I'll Be You(40)

Even sober, I was the queen of self-sabotage.

Anyway—this was what I had to work with: a missing binder, a bizarre-seeming compound in Ojai, an eye-popping list of expenses, and a sister who wouldn’t return my texts. It didn’t add up to anything concrete. It didn’t give me anywhere to start looking for answers.

Except for those three addresses.

I pulled the list out from the pile of folders I’d stolen and studied them. Perhaps the list was a clue to understanding my sister’s situation. Then again, it could also be an irrelevant memo that was intended for the trash: an aborted Christmas card list, the addresses of former clients, people she’d met in an internet forum. Desperation and paranoia often manifest patterns where there are none: We think we see meaning in scraps. But I had nothing else to go on, and two of the addresses were a reasonable drive from Santa Barbara. Why not go check them out, at the very least?

It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was something.

I’d stayed up past midnight, reading up on cults and mind control, and then woken up early with Charlotte; so now I downed a third cup of coffee as I shoved Puffs and sippy cups into the diaper bag. I had no intention of telling my mother what I was up to. Stirring up trouble, she’d call it. That’s what I remained, even now: the troublemaker. I wondered how long Elli would have to remain missing before my mother would start to question her trust in my sister’s good sense. Better to wait until I had firm proof that my sister was involved in something unsavory.

Instead I left my mother marinating in her own blind optimism, limping back and forth across the kitchen while the healing crystals clacked in her robe pockets. I figured, let her be happy for one more day.



* * *



—

Charlotte and I headed south, toward Burbank and the first address on Elli’s list. Ninety minutes later, we descended into the hot haze of the San Fernando Valley, turning off Interstate 5 and up into the sun-parched hills that loomed over the suburban sprawl below. The house at 17344 Catalpa Way was an enormous Mediterranean, a modern beige salute to a villa in the Riviera, but with a three-car garage and a pool with a waterslide out back. Below, in the valley, a procession of airplanes took off from the Burbank airport, banking right and over the green belt of Forest Lawn cemetery, before disappearing out toward the sea.

I parked, extricated Charlotte from her car seat, and carried her up to the front door. When I rang the bell, I could hear chimes echoing in the hall beyond, and then, moments later, the tumble of footsteps, a voice shouting, and finally a fumbling at the door.

When it opened, chaos erupted. First a small white dog with a leopard-print collar came bursting through, barking shrilly at me, nipping at my ankle. This was followed by a little girl in a cropped T-shirt that spelled Mommy’s Superstar over a protruding round belly, her blond hair caught up in a rhinestone tiara. She clutched at the dog’s tail with dirty fingers while the dog snarled and whirled around.

Holding up the rear of this parade was a college-aged girl who pursued dog and child with her arms outstretched.

“Bella, no! You know you’re not allowed to open the door! Leave the dog alone!” She burst past us and grabbed the dog’s collar in one hand, the little girl’s shirt in the other. She took a few steps backward into house, dragging her charges with her. I got a glimpse of a long hallway, tiled in shiny black stone, and a spiral staircase carpeted in red. Only once the girl had the dog and child stashed safely behind her in the foyer, the door half-closed to block them from leaving again, did she turn her attention to me.

“Can I help you?” she asked suspiciously. Her eyes settled on Charlotte’s face and softened. “Oh, what a doll,” she cooed. “Don’t worry. The dog is friendly; he’s just a big noise in a small body.” Behind her, the little girl was trying to press herself through the open crack in the door, staring up at Charlotte in my arms. The babysitter put a hand on the crown of the girl’s head and gently pushed her back; her foot hovered in the crack, barring the dog’s path out.

“Can she come in and play?” the little girl said. “I’m booooooored.”

Charlotte craned her head to look at the girl, suddenly interested. She blinked at her, then turned to me. “Lala play?” she asked, eyes big as nickels.

“We’re not here to play, kiddo.” I turned to the babysitter. “Sorry, but do you live here?”

The girl shook her head and took a tiny step backward, narrowing the gap in the door even more. “I work here. The owner’s not home.” The dog surged at her feet, yipping so loudly that she had to raise her voice to be heard. “What’s this about?”

“This may sound strange but…do you know a woman named Eleanor Logan? Or Hart. She looks just like me? I’m”—I realized that I wasn’t quite sure how to describe what I was doing—“looking for her.”

“You think she’s here?” She seemed perplexed.

“Well, no—I just found this address in her things. Maybe she was the owner’s florist? Did they get married in the last few years?”

The friendly expression on the babysitter’s face was fading fast. Quite possibly she was debating whether or not I was insane.

“I wouldn’t know, I haven’t worked for them that long.”

“Can you tell me their name?”