Wrong Memories Read online

  Wrong Memories

  by Edna Curry

  Wrong Memories

  by Edna Curry

  Copyright 2015 by Edna Curry

  ________________________________________

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  This is a work of fiction. All events and names in this story are fictitious and any resemblance to any event or any person living or dead is purely coincidental.

  No portion of this book may be reprinted in whole or in part, by printing, faxing, E-mail, copying electronically or by any other means without written permission of the author, except for short excerpts for reviews.

  Credit:

  Cover by Bev Haynes

  Chapter 1

  Wednesday, March 4, 2015, Grand Bahama Island

  Wealthy young playboy, Roscoe Mattison sat on the beach on Grand Bahama Island, furious with his fiancé, Lucille Denton, and with himself.

  He’d overstepped his own rules. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t ever do that again. He knew better now, he’d told himself. Violence wasn’t his style. It was messy and his last girlfriend hadn’t put up with it, and neither had Lucille. He’d only hit her a couple of times, but he should have known she was too smart to take it without fighting back. She’d screamed, but she hadn’t even fought back, just sat there on the floor and looked at him with that appalled stare.

  He’d walked out, then, but he should have stayed and kept a close eye on her. She’d waited until he was down in the bar drinking with a friend, then she’d left.

  He’d figured that out when he got back to his room hours later.

  And she’d taken all those traveler’s checks she’d bought for them both to use on this supposed two week sun-filled vacation. He’d planned to enjoy sex many times in those two weeks. Ha. Two days, is all he’d gotten out of her. That he’d hit her was her fault, though. She’d made him so mad with her lousy excuses. ‘Too tired.’ ‘Hungry, let’s go eat first.’ ‘I have a headache from too much wine.’ Now she’d escaped and he had a problem. He couldn’t let her get away with it. She might even tell the newspapers he’d abused her, or press charges against him when he got home. His family was very important in Minneapolis. He couldn’t let her spoil that for him.

  He called Buddy, a guy he knew and could trust, who took care of situations like this and told him to take care of her for him. He told him what flight she’d taken back to Minneapolis; he’d gotten that info from the airport.

  “You’ve met her at parties at my dad’s place. You remember what she looks like, don’t you?”

  “Yes, of course. Don’t worry, I’ll meet her plane and follow her. You know I always make it look like an accident.”

  “Good. I’ll pay you the usual way.” He hung up and went online and transferred the agreed upon amount of cash to another overseas account, then transferred it again to Buddy’s account.

  Then he went back to the bar for another drink. She’d pay for leaving him, just like the last gal had. No one left a Mattison man without consequences. No one said no to him.

  He’d stay here, of course, to make sure he had an alibi, just in case they tried to connect her accident to him. The hotel and his credit card purchases would verify that he’d been here. Then he moved to his beach chair to sun himself, drink in hand. He stared out at the ocean waves rolling in gently and breaking on the sand.

  A tall, willowy blonde in a skimpy red bikini walked by. She eyed him and smiled invitingly. He rose and walked with her, smiling and chatting. Soon they moved to the bar and he bought her a drink. She chatted happily and snuggled close to him, a hand rubbing his thigh suggestively. He smiled back. A couple more drinks and maybe dinner, then he’d invite her up to his room. No sense spending the time alone just because one bitch had run out on him. Perhaps this vacation had possibilities after all, he thought.

  ***

  Tuesday, March 10, 2015, St. Paul, Minnesota.

  Pain echoed through Lucy’s head as she awoke. When she tried to sit up, everything whirled around her. Where was she? In a bed of sorts, an IV in her arm. A hospital, then?

  A swish of uniform beside her caused her to look that way. A middle aged black lady was adjusting the controls on her IV bottle. Her name tag said ‘Anna.’

  She smiled at her. “Ah, you’re awake. I’m Anna, your nurse today. How are you feeling?”

  “Ah…I hurt everywhere. Where am I?”

  “In Regions Hospital in St. Paul. Just relax, you need to rest.”

  “What am I doing here? What happened?”

  “I don’t know, ma’am. An ambulance brought you here late last night. Someone found you along the road in the snow and called the ambulance. They thought you might have been hit by a car. Do you know how you got there?”

  “No. I’m in St. Paul? What am I doing here?” She tried to look around and Anna raised her bed.

  Anna showed her how to work the buttons on the control bar beside her. “This is your call button. Press it to call the nurse if you need anything, okay? And this button controls the TV. This one changes the channels, this one raises or lowers the volume.”

  “That’s great.” Lucy had never seen one like that before, but could see why they needed a special control for hospital patients who couldn’t get out of bed to change the channels.

  “What’s your name?” Anna asked.

  “Lucy…I mean, Lucinda…Johnson.”

  “What’s your birthdate?”

  “June tenth, 1930.”

  Anna looked at her strangely. “What day is it?”

  “Wednesday.”

  “And the date?”

  “Mar 3, 1955.”

  “How old are you?”

  Lucy frowned. This woman couldn’t add or subtract? She swallowed and tried to remain polite. “I’m twenty-five. I’m an elementary school teacher, third grade.”

  Anna asked, “Who’s the president?”

  “Dwight Eisenhower.” The questions continued and Anna just frowned at her answers, then bustled out of the room.

  Soon she was back with another woman, who said she was Janet, her doctor. She examined her, shone a light in her eyes and looked at all the info on a clipboard she’d brought with her. After a bunch of more questions along the same lines as those Anna had asked, the doctor said, “I can’t find anything other than bruises physically wrong with you, but I think you may have amnesia.”

  “But doctor,” Anna began, but shushed at a look from the doctor.

  “We got your driver’s license and picture from your purse.” She handed her a clutch and opened it to reveal a Minnesota driver’s license. The picture on the license had a weird reflective light to it, but looked familiar. “This is you, isn’t it?”

  Anna handed her a hand mirror to compare herself to it.

  Lucy stared at it. Long, thick dark hair hung from a left side part to under her chin, curving in at the bottom. Dark eyebrows, neatly plucked, rose above clear blue eyes rimmed with thick brown lashes. Raised red and purple bruises marred the left side of her face.

  Lucy sighed and nodded. “I guess so. The face in the mirror looks like me, although it’s pretty hard to tell with all my bruises.”

  “I know. But I think it’s close enough. We found your medical insurance card and sent it in to the company. We’ll let you know if they accept it. Do you know if it’s current?”

  Lucy shrugged and gave her a wry smile. “I have no idea.”

  The doctor sighed. “Read the license info, Lucy, or whoever you are.”

  Lucy did and her smile disappeared. She felt the blood drain from her face as she read aloud: “Lucille Denton, 650 Willow St., Minneapolis, MN. Born February 2, 1990.” She looked from the nurse to the doctor and gasped through stiff lips, “But that’s impossible. This
must be a mistake. How can I be born in the future?”

  The doctor patted her arm. “You weren’t, Lucy. It’s not 1955, it’s 2015. You’re just a bit mixed up. I’m sure your memory will straighten out soon. Oh, and a police detective wants to talk to you, too. He’ll be here in a few minutes. Just rest now, okay? I’ll stop back in a few hours.”

  Lucy stared open mouthed as they walked out of the room.

  2015? That wasn’t possible, was it?

  Chapter 2

  Lucy couldn’t believe what they had told her.

  Her last memories were of joking around with a young truck driver at a gas station in a small town in Wisconsin. She’d been visiting a college girlfriend and told him she’d missed the last bus west. She needed to be back in Conley, in southwestern Minnesota, the next day to teach her class. He’d said it was against his bosses rules, but he’d give her a lift anyway, as far as St. Paul. Then she’d have to find another lift or a later bus the rest of the way. He’d been so friendly and nice looking, too. They’d had a fun time, talking about her school and all her students’ antics. Then she’d stepped out of his truck at an intersection and intended to cross the highway where she could see another gas station. He’d waved and pulled away and she’d started across the highway. She’d been carrying a brown leather suitcase. Then what had happened? Try as she might, that was all she could remember.

  I want my life back. I want things to be the way I remember. How can I get things back to normal?

  Finally, she turned on the TV, which came on in full color. Wow, this hospital must really splurge on amenities. Few people she knew could afford a color TV set.

  She flipped through the channels until she got to a news channel. As she listened to the news station, she realized they had told her the truth. A black man named Obama was the president. Unbelievable that a black man had won a presidential election. And women evidently held many more important roles in television as well. She couldn’t remember seeing so many women giving the news and weather. Maybe color TV wasn’t so unusual now after all.

  Anna appeared again and helped her trail her IV along as she went into the bathroom. Amazing that she had a room all to herself with her own bathroom. Tall buildings outside her window told her that the St. Paul skyline had changed a lot in the past sixty years as well. Anna tucked her back in, turned off the TV and Lucy fell asleep.

  Hours later, she awoke and they fed her a nice lunch of hot split pea soup and a ham sandwich. She devoured it, her stomach feeling as though she hadn’t eaten in days. Had she? She couldn’t remember that, either, which was scarier than anything else.

  Then a police detective arrived. She sat in bed and sipped her coffee as she answered many more questions. The detective, a burly, dark haired man about mid-forties, who looked as though he hadn’t slept or shaved in days, frowned at her answers. No, she didn’t know if she owned a car. She usually rode the buses or walked to work in the small town of Conley where she lived. She lived within walking distance to shops and the theater. Of course she didn’t drink or do illegal drugs. She was a respectable school teacher. She’d lose her job if she did things like that. She repeated the info of catching a ride with the young truck driver several times. He didn’t seem to believe her.

  “No one picks up hitchhikers these days, lady,” he assured her.

  “His name was Joe,” she said and described the bread company logo on the side. “Did anyone find my brown leather suitcase?” she asked.

  “No, the officers at the scene didn’t list anything except your purse. You got that?”

  She nodded and showed him the info in her purse. “But I remember carrying a brown leather suitcase.”

  “Carrying it?” he asked. “Didn’t it have wheels? All suitcases have wheels.”

  “Wheels?” she asked in a puzzled voice. “No, it had a handle to carry it.”

  “Huh,” he said, looking at her strangely.

  He stared at her driver’s license. “Yes, we made copies of this info when we brought you here.”

  She chewed her lip and informed him, “I know that looks like me, but it isn’t. My name is Lucinda Johnson.”

  He looked from the license to her, then asked, “What about your car? Why weren’t you driving it?”

  “I don’t own a car.”

  “You don’t? Then why do you have car keys?”

  “Car keys?”

  “We found a ring of keys in your purse.”

  She looked at him, then dug around in her purse. Sure enough, there were keys at the bottom. She pulled them out. Five keys on a ring, with a large, metal “L” attached to them. Her initial, she assumed, staring at them in surprise.

  “That one’s probably a house or apartment key and that looks like a GM car key,” the detective said, pointing to one, then another. “So, what are they for?”

  “Really?” Lucy said. “I never saw these before. I told you, it’s not my purse or ID.”

  “Uh huh, sure.” He went out to the hallway and she could hear him talking to someone, probably on his phone again.

  Finally, he came back to her and brought out a fingerprint kit. “I don’t know who you really are, lady, but I’ll need to take your prints,” he said, leaving her no choice in the matter.

  She shrugged. “Okay.”

  He took her fingers and one by one, took her prints. “That’s a nice wristwatch. Must have cost a pretty penny.”

  She stared at the gold watch on her left wrist. It did look expensive. “I have no idea.”

  “Oh really? Are you a rich bug’s wife?”

  “I’m not married. See? No wedding rings.”

  “Huh.” Then he frowned at her and said, “Why is your driver’s license six years old?”

  Lucy stared at him. “It is?”

  “Don’t play dumb with me. I don’t know what your game is, but something’s going on here. I don’t know what it is, yet, but I’ll find out. We have everything on computers nowadays, you know.”

  Her stomach churned in alarm at his tone. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, yes you do, lady. You give us one name, but your license has a different one. That driver’s license address is old. I checked that address out. You haven’t lived there in five years. Nobody knows you there. They didn’t have a current address for you. Witnesses said you were a pedestrian when you were hit, so I guess I can’t claim you were driving.”

  “I’m telling you, I’m Lucinda Johnson. I don’t know how I got that purse or driver’s license, but it’s not mine. You can call my mom and dad and ask them.” She glared at the detective and rattled off their phone numbers.

  He sighed and punched them into a small phone he carried. She’d never seen one that small before, but he held it up to his ear and listened, so she assumed it worked.

  “Not a working number,” he said with a satisfied grin. “Try again, lady.”

  Her stomach tightened and she snapped, “Of course it’s not working. You don’t have your phone plugged in.”

  He gaped at her, then laughed. “It’s a wireless phone, lady.”

  “Oh.” Phones worked without wires now? “But…” she sputtered. “How can my parents’ number not be working? I just saw them two weeks ago. I spent the weekend with them. They were fine and they haven’t moved or anything. They would have told me.”

  He sighed. “What are their names and address?”

  “Ben and Mary Johnson, in North Mankato, Minnesota.”

  He tapped his phone. She tried to see what he was doing, but he held it too close to himself. Sending her a glare, he said, “Nobody lives in North Mankato with that name.”

  “But that’s impossible…”Lucy sputtered.

  He tapped his phone, then hesitated, looking at her a bit strangely. Finally, he said, more gently, “They died in a car accident together in 1960. That’s fifty five years ago.”

  Lucy stared at him, again feeling the blood drain from her face. “No,” she whispered. “Th
at can’t be true.” My parents are dead? Pain ripped through her and she shivered as the shock of it rolled through her. I’m an orphan? A grown orphan, to be sure, but…no, he was lying. But why?

  “I’m sorry. Is there anyone else you can think of to call?” His voice was gentler now.

  “Call Mrs. Henders, my landlady in Conley. I live there.” She gave him the lady’s address and phone number.

  He typed on his phone a while, then said, “No such person in Conley. Anyone else?” His voice was sarcastic now.

  “No. There’s no one else. I’m an only child. I’m not lying. How can my parents be dead for all those years when I know I just spent the weekend with them? You’re lying.”

  His face reddened and his brows dipped in anger.

  At his expression, she back-tracked and said in a small voice. “Or…or you must be mistaken. None of this makes any sense.”

  He sighed. “I can only agree with your doctor that you’ve apparently lost some years of memory. Though that doesn’t explain why you think it’s 1955, since you don’t look old enough to have lived then, and your driver’s license agrees with my assessment of your age.”

  Lucy’s mind whirled. He wasn’t listening, so there was no point in repeating that the license wasn’t hers. She could think of nothing else to say or ask the detective.

  He eyed her and went on, “And you were apparently a pedestrian when hit, although your story of a hitch-hiking doesn’t make any sense. There aren’t any trucks such as the one you described. That baking company went out of business at least a dozen years ago.”

  “But I distinctly remember that logo…”

  Once more, his face hardened. “It doesn’t exist anymore, I checked. Your memory is faulty, lady. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’d been hallucinating, were drunk or high on drugs. But all the blood tests they took here were clean, so I guess you weren’t high when you were hit. But don’t worry, we’ll figure out who you really are and what’s really going on.”