Chapter 7: Carrie Meets Marjorie

We got more relaxed about appearing in public after the second visit by the police, the one where Carrie stuck her face in front of them. Between the red hair, the tattoos, the tissues stuffed in her cheeks, and the face cream, she only resembled the missing princess.

Midweek, I brought home another burner phone. This time we drove to Landover, Maryland, and she called her local embassy. She got one of the mid-level diplomats on the phone, gave her safe word, explained who she was and why she was calling, and explained that she was fine, living a new life, and didn’t want the police or various security services trying to chase her down. I timed the call – three minutes and twenty seconds, most of that spent trying to get to someone relatively important who would listen to her.

This time I heard her give several other key pieces of information about her life that only those close to her would know. She chose to mention three things: the name she’d given her teddy bear as a child, a particular name she’d called her sister when she was teasing her in their early teens, and the name of the color she insisted on having in her palace bedroom – desert rose. For certain, this would establish the authenticity of the call. We also left the cell phone with her fingerprints on it sitting on top of a traffic light signal control box so it was hard to miss, and we told the embassy rep where to look for it. We’d made sure there were no traffic cams around.

Carrie and I ate in a small Italian bistro enjoying a pasta dinner when I saw a glimmer of recognition in one of the other patron’s faces. I tried to ignore the look, but this was not some guy who’d spotted a hot chick. He knew. We were nearly finished, so I tossed fifty bucks on the table, and we hustled out of the restaurant. As luck would have it, I’d had to park half a block away and out of sight from the restaurant. As I drove out of the neighborhood with the restaurant, I saw two police cars racing towards the place.

When we got home, we waited for quite a while expecting a knock on the door. None came.

Two days later, Carrie and I went to dinner at TGIFridays – a popular and noisy sports bar kind of place. This place was located in one of the shopping malls in Fairfax, Virginia. It would take thirty seconds to get from the door of the restaurant to the mall door and busy parking lot. That route went past a dozen other shops, each of which attracted great attention from the princess. She was being ‘normal’.

At the restaurant, Carrie pushed the sunglasses on top of her head so she could read the menu and order.

The waitress came and stared at Carrie. She finally said, “You know, you really look like that missing princess.”

Carrie smiled and said, “Thank you. My boyfriend thinks I’m better looking.” She glanced over at me and I smiled at the girl. “Since all that commotion started a week or so ago about the Princess, I’ve been stopped a couple of times a day by people asking. Who would’ve thought? Of course, I even have the English accent to make them stop and think, too.”

The remarks seemed to satisfy the waitress that Princess Caroline had a ‘sound-alike’ and ‘look-alike,’ so nothing further was said by her. I watched to see whether there’d be further action.

Again, however, as we walked out of the restaurant, a woman sitting with her husband and two young children locked on and pinged off Carrie’s face like radar seeing an enemy jet. I saw the look, and there was no ‘maybe’ in her look at all. She knew for sure. As we passed by her table, I saw her reaching for her cellphone.

We got outside the restaurant door, and I said to Carrie, “Run to the car. Don’t stop for anything.”

We speed-walked to the nearest exit, and then broke into a real run. I had the car started and moving in fifteen seconds, and we were just leaving the mall onto one of the main roads, when a police car with lights and siren whipped past us onto the mall road.

“Whew!” we both said simultaneously before we laughed.

I told Carrie, “Sooner or later, you’re going to have to make a public appearance and square off about your new ‘normal’ life with the public and the authorities. They will keep looking until they find you.”