The next day was Saturday, and Susan decided she wasn't going to listen to the news, or watch the television, or read a newspaper. When Mike Sheldon had learned that his daughter escaped from the van because they men hadn't restrained her, he'd ordered the men be fired. This led, in turn, to loud complaints and threats of a lawsuit from the police union. Mike had threatened to go public with the fact that the two officers had been outwitted by a teenage girl. Then the union had threatened to go public with the identity of that teenage girl.
Susan really didn't want to find out what had happened while she was asleep. She had intended to sleep late, but she'd awakened at her usual time and had not been able to get back to sleep.
At ten minutes before seven, she was sitting at her kitchen table, watching the water boil, trying to get up the energy to make coffee. The lobby buzzer went off, and she got to her feet, went over and pressed the button. "Yes?" she asked.
"Miss, there's a Miss Stein down here to see you."
Susan's immediate urge was to yell, "NO!" and go back to bed, but she dutifully said, "Send her up, please." So, for the next four minutes, she wondered who was coming up in the elevator. Was it the real Carly Stein, or was it Micki Sheldon?
By the time the doorbell rang, she'd decided it had to be Micki Sheldon, and she was right.
Micki looked around the large kitchen and peeked into the living room. She turned, smiling a smile which involved only her mouth, an expression Susan knew very well from Micki's father. Susan meanwhile tried not to stare at Micki's hair. It looked like she'd gone after Carly Stein's bangs and long, severe hair with a lawn mower, or perhaps a knife and fork. And in the dark. Some patches were very short, almost down to the scalp, others were a couple of inches long, sticking up in various directions.
"Pretty ritzy place," Micki said. Susan shrugged. "You seen the papers?"
Susan shook her head. "I've been avoiding–"
"As my father always says, you can break the glass, but you can't hold back the weather. Look." She threw a newspaper down on the table. Susan looked at the headline, sank into a chair and started to read.
"I'll make the coffee," Micki said after a minute.
Micki put a mug of coffee in front of Susan and sat down
across the table from her. Susan looked up and they were both
silent for a while. Finally, Susan asked, "Why are you here?
Why did you come to see me?"
"I need some money."
Susan nodded. "Okay, I see, and your idea is that I'm going to give you the money because I've just figured out 'what he's really like,' and I'm going to feel guilty about working for him all this time." She leaned forward and picked up her coffee. She sipped it and then placed the mug on the folded newspaper.
"I am a bad person," she went on, "but not for the reason you think. I'm a bad person because even though the man I work for–"
"The man you love," Micki muttered into her mug.
Susan laughed. "The next vacation I get, I want to spend it where you live, the country where things are so simple. Anyway, the man I work for just had two men killed, and he had it set up so that their bodies would be found in the most ridiculous and humiliating situation he could imagine."
"I wonder if this comes as any big surprise to you," Micki said quietly. Susan ignored her.
"One of those man was going to withdraw his support," she continued, "and maybe make some public statements. Plus he called you a slut. The other man, this Hobbs, didn't do anything, at least nothing that Mike Sheldon cares about. And now they're both dead.
"You know why I'm a bad person? I'm a bad person because the thing that upsets me the most is how Mike treated you. More than two murders." She picked up her coffee. "You might as well take off that horrible, smelly jacket, because I'll give you money, and some clothes besides, but there's a price. I want to know what's going on, all the questions Mike was too angry to ask." She held up her hand, "Not for him. If he wants to know, he can stop being so stubborn and ask you himself. This is just between you and me. But if you don't want to tell me, you can leave now."
Micki nodded and stood up. "Okay," she said, taking off her jacket and hanging it over the back of her chair. Susan went to the stove and got the coffee pot. She topped off both their mugs and then sat down.
"When I got to college," Micki began, "I might just as
well have been named Micki Hitler. I had wanted to go to school
far away because I wanted to be more anonymous, but I found out
that my father's name is known all across the country. So, kids
would say things about him, and I'd defend him. Not even because
I thought he was right about every little thing, but because you
defend your blood. You remember all those stories about how he
stood up for Paul when they were kids, even when Paul was wrong
and my father would beat the shit out of him later at home.
"So, anyway, I got in trouble a few times, for fighting and stuff, but nothing too bad. But then I started trying to figure out why the entire student body of this big, fancy school all seemed to think my father was a monster. So, I started doing some reading, newspapers and magazines, and then I started to wonder if maybe they were right. It didn't seem reasonable that they could all be malcontents and crybabies."
She sighed and leaned back in her chair, then she brought her legs up and folded them under her. "You know my record in high school. I didn't get into a school like that on my own merits. And, between the fights and everything else, plus a lot of partying, I admit, I wasn't in good shape grades-wise. I decided to hell with it, I was going to leave school and come back here. I wanted to know the truth, a lot more than I wanted to know about calculus or anthropology or whatever."
Susan nodded. "So, you came back. I can understand that. But why did you come back as Carly Stein?"
Micki looked around. "Do you have anything to eat? Just anything? A piece of bread would be fine. I'm really hungry."
Susan got up and took some bagels from the breadbox. She brought them over on a cutting board, along with butter, jam and a big knife. Micki sliced a bagel in half and buttered it. She started chewing a piece, then said, "Thanks. Anyway, Carly was a year ahead of me at school. I guess maybe her father helped me get in." Susan nodded. "We'd never been close, she's a real religious type, very strict, but we got more friendly after I got there because she sort of understood what I was going through, the whole thing about my father."
She swallowed and took another bite of the bagel. "I had a problem. If I tried to buy a plane ticket, it would show up on my credit card, and whoever goes over those things–you, I assume–would tell my father. I tried to buy a ticket with cash, but you can't do that, at least not if you're a teenager. So, I was talking to Carly about this, and she said she'd buy me a ticket. She said nobody ever looked at her credit card, they just paid it.
"But they check ID on planes these days, so I had to travel as Carly Stein. I had my hair cut like hers, and I figured they wouldn't look that closely if I had the right ID and the right attitude and the platinum card. And I was right.
"When I got here, I just kept on being her because I didn't want my father to find out I'd come home."
Susan nodded slowly, then she bit thoughtfully into a bagel. "And you didn't wonder why Carly Stein would go to all this bother for you? And maybe get in trouble herself if her father ever found out?"
"No," Micki said, smiling. "I had a pretty good idea. I figure she wanted to run away herself, and this way I'd leave a great big trail pointing here, and meanwhile she's gone somewhere else."
"Why was she running away?"
"She never mentioned it, but let's just say that Little Miss Virtue was starting to show."
Susan failed to smother a giggle, then she shook her head. "I was about to imagine her father's reaction to that, but . . ." she waved a hand at the folded newspaper between them.
Micki nodded. "Maybe he'll spin in his grave."
"So, how long have you been here?"
"About a month."
"And nobody noticed you were gone? At school?"
"A lot of students cut classes, it's not like high school. Nobody really cares. And I have a couple of people covering for me. I've mailed a couple of letters out there for them to mail back to my father. Finals are starting, though, so I guess my college career is about to end for real." She smiled at Susan's expression. "It's okay, I know about my father's spy. Let's just say I won him over." She peered into her coffee mug, trying to see if there was another drop to be found in there.
"You've been here a month? Where have you been staying?"
Micki slumped in her chair and hugged her knees against her chest. "This is the lousy part. If you're thinking that maybe Ben Stein was right about me . . . Anyway, I needed a place to stay. My first night here I picked up this guy in a bar and went home with him. I stayed with him for about three weeks, but then I had to get out. He . . . I knew I was in trouble the first morning when he started looking at me and murmuring my name over and over. And of course it wasn't even my name." She looked up. "His name was Danny. He was the one Hobbs killed. Hobbs was following me for Ben Stein, thinking I was Carly, and he saw us together. Danny and I had dinner the night before last." She shrugged. "I was hungry and broke. He was desperate to get me to come back, so I let him buy a dinner."
Susan thought it was rather endearing that Micki obviously thought this was an almost unforgivably evil thing for her to have done to poor Danny. All she said, though, was, "I don't get why Hobbs killed him."
So Micki told Susan an abbreviated version of what had happened that night. She told her about walking aimlessly after dinner until she stumbled on Danny's body, about bumping into the tall man and about hiding out with him after curfew, about her telling the story of Danny's side of the evening, and about exactly when he'd interrupted her. She left out the story of the streets, and the rest. She concluded with, "I was blocks and blocks from the restaurant when I found his body. Why was he right there? He must have been following me. And Hobbs must have been following me, too, that's the only way it figures. Danny . . ." She fought back sudden, unexpected tears. "He probably thought he was protecting me or something. Shit." She picked up a napkin and wiped her eyes.
Susan waited a moment, finishing her coffee, then she asked quietly, "So, what are you going to do now?"
Micki hesitated, then shook her head. "I don't trust you that much. And anyway, I'm really not sure. I suddenly feel like I don't have a home anymore."
"Don't jump to any conclusions. Listen, for the first eighteen years of your life, you thought your father was always right. Now you probably think he's always wrong."
Micki made a face. "I didn't say that."
"But you think it. I'll tell you what I think, which is that he's more complex than that. Now, you're all pissed off at him, but even so you quoted one of his sayings a few minutes ago. I'll bet you have a lot more of them floating around up there under that terrible haircut. We all do. So, maybe you'd better find out if you want to keep them or throw them out."
Micki smiled. "Maybe. Remember, I don't trust you that much."
"Fair enough." She smiled. "Fair enough. Come on, let's get you some clothes."
Susan locked the door behind Micki Sheldon. She looked at
the closed door for a moment, then she smiled and went into her
bedroom to get dressed.