Stocks & Blondes
9
Going ‘home’ to Cleveland
A STUFFED ANIMAL, worn threadbare, might have been the most treasured item in the world, but without the owner to give it value, it was either Goodwill or garbage.
A life in boxes
After my visit with Clarice yesterday, I scoured Georgia’s room for any kind of evidence that she had been as wild as Clarice suggested. Nothing. No sign of that necklace either. I finished packing the room into boxes about eight o’clock, after Grover ordered in some Chinese food. It’s sad to see a room that held so much of a woman’s life all put into boxes. They were labeled neatly with either ‘Goodwill’ or ‘Attic.’ Anything that had no market or sentimental value was already sitting in the alley in black plastic garbage bags. The boxes labeled ‘Attic’ contained photographs, awards, and keepsakes that had specific, identifiable meaning, like a high school achievement award. If it was just a stuffed animal, it either went in Goodwill or garbage. It could have been the single favorite item Georgia owned, but without its owner it was meaningless. It reminded me of how much stuff of Dag’s I still needed to go through. That depressed me even more. I’ll be spending the next couple of weeks putting Georgia’s soul to rest and still need to find peace myself.
In a way, though, I understand Lars’s insistence that I come to Savannah and put on Peg Chester’s persona. Savannah is one of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever seen. After I left Grover last night, I took a cab down to River Street. Wow! I wandered through Emmet Park and stopped at a rib joint to eat real food. I could only choke down a few bites of Grover’s Chinese takeout. I don’t think he minded because I expect he’ll be eating from those cardboard boxes for the next three days. Along the waterfront I saw the Olympic Torch. Yes, Savannah hosted the 1996 Olympic Yachting events. Again—who knew?
I went on the ghost tour at eleven that night, meeting a guide dressed like a ghoul in a cemetery. If there hadn’t been ten others in the tour group, I would have run away in the first five minutes. As it was, when I got back to the B&B, I kept imagining people coming into my room and marching through to the bathroom all night long. Mrs. Teasley told me in the morning that she was surprised I hadn’t noticed it earlier. My bathroom is where the stairway to the servants’ quarters used to be. Apparently, every house and hotel in Savannah—at least in the historic district—is haunted. I know I looked carefully before I went into the bathroom in the morning. My face in the mirror looked a little more tired. I’m keeping that look as I head for the airport.
Grover was genuinely sad to see me leave. He wanted to drive me to the airport but I told him I already called Uber. I’m not getting into a car with him again. I’m feeling pretty comfortable in my body, so we’ll see how it goes at the airport. Then I’m off to Cleveland.
Where do you go when you die?
No one even saw me at the airport in Savannah. I walked through the checkpoints and the security scan without even being spoken to. Just waved along.
I caught a cab and paid $40 for a ride to my apartment in Cleveland. I can’t wait to get back to Seattle where I can drive a car. That reminds me, I need to make a rental reservation tonight.
I’ve never actually been here. I stood at the apartment door with the key in my hand and decided to be polite and knock. I waited a moment and a woman about my age—real age—answered the door.
“May I help you?” I stood there silent for a moment and let her look into my eyes. I saw the dawning revelation. “Peg? Is that you?” I smiled and said ‘Hi.’
“How’s my favorite niece doing?” She laughed and ushered me into the little apartment.
When I first developed the Peg Chester alias, Lars was looking over my shoulder. He insisted we figure out how to verify where our personas lived. Peg has to have an address, and if someone sends a letter there, it can’t come back ‘Address Unknown.’ What’s more, if someone shows up at the door and asks for Peg, the person who answers the door can’t say ‘Who?’ Enter Joan Redford. I roomed with Joan at the U during my undergrad days and we got along well. She lived in Indianapolis with her parents and came out to Seattle to get as far out of their house as she could. But she wanted to go back to the Midwest.
We were talking one night she said her parents were kind of sickly.
“What do you plan to do when they go?” I asked.
“Go? Go where?”
“To Cleveland, silly,” I answered. “When they die.” It was the silly kind of thing that roommates say and all of a sudden, going to Cleveland became our equivalent of dying. When Joan got a job offer at Sherwin-Williams in Cleveland, we both about went to Cleveland. But she took the job and we stayed in touch. When Lars told us to find out where our aliases lived, Peg Chester moved in with Joan.
“Your accent sounds a little Southern,” Joan said, “but you look fantastic. Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”
“I sent you an email,” I said. “You’d probably better look in your junk mail.” Of course, she hadn’t recognized an email from Peg Chester and deleted it without reading. But the fact was that I paid a portion of her rent for this little two-bedroom apartment. I had a key. Joan showed me to my room.
“I put everything you wanted in the room,” Joan said. “There’s clothes in your closet but I don’t know if they’ll fit. Is everything all right? I always imagined you’d show up one dark and stormy night because the mob was after Deb Riley and she had to drop out of existence.”
“It’s a training exercise,” I said. “Actually, I have a client who couldn’t relate to a young woman, so I introduced him to my older partner. I’m on a case.” The room looked lovely. I’d supplied the photographs, bedding, and some of the clothes. Joan had supplemented things with a trip to the local Goodwill store. Walking into the room, I truly felt like a maiden aunt living with her niece. I’d only made one trip to Cleveland during which I’d taken utility bills and mail to the DMV and got a driver’s license. I parlayed that into a passport. I even opened a bank account from which I paid my share of the monthly expenses. In Cleveland, Peg Chester was a real person. I began to feel at home.
“What’s on the agenda?” Joan said. “I work in the morning but I could get some time off for a family emergency.”
“Thank you, dear,” I said in a matronly tone. “I shouldn’t need much. I just want to go to my bank and make a deposit and get a new credit card. I need to renew my driver’s license, too.”
“And change the address,” Joan said. “Isn’t this apartment much nicer than the first one we moved into? I hope you didn’t mind that I upped the rent a little.”
“It’s perfect. But I’m truly exhausted. I’d like to take my shoes off and get a good night’s sleep before all hell breaks loose. I might not sleep again until this case is over.” Of course, we sat up for another two hours talking and saying good night. I asked her how things were going, if her boyfriend ever came to spend the night and if she had any difficulty maintaining the fiction of a maiden aunt living with her. Joan was doing so well and had developed her story so thoroughly that I couldn’t help but think she would make a great PI.
Well, a little banking in the morning and Peg Chester will fly from Cleveland to Seattle tomorrow afternoon. Now for some sleep in a house I’m pretty sure isn’t haunted.
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