The old man looked out the window for a moment, immersed in the memory.
“I never seen Tony so fucked-up. He trashes a whole room! Then he makes another phone call. Three, maybe four days later, a couple of guys with heavily bent noses drop by her apartment while hubby and the kid are out together. Ba-da-Bing! LaVonne Goldstein ain’t never gonna talk to no Rabbi. Vonda Gold ain’t never gonna talk to nobody.”
“Jesus,” Crockett said.
Sal shook his head. “Jesus ain’t got nothin’ to do with this,” he said. “It was Tony Boy all the way. Some people you just can’t say no to. They’re too stupid.”
“Uncle Sal,” Ruby said, “do you know what happened to the child?”
“Naw. Tony tried to keep track of her ‘cause he thought she was his, but a couple a years later Walters was convicted of some kind of insurance scam and sent to prison. The kid went to the state, I guess. By that time Tony didn’t even care what happened to Tony, much less the little girl. It ruined him.”
He paused to yawn and wipe his eyes.
“Damn shame,” Sal continued. “Prettiest woman I ever saw. Ever.”
He seemed to sag in his chair and his eyes lost focus. Crockett and Ruby stood quietly for a while, digesting all that had been said. After a few moments, Ruby leaned down and touched Sal’s frail shoulder. He lifted his head and smiled at her.
“Rose,” he said. “Have you seen the garden?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
On the beach
When Ruby and Crockett arrived back at the house, they found Ivy and Marta having tea in the kitchen.
“Children,” Ivy said, “you have returned. Please have some tea or coffee and visit with us for a while. You’ll have to fend for yourselves. Staff’s afternoon off, I’m afraid.”
Ruby went to fuss with the coffee pot and Crockett sat, rather heavily, at the table.
“What extra weight do you carry, David?” Marta smiled.
“I think we can assume from what we learned this afternoon from Ruby’s uncle,” he said, “that the young woman you almost read for all those years ago is probably the daughter of the woman in your nightmares.”
“Really?”
“Uncle Sal knew the woman in the trunk of that car. Her name was LaVonne Goldstein. Her stage name was Vonda Gold. Her married name was Walters. She had a young daughter at the time of her death.”
“Leona Marie Walters,” Marta whispered.
“Exactly.”
“God in heaven.”
While they had coffee, Ruby and Crockett told the two women the gist of their conversation with Sal. When they finished, Ivy spoke up.
“Dreadful,” she said. “Absolutely horrible. That poor thing. Finding her place in life, then being cut down by that beast. It would seem that the connection between the women has been established, however.”
“I’m really not too surprised,” Marta said. “If you recall the reading I did for the two of you, one of the cards pertaining to the situation you are in was the Ankh. In some interpretations, in spite of the way that particular symbol was perverted to mean free love in the 60’s, Ankh is the representation of family, familial extension and generation, and maternal love. A mother’s love for her children is possibly the highest of all motivations. A mother’s connection to her daughter is perhaps the closest of all relationships.”
“So,” Ruby interjected, “you think that the reason LaVonne Goldstein came to you, and then to us, was because of her daughter?”
“That would be my assumption,” Marta replied. “I didn’t have enough information at the time of the reading to arrive at that conclusion then, but it certainly seems that way now.”
She smiled and chuckled to herself.
“Hindsight provides great clarity,” Marta said. “Also in that reading was Ptah, the origin of the Mason’s symbol. We met upon the level and we parted on the square. One of its interpretations is an upcoming occurrence or an existing connection within a definite physical space or place. I would say, David, that LaVonne’s arrival in your apartment and the fact that she once actually lived there, would qualify. Your physical space definitely had an occurrence and your place has a connection.”
“So now we look for the daughter?” Ruby said.
“So now Clete looks for the daughter,” Crockett said. “His resources are a lot better than mine. Besides, he’s ex-government. That means he’s a lot more devious than I am. I wouldn’t know where to start.”
“Clete should return in another day or two,” Ivy said. “Currently he is in California negotiating the sale of some beach property for me. I am afraid my days of frolicking beside the ocean, beach ball in hand, are over.”
“Why, Ivy,” Ruby said, “I can just see you in your little polka-dot two-piece on the sand, Beach Boys’ music in the background, teasing all the golden-haired young surfers.”
“My music was more on the order of Frank Sinatra, Dear,” Ivy replied.
As the three of them laughed, Crockett remembered.
“Jesus Christ,” he said.
Ruby turned to him and raised an eyebrow.
“Jesus Christ,” Crockett said again.
“What?”
“Remember when I said I knew the woman in the picture that Clete re-did into a blonde?”
“Yeah.”
“I do know her. Well, no, not know her personally, but I’ve seen her. You probably have too, if you watched enough of those grade B ‘beach’ movies from the 60’s. She was in ‘em! She wasn’t a star, or anything like that, but she was there, on the beach, more than just an extra, less than one of the principals. You know, one of the group that didn’t like Sandra Dee or Annette or whoever. A bit player. Damn! I knew I knew her!”
“Do you remember what name she used?” Ruby said.
“No. I have no idea.”
“Typical man. Remember the face, remember the body, forget the name.”
“How true,” Marta said.
Ivy jumped on board.
“It’s sad,” she said. “I thought better of you than that, Crockett. Can you possibly imagine my disappointment?”
“Why don’t the three of you go play in the surf?” Crockett said.
Ruby grinned. “And now,” she said, “just old and bitter.”
Crockett and Ruby left Ivy’s after breakfast the next morning. The lake effect conspired with a north wind to make it a cold and blustery day. Spring showers that were reminiscent of a Nor’easter battered the Jag and severely restricted Ruby’s usual cavalier approach to highway safety. While a veritable ace at the wheel during fair weather, wet roads and high winds so cramped her style and restricted her speed that driving became work. Ruby did not like to work. By the time they were a hundred miles out of Chicago she pulled into a rest area and stopped.
“Drive,” she said.
“Me?”
“Yeah, you.”
“Take the helm of the Jag?”
Ruby stared out of the rainy windshield.
“Jesus,” she said.
The Jag shook slightly as it was buffeted by the wind.
“As a rule,” Crockett said, “I don’t usually like to drive Fords.”
Ruby turned up her collar, opened her door, tossed the car keys into his lap, and vanished into the storm on her way to the restrooms. Crockett waited for a while to stay out of range and enjoy a small moment of private celebration. He won so few with Ruby, he liked to take a little time over his tiny victories.
They didn’t arrive in Kaycee until nearly seven, the usual six-hour jaunt with Ruby “The Rocket” LaCost lengthened to nearly ten hours because Crockett was not a lunatic speed freak, and the rain didn’t let up until they passed Independence. Ruby was a frustrated wreck by the time they unloaded and trucked their stuff inside. One whiff of Crockett’s living room reminded him that he forgot to clean Nudge’s litter before they left. He went into the closet and knocked on Ruby’s door.
“Enter,” she said.
Ru
by was standing, rather dismally, by the windows, peering out at the gloom.
“Take a nice hot bath,” Crockett said. “Perform those ablutions upon yourself that ladies undertake to put away a care-worn day, dress in whatever manner necessary to feel good about yourself, and join me in my crib at nine PM. I will feed you dinner, entertain you with my razor wit, blow in your ear, nibble on your neck, and attempt to extract you from the error of your sexual ways. Failing that, we will watch a video or two and get tipsy.”
Ruby turned from the window and raised an eyebrow.
“I love you, Crockett.”
“No fool, thou,” he said, and walked back into the closet.
Two hours later he had cleaned the litter and lit two lavender candles, taken a shower and changed his clothes, been to both Blockbuster and Valentine video, the grocery, Berbiglia Liquors, and was lighting a charcoal fire in his kitchen. One of the few extravagances in Crockett’s life was a massive copper hood over his range top and the adjoining counter. That portion of the counter was done in antique bricks. Sitting on top of the bricks was a hibachi. Sitting in the hibachi were three inches of charcoal briquettes. Good steaks require a lot of heat. The exhaust fan in the hood could actually make Crockett’s ears pop if the place was closed up tight.
He set fire to the charcoal and watched the flames leap up to about twenty-four inches, removed the potatoes from the microwave where he’d given them a ten minute head start, covered them with olive oil and heavy salt, and popped them in the oven. Then he took the butter out of the fridge to let it soften, chopped some fresh chives to accompany the sour cream, crumbled Feta cheese with some huge purple olives in a light garlic-vinegar wash, unwrapped two eight-ounce Angus filets to let them breathe on the counter, covered most of the hibachi grill with an old Dutch oven lid to get it as hot as possible, poured himself half a glass of Dalton kosher merlot, and went to sit at the table. Ruby was standing in the corner.
“An artist at work,” she said.
Crockett grinned. “Scooter Pie!” he said. “Woof.”
She was wearing a dark red, crushed velvet jumpsuit with small black buttons from deep in the crotch to the bottom of the plunging neckline. Black piping graced all the edges, including the wrists and ankles, and red piping highlighted the black sash she used for a belt. Her three-inch heels, rather low for Ruby, matched the sash. She tossed her mane and smiled.
“You look dangerous,” Crockett said.
“I feel dangerous,” she said. “Very rare on my filet.” Her smile slipped easily into a slow grin. “Remember to breathe, Sweetie.”
After dinner they adjourned to the couch and Ruby pawed through the three tapes and one DVD he’d rented.
“Tab Hunter and Frankie Avalon? For me? Be still my beating heart.”
“Actually,” Crockett said, “I thought Sandra Dee and Annette would be more to your taste.”
“Tab and Frankie are for you? Crockett, you devil, has coming out of my closet so often begun to work some magic on your, ah, tendencies?”
“Beach movies, you twisted old broad. These were all I could find. I thought we might see Leona Marie Walters in one of them.
They found her in a 60’s epic entitled “Malibu Pipeline,” just another bouncy young lovely in a group of bouncy young lovelies, frolicking on the beach in rather conservative two-piece bathing suits. Third banana to the star, in spite of the clothing and makeup of the day, she was still the prettiest girl on the sand. The credits for the lesser players did not list character names, and Leona Marie Walters did not appear on the screen. The movie was obviously a low budget attempt to capitalize on the popularity of the 60’s surfer craze and produced by a company called SunSan Studios. Crockett wrote down the name of the director and producer, as well as a list of the female players.
The next morning, fighting the effects of the long drive, the wine, and Ruby’s need to talk and play grab-ass half the night, he called Cletus.
“You sound like hell, Crockett.”
“Ruby kept me up late.”
“You poor bastard,” Clete said. “You just call to brag?”
“Yeah. You’re third on my list.”
Clete laughed. “I, too, have been working late,” he said. “Found out that LaVonne Goldstein’s daughter spent some time in foster homes after her dad went to prison. Finally wound up with his spinster sister, a gal named Alberta Walters, in some little town out near Manhattan, Kansas. Her dad’s name, incidentally, was Kenneth. He got out of the Graybar hotel when his daughter was about ten years old and headed for Chicago. No trace of him after that. From what we can determine, Leona Marie left Kansas when she was about sixteen and came to Chicago to hang out with dad, but since we can’t find out exactly where he was, we can’t get a handle on her either. Sorry. We’ll keep lookin’.”
“Try Hollywood,” Crockett said.
“Oh?”
“Yeah. That’s where I’d seen her. In the movies. Displaying her ample girlish charms in a cut-rate surfer flick.”
He explained what Ruby and he had discovered and gave Clete the names he’d copied down.
“Jesus. Doesn’t anybody in this damn family ever land in one spot? She’s got the looks for Hollywood, no doubt about that, but looks are cheap. Beautiful women have been disappearing off the face of the earth in L.A. for years hunting for the pot of gold at the end of that rainbow. Lemmings on the way to the cliff.”
“I know,” Crockett said. “I wish I had more for you.”
“Don’t get me wrong. You did better than my guys. We ain’t dead yet, Crockett. I’ll make a couple of calls and see what I can find out. Maybe we’ll get a lead out of this. Find her sittin’ in a soda fountain on Sunset Boulevard still waitin’ to be discovered.”
“Thanks, Texican.”
“No thing,” Clete said. “I’ll be in touch. Give Ruby a big ol’ somethin’ for me.”
As Crockett hung up, the lady in question appeared out of his closet carrying two cups of coffee and some bagels on a tray. As always, she looked fresh as a daisy.
Crockett eyeballed her and snorted. “How the hell do you do it?” he said.
“My heart is pure,” Ruby said. “Who was on the phone?”
“Cletus. He wants me to give you something for him.”
Ruby eased to the couch beside him, failing to keep her robe completely closed.
“What?” she purred.
“He didn’t specify.”
“Up to me then, I suppose?”
“I suppose.”
Ruby kissed him on the cheek, lingering a bit. “How ‘bout love?” she whispered, her lips just brushing his skin.
Crockett turned his head and gently returned her kiss. “Never a doubt about that, Sweetheart,” he said.
Ruby leaned forward to put cream cheese on a bagel so Crockett wouldn’t see the tears that had sprung to her eyes.
“There really isn’t, is there?” she said.
Ruby stayed long enough for coffee and a bagel, then scurried off for a day of five appointments after she’d decided they needed to go out for sushi that evening. Tired and grinchy, Crockett sat on the couch and stared at the wall, mentally and emotionally adrift. Nudge sauntered in and oozed up onto his lap, doing that cat thing of being weightless until he achieved the position he wanted, then nailing Crockett to the cushions like a fifty pound sack of feed. He kneaded Crockett’s thigh gently with a paw the size of a mayonnaise lid, remembering, for a change, not to draw blood.
Crockett needed a soak to get the return trip from Chicago out of his back and hip, but he just couldn’t summon the energy to move either himself or the cat. Vonda Gold crossed his mind. Chicago showgirl transplanted to Kansas City by an obsessive mobster as a kept woman to keep her hidden from his wife. Stars in her eyes and need in her heart, Vonda committed two cardinal sins. She became independent and she tried to live her own life. For that she was left, mutilated and disfigured, in an unmarked grave. An astonishingly beautiful woman with a young d
aughter and a new husband, disposed of with less ceremony or respect than the family dog.
It made Crockett angry and his mind turned to her child, Leona Marie Walters, living without her mother, then without her father, being shuttled through a string of foster horrors and governmental revolving doors until she finally came to rest in the stark bleakness of Kansas with an unmarried Aunt. His imagination created a withered, dried-up woman of brittle attitude and scratchy personality. A God-fearful husk of righteous piety who would have been jealous of the child’s uncommon beauty and driven to punish the girl for the sins of her parents. A woman of tightly buttoned collars and heavy hose who used slipcovers on her furniture, doilies on her end tables, and would have locked the bathroom door behind her even when she was alone.
To her, cities would have been dens of iniquity, freedom of expression unnecessary, and beauty the mark of a sinner. Crockett visualized the child finally escaping the spinster, fleeing to Chicago to be with a father she barely knew to evade the weather-withered clutches of Kansan control.
Nudge stirred and levitated to the windowsill, bringing Crockett out of his self-indulgent reverie. He wondered if he was so wrapped up in this thing that he was creating characters to fill some sort of twisted motivational fantasy. Smiling and rubbing his face, he corrected his posture and attempted to shove the shadows of imagination back where they belonged.
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