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Not only had the victim been dressed in vintage clothes and a short platinum-blond wig, but inscribed within the skullcap of the wig was the name Didi Storm, bold as you like. But there was no other identification in her hotel room, just a small suitcase with a pair of pajamas and makeup. Not even a purse or wallet, though the clerk at the desk swore he’d seen a California driver’s license, or at least he thought so, but when pressed, he wasn’t able to clearly remember the name on it, nor did he take a copy. He just recalled that it was busy when she checked in, he was stressed, and the license seemed legit.
“I said it looked like her.” Edging into the other lane, she worked her way around a van that was double-parked. Traffic today seemed even worse than normal. She asked, “But how old do you think the victim was?”
“Forty, maybe forty-five.”
“Didi would be in her fifties now. Unless she found the damned fountain of youth, she’s not Didi Storm.”
“Some people age well.”
“Not that well.”
“How could you tell? She was pretty . . . y’know, broken up,” he said, frowning as he mentioned the body. “These days there’s all kinds of plastic surgery or injections. Botox, whatever. Ten years isn’t that much. Some people look twenty years younger than they are.”
“Fine. Wanna bet that retirement condo in Cabo on it?”
“Sure.”
“Okay. Fingerprints will be in soon. We’ll see if the victim is in the system.”
“And if she’s this Didi Storm?”
She slowed for a stoplight, waiting as pedestrians in coats, hoods, and umbrellas hurried across the street, the crackle of the police-band radio in the background. “If it’s Didi, and I’m not saying it is, why would she jump now? Why, when there’s a book out about you, when you’ve always been looking for fame, would you kill yourself?” She couldn’t imagine the desperation or the horror of one’s life that would make leaping from a tall building seem like the only answer.
“Maybe she didn’t mean to jump.”
“You mean like a publicity stunt gone wrong?”
He shrugged. “Maybe.”
“That would fit. From what I read, she was a drama queen, one who wasn’t afraid of much.”
“You got that from the book?”
“I read between the lines,” she said, turning up the tempo of the wipers as the drizzle turned to a steady rainfall and a trolley, people packed inside, clanged its way up the hill. “It interested me, so I looked her up online.”
“And?”
“A publicity stunt would be right up her alley, but this . . . I don’t know. Who would stand on a ledge nearly twenty stories over the city just to garner attention? She was flamboyant, always played to an audience. From what I’ve read, she wouldn’t be one to just quietly take some pills; she’d want to go out with a splash.” She shook her head. “Then again, she was into self-preservation. A fighter.”
“You know a lot about her.”
“I hadn’t thought about her for years, then I pick up a book and do a little digging and—”
“Splat. She lands at your feet.”
She grimaced. “You don’t have to be so graphic.”
“Just tellin’ it like it is.”
“But I don’t think it’s her.”
“Just someone who’s impersonating a missing impersonator and takes a flying leap to . . . ? I dunno, Dani, doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.”
“Me, neither,” she had to admit.
“Why did she disappear in the first place?”
“The big question. She had a child that year, that much is known, but there’re rumors that there were two babies, a boy and a girl, both gone. I read about the case years ago, when I was a teenager. It was in all the newspapers at the time, and so I scanned a few of those articles again, a couple of days ago, after reading the book.” Dani Settler had been fascinated with crime and criminals since she was an adolescent and a kidnap victim, one who had m
