One way to find out. I only had to walk into my bedroom and if my dream man was sprawled out on my bed, naked and standing at attention… Hopefully he was circumcised. I’d always wanted one that was. Wonder what the difference was, mechanically? Was there some subtle nuance I’d been denied? I turned the shower off and returned to the bedroom.

  Mr. Jones wasn’t there. I sighed in disappointment.

  Where did the dog come from and where had she gone? I snatched my pink silk bathrobe from the hook behind my closet door and pulled it on. I dripped with water and the fabric clung to my wet body. I tucked my half-soapy hair behind my ears and crept through the house.

  I didn’t notice anything unusual. As I stood at the top of the stairs, I heard laughter outside. Feeling a breeze as I descended the oak treads, I clung tight to the turned banister. When I made it to the bottom and peeked around the foyer wall, I realized the front door was wide open. As I shut it, I noticed two little girls out front, petting the dog.