Down the Darkest Road ok-3

by Tami Hoag

  The house was a typical southern California bungalow—beige stucco and a barrel tile roof—with overgrown purple bougainvillea and brilliant orange birds of paradise flanking the front porch steps. The yard was thin and weedy. The place had that odd feeling of vacancy about it.

  Hicks went up onto the little porch. Mendez took a stroll around the back of the house and tried the back door. Locked. Through the window he could see the small kitchen. The counters were bare. There wasn’t so much as a water glass by the sink. The sun splashed in through a window, illuminating the layer of dust and the odd dead bug on the Mexican tile floor.

  “Hey, you!”

  He jumped a little at the sharp sound of the voice. Turning around, he came into the full glare of a skinny elderly woman in denim overalls and a blue Dodgers cap. A wild head of gray hair fell to her shoulders. Standing in the yard a few feet back from the stoop, she carried what looked like an ax handle, hefting it and making small circles with it like it was a baseball bat and she was getting ready to swing for the bleachers.

  Mendez started to reach inside his coat.

  “Don’t even think about it, pervert!” the woman snapped, shouldering the axe handle. Her accent was British, he thought. She came a couple of steps closer to the stoop, her wrinkled little mouth knotted up like a prune.

  “I’m a law enforcement officer, ma’am,” Mendez said. “I’ll show you my badge if you’ll let me.”

  “How do I know you’re not packin’ heat?”

  “I am packing heat,” he said, trying to keep a straight face.

  “Show it to me, then,” she demanded. “And don’t try anything funny. This is a hickory handle and I know how to use it.”

  Mendez gently opened his sport coat so she could see both the badge clipped to his belt and the nine millimeter in his shoulder holster.

  The old lady deflated with a big sigh and lowered her weapon. “Crikey,” she said. “What are you doin’ skulkin’ ’round back here? You scared the livin’ piss out of me!”

  “I could ask you the same thing, ma’am. What are you doing back here? Do you live in this house?”

  “No,” she said. “I live right over here. I’m on the neighborhood watch. I keep an eye on things around here. You never know what might go on, considering.”

  “Considering what?”

  “Considering the pervert that lived here.”

  “Roland Ballencoa?”

  “That’s him,” she said. “I couldn’t believe he moved right in next to me, bold as brass,” she said with absolute disgust. “Outrageous.

  “I had read all about him in the Santa Barbara paper,” she went on. “I take four papers and read ’em front to back: The LA Times, The New York Times, The Tribune, and The Santa Barbara News-Press . A person should be informed, I say.

  “And I know they never arrested him or nothin’ down there, but I can read between the lines. He done somethin’ to that poor girl, sure as anything.”

  Hicks came around the side of the house, missing a step as he caught sight of the old lady. His eyes got big for a split second.

  “There’s no one home,” he said.

  “He moved out,” the woman said, and she spat on the ground. “Good riddance.” She looked up at Mendez and tipped her head at Hicks. “Is he a copper too?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Detective Hicks, ma’am.” He showed her his badge.

  “Mavis Whitaker,” she said. “I live next door. I’m with the neighborhood watch.”

  Hicks looked at her ax handle and bobbed his eyebrows.

  Mendez came down off the back steps.

  “There’s nothing in the mailbox except for ‘Occupant,’” Hicks said.

  “Oh, he didn’t get his mail here,” Mavis Whitaker said.

  They both looked at her.

  “I was speakin’ to the post carrier one day. She’s a woman, and a cute little thing. I told her all about the perv as soon as he moved in. You know, lest he try to lure her into the house and try somethin’.

  “So I said, I don’t imagine he gets no mail but from his mother, if he knows who she is. And she told me he don’t get no mail at all. That he must have it delivered elsewhere. Not so much as a utility bill, she said.”

  So much for a forwarding address the easy way, Mendez thought.

  “How long ago did Mr. Ballencoa move out?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I went home to Australia for six weeks the end of April. When I got back, he was gone.”

  “Do you have any idea where he might have gone?”

  “I certainly don’t. I wouldn’t give him the time of day. Nor would he engage me in conversation. I told him in no uncertain terms when he moved here, if he thought he might get smart with me, I’d introduce Ol’ Hick’ry here to his kneecaps. Bloody wanker.”

  “What did he say when you told him that?” Hicks asked.

  “Nothin’. Not a word. He just looked at me like he was lookin’ through me, then went on about his business.

  “I grew up in the Outback,” she said. “My dad was a miner, and a rough sort they are. Plenty of men like this one out there, walkin’’round with no souls. You wouldn’t walk beside them, I’ll tell you that. You’d go out in the bush and you’d never come back.”

  “Did Mr. Ballencoa live here alone?” Mendez asked.

  “I never seen nobody go in nor come out but him. Never saw a friend nor a girlfriend—’course he may have had one in a box in there. He’s that sort, ain’t he?”

  “What kind of car did he drive?” Hicks asked.

  “A white van. Plain as Jane. No windows.”

  “Do you happen to know if he owned this house or rented?” Mendez asked.

  “Rented. I called his landlord up and gave him a piece of my mind, I’ll tell you that. What kind of decent individual rents to a pedophile? And with the school right there? I called the police and gave them what for as well. It shouldn’t be allowed, but they told me he hadn’t been charged nor convicted and there weren’t nothin’ they could do about it.”

  “Do you have a phone number for the landlord?” Hicks asked.

  “Carl Eddard. Scum Lord I call him,” Mavis Whitaker said. “I do indeed. Come next door and I’ll get it for you.”

  Mavis Whitaker’s home was identical in style to the one Ballencoa had lived in, but her yard was cute and tidy, and showed the fruits of her green thumb. Iceberg rosebushes loaded with big fat white blooms encircled the property inside the low black iron fence. Flower beds flanked the sidewalk and made a colorful border around the house itself.

  A bell jingled as she let them in the gate. There were bars on her front door and grates over the windows. Ms. Whitaker did not leave her security to chance. And if an assailant made it past the first line of defense, she had Ol’ Hick’ry for her backup.

  The house was immaculate and smelled of lemon furniture polish. The décor was a mix of antique pieces draped in doilies, shelves loaded with knickknacks, and a seventies plaid sofa and chair from a discount furniture mart. Two big brown tabby cats sat in an open window, taking in the sun.

  “I’ve got it here in my address book,” Mavis said, going to a little writing desk in her dining room. “I even filed it under Scum Lord so I wouldn’t have to tax m’self sayin’ his name.”

  She put her ax handle down on the dining room table, then turned to the desk and picked up the address book from beside her telephone.

  “He’s a rude one, I’ll tell you,” she went on. “No regard for anyone but his banker. I said to him, what if this perv comes over in the night and attacks me. He says, considering what an old bitch I am, I shouldn’t have to worry ’bout anyone wanting to lay a hand on me.

  “Can you imagine?” she said, offended.

  “That’s uncalled for,” Hicks said. “Some people have no manners.”

  “None whatsoever,” she said, perching reading glasses on her nose. “I told him he could kiss my puckered old arse. Here it is. Scum Lord Eddard.
”

  Mendez jotted down the number and name in his spiral notebook.

  “He said it weren’t his job to keep an eye on Ballencoa. That was up to the police.”

  “Were they around much?” Mendez asked. “The police?”

  “At first they came ’round, but then the perv threatened to sue, and that was the end of that. Never mind if he makes off with some young lady from the high school or kills his cranky old neighbor. God forbid he should sue the city.

  “It’s a sad day when the criminals have more rights than the rest of us,” she said.

  “But as far as you know, Mr. Ballencoa never got into any trouble?” Hicks asked.

  She frowned, clearly disappointed. “Not that I’m aware. Although he might have been up to something before I went away to Australia.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because there was a strange car in the neighborhood a week or so before I left,” she said. “I didn’t like it. I thought maybe it was some thief casing the neighborhood. The car was sitting at the curb across the street one day, so I marched right over to it and asked the man what his business was.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Told me he was a special investigator with the police.”

  Mendez shared a glance with his partner. According to Detective Neri, the SLOPD hadn’t been watching Ballencoa at all. As far as Neri had known, Roland Ballencoa was still living next door to Mavis Whitaker.

  “Did he show you a badge?” Hicks asked.

  “Not a badge,” she said. “But he opened an ID.”

  “What did it say?”

  “I couldn’t say,” she admitted. “Didn’t have me readers on. I figured it was all right or he wouldn’t have shown it to me. Right?”

  “You didn’t happen to get a license plate number on the car, did you?” Mendez asked.

  “Of course I did.” She set her address book aside on the desk and took up a purple spiral notebook. “I wrote it down the first time I saw the car, of course. A strange car in the neighborhood—that’s the first thing I do as part of the watch. I write it all down in my book here.”

  She turned through the pages, looking for the right one. Each page had the date written at the top in spidery old-lady handwriting. Notes were jotted down on each page, with the time of day noted beside each entry.

  “Here it is,” she said, and she read off the tag number aloud.

  Mendez put it in his notebook.

  They thanked Mavis Whitaker for her time and her diligence and left the house.

  “Why wouldn’t Neri have said they had started watching Ballencoa again?” Mendez said as they walked back to the car. “After all the shit I gave him?”

  “I’ve gotta think he would have,” Hicks said. “If he’d had a way of not looking like a slacker, I think he would have taken it.”

  “Me too.”

  They got back into the car and sat there for a moment, both of them letting the wheels turn in their brains.

  “He wasn’t a cop,” Mendez declared, starting the car. “Let’s go find a pay phone.”

  12

  From the corner of her eye, Leah watched her mother come into the kitchen. She said nothing, just kept her head down as she brought food to the breakfast table. Hard-boiled eggs, orange juice, a bowl of sliced melon.

  Her mother looked terrible. Leah knew why.

  Her own eyes had been puffy and red when she got up. She had held a cold cloth over them for a long time before coming downstairs. If her mother had done the same, it hadn’t worked.

  Leah remembered when her mom had been beautiful. She could have been a model or an actress. Her eyes were so blue, her dark hair as smooth and shiny as hair in a shampoo commercial. Now there was gray in her hair and lines beside her eyes and around her mouth. Her skin was pale and dull. Her hand was trembling as she reached for a coffee cup.

  “Mom, do you want juice?”

  “No,” she said without looking over.

  “Do you want an egg?”

  “No.”

  “Do you w—”

  “I just want coffee,” her mother snapped, then touched a hand to her forehead and closed her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, staring down at the coffee cup. “I’m just going to have coffee and some toast.”

  Nerves crawled around in Leah’s stomach. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, sweetheart.”

  “You don’t look fine. You look sick.”

  Her mother pretended not to hear her as she poured a splash of cream into the coffee and added sugar. She closed her eyes again as she used both hands to raise the cup to her lips.

  Leah took her seat at the table and chose an egg from the bowl.

  “You should have an egg or something,” she said, though she didn’t crack her own. She just played with it, turning it this way and that on her plate.

  Her mother set the cup down and put a slice of bread in the toaster.

  “You always used to tell Leslie and me that breakfast was the most important meal—”

  “Leah, please!” her mother snapped. “I don’t want a lecture. I want a piece of toast.”

  “Did you sleep last night?” Leah asked. “You look like you didn’t.”

  “I went back to work for a while.”

  It didn’t seem to occur to her that maybe Leah hadn’t slept either. Sometimes Leah thought it didn’t even register with her mother that she had gone through the same experience her parents had when Leslie was taken.

  They had lost a daughter. Leah had lost her sister. They had at least been able to try to do something about it. Daddy had gone out on every search, but Leah hadn’t been allowed to go out with the search parties. Her mother had thrown herself into the volunteer center, making flyers and posting them all over the place. Leah thought she could have helped put the flyers out, but no one would let her.

  She had been sent to her grandparents’ house to stay out of the way. She had hardly seen her mother or her father for the first month Leslie was gone. It had been as if the only daughter they had was the one that was missing, and they forgot about the one right there, the one that hadn’t broken the rules, the one that hadn’t been grounded and gone out anyway.

  Her mother came to the table with her coffee and a small plate with a piece of dry toast lying on it. She sat down and stared at the toast. She probably wouldn’t eat it. Or she would take two bites and leave it. Leah silently slid the jar of apricot preserves over to her. Her mother didn’t seem to notice.

  “Are you having a lesson today?” her mother asked, but not in a way like she was really interested. It was more like she was just saying something to fill the silence, and maybe she wasn’t even paying attention or listening for an answer.

  It made Leah feel uneasy.

  “Yes,” she said. Of course she was having a lesson. She had a lesson every weekday but Monday, when the barn was closed. Her mother knew that.

  “How’s Bacchus doing?”

  “He’s fine.”

  Bacchus was Leah’s own horse. When Daddy had died, his polo ponies had been sold off to the Gracidas and to Uncle Bump, but Leah had been allowed to keep her horse.

  She had been terrified Bacchus would be sold too. She would have died of a broken heart if she had lost him. After Daddy’s accident, she had felt like Bacchus was the only real friend she had in the whole world. He was certainly the only one who allowed her to feel what she was feeling without judging her or telling her she shouldn’t feel this or she shouldn’t think that. He never judged her when she wanted to blame Leslie for ruining all of their lives. She could always go to Bacchus and bury her face against his big, thick neck and cry, and he would nuzzle her hair and breathe his warm, velvety breath on her neck, and she would feel comforted.

  “What time should I pick you up this afternoon?” her mother asked.

  Leah took a deep breath and held it. Now was the time. She needed to ask. She dreaded asking. She knew her mother would say no. There was
probably no point in asking. Really, she should just not even go there, and avoid the whole unpleasant experience. But even as she thought that, her mouth started moving and words spewed out in a rush.

  “Wendy’s mom is going out of town and so she’s staying with Mrs. Leone and she asked me to come and stay too and Anne said it was fine with her, so can I? Please?”

  Her mother looked at her as if she’d only just realized Leah was sitting there. “You want to do what?”

  Oh God.

  Should she just say never mind? Nothing?

  But her lips began to move and words came out.

  “Wendy’s mom is going out of town,” she said, her heart beating faster even as the words came out slower. “So Wendy is staying overnight with Mrs. Leone, and she asked me to come and stay too. Can I?”

  She braced herself so she wouldn’t flinch when her mother snapped at her.

  But her mother didn’t snap at her. She stared at Leah for a moment, then went back to staring at the toast. She was silent for so long Leah began to wonder if she was ever going to respond. Finally she did.

  “Is it all right with Mrs. Leone?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  Leah held her breath. She hadn’t been allowed to stay with a friend since forever. The prospect of having her mother say yes was like dawn breaking, like a cell door opening.

  “I’ll have to speak to Anne directly,” her mother said.

  She was thinking about it, Leah could see.

  Come on, Mom, say yes, say yes, say yes . . .

  If she could have read her mother’s mind, she would have been coming up with counterpoints to every argument against letting her go, but she had no idea what her mother was thinking as she stared at her toast.

  Finally her mother said, “All right.”

  Leah practically gasped for air. The shock rendered her speechless.

  “I’ll pick you up at the barn—”

  “You don’t have to. Wendy is coming out this afternoon. Anne is bringing the kids out to watch her ride. We’ll all go back in Anne’s car.”