Slightly Irregular (30 page)

I saw Liam before
I saw his excuse of a car. He was seated on my front step with my laptop next to him. He looked fabulous in his casual shirt and thigh-hugging jeans, but I immediately reminded myself that he had to be off-limits. As much as it pained me to say, there was a possibility my mother was right, and I should keep my distance from him.

Liam was nothing like any of the other men I’ve dated. Not that we’ve had a date. What did we have in common? Probably nothing more than a strong physical attraction. And here I’d just spent time telling a thirteen-year-old when to kiss
and when not to have sex. Maybe I needed to take my own advice.

“Have fun playing dress-up with Izzy?” he asked as soon as I was out of my car.

“It went well, thank you. Why are you here?” That question was getting redundant.

“Returning your laptop—and I thought you might want to know what the IT guy had to say. Oh, and I got to listen to the recording of the Crime Stoppers call.” He held up a micro-recorder. “Wanna know what I found out?”

“You know I do. Come on in.”

Liam carried my laptop inside the house while I took the tote bag in and put it in my bedroom. When I came back, he had his head in my fridge.

“Try the veggie drawer.”

“You keep beer in the veggie drawer?”

“Want one or not?”

“Don’t get snippy.”

As soon as he finished rummaging through my refrigerator, I went over and uncorked a bottle of red from Australia. After pouring myself a large glass, I stood in the kitchen while Liam took one of the bar stools. “So what did you find out?”

“Tiara64 is no slouch. She routed her IP through about seven countries. But it looks like the site of origin moves in and around West Palm.”

“In and around?”

He nodded and then took a drink. “She’s using Internet cafés all over the county.”

“Tiara is a total stranger. How would she know to find me on eBay?”

“Don’t know yet.”

“Do you think she mistook Becky for me?”

“Possibly. But I think all this tracks back to Ellen’s sudden departure.”

“What about breaking into Ellen’s apartment?” I asked.

“Speaking of break-ins, you owe me five hundred dollars.”

“For what?”

“That’s what it cost me to get the tow yard to drop the charges.”

I went into my bathroom, took the envelope out of the tampon box, and counted out five hundred in twenties. “Here,” I said when I returned with the cash. “Are you going to play the Crime Stoppers tape for me?”

“I was saving that for last.”

“So now we go to Ellen’s place?”

“Not tonight. I have a thing. You really need to learn patience.”

That blasted
thing
. “And you need to learn when you’ve overstayed your welcome.”

“Okay, don’t get your thong in a twist.” He pulled the recorder out of his pocket, laid it on the table, then pressed the Play button.

A female voice asked. “Palm Beach Crime Stoppers, may I help you?”

“I’d like to report a crime that I just witnessed,” a second female voice stated. Only the second voice wasn’t as strong or as commanding as the first.

“For that you’d need to contact the police directly.”

During the brief silence, I heard some muffled sound I couldn’t place.

“No police,” the scared woman said with urgency. “Finley Anderson Tanner just broke into Lawson’s tow yard and broke the window on at least one car.”

“Oh my God,” I said as I brought my hands up to my face. “That’s Becky’s voice.”

“I thought so, but I wanted to confirm it with you.”

“So now what?”

“So we keep it to ourselves. If the police find out she’s made contact, they’ll call off any kind of search.”

“How would Becky know I went to the tow yard?”

“I was going to ask you that.”

I shrugged as my brain swirled, trying to get a grip on this latest piece of the puzzle. “No one knew. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing.”

“Tell me how you came up with the idea to break in. Did Jane and Liv suspect?”

I shook my head. “I didn’t tell anyone.”

“Well, at least this is good news.”

“How? My best friend ratted me out to the authorities.”

“Yes, but your best friend is alive.” He tipped his drink to me. “Try to have a good night.”

“You too.”

As soon as he left, I curled up on the sofa with my computer in my lap and a box of Lucky Charms to my left. I went to Google and typed in my own name. About seven entries later, I found that my Facebook profile listed my eBay addiction but
didn’t have a photograph of me. I thought that was secure enough to keep the loons at bay. I did a quick scan of my posts, and sure enough, I’d posted my eBay screen name in one of my entries.

“Stupid, stupid, incredibly stupid.”

No wonder Tiara found me. “Well, that solves one element of the mystery.” I was so anxious about Becky. Even though Tony had faith in the police, I wasn’t so sure. Something was wrong, and Liam might be right. It all started with Ellen. The problem was, I had no idea what
it
was.

On a lark, I Googled Ellen Lieberman. The first fifty entries had to do with various newspaper articles, all relating to her work with the bar association and/or cases for particularly high-profile clients. Then I came across something very strange. It referenced an Ellen Becker, but the link to that page was broken. I’d gotten to that Google place where it just started listing every instance of “Ellen.” Then it gave me all the possibilities for “Lieberman.”

Not really helpful. Then I thought about the Department of Corrections, so I typed in Ellen Lieberman and Department of Corrections. Nothing. Next I tried Tiara64. That gave me nothing but pageant results. Another useless path. In a last-ditch effort, and using my Dane-Lieberman password, I went to one of the credit-reporting places and typed in Ellen’s name. Her report was spotless. Only problem? It went back only as far as 1988. No loans or debts of any kind until she was twenty-seven. Not even a store credit card. Nothing. It was as if she was born in 1988. Only I knew she was forty-seven, so where did the other twenty years go?

Never take life too seriously; no one ever gets out alive anyway.

“She didn’t exist,”
I
told Jane over the phone. “I’m going into the office so I can access the census and Social Security databases.”

“What can I do to help?” she asked.

“Know anyone at the IRS who will tell you if Ellen filed taxes before 1988?”

“Maybe. But it’s Saturday. I might have to wait until Monday. Are you okay from your night in jail?

“As good as I’m going to get. At least Steadman and Grimes weren’t on duty.” I’d had a brief but memorable encounter with those detectives, and even though it all ended well, they still held a grudge.

“How’d you get out? Liv and I were already pooling our resources to cover your bail.”

“Thanks, but Tony and Liam got the charges dismissed. The guy from Lawson’s declined to prosecute if I paid him five hundred dollars.”

“Liam
and
Tony. This is getting
way too
interesting.”

“Are you sitting down?”

“No. Why, should I?”

“Yes and yes. The reason the tow-yard people caught me had nothing to do with security.”

“Then how did they find you?”

“A call into Crime Stoppers even before anyone knew there was a crime.”

“Some clairvoyant with a hunch?”

“No. I listened to the tape. It was Becky.”

“That’s great, right?” Jane said on a single breath.

“Yes. Proof of life is good. Or so Liam tells me. But the call to Crime Stoppers can mean only one thing.”

“Which is?”

“Someone is following me. I didn’t tell anyone I was going to the tow yard. Hell,
I
didn’t even know I was going until I was halfway home.”

Jane made a
tsk
ing sound. “You really need to stop this. You could have been hurt. I’d bet Lawson or whoever had a nice collection of guns.”

I told her all about Becky’s purse still being in the car. “It looked as if nothing was disturbed.”

“Were her keys inside?”

“No.”

“Phone?”

“No.”

“Then it does seem more plausible that she just took some time away. Remember last year when she went to the Bahamas with nothing but her ID and passport?”

“But things were slow at the office, and she knew no one would care if she took three days off. And she did tell the three of us. This feels different. Besides, why would she turn me into the police when she has to know I’m worried sick?”

“I’ll call Liv and cancel lunch.”

“Oh, that’s right!” I slapped my forehead. “No, no, don’t cancel. I’ll be at Thai Jo at one.”

“Want me to come by and pick you up?”

It did feel a little creepy knowing someone had probably been following me. “No, thanks. I’ll spend some time at the office and then meet you at the Thai place. But Jane?”

“Yes.”

“Call me on my cell every fifteen minutes. I don’t want to end up like Ellen and Becky.”

The place was dead
. It didn’t used to be this way. Ellen and Becky usually worked on Saturdays, and often Vain Dane would come by to get some things done. But this Saturday morning, I was the only one in the building. Which is why I was super careful to lock the door and reset the alarm code the minute I’d stepped inside. Even after taking all those precautions, I still felt like Janet Leigh walking into the Bates Motel.

Following my standard procedure, I made myself some coffee and then hunkered down to business. Checking the census records was tedious, but in the end, I was satisfied with my results. Ellen Lieberman was not counted until after the 1990 census. The woman was a ghost, but why?

My mind immediately went to something sexy like a spy, or a material witness in some big trial. But then I remembered Ellen—nothing sexy about her. “So what are you hiding?” I thought aloud.

In order to continue my search, I’d have to go to the Human Resources office. One of the perks of being a paralegal was that I’d been entrusted with a master key. The key was supposed to be used in emergencies—like if one of the partners forgot to sign something or I needed to retrieve a file from one of their offices. I considered finding Becky an emergency.

HR was on the first floor, an area I try to steer clear of. It’s usually occupied by Maudlin Margaret’s minions, who share her resentment over my salary. Most of the ladies had worked for Dane-Lieberman a decade longer than I had, but they were administrative assistants, so of course we had a pay inequity. This made Margaret nuts. She’d been seated at her post for nine and one half hours with an hour for lunch for more than twenty-five years.

I slipped my key into the lock of the HR office. There was a small waiting area with a desk and a few chairs. The second door led to the actual office, where all employee information was safeguarded.

I yanked on the cabinet marked with the letters “L” through “P,” but it was locked. I tried all the other drawers with the same result. Time to go hunting. I checked the obvious places first—the desk, the credenza behind the desk, then even ran my hands under the three chairs, all in the name of thoroughness.