Follow the Dotted Line (35 page)

“I what?” Andy asked.

Lorna sighed and sat down on the edge of the bed. “You clubbed, and I use the word literally, a government employee with a piece of golf equipment.”

Andy was dumbfounded. “I did?”

“You did.”

“I don’t remember that.” Her brain was still shooting blanks. She strained to recall what happened. “And did I …” She was distracted by the sheriff’s deputy standing by the door. She reached out and drew Lorna close. “Did I
kill
him?” she whispered.

Lorna snorted. “You may be good, Andrea. But
that
good, you are not. He is alive and lucid and sporting a goose egg the size of—well, the size of a golf ball.”

Relieved and utterly derailed, Andy collapsed onto the pillow, trying to hold back the saltwater seeping out of her eyes. “I have no idea what happened. I just don’t get it.”

“Would you like a hug?”

“No. Keep your distance,” Andy sniffed. “Or my dam’s going to break.”

“All right. Should I help you try to clear things up?”

“Can you?”

“Most things, yes. What would you like to know?”

Andy tried to open her clogged sinus passage by inhaling. Lorna handed her a tissue. Blowing out worked significantly better. “Am I going to jail, Lorna?”

“No. Mitch just called to verify that. The lawyer says that no one has charged you with anything.”

“Yet, you mean?”

“Yet. To be fair, the agent was as unprepared to find you at Lake Castaic as you were to find him.”

“Lake Castaic? Why would I be at Lake Castaic?”

“Tilda drove you there. In the trunk of your Camry. Whatever she gave you to get you into the trunk also seems to have erased your memory of the events. We know it was a barbiturate, but we won’t know which one until your tox screen comes back. Do you remember being drugged?”

“No. But I vaguely remember waking up and hearing somebody in my house.”

“Tilda?”

“Or Tom Hanks. It’s kind of a jumble.”

“Hmm. And you don’t remember how you got in the trunk?”

“Oprah,” Andy said.

“What?”

“It had something to do with Oprah.” The tears started leaking through her composure again. “God, Lorna, this is all so frustrating. Why did she take me to Lake Castaic?”

“I think she was hoping for another accidental drowning.”

Even without any clear memories, the sequence of events began to make sense.

“She was going to kill me?”

“She was,” said Lorna. “Thank god the feds were following her.”

Suddenly, something very specific surfaced in Andy’s recollection. A detail in search of a context. “Tilda told me she was being followed! I remember that.”

“Did she know who it was?”

“No. No. She thought I knew. But I didn’t.” Andy couldn’t recall anything else about the conversation, but she was re-feeling the feelings; Tilda was angry, and she was terrified. “So Tilda really was being followed?”

“By U.S. Treasury agents.”

Andy’s one brief shining moment of understanding went completely dark. “Did you say Treasury agents?”

“I did.”

Tears of frustration let loose from the corners of her eyes. She couldn’t see beyond the puddles collecting around her cornea. “I don’t get it, Lorna,” she sobbed. “I feel so stupid.”

“But you weren’t stupid, Andy. You’re the one who said this whole thing was more complicated than the tax code. I should have listened to you.”

“To me?”

“Yes. We kept focusing on death, when we should have been focusing on taxes. That’s the way they finally got Al Capone. And that’s the way they finally got Tilda.”

“They got Tilda?” Andy asked, sitting up and wiping her face with the bed sheet. There seemed to no end to the number of things Andy couldn’t remember.

“Are you saying Tilda was arrested?”

“By the Internal Revenue Service. For tax evasion.”

Andy’s clueless stupor grew more clueless.

“For failing to report her ill-gotten gains. Can you believe it? We kept trying to prove murder, when all we had to do was prove she was a tax cheat.”

“A tax cheat,” Andy repeated, numbly. What was Lorna talking about? There was nothing Andy hated more than being in the middle of a situation she didn’t understand. It was why she avoided visiting countries where she didn’t speak the language and why she never got involved in discussions of the periodic table.

“Remember all that money Tilda accumulated from her string of husbands?” Lorna went on. “Well, she did the same thing with
it
that she did with
them
.”

Andy idled, waiting for her friend to help her get her mind back into gear. “Huh?”

“She moved it offshore, Andy. Hoping no one would notice what happened to it.”

Andy sighed, as she finally got a little mental traction. “Of course, she did.”

“Naturally, she never reported a penny of the earned income to the U.S. government, so that’s how they got her. Talk about feeling stupid. I’m a certified public accountant, and I never once thought about calling the IRS.”

“But how did they know Tilda was hiding that money?”

“Somebody besides us must have reported her,” said Lorna. “And it’s a damn good thing. Because if they hadn’t, you might not be here right now.”

Despite her drug-induced amnesia, Andy was beginning to understand how close she’d come to dying. “How did the agents know Tilda would be at the lake?”

“They followed her there. Then they watched her leave her car and take a cab back to Valencia. While she was gone, they got a warrant to search the car and found a plane ticket in the glove compartment. When she returned to the park in your Camry, they decided to arrest her before she fled LA.”

Tilda was getting on an airplane. Another coin dropped in Andy’s memory bank. She told me that, thought Andy, just before she put me in the trunk.

“Oh, my god, Lorna. I was in the trunk, and those agents had no idea.”

“Believe me, the poor schmuck who opened it up told me you came as a complete surprise.”

The man in the brown suit, Andy remembered. “I hit him with a 4-iron.”

“Is that what it was?”

“Oh my god,” Andy cringed and then said without thinking, “I always use way too much club.”

It came out sounding funny, but it wasn’t. None of this was funny. More importantly, as far as Andy could tell, these treasury agents all had missed the point. “You mean nobody knew about the murders when they arrested Tilda?” she asked.

“Not a clue. The IRS assumed Tilda’s husbands all died of natural causes.”

“They had no idea she was a black widow?”

“None. They thought she was avoiding her taxes. And thank god they did, or you’d be dead, and Tilda would be long gone.”

This wasn’t the first time government employees did the right thing for the wrong reasons, Andy noted. She blessed their myopic devotion to duty. “But you told them about her real crimes, right?”

“I told them.”

“And our evidence? Did somebody take our evidence?”

“The FBI can’t get enough of it,” said Lorna.

Although Andy had never been a big fan of the J. Edgar Hoover Boys Club, she had a strange sensation—the same feeling she fantasized having if, and when, she ever won an Oscar.

“The FBI! Really?”

“They want to know how we came up with the idea of using those passport stamps.”

Andy found herself smiling involuntarily, a smile big enough to fill the Kodak Theater.

Lorna laughed.

Having accepted the honor, Andy thought it would be a good idea to show some humility. “Well, let’s be honest,” she said. “That passport thing was all you, Lorna.”

“Oh, no. Now you’re suffering from selective memory,” Lorna chuckled. “Using the passport to track Tilda’s travels was actually Harley’s idea.”

Harley. Oh, yes, Harley. Andy had forgotten all about Harley. Where was Harley? An image of the keek-stane Tilda had left on her doorstep flashed into view. She suddenly remembered sending Harley off to Santa Monica for safekeeping.

“He’s still with Mitch, right?”

“Yes. In a manner of speaking. But don’t worry, he’s okay.”

“He’s not with Mitch?”

“Not exactly, Andy. He’s out of town.”

There was a faint stirring of familiar juices under the residual sedative in Andy’s system. “Out of town? Why?” The Academy Award-winning smile was gone now, replaced by an equal, but opposite, emotion.

Lorna could tell Andy was riding the roller coaster of drug withdrawal. She needed to keep things simple.

“For some—training.”

“This is Mitch’s doing, isn’t it?”

“No. No, Andy, it’s not,” said Lorna in her very controlled, very conciliatory account’s voice. “It was Melissa’s suggestion.”

“What kind of suggestion?”

“She sent him off to boot camp.”

“
Boot camp
?” What the hell else had been happening while she was under Tilda’s spell? “Are you telling me that Harley has joined the marines?!”

“It’s not the marines, Andy. She promised me it wasn’t the marines,” Lorna said.

The ebbing barbiturate began to mix with the stomach acid Andy’s eldest child always induced.

“This is over the line! Mitch has really done it this time!”

“It’s not, Mitch. Believe me. It’s The Impresario. And it’s just for a couple of weeks, Andy. She told me to tell you he’s safe and warm.”

“Safe and warm? What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. But Mitch swore to me that Harley’s not in any danger. And he wants you to know . . .” Lorna held up her hands in surrender before finishing the sentence. She hated being the messenger when Mitch was the sender and Andy the receiver. “That Harley will return a better man.”

With that bit of news, Lorna had inadvertently placed the olive into the

mood-altering cocktail currently floating around in Andy’s body chemistry. Shaken and stirred, the dam broke, as a full-fledged flood of tears and pent-up emotion gushed forth.

“Oh, Lorna, my life is so out of control,” Andy croaked between sobs. “I feel like I can’t do anything right. I just wanted to, you know, give the kids some closure about their father. And I wanted to help Pam with Harley. But nothing’s turned out the way I thought it would. I’ve screwed up everything.”

Post-traumatic trunk syndrome, Lorna concluded. Andy was not normally a blubberer.

“Why don’t I give you that hug now, Andrea?” Lorna said, urging the blubberer into her arms. Andy did as she was told. “And after you’ve had a good cry, I’ll go out and get us a Reuben sandwich.”

The Non-answer to Your Unasked Question

The question of who had thought to call the IRS about Tilda Trivette troubled Andy for the rest of her stay in the hospital and the weeks that followed. When she finally hit on the answer, it seemed so simple. And so obvious. And yet she had no official way to confirm that her suspicion was correct. Today, however, Andy was presented with a unique opportunity to find out who the whistleblower had been. Asking someone to violate the laws governing tax privacy was probably a dumb idea, but Andy had been trafficking in dumb ideas for months, so why stop now?

“This is kind of fun, isn’t it?” Lil asked.

Andy looked at her elder daughter a bit surprised. “Driving to the airport? You really don’t get out much, do you?”

“Not the airport. The funeral. I mean, everyone getting together like this.”

Andy groaned. “If you like the four horsemen of the apocalypse all in one room at the same time.”

“What?”

“Nothing. I just find that having all of my children together, as adults, is a little—I don’t know. Daunting.”

The 405 near Santa Monica was cramming up at the intersection with the 10. Lil slammed on the brakes and started up again slowly, all without missing a beat in the conversation.

“Daunting? Really? Come on now, Mom. You’re the one who raised us.”

“Which only makes it more painful. I become the butt of your jokes, Lil. Some of it is deserved, I grant you. But none of you—well, except maybe Ian—knows when to stop. And he’s laughing louder than anyone else.”

The six veins of cars in the southbound lanes were now so clotted that traffic was barely moving.

“We don’t really make fun of you all
that
much, do we?” Lil asked.

“Yes, you do.”

“So you’re pouting about it already?”

“I am pre-pouting, hoping to finish before the festivities begin.”

“Good. I’m proud of you. And this
is
going to be fun,” Lil reassured her mother. “Wait until you hear what’s on Mitch’s memorial mix. It’ll knock your socks off. And he’s making enchiladas for the wake.”

“Wake?”

“Or shiva. Or repass. Whatever. For the after-party. The boys can’t wait. Graham says Mitch’s green salsa alone is worth the trip from Edinburgh.”

The midday sun bounced off the grooves on the concrete freeway, along with the chrome on the cars, giving Southern California its uniquely grimy sparkle. Andy sat back and enjoyed the glistening urban jungle, delighted to live where she lived and secretly euphoric to have all of her children back home and together again. Right on cue, whatever was clogging the artery in front of them broke loose for no apparent reason, and they were suddenly doing 60 mph, approaching Century Boulevard.

“What terminal?” Lil wanted to know.

“American,” Andy instructed. “Odd, isn’t it?”

“What’s odd?”

“That Dad’s the one bringing us all together.”

Lil reached over and squeezed her mother’s hand. “One of the nicest things he’s done since he left us. We
are
great kids,” Lil pronounced, with the familiar and obnoxious confidence that Andy so loved in her offspring. “Too bad he missed his chance to see just how fucking-tastic we turned out.”

“Don’t be so modest, honey. It doesn’t suit you.”

Lil grinned impishly and pulled into the parking ramp.

Annabelle Sakar looked very small and dark and nearly porcelain, as she walked into the LAX arrivals area. On the other hand, she felt wiry and warm and downright effervescent, as she held Andy in her grip of greeting.

Good god, thought Andy, Ian’s found himself a Bengali version of his siblings; there’s a jetpack right behind this hug!