We rolled up and down the streets, eyeballing the houses carefully, watching for any visible sign of “Von Longorial” or “Long” on a mailbox, or red hair. Finally, after twenty minutes of peering into the front windows of house after house, I told Betsy to pull over next to an old man who was mowing his grass while his wife weeded the flower garden nearby.
As soon as he cut the engine to kick a pinecone out of his path, I said, “Excuse me, sir?”
He glanced at me. “Hmm?”
“We’re looking for the Von Longorials.” I tried to sound as polite as possible. “Could you tell us which house is theirs? We’re late for a cocktail party.”
“At noon on a Wednesday?” Betsy whispered.
I kicked the back of her seat and laughed innocently at the man, who was scratching his head.
“Well, I don’t know.” He looked at his wife, whose backside was sticking up in the air as she tenderized her flower garden with a trowel. “Hey, Marian.”
She turned, squinting her eyes. “Yes?”
“Von Longorial? Sound familiar?”
“No. Maybe have them go ask Nancy.”
“Nancy?” I repeated when the man turned back to me.
“Yup. She’s the chairman of the neighborhood association.” The man nodded. “She’s around the corner. In the taupe house. Should be out trimming her roses. I saw her there just a bit ago.”
Of course she’s in the taupe house
, I thought. “Thank you, sir.”
We drove around the corner, and sure enough, a silver-haired woman tenderly pruned her rose garden. We pulled up in front of her, and I offered her the same excuse I’d offered the man with the lawn mower. She thought for a moment, tapping a finger on her chin. “Sorry. I don’t know of any Von Long…what was it?”
“Von Longorial.”
“Right. No, I don’t know any Von Longorials here in Minting Heights.” She pushed a pair of half-glasses up on her nose.
I bit my lip. “Is it possible that you just don’t know them?”
She frowned sourly. “I’m the resident association chairperson. I know everyone. That’s my job.”
“Congratulations,” I muttered, rolling my window back up. “Er, sorry. Thank you.”
We drove around in circles again, looking for another neighborhood that fit the description, but came up short.
“It’s okay.” Kim searched the passing houses while I pouted in the backseat. “None of the houses in that place looked big enough to be Alicia’s house, anyway. Didn’t you say that her dad owns all of the waste management facilities around here?”
I stared out the window. With every dead end we hit, it became more and more clear to me that I’d been right about Alicia all along. “Guys, I don’t know if there are any bigger houses in the South Summit boundaries. It’s very average around here. Working class people like us live here.”
“Maybe Alicia’s parents are the miser type?” Kim was pushing it now. “You know, they have all sorts of money, but live in a humble home, because they sit on all their money? Like Silas Marner?”
I snorted. “Silas Marner?”
“I have a hard time believing that Alicia was a product of a Silas Marner lifestyle.” Betsy shook her head, and her pigtails danced. “She wears the most expensive clothes I’ve ever seen.”
“Maybe she’s rebelling against her frugal upbringing?”
I glared out the window. “I was just hoping for confirmation that…” Closing my eyes, I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Either Alicia was lying, or Shawn was. Or…I don’t know. That my best friend isn’t marrying a complete phony.”
Kim turned around in her seat. “Or were you looking for confirmation that he is?”
Guilt nagged at me. I hated it when Kim busted me. It was time to give up and buy my friends some food for their trouble. We pulled into a truck stop cafe close to the highway, disheartened. Once we were seated at the tiny counter facing the kitchen and all of our menus were open, Kim bumped me with her shoulder. “So what exactly were you going to do if you’d found Alicia’s house?”
I fidgeted with a pepper shaker. “I don’t really know. I guess I just wanted to know if Shawn was wrong about her.”
“Wrong? Why? You hate Alicia,” Betsy said.
“Yeah, but I love Gabe.” I looked down at the speckled countertop wistfully. “I wanted to know that she isn’t lying to him.”
The waitress, a girl in her mid-twenties, took our orders, eyeballing us. “Bad morning?”
Kim looked up from her menu. “We were trying to stalk someone. Unsuccessfully.”
Betsy elbowed her. “Hey. We’re on a covert operation. You’re gonna blow our cover.”
“It’s okay. The Von Longorials apparently want to live an anonymous life.” I held out my coffee mug for the waitress to fill. “We were trying to find someone’s family. She is marrying my best friend, and I was trying to—”
“Catch her in the act?” The waitress gave me a sly wink.
“Yeah.” I blushed. “It’s sort of crazy.”
“Not really.” She poured coffee in each of our mugs. “I mean, if your best friend is marrying a liar, you’re doing him a favor.”
I slapped my hand down on the countertop. “That’s right.”
Betsy took a sip of coffee. “Regardless, we can’t find any trace of her around here, so we’re not helping anyone out today.”
The waitress wrinkled her nose. “You sure she’s from here?”
“Absolutely sure she is. I mean, she said that she went to South Summit high school.”
“No kidding?” She put the coffeepot back on the burner.
Betsy’s eyes lit up. “Did you go there?”
The waitress adjusted her blond ponytail. “I did.”
“You did?” Kim grinned at me.
“Sure did.” The waitress moved to grab a plate under the hot light. “I’m Hannah. So what’s her name?”
“The family name is Von Longorial. Er, Long, I guess.” When no sign of recognition crossed her face, I added, “They supposedly own most of the waste management facilities in the area.”
Hannah looked at us with a perplexed expression. “Doesn’t the city own them?”
“Could the city rent or lease the buildings and lots from a private land owner?” Betsy asked.
“I don’t know…possibly. Hey, Hal?” Hannah cut a slice of pie and put it on a plate for an old man at the other end of the counter. The old man reluctantly raised his eyes off his paper. “Who owns the waste facilities?”
“The state owns the main waste management facilities. But the private one? Portland Waste? Well, the city bought those properties a few years ago. Before that, they were leasing them from some Portland bigwig. What was his name?” The old man spoke in a raspy smoker’s voice, and the front of his shirt was streaked with oil. “West. It was Blakely West and his family. That guy who owns stock in some damn computer company, and now his family owns half the city. Damn Republicans.” He went back to his paper, and started in on his pie.
Kim raised her water glass at Hal. “Hear, hear.”
I focused back on Hannah. “So now the city owns all the facilities?”
She shrugged. “If that’s what Hal says, I would trust him. He’s worked on darn near every truck in this city, including the garbage trucks.”
Betsy craned to look at Hal again. “Excuse me? Hal?”
He looked up with a scowl and a speck of pie on his lip. “What?”
“You work on the city’s garbage trucks?”
“Most of them. City’s got a contract with my boss.”
My eyes widened. “Then do you know anybody by the name of Von Longorial. Er, Long?”
“Von…long….go…what?”
“Von Longorial,” I pronounced slowly. “But that’s her stage name.”
“Ain’t nobody driving a garbage truck around here with that crazy ass name.” He went back to his paper with a grunt. “Stage name. Huh.”
I looked back at Hannah, my heart sinking. “I think I’m looking in the wrong place. Maybe I misheard where she went to school.”
Hannah went to check on some tables, and Kim began messing with my hair, murmuring, “I think you should sit in my chair this week and let me lighten your hair a bit more. You’ll look hot if you go to a cool white blond for the wedding.”
“Heaven forbid I mess up Alicia’s wedding photos with my crazy hair.” My voice was lackluster.
“Did you say Alicia?” Hannah came back around the counter.
“Yeah.” I took a sip of my coffee.
Hannah covered her mouth and cracked up. “You’ve got to be kidding me.
Alicia Long
? I should’ve put two and two together.”
Kim and Betsy both sat up straight. “What? Why?” Kim asked.
Hannah folded her arms across her chest. “Because everyone around here knows her.”
“How?”
Hannah’s smile grew tight. “Alicia Long, or Von Longorial, or whatever she calls herself these days, is a celebrity in her own mind.”
“Give us the dirt on her,” Betsy demanded.
“First off, her name isn’t Ah-lees-ee-uh. It’s Uh-lee-shuh.” Hannah washed the counter as she spoke. “She changed the pronunciation when we were in high school. Started making the teachers call her that during her sophomore year. And her last name isn’t even Von…long…whatever the crap she calls it…”
“Von Longorial,” I said.
“Yeah, what’s up with that stupid name?” Hannah laughed dryly and wiped a napkin dispenser. “That didn’t change that until she graduated and moved away. When she was here, she was plain old Alicia Long. Her parents are Joyce and Roy Long.”
“Roy Long?” Hal grumbled from behind his paper.
“You know him, Hal?” Hannah grabbed a stack of paper napkins and began rolling them around clusters of silverware.
“Yeah. Good guy. Drives truck twelve. Doesn’t talk much, but he’s not bad.”
Kim gasped. “Dude, he’s a garbage man?”
Hal frowned at her. “There somethin’ wrong with that?”
I looked up at him. “No. Not at all. I’m just…surprised.”
Hannah glanced back at us. “See? That’s Alicia Long. She was a year ahead of me in school. She got a few local modeling jobs during our senior year and decided to chase her big modeling dreams right out of town. She’s been doing local stuff in Seattle for the last few years, because nobody in L.A. or New York wanted her.”
My eyes were bugging out of my head. “What? Are you kidding?”
Hannah nodded and found our plates, which had been set under the heat lamp behind her. She placed them in front of each of us before moving on to collect the ketchup and mustard bottles. “I guess she got a rich old man to be her boyfriend a couple of years ago, and he paid to fly her to both cities for a few months so she could get signed. But there were no takers. Rumor has it, she cursed out an agent in one of the agencies, and they blacklisted her in a bunch of L.A. agencies. Alicia always was a real bitch.”
“Sounds like our girl.” Kim dug into her grilled cheese sandwich.
“Yeah, and I heard that when she went to New York, she told all of the agents that she wouldn’t work for less than what the big-time models earn.” Hannah laughed. “She said she was the next big face, and that they would regret it if they didn’t represent her. But from what I can tell, her modeling career hasn’t exactly taken off in Seattle, because my friend Tracy saw her in a restaurant there. She’s a waitress.”
“Hostess.” My voice came out hoarse.
“Right,” Hannah quipped. “Anyway, it won’t matter
, eventually.”
“Why not?” Betsy dipped one of her fries into some ketchup.
“Because she just has to settle down with the right rich guy, and then her working days are over. That’s always been her plan.” Hannah refilled Hal’s coffee cup. “She’s never been shy about telling everyone around here that she was going to marry up.”
I nearly choked. “Who
says
shit like that?”
“Alicia Long does.” Hannah gave us a pointed look. “She was always very forthright with her plan. And she had the beauty to make some poor schmuck fall for it.”
“But what about the volunteering, and the soup kitchens, and the reading to the elderly in her grandma’s nursing home?” I put my head in my hands. It was confirmed. I was officially right about Alicia all along.
Hannah gave us a sideways glance. “I was the head of the humanitarian committee in school, and Alicia Long did not lower herself to do charity. And her grandma lives with her parents.”
Kim paused, her sandwich an inch from her mouth. “What made her so rotten?”
“Alicia always resented her folks for being poor. Well, they weren’t exactly poor, by my standards. My parents are poor. My dad hurt his back at work in the paper mill ten years ago, and he’s been unemployed ever since.” Hannah went back to wiping down the countertop. “Alicia’s parents have a house over on Dakota Avenue, and other than needing a new front porch, it’s a decent place. Alicia was always bent out of shape because they didn’t buy her a car when she turned sixteen. She had to borrow their minivan, just like we all had to do when we were kids. But Alicia punished her parents for it.”
“How so?” I asked.
“Well, she stopped letting them come to school functions. She called them ‘Joyce’ and ‘Roy’ for a while, too, and made them say they were her aunt and uncle. Her dad was injured in the Army way before he got married, so he walks with a limp. She used to make fun of him behind his back when he came to any school function.”
Betsy grimaced. “She was the exact type of girl I hated in high school.”
“I know, right?” Hannah topped off her coffee cup. “Alicia called him ‘gimpy.’ And she hated the fact that her dad was a garbage man. She used to say he stank like trash all the time, even after he showered.”
I felt a pang of sympathy for Roy Long. The poor guy was hauling trash every day, then had to come home to an ungrateful teenage Alicia. I pushed my plate away. “I can’t believe Gabe is marrying someone like this.”
Hannah grimaced. “I would be upset if my best friend were marrying her, too. She’s a gold digger. Big time.”
“That’s just it. Why is she going after Gabe?” I rubbed my eyes. “I mean, I guess his parents make a decent living. And Missy and Darcy and her husband make good money, too.”
Kim looked at me. “Gabe’s bringing in bank for someone our age.”
Hannah refilled our coffee cups. “If it were me, which, of course, it’s not…I would warn him. Anyone who is marrying Alicia Long probably doesn’t have a clue what he’s getting himself into.”