Thirty-Two

Ryan tried to keep his voice calm, a superhuman effort after what he’d just learned. “Susan,” he called out, the tread of his feet as loud as shotgun reports on the tiled flooring of his foyer.

In his hand, he clutched the envelope that contained the tape from Wanda’s answering machine. He kept squeezing it in an effort to keep his hands under control. How could she possibly explain herself?

He prowled through the hall, glancing into each room, but the house had an empty feel. Likely she was keeping one of her weekly beauty appointments. There were so many since her television appearance—manicures, massages, waxings. Last week he’d paid a bill from an esthetician. He didn’t even know what an esthetician did.

Ryan entered her dressing room. Susan wasn’t in her usual spot, sitting on a padded chair in front of her vanity, rubbing into her pores some high-priced cream made from a baby’s foreskin. He scanned the top of her vanity, looking for her en­gagement calendar, when his hand knocked against her dental mold case. Recently she’d started to bleach her teeth to such a blinding whiteness he felt like shading his eyes every time she smiled.

He turned to leave the dressing room, but after a spark of inspiration, instead seized the case that held the mold and pocketed it. Then he trotted out to the garage, flung open the door of his Mercedes, and called his dentist on his cell phone.

“Hi, Lucy, this is Ryan Blaine,” he said to the receptionist as he dug in his trouser pockets for his car keys. “I have an emergency on my hands. Could you look and see if you still have some of Susan’s old records?”

As he waited for her to check, he was so distracted he backed the car out of the garage and almost broadsided a trash can.

“You have them? Good. I’m on my way. And will you tell Bob I’m coming? I’ll need five minutes of his time.”

When Susan first moved to Atlanta, she’d gone to Ryan’s dentist, Dr. Robert Stalling. Dr. Stalling was an old buddy and had been the family dentist since Ryan lost his first baby teeth. After her accident, Susan never returned to Dr. Stalling. Instead she’d started seeing a cosmetic dentist in Buckhead. Ryan hadn’t thought much of it at the time, but in light of what he now knew, her decision to find a new dentist seemed far from innocent.

After a few minutes, he arrived at the dental office and charged into the reception area.

“Hi, Lucy,” he said to the pale redhead behind the desk. “Did you speak with Bob? I just need a few—”

“Hello, Ryan. This is a treat.” Dr. Stalling ambled into the waiting room. He was a small dapper man with round over­sized spectacles. “Of course I can spare a few minutes for one of my best—” He glanced at Ryan’s face and his brow furrowed. “Are you all right? You look like you’re about to lose your lunch. Let’s go into my office,” he said, crossing to Ryan and putting a guiding hand on his shoulder. “I’ve got the records you wanted on my desk.”

Ryan dropped into a leather wing chair and placed the box with the mold on the dentist’s desk.

“This is a mold of Susan’s teeth. Will you take a look at it? See how it compares to her previous records? I realize these things are usually confidential, but I still have medical power of attorney over Susan.”

Dr. Stalling wore a quizzical expression, but he did as Ryan asked, picking up the mold and examining it. Then he looked inside a file folder on his desk. He squinted, and the vertical groove between his eyes deepened.

“I’m getting a little slower in my old age, Ryan. Who did you say this mold belonged to?”

“It’s Susan’s. Her new dentist cast it.”

Dr. Stalling glanced down at the mold, twisting it in his hand. “Then there must have been some kind of mix-up. This can’t possibly be Susan’s.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. Teeth marks are as individual as fingerprints.”

“Even with identical twins?”

“Yes. They’re completely different.”

The impact of Bob’s words made Ryan so woozy he grabbed the arms of the chair to keep from passing out. There was no denying the truth. With the dental mold and the tape...Ryan’s hand automatically went to his pocket. The envelope containing the tape was missing. He must have left it on Susan’s vanity when he picked up the mold.

Ryan bolted up from his chair so fast a stitch pierced his side. “Thanks so much for your help, Bob,” he said, holding his abdomen. “Sorry to be in such a rush, but I need to get going.”

Dr. Stalling shook his head. “I can’t imagine a dentist making this sort of error. Are you sure everything is okay? Why don’t you sit for a while?”

“I need to get home immediately. I’ll call you later and explain everything.”

 

 

Susan walked up the flagstone pathway leading to her front door, fluffing her newly streaked hair. She’d gone to Elton Sutherland, Atlanta’s top stylist, and he and his staff had whisked her off to a private area of the salon and kept her happy with cucumber sandwiches and glasses of Chardonnay. Best of all, when it came time to pay, Elton refused his $250 fee.

“Having you as a client is honor enough,” he’d said, hoping no doubt she’d drop his name in the right circles.

She stood unsteadily on the threshold of her doorway (Jimmy Choos were a pain to walk in, especially when she had a buzz) and waved goodbye to her driver, Roland, as he pulled away. Then she headed into her dressing room to check out her hair under the recently installed pink light bulbs. She knew she spent too much time in front of the mirror, but who cared? She was looking fabulous so she might as well enjoy it. She’d gone to a makeup artist who had shown her all kinds of ways to cover up the scars on her face and taught her how to apply her makeup like a pro. Now if she could only talk Ryan into paying for a boob job. Her breasts were itsy-bitsy—like two halved lemons clinging to her chest.

Her dressing-room lights were on; she must have forgot­ten to turn them off before she left. On her vanity there was a long white business envelope. She was pleased to see her name printed on the front, and she eagerly tore it open. The envelope contained an undersized cassette tape, but there was no note or any clue as to where it came from.

Looks like an answering-machine tape, Susan thought. Maybe it was a sweet-nothing message from Ryan. Lately he’d been so anxious to please her. This morning he’d prepared a tray with coffee, croissants, and a vase with a single red rose and brought it into the bedroom.

He should treat me nice, she thought with a thrust of her chin. Finally she was getting to live the life she deserved.

“Let’s see what we got here,” she mused, carrying the tape into the bedroom so she could listen to it on the answering machine. Her machine blinked with several messages. Not surprising. She was such a popular girl these days.

She pressed the button to listen to the first message and heard an unfamiliar female voice on the line.

“Hello, Mr. Blaine. This is Lucy from Dr. Stalling’s office. I don’t know if you realized it, but you were in such a hurry you left the mold for your wife’s teeth here. Please give our office a call when you get in. Doc Bob is really concerned about you.”

Her teeth mold? Surely this Lucy person had to be mixed up. Her mold was on her vanity, right where she left it this morning. Wasn’t it? Susan returned to her dressing room, but the familiar blue case was nowhere in sight. Why would Ryan take her dental mold to Dr. Stalling’s office?

Had something happened in the last few hours to make Ryan suspicious of her? She glanced at the tape she still held in her hand.

Could the tape have anything to do with it? There was only one way to find out.

 

 

Ryan’s Mercedes was just one car in an endless string stuck on 1-285. A traffic copter circled and sputtered overhead, and he’d inched past the same paneled station wagon at least ten times.

A gap-toothed boy in the backseat squashed his lips against the car window. To his left, a woman had her sunroof open and held a square of silver reflective board beneath her chin, trying to catch some rays.

“A list of pile ups includes 1-75 west outside of Morrow, and 1-285 east, which is backed up for over ten miles,” said the radio announcer. “Expect delays of nearly an hour.”

Ryan snapped the radio off so hard he nearly yanked out the button. He was so pumped up with adrenaline he felt like abandoning his car and sprinting all the way home.

“Please don’t let her find it,” he whispered. What an idiot. He’d left it in the worst possible place in the house. Lately, Susan spent hours in her dressing area, primping and preen­ing in front of the mirror. If she spotted the envelope, she’d certainly play the tape, which would be disastrous. He needed time to calm down, to decide how to handle the situation and whether or not he should get the police involved.

His mind returned once again to his conversation with the woman who’d accosted him earlier. When he invited his “stalker” into his car, relief had flooded her weathered face.

“I’ve been living with this information for way too long,” she said. “It’s been clawing at my insides. I can’t sleep or eat.”

Gordon had sat beside her, vigilant of any abrupt moves as she began her story. “Have you ever had the feeling that your wife was some­one else entirely?” she said. “That she was a complete stranger?”

“Mr. Blaine,” Gordon said. “I think this has gone far enough. It’s not a good idea to encourage—”

“No, Gordon,” Ryan said firmly. “I want to hear what she has to say. In private, please.”

“But, Mr. Blaine—”

“It’ll be okay.”

After the security guard and driver left the car, the wom­an’s eyes, vivid with blue shadow, locked with Ryan’s.

“My name is Wanda, and I have a hot-dog cart in Birming­ham, Alabama. In order for you to understand what I’m about to say, I have to tell you about a homeless gal I once met named Emily.”

She described how she’d struck up a friendship with Emily, and remarked on her resemblance to the guest animal behaviorist on Animal Planet.

“I didn’t give our conversation a second thought until I saw your wife on Talk to Me,” she continued.

Wanda recounted her surprise upon hearing Susan’s lisp and her love for Johnny Cash. To her, it was obvious that Susan and the street woman were twin sisters, but she didn’t know if Susan knew Emily existed.

“Curiosity was killing me, so I wrote Susan a letter, and she called me a few months ago. I accidentally taped the call. It tells the tale much better than I can,” Wanda said.

She’d copied the tape to a standard-sized cassette. She gave the copy and the original to Ryan, who leaned over the back­seat and slid it into the player up front.

His shock mounted as he listened to Susan speak of an identical twin sister whom she had visited and who’d died of a heart attack after smoking crack cocaine.

“When I saw her I was amazed at how much we resembled each other,” Susan’s voice said on the tape. “Of course, Emily looked terribly run-down. As you said, she’d been living on the streets. Once I spoke with her it was clear she was my twin sister. We’d both been adopted; we both had lisps...”

After the tape finished playing, Ryan leaned his head back against the seat, his thoughts swirling as he tried to make sense of what he’d just heard. It was as if he’d been given the sharp, jagged pieces of a glass puzzle. There were so many things wrong with their conversation. Susan had never lisped before her accident. Nor was she a Johnny Cash fan. Her ob­session with the country singer also came after her collision. And the idea that she met her twin sister and had kept it from him was incredible. Ryan took slow deep breaths, because he was on the verge of hyperventilating.

“I knew something was fishy,” Wanda said. “And it took me a listen or two to figure it out. On the tape, you hear Susan call me Mrs. Hart.”

“I don’t understand,” Ryan said in a weak voice.

“It’s not my name anymore,” Wanda said. “A little over a year ago, I was married, but the bum cheated on me and I kicked him to the curb after only six weeks. When I met Emily, she was one of the few people who knew me as Mrs. Hart. I used to joke with her, saying, ‘My husband’s name is Hart and he stole my mine.’ A little while afterward, I went back to my maiden name and never used the surname Hart again. The letter I wrote Susan was signed Wanda Myers. Susan slipped up on the phone and called me Mrs. Hart. That’s when I knew I had to speak with you.”

Ryan pressed his cheek against the cool window of the car as his stomach lurched. “Are you saying you think this street person is posing as Susan?” he asked in a ragged whisper.

“Looks that way to me.”

“Then where, for God’s sakes, is the real Susan?”

Wanda nervously pulled on the loose skin of her neck.

“I’m real sorry, Mr. Blaine, but I’m afraid she might be dead.”

The words Susan had spoken on the tape echoed in Ryan’s ears. “She’s dead and it’s all my fault.”

Could it be true? He’d kissed this woman’s lips, sat at her bedside for hours, made love to her, married her. Had she murdered Susan? There didn’t seem to be any doubt. He stumbled out of the car and retched strings of saliva beside the back tire.

Now, nearly two hours later, Ryan looked at the hundreds of idling cars stretching in front of him and leaned on the horn, even though he knew it would do no good. He had to re­trieve the tape before that impostor, whoever she was, got her hands on it. How could he have been so stupid as to leave the original on the vanity?