You Can't Catch Me(20)
“I’d do the same.”
“I did make a contribution to the American Cancer Society.”
I nod. “They do good work.”
She looks away. “Then, after I moved here, I got a different kind of letter. It was from this . . . I guess you’d call it a support group?”
“For lottery winners?”
“Yeah. I know it sounds sort of hokey, but I was feeling pretty isolated.”
“What did the letter say?”
“It was an invitation to a conference in Denver. I’d never been there.”
“Was there a conference?” Liam asks.
“No, it was all a lie. I only found that out after.”
Jessie’s flexing her fingers back and forth, as if she has arthritis. Her nails are short and chipped.
“What happened, Jessie?”
“I had a connecting flight in Minneapolis. While I was waiting, someone called for Jessica Williams to come to the service desk. When I went up there, she was there.”
“Jessica Two?” I say.
“Yeah.”
“What did she look like?” Liam asks.
“I mostly remember her red hair.”
“Anything else? Height, weight?”
“She was taller than me. Wearing a fancy black business suit and these super high heels.”
“Confident? Pretty?”
“Yeah.”
“And she made the coincidence seem cool, right?” I say. “Like you were part of some club?”
“That’s exactly what she did.”
“How long did you talk to her for?”
“She offered to buy me a drink because ‘How often do two Jessica Williamses meet?’”
“Too often,” I say.
“Seems like.”
“So, you went.”
“I don’t usually drink, but I did that day.”
The woodpecker knocks loudly against a tree. Jessie turns to look out the window to the deck, maybe seeking him out.
“Was she drinking scotch?” I ask.
“What? Oh yes. She was.”
“And you?”
She turns back to me. “She ordered me something called a French seventy-five. Because I had to try it, apparently.”
My brain tosses up the recipe from when I worked as a bartender for a catering company when I was in school. Sparkling wine, gin, lemon syrup. A deceptively strong drink. Especially for someone who isn’t used to drinking. The drinking is part of her MO, clearly, and for good reason. People open up more when they drink and are less likely to remember the fine details.
“Then what?”
“We talked a bit, about this and that. And we played that game, of course. How she got my information.”
“Jessica Williams Twenty Questions?”
She shakes her head. “I can’t believe I fell for that.”
“You weren’t the only one.”
“Then I went to get on my plane, and I only realized once I was on it that I’d left my phone behind.”
“She took it?”
“I think so.”
“How did she unlock it?”
“My password was lazy.”
“Your birthday?”
“Yes.”
“What happened when you got to Denver?” Liam asks.
She lets out a long, slow breath. “There was supposed to be someone to pick me up. Someone from the conference. But there was no one there. I didn’t have my phone, so I couldn’t call anyone. I found one of those airport computers, but then I realized I couldn’t pay for it because my wallet was missing, too, with all my money and ID and bank cards. Eventually, someone was nice enough to pay for me to have a few minutes on the internet, and I looked the conference up and I couldn’t find anything other than the website I’d looked at before. It didn’t exist.”
“She sent you the letter and made a fake website,” I say.
“I think so.”
“How did you get home?” Liam asks.
“I called my old boss from Chicago, and she faxed airport security the information from my personnel file. You can’t imagine how hard it was to get them to believe me when I didn’t have any ID.”
“You couldn’t ask your family for help?” Liam asks.
“My parents are dead, and I don’t have any siblings.”
It’s a terrible story, but believable, given what I know. I try to imagine how I might react in the same situation. Anger, fear, loneliness. Mostly anger, I’m guessing. But I’d also know that Liam would come to my rescue. There’s security in that, which I take for granted.
“And then what happened?” Liam asks.
“I confirmed what I already knew. She’d gone to the bank and taken out all my money.”
“Because she had your wallet.”
“Yeah, and her driver’s license, which she showed me, which said we had the same name and birthday. My account information, my passwords, they were all in my phone.”
Liam speaks with a bit more urgency. “She went into the bank?”
“I wasn’t signed up for internet banking. I don’t like doing much online.”
“There must’ve been security footage, then.”