Mommy's Little Girl (19 page)

They exchanged other thoughts about Cindy's situation through the next day, both commenting on how good it was that Cindy and George were getting along, because Cindy needed his support during this trying period of time with Casey.

Mary Lou wrote:

I know Cindy is between “a rock and a hard place” with this “Casey affair.” Even though Casey has been supported in everything she has done, by her folks, she is an “ingrate” and for some reason has turned her back on the people who care the most for her.

Rico was scheduled to return to Orlando from a trip to Boston on the same day that Amy flew to Puerto Rico, but at a later time. Casey sent him a text, asking for his arrival time and offering to pick him up. He told her that picking him up didn't make much sense, since he had a flight to Puerto Rico just five hours later. “But if you want to come and get me and we can chill at Chili's and then you can bring me back to the airport.”

By the time Casey got his response, she had already made other plans. Casey told him to send her a text when he got in. He did. But she didn't acknowledge his message. Rico was not surprised.

 

Throughout the day, Shirley and Mary Lou continued emailing about the pros and cons of Casey having a new love interest in Jacksonville, including the possibility that the result would be a second child for Casey—one that Cindy would be forced to raise. Mary Lou added:

I smiled when you said Cindy says she doesn't think Casey is PG [
pregnant
]. I don't think she thought Casey was PG the last time around either??? Something is keeping Casey from facing her mother??? (I was so devastated last time when Casey was pregnant. It was almost like it was my own child.) I just felt terrible and I could imagine how letdown Cindy felt.

Late on the night of July 8, Casey posted an image file on line. It was a picture of a sad little girl looking up at a noose wrapped around the neck of a teddy bear that has x's for eyes. Beside the little girl were the words: “Why do People Kill people, who kill people, to show people that To Kill People—is Bad?”

Casey woke up in a cold sweat three or four nights that week. Tony asked what was wrong. Casey said she'd had a nightmare and blamed it all on the uncertainty in their relationship.

 

Will got off work at 5
P.M.
on July 10. Casey was supposed to meet him at 6:30 for a helicopter ride to Saw Island. When she was ten minutes late, Will called. No answer. He sent a text. She didn't respond right away, as she usually did. He texted again: “I need you to reply so I can cancel the helicopter trip.”

Still nothing. He sent another message: “I need to know something. I've got reservations and people are on hold.”

Twenty minutes later, she acknowledged his messages: “I can't make it. Sorry.”

 

Cindy had taken more vacation days the week after the Fourth of July holiday, counting on Casey's promises that she'd have a chance to visit with Caylee. Every day, Casey opened up her bag of excuses and doled out another to her mother. On July 10th, Casey claimed she had come by
the house. She said she'd seen her dad while Cindy was out running errands. Cindy questioned George, who denied seeing either Casey or Caylee.

Cindy sent a despairing email to her daughter:

I can't sleep, stupid hot flashes wake me up then I start thinking about you and Caylee. Dad said he went to work at 9 am and got home at 6:30 pm, he said he did not come home in between. I don't know who or what to believe anymore.

You've told me every day that you were going to call me and you haven't but you choose to call when you know I won't be home. What the hell is going on? I've tried not to bug you to death but I still haven't gotten to see pictures of Caylee or gotten to speak to her. It's been over a month now.

Am I ever going to see her again? Are you still with Jeff? Are you going back to work? . . . I'm not sure how much longer I can continue on this day to day course. I'm going freakin' nuts not knowing what's going on with you. I've had a breakdown at work, can't take much more stress.

Casey posted a poem by rap artist Tupac Shakur on her MySpace page on Friday, July 11. The words encouraged people to stop trying to make sense of a bad situation and instead, to walk away from your problems and move on with your life.

 

The postman walked up to the front door of the Anthony home on Friday and stuck a piece of mail in the crack of the door when no one answered. The family always went in and out of the house through the garage. No one noticed the letter.

 

Casey called Will and told him she was working with the “shot girls,” the girls who serve shots, at Fusian and invited him to join her there that night. Will was flabbergasted.
“No. Why would I want to hang out with you when Tony is supposed to be there. . . . Why would I want to hang out with you and Tony if you know I have a crush on you? Why would I put myself through that?”

It was not a good night for shot girls. One was grabbed and scratched on the stomach by a rowdy customer. They all went home early. On Saturday, Casey was supposed to hang out with Will. She begged off once again.

That Sunday and Monday, Casey exchanged instant messages with Iassen Donov, the Army buddy of a former boyfriend. Innocuous on the surface, the dialogue revealed a lot about Casey's state of mind and her willingness to go to great lengths to protect her lies. On Sunday, she told him that she was tired because she hadn't been sleeping well.

“You should exercise more,” Iassen wrote.

“This is true. I can't wait to get my new place.”

“When is that happening?” Iassen asked.

“Probably within the next week.”

“Oh, true, you and Tony?”

“No sir. Just me and the kid.”

“Where?”

“Possibly in the Winter Park Villas.” She explained that she really didn't want to live in an apartment, but getting a house didn't seem to be a good idea at that time.

“So what do u do when u work? With the kid that is.”

“I have a nanny. I love her,” Casey wrote.

Iassen asked her why she wasn't moving in with Tony, and then wrote, “Where's the other guy? The Spanish guy?”

“Ricardo and I aren't really even friends anymore.”

“Sucks, doesn't it?”

“We stopped dating in March right around my birthday.”

“Still have feelings for him?”

“Ha, definitely not. The other way around actually.”

“Oh. How did u get over him so quickly?”

“I didn't have the same feelings. He said I led him on.
I never really ever saw him as more than a friend. It sucks but I was honest.”

“I thought u were the one who wanted a relationship,” Iassen wrote.

“I did, for a little bit, but he wanted to wait.”

“And it bit him in the ass. Are u happy now?”

“I am very happy now.”

While Casey chatted away, her parents worked in their front yard. George planted plugs to restore a couple of dead patches in the lawn. Cindy weeded the flower beds near the house. She noticed something stuck in the front door and got up to retrieve it. “George, we got a certified letter from somebody by the name of Johnson's.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Can you pick this up?”

“Yeah, I'll do it Monday.”

That day, though, George was called into work early and didn't get a chance to get to the post office until Tuesday, July 15.

 

On Monday, Casey took Iassen's advice and worked out at the fitness center at Tony's complex, and reconnected to let him know and continue their IM conversation. She asked him to go to the beach with her.

“Ok u wanna go on a date with me to the beach while u have a boyfriend, that looks grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreaaaaaat.”

“Hahahaha. It wouldn't have to be a ‘date.' But you need a friend. I miss my friend. It's a win, win.”

“Lol. I wanna know, have I ever hurt you? Like emotionally.”

“Most definitely not. You seriously are one of the nicest guys I have ever met. Hands down . . . I've had a consistent crush on ya for a long time.”

“Nuts. We didn't even hang out that much.”

“It's one of those things. You get a good vibe from someone, it sticks,” Casey wrote.

“I'm sure u wouldn't want anything with me right now, I'm in the worst state of mind to commit to somebody.”

“Even outside of a relationship, I'm probably not in the best spot either.”

“Why?” Iassen asked.

“I'm pretty much hung up on Tony, and realistically, if he moves back to New York next year, my relationship will end. Sucks to know that inevitably, unless I were to drop everything, I'm going to lose someone close to me.”

They bounced messages back and forth, talking about her feelings and the alternatives to Tony's expected departure, and then Casey wrote, “If you're going to take a risk on something, of all things, why not let it be love? It is the most damaging and rewarding thing in the entire world.”

“Because it's the one risk that hurts the most.”

“It is.”

“People may not die of a broken heart but they wish they did.”

“Absolutely,” Casey agreed.

“The person that can make you the most happiest in this world, is the same person who can make you the most miserable.”

“It's a powerful thing to hold someone else's heart in your hand,” Casey wrote.

Jamie and Casey exchanged text messages, on Tuesday, July 15, about the unpleasant incident at Fusian the previous Friday night. Because of what happened, Jamie told Casey that she wasn't going to work there as a shot girl again. Jamie asked what she was doing that day. Casey said that she was going to work at Universal.

Jamie mentioned the little girl in the photographs on Casey's MySpace page. “Is she yours?”

“Yes,” Casey wrote. “She has a birthday next month. She'll be three.”

Casey left the apartment and stopped by the Bank of America branch on South Conway Road. She went up to the teller with one of Amy's checks and walked away with $250 in cash.

Her next stop was Cast Iron Tattoos to make an appointment for herself and a friend for Saturday, July 19. Recognizing her as a regular customer, tattoo artist Danny Colomarino came out front to greet her. “Hey, how you been?” he asked, then inquired about her daughter.

“Caylee is with her nanny. I'll bring her with me on Saturday,” Casey said. She pointed to the car in the parking lot and said it belonged to a friend. “I'm going to the airport to pick her up, and three other guys who are coming back from Puerto Rico.” She explained that she was supposed to go on that trip, too, but she had to save her money to move out of her mother's house and into a place of her own.

Danny thought he heard a bitter edge in her voice, but he didn't blame her. He knew he'd be “a little bummed” if his friends all went on an island vacation and left him behind.

 

While Casey was chatting up Danny at the tattoo parlor, George and Cindy were running head-first into Casey's lies. Their daughter couldn't have driven to Jacksonville as she'd said. The car was right here in Orlando at a tow yard.

Cindy explained the situation to her supervisor, Debbie Polisano. “Go get the car, get Casey and go home,” Debbie advised.

After retrieving the stench-filled Pontiac, George suggested that they call the police. Cindy refused. She had to find Casey first. Cindy returned to work around 2 that afternoon.

Co-worker Debbie Bennett was surprised to see Cindy entering the office. She turned away from the copy machine to ask her what happened.

At this point, Cindy didn't seem worried, but sounded very angry at her daughter's irresponsibility. “The car is a mess. Caylee's car seat, her backpack, her clothes and her favorite baby doll are in there. It smells like a dead body in that car.”

“Cindy, there's something wrong. You need to call police,” Bennett urged her. “It doesn't sound right.”

“No. I'm going to give Casey a chance to explain herself. I'm going to try to get hold of her. I'll call her employer.”

Concerned about Cindy's state of mind, Bennett went to their supervisor, Debbie Polisano. The supervisor went to Cindy's office to talk to her.

“There's a really, really bad smell in the car,” Cindy told her.

“Did you open the trunk?” Polisano asked. When Cindy didn't respond, she asked another question. “Where is Casey?”

“I don't know.”

“Cindy, you need to go home and call the police.”

“I can't,” Cindy said, shaking her head. “I have a lot of work to do.”

Exasperated, Polisano went to the area director, Nilsa Ramos. Nilsa told Cindy she had to go home and deal with her family problems.

Finally, Cindy relented. She pulled into her driveway and went straight to the car in the garage. She pulled out the purse that Casey had left on the seat and found a phone number for Amy Huizenga.

 

Casey drove Amy's maroon four-door compact to the airport and met Amy and the other three returning revelers. It wasn't possible to fit everyone and their luggage into Amy's small car. Rico, Troy and J.P. waited at the airport while Amy drove Casey to Tony's apartment. On the way, Amy listened to Casey's excited chatter about a cell phone call she'd received that day from Caylee. Amy then returned to the airport to pick up the guys.

After they got back to their apartment, J.P. wanted to get an iPhone, and Amy went with him to The Florida Mall. Twenty minutes after they arrived, Amy received a harried phone call from Cindy Anthony.

 

At Sutton Place Apartments Tony and Nathan played MLB 2K8, a major league baseball video game while they waited for the All Star game to commence on the television. Casey sat beside them on the sofa tapping on her laptop.