Lizzy Gardner #2_Dead Weight (26 page)

Hayley had told Lizzy she didn’t know what love was, but that wasn’t completely true. She loved her mom. And she loved Lizzy like a sister. She didn’t have any siblings, but she igured the way she felt about Lizzy was probably the same way many siblings felt about one another. Lizzy was a good person. She always put everybody else irst. She never thought about her own wants or needs. Even the Jared thing was more about Jared than Lizzy, Hayley igured. Lizzy didn’t want to creep him out with her nightmares and crazy highs and lows. Lizzy was nice, but she was still screwed up. Anybody who knew her well enough could see that.

Maybe that’s why Hayley liked her so much.

She glanced at the Home Sweet Home picture again and knew that was de initely why she liked Lizzy: she was one messed up lady who was trying so hard to be normal.

***

It didn’t take Lizzy long to ind Andrea Kramer’s address in El Dorado Hills. It was interesting to Lizzy that Andrea didn’t use her married name. The binder that Andrea had given her was chock full of detailed information, on everyone except for Andrea herself.

The car Lizzy had rented while the auto shop took a look at Old Yeller was nicer than she’d expected or wanted, but it was all they had left: a shiny new 2012 Cadillac CTS with navigation and everything else you could ever want in a car.

Lizzy drove straight from the rental shop to Andrea Kramer’s house, a massive 10,000 square foot mansion on the top of a hill overlooking Folsom Lake. The driveway was long and visitors were kept at bay with a sturdy gate.

Leaning out her car window, she hit the button on the black box, hoping somebody would let her through.

“Hello?” came a timid voice from the box.

“Hi, this is Lizzy Gardner. I’m here to talk with Andrea Kramer.”

“What are you doing here?”

Lizzy was confused by Andrea’s tone of voice. She sounded angry.

“You didn’t leave me a telephone number where I could reach you,”

Lizzy explained, “but I was able to find your address.”

“How did you find me?”

“I’m a private investigator, remember? I need to talk to you about your sister.”

There was a buzzing sound and the gate slowly slid open. Lizzy drove the Cadillac up the driveway lined with tall, well-fertilized palm trees. Fountain. Check. Sprawling green grass and manicured hedges. Check. Pond with expensive ish swimming about. Check.

Although she couldn’t see the fish, she had a good imagination.

She pulled into one of ive parking spaces, got out and admired the view before heading for the stairs that led to the front door. As she climbed a ridiculous number of lagstone steps to a humongous front door made from imported rare wood, no doubt, she was surprised to ind that she was still able to breathe. The workouts were actually doing some good.

Andrea greeted her at the door. Lizzy couldn’t help but wonder if the woman slept in her Armani and then lie perfectly still so as not to ruin her perfectly coiffed hair. How did women like Andrea do it— always look so put together? She was lucky if she could get her laundry done.

“You really shouldn’t be here,” Andrea said, wringing her hands and looking around nervously.

Lizzy blew out some hot air. Today was another scorcher. “Should I come back later?”

“No, no. Come inside. My kids are playing across the street. They might see you.”

Lizzy looked over her shoulder to make sure they weren’t behind her. “Just tell them I’m an old friend stopping by to say hello.”
What
was the big deal?

Andrea gestured again for Lizzy to come inside and then quickly shut the door behind her. “I sent you a check yesterday. The money should arrive at your office by tomorrow.”

“I didn’t send you an invoice,” Lizzy said, confused.

“Oh, please don’t send me an invoice. No paperwork if you don’t mind. I believe I told you that my husband can’t know about our exchange.”

“I don’t recall, but why is that?”

“He works in finance. He watches every penny.”

“Your sister is missing. I would think with all of this,” Lizzy said, motioning with her hands at the ifty foot ceilings and expensive statues, “he might see it as money well spent.”

“He never liked Diane. He wouldn’t understand. Why don’t you tell me why you’re here, so we can get this settled.”

Get this settled?
The woman clearly didn’t like Lizzy being here.

Lizzy looked around and saw no sign of life. No toys lying around. No big teenager shoes near the door or any sign at all that anyone else lived here. “Usually,” Lizzy explained, “I meet with my clients once or twice a week to keep them apprised of what’s going on with their case. The reason I came to see you, Andrea, is because following Anthony Melbourne is not producing results. I don’t mind keeping an eye on him for a few hours every day, but I don’t see any point in following him around twenty-four seven.”

“Do you know where he is now?”

“As in right this very minute?” Lizzy asked.

“Yes.”

“I have no idea.”

“Well, then, it doesn’t seem to me that you’ve been doing your job.”

Okay, now she was starting to piss Lizzy off. “I told you from the start that I have other work to do. Your missing sister is not my only case.

Today I had other things that needed my attention, and then my car broke down. Thankfully, Melbourne’s assistant happened to be driving by and she sat with me while I waited for a tow truck. Thus the rental car and here I am.”

“Jane helped you?”

“Yes, and she mentioned that you used to work out with Anthony Melbourne.”

Andrea looked down her nose at Lizzy. “That’s not a secret. I told you that I worked out with Anthony, remember?”

Lizzy scratched her head. Had she completely lost her memory? She couldn’t remember Andrea ever saying anything about working out with Melbourne. “He trained you?”

“Yes.” Andrea lowered her voice as if they weren’t the only two people in the house. “The truth is I used to be as big as Diane. My husband insisted I lose the weight. He doesn’t like Anthony Melbourne.”

“Does your husband like anyone?”

Andrea ignored her. “Ever since I lost the weight, he’s been jealous of other men, especially Anthony since he and I worked together for months, hours at a time.”

“Did your husband have any reason to be jealous?”

“No, of course not. I love my husband dearly.” Andrea looked at her gold Cartier watch. “You really do need to go. My husband should be home any minute.”

Lizzy tried to talk fast. “I wanted to let you know that I’m not going to work out with Melbourne at the gym any longer. I’m going to cancel my membership tomorrow.”

“Fine.”

Surprised by Andrea’s quick agreement, Lizzy said, “Andrea, is there anything else you’re not telling me?”

She was wringing her hands again. “There is one thing. I’ve been receiving a lot of calls, day and night. When I pick up my phone I hear breathing and then the caller hangs up.”

“And you think it might be Melbourne?”

She nodded. “After I got to my goal weight, I worked part-time for Anthony, but I’m afraid he was upset with me when I had to quit for the sake of my marriage. I think he might have done something to my sister to get back at me.”

“I see,” Lizzy said, but she didn’t see at all. Andrea was acting strange. Although she had planned to tell Andrea about the photo she had found and that she thought she was being followed, she suddenly decided to keep it all to herself. “Okay, then,” Lizzy said, feeling tension between them, “I’ll see what I can do.”

Andrea sighed. “Since you’re here, you might as well tell me about your weekend in Tahoe. Did Melbourne ever leave the retreat?”

Lizzy shook her head. “I had a direct view of his car from my room.

He never left the lodge except to take us on a hike. If he had left, where do you suppose he might have gone to?”

Andrea sighed, clearly exasperated. “I’ve already told you. I think he’s hiding something. He has secrets and I hired you to find out what those secrets are.”

Alrighty then. Lizzy clasped her hands together and nodded. For the irst time since she’d met Andrea Kramer, though, she wondered what exactly the woman was up to. Was this some sort of wild goose chase?

“I guess we’re inished here. Thank you for the update,” Andrea said, clearly ready for their talk to end.

Lizzy headed for the door. “If I learn anything about your sister, how would you like me to contact you?”

Exasperated, Andrea turned about and walked quickly to the sprawling kitchen with the two refrigerators and two ovens. She jotted down a number and came back to hand Lizzy the scrap of paper. “If you learn anything new, call me at this number and leave a message if I don’t answer.”

Lizzy held up the paper. “Will do.”

“Oh, and I wouldn’t believe anything that Jane woman tells you.”

“Why is that?”

“She’s a little cuckoo, if you know what I mean?” Andrea made the little cuckoo motion people tended to do when they said the word, spinning her slender, well-manicured finger next to her ear.

Lizzy thought it was a little cuckoo that Andrea would bring up Jane at all.

Andrea was holding the door open and Lizzy was afraid if she didn’t get the hell out of there, she was going to feel the tip of Andrea’s expensive shoe in her backside.

Glad to be leaving, Lizzy made a quick exit.

After clearing the gate at the bottom of the driveway, she waited for one of Andrea’s neighbors to grab a ball that some kids had thrown into the middle of the road.

Lizzy rolled her window down so she could talk to the woman.

“Which of those kids over there belong to Andrea Kramer?”

“Do you mean Andrea Smith?” the woman asked, pointing to the house Lizzy just left.

Lizzy nodded.

“Are you friends with Andrea?” the woman asked.

“We just met. She said her kids were playing at the neighbors and I was just curious if maybe those were her kids over there.”

The woman came closer to Lizzy’s window. “I don’t know if it’s my place to tell you, but her husband left her recently and took the kids with him. I heard through the grapevine that he even went so far as to get a restraining order against her.”

Lizzy was too stunned to say anything at all.

“I’m sorry if I said too much.”

The kids across the street were yelling for their ball.

“No, not at all,” Lizzy said. “It’s good that I know. Next time I see her, I’ll be able to tell her how sorry I am for all she’s going through.”

The woman nodded, but before she could get away Lizzy had one more question. “Do you have any idea what kind of car Andrea drives?”

“She drives a silver jaguar, but every once in a while I see her in the Expedition,” the woman said before she ran back to the kids and handed them the ball.

Before Lizzy could let that information sink in, her phone rang.

Hoping it was Jessica, she answered on the first ring.

“Lizzy Gardner?”

“This is her.”

“It’s Debra Taphorn. I think we should talk.”

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

Chapter 34

A Very Long Day

Boredom seeped into every crevice of Hayley’s being. For most of the day, she had played with the cat, watched a movie, and pondered on Brian’s last moments in this world.

At the moment she wondered what Lizzy had been doing all day since she usually checked in at least twice a day. Hopefully Lizzy wasn’t driving around breaking and entering just for the hell of it.

Lizzy had looked as if she’d enjoyed the process entirely too much.

Maybe she was in jail and had already used her only call. Except Hayley knew that that’s not how it worked. Back when she thought Brian was an okay guy, he’d gotten a DUI and she and her mom had gone to the jail to pick him up. They had to wait until morning when they could hire a bail bondsman to put up the money to get him out.

He’d called at least six times, which had cost her mom a pretty penny considering she had to give the voice recorder a credit card number before they would connect Brian from his cell. He said there was a payphone inside the holding cell.

Hayley sighed, iguring she might very well ind out how all of that worked soon enough. Her next thought was about Jessica. Jessica had been on surveillance duty yesterday and Hayley couldn’t help but wonder how that was going. Jessica was smarter than many, but she wasn’t even close to being the shiniest tool in the shed. Sure, she had a few clever ideas every once in a while, but that was about it.

And then there was Brittany Warner. She thought of Brittany as a sister. After being abducted by Spiderman, Brittany’s newfound fame had helped to make her dreams of becoming a cheerleader come true.

Suddenly she was popular and everyone wanted to be her friend.

Nobody else knew about all of the confusing thoughts running through Brittany’s head. The mind was a powerful thing; it tried to control people with random thoughts throughout the day.

Hayley had read Eckhart Tolle’s
A New Earth
. She tended to memorize whole passages without trying, which had always made school easy for her. Eckhart Tolle was a spiritual teacher and a thoughtful thinker. One of his ideas that Hayley had latched onto was that her thoughts were not who she was. The passage she liked the best and reassured her the most was: “….the newfound ability of rising above thought, of realizing a dimension within yourself that is in initely more vast than thought. You then no longer derive your identity, your sense of who you are, from the incessant stream of thinking that in the old consciousness you take to be yourself. What a liberation to realize that the ‘voice in my head’ is not who I am. Who am I then? The one who sees that. The awareness that is prior to thought, the space in which the thought—or the emotion or sense perception—happens.”

Hayley sighed.

All good feelings were swept away as she went over a mental list of what she needed to do to take care of Brian once and for all.

1) Find a way to distract bodyguard camped outside Brian’s house
2) Get syringe into Brian’s house without him seeing it
3) Make Brian believe I miss him