by G. M. Ford
I parked the Fiat in a wide turnout facing the northbound interstate traffic and walked diagonally back across Hubbell to 905, a five-story blond brick block of a building, dwarfed by the surrounding jungle of steel and concrete, as dated and out of place as a flapper at fetish night. The leadedglass transom read, "The Ivy. 1927."
The door security system told me that Karen Mendolson lived in 505 and that the manager, Gladys Skeffington, was in 166. I rang 166 and was instantly greeted with a harsh buzzer and the sound of the automatic lock snapping back. I stepped inside onto the wild purple floral carpet and followed the signs around the corner to the left.
Gladys Skeffington was waiting for me in her apartment door. She was about seventy, wearing a mumu in a bright orange floral print. Her rolled and segmented arms and legs seemed to be sewn to the edges of the garment, allowing the rest of her to remain completely at large, moving apparently at random beneath the three acres of bright fabric like an overheated Lava Lamp.
Either she had considerably overestimated the surface area of her lips, or she considered the application of lipstick to be a far more creative enterprise than most. Horizontally it reached nearly around to her ears; vertically it ended just beneath her nose. Under other circumstances, the abundance of makeup could have lent a festive effect. Her facial expression suggested otherwise.
''Wadda you want?'' Her voice was an octave lower than mine. I found myself totally at a loss for words. She stood there slowly chewing on her gums, looking up at me. Strings like little brown rubber bands connected her lips as she worked them up and down.
"I'm looking into the disappearance of Karen Mendolson."
"Who says she's disappeared?"
"The people down where she works are concerned. She hasn't -"
"What would those two yo-yos know?" She went back to her chewing.
"I was hoping that maybe you could "
"Why should I?" More chewing. I looked away.
"Why not?" Two could play at this game.
"I already told those other two idiots."
"How about making it three?"
She looked me up and down twice.
"Well, you're a bit on the beat-up side, but you're still better-looking than those other two," she said finally.
I gave her my best Boy Scout posture. "At your service."
She waved a ridged finger in my face. "Don't be gettin' smarmy with me neither, Buster. Like I'm some old fart. Just because I've got some wear on my tires don't mean I'm ready for the junkyard."
I hunched my shoulders and silently denied all.
Unconvinced, she tapped me twice with the finger. "I could still leave the likes of you for dead. Wadda you think of that?"
"I think maybe you overestimate both of us," I said.
She managed a small smile. "We'll see." She pulled the door open, turned her back, and shuffled into the room. I took this as an invitation and followed her in. She stopped, turned, and looked at me.
"Wait here. I'll make some tea," she said, massaging her gums. She moved me aside and headed back the way we'd come toward what I presumed to be the kitchen.
Hermetically sealed. The place smelled of fresh cabbage and dead skin. Narrow paths were worn into the minuscule areas not covered by furniture. The furniture and lamp shades were covered in plastic. The plastic gave me the impression that maybe the likes of me wasn't allowed up on the furniture, so I stood and waited.
Turned out I wasn't. She reappeared five minutes later with a tray. After surveying the room, she reluctantly waved me toward a plastic-wrapped wing chair and without further ado began serving me something green in a blue bucket. Actually, it was a huge blue cup. The matching saucer was half the size of a hubcap. I felt like Alice.
She settled herself on the couch. She smelled of dust and potted violets. "What's your interest in this, Bosco? You're sure as hell no librarian like those other two."
I produced a business card from my pocket and handed it to her.
"A private dick, huh?"
"On my better days."
"Why would a private dick be looking for Karen Mendolson?"
"I can't really say. But I assure you "
She slurped a mouthful of tea with such force that it sounded like she was gargling. "Don't matter," she said when she'd swallowed. "I know just about nothin' about her except she had good references and she paid her rent on time. Quiet girl. Kept to herself. Never had any trouble with her. Wish to God they were all like that girl."
"Nothing?" I probed.
"Nope," she said. "Nobody knows anything about anybody else anymore. They're all strangers to each other. They live here, all huddled up together, but alone. They nod at each other in the halls. That's it."
"How long has she lived here?"
"Since eighty-six, when they buried us alive."
"She moved in after the construction?"
"We my husband Jack was still alive then we had to come way down on the rents. Lost most of our long-term tenants. There used to be a nice little peekaboo view of the Sound from four and five." She narrowed her eyes. "Now it's like being in Sing Sing."
"So she was a good tenant?"
"Oh yeah." She nodded. "Still is. Real unusual these days. Back before we was buried alive, people used to stay in one place for a while. Most of the folks we had then had been here the better part of ten years. Can't replace tenants like that, you know. Not all this running from place to place you got now." She waved her pleated arms. "Going here. Transferred there. Moving in with my boyfriend. You name it. Seems like nobody grows roots anymore. I should have more of them like the Mendolson girl. Settled. Steady."
"That's the problem," I said.
She stopped the cup halfway to her mouth. "What?"
"I get the same story from the people she works with."
"What story is that?" she asked.
"That she's a real reliable person. That it's not at all like her to be missing for a week or so without telling anybody."
"So?"
"So, they're worried about her."
"So what do you want from me?"
"I'd like to have a look at her apartment."
She shook her head. "Can't do that. She's paid up." She put her cup on the table. "Hell, she's paid up through the end of next month."
"Next month?"
"Last time she paid, she paid for two months."
"Did she usually do that?"
"Hell, no. First time. I was " A cloud of confusion darkened her face. "I thought maybe she was going on vacation or something."
I waited. She retrieved her cup and inhaled another quart I of tea.
"You think something might have happened to her?"
"I have no way of knowing. I just started on this, but I think missing ten days of work without telling anybody is way outside this woman's usual behavior pattern."
"Like paying advance rent."
"That just makes it worse."
She mulled it over. Again, she wagged a meaty finger in my direction. "You're smoother than you look," she said. "You're trying to scare me, aren't you? That's, what you're trying to do."
"I'm being straight with you."
"I don't like the idea of busting up somebody's privacy. It's bad for business. This is a real quiet building. That's what these people want."
"I don't like the idea much either," I said. "But I'm thinking that I'd rather make a mistake by being too damn concerned and pushing my nose in where it's not needed than by sticking my head in the sand and pretending nothing's wrong. That's the attitude gets people killed in full view of thirty of their fellow citizens. I think I can live with being a busybody a whole lot easier than I can live with any of the other possibilities."
She swirled the tea in her cup. First one way, then the other. Then back the other way. "I wish you hadn't said that," she said finally.
"Why's that?"
" 'Cause that's just what I've been thinking about ever since those two gals came here." She banged her cup ba
ck into the saucer. "Matter of fact, I haven't slept a wink all week thinking about it."
She stood and snatched both cups from the table. Mine, still full, sloshed over into the saucer and onto her thumb. She looked me in the eye. "You won't touch anything. You'll just look around?"
I gave her Scout's honor. She nearly threw the tray at me.
"I'll get the key," she said. "You wait right here."
Karen Mendolson's living room furniture was arranged in the middle of the room, facing in at itself. White couch, I matching chairs and ottoman. If you looked closely, they had a subtly embossed pattern in blue and burgundy. Glasstopped coffee and end tables. Just beginning to collect noticeable dust. Brass lamps. A peach and baby blue imitation oriental rug covered most of the oak plank floor. Matching little rug in front of the slider. Antique oak sideboard on the left-hand wall. Entertainment center on the right. Several old Bumbershoot posters were framed on the walls.
I tilted the chairs back and looked underneath for a stray magazine or a slipper. I looked down in the cushions. Not even crumbs. I walked softly over to the entertainment center and opened the double doors beneath the television. About forty CDs were arranged alphabetically in an oak carousel. Heavy on the Neil Diamond and James Taylor. Ten or twelve classical cassette tapes, also alphabetized. A videotape of The Jane Fonda Workout. A boxed set of Gone with the Wind. Fonda before Gone.
I went over to the sideboard and opened the drawers on top. The family silver was neatly arranged in the little compartments. A little off-color, but still silver. Napkin rings, lace tablecloths, place mats, finger bowls. Underneath, the family china was arranged according to height. Little hooks for the little cups.
After rummaging my way through the kitchen, I headed down the hall toward the bedroom. Small, feminine bathroom on the right. I stepped in. Little ornate soaps in a crystal dish on the counter. Matching pink toilet cover and throw rug. Flamingos cavorted on the glass shower door. Beneath their watchful red eyes, I went through the room carefully. Nothing in the drawers of the vanity except used over-the-counter medicines. The only toothbrush was still sealed in its plastic case. No toothpaste. No makeup case. No Q-Tips. No cotton balls. No deodorant. Having already answered my first question, I headed down the hall.
The bedroom was all the way down on the left. All yellow and white. The yellow bedspread looked Mexican and matched the drapes. The carpet was off-white. More framed posters of Seattle events. There were three dressers, a makeup table, and a rustic cedar chest at the foot of the bed.
The first dresser was for underwear and stockings. I hate going through women's drawers. It never fails to make me feel shabby. I did it anyway. When I finished, I walked over and checked the laundry hamper in the corner of the room. Empty. Either Karen Mendolson managed to get by with only three pair of frayed cotton panties, or her underwear stash was elsewhere.
The next dresser was for accessories. Purses, belts, scarves, and a number of esoteric items I couldn't identify. I took my time. Nothing in any of the purses except a wad ded-up tissue and a tampon applicator. I mentally added tampons to my list of things that were conspicuously missing from the bathroom.
The third dresser wasn't a dresser at all, but slid apart on silent rollers to reveal a cleverly designed computer workstation. A gray Hewlett-Packard printer sat forlornly on the lower shelf. Everything else even vaguely electronic was gone. To the left, where the dust outline of the computer was still visible on the desk, a black-and-white plastic box held about twenty diskettes. To the right, a black wrought-iron gizmo kept bills neat and tidy with a series of metal clothespins. I riffled through the bills. Heat, electric, the Bon, Nordstrom, a Seafirst Bankcard, a credit account at Computer City. All paid in full. I pocketed them. As an afterthought, I popped open the plastic case, stuffed the diskettes into the inside pocket of my jacket, and started for the door.
10
"Mr. James is with a client, Mr. Waterman. But we have instructions to put you through no matter what. So, if you'll hold, it may be a minute or so."
"Thanks," I said.
I gritted my teeth through three minutes of Bobby Vinton singing "Roses Are Red, My Love."
Jed rescued me. "Yeah, Leo."
"A quick report. Let's start with the fact that the girl definitely left town on her own."
"You sure?"
"Trust me, my man. She took her computer and her phones with her, and I'm not talking laptops and cellulars here. I'm talking full-size computers and hardwired phones. She's moved in someplace."
"Shit." "Her personal things are missing, too. She's neat. She took out the garbage. She emptied the refrigerator. She's gone."
"What now?"
"We're going to need to spend a little money."
"Oh?"
"I've spent all last evening going through her personnel file and her personal correspondence. She's got a father and a brother living on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We're going to need to send somebody up there to see if she's showed up."
"You know somebody?"
"I did a little contract work last year for a PI in Detroit named Tim Miller. I was thinking I'd contact him."
"What do you figure for cost?"
"Depending on traveling time, it's no more than a couple of days' work for a good man. Just long enough to talk to the neighbors and tradesmen. You know. Has either of them upped his egg order from a dozen a week to two, that sort of thing. Out in the country, it won't take very long. Everybody knows everybody else's business."
"Do it. Anything else?"
"I gave my cousin Paul her credit card information. He's gonna run it through the bank's system to see if she's been using them. Maybe get us a lead that way."
"What do we do while this is going on?"
"We wait."
"I hate it," Jed groused.
"I understand. This is the kind of thing for which the cops are best qualified. Our little private search is either going to play itself out in the next week or so, or it's not going to play itself out at all."
"Okay. Okay. Listen, I gotta go."
"Later," I said.
I returned the phone to its cradle and massaged my neck with both hands. Last night, after watching the Sonics whip the Portland Trailwhiners, I'd fallen asleep at the kitchen table with the Mendolson and Terry lives spread out beneath me. It was like a bad horror movie. I'd dreamed of being pursued. I'd dreamed of my father. I was being chased through an enormous old house, a mansion really.
The place was thick with cobwebs and oily gray dust. The furniture was covered with smudged white sheets. I don't know who was chasing me, but the house was riddled with secret passages and hiding places, stairs and chutes to nowhere, moving walls. I was looking for a door to the outside. No matter how many times I went up and down the stairs, I never entered the same room twice. Every door led to a new room. All the while, my old man was on the sidelines exhorting me, pushing me on. "Don't let 'em get you, Leo!" he'd yell as I raced by. "They're gaining on you, kid. Pick it up! Pick it up!" I could outrun my pursuers, but I couldn't stay ahead of the old man. No matter where I went, he was there on the sidelines, a small American flag stuffed in his big fist, shoving me onward. "Pump those arms, my boy; pump those arms," he chanted.
I was still running when I jerked myself perpendicular at six-thirty this morning to find my entire body tied in a throbbing knot. Why wasn't I surprised when the twisted form in the bathroom mirror bore a striking resemblance to Quasimodo. Arrrrrrgh. For want of either a peasant girl or a bell rope, I shuffled in to bed.
By eleven-thirty, I'd staged a minor recovery. Five hours supine, a full pot of coffee, and a half-hour shower had loosened me sufficiently to facilitate sitting upright and dialing the telephone. I would, however, never play the piccolo again.
My first call had been to Ron Tubbs. Ron was in the third year of a five-year plan to put his twin daughters Kathy and Katie through Whitworth College, a plan of sufficient fiduciary magnitude to hasten lesser Kuwait
i princes to the welfare line and, it goes without saying, definitely a bit much for a guy who works for the Department of Licensing. That's why I and every other freelance, skip trace, bail jump, no-account operative who needs any official information connected even vaguely with motor vehicles immediately calls old Ron. A mind is a terrible thing to waste. Or vice versa.
He had one of those stubby drawls indigenous to northwestern Florida. "Wadda ya need?"
"I need a driver's license picture."
"Current?"
"Old. Ten, fifteen years."
"That there is iffy and a full unit, my friend."
I figured that my current financial status could weather a hundred bucks for idle curiosity. "All right," I said.
"Tell me, podna."
I read him what I'd copied from the presumptive death certificate.
"Raymond, Washington. Where in holy hell is that?" he asked.
"It's down there on the way to Astoria, isn't it? You know, like when you go down to Seaside, Oregon. Like that."
"I do believe you're right, old buddy. Now, what would that be? Grays Harbor or Pacific County?"
"Pacific, I think."
"'That's even more iffy, then. Those rednecks are fresh outta the twelfth century. Paper clips are high tech to those old boys."
"Do what you can," I said. "Put anything you get in a FedEx envelope and next-day it to me. I'll next-day back and pay both ways."
"It's a done deal, champ," he said before hanging up.
On a lark, I called information and asked for Raymond, Washington. "Have they got a newspaper?" I asked.
I could hear the tick-tick of buttons being pushed.
"There's a Willapa Harbor Herald."
"Could you connect me?"
"Certainly, sir."