The Broken Promise Land

by Marcia Muller

  “You want to work on the investigation?” he asked with some surprise.

  “Of course. I’d love to be the one who finds her. I’d love to get my hands around her neck and strangle her!”

  “My fearless defender. I can use one right about now.” He actually was smiling when he went to make his call.

  Rae turned to me. “So where do we start?”

  “There’re multiple avenues to pursue. We’ll divide them up between you, Mick, and me, plus continue using Charlotte for the data search. I’ll take the more sensitive stuff that Mick shouldn’t be exposed to and that you probably don’t want to deal with.”

  “Such as?”

  “For openers, a motel up the coast in Ventura.”

  Mick didn’t want to come to the hotel suite Rae was sharing with his father, but I needed to outline strategy with both of them present. In the end, we met for a late lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe in central La Jolla. When my nephew arrived he said hello to me and nodded curtly to her. He sat where he wouldn’t have to make eye contact with her, and his body language was rigid.

  In the interests of harmony between the two members of my team I said to him, “You and Rae were good friends as recently as yesterday afternoon.”

  He picked up the menu and studied it.

  Even though I didn’t fully believe it myself, I added, “She’s the same person now that she was then.”

  He set the menu down and looked at her, eyes narrowed as if he were trying to detect some change, however slight.

  Rae asked, “How about it, Mick? Can we not let this get in the way of our friendship?”

  “By ‘this,’ you mean the fact that you’re fucking my father?”

  She winced.

  “Isn’t pretty when you tell it like it is, huh, Rae?”

  “Maybe that’s how it looks to you, but I really care for him. And I’m sorry you had to find out about it from a gossip column.”

  His angry gaze wavered. He looked down at the table, and for a moment his lips trembled like those of a small boy who has been horribly disappointed on Christmas morning.

  Rae added, “I know what it’s like to have your life torn up in about a dozen different ways.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes. Please don’t hate me, Mick. I couldn’t bear that.”

  He looked up again, face vulnerable and very young. “I don’t hate you, exactly. It’s more… I don’t know how to deal with you anymore. And… dammit, Rae, why didn’t you tell me yesterday, when you knew you’d be going to Arizona?”

  “Your dad didn’t want you to know.”

  “Secrets again! Christ, from what Mom and Jamie and Chris tell me, this family’s been harboring enough secrets to keep us all tongue-tied for eternity!”

  “Not anymore.”

  “No, not anymore.” He hesitated, then held out his hand to her. “Okay, I’ll try to deal with you. That’s all I can promise.”

  “That’s more than enough.” She clasped it and held tight.

  Mick added, “Do me one favor, will you? If it lasts and the two of you get married, don’t make me call you Mom.”

  Mick liked Ricky’s story even less than Rae and I did. I held nothing back, though, and, per his father’s instructions, didn’t try to sugarcoat it. He listened without comment, losing his appetite and pushing his food around with his fork. Finally he gave up on it, took out a small spiral notebook, and began jotting things down.

  “So that’s what happened,” I finished. “The leads we should pursue are obvious. I’ll take the motel in Ventura, and I’m going to co-opt an investigator I know in Austin to get background on Terriss. Which one of you wants to take what?”

  Mick said, “I’ll take the motorcycle accident. We’ll need the names of the investigating officers from Kurt, and I don’t think it’s a good idea for Rae to deal with him. He’s awfully fond of Mom and bound to be upset about the split and looking for somebody to blame it on. And I’ll talk with the fire-department investigators in Pacific Palisades.”

  Rae said, “That leaves me with the drug overdose. I’ll get on to the Denver PD, fly up there if I have to. And I’ll talk with the lawyer who called Ricky about the alleged plagiarism. He said Ethan should have the guy’s name, since he warned him that he might be calling.” She glanced at Mick. “Or should I steer clear of him, too?”

  “Hell, no. Ethan hates Mom. I think he hit on her once when she and Dad were going through a bad period, and she blew him off.”

  “Okay,” I said, “we’ve got our assignments. Mick, why don’t you go back to the Sorrento and talk with your dad? He said he’d answer any questions you have, and it would cheer him up to see you.”

  Mixed emotions crossed his face. I knew how he felt because I still held the same feelings inside myself. Then he shrugged. “Why not? I’ve declared a truce with the redhead here; might as well do the same with my own flesh and blood.”

  I’d never been prouder of him.

  Another challenge presented itself when I went back to the estate to check in with Hy and make some phone calls before leaving for Ventura. As I passed through the entry-way, my sister called to me from the living room. I went in and found her sitting on a sofa beside a tall slender man with a deep saltwater tan and silver-gray hair. Charlene looked rested and at ease; she’d applied makeup to cover the bruise on her cheek and was stylish in green silk pants and a gold sleeveless top.

  “Sharon, I want you to meet Vic Christiansen,” she said. “Vic, my sister, Sharon McCone.”

  Christiansen rose and shook my hand. He was not handsome like Ricky, but he had the same confident presence. What had my brother-in-law called it in contrast to his dead friend Benjy? Being comfortable in one’s own skin.

  He said, “It’s good to meet you. Thank you for being here for Charlene this weekend.”

  I wanted to dislike him on principle, this man whose appearance in my sister’s life had dealt the final blow to her marriage. But his presence here meant Charlene was getting on with her life; I’d better accept that, and accept the man she loved. So I unbent and gave Christiansen a real smile. “I didn’t do anything,” I told him. “She’s a strong woman, and she’s handling everything well.”

  He smiled down at her. “You see? Isn’t that what I just got through telling you?”

  “Two against one; I bow to the majority. Shar—have you made any headway on finding out who’s doing these things to us?”

  “Some, yes,” I said, wondering how much of the story Ricky had told her in their phone conversation.

  She sensed the unasked question. “He said he needed to explain some things in person, and that they’re pretty ugly. I’m not sure I want or need to know.”

  “It might be good to be prepared, in case there’s media coverage.”

  “There already has been; that ‘StarWatch’ column is syndicated in the paper down here.”

  “Another of those notes arrived too, slipped under Kurt’s office door this time.”

  Charlene shivered. “All the more reason I can’t go to China,” she said to Christiansen. “I’m not leaving my girls alone with only the housekeeper and a bunch of armed guards when there’s a crazy person on the loose.”

  “Love, believe me, the trip isn’t important.” He sat beside her again, touched her arm.

  I was quickly warming to my sister’s new man.

  After a moment Charlene said to me, “Curiosity may be in bad form, given the circumstances, but… this redhead—do you know her?”

  “… Yes.”

  “Is he with her now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is she important to him?”

  “I think so.”

  For a moment my sister looked as though she wanted to ask more. Then she shrugged and smiled at Vic—letting go.

  I found Hy in the office, conferring with one of the guards. A rifle lay on the desk between them.

  “Is that the sniper’s weapon?” I asked.

  They looked ar
ound, startled. “Could be,” Hy said. “Ironic thing is, it’s a Savage model three-forty, thirty-caliber, like the slug we found.”

  “Savage?”

  “Common sporting rifle.”

  “God, don’t tell me this lunatic is making a joke! Where was it?”

  “Near the wall that backs up on the north canyon.”

  Dropped by the shooter as he—or more likely, she—was escaping? No, that couldn’t be; the security system on that wall had not gone out. “How come it took so long to locate it? You’ve been combing the grounds for over twenty-four hours.”

  The guard said, “It was hidden pretty good—under a pile of leaves with a fallen tree trunk pushed over it. Only reason I noticed, the dirt was disturbed where the trunk was.”

  I frowned.

  Hy said, “Uh-huh.” To the guard he added, “Thanks. You can get back to your regular post now.”

  After he’d left, Hy sat down in the swivel chair. I perched facing him on a corner of the desk. “You’re thinking the same thing I am,” I said. “The rifle was deliberately concealed by somebody who remained on the property. Somebody who knew he or she couldn’t remove it or hide it in the house or a car. And in light of the gun’s manufacturer, I think we were supposed to find it. The perpetrator of this nasty game’s not only becoming more aggressive, but playful.”

  “Well, that narrows it down to a family member, Girdwood, Amory, or a band member.”

  “And that doesn’t fit with the new facts in the case.” I recapped them for him and added, “If it’s Terriss who’s behind all this, she’s got an accomplice who’s close to Ricky. One of the nine people who were here Saturday night. I think we can discount the family—which leaves us Girdwood, Ricky’s manager, who has no reason to want to bring him down.”

  “That we know of.”

  “… Okay, that leaves us Girdwood. And Amory. And the band. I’m more inclined to suspect one of them. Keim’s checking police records and credit histories on them; maybe she’ll come up with something that’ll point to one or the other.”

  Hy was thoughtful, running his fingers over his mustache. “McCone, I can understand a slow progression. Kill the guys who did whatever they did to her; burn down the house; start nasty rumors; tamper with Chris’s car; sic a sleazy lawyer on him. But what triggered those notes? What made her—if it is her—all of a sudden step up her campaign?”

  I’d been considering that on the drive over here, and I thought I knew the answer. “The first note arrived a week after the Billboard item on the new label appeared. It said ‘Whatever happened to my song?’ A phrase from a ballad performed by an artist who acknowledged Ricky’s help with her career in her liner notes.”

  “So?”

  “The logic’s skewed and the message is obscure, but it’s simple when you know who’s probably behind it. Terriss once thought she could blackmail him into leaving Charlene and making her a star. Now she thinks she can terrorize him into signing her to his new label.”

  Fifteen

  Five-thirty on a Monday afternoon. I had picked the absolute worst time to cross L.A.

  Or maybe there was no good time, I reflected as I sat at a dead stop under the Rosecrans Avenue overpass on the San Diego Freeway. I’d driven this route countless times since I moved north and had never breezed through the megalopolis; once I’d been stuck in an enormous traffic jam near Culver City at two in the morning.

  An hour later I finally reached the intersection with the Ventura Freeway. More dead stopping on the feed-in, but around Thousand Oaks traffic thinned some and I picked up speed. Soon I was out of the L.A. basin, and the air looked clearer. I rolled down the car’s window and sniffed it; cleaner, too. At a little before eight I took the California Street exit for Ventura and could smell the sea.

  Tourist areas of California beach towns share many characteristics, and Ventura’s was no exception: restaurants with oceanview dining; the ubiquitous T-shirt stands; too-cute shops and fast-food outlets; hotels and motels ranging from the luxurious to the shabby. The Spindrift Inn fit neither category. Tucked on a quiet side street not far from the marina, it consisted of twenty-some tan stucco bungalows set well back from the motel office and screened from one another by latticework overgrown by ivy. The perfect place for a lovers’ tryst—or a setup that could turn ugly.

  I pulled the rental car into a parking space marked “registration only” and sat for a moment, contemplating the place. Ricky had told me that Dan chose the location—knew the motel from weekends spent there with various women friends. I wondered, not for the first time, if Dan and Benjy had worked out in advance how to handle Patricia Terriss, or if they had come here prepared to let the confrontation play itself out in whatever direction it might take. Wondered, too, about my brother-in-law’s uncharacteristically passive role in the scenario and decided he hadn’t wanted to know his friends’ intentions because he hoped ignorance would somehow make him less culpable.

  Didn’t work that way, now did it, Ricky?

  I got out of the car and went into the office. The motel was clearly a mom-and-pop operation: Behind the counter a door opened into a cozy living room where an older couple were watching a rerun of “Law and Order.” I tapped the bell and the man, gaunt and stooped, got slowly up from his chair and hobbled out. His hands were gnarled and swollen with arthritis.

  I showed him my I.D., and he looked it over with interest, a gleam of excitement coming into his pale eyes. Then he glanced back at the living room, where the woman sat riveted to the fictional drama. He said nothing to her; the real-life drama was his, and he wasn’t about to share.

  I asked, “Are you the manager?”

  “Owner,” he replied with some pride.

  “And you owned the inn three years ago?”

  “Since the late seventies, when I took an early retirement.”

  “Three years ago on June twenty-ninth, a young woman registered here. Tall, willowy, waist-length light-brown hair, big green eyes. She may have given her name as Patricia Terriss. Any possibility you recall her?”

  “Three years is a long time, miss.”

  “She was quite beautiful, I’m told. Checked in alone, but someone may have joined her later on.”

  He glanced toward the living room again; a commercial had come on, and the woman had muted it. When he spoke it was in a whisper. “Well, I could check my records.”

  I slipped a twenty from my wallet and placed it on the counter. “I’ll be glad to pay for your time; I’m keeping you from your TV program.”

  He made a motion of refusal, but without turning her head the woman said, “Take the money, Harry.”

  Harry glared at her, took the twenty, and laboriously sat down at the desk below the counter. As he turned on the computer terminal his lips soundlessly formed the words “old bat.” He began clumsily tapping the keys to access the old records; after a moment he said, “There it is—June twenty-nine, nineteen ninety-two. Three couples, one family, three single males. No single woman. No Patricia Terriss.”

  “May I look?”

  He swiveled the screen toward me.

  I scanned the names, stopped at the listing for Mr. and Mrs. Ricky Savage, at the old address in Pacific Palisades. Ricky had told her to register under her own name. Was this her idea of a joke, or a way of trying to impress the motel owner?

  I said, “The Savage couple—did they arrive together or separately?”

  Something flickered in his eyes; perhaps he was only now connecting the name with the celebrity. “I really don’t recall.”

  I scanned the screen again, took down the Texas license-plate number of Terriss’s Chevy Camaro. “Are you sure you don’t remember the woman? She was the one who registered, and she was quite striking.”

  Harry shook his head, but his eyes shifted away, as though he was remembering something. From the living room, the woman said, “You might as well tell her. Better a private eye than a cop.”

  He slumped over the desk, both ner
vous and deflated. Even with the TV going again his wife had managed to follow the real-life drama as well. After a moment he said, “You keep talking about her in the past tense. Is she dead?”

  Odd question. “Not that I know of. Why?”

  He hesitated, running the tip of his tongue over dry lips.

  The woman said, “I told you somebody would come around asking someday.”

  “Shut up.”

  “We should’ve reported—”

  “Shut up!”

  “Look,” I said quickly, “I’m not going to involve the police in this. That’s the last thing my client wants.”

  He frowned, glanced back at his wife for help. She still faced the TV. Finally he sighed. “Okay, the woman came in around six o’clock, paid cash for one night. She said she was meeting her husband. I got the idea she expected some reaction from me, and that struck me as peculiar because a lot of couples come in separately. Maybe she wasn’t married to him and was nervous because she thought I’d care.”

  No, as I’d surmised, she expected him to recognize Ricky’s name. Thank God Harry wasn’t a country fan! “Go on, please.”

  “That’s all there is.”

  “Harry, if you don’t tell her, she will go to the cops, and that kind of attention this place doesn’t need.”

  I took another twenty from my wallet and laid it on the counter. This time Harry pocketed it without hesitation, putting a cautioning finger to his lips. “Okay, the woman was strange. Those big eyes were all jumpy and intense, and she smiled at the wrong times. She went to the bungalow, then called down here asking how to dial long distance. I told her I’d have to place the call and ask for time and charges, since she hadn’t put the room on a credit card. She didn’t like that, but she made the call anyway and came down right afterward to pay for it.”

  I looked at the charges listed on the screen; the call had been to the 213 area code—the phone at Transamerica’s offices where Ricky said he’d waited to hear from her. “When did her husband join her?” I asked.

  Harry shrugged.