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He smiled to himself. Wasn’t technology great?
CHAPTER 21
Just to be certain she wasn’t being followed on her way home, Remmi made a quick turn off the main artery of traffic, then cut through a neighborhood with narrow streets and cars parked tightly on either side. As she did, she watched for a tail but saw no dark vehicle keeping her Subaru in its sights while hanging back and maintaining its distance.
“You’ve seen one too many horror flicks,” she told herself. She was in the city, her city, not some lonesome private dirt road winding deep in the woods leading to a haunted house or cemetery or whatever. She passed the UC San Francisco Medical School before reconnecting with the main street and driving her Subaru up the hill to the house. She parked in her usual spot in the driveway and, with a last look over her shoulder, swept her gaze over the wet street but again noticed nothing out of place, nothing suspicious, no lurking dark vehicle. Good.
Get a hold of yourself.
She locked the car. Laden with grocery bags, she dashed up the front steps.
The porch light flipped on just as she reached the front door.
“Saw you coming.” Jad
e, Greta’s caretaker for the evening, shut the door behind Remmi as she slipped inside. “Thought maybe you could use a hand.”
“At least one.”
“Got two.” Jade, a woman in her late forties, was tiny and lithe. Part Asian, Jade boasted often enough that she had earned a black belt in karate and tae kwon do. And she looked the part: Tough. Compact. Supple. Her black hair was twisted into a neat bun, and she wore yoga pants and a tunic as well as a woman half her age. Remmi believed Jade’s accomplishments, though she’d never witnessed any martial arts display. “Let me take those,” Jade insisted and, before Remmi could protest, removed the soggy bags from her, allowing Remmi to hang her coat on the front hall tree.
Ever vigilant, Turtles noticed she was home and trotted out to greet her.
“There you are,” Remmi said, feeling a little better now that she was inside the warm house, with its mingled scents of Greta’s lavender potpourri and something Jade was simmering in the kitchen, something tangy with onions and garlic, she guessed.
“Mongolian beef,” Jade said as if she could read Remmi’s mind. Her stomach rumbled as she bent down and Turtles lifted her front legs off the floor to receive the proffered petting a little more quickly. “Greta’s in her room”—Jade was already hurrying around the staircase toward the kitchen—“and I think she wants to talk to you.”
“Got it.”
Remmi found Greta dressed as she was this morning, but with a fresh sheen of lipstick. Seated in her favorite reading chair, her feet propped on an aging ottoman, she looked up at the sound of Remmi’s footsteps. “I thought I heard you come in,” she said, shifting slightly and wincing a bit as she set the book, her copy of I’m Not Me, next to a box of tissues on a side table. “Damn this arthritis.” With a sigh, she adjusted a pillow propping her back, then added, “It’s hell getting old,” something she confided to Remmi at least once a month. “There we go. Now,” she said, her attention back on Remmi again, “tell me. What did you learn today?” She was always eager for news, and this evening was no exception.
“We’ve got some work to do.” Remmi started explaining about the repairs needed to both the buildings she’d visited today in Sausalito and Berkeley, but Greta swatted the air impatiently.
“Not that! For God’s sake, I know you’ll take care of whatever needs to be done. What I want to know is what you learned about that Upgarde woman. Sit down, sit down.” She pointed to the corner of her antique four-poster bed, but Remmi settled on the window seat instead.
“I don’t think Mom knew Karen Upgarde. At least not that I remember, and I spent hours trying to research her before I left this morning. I searched the Internet as best I could. Unfortunately, I came up empty.”
“Huh.” Greta scowled in disappointment as Turtles finally waltzed into the room and hopped onto the ottoman, curling into a ball at Greta’s feet.
Remmi explained about the Reliant Agency being nothing more than a post office box with an answering service, and Greta let out a snort.
“What about the police? They must know something.”
“If they’ve found out more, they haven’t told me. I’m not exactly on their ‘need to- know’ list. I think they’re going to try to find Aunt Vera, check on the validity of the book, see if she was interviewed.”
“Or, if she’s behind the whole thing, including the book,” Greta suggested. Over the years, Remmi had confided in the older woman, whose view of Aunt Vera had been colored by Remmi’s stories. Though Remmi had originally been reticent to say anything about her family, she’d let the story out bit by bit, due, in part, to Greta’s intense curiosity and constant, if gentle, prodding.
“I’ve thought of that,” Remmi admitted. She wouldn’t put it past her aunt to try to find a way to make some money off her missing sister.
“Well, who else?”
“I don’t know. Someone from Anderstown, Missouri? One of Didi’s—or Edie’s, I should say—friends? Or, maybe someone who didn’t like her? A relative I don’t know about? Or someone else she confided in?” She thought of Seneca or Leo Kasparian or Ned Crenshaw, or several of the other men who had come in and out of Didi’s life, men Didi had dated but hadn’t married. And then there was the mystery man, the twins’ father. Or maybe a random person. Someone unknown.
“Frustrating,” Greta said.
“Agreed.”
Remmi’s phone rang, and she pulled it from the pocket of her jeans and glanced at the number. She didn’t recognize it and almost hung up, but then decided it could be important. “Hello?” she answered.
