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“You okay?” Settler asked.
Remmi straightened. “Of course not.” What kind of stupid question was that? Now that the shock of viewing the dead woman was receding, she had a million questions. “The woman in there”—she jabbed a finger at the door of the building—“isn’t my mother, but she was wearing Didi’s clothes and wig. Who is she? Why would she jump off a damned ledge? What does this have to do with Mom?” she asked, the questions pouring out of her. “This . . . this has to be tied to the book, right? I mean, that can’t be a coincidence?” The rain was blowing against her face, dampening her hair, but she didn’t care. She couldn’t imagine why anyone would dress herself up like Marilyn Monroe in Didi’s clothes and wig, step onto a window ledge, and leap to the ground below.
“We don’t know.”
“There’s a reason this is all coming out now,” Remmi said, brushing rain from her face with her sleeve. “Someone’s behind it.”
“Do you have any idea who?” Detective Settler asked.
“Probably someone who has something to do with that damned book,” Remmi said. “Like I said, that’s just too much of a coincidence.” She had some ideas, of course, but she had no proof, so she didn’t mention them. Until she knew more, she wouldn’t give away any of her unfounded suspicions.
As she left the detectives, she walked three blocks to her car through the rain. She flipped up the hood of her jacket and told herself that tomorrow, come hell or high water, she was going to talk to Maryanne Osgoode’s agent and find out who the author of the book really was. That was a start. It might lead nowhere, but she had to do something.
She heard footsteps behind her and, glancing back, saw several people through a curtain of rain. Dark, watery shapes following her. Men or women, she couldn’t tell; they were all bundled in black, gray, or navy blue parkas or coats.
It’s the city. That happens. No big deal. Just other pedestrians.
But she felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold weather slide down her spine, and she quickened her pace, looking back once more and realizing that only one tall figure was still behind her. A man, she was sure, and he was quickening his pace.
It’s nothing. Nothing. He’s just hurrying to get out of the rain.
Still, she jogged the remaining half block to the corner, where she had parked her car. She unlocked the door remotely and slid behind the wheel as she yanked the door closed. The instant the door of her Subaru was shut, she locked all of the doors and let out a breath.
Stop being so paranoid.
Ignoring her own advice, she started the Subaru and hit the gas, pulling out just as a truck rounded the corner and blasted her with its horn. Narrowly missing her, it careened down the street, and she hit the gas, one tire splashing through a puddle as she overcorrected, her heart pounding.
“It’s nothing, it’s nothing, it’s nothing,” she insisted, but kept an eye on her rearview mirror and watched as traffic closed in around her. If anyone was following her now, she wouldn’t be able to tell, but she felt safer in the flow of cars, buses, trucks, and vans than she had walking on the wet city streets.
Rather than taking a direct route, Remmi zigzagged across the city, even going so far as to cut through Golden Gate Park before finally edging up the hill to her home near Mount Sutro. Once or twice, she was certain a black or dark gray SUV was following her, but she couldn’t be sure as the vehicle hung back and then disappeared.
Her heart pounded as she made a quick left turn, pulled into an alley, and reversed, heading the opposite direction. No SUV or car or van followed, and she let out her breath. Why was she being so paranoid anyway? So a woman who looked like her mother plunged in a suicide leap to her death. That was upsetting. Yes. Unnerving. But it certainly didn’t mean that someone was following her.
It was all just a weird coincidence.
Letting out her breath and checking the mirror regularly to insure no one was tailing her, she drove up the steep, snaking street to a three-story Craftsman home perched near the top of the hill. “Home sweet home,” she whispered, pulling into the narrow side driveway and setting the emergency brake before climbing out of the car and dashing up wide steps to a broad front porch, where the skeletal remains of a once-lush clematis trailed along the rail. Her feet rang on the old floorboards leading to a huge double door with leaded-glass inserts. Using her key, she stepped into the grand foyer of the massive home that was constructed three years after the historic earthquake of 1906. It had survived others since then, including the huge tremor of ’89.
“Hello?” a female voice called from beyond the parlor as the scent of lavender potpourri reached Remmi’s nostrils. “Remmi?” The familiar whirring sound of Greta’s electric wheelchair accompanied a surprisingly strong voice for a woman in her nineties. “Is that you?”
“Yeah, I’m home.” She hung her raincoat on the hall tree opposite a wide staircase that swept to the upper floors, as Turtles, a slim tortoiseshell cat did figure eights between her feet.
“Hi, to you, too,” she said, bending over and petting the cat’s mottled head. Turtles was one of Greta’s three house cats and was always quick to greet any newcomers.
In her motorized wheelchair, Greta Emerson zipped in through an archway leading from the dining area and whipped across the ancient Persian carpet that had covered the hardwood floors of the parlor for over half a century.
“I heard!” She stopped the wheelchair in the foyer. “Oh, my God, is that woman, the one who jumped from the Montmort Tower, Didi?” Her eyes were bright behind rimless glasses, her cloud of bluish hair sprayed stiffly in place, her pointed chin turned upward. “I was watching the local news, and they said the woman who jumped, she was dressed like Marilyn Monroe, and I immediately thought of your missing mother.”
Greta, over the years, had pieced together Remmi’s history, partially from what Remmi had admitted, but also from a deep curiosity, lots of empty hours in the day, and computer skills few people of her age had acquired. There was a slim chance Greta knew more about Didi’s disappearance, or at least the theories surrounding what had happened to the Las Vegas showgirl, than Remmi did. Remmi suspected, though Greta had never admitted it, that Greta was a member of Facebook groups or Internet chat rooms dedicated to unsolved mysteries and Didi Storm. A smart woman who had defied her generation and become a lawyer, Greta Emerson was a stalwart believer in FDR, Jack Kennedy, and all human rights and wasn’t afraid to make her opinions known. An Agatha Christie buff, and a consummate believer in many conspiracies, Greta was keenly interested in Remmi’s mother and the question of what had happened to her.
Greta said now, “The newsperson—not the anch
or, mind you—was reporting from the base of the tower, near the fountain. She said the body hadn’t been identified, but that the woman was dressed as Marilyn Monroe, someone impersonating her.”
“That’s true.”
“You were in the area, yes?”
Remmi nodded.
