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And he’d died for it.
Someone had killed him in that car. Murdered him and, either by intent or by mistake, had taken the life of the child that was assumed to be Adam.
Oh. No.
She had been so caught up in her own misery, her own fears for herself and her mother, worrying about when Didi would return, that she had ignored the horrific fact that possibly the murder that had gone down in the desert was about Adam. She stared down at the child in her arms, the innocent baby, a twin without his sister. “Oh, God, no,” she whispered when she thought of what might happen to this little one if he were truly at the center of all this, possibly a target himself. “Oh, baby, I won’t let that . . .” She didn’t finish the thought as the phone rang and she leapt to answer it.
Didi had finally surfaced. Her heart soared and relief flooded through her. She almost cried, “Mom!” as she snagged the receiver from its cradle on the wall, but at the last second, Remmi bit her tongue, found a way to restrain herself, and didn’t say a word.
“Didi?” a rough, irritated male voice demanded. “Didi? Are you there?” He hesitated, and Remmi placed the voice. Harold Rimes, her mother’s boss at the club. “What the hell’s going on? Where are you? Last night, okay, you said you were sick, and fine, Tanya did her thing, covered for you, but what about tonight?” A pause. “Are you there? Damn it all, I’m expecting a crowd tonight. You’d better show, Didi. If you value your job, which apparently you don’t.” He let out a long breath and, when he spoke again, was more conciliatory. “Tanya’s not you, and the regulars, they expect, well, you know . . .” Another pause, and he was furious again. “Oh, for Christ’s sake! Just show up, Didi!” He hung up with a sharp click. Shaken, still holding Adam, Remmi replaced the receiver slowly.
Didi hadn’t even called Harold to tell him she wouldn’t be in. This was not good. Not good at all.
Again, she looked at the baby, and Adam gurgled up at her, all big eyes and innocence. She almost cried. “That’s it,” she said with finality. She packed him into his carrier, stuffed his clothes and hers into a suitcase, found water bottles and baby formula, a huge box of diapers, some snacks and soda and carried everything, including her brother, out to the Toyota.
Money.
She needed money.
And maybe a credit card or two.
Propelled by the thought, she hurried back inside the house and to her room, where she found the tips she’d saved from Biggie’s Burgers, where she worked part-time, coins and bills she kept in a jar. She stuffed the jar into her backpack. It wasn’t enough. But she knew where there was more. Without a second’s hesitation, not listening to a tiny voice that said she was stepping over an invisible line that could never be crossed again, she beelined to her mother’s bedroom and closet, where she found a locked box and dragged it down. After locating the key in the earring compartment of Didi’s jewelry display, she unlocked the box that held Didi’s money from tips and her few valuable pieces of jewelry. As the lock turned and the box opened, Remmi nearly gasped. Holy moley! She’d found the mother lode! A lot of money in bigger denominations than the bills Didi’s fans left in her tip jar.
Remmi decided these were the real bills the con artist had seeded into the phony ones. Didi had culled the good ones out. At least Remmi hoped so. She made sure the extra credit cards were still in the bottom of the box, along with her great-grandmother’s diamond ring and a gaudy br
ooch that Didi had sworn was made of genuine rubies and emeralds. Maybe. Right now, Remmi didn’t have time to consider their worth. Then there was a small, spiral-bound address book that had more names crossed out and erased than still existed. But it could come in handy. Remmi decided to keep it. She locked the box again, pocketed the tiny key, then hauled everything back to the Toyota.
She thought about the computer. She’d love to take it, but the monitor was bulky, and the modem wouldn’t work without a hookup. The CPU would take up too much space, and as much as she loved the secondhand machine and hooking up to the net, she just didn’t have room for it.
ID. You need ID. Your smiling picture on your high school ID isn’t going to cut it.
She slid behind the wheel and told herself that when she got to wherever it was she was going—and she had no idea where that was right now—she’d inquire around and find some way to get some ID that said she was old enough to drive. She glanced at her reflection in the mirror. She looked fifteen, no older. “Fresh-faced,” that’s what she’d always heard about herself. Well, fresh-faced wouldn’t do. “Just a sec,” she called over her shoulder to the baby in his carrier, then she raced back into the house, found a suitcase in Didi’s closet, and filled it with her mother’s costumes, dresses, bras, stockings, gloves, and wigs, then went to work in the bathroom. Beneath the mirror rimmed in lights, she snagged not one, but two, makeup cases and filled them with all of Didi’s makeup. Brushes, sponges, and applicators. Mascara, lipstick, foundation, rouge, blush, eye shadow and liner—all of the feminine ammunition that was in Didi’s personal arsenal went into the bags before Remmi hauled them and the suitcase back to the car.
By this time, the baby was wailing.
She ignored him and twisted the key in the ignition. The Toyota sparked to life. Tearing out of the driveway, she told herself to slow down, calm down, and not attract any attention. The last thing she needed was to catch the eye of some cop watching traffic.
Where to? she asked herself as she drove onto the main road. East to what? Texas? Amarillo? Dallas? West to L.A.? She knew no one there, and she would have to contact someone, right? To the south was Mexico, but could she cross the border to a foreign land? Her high school Spanish was good enough for the classroom, though she was hardly fluent. What kind of documentation would she need?
And if you get there, will you ever be able to get back to the U.S.?
Deciding to shelve the Mexico idea, she drove steadily, away from the heart of downtown, where traffic was congested. Her hands were clammy over the wheel, her pulse pounding in her eardrums, her mind racing. She turned on the radio as she came to a spot in the road where she had to make a choice. East or west. Chris Isaak was singing, and she recognized the song: “San Francisco Days.”
It was playing as a huge green road sign indicated that San Francisco was many miles away. Far, but far enough? Mentally, she calculated that it would take her all night to get there. So what? She needed distance from Las Vegas, and she also needed time to think, to plan.
Now that she’d left the house and the phone, how would Didi know where to find her? She swallowed hard. There were mobile phones—digital devices that were becoming more popular by the day. Each year, with advances in technology, the phones were becoming smaller, sleeker, and more convenient. Certainly, they were the wave of the future. Remmi could see that, but Didi had been death on them.
“Who needs to be in contact with the world all the damned time?” she’d said on more than one occasion when Remmi had mentioned that one of her friends at school had one.
Once, while seated at her makeup mirror and removing the thick foundation with a cotton pad and some kind of cleaner, Didi had kept her gaze fixed on her reflection as she’d said, “If you ask me, a high school kid with access to a phone day in and day out? That’s a recipe for disaster.”
“But they’ve even got small ones that flip closed, kind of like a clam,” Remmi had argued, and her mother had laughed.
“What? Why?”
“So you can snap it closed. It fits in a purse or pocket.”
“And it comes with a separate bill, something we don’t need. We already have one phone bill. Trust me, that’s more than enough.”
