Ken Douglas - Dead Ringer

She was breathing peacefully as she bled out.

It looked real.

He opened the medicine cabinet above the sink and put the blade dispenser on the top shelf, next to a bottle of aspirin. A neat lady like this wouldn’t leave them lying around for the kids to get hurt with.

An hour later, he took off. The sky had cleared and he could see Long Beach Harbor from over Catalina. He popped Mozart back into the player. The French horn he loved so much filled the cockpit, but it brought him no peace. He took it out, shoved in the Springsteen.

“Born in the USA!” He’d be hearing that damned song for the rest of his life.

“Wake up!”

Maggie opened her eyes, met Gaylen Geer’s stare. “What time is it?”

“I didn’t think you knew who I was.” Gaylen put her hands to her hips. “How come you never said anything?”

Maggie rubbed sleep out of her eyes. From her position on the couch, Gaylen looked formidable. She pushed herself up. “How long have I been asleep?”

“Three or four hours. We kept checking on you. You must have had a hard night, because thunder wouldn’t have wakened you.”

“You wanna sit?” Maggie said.

“Sure.” Gaylen took one of the chairs opposite the sofa. Maggie had admired Gaylen Geer since high school and now she was sitting right across from her. And Gaylen thought Maggie was Margo Kenyon. What further proof did she need? Margo had been her twin, no matter what that driver’s license said.

“Are you going to keep staring at me?” Gaylen said.

Maggie didn’t know what to say. She was still in kind of a sleep fog. Should she tell her? Could she not? Just a short time ago, she’d been thinking about stepping into her dead twin’s life. Was her own life so bad she’d leap at the chance to get out of it? No, but it was a chance to keep her baby. She’d been weak, about to get rid of it. As Margo she could keep it, would be able to support it. But she couldn’t do it alone. If Gaylen could help.

“Come on, say something.”

“Margo’s dead.”

“What?” Gaylen threw her hands to her breasts as if she’d been struck with a mallet.

“I’m her sister. Her twin.” Maggie clasped her hands in her lap and her thumbs went to war with themselves. She was powerless to do anything about it.

“I didn’t know she had a twin sister.” Gaylen barely got the words out.

“She didn’t either.”

“How?”

Maggie told her everything, starting from when she saw Virgil and Horace in the Safeway and finishing with her seeing the story about her own murder on television.

“So, you were going to take over her life, like a pod person from the Body Snatchers?” Gaylen said after Maggie had finished.

“No, not initially. I didn’t know she was dead till after I got here. Not till I saw on television that I’d been murdered.” She paused. “I thought about how Jasmine was afraid of her father and the idea sort of came to me as I was dialing 911.”

“So, why tell me?”

“I used to worship you. I wanted to be like you. You’ve got that strength most of us are missing, so I guess I thought if you helped me, maybe I could pull it off.”

“I think you might have taken me a little too seriously. I know I did.”

“You helped change history. Things are better because of you.”

“What you’re asking is wrong.”

“How well did you know Margo? Can you tell me about her?”

“Didn’t you just hear me say it’s wrong?”

“If you don’t help me, that horrible man’s going to take away that frightened child. She’s my family now. I can’t allow that, so I’m asking for your help.” She paused again, met Gaylen’s eyes straight on.

“I can’t do it,” Gaylen said.

“Maybe I’m asking the wrong person. The Gaylen Geer I used to see on television all those years ago, the one who said there was supposed to be a brass ring for everybody, regardless of color or sex, that Gaylen Geer would help me.”

“That Gaylen Geer’s gone.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I’m Gay Sullivan now.”

“You’ll always be Gaylen Geer. You can’t change what you are.”

“I did.” A whisper. Gaylen broke eye contact, looked down at the carpet. She seemed ashamed.

Maggie decided to back off a little. “I promised Jasmine I wouldn’t let that man take her, ever. I need your help to keep that promise.”

“Oh my God!” Gay said.

“What?”

“Margo’s car. It’s in the lot. She’d been gone for a week. I’ve been watching Jazz. She must’ve come home last night.”

“There were groceries in the kitchen when I got here. I put them away.”

“This is scary,” Gay said.

“The killer must have grabbed her here. Then dumped her behind a bar I’d been in earlier. That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I just thought of something.”

“What?” Maggie said.

“She saw a murder.” Gay told her about Frankie Fujimori and how Margo was in the store when he was shot and about how Margo’s ex was Fujimori’s lawyer and how he was there too, hoping to catch Margo harassing the child killer, so he could get a court order against her.

“The guy sounds like a sleazeball.”

“He was. The world’s better off with him dead.”

“I was talking about the ex, Bruce Kenyon.”

“Oh. Yeah, well I guess he is too.” Then Gay told her about the long-haired cops, the albino and the Mexican, and how the girls called the albino one the Ghost. “They had Margo up at the Long Beach PD looking at pictures. She was supposed to go again, but in typical Margo fashion, she left Jazz with me and took off for a week without telling them a thing.”

“Typical Margo fashion?”

“She didn’t want to find the killer’s picture in any book, so she took off on a writer’s retreat. That’s why she left, it’s just like her. Out of sight out of mind.”

“Was she afraid of the killer?”

“Heck no. She thought he’d performed a public service. No way would she have turned him in. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d seen the shooter’s photo in one of those mug books and passed over it.” Gay clutched her hands together in her lap. “I think the killer saw you in that store and thought you were Margo. I think he followed you to that bar, then chased you on the beach. When you got away, he came here hoping to catch you and got the real Margo instead. Then he killed her and dumped her behind that bar, God knows why. But I think that’s what happened. Frankie Fujimori’s killer got her, so she wouldn’t talk.”

“But you said she never would.”

“The killer didn’t know that.”

“Those guys in the Safeway thought they knew who I was. One said he’d seen my picture in the paper. He was slow. But the other one, the guy who looked like a ferret. He wasn’t slow and he had a gun.”

“Still want to take over her life?” Gay said.

“I promised Jasmine,” Maggie said.

“I still think it’s wrong and it’s probably not safe. I mean if the killer finds out Margo’s still around, still breathing, so to speak. He’s going to try again.”

“He’s going to try again anyway, because I saw him in the supermarket, then on the beach. If I come forward as Maggie, he’ll know I can identify him. So I think we should leave him out of the equation, at least for now.”

“Even if she would’ve died of natural causes, even if the killer wasn’t out there, it’d still be wrong,” Gay said, but not with her earlier conviction. She was wavering. “If you want to care for Jazz, then you should come forward and fight for her.”

“Do you really think they’re going to give a child to an aunt who popped out of the woodwork the day her mother was killed? I don’t think so.”