Chapter 36 The Blackmail Trope
In my mind, therapy should be a spa day for your brain.
You should feel refreshed. People on the street should be like, “Girl, what happened? You got some kind of glow-up.” Instead, I felt confused and muddier than ever.
I finished filling out the questionnaire to get the pills.
Feeling unusually drawn? Yes. Not feeling social? Yes. Experiencing panic attacks? Yes.
All I wanted to do was collapse on the couch.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer was all I had the energy for: my favorite comfort watch.
Sure, I had some problems with the show.
The basic premise, for one. But I didn’t want to be a vampire, so that worked.
I wanted to be Buffy, not a demon inhabiting a human corpse.
At least I didn’t have those stupid bumps on my head that all the vampires on the show had.
The makeup people on Buffy were jerks for that.
Tyrone interrupted my TV watching with a text.
Tyrone: Feeling better?
Me: almost
Tyrone: Did you tell the city we killed the coyote?
Me: not yet
Tyrone: Wanna hang out?
Me: in a couple of days. xoxo
I needed to get it together before I risked biting anyone again. It apparently took a while for psych meds to really kick in. But he was right, I needed to tell Mr. Jarvis about the dead coyote.
The city offices were closed so I sent an email.
Dear Mr. Jarvis,
Tyrone killed the coyote that bit you. Let me know how you would like me to deliver it to you. I have porphyria and won’t be able to deliver it during the day. Please advise.
Tiffany Amanda Blair
Heaven wandered into the room. “I’m going to take these braids out before the SugarBoo,” she said. “I can’t get my hair redone, so I’m going natural.”
“Are you sure you want to go? Do you feel ready?” I didn’t.
“Of course I want to go.” She looked like she might bite me if I didn’t support this. “Are you trying to back out?”
“We have eternity, Heaven. No need to rush.”
“Nuh-uh. We are not skipping the first party this town has thrown after dark. Hell to the no!”
I made a noncommittal noise in the back of my throat.
“Even if you don’t want to go for yourself, you need to go for me. I need a wing woman.”
“What about the inspector? That was less than a month ago.”
“I’m not going to spend eternity beating myself up for almost draining one bean counter,” Heaven said. “And I guess you need to hear it—I forgive you.”
“I don’t forgive myself. I’m a mess. I can’t be trusted.”
“Get over yourself, Tiff. I’m going, and I don’t want to show up alone. I don’t know anyone in this damn town except for you, Vlad, and Santa Claus.” She shook her head. “That is not a well-rounded group of individuals.”
“Fine.” I’d never felt less excited to go to a ball.
Up in my feelings and staring out the living room window, I noticed a car parked in front of the mailbox.
“Doesn’t the mailman normally come during the day?” I called out to Heaven. “There’s a guy parked in the driveway.”
Heaven stopped messing with one of her braids, which she was apparently pulling out. “Do we a have a stalker?”
“Not that I know of,” I said, although my adrenaline spiked at the possibility. I might enjoy dealing with a stalker.
The driver of the car spotted us and we both ducked behind the curtain.
“Do you recognize him?”
Heaven shook her head. “If he’s a stalker, we might not. He’s probably been lurking. No one normal drops by at this time of night.”
“Grab something we can smack him with if we need to. Normal human self-defense measures. No teeth.”
The guy got out of his car. In a parka, a hat, and an overgrown hipster beard, no one would be able to pick him out of a lineup.
“Should I go upstairs?” she asked. “I haven’t been around people yet.”
I shook my head. “Try not sucking him dry. Sort of a trial run before you go to the SugarBoo.” Her grand debut into Valentine society was almost upon us. No, second. She had briefly met Bob the electrician without incident. Heaven’s bloodlust had simmered down to manageable levels.
“How long till the ball?” she asked.
“Next week. It’s the first Saturday in December.”
When I opened the front door partway, our stalker smiled and said, “Sorry to bother you this time of night. I just got off work and noticed your lights were still on.”
I nodded. He needed to do better than that before I decided not to smack him.
“Hey, I accidentally got your mail, a couple of bank statements and some other stuff that doesn’t look like junk.”
I took the handful of mail without saying a word.
“Grand Cayman, huh?” The man raised his eyebrows and looked hopeful that I would explain my apparent offshore banking activities. “What kind of business you gals up to, anyway?”
I downgraded him from stalker to nosy and pointed to the condemned building behind me.
He nodded toward the sign that we’d installed out front to replace the broken-down Valentine Bed-and-Breakfast sign. “We’ve all been talking about the new name. Radiance,” he said in a bold voice. “I don’t get it.”
“What’s not to get?” Heaven said over my shoulder. “I bet you were fine with it in Charlotte’s Web.”
He scratched his head at that. “Well, good talking to you girls.”
Girls—lol. If he only knew how old I was.
Once inside, I opened one of the statements. It was for a bank account registered to Tiffany Amanda Blair. A quick scan showed a balance of fifty-eight thousand dollars. Not bad.
Was this a windfall? Once again, I didn’t expect to inherit money from someone who had sold their identity. She shouldn’t have kept a bank account in her real name. Running Away 101 was: Liquidate your funds and pack them in a suitcase. Or maybe not. I’d never had any funds.
“What is it?” Heaven asked.
I showed her the statement. There were deposits, including regular ones from St. Nicholas Farms.
“Wait, what is Tyrone doing paying Tiffany?” I scanned the rows of numbers, blindsided by this development.
On the one hand, I had money, but only because I’d found a secret stash that two people I’d trusted had hidden.
Well, sort of trusted. Tyrone: I’d trusted that he was pretty much a saint.
Tiffany: I’d trusted that she was probably dead.
When you sell your identity, you’re supposed to stop using it. Those are the rules.
“Maybe he knows she’s alive and you’re a fake?”
I shook my head. “That would be so weird. He’s been going along with the idea of me being Tiffany this whole time. If he were lying, he’d have to be a sociopath or something.”
I mulled over the numbers. Growing up, I’d only had to learn to count eggs and scoops of flour. The bank statement revealed nothing, but something smelled rotten.
I found Vlad upstairs where he had started using one of the guest bedrooms as an office. We hadn’t redecorated this room yet. The fluffy mauve bedspread and tiny white desk didn’t exactly say Prince of the Undead.
“I have a banking question.” Nothing was sure to bring Vlad to life more than a question he knew the answer to. “Why would Tyrone be depositing money into Tiffany Blair’s account?”
He took the statement from my outstretched hand and studied it for a minute. “This is very weird,” he said, before handing it back to me. He continued making a fire, wadding up newspapers and tossing in kindling. “It looks like she’s blackmailing Tyrone.”
Blackmail?
Tyrone thought he killed Jeff. Maybe Tiffany did too?
“Couldn’t she just blackmail him and keep her regular life, though? People do that all the time.” This all raised the question: was Tiffany with a -y a grieving fiancée or something more?
He shook his head as he stared thoughtfully at the flames of the growing fire. “Not sure.”
“What about him? Doesn’t he know he’s sending money to Tiffany every month?”
“He probably has no clue who’s blackmailing him. All the blackmailer has to do is send a routing number and account number.”
This explained why Tyrone looked so tortured. He was atoning for a sin he probably hadn’t committed: taking care of me and sending money to a person who was confirming the lie he believed about himself—that he was a killer. Poor Tyrone.
And the blackmailer was Tiffany with a -y. It had to be. The name on the bank statement said it plain as day.
Tiffany, who I’d believed had died or suffered a terrible fate. A woman who needed to run under the cover of darkness to hide from the world. Maybe it wasn’t the world that was the problem; maybe it was her.
Tiffany Amanda Blair, a cheerleader, a volunteer, and owner of the best smile in the class of 2014—she was the problem.
Jessica had mentioned Tiffany doing balance beam tricks on the railing with the big drop behind the school like she was taunting death.
So maybe she liked things dangerous and risky.
Who knows, maybe all of Jeff’s dumb money-making schemes had actually been Tiffany’s ideas.
The Bloodshot energy drinks might have been hers, too.
I couldn’t help but recall the quote on the last can: “It takes a big man to cry, but an even bigger man to make him cry.” In this case, the bigger man might have been a small cheerleader.
“What do we do about it?” I asked Vlad.
“What do you want to do?” he asked.
“Poor Tyrone,” I said, with a wistful glance in the direction of his farm. “Could we get Tyrone his money back?”
“Tiffenie, be more cautious. Someone is blackmailing him. Maybe for a good reason.”
I doubted that, but still. “That bank account is in my name,” I thought aloud.
The wheels in my brain started turning. I remembered how Tyrone started running the Christmas fair to make ends meet because money was tight.
Would he dial back the holiday cheer if he wasn’t being blackmailed?
If the antidepressants deadened my vampiric desires, maybe we could meet in the middle.
“I want to get Tyrone his money back, Vlad.”
Vlad looked skeptical. “Why?”
“Because it’s the right thing to do,” I said. “And he doesn’t deserve to be blackmailed.” I pulled out my phone to dial the bank. Funny that I was going to have to protect Tyrone from Miss Best Smile of 2014.
It looked like the real Tiffany wasn’t a victim but an honest-to-God criminal. Who would have thunk? She had a schism between her authentic self and the person she was introducing to the world as well.
“You might be a nicer person than the cheerleader you’re impersonating,” Vlad said with a sly smile. “Imagine that.”
I laughed, but it was a hollow, who-could-have-imagined laugh. It’s not like Tiffany’s bad acts undid mine.
Grand Cayman Bank was unfortunately in the same time zone as Vermont and only open from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., like it thought it was a small-town business rather than a no-questions-asked money vault for criminals. No matter, I set an alarm.
At 2 p.m. my alarm went off. I’d changed it to “Listen to Your Heart,” which I was trying to do. No jokes, please.
My room was filled with signs of the day, light sneaking in around the edges of the curtains and the rush of a car zooming down Maple Lane.
I formed the covers into a tent over my head to block out the light.
Under the protective cover of Aunt Mildred’s ugly bedspread, I dialed the number for Grand Cayman Bank.
After an extensive list of menu options, I reached a banker. “How can I help you?” she said.
“Hello, my name is Tiffany Amanda Blair, and I have an account I’d like to close.”
After a brief conversation, she explained that I only had to file a written request with my account number and signature and let them know where I would like the funds released to.
Checkmate, Tiffany with a -y.