The Woman In the Sarcophogus -- the Hidden Track
In Trina’s experience (which is not inconsiderable), the life-changers come along, on average, every six to nine months - your stepmother offs herself, your father gets arrested, you meet your birth mother, your father gets murdered, you step into the green room at a knockoff celebrity reality show and run into an ex-boyfriend. She was way overdue for one, then, on an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday afternoon.
Trina was on her way back to her car. She’d been at a fundraising committee meeting, for the LA County Theatre for the Deaf. She wasn’t watching where she was going, because she was trying to find her cell phone in her purse, to call Chad and let him know she was running late. The meeting always went longer than planned.
She literally ran into the other woman.
“Excuse me, I’m -- Lynn?”
Couldn't be. But it was. Blonde hair, hat, glasses. Enough to fool people making casual glances at the woman they didn't realize used to be a movie star. But not enough to fool her stepdaughter. Anyway, the woman's reaction confirmed it.
“Trina.”
All Trina could do for a moment was stare. It’s hard to leave Trina Echolls speechless. (Chad manages, on occasion, but not by doing anything he could - or at least would -- do on a public street.)
But what the fuck did you say to the stepmother you’d believed was dead for two years? Except . . .
“I take it the reports of your death were greatly exaggerated?” When you couldn’t come up with your own line, you borrowed from a master. Wilde would have been better, but Twain would do.
“Looks like it,” Lynn said. “I have appointments, excuse me.”
Trina reached out and caught her arm. “I don’t think so. Where the hell have you been?”
“Cabo, mostly. Switzerland. Australia. I’m just in town for a day or two to take care of some things. Bye, Trina.”
“You really think you’re just gonna walk away?”
“How would you stop me?”
Trina’s smile could have killed a redwood. “Make a scene. Yell your name.” Trina looked meaningfully at the crowd around them. “What do you say, Mom? Wanna find out if you’re still famous enough to make the front page?”
“Don’t you dare.”
Trina took a deep breath, clearly building up to an outburst.
“Fine,” snapped Lynn, pulling Trina into a doorway. “What do you want?”
“An explanation would be a good start. My God, did you really fake your own death? It’s like something out of a crappy B movie.”
Which, to be fair, the two women standing on that street were masters of.
“Yes,” said Lynn, smugly.
“Why?”
“It seemed like the thing to do.”
“And Logan?” There was no way he knew. Much like his mother, Logan can’t act.
“What about him?” Lynn asked.
“Nothing,” said Trina. That question was pretty much all the answer she needed. “So what brings you back to California?”
“Business. I left some things.”
“The house burned down, you know.”
“They’re in a safe deposit box.”
“Don’t those require ID?” asked Trina. “From people who haven’t been declared legally dead?”
“I’m picking up a new passport while I’m here. And then I’m gone. And not back to Cabo.”
“Disappearing from your disappearance?”
“More or less. The Vickers are getting too greedy. Some sob story about their daughter.”
“Who?” Trina asked. “Who the hell are the Vickers?”
“Stunt people. They helped with the . . . staging.”
“Oh, right. From Over the Edge. That clears some things up; I did wonder at the time why you jumped. Didn’t seem like a you way to go. Too much chance of turning up as a hideous corpse."
Assuming, of course, that enough of Lynn was still made of natural substances to decompose at all.
"So you hired down-on-their-luck stunt people for your 'departure,'" Trina continued. "And now they’re blackmailing you.”
“Not for much longer.” Lynn looked at her stepdaughter. “I actually could use a little . . .” she paused, looking for the words. “ . . . send-off money.”
“What possible reason would I have to give it to you?”
“It’s mine. Under California law, half of what Aaron had was mine, right?”
Trina laughed. It was toothless threat, and they both knew it. “Under California law, you’re dead, Lynn. Dead people don’t own property. Who am I to question the great state of California?”
“Then why don’t you just tell me where to find Logan these days? He’d be happy to see me, right?”
He would. And that was a much less toothless threat. In fact, the teeth on that threat wouldn’t look out of place on a T-rex.
“You thinking touching reunion, or just planning to hit him up for some cash?” When Lynn doesn’t answer, Trina continued, brazening it out. “I can’t think what you’re gonna tell him about where you’ve been the last two years. Or why you’re leaving again.”
“You want me to leave him alone, don’t you?”
For one moment, there was no pretense. “Yeah. I think you owe him that.”
“Then I’ve told you what I need,” said Lynn. She had the upper hand in dealing with her stepdaughter for probably the first time, and she was enjoying it. “I’m not greedy. Say . . . three million? Cash, of course.”
“Fine. Three million,” said Trina, opening her purse. “Are quarters okay?”
“Why don’t we meet back here tomorrow? Around six.”
“I’ll see you then.”
Trina watched Lynn melt into the crowd, and then headed for her car.
Logan had been better lately. Life on track - the apartment, college, a girlfriend who is neither married nor a felony nor Veronica Mars.
This? This would undo him.
Fortunately, Lynn was an idiot who talked too much, and who Trina could read like a book. Aside from faking her own death, Lynn hadn’t managed to do anything Trina hadn’t expected in fifteen years.
LA would mean the Intercontinental, probably registered under her “incognito girls’ weekend on the town” name - Deirdre Carrington. And if she really was stupid enough to be back at her old favorite hotel, she deserved what she got.
Trina got home almost two hours late that night, to find Chad frowning at the dinner that had been overcooked in her absence. “Hey, babe,” he said. “I was just starting to worry about you.”
“Sorry,” she said, wrapping her arms around him. “Meeting ran long, and then there was traffic.”
And it was damn hard to find a payphone. But she did. It only took three minutes to call Cassie Vickers - Trina’d had her binder with her to see who looked good for the theatre to hit up for donations. Just a quick call, claiming to be Lynn (Trina got good at faking her stepmother’s voice at 14, around the time she got good at skipping school). Said she wanted to renegotiate their financial arrangement, asked the Vickers to come to the hotel.
Trina's memory of Andrew Vickers was that he had one hell of a hair trigger, and (judging by that fight with Seagal at the Fourth of July picnic) a backhand that made Aaron's look weak. She wasn't sure what sort of reception Lynn was going to get, but she was certain it wasn't going to be pretty. It should be enough to scare her back out of California. And if it got her killed, well, she'd been dead for two years as far as anyone else knew.
“Is it ruined?” Trina asked Chad, eyeing what used to be a roast.
“DOA,” he said.
“I’m really sorry," she said, kissing him to make up for it. "You want to order in or go out?”
They ordered in. Had dinner in bed. Trina slept like a baby. And when, the next day, Lynn didn’t show up to meet her, and Logan didn’t call to say she’d turned up, Trina assumed that was the end of it.
She had, of course, expected the Vickers to be much smarter about body disposal. But they always were needlessly complex. Trust a stunt person to blow up a sarcophagus when there’s a perfectly good ocean to dump her in. And on federal land, too. Drag the FBI into things.
Though in the end, that worked out. They solved just enough of it, that nice neat solution. (Trina appreciates not having to have been too obvious about helping them to their conclusion.) Trina likes Agent Booth, and she'd be willing to bet that on the East Coast, not much gets past him. But out here? He's out of his element and in way over his head.
This game was played by Neptune Rules, and very few people have mastered those like the Echolls family. An outsider is never really going to understand all that "This is Neptune" means.
So the FBI's involvement, while unexpected, wasn't entirely unwelcome. Trina should probably be grateful the Vickers blundered onto federal land. Of course, they were desperate. And desperate people do stupid things. Work’s been drying up, and while, yes, they do have a three-year old daughter with autism, Trina’s discreet inquires have led her to believe they were far more worried about Andrew’s gambling debts than Sophie’s quality of life. She supposes she should feel guilty about getting Sophie’s parents sent to prison, but she doesn’t. She can’t be responsible for other people’s stupidity, and Sophie’s probably better off without them.
At least, she probably is once Trina gets off the phone with social services. It takes about 20 minutes, a reference or two to her own (brief and unremembered) time in foster care, and a few tugs of the heartstrings, to make arrangements to set up a trust fund to care for Sophie. Three million. That was, after all, the agreed upon amount.
No, Trina isn’t wasting any guilt on the Vickers. Or on Lynn, for that matter. She does, however, sincerely regret that the main objective of the whole thing has failed. She was improvising, and with not a lot of time to plan, but she should have done better.
Logan was never suppose to find out that his mother left him alone with Aaron Echolls, and that she didn’t even care enough to come back after Aaron went to jail, or died.
Trina hopes the bitch is burning in hell.