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“I’m sorry. I know it sucks.”
“It’s whatever,” Gia sipped. “Your water’s really good!”
“Oh, yeah, I have a reverse osmosis filter—takes out all the micro-organisms and chemicals and stuff. It’s amazing.”
“I don’t know what to say to that!” Gia downed half the glass. “Whatever it is, it works great. So how are you doing? Missing Jude?”
“Ugh. Don’t want to talk about it.” Derrick drew his hand across his neck. Message received.
“That’s fair. They say love is supposed to be all rainbows and unicorns, but it’s not.”
“It’s totally not.”
“More like storm clouds and zebras, huh? At least for me. But not everyone, I guess.” Her opening had presented itself. “Which leads me to what I want to talk about. I need your help with something if you’re game. I tried to do it at the library, but I was too late to get a card—you have to do that during business hours, which is so lame! I can’t just take off work because I want a library card.”
“That’s very Palm Springs.” Derrick nodded.
“I’m discovering.”
“What’s the thing?”
“Okay. I have this kinda wacky elderly neighbor, Jennifer. She was actually the first person I met in town because her cat climbed a tree, and she needed help. I only knew her as Mrs. Edelman for months, and then I came home late one night, and she was out on the porch smoking. We got to talking, and turns out, she’s latently gay. Or maybe not latently. I don’t know much about the time between her husband dying and now, but before they met, she had this girlfriend.”
“The plot thickens.” Derrick supported his head with a curled fist and leaned a little closer across the bar.
“It does. So, she had this girlfriend, Emily. And apparently it was a torrid affair. They both worked for directors in Hollywood, but it was very hush-hush. One day, they agreed they couldn’t keep it up because that just wasn’t what you did back then. So, they parted. And haven’t seen each other since. Jennifer married this guy Gene, who died of cancer three years later. And she’s pined for Emily for like sixty years. Tried to look for her in the ‘70s but came up empty.”
“That is so sad.”
“It’s so fucking sad. But I wondered—would you help me find Emily? Or if she’s still alive, at least?”
“Do you know her last name? Or any other details?”
“I know she was called Emily Lorrainne Mitchell, and she’d be 87 now. Grew up in Burbank. She worked in the ‘60s as a director’s assistant, maybe longer. And, apparently, she was a classic beauty—Jennifer basically described her as a brunette Marilyn Monroe.” Gia tapped the bar with her index finger as she thought. “The odds are good she stayed in L.A. I mean, born and bred types don’t usually wander far.”
“Unless she married some guy who moved her. Or she followed a lover to the woods of Maine to live in privacy? Or, she said to hell with it and went to San Francisco to be out and proud.”
“True. But she coulda married someone in the business and stayed. Or never married. Jennifer seems to think she would have gotten married and had kids, but who knows what people do when they’re repressed? I mean, I know what I did—all the girls—but what did Emily do?”
“You want to find out?”
“I really, really do. So, you’ll help?”
Derrick was five steps down the hall before he answered. “Hell, yeah. This is way more interesting than anything I’ve got going on. Let me get my laptop.”
???
By midnight, they’d scoured the internet for all the Emily Lorrainne Mitchells—at least those with a digital footprint. There was a YouTuber in her 30s—not the right Emily. An Emily N. Mitchell in Palm Springs—also not the right Emily. Another in Tennessee had the correct name, but wrong age—she was in her 50s. Dozens of paths led to dead ends. They hopped from search engine to search engine, pored over Facebook pages, and clicked more than one click bait site. And then. A prospect emerged in an online directory—Lorrainne Mitchell, of Pasadena, California. She was the correct age: 87. But there were no other details, aside from an address, which appeared to be a single-family home. No relatives listed, no “also known as” names.
“Do you think it could be?” Derrick asked, rubbing his eyes.
“Maybe? She’s the first person who matches the age, but Jennifer calls her Emily—not Lorrainne.”
“So? What if we work with this theory that she wanted to shed her demons. Changing names isn’t out of the question. Especially to a middle one—it’s a fresh start. Think about a trans dead name. Maybe she killed Emily to start a new life?”
“Yeah, maybe? But a dead name is putting to bed someone you never felt at home with. This would be the reverse—putting to bed the person you were most at home with, to pretend to be who you’re not.”
“Too literal. Work with me, here!” Derrick was pacing the kitchen. “Jennifer told you they knew their relationship couldn’t be, and they parted ways, never to speak again. Jennifer married a man, effectively growing her beard and never having to worry about it—she had a dead husband. Automatically hetero. But Emily—neigh Lorrainne—what if she never had the beard?”
