The Best of Sisters in Crime (31 page)

“Cindy Carson.
Like Kit.” Water dripped from her hands into a puddle on the tile floor.

She’d need a
good set of acrylic nails—you never knew what those vultures hungry for the
beating heart of a public figure would notice.

The woman
reached for a paper towel; three fluttered to the floor. As Cindy Carson and
Charlotte Durning knelt to retrieve the towels, their heads bumped lightly.

“Sorry,” they
said at the same time.

Eyes crinkling,
Cindy stood slowly; then she laughed, shaking her brown hair. “This is
so
strange. Gotta run or I’ll miss my
appointment. Bye.”

Don’t freeze
up now
,
Charlotte thought as she fought a clutch of fear.
She’s your only chance and all the signs are right.

Cindy Carson
pulled away from the hold of Charlotte’s gaze and reached for the door.

“Wait.”
Charlotte’s eyes teared with relief that she’d finally broken her own silence. “I
need to talk to you later. Please. Tell me how I can reach you.” She glanced at
her watch. She had to be back in court in less than five minutes.

“I, uh . . .”
Cindy’s quaver trailed off. “Look, you’re scaring me.” She started for the door
again.

“Please. I need
your help. And I have a lot of money to pay for it.” She reached into her purse
and pulled five hundred-dollar bills from her wallet.

Cindy stared at
the money but didn’t move.

“Meet me at Macy’s.
Tomorrow at noon. I’m talking about a lot of money. Enough so that, if you were
smart, you wouldn’t have to worry for the rest of your life.”

The faucet
dripped noisily. Beyond the rest room walls, the roar of lunchtime conversation
rose and fell at the restaurant tables.

“Linens?
Sportswear? Electronics?” Cindy frowned and reached for the bills, folded them
in half, then jammed them into the pocket of her slacks.

“Beauty salon.”
She could have spared herself those moments of fright by taking out the cash
sooner; Charlotte felt better already. “Fourth floor.”

Back to table of
contents

Charlotte
squinted and shook her head. “Look,” she said, fluffing the hair toward Cindy’s
face. “Mine falls forward. Hers keeps curling the wrong way. Can’t you do
something about it?”

The stylist
stepped back. She should have known—anyone who would wear a terrible brown
cardigan over that yellow polyester uniform wouldn’t have the necessary panache
to pull it off. But she couldn’t very well have waltzed into her own Union
Street salon and directed Bijou to recreate Cindy Carson in her image. Makeup
and clothes would have to take care of the rest.

A gnawing fear
nibbled at her stomach. How silly to be afraid now, she chided herself. This was
going to work to everyone’s advantage.

If by some
miracle the case went her way or was thrown out of court, then Cindy would keep
the $30,000 she’d already been given for her troubles.

But if things
went as she expected, Charlotte would deposit $250,000 each month into a Swiss
bank account; the bank would print a coded message in the
Chronicle
to let Cindy know that everything was
okay. And while Cindy took her place in the facility, Charlotte would live in
Cindy’s Fillmore Street apartment. When the three months were up, they’d each
resume their lives.

“This is better,
don’t you think?” Cindy flicked a curl down toward her cheek, raised an
eyebrow, sat back with her shoulders squared and her neck stretching.

Do I really
look like that?
Charlotte wondered as she squinted
through her dark glasses.
Do I really appear
to he so cold and distant? No wonder I have no friends.

Now the effect
was so nearly right she gasped. The sleek blond hair curled into a gentle frame
around the Cindy/Charlotte oval face.

Charlotte tried
not to watch as Cindy, who had spent ten minutes practicing just before they’d
entered the beauty salon, scrawled a signature on the charge slip. The
receptionist nodded, tore up the carbons, and went back to her
TV Guide.
Cindy and Charlotte hurried out of the
department store onto the crowded street, jostled by the crush of midday
shoppers, and started walking.

Three blocks
later, they still had said nothing to each other. Cindy stopped in front of
Gump’s window. “I don’t know about this whole trip.”

“What do you
mean?” Charlotte untied her scarf and let it fall to her shoulders. She pulled
the dark glasses away from her face.

Cindy frowned. “Oh,
shit. I don’t know.”

“Oh,
dear
,” Charlotte corrected, her forehead
wrinkling in disapproval. “Charlotte Durning would never say ‘Oh, shit’ in so
public a setting. And prison, don’t forget, is a public setting. Oh, dear; oh,
my; oh. Lord. Any of these. But not ‘Oh, shit.’ Okay?”

Cindy nodded. “Just
a little nervous, I guess. I’m ready for the rest. I’m really hungry, though.
You want to pick up some lunch on the way over to my place? Pizza, or maybe
some take-out bagels and lox?”

Charlotte’s
stomach fluttered. “I forgot to tell you. I’m allergic to smoked things.
Something in the curing process, I don’t know. No bacon. No lox, even though
most of it isn’t smoked but pickled. No ham. No barbecue.”

An annoyed scowl
flitted across Cindy’s face and Charlotte shivered. Instead of the giggle she
expected, Cindy’s right eyebrow and the right corner of her mouth rose. She was
good, this woman, maybe too good. Charlotte shivered again. She felt
inhabited—no, that wasn’t quite right. She felt replaced.

Well, that was
what she wanted, wasn’t it?

Cindy sighed. “That’s
gonna be a bummer. What
do
you eat for breakfast? I know about the cholesterol rap, but I’ve been eating
bacon and eggs five days a week all my life.” She giggled, then frowned. “And
the other two days it’s bagels and cream cheese and lox.”

This whole thing
couldn’t
fall apart over the breakfast menu. “Three
months of cornflakes and milk—you can put up with that for three quarters of a
million dollars. I’ll bring some with me tomorrow morning so you can try it.”
For a minute, she couldn’t read the expression on Cindy’s face. Then she
laughed as she realized that the cant of the head, the pursed mouth, were her
own gestures when she was making a difficult decision.

Damn, the woman
really had her down cold. Was she so transparent, so easy to mimic?

What did all
this identity stuff matter, anyway? She wouldn’t be going to jail; that was all
that counted.

Back to table of
contents

“Here, I’ll take
the box of cornflakes. I want you to practice opening the door with this key.
It’s a little tricky.”

Charlotte took
the key and looked up as a tan-and-brown pigeon settled on a second-story
windowsill. Would there be an elevator? She had forgotten to ask; her throat
filled with bile and a cold fist squeezed the air out of her lungs.

“You okay?”
Cindy laid a warm hand on Charlotte’s bare arm.

“What floor?”
Charlotte finally managed to say.

Cindy held up
her hand, her fingers spread in the victory sign. “Second. One flight of
stairs. You can make it.”

Charlotte nodded
at Cindy’s grin and followed her up the wooden stairs. Cindy’s Fillmore Street
apartment was in what Ed Partridge would call a marginal neighborhood, with
yuppies and upscale restaurants moving the blacks and Hispanics farther into
the Mission District or the Western Addition.

Weekends would
be noisy. Evenings would be nothing like the cloistered quiet of home, where
the back rooms looked out over the lights of the Golden Gate Bridge and the
jewel like twinkle of cars crossing the bay.

But it wouldn’t
be jail, she thought as she wiggled the key in the lock.

“Pull down on
the knob and pull the key out just a tiny bit,” Cindy directed.

Charlotte
jiggled the key but nothing happened. It wouldn’t turn. “Oh, shit,” she
muttered.

“Good.” Cindy
grinned. “You’re getting it now.”

The key suddenly
felt right; the lock turned, the door opened, and they clattered inside.

Ordinary.

That was the
first word that came to Charlotte Durning’s mind.

Blessedly
ordinary. A Haitian cotton love seat. A pair of rattan chairs with
rose-colored cushions. An imitation Oriental on the dull wood floors and lots
of green plants in clay pots.

She followed
Cindy down the hall. They passed an oval mirror with a carved oak frame.
Charlotte pulled Cindy’s sleeve.

“What?” She
looked annoyed and shrugged out of Charlotte’s grasp.

Without saying
anything, Charlotte turned Cindy’s shoulders so that they both faced into the
mirror. It was too unbelievable, not knowing which of the images reflected her
own face and which was the other’s. Finally, Cindy broke away and hustled to
the kitchen.

“The top element
of the toaster oven is dead so you have to toast one side first and then turn
your bread to toast the other side.” She yanked the refrigerator door open,
pulled out a package of bacon. “Oh, shi—oh, dear. I think I’ll just fry this up
and have it all. Before I get in that taxi.”

She tossed the
package onto the counter and stood a moment too long, hands on hips. Her eyes
narrowed. “You never been printed, have you? By the cops. Fingerprints, I mean.”

Charlotte raised
her eyebrows. “Of course not.”

“We’ll be okay
then. Now sit down and let’s turn you into a brunette.”

Charlotte
watched in fascination as Cindy moved about the tidy kitchen. Maybe she’d learn
to cook in these three months. And catch up on her reading and learn to sew or
knit. She could do lots of things, without the distraction of board luncheons
where the primary objective was to show off how thin you were and how many good
deeds you could buy for your good name. No days wasted after late-night parties
in which she’d have to fish for questions to ask a fiercely dull diplomat or a
boorishly crass manufacturer so that she could be rewarded with the
excruciating details of their daily lives.

“What do you do
all day? When you aren’t looking for work, I mean.” Charlotte breathed the
ammonia fumes of Miss Clairol Golden Chestnut #390 and squeezed her eyes shut
as Cindy dabbed the thick stuff on her head. She could practically hear the
other woman shrug and screw up her nose.

“Not much,” the
voice behind her said. “Whoops. Dripping. Keep your eyes closed.”

Charlotte
obeyed; the cool touch of the damp cotton swab as it mopped up the hair dye
felt. . . what? Sisterly? She didn’t have a sister. Her fastidious mother had
decided after Charlotte’s birth that one such messy event was enough. Charlotte
opened her eyes, marveling at the growing embryo of affection she felt for
Cindy Carson.

Cindy secured a
plastic cap on Charlotte’s head with a clip; she set the timer and sat down at
the chair across the table.

“I’m a crossword
puzzle freak. And I have an herb garden back here. See?” Cindy threw open the
window; four wooden boxes filled with lacy greens formed a rectangle on the
fire escape outside the kitchen. Sun kissed the soil and sparkled on a white
enamel watering can. “Just water them twice a week. Snip the tops of these and
use them in omelets. Should be strong and fully grown when I get back.”

Charlotte felt a
tingle of anticipation.

She would help
those brave little seedlings struggle to full fragrant growth. She would do
something constructive.

“Mostly,” Cindy
said as she picked a dried tomato seed from the counter, “I walk. This is a
great city for walking. Great bookstores. Places that sell handmade stuff.
Cafes. I really like just strolling around and looking in the windows of other
people’s houses, you know?” She was silent for a moment, her eyes clouded and
far away. “You’re sure it’s going to be three months max? Any more than that—I
don’t know if it’s worth it. Mickey really needs to hear from me— for support,
you know. I’m counting on you to mail the letters. To this address.” She tapped
the yellow note under the plastic sushi magnet on the refrigerator.

“I’m very
reliable; of course I’ll mail your letters. Look, my attorney says three
months. No more, no less.”

A siren screamed
down Fillmore toward Church Street. She wouldn’t back out now, would she? There
was no time to do anything else, no chance to make other arrangements. Cindy
Carson simply had to honor her commitment.