Free Dead to Me by Mary McCoy Page A

stand to look at it any longer—I couldn’t stand to touch it. But even after I’d stuffed it back in the envelope, I couldn’t get the image of the girl out
of my head. It made me sick, knowing that a picture like that was lodged in my head, and that I’d have to carry it around with me.
    And then there was the girl. I wondered where she was now, if someone was looking out for her, and then a chilling thought crossed my mind. It was bad enough that my father had her picture. What
if he knew her? What if he’d stood by and let this happen to her?
    I shuddered, and pulled the last photograph out of the envelope, half afraid to look.
    In for a penny, in for a pound. What else are you capable of, you rotten-hearted, sorry excuse for a father?
    When I saw it, I began to get some ideas.
    Because the woman in the picture was Ruth.

T he photograph fell from my hands and drifted to the floor.
    In place of the tasteful plum lipstick and plain gray shirtwaist, Ruth wore false eyelashes and black garters, but there was no denying she was the woman I’d met that afternoon.
    The woman who’d tried to hand me over to Rex.
    Rex, who was apparently on friendly terms with my father.
    I curled up on the floor next to Annie’s bed, gripping the sheets in my fists. I buried my face in them, shutting out the light and noise of the hospital until it was just me alone with
the things I knew. Detail by detail, I forced myself through them.
    My father had a picture of Ruth in his safe. Ruth knows Rex. Rex set Annie up at the Stratford Arms, but Annie found out Rex knew our father. She ran away, but it didn’t matter. Someone
tried to kill her. My father had the pictures. My father had the pictures.
    The pieces didn’t fit, and they didn’t make sense.
    Who took the pictures, then? Rex? My father? Was that what made Annie run away from home? Was it the reason why she got away from Rex?
    I needed a decent night’s sleep, a bath, a meal, someone I could trust, a new set of parents, and cab fare. But right at that moment, what I needed most were answers.
    That was what finally got me up off the floor sometime around dawn. I let go of the bedclothes, picked up the picture of Ruth, and laid it at the foot of the bed with the others. They
weren’t pleasant pictures to look at, even for a short time, though I doubted that I was their intended audience. No one who was looking even a little bit closely would have mistaken any of
them for professional jobs, much less publicity photos. The costumes and poses were lazy, the lighting was bad, the sets and backgrounds nonexistent. My brain worked to piece together what these
people had to do with one another, what their pictures were doing in my father’s safe: the woman who looked like Snow White, Camille Grabo, Ruth, and the girl.
    Then I noticed something sloppy in the background of Ruth’s picture, something any photographer with half a brain would have tried to hide, and suddenly, it didn’t matter that I was
supposed to be here when Jerry arrived, or that he’d be here at any moment.
    I knew exactly where I had to go next.
    The receptionist at Fleming’s Fine Family Photography told me that Milton Fleming was not in. However, Milton Fleming made an annual appearance at the high schools near
Hollywood, hawking his unique photo packages—“perfect for yearbook pictures or head shots”—and while his pitch failed to invigorate my school spirit, his voice, raspy and
harsh from a lifetime of cigarette smoking, certainly left an impression. Not even the wad of phlegm lodged in his throat could keep that voice from penetrating the glass door of the back
office.
    I looked over the receptionist’s shoulder, glared in the direction of the door, then back at her.
    “He’s not here?”
    “No, dear, I’m sorry.” She gave me a thin smile. “Perhaps I could take a message for him?”
    “Yes, please,” I said, smiling back at her.
    “And what would that message be, dear?”
    I