Kelly Girl

by Wanda Cunningham

Chapter 23

"Constable, Spare My Child"

When the three girls came into the ladies's bathroom behind the Carl's Jr., Kelly and Phil were both standing in front of the mirrors, pretending to fluff their hair and check their makeup. Kelly had intended to simply brazen out any encounter but recognized the girls in the mirror from the color combinations and their voices. His plans had no contingencies for something like this.

"Are you really Kelly Drew?" asked Crystal, cutting to the heart of the question that had been bugging the three shadows all afternoon.

Kelly squeezed his eyes tightly shut, what do I do now?

But Phil turned to look at the girls, "Oh, do you know my niece? Kelly, are these friends of yours?" He pitched his voice upward and added a bit of a musical, feminine lilt. I never expected to use this voice outside of prison, he thought. He turned his wrist in a ladylike way and smiled.

"Uh, yeah? Uh..." Kelly didn't know what to think of Phil's abrupt adaptation.

Phil beamed at the three nerve-stricken girls. "I'm Kelly's Aunt Connie, Connie Phillips."

All Kelly could think of just then was that Connie was the name of the Manns' housekeeper.

"Oh, yeah," said Kimberly. "Uh, we went to school with Kelly last year? I'm Kim."

"Well, that's nice. You're certainly a cute bunch, I bet the four of you hang out together? Hmmm." Phil practically cooed.

"N-not really?" Kelly said, staring at his father now. How was Phil doing that voice? And his manner and movements had changed too. Actually, a little too feminine for Kelly's comfort. It really must be hereditary, he thought with dismay.

Valerie announced herself. "I'm Val and Kelly was kinda our friend but--uh..." She trailed off, suddenly unsure of what pronoun to use.

Crystal leaped in. "I'm Crystal. And it's just that Kelly's kinda shy?" She tried looking hard questions at the tiny blonde, like--is this really your aunt? And, which are you, a boy or a girl?

Oblivious to such hard looks without his glasses, Kelly stammered some more. "W-we were just leaving. Uh, the mall is closing? Gotta go?"

But the three girls didn't clear the way to the exit. Instead, Kim stepped directly in the way. "Are you going to tell us what's really going on?" she demanded of Kelly.

"Believe me, I would if I thought you'd believe me?" said Kelly.

"I mean it," said Kim. "You've been sneaking around the mall for an hour or more, buying things like wigs and...and, you're in disguise?"

Phil thought the girls must have detected his masquerade, doing drag shows in prison wasn't the same thing as posing as a suburban housewife. "You mean the sunglasses?" he trilled.

"And the wigs?" said Kim. "We saw her buy them. Besides, Kelly, yours is hot pink." Kelly and the other two girls stared at Kim, she'd just called Kelly 'her'. "And the place out there is swarming with cops?" she gestured behind her.

"You two don't look like bank robbers," added Valerie.

Phil laughed. "No, no, we haven't robbed any banks." Kelly giggled, nearing hysterics.

No one said anything for a moment.

Finally, Crystal sighed. "So the cops are after you, if we promise to help you escape will you tell us what's going on?"

Kelly shook his head.

"Not ever?" asked Val.

"I should just give myself up," said Phil, letting his voice return about halfway back to normal.

"So it's just you that's wanted by the cops? Aunt Connie?" asked Kim.

"Just me," Phil agreed.

"How about you help us and I promise to tell you everything afterwards?" suggested Kelly. Then he hiccoughed loudly just as Kim started to reply.

"Will both of you swear you didn't hurt anyone?" Kim demanded.

Kelly nodded, Phil looked uncertain. "I've never hurt anybody on purpose in my life," he said, "but why should you trust me?"

"Because you two are obviously related," said Kim. "You look alike. Maybe you are Kelly's aunt and maybe not, but Kelly wouldn't ask us to help someone who didn't deserve it."

Kim's decision carried her two friends along. Crystal asked an important question, "Are they going to be looking for the two of you together?"

"Uh, probably?" admitted Kelly.

"Then we split you up," said Kim. "Valerie, you're most obviously not Kelly, you go with Aunt Connie. Just go on out, don't talk to anyone and don't look back. Um?" Kim faltered trying to think where they should go.

"Right," said Valerie. "Um, we could go to the theaters?"

"No," said Kelly. "That's still part of the mall, uh, can you take the bus to the Flower Street Station in Santa Ana?"

"I guess so?" said Valerie. "But I've never ridden the bus that far?"

Phil stopped them. "I don't want you kids to get in trouble," he began.

"Don't worry about us," said Crystal. "How much trouble can we get into, we are kids. We might get grounded or something?"

"Eww. Grounded?" said Valerie. Her friends looked at her. "Well, okay, I'll risk it. It's an adventure?" she giggled. "C'mon, Aunt Connie." She took Phil's hand and tugged him toward the door.

"I don't? I'm not? Let me get my bag?" said Phil.

"C'mon, Aunt Connie! We'll miss our bus!" said Valerie, getting into the spirit of things.

Phil resisted long enough to give Kelly a goodbye kiss on the cheek. "I love you, sugar."

Kelly returned the kiss and whispered into Phil's ear, "Be safe, Daddy.
I love you, too." He sniffed back tears and Phil did the same.

In moments, Kelly, Crystal and Kim were alone in the restroom.

"Okay," said Kim, after Kelly had dried his eyes. "Now, I've got to know. Why the heck have you been pretending to be a boy for the last year?"

Kelly's eyes widened.

"Yeah," added Crystal. "You didn't hardly have nobody fooled. Is Connie your mom's sister? She's got a different last name than you?"

"She's my da-hic!-my dad's..." Kelly trailed off, confused. Should he continue lying? Or come clean? And how could these two think he had been going to school disguised as a boy? His head spun with the weirdness of it all.

"Your dad's sister?" supplied Kim, guessing. "Your parents don't live together do they?"

Kelly shook his head.

"Oh," said Crystal. It was a familiar scenario now. "So your Aunt Connie was taking you to see your Dad and the cops think she kidnapped you?"

Kelly stared at Crystal. "That's -hic!- that's pretty much it, actually?"

"Okay," said Kim. "So we got to get you out of here and back to your Mom so they call all this off? But if they find you here, they'll be looking even harder for Connie, right?"

"Uh, I guess so."

"It's like one of those daytime talk shows," mused Crystal. "'My aunt kidnapped me because my mom made me live as a boy.'"

"Hey! No...! Mom, oh, foot!"

"What?" asked Kim.

"Foot?" asked Crystal.

"Mom's in Las Vegas with her boyfriend," Kelly said, adding another hiccough for emphasis.

"Yow."

"That's harsh," Crystal said sympathetically. "So if they catch you, they take you to Children's Court. You don't wanna go there."

"No," said Kelly. "I've got a cell phone? If I can call, uh, Andie, she's actually, um, my Mom's friend and...and...and...." He retrieved the cellphone from his purse and stared at it. "How can I call her, this is her cell phone?"

"She probably wouldn't answer then. So call someone else," suggested Crystal.

"Can't call anyone from here, we're too far underground," said Kim.

"We're underground?" said Crystal. "I thought we were just under the mall?"

"Same thing. Ditz," said Kim.

"Wait!" said Kelly. And then he hiccoughed into the silence, losing the momentary opportunity.

"Andy?" said Crystal. "That's a guy's name?"

"Andie like Andie McDowell," said Kim.

"Oh, yeah," agreed Crystal.

"Stop talking! I'm trying to think!" Kelly insisted.

For most of half a minute, no one said anything. Then Crystal asked, "Who did your hair, Kelly? It's really good. I mean, not the wig but the hair you had in the mall, um, the color and the curls and..."

"Just shut up," Kim warned her. "She's trying to think."

"Well, I know that. Sorry, Kelly. I'm not used to people needing to think."

"You don't."

"Pleh!" Crystal said to Kim, a sound that expressed the idea of sticking one's tongue out without actually doing it.

Kelly rubbed his temples and made no comment, except another hiccough. "Okay, we get out of here where the cell phone will work and we call Richard, uh, my Mom's boyfriend's son?"

"Is he cute?" Crystal wanted to know.

"What the heck does that matter?" said Kim. But something occurred to her. "Kelly, do you like boys?"

"Now who's asking un-elephant questions?"

"What kind of questions?"

"Wait," said Kelly before they headed out the restroom door. "I can't use this cellphone, uh, it might be traced?"

"Wow!" said Crystal. Then to Kim, "Well, you have yours don't you?"

* * *

Valerie and Phil had made their way out of the Carl's and headed deeper into the mall; Phil's idea being to get away from the front of the Sears store where he had parked Andie's stolen car and Valerie intending to stay inside the mall until they were closer to the bus stop.

"Sure are a lot of cops," said Valerie cheerfully, pretending to be as clueless as she sounded. "Wonder what's going on? Is it a policeman's holiday?"

Phil smiled. He didn't fear being captured, the worst that would happen would be another prison term. He'd done that before, he didn't want to do it again but he knew he could. Or there might be an alternative.

Would anyone spot him as a fake he wondered. No one seemed to be paying him the slightest bit of attention. Valerie stood almost as tall as he did and seemed to be intent on staying between him and anyone in uniform while they made their way down the cross corridor toward the southwest exit.

When Kelly had come up with the plan to disguise Phil as a woman he had been reluctant. Too many memories of prison tied up in that. Odd, what a man will do to survive. But it had worked, for a time. And when it had stopped working, the warden had put him in solitary, for his own protection. Just as he had spent the first year in prison in solitary, because his conviction had essentially been for molesting his daughter, the warden had wanted to wait until he could be simply blended into the prison population.

But a man only five foot three, with blond hair and bright blue eyes and a slender build can be in danger in prison in a number of ways. One of those ways is to be without a protector--a larger, tougher con willing and able to fight if necessary. A protector who is going to want a payoff.

Phil sighed. In the particular prison in which he had spent nine years, an underclass had existed of men who needed such protection or sought it out on their own. Before prison, Phil's experience with homosexuality had been a few very confused drunken escapades in which he had participated only minimally and sometimes under protest.

It was only after he went to prison that Phil realized that he, the convicted rapist, had himself been raped more than once, and likely would be again. That's when he had chosen Jerry Temple, out of the men who threatened him, frightened him, desired him.

Phil shook his head to ward off the memories. He followed Valerie up an escalator and into a large and still busy department store, his mind replaying the tragicomedy of his life. They walked through the women's wear section and he wondered what Jerry, his protector, would have thought of seeing him dressed like this waltzing through the aisles of skirts and lingerie. Jerry would have laughed his ass off, thought Phil.

A wide mirrored wall caught his attention. The middle-aged woman with the teen-age girl looked completely natural. He paused.

"Huh?" said Valerie, turning to look back.

"No time to shop," said Phil. The voice he had perfected for Jerry--it had been Jerry that had told him to call himself Connie Phillips--the way of moving, that Jerry had liked, all of the things he had done for Jerry, they were still part of him. Life with Jerry had actually been pleasant in an odd way. Phil--Connie--had been lucky choosing a protector who wasn't at heart a violent man. Jerry had never beat him, had never done any of the cruel things that other 'girls' in prison had had to endure.

"C'mon, Aunt Connie," Valerie called. "We don't want to miss the bus."

"We won't miss it," said Phil. "We won't miss the bus."

Jerry had bought him things in prison, lingerie and makeup, even dresses from catalogs. Phil had at first pretended to enjoy the games of make believe. Jerry called him his trophy wife and seemed especially pleased that other men in the prison desired 'Connie'. After years of pretense, Phil eventually lost track of what was counterfeit and what was real. Jerry had been a bright spot of caring in a dull grey world.

When the guards came and told him that Jerry had had a heart attack, he'd been in their cell, painting his nails. Jerry never made it out of the prison hospital, perhaps on the outside he could have gotten care that would have saved his life, fifty-nine wasn't that old.

They hadn't let Phil visit Jerry in the hospital, they didn't even let him attend a funeral. He had felt like every other widow who ever lost a protector who had become a friend. It was hard to admit to himself, he had come to love Jerry and he thought that Jerry had loved him, strange as that sounded. Facing what he had become and the dire situation in which he now found himself had landed him in the hospital, too. Nervous prostration, the doctor called it. But part of it was grief, Phil knew.

And then solitary where Phil had worked to reclaim his masculine self, rejecting the 'Connie Phillips' who had been Jerry Temple's prison wife. That might have been the hardest of hard time.

Valerie pushed open the lower level doors of Nordstrom's and they emerged into the parking lot. At least twenty police and security officers had looked at Phil and seen only Connie. They walked toward the bus stop, a place with a few cement benches and round signs announcing the various routes that stopped here. Valerie tucked an arm through his in companionship and he smiled at her.

"I hope they catch up to us soon," commented Valerie. "I mean, Kim and Crys and Kelly." She giggled. "Sorry."

"That's okay," said Phil. "You can wait here at the bus stop for them, I'll take the first bus."

"That's all right, I can go with you..." but Valerie chewed her lip. Santa Ana was Terra Incognito without her family or friends.

Phil squeezed her arm gently, "Hon, if you don't know where I went, then no one can get you to tell. From the Flower Street Station, I can take a city bus, a Greyhound or a train, right?"

"Oh. Okay," said the little brunette. She hesitated. Phil tapped her on the nose with a fingertip and she giggled. Then he moved toward the benches next to the street, putting down the heavy bag he'd been carrying. He didn't look at her or say anything more and after watching 'Aunt Connie' for a minute longer, Valerie headed back toward the mall.

When she got there, though, the police weren't letting anyone back in.

* * *

Andie found Bartolo Mendoza near a cluster of Costa Mesa Police vehicles.

"What the hell are you doing here?" he demanded when he saw her.

"What the hell do you mean telling me to shtay behind?" Andie retorted.

Bartolo struggled not to smile, Andie's slight lisp was most cute when she was somewhat annoyed. "Okay, you can stay here, with me. Stay out of the way, though."

"Yesh, sir," Andie grinned. "Have you found out anything?"

The police lieutenant looked grim. "Nothing good. No one has seen either of them, not for sure. Well, we did get one good report, parole officer says that this Phil Constable is a non-violent type." That good news had been balanced by the report of items stolen from the veterinarian office where Constable had worked. But Mendoza would give up a hand before he told Andie about the surgical instruments and something called an old-fashioned humane killer. He gathered that such a device held one bullet and could be used to shoot large animals in the head at point-blank range with no chance of missing. It made him ill to think of someone kidnapping a young girl while carrying a thing like that around.

"Non-violent huh?" Andie sniffed. "I'll give him violenshe if I get close enough to him again."

"Easy, easy. It's our job to catch him, I don't want to have to protect him from you," Bartolo grinned.

"Loot!" someone called. Mendoza looked up. "Loot, call being transferred on mobile from the station." Someone handed him a telephone handset. "Hello?" he said into it.

"Lt. Mendoza, this is Dr. Harold Mann, I'm at John Wayne and I've got the missing child's mother here on the phone, she'd like to speak to you." Andie heard Harry's deep voice even with the receiver next to Bartolo's head but she kept quiet, straining to hear both sides of the conversation.

"Hi, I'm Barbie Drew, Kelly's mom. They already told us at the police station that they had no new news, um. But I wanted to tell you, the man you're looking for is Kelly's father, he's not going to hurt, uh, her. He's never seen her and he probably just wanted to say hello in private?"

"We have no intention of hurting him as long as he releases your daughter unharmed. We'll do our best, uh, Mrs. Drew, and our first priority is, of course the safety of the child."

"Okay," said Barbie. "I just wanted to tell you, um, Phil isn't some desperate criminal, he's probably just confused and lonely. And thank you."

"Barbie!" Andie said loudly. "Mr. Mendoza, can I talk to her?"

Bartolo looked at her, startled. "You've got good ears and you're damned nosy as well as not staying where you're told." But he handed the phone over with a smile. "Don't talk long, we need that for calls from the station."

"Okay," said Andie, then into the handset, "Barbie, I am so sorry this happened. I feel so guilty."

"You ought to," said Barbie quietly. "What was the big idea of dressing Kelly up?"

Andie waved a hand, "It was just a short of joke that got away."

"Well, I've talked to Harry and he's going to cut off your allowance," Barbie said.

"I don't get an allowance from Buzzy?" said Andie, puzzled.

"Well, first I had to talk him into giving you one so he could cut it off," Barbie explained.

After a moment, Andie made a noise halfway between a laugh and a sob. "You forgive me?" she choked.

"I forgive you," said Barbie. "Let's just get Kelly back and we'll find out how much of an ass-kicking you really deserve."

"I love that kid," Andie cried.

Barbie sighed. "You shouldn't make people you love do things they don't want to do."

"I'm an idiot," said Andie.

"No argument, wait a minute, I'm getting another call on this damned thing. Harry, how do you..."

Andie took the handset away from her ear, "She must have hung up accidentally."

"Either that or someone at the station noticed two civilians having a private conversation on a Police Mobile," commented Bartolo.

Andie wiped her eyes and grinned at him. "It's all going to be okay, I know that, now."

Bartolo didn't say anything. He handed the phoneset back to the officer who had brought it and returned to the task of managing an orderly and unannounced evacuation of one of the biggest malls on the West Coast.

* * *

"Pete! Pete! Slow down!" Richard yelped. "I'm getting a call on the cellphone!"

"Why do I have to slow down for that? We're almost to the airport." asked Pete, but he did slow down as his younger brother answered the cellphone.

"Richard?" said a voice.

"Huh? Who's this?"

"Someone you know wanted to call you but her cellphone might be traced so I'm calling you."

"Kelly?" Richard gasped.

"No names, but you can find this person, walking North on Bristol Street from MacArthur Boulevard on the east side of the street. She's wearing burgundy slacks and she really wants to see you."

"Oh, geez! He's going to think...."

Richard had a thousand questions but whoever called had broken the connection. And that last voice had sounded like Kelly. He looked up, "Christ, Pete, we're on MacArthur! Keep going!"

"Huh?"

"Kelly's at MacArthur and Bristol waiting for us!"

"But we were going to pick up Harry and Barbie?"

"I'll call and tell them to take a cab! Can't you go any faster?"

"Wait a minute!" Pete said, stopping at Campus Drive, glad for once that a red light gave him time to think. "This MacArthur goes North-South, the one at Bristol goes East-West, they can't be the same one!"

"They are! It turns west when it gets to Santa Ana! Now drive!"

"It's a goddam red light, you moron! How do you know they're the same?"

"I can read a map!"

"I'm the one with a driver's license!"

"Yeah, but you get lost on the way to the bathroom! It's green, go!" Richard punched numbers on his phone.