1
Like my forefathers, Gene Simmons and Christina Aguilera, my life began in Staten Island, the borough of New York most known for its landfills. The first 25 years of my life were going somewhat according to plan. I was an underpaid social worker, I got married to a man I knew from high school, and to top it all off, I was dead inside. What can I say? It’s the Staten Island way.
When most grown people get bored, they cheat on their spouses. They start buying lottery tickets. They develop a drug habit. Not me, though. No, sir. When I need to fill a gaping void in an otherwise predictable, monotonous life, I like to think outside the box. So I made up an alter ego named Luella van Horn who solves crimes. Is that the worst thing in the world? In theory, no.
When I slap on a blonde wig, fake white teeth, and some red lipstick, I become Private Detective Luella van Horn. Suddenly I’m a woman who knows what she wants and gets it. People start paying attention to me. They tell me things they’re not supposed to. The powerful see me as an ally and the weak see me as a threat. It’s amazing. I think it’s probably because of the teeth.
Growing up, all I wanted was to be someone like Luella van Horn. To have people finally look at me like I have something to offer. Something they want.
When you’re mousy, nobody cares where you’re going at night. When you come back to the house at 2 a.m., and your husband sleepily asks, “Were you gone?” you can say, “No,” and he’ll believe you, turn over, and go right back to sleep. Nobody bothers to ask why you’re spending thousands of dollars on blonde wigs (made with real human hair!), and going to the dentist for teeth molds, and maxing out your credit cards at Sephora. They’ve barely noticed.
I began Luella’s private detective agency a little over four years ago. The cases were small to start, like who stole the cookie from the cookie jar? (As it turns out, it was the local police commissioner.) I ruffled feathers here and there, but only enough to get a certain amount of notoriety around Staten Island. The local blogs described Luella as intuitive, smart, and savvy. A rising star private detective. A bombshell. Me! A bombshell! In retrospect, I’d been lucky. Then the Bell case happened.
It was around this time, the whole double-life shtick had started to wear me down. My husband was becoming suspicious. He couldn’t understand why there wasn’t a hot dinner on the table every night. Things were getting a little tense in our marriage. I’d hurry home after a long day of social work, make him a dry pork chop, grab my duffle bag and change in the car. Then Luella would take it from there. I was tired but I was happy. I was simply not prepared for the monster that is Taylor Bell.
If you only read the news reports, you’d think Luella van Horn was good at her job. You wouldn’t know she almost convicted the wrong man, nearly lost her social worker’s license, and essentially ruined her marriage. All the papers said was, thanks to the elusive Luella van Horn, Taylor Bell was now in jail awaiting trial for murdering his wife. That was enough to comfort the masses. Gotta love lazy journalism.
After the Bell case, I kept thinking what it would be like to be Luella full-time. Maybe I wouldn’t mess up so much if I wasn’t stretched so thin doing
two jobs, living two lives. Soon after that, I left my husband and decided to quit social work altogether. I moved to Manhattan with what was left of my savings, turned 29, and adopted a cat. And then another cat. To keep the first cat company, of course. Using this logic, I understood how quickly someone could end up with forty cats in a one-bedroom apartment. To keep the other thirty-nine company. Duh.
So, now I exist as two women. One is who I’ve been most of my life: Marie Jones. A mousy ex-social worker divorcée with frizzy brown hair and an addiction to bad reality TV. The other is Luella van Horn. A glamorous private detective who has yet to find a case she couldn’t solve, even if it was messy as hell. It’s like I’m Sherlock and Watson rolled up in one. I am jealous Sherlock had a friend to take notes.
The hope is that I can one day leave Marie Jones by the wayside, exist only as Luella van Horn. I guess time will tell. That Staten Island Ferry runs to Manhattan a little more regularly than I would like.
TUESDAY
This particular case began like most of them do. With a missing person. New York City hadn’t seen the likes of Luella van Horn for a while. There were small cases here and there, but after the Bell case, I felt like I needed a breather. I usually told callers Luella was on an extended vacation in the Keys. This translated to me sitting in my apartment talking to my cats (named Meatloaf and Meatball, if you’re curious) and watching Sex Island like it was a religion.
If you’re not familiar, Sex Island is an incredible reality television show. They take the country’s sexiest 22-year-olds and fly them to a tropical paradise, while we, the viewers, watch them have sex and emotionally destroy each other. I don’t know why or how the FCC allows them to broadcast intercourse, but I’m not going to be the one to raise a red flag. Maybe because the contestants are always under the covers? Who knows!
The show was somehow both addictive and completely unwatchable. There is something oddly comforting about sequestering our nation’s sexually active youth to a land mass in the middle of the ocean. It aired every night for one full hour, and the ratings were, as you might imagine, very high. I did my part.
This season of Sex Island was quite compelling already. Every night, there was sex, screaming, fighting, and more sex. I mean, what more could one ask for.
Smell-o-vision?
Each season of Sex Island started out with fifteen men and fifteen women, all straight, all cis-gendered, all 19 to 23 years old. This was the type of show where a 25-year-old was considered geriatric. As the season progressed, contestants were eliminated for anything really, from not having sex “good enough” to having an odd-smelling anus. Sure it was dystopian, but have you watched the news recently? It’s about on par with the news. Suffice it to say, as Marie, I wasn’t in a great place emotionally, financially, or otherwise.
The last two episodes of Sex Island had gotten strange. My favorite cast member, David G, was suddenly absent. No other cast members had addressed it, which was even more off-putting. Cast members would frequently leave the show, but their exodus would be decided upon by the group. Plus, it would be all anyone could talk about the next day in their confessionals. The last contestant to tearfully leave the show of her own accord was a professional cheerleader from Dallas, Texas named Rachel. The show’s official statement: Rachel suffers from Crohn’s Disease. We wish her well.
I wasn’t the only one to notice David G was gone. The message boards were abuzz — kidnapping was a popular theory, but one Reddit user was adamant she’d seen him in her local grocery store in Tampa, Florida. Another commenter claimed he was sending her signals through her air fryer. This is all to say the show had a very devoted following and David G was a unanimous favorite.
Before his disappearance, David G had been sleeping with a contestant named Tasha, a tall woman with long black hair who hated “wearing clothes.” In the most recent episode, Tasha had been acting very strange. Take this little nugget from her confessional that had the Sex Island fans reeling:
Off-Camera Interviewer: Are you okay?
Tasha: Bitch, shut up!
I had a feeling something weird had happened, and usually — sadly — I’m not wrong about this stuff. David G was a rare type of contestant, in that he was hot, but he also seemed like he had a soul. He was called David G because there was another David on Sex Island called David N, and let me tell you, David N could not hold a candle to David G. Anyway, it might have been his cleft chin or his close-cut beard or the fact that he was a nurse before becoming a reality TV star — whatever
it was, David G was a straight-up catch, and his absence was extremely noticeable.
I remember very clearly the night I got the call. I’d just poured myself a second bowl of generic Frosted Flakes. Technically it was my fifth bowl of the day but my second after-dinner bowl. I had taken a very large bite just as the phone started ringing. I chewed and looked at the phone, milk spilling down my chin. No Caller ID. I knew what that usually meant: a case. I looked to Meatloaf, the more spiritual of my two cats. His green eyes said, Answer it. I picked up on the third ring.
“Hello,” I said with a mouth full of cereal.
“Is this Luella van Horn?” a man’s voice asked.
I managed to chew and swallow. “This is her secretary. I can take a message,” I said, coughing up a rogue flake. It landed gracefully on my couch cushion. I picked it up and ate it again. Meatloaf stared at me in horror.
“Uh, this is strictly confidential but I work as a producer on the reality show, Sex Island, and we’d like Ms. Van Horn to look into the disappearance of one of our cast members. His name is David G,” the man said.
I bit down on my knuckle and kicked my legs. The cats darted away from me. Internally, I was squealing. A case on Sex Island? Was I dreaming?!
Externally, I oh-so-calmly replied, “Okay. And what’s your name?”
I was met with silence on the other end. Finally, the man spoke. “My name is John. Uh, John Murphy.”
“So, John Murphy, when was David G last seen?” I asked.
“It’s been about 48 hours,” John said. “Can Luella come track him down? Is she available?” There was a growing urgency in his voice.
A second producer spoke up then. Already, she seemed more confident than John, less shaken.
“Hi there, I’m Stephanie Hillson, another executive producer on the show. Listen, we’ve scoured the island. We’ve talked to the cast and crew. Nobody knows anything. Which leaves us between a rock and a hard place.”
“We’ve done everything we could other than contact his family and call the police. We just don’t want to alarm anyone unnecessarily, you know? His family would be hysterical,” John added.
“And of course, the viewers…” I added sarcastically.
“Yes, the viewers are our number one priority,” Stephanie agreed.
I hoped she was joking, but it didn’t seem that she was. I’d say, off the top of my head, the two main things you’re supposed to do at a workplace when an employee disappears is contact their family and the police. But this was Hollywood, baby, and I knew they did things differently over there.
They’d heard Luella van Horn was the person to call when you wanted crimes solved quickly and quietly. That was the big one — quietly. With the ratings so high, John and Stephanie didn’t think police interference was necessary at this point, but they wanted the problem solved.
“We’re certain it’s simply a matter of David G hiding somewhere,” Stephanie insisted.
“Right. Sometimes, these actor-types really do take off for a few days! They only tell the PA, who forgets to tell us, and then they come back. And everyone’s okay! For all we know, David G is suntanning on a boat somewhere right now.” John chuckled nervously at his own joke. I noticed Stephanie didn’t join him.
David G was a frontrunner on Sex Island, and his star was on the rise. If he was hiding, there had to be a really good reason for it. John and Stephanie hoped Luella could do some hush-hush private investigating, find David G alive and well, and be on her merry way. You might be wondering how someone could actually disappear in the age of social media. Well, the geniuses running Sex Island had a moratorium on posting, liking, and even sharing during the filming months, and that applied to all cast and crew. In fact, all contact with the outside world had been actively discouraged. David G’s (and everyone else’s) social media had been untouched for weeks.
“How much will you pay?” I asked.
For some reason, it was always easier to ask about money when it was for Luella. The producers got cagey but said they’d make it “very worth her while,” plus a first-class ticket both ways. They asked if she could get to the island by tonight, as time was of the essence. I said I would relay the message and get back to them after I’d spoken to Luella. I hung up the phone and took the next three minutes to jump around my apartment screaming. Meatball hid under the bed while Meatloaf hissed at me from on top of a book shelf.
I know most sane people would ignore this vague offer with no concrete money on the table. They’d go on with their regular, sanity-drenched lives. But seeing as my life actually revolved around watching a reality show that was now a potential crime scene, I felt that doing something was
the right thing to do. Call me an angel from heaven. An angel tracking down the very attractive David G on the set of her favorite television show. This could be the turning point I’d been hoping for. If Luella could solve this case, I might become so busy, I’d never have to live as Marie another day in my life.
I called them back. John picked up after the first ring.
“Hello? Did you talk to Luella?”
“She’ll do it,” I said.
“Amazing! Okay, just book her on the next first class ticket out — we’ll wire you the money now.”
I thanked him, then promptly got an airplane ticket that left New York in two hours and cost approximately $14 million dollars. There was so much to do in so little time. Next, I called my 75-year-old neighbor, Sophie.
“Sophie, hi, how are you?”
“Cut the small talk.” Sophie cleared her throat and spit up a loogie, which thanks to advanced technology, I could hear very clearly. “What do you want?!” she screeched.
If you can believe it, she was always this pleasant.
“Could you take care of my cats for a bit?”
She coughed twice directly into the receiver. “How long this time?”
“Not sure. Maybe two weeks, maybe a little more.”
She treated me to another throat clear and then a very wet-sounding snort. “Alright. Have a bottle of Baileys waiting for me in the fridge.”
“Always,” I said.
If anyone in the city knew of my double identity, it was likely Sophie “Wet Snort” DePlaza. But she never said a word about it and neither did I. Is that considered a friendship?
With the cats taken care of, I took a shower, which was something I hadn’t done in some time. Seeing as I was going to visit a tropical island, I tried to remove as much of my body hair as possible, but in my haste, there was no telling which tufts I missed.
Next, I put on my Luella face — red lipstick, a blonde wig, a smokey eye, and a set of fake, white teeth. I’ve always had a chipped front tooth, which is a lot like a car accident — nobody can stop themselves from staring at it. Wearing the perfect Luella teeth changes my whole face. Putting a nice blonde wig over the frizzy brown curls doesn’t hurt,
either. It’s not that my goal is to be pretty, but I have found pretty gets you places plain wouldn’t dream of. What? It’s a sick world, and I’m just living in it.
I looked at my reflection, and for a moment I forgot I wasn’t her. Then my eyes wandered down to the rusty edges of the mirror, the growing pile of dirty laundry near the foot of my bed, the double-wide litter box I hadn’t cleaned in a week. Glamour!
I quickly packed a suitcase, tossing in a few backup wigs and some sunscreen. I looked at the time and temporarily panicked when I realized I’d miss that night’s Sex Island episode. I’d been devoted to this show for weeks, developing what some might call a dependency. Now Luella was actually going to Sex Island! I hugged the cats as much as they would tolerate and headed to JFK, my head spinning.
I’ll skip the gruesome details but I’ll sum it up by saying the two words you never want to hear when it comes to air travel: tiny plane. Three long hours later, I landed on the island frazzled and ecstatic to be back on land.
It was almost 1 a.m. when I arrived. Even inside the airport, the air was warm and muggy. Everything smelled like salt water. I started to doubt whether my wigs would hold up in this weather. A short man and a tall woman greeted me at arrivals.
They revealed themselves to be the producers I spoke to over the phone. The short one was John Murphy, a nervous man in his mid-thirties with a receding hairline and blue eyes I didn’t quite trust. He tried to smile.
“Welcome to the island! How was your flight?” he asked.
“A little rough,” I said.
“Good, sounds good. Well, welcome to the island!” He gave me three consecutive pats on the shoulder. One of us was having a nervous breakdown, but I couldn’t tell who.
The tall one, Stephanie Hillson, was a striking brunette in her early forties. I noticed she wore a large diamond ring on her left hand. Her nails were perfectly manicured with light pink polish — a color I exclusively associated with suburban moms and cotton candy. I looked down to see she was wearing the same stupid four-inch heels as me. At 1 a.m. In an airport. Why do we do this to ourselves? I was about to say, but she was already on her phone. We made our way to the arrivals parking lot.
John got in the driver’s seat of a 12-seat passenger van and Stephanie sat shotgun, which I sort of took personally. I sat in the row directly behind them, even
though I had my choice of nine other seats in the vehicle. I hoped it conveyed I was committed to the cause. School bus politics from twenty years ago were still fresh in my mind.
We made small talk on the ride over to the Sex Island compound. Over the years, I’ve gotten better at talking with the Luella teeth in, but I still have trouble with certain letters. All in all, I try not to speak as Luella more than is necessary. People assume Luella is standoffish or sensitive or even flirty — their interpretations run the whole gamut. ...
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