by Sue Grafton
Dolan’s response was noncommittal, perhaps in hopes of squelching further conversation. Ignoring Johanson, he scrambled a few steps down the embankment. The ground seemed soft, though the surface was powdery with dust. He anchored himself with his right foot on the downside of the slope and stood with his hands in his jeans pockets studying the undergrowth. “She was right about here. A lot more brush in the area back then.”
“We cut that back on account of the fire department,” Johanson said. “They come out usually twicet a year. Owner won’t clear brush without a threat. Too cheap.”
“With the fire danger up here, you can’t ignore the brush,” Stacey said, ever so polite.
“No, sir. That’s what I say. You’ll find a few more trees. Back when that girl was throwed down there, that ’un and this one wasn’t here. Both black acacias. Grow like weeds. I’d cut ’em down myself, but owner won’t hear of it. Now, oaks I don’t touch. Couldn’t pay me to fell one unless it’s eat out by rot.”
Dolan and I were both ignoring the man. I watched Dolan as he scrambled back out of the ravine and stood scanning the portion of Highway 1 that was visible from where we stood. “My guess is he backed in and opened the trunk of the car. He probably used the painter’s tarp to drag the body the short distance from there to here. The tarp was heavily soiled on one side and you could see a path through the underbrush where it’d been flattened by the weight.”
“Kids used to pull in here for petting parties,” Johanson said. “Monday mornings, ground’d be littered with rubbers, limp as snake skins. That’s why we put in the gate, to keep cars out.”
I looked at Stacey. “Was she wrapped in the tarp?”
“Partially. We believe he killed her somewhere else. There were blood stains in the grass, but nothing to suggest the volume you’d’ve seen if she bled out. He probably used the tarp to keep the stains off the interior of the trunk.”
Dolan said, “If we’d had some of this new high-tech equipment back then, I bet we’d have found plenty. Hair, fiber, maybe even prints. Nothing neat about this killing. He just happened to get lucky. Nobody saw the murder and nobody spotted him when he toppled her down the slope.”
Johanson perked up. “Neighbor down the road—this is C. K. Vogel—I don’t know if you remember this, but C. K. seen a light-colored VW van on the particular morning of July 28 up along that road over there. Painted all over with peace symbols and psychedelic hippie signs. Said it was still there eleven o’clock that night. Curtains on the winders. Dim light inside. It was gone the next morning, but he said it struck him as odd. I believe he phoned it in to the Sheriff’s Department after the girl was found.”
Dolan’s skepticism was unmistakable, though he tried to be civil—not an easy task for him. “Probably unrelated, but we’ll look into it.”
“Said he seen a convertible as well. Killer could’ve drove that. Red, as I recollect, with an out-of-state license plate. If I was you, I’d make sure to have a talk with him.”
I said, “Thanks for the information. I’ll make a note.”
Johanson looked at me with interest. Suddenly, he seemed to get it: I was a police secretary, accompanying the good detectives to spare them the tedium of all the clerical work.
The breeze shifted slightly, blowing Dolan’s smoke in my face. I moved upwind.
“Something I forgot to mention about Miracle,” Stacey said. “When we went back to the impound lot and searched Frankie’s car, we found soil samples in the floor mats that matched the soil from the embankment. Unfortunately, the experts said it was impossible to distinguish this sample from samples in other quarries throughout the state. West Coast has the most extensive marine deposits in the world.”
“I saw that report. Too bad,” I said. “What’d Frankie say when you questioned him?”
“He gave us some long garbled tale of where he’d been. Claimed he’d been hiking in the area, but it was nothing we could confirm.”
Dolan said, “He was higher than a kite the day they picked him up. Grass or coke. Arrest sheet doesn’t say. He’s a meth freak is what I heard.”
“Everyone under thirty was higher than a kite back then,” I said.
Mr. Johanson cleared his throat, having been excluded from the conversation too long to suit him. “Being’s as you’re here, you might want to see the rest of the property. This is the last ranch of its size. Won’t be long before they tear down the old house. Probably build subdivisions as far as the eye can see.”
My impulse was to decline, but Dolan seemed to spark to the idea. “I’m in no hurry. Fine with me,” he said. He gave Stacey a look. Stacey shrugged his assent and then checked for my response.
I said, “Sure. I don’t mind. Are we finished here?”
“For now. We can always come back.”
Johanson turned toward his Jeep. “Best take the Jeep. Road’s all tore up from heavy rains we had a while back. No point throwing up dust and gravel on that fancy car of yours.”
I thought he was being snide. I checked for Dolan’s reaction, but he was apparently in agreement with the old man’s assessment.
We piled in the Jeep, Stacey in the front seat, Dolan and me climbing into the rear. The seats were cracked leather, and all the glassine windows had been removed. Johanson started the engine and released the emergency brake. The vehicle’s shocks were gone. I reached up and grabbed the roll bar, clinging to it as we began to lurch and bang our way up the deeply rutted gravel road. Like me, Stacey was clinging to the Jeep frame for stability, wincing with pain from the jolts to his injured back.
The grass on either side of us was rough. A hillside rose on our left and then leveled out at the top, forming a mesa where numerous pieces of heavy equipment sat. Much of the remaining ground was stripped and terraced, broad fields of rubble unbroken by greenery. “That’s the quarry,” Johanson said, hollering over the rattle and whine of the moving vehicle.
I leaned forward, directing my comments toward the back of his head. “Really? That looks like a gravel pit. I pictured limestone cliffs.”
“Different kind of quarry. These is open pit mines. Grayson Quarry goes after the DE. That’s diatomaceous earth. Here, I’ve got a sample. Take a look at this.” One eye on the road, he leaned down and removed a chunk of rock from the floor of the Jeep, then passed it across the seat to me. The rock was a rough chalky white, about the size of a crude round of bread with irregular gouges in the crust. I passed it on to Lieutenant Dolan, and he hefted it as I had, finding it surprisingly light.
I said, “What’d you say this was?”
“Diatomaceous earth. We call it DE.”
I felt a tingle of uneasiness run down my spine as his explanation went on. “DE’s a deposit made up mainly of siliceous shells of diatoms. This whole area was underwater oncet upon a time. The way they tolt me, marine life fed on diatoms, which is these colonies of algae. Now it’s pulverized and used as an abrasive, sometimes as an absorbent.”
Stacey raised his voice against the crunch of the tires over gravel. “I used to use it to filter beer when I was making it at home.”
The road began to climb and the Jeep labored upward, finally rounding a bend. The old house came into view—massive, dilapidated, Victoriana under siege. Clearly, the structure had once been regal, but weeds and brush were creeping up on all sides, consuming the yard, obscuring the broken lines of wood fence. Years of neglect had undermined the outbuildings so that all that remained now were the rough stone foundations and occasional piles of collapsed and rotting lumber.
The house itself was a two-story white frame, flanked by a one-story wing on either side of the facade. There were four porches visible, providing shade and sheltered ventilation so that doors and windows could be left open to the elements. A porch wrapped around the house at the front, with a second porch stacked on top. A widow’s walk encircled the roof. The numerous paired windows were narrow and dark, many of the panes sporting the sort of tattered holes that rock throwers m
ake when they score a hit.
Johanson waved at the house, scarcely slowing his speed. “Been empty for years. I’m in the gardener’s cottage on ’tother side of the barn,” he yelled.
I found myself averting my gaze as we passed the house and headed for a compound of structures I spotted in a shady area ahead. Barn, toolshed, greenhouse. There were arbors of grapevines as gnarly as rope. Weathered wooden tables were arranged under the trellises. I had the sensation of cold blowing down on the back of my neck.
Johanson pulled up in front of a ramshackle frame cottage. Beyond, I could see a raw wood barn that listed to one side, and beyond that there were endless stretches of three-board wood fence.
I leaned forward again and laid a hand on Johanson’s shoulder. “Excuse me, who’d you say owns this?”
He killed the engine before he turned. “Miz LeGrand. I guess I should say Miz Kinsey to be accurate. She’s a widder woman, must be ninety-some by now. Married to Burton Kinsey, the fella who leased the quarry from her pappy. He made his fortune off the mine, though the whole of it was rightly hers oncet the old man died….”
I’d ceased to listen and the silence in my head seemed as profound as temporary deafness. He was talking about my maternal grandmother, Cornelia Kinsey, born Cornelia Straith LeGrand.
4
Friday morning, I arose at 5:59, switching off the alarm a moment before the clock radio was set to burst into song. I stared up at the skylight above my bed. No rain. Shit. I didn’t feel like exercising, but I made a deal with myself: I’d do the jog and skip the gym. I leaned over and scooped up the sweats I’d left folded on the floor. I wriggled into pants and top. I sat up and tugged on a pair of crew socks, shoved my feet into my Sauconys, and had my key tied to the laces before I’d left my bed. It occurred to me that if I just made it my habit to sleep in my sweats and crew socks, it would be a lot more efficient. All I’d need were my running shoes and I’d be ready to go. I went into the bathroom and availed myself of the facilities, after which I brushed my teeth, splashed water on my face, and then used my wet hands to comb the sleep-generated peaks and valleys from my hair. I trotted down the spiral stairs, checked the thumblock on the front door and pulled it shut, then rounded the studio to the gate.
The neighborhood was quiet and the air felt damp. I walked half a block down and one block over, crossing Cabana Boulevard to the bike path that parallels the beach. I began to jog, feeling sluggish, aware of every footfall and every jolt to my frame. With me, jogging is seldom a subject for debate. I get up and do the run, unless it rains, of course, and then I burrow in my bed. Otherwise, five mornings a week, I shake off the sleep and hit the road before I lose my nerve, knowing that whatever I’m feeling at the outset of a run will be gone by the time I reach the end. The gym I can do without, though I’d been good about lifting weights for the past several months.
The sunrise had already presented itself in a dazzling light show that left the sky a broad and unblemished blue. The surf looked forbidding, a silt-churning cold, applauded only by the sea lions who waited offshore, barking their approval. I ran a mile and a half down to the Cabana Recreation Center, did a U-turn, and then ran the mile and a half back, finally slowing to a brisk walk as I headed for home.
I’d been resisting the urge to ponder events from the day before, but I could feel my thoughts stray. Dolan and Stacey had both caught the name “Kinsey” as soon as Johanson mentioned it, but my expression must have warned them to keep any observations to themselves. I had said little or nothing while the ranch foreman showed us through the barn, the old orchards, and the greenhouse, which was largely abandoned. Most of its panes were intact. The air was humid and smelled of mulch, peat moss, compost, and loam. In that protected environment, alien vines and opportunistic saplings had flourished, creating a towering jungle that pushed against the glass on all sides, threatening to break through. The minute we walked into the space, I knew I’d been there before. Cousins I’d discovered in the course of a previous investigation had sworn I’d been at Grand’s house when I was four years old. I had only the scantiest recollection of the occasion, but I knew my parents must have been there, too. The three of them—my father, my mother, and her sister Virginia—had been banished from the family after my parents eloped. My father was a mailman, thirty-five years old. My mother, Rita Cynthia Kinsey, was an eighteen-year-old debutante whose mother was convinced she was destined for someone better than Randy Millhone. Instead, my mother ran off with him, thumbing her nose at the entire Kinsey clan. Virginia sided with the newlyweds. Thereafter, all three were cast into the Kinsey family equivalent of the Outer Darkness.
Despite being exiled, my parents apparently made secret visits to the ranch whenever my grandparents were away. Rumor had it there were numerous contacts with the three remaining sisters, but I only knew of two occasions. On the first, there was an incident in which I’d fallen off a porch and hurt my knee. I did remember the sight of the scrape with its alternating stripes of dirt and blood, which smelled like iron. I could also remember the searing pain when my mother dabbed at the abrasion with a cotton ball that seemed to hiss on my skin. She and I took turns blowing on the wound, huffing and puffing to dry the medication and thus ease its sting. On the only other drive to Lompoc I remembered, my parents were killed before we ever arrived. My grandmother had known of my existence since the day I was born. I was still smarting from the fact she’d never bothered to make contact.
Walking the property with Arne Johanson, I’d dreaded the idea of entering the house, and I’d been hoping to avoid it when I realized Stacey’s breathing had become labored and much of the color had drained from his face. I laid a hand on his arm and called, “Con?”
Dolan turned and looked back. Stacey shook his head, making one of those gestures meant to assure us we needn’t worry about him. Johanson had forged on ahead and he was still chattering about the ranch when Dolan caught up with him. “Mr. Johanson? Sorry to cut this short, but I’ve got a meeting coming up in town and we have to get back.”
“This won’t take long. You don’t want to miss the house.”
“Maybe another day. We’ll take a rain check.”
“Well. I guess that’s that then. Whatever you say.”
Within minutes, he’d delivered us to Dolan’s car and we were back on the highway. The drive home had been low-key, with Stacey slumped on the backseat, the red knit cap pulled down to shield his eyes.
“Are you all right, Stace?” I asked.
“Walking wore me out. It’s my damn back again. I’ll be better in a bit.” In the absence of animation, his face looked old.
Dolan readjusted the rearview mirror, keeping one eye on Stacey and one on the road. “I told you not to come.”
“Did not. You said the fresh air’d be good. Said I ought to take advantage while I was up to it.”
I said, “You warm enough?”
“Quit worrying.”
I turned my attention to Lieutenant Dolan. “What’s next?”
Stacey answered before he could. “We’ll meet at my place tomorrow morning. Ten o’clock suit?”
“Fine with me,” I said.
Dolan said, “Sounds good.”
We dropped Stacey first. He lived close to downtown Santa Teresa, five blocks from my office, in a small pink stucco rental house perched above a pink cinder-block wall. Dolan had me wait in the car while he retrieved Stacey’s gun from the trunk and then followed him up the six stairs to the walkway that skirted the place. I could see how tightly Stacey had to grip the railing in order to pull himself up. The two disappeared, moving toward the rear. Dolan was gone for ten minutes, and when he returned to the car, he seemed withdrawn. Neither of us said a word during the drive to my apartment. I spent the remainder of Thursday afternoon taking care of personal errands.
Having finished my jog, I walked the block between the beach and my place. When I reached my front door, I picked up the morning paper as I let myself in. I tossed th
e Dispatch on the kitchen counter and started a pot of coffee. As soon as it began to trickle through the filter, I went up the spiral stairs to take my shower and get dressed.
I was halfway through my bowl of Cheerios, sitting at the counter, when the telephone rang. I dislike interruptions at breakfast, and I was tempted to wait and let the answering machine pick up. Instead, I leaned over and grabbed the handset from the wall-mounted phone. “Hello?”
“Hello, Kinsey. This is Tasha, up in Lompoc. How’re you?”
I felt my eyes close. This was one of my cousins, Tasha Howard, the only member of the family I’d ever dealt with at any length. She’s an estate attorney with offices in Lompoc and San Francisco.
I’d met her sister, Liza, a couple of years before, and during our one and only conversation discovered hitherto unplumbed depths of disaffection in my otherwise placid frame. My reaction was probably only a side effect of the fact that Liza was telling me things I didn’t want to hear. For one thing, she told me, in the giddiest manner possible, that my mother was regarded as an idol among her living nieces and nephews. While this was meant as flattery, I felt it dehumanized the woman whom I’d never really known. I resented their prior claim, just as I resented the fact that my pet name for our aunt Virginia, that being “Aunt Gin,” was a term already in wide use among these same family members. So, too, was the penchant for peanut-butter-and-pickle sandwiches, which I’d assumed was a secret link between my mother and me. Granted, my reaction was less than rational, but I was left feeling diminished by the idle tales Liza told.
Tasha was okay. She’d bailed me out of a jam once and on another occasion she’d hired me for a job. That hadn’t turned out well, but the fault wasn’t hers.
Belatedly, I said, “Fine. How are you?” We always have conversations that sound like they’re punctuated by transatlantic delays.
“I’m good, thanks. Listen, it looks like Mother and I will be coming down your way to shop and we wondered if you were free. We can have lunch if you like, or maybe get together for drinks later in the afternoon.”