Ken Douglas - Dead Ringer

The living room was bright, with light beige carpets, rattan furniture with floral print cushions, two lamps with glass bowls stuffed full of sea shells for bases, tropical prints on the walls. Maggie guessed Hawaii.

“Can I go to next door and play with Sonya?” Jasmine said.

“Sure,” Maggie said.

“Thanks.” Jasmine was out the door before Maggie could say another word.

Alone now, she walked around the condo. She went to the bedroom, saw a Queen size bed, rattan end tables, a painting of a palm tree swaying in a storm above the bed. Margo was a water woman. An island woman. Maggie smiled, because she was too.

She turned and gasped. For an instant she thought she was face to face with her twin, but it was only her reflection in the floor to ceiling mirrored closet doors. She frowned, pushed the hair out of her eyes. She was dripping with sweat. What a way to greet her sister for the first time. Before she could stop herself, Maggie slid open the closet. She had to know more about her twin and what better way to know a woman than by her clothes?

“Yuck.” Maggie ran her hands through the hanging suits. What kind of woman lived by the beach, decorated an apartment so wonderfully, than dressed like that? Old lady lawyers. Not real people. Maggie closed the closet and went back to the living room.

The timer on the VCR under the TV said, 9:15. Fifteen minutes till Nick’s Sunday show. He didn’t come home last night, but wherever he’d slept, he’d be out of bed for that. If she’d been thinking clearly, she’d have realized it earlier. He was always at the station an hour or more before the show. She could have called him there.

She went to the kitchen, where she saw a handbag and two bags of groceries that begged to be put away. In less than a minute she was as familiar with the kitchen as if it were her own. She put away the groceries. Ten minutes till Newsmakers with Nick. She found coffee and filters for the coffee machine.

Back in the living room with black coffee, she turned on the television. She took a sip and watched as Carry Ann Close, Nick’s co-host, came on the screen. She apologized for Nick’s absence.

“It is this newswoman’s sad duty to report that Nick Nesbitt’s wife, Maggie, was found murdered last night. Her nude body was discovered, battered and broken, behind the Whale, a bar frequented by gays, in Long Beach. It’s not known yet if she’d been sexually assaulted-”

Maggie stared at the set, stunned as Carry Close cut to a live camera outside of the Whale. The whole thirty minutes was spent on the murder. It was those men, Horace and Virgil. It had to be. They’d mistaken her for Margo yesterday. They must have followed her and Gordon. Then somehow they found the real Margo, killed her and dumped her there.

Her first instinct was to call the police. She looked around the room. No phone. But there was one in the kitchen. She got up, sat back down. What about the promise she’d just made to the child? What would happen to her if Maggie called the cops?

What was the matter with her? It was her sister. It could have been her. She got up, went out to the kitchen, picked up the phone, dialed 911, then hung up before it had a chance to ring. Margo was dead. Nothing she did could bring her back.

And she’d promised the child, Jasmine.

That stopped her. She’d promised not to let her father take her away. What was she, eight? Ten? He must be awfully bad if a kid like that was so afraid of him.

Her hair was in her eyes again. She pushed it back, went back into the living room and slumped down onto the sofa. The TV was still on. Carry Ann Close was talking about how dangerous it was becoming for women in Southern California. What planet was she from? It had been dangerous for a long time. Maggie picked up the remote, clicked off the TV. Let Carry Ann tell it to somebody else.

She wanted to bury her head in her hands. She’d found a sister, only to lose her before she got to know her. Life was so unfair. Tears welled in her eyes. They would have been close.

“Come on, Maggie,” she said to herself. “You don’t have time to cry.” She wiped the tears away. She needed to find out as much about her sister as she could before Jasmine came back from her friend’s.

She went back into the bedroom. She’d only glanced at the stuff in the closet earlier. Margo must have had something a normal person might wear. Nope, not a pair of Levi’s anywhere to be found. Not a cut off sweatshirt, no old, comfy T-shirts, no broken in running shoes. Everything looked new.

She spied a checkbook on the nightstand next to the bed. Checks, three to a page on a three ring binder. Was Margo in business? A quick scan told Maggie no, but she had a little over forty thousand in her checking account.

Her mortgage was twenty-five hundred dollars a month. She deposited the same amount around the first of every month. The notation on the stub said, “Jack-child support.” The ex-husband couldn’t be all that bad if he was shelling out that kind of money.

In the drawer under the checkbook, Maggie found a savings account booklet, simple, the kind any child might have. She whistled when she saw the figure, Three million, three hundred and eighty-six thousand dollars and seventy-five cents.

She also found a schedule of classes. Margo was a student? Apparently. She was taking a full load, going five days a week, but they were freshman classes. What kind of thirty-one-year-old woman had over three million bucks, dressed for power and went to college? What was she studying to be?

Numb, Maggie went back out to the kitchen, picked up the purse, took it to the sofa. She dumped it out. Another checkbook, a normal one, a little over seven thousand dollars in the account. Walking around money? A pink wallet. Pink? A little over three hundred dollars in it. She put it back, took out the driver’s license.

Margo Sue Kenyon. Height 5?7?. Eyes. Blue. Hair. Blonde. DOB. “Oh my God!” Maggie gasped. She should have been born on May 10, but she wasn’t. March 5 is what the license said, two months before Maggie. Something was wrong. If that was true, they weren’t twins, they weren’t even sisters. It wasn’t possible.

Maggie looked at the photo, a mirror image of her own. Margo’s husband, Jasmine, the wrongful identification of the girl found dead. They all pointed to the fact that Maggie and Margo were twins. There was no other explanation. Therefore the birth date was wrong. Had to be. Why?

Did Margo know she had a twin? Did she get fake ID to hide it? She would’ve had to have done it years ago, before Jasmine. Before the husband. Again, why?

Maybe she didn’t. Maybe she didn’t know. Maybe she was kidnapped at birth, stolen from the hospital. Maybe. The new parents, the fake parents, could have gotten a phony birth certificate, raised the child as their own. Maybe.

Maggie slipped the license back into the wallet, dropped the wallet back into the purse, gathered up the other stuff-lipstick, too red, make up, too light-blush, mascara, mousse. Made up, she must have looked like Dolly Parton. She looked up at the bookcase. There were some photo albums on the bottom shelf.

She moved over to the bookcase again, sat on the floor and took out one of the albums. She shivered at the first photo on the first page. Margo in a cheerleader’s uniform. Maggie had been a cheerleader. She closed her eyes. She had her own photo albums in Long Beach. Most she could live without, except the one that documented her own high school life, the one with the pictures of her parents in it.

She looked at more pictures. Margo at the beach in a yellow bikini. Margo with a young Bruce Kenyon in a Marine Corps uniform. An officer. Margo and Bruce on an island somewhere. The Caribbean? Hawaii? Margo pregnant. Margo in the hospital. Margo holding a baby, smile a block wide, a glow in her eyes that radiated out of the photo. Margo, Bruce and a baby girl, a Christmas tree behind them. Maggie looked across the room, saw where the Christmas tree had been. Margo had lived here a long time.