Welcome to Golden, Chapter 12

It was Saturday, another perfect day in Golden. The birds sang, the sun was shining and the temperature was a comfortable seventy-nine degrees. It was about like any other Saturday in Golden, except that on this day Ruth was scared because there was a killer walking around.

It didn't take long for rumors to start circulating, which is what Ruth told Fred would happen. Ruth knew Fred liked the chaos the rumors caused, it kept everyone busy with speculation and kept the suspect from getting too comfortable with his crime. Ruth's mind certainly wasn't idle as she walked across town to Gloria's house.

She was puzzled over what she had imagined what was a setback in the investigation. After going home and sleeping, Ruth woke refreshed and decided to stop by Lily's apartment to have another look. Maybe there had been clues she and Fred had missed because they were too tired and too emotional. When she got to the apartment, she discovered the diorama had been erased — there was nothing but four blank walls when she entered. Her panic subsided and her puzzlement increased when she reached in her pocket to find Lily's diary still there.

Both Fred and Billy insisted that once the diorama was erased everything belonging to Lily would disappear. But here was the diary, as real as anything else in Golden. It hadn't disappeared, even though the diorama had. Ruth wasn't sure what it meant, whether someone on the outside — Billy maybe — had somehow preserved their evidence, or some mistake had occurred in the Golden program. Either way, Ruth decided she had better read the diary much closer.

Unfortunately, it was a waste of time, as far as a crime investigation went. At least that's the way Ruth saw it, but maybe one of those forensic detective types on TV might be able to make something of it. Most of the entries were about the mundane things that Lily was going through, the people she liked and the fear she had of Andrew Joslin. These were things everyone would have already known.

She was still curious about Ricardo. She had made it a point to meet everyone in Golden and didn't know him. And, she wondered, whether he had anything to do with Elvis. Being able to kill someone was not something she understood and wondered who amongst the residents had it within themselves to take a life. A few came to mind, but she had seen most of Golden's residents with her own eyes at the time Lily was killed, or she believed that they were incapable of hurting anyone. Her mind kept coming back to Andrew Joslin, Anne Knox and Cal Everitt. Cal was good at rendering — everyone knew that — but Ruth had never seen him try to change his own appearance.

The distraction of her thoughts as she walked across town made her almost miss Elvis. When she first saw him, it made her start — this could be the killer — and she felt vulnerable.

“Nothing can hurt me here unless I let it,” she said to herself over and over to calm her nerves. It did little to allay her fears, but she was able to keep herself from running away screaming her head off. Somewhere within herself, though, she managed to find bravery, which was rooted in anger that someone could take away Golden from her and everyone else here. The killer's actions not only served Lily with a death sentence, but could spell one for the rest of the residents. Those were the thoughts that occupied two brief instants in her head before she would turn the tables on whoever was rendering himself as Elvis and follow him.

When she'd see him, she would immediately turn and walk toward him. Billy was right he looked exactly like a young Elvis. If he was behind a bush, she would walk to the bush and continue on a path past it. She had to hand it to him, though, he moved locations very quickly and she never saw him scurry away.

“I see you!” she finally shouted as Elvis ducked down behind a garbage can. “Why don't you be a man and show yourself?”

Nothing. Instead, he disappeared altogether and she continued her walk to Gloria's house. The appearance of Elvis shook her a little, but her resolve was still firm. On her way to Gloria's, Ruth changed to a middle aged version of herself thinking it would be easier on Gloria. She thought about Lily and the problems she had changing her image. Ruth couldn't understand it and in the times she had tried to help her, found that she couldn't explain how some people in Golden could change easily and others couldn't. Well, that wasn't quite right, there were very few who had the control that Ruth had, and as she walked on she went over the list of those who showed an acumen for rendering.

She started with Fred, who while she rarely saw change his form, she imaged that it would be no problem for him. She saw him do other things that were just amazing, like create a pet dog for Rita Johnson. Jerry was pretty good at it but she had never seen Dan even try. She once saw Paul Thompson change fairly quickly from an old man to a teenager. The more she thought about of it, the more she realized that her list was pretty short, but that was because she didn't know what other people did behind closed doors. Like any community, there were groups within the community. While she knew everyone, she didn't really socialize with that many.

What she did know, though, was that at least one person who she didn't trust had exceptional control over Golden and that was Anne. She was someone who Ruth had no desire to talk to, and was happy when Fred agreed to take up the task of talking to the people Ruth didn't like. It's not that she wouldn't if asked, she told herself, but life was too short to deal with those type of people. She was happy her part in this investigation would be to talk to friendly people, see if she could track Lily's last hours.

Gloria lived on Third Street in the middle of the block next to Noah Harper and Gary and James, who shared a home. Steve the lawyer lived down the road and Ron Farmer lived across the street as did Vince and Peggy, who were an item and two of the old timers in Golden — they'd been here since nearly the beginning. Ruth liked all of them, except maybe Steve, even though once you got past his blowhard exterior was really a nice guy. They hung out together, along with Jerry and Dan.

Gloria was probably one of the sweetest people you could ever meet, but not very smart and not a good drinker. Everyone in Golden, except for Gloria, seemed to realize that you really couldn't get drunk. Ruth suspected that Gloria probably felt that she had to be at least a little drunk as an excuse for her sometimes outrageous behavior. In the old days, Ruth thought, the boys would have called her a tease, or worse. Ruth climbed the steps up Gloria's porch and knocked on the door. A hand pulled back a curtain and an eye looked quickly at Ruth.

“Who are you? What do you want?” the voice behind the door said.

“Gloria, it's me, Ruth.” The curtain opened a little wider and Gloria studied Ruth a little closer. A lock was undone and the door swung open. It was unlike most people in Golden to worry about locking doors.

“Sorry, I didn't recognize you,” Gloria said. “You were so pretty in middle age. You should have been a movie star.”

“Well,” Ruth said as she walked in, “I took a few liberties. I'm a lot thinner here than I really was.”

“Oh, I so wish I could do that.” Scratch Gloria off any list, not that she was ever on one, Ruth thought. “What brings you by? Can I get you some coffee?”

“No thanks,” Ruth took a seat in Gloria's sitting room and looked around. All the blank wall space in the room had been covered with shelves lined with photos of family, friends and numerous bowls of potpourri and Hummel figures. “Say, Gloria, what's with the locked door and the suspicions?”

Gloria sat in a chair across from Ruth, a worried look on her face.

“Things have been a little … creepy lately. I just feel more comfortable with the doors locked.”

“Creepy in what way?”

A cup of coffee appeared in Gloria's hands and she blew on it and took a sip.

“Well... I was going to bring it up with Mr. McKenzie, but Cal Everitt has been following me and looking at me weird, you know?”

“Like how?”

“Like he wants to do things to me. And then there's someone who looks like Elvis who's been lurking around. I don't know who that is, but I suspect it’s Cal because I told him to leave me alone. Elvis has followed me around a couple of times. Does this have anything to do with Lily?”

“What do you mean?”

Gloria stood and went to the window looking out on to the perfect lawn and the perfect day.

“I went around to her apartment this morning and no one answered her door, I thought something was wrong so I went in and the apartment was bare, like she'd moved out. She didn't say anything about moving. I figured she must have died last night, why else would her apartment be empty? Did she die?”

Ruth nodded, but in her mind, she froze. Maybe Gloria was smarter than Ruth gave her credit for? One thing Ruth did know, if Gloria figured out Lily had died, then other people would too. Any secrecy that Ruth had hoped for was gone. It looked like Fred would get his rumors and chaos.

“That's too bad, I really liked her. She was the best friend I had here. I wish I would have known her in Real Life. I was looking forward to finding out who her suitor was. What was it that took her? Stroke?”

Ruth wondered if she should tell Gloria the truth and decided quickly not to, she had already accepted the death on its face value. Death certainly wasn't a stranger in Golden, a week didn't go by without someone leaving.

“Heart,” Ruth said, which was not far from the truth, she supposed. “So she had a man?”

“Well,” Gloria said, “she said she did. I never met him though. We were all trying to figure out who it was, but she said that she would show him off when the time was right. She asked me not to say anything to anyone — she didn't want scare him off. Yesterday afternoon, I saw her in the store and asked her again when we were going to see this fellow at the Lounge. She said it was going to be that night, that he said he would meet her there. She invited me over to dinner so I could help her get ready, but she still didn’t talk much about him. I was so happy for her, she hasn't been happy here, you know.”

“Did you know anything about this guy?” Ruth asked.

“No, she wouldn't even tell me his name. I speculated and I looked at all the guys real close to see how she acted around them. There's not too many people here, and even fewer guys, you know? She said she only knew him a couple of weeks, so we all figured it must be one of the new fellows.”

“Did you talk to her at the club?”

“I saw her come in and we chatted a little bit. I told her how gorgeous she looked and she said her friend had helped her to finally control Golden so she could look the way she wanted to. We waited for her man, but he didn't show up. I didn't push her about it, I know she wasn't feeling like she wanted a spotlight on her romances. Finally, she said she was going to go home, I tried to talk her into staying, but she didn't want to. I offered to walk her home, but she said no.”

“What time was that?”

“That was at least nine-thirty. I didn't see her leave with anyone, but that doesn't mean she went out alone, I just remember seeing her while I was dancing, and then not seeing her. It was almost like she just disappeared.”

Gloria chatted a little more about Lily and how she was really going to miss her. The two were really close, Ruth knew, and were much more similar than it would have seemed. She told Ruth of their excursions together through Golden and how the pair of them would spend hours in the boutiques along Main Street looking at clothes and boys.

“She really brought me out of my shell,” Gloria said. This just about floored Ruth and her face showed it.

“I know what you're thinking,” Gloria said. “God knows enough people say it around here. I know people call me easy, and I don't care. I spent my whole life being the 'good girl' and now I've been given a chance to have all that fun I missed. Do you know what I really look like?”

Ruth shook her head. She, like everyone else in town, figured that things like that were private.

“I … uh.”

“It's okay, Ruth. I'm not ashamed.” Gloria stood and walked in front of Ruth. She appeared to be in her early-twenties with a perfect hourglass figure and flaming red hair. She wasn't movie star beautiful, but she certainly could turn a few heads. Slowly, though, as Gloria closed her eyes and concentrated, a different woman appeared. This one was shorter and her hair was a greasy brown with a streak of gray. Her eyes were too close together and her ears were huge and stood out like taxi doors. Gloria smiled and her teeth were small and looked to be rotting. That poor girl, Ruth thought.

“When I first came here, I could barely speak to anyone,” Gloria said, her body returning to the way Ruth was used to. “Dr. Watson helped me with the image, but it was Lily who gave me the strength in my heart to finally learn to have fun. It was something she wouldn't do for herself, though.

“She still loved Fidel, her husband, and missed him terribly, you know?”

Ruth did know. The quiet moments in Golden were sometimes the most difficult, when the memories of the people who were loved came around to haunt her. Thinking about it made her that much more sad for Lily. She didn't deserve to die like she had. Ruth still didn't say anything to Gloria about what happened and felt all the worse for it.

Then Gloria surprised her again.

“Something bad happened to her, didn't it?” she asked. “That's why you are here asking me about Lily.”

Fred and Ruth had come up with a story for why they were asking questions that involved Billy needing information on the unattended death, but she didn't have the heart to lie to Gloria.

Ruth nodded, not able to look Gloria in the eye.

“I thought things didn't feel right around here,” Gloria said. She stroked Ruth on the side of the head in a comforting manner. “I won't ask you to tell me all that happened — I don't think I want to know. I just know that with you and Dr. Watson and Freddie McKenzie working on this you'll find out who did this. Just promise me you all will be careful.”

Ruth nodded again and hugged Gloria tight, the pair of them crying into each other’s shoulders.

After a time, they both straightened themselves out and Ruth made her way to the door, telling Gloria to let her know if anything unusual happens. Quicker than she imagined, Ruth was on the porch and listening to the lock on Gloria's door click shut.

She slowly walked down the stairs on to the front walk. Her plan had been to drop by and talk to the rest of the people on the block, but after visiting with Gloria, Ruth wasn't sure that she would learn anything new. Having watched too many cop shows, Ruth knew this wasn't very good police work, but at that moment, she didn't feel much like being a detective. She felt like going home and crawling under the blankets. It had already been an exhausting morning, not only dealing with Lily's murder, but confronting the emotions of what was left behind. Ruth wasn't sure she could deal with her own fear. She had never been a person to run away from things that frightened her, but she was learning that a long life didn't mean you could really know what fear meant.

Her anger, though, is what kept her from running and hiding. She decided that she would take a break for lunch then get back to her investigations, and she immediately decided that the best thing to do was drown her frustrations with a root beer float at the drug store. Ruth was so happy to again have a drug store with a fountain in it and a drive-in theater and all those things she had when she was a kid. In the town where she grew up in Colorado, there was a Woolworth's with a lunch counter. Whenever she got a nickel, she would buy a cherry coke; and if she had fifty cents, she went for the float and got a dime in change, which she used to buy girly things her papa never got her. She grew up in a family of four boys and one girl. Their mother had died or left when Ruth was young. She didn't know the whole story of what happened to her mother, and after so many years, it didn't matter that much.

When she went into the drug store, she didn’t notice that the doorbell didn’t ring because of who she saw — Andrew, Cal and Anne were all sitting in a booth, talking to each other in hushed tones. Schemers scheming, and Ruth figured they were up to no good. She didn't walk out, though, because the hushed tones of their conversation could have been about Lily's murder. They hadn't seen her, so Ruth ducked behind an aisle and thought fast. She popped her head above the shelves and looked around, the only people in the shop were those three, the rest of the twenty or so shoppers were Seegees. In a flash, Ruth devised a method of listening in.

She quickly changed her appearance to look like a Seegee. It wasn't hard for someone with Ruth's abilities. The Seegees looked enough like real people, but there were only about a dozen or so templates to work off of, so while there were maybe up to 400 Seegees at any one time in Golden, many of them looked alike. Seegees were programmed in a loop and some loops were longer than others, but eventually the routine began to show patterns. The Seegees also were programmed for limited interaction with the real residents, and most of the residents essentially treated them as actors treat extras — as something to ignore.

The Seegee appearance Ruth chose was of an older woman, plump, yet friendly. It was a model that Ruth saw often standing in lines. She was in lines in the bank, at the bakery and just about everywhere there was a line. Even though she knew the Seegees weren't real people, Ruth found comfort in giving each of the models a name. This one Ruth called Mrs. Baxter, because she looked like a Mrs. Baxter, constantly standing in lines to please her husband, Mr. Baxter, a Seegee with a balding head and flushed face who worked at the bank, and the post office, and the chamber of commerce and a half dozen other places in Golden. Ruth had seen Mrs. Baxter in other locations around town, but rarely in the drug store. She thought whoever was responsible for the upkeep of the drug store and its ancillary programs didn't care to use Mrs. Baxter that much. She was hoping that Andrew, Cal and Anne hadn't thought about the patterns and uses of the Seegees.

Nevertheless, it was Mrs. Baxter who sat in the booth next to the trio as they spoke. All three glanced at her, then immediately went on with their conversation. They had all been in Golden long enough to know that Seegees didn't listen and only responded when you spoke to them, and even then, the only thing you can get out of them are directions.

“I'm telling you guys,” Anne was saying. “McKenzie and his little pixie are acting like this thing is a murder investigation. They've been asking a lot of questions about Lily. The guy was just at my house saying he thinks we did something.”

“So?” Andrew said, stuffing fries into his mouth.

“So?” Cal said. “That's all you got to say is ‘so?’”

“Yeah, they won't figure out what we done, no one saw us except for that Cuban guy and he's our alibi,” Andrew said. “They can't pin anything on us, can they?”

Ruth's back was to them, so she couldn't see what was going on, but apparently someone was giving Andrew a look he didn't like.

“If you got something to say, say it.”

“Well ...” It was Cal. “I'm not saying anything, it's just ...”

“What?”

“It's just that you went storming off after that Cuban guy punched you. You could have gone back and done something,” Anne said, almost accusing Andrew. Ruth felt the movement behind her and ached to turn around and see what was happening, because it sounded like Andrew reached across the table and slapped Anne across the face.

“Don't you ever do that again,” Anne said through clenched teeth.

“Hey,” Andrew answered, his tone light and merry. “You accuse me of something, you're gonna get what's coming.”

The tension was cut by the front door of the drug store opening and someone coming in. Ruth was dying to see who it was, but she, and everyone, knew that a Seegee would never notice anyone coming in or out. Ruth would find out soon enough who walked in, and Andrew didn't disappoint.

“Well if it isn't our little friend, Noah. What you got for me today, Noah, any juicy gossip?”

Ruth couldn't see him, but she could smell Noah Harper's Old Spice aftershave — he always wore it strong.

“I don't feel comfortable doing this, spying on other people,” Noah said. “Who's that?”

Ruth could feel all four of them turn in her direction, she had to maintain, otherwise her cover would be blown.

“It's just a Seegee you blockhead,” Cal said. “See, watch?”

Cal stood and moved over to Ruth's booth, where she studied the menu.

“It'd sure be nice to have something to read,” he said.

Ruth looked up at him and smiled the same phony Mrs. Baxter smile she'd seen hundreds of times. In times of boredom, everyone in Golden had checked the limits of the fake people. Hopefully, Ruth had the routine just right.

“The Golden library has more than 40,000 volumes. It's located on the corner of McKinley and Fifth Street. You are currently located in the Golden Drug...”

“Okay, okay, shut up,” Anne Knox said nearly shouting. Ruth shut her mouth and went back to the menu. “God, I hate those things.”

“You okay now, little man?” Andrew said to Noah.

“I'm just a little nervous, that's all. I'm not used to doing things like this,” Noah said.

“Really?” Cal said. “I had the feeling that you had a long life as a snitch.”

“I'm not a snitch!” Noah said, standing. Ruth had never heard him that angry.

“Sit down, Noah,” Andrew said. “You aren't a snitch, but you do a heck of a job keeping us up on things here in Golden. You make things a little funner for us. You know that everyone has pretty much seen what we're capable of, including that damn doctor. Did you know he's trying to get me kicked out of here? Honestly, I don't know if that's such a bad thing seeing as we can't get to our little club at the school. Golden may be nice to little weasels like you, but people like us need things a little more exciting. So you haven't forgotten what you are doing for us, have you?”

“Of course not,” Noah said. “But how do I know that you're going to live up to your end of the bargain?”

“Are you calling me a liar?”

Noah hesitated, Andrew sounded dangerous.

“No,” Noah said. “I'm just saying that I've seen how you handle people who get in your way. I’ve seen how you treated Lily...”

There was a deadly silence, and it was at that time the Seegee waitress decided it was time to ask them for their orders. They shooed the Seegee away and somehow got Noah to sit.

“And I know that Mr. McKenzie and Ruth are already going around asking questions. They suspect someone here in Golden did something to Lily. Eventually, they will start asking me questions about her last day in Golden, and I'm not sure what I might tell them. It was you who told me to watch her, to let you know when she was alone.”

This time, it was Cal Everitt who stood and in the softest, deadliest voice that Ruth had ever heard, he heard Cal whisper in Noah's ear.

“Listen closely,” he said. “You do what we tell you and you don't ask questions and you don't say nothing to nobody. Then we might make sure that what happened to Lily doesn't happen to you. Understand? So you find out how we can get into our room at the school and we can all go about our own merry way.”

Cal walked away from the table and Andrew and Anne followed closely. All three left the store, leaving Noah sitting by himself. Ruth could have sworn that she heard him gently sobbing, but she was not sure. Her maternal instincts were screaming at her to comfort the man, but another instinct told her not to blow her cover, even if it was Noah Harper.

In a bold move, she stood, walked once around the store and then left. She tried to keep from skipping and hopping as she headed toward Fred's house.