And Now She's Gone(107)
And she’d never be satisfied, because stolen identities never settled in like a new nose or a nip/tuck around the neck. Deanna Kelly was Cerberus, except that people didn’t know they should be careful around her. Those who hadn’t been careful paid with ruined credit and misdemeanors on their previously clean records. Others had paid with their lives. Like Tommy Hampton. Like Xavier Vargas. Like Omar Neville.
Deanna Kelly was a grifter, a thug, a liar, and a thief.
Worse …
Deanna Kelly was a serial killer.
And this case was now bigger than ever and needed to be taken over by the police.
On the plane, Gray found her draft email to Yvonne Reeves.
Dear Yvonne.
I was born Natalie Kittridge in Oakland on April 25, 1980 and given up for adoption. Since then, I’ve never met members of my biological family—but now I see your name listed as a second cousin. And with this test only analyzing maternal DNA, you must be my birth mother’s first cousin. Would you be open to talking to me?
Gray pressed Send before she changed her mind.
By the time Gray’s plane landed in Los Angeles, Detective Jake Days in Oakland had called and left a voice mail on her phone. She could barely hear his message over the roar of Los Angeles: “Something, something, Myracle Hampton hope we can close this once and for all Tommy Hampton something something.”
Gray had answered almost every question she’d come up with at the start of this case, except the original: Where had Deanna Kelly taken the damned dog? That made her heart ache, because her first thought was this: Kenny G. was dead. Deanna didn’t care about humans, so why would she care about her ex-boyfriend’s Labradoodle?
It was late, but Gray called Ian O’Donnell from the back seat of her cab. “She’s worse than we thought. Nothing about her is real. Not the name you knew. Not the name she had before that name. She’s not in her thirties. She didn’t graduate from UCLA, and she may have murdered—well, she probably murdered three ex-boyfriends. If identity theft was her only crime, I would’ve been thrilled, but yeah … She’s much worse, and until the police find her, you should watch your back.”
Ian O’Donnell said nothing.
“And I still don’t know where she took Kenny G. We looked for recent trips taken by Elyse Miller and didn’t find anything. Not sure yet about Deanna Kelly.”
Ian said, “I received a call from the medical board and … I haven’t talked to them, but I’m sure my career is over. I know it. I paid Nick a lot of money for you to stop her and you didn’t—you failed. We’ll handle that later, but … the police are involved. That’s good, I guess. At least I know they’ll stop her.”
“Like they stopped her back in the nineties? Like they stopped her years ago? Like they stopped her two weeks ago?” She would’ve chomped Ian in half if he were standing in front of her.
She took a deep breath, then said, “I understand your frustration. You may complain to Nick about my failure to keep your shenanigans in the dark.”
She called Nick next.
“You’re home,” he said. “Mike said there was no sign of Sean.”
“The cops in Mobile are still looking for him.”
“I’ll keep an ear out.”
“I still haven’t found the dog. Nor have I found her.” And she told him about meeting Deanna Kelly’s mother and cousin.
“What’s her long game?” Nick asked.
“There’s a mortician down in Belize willing to sell her a body—a car accident victim—for five thousand dollars. Comes with a death certificate and mourners, too. He’ll cremate the body and Deanna’s hair and nail samples will prove that the body is Isabel Lincoln.”
“And then Deanna collects the insurance as Tea Christopher.”
“Right,” Gray said. “Tea told me that she’s joining Deanna in Belize, and I’m thinking Deanna’s planning to kill Tea, too.”
“For insurance?”
“Yeah.”
“But who’s the beneficiary on Tea’s policy?”
“Don’t know,” Gray admitted. “Some other stolen identity that I haven’t found yet.”
“Classic death fraud. Anything else?” Nick asked.
“I have a second cousin in Sacramento and—” Her throat closed.
“You gonna introduce yourself?” Nick asked.
“I emailed her.”
“You okay?”
“Kinda feels like I’m betraying them.”
He was silent again, but then he said, “Victor always told us, ‘The truth is rarely pure and never simple.’”
“Oscar Wilde.” She let her forehead rest on the window. “I miss them so much.”
“Want me to come over?”
“Oh, how I’d like to say yes, but…”
“You’re tired.”
“Exhausted.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Please?”
“Thai?”
“And martinis.”
“Dessert?”
She blushed. “Depends.”
Like the city, her phone had been buzzing since she’d lumbered off the plane. Text messages from Tea Christopher.