by Sue Grafton
"He still had contacts in town."
"So she ended up living with her mom again?"
"Not for long. Sally Mellincamp died in a house fire the next year and a local family took Liza in. Charlie Clements was a good guy and didn't want to see her sucked into the foster care system. He owned the auto-repair shop in Serena Station that I bought when he retired in 1962. Liza married his son."
"So everything connects."
"One way or another; it sure looks that way."
Steve was called out to the service bay, but he urged me to stay where I was until my car was ready. His office was small and utilitarian — metal desk, metal chair, metal files, and the smell of oil. Parts manuals and work orders were stacked up everywhere. I took advantage of the moment to review my index cards, playing with the information every way I could. A moment would come when everything would lock into place (she said bravely to herself). Right now, the bits and pieces were a jumble, and I couldn't quite see where any of them fit.
It was Winston's confession I kept coming back to. For years he'd kept quiet about seeing Violet's car. Now I realized how lucky I was his wife was booting him out. Because he was pissed with her, all bets were off, and he felt no compunction about spilling the beans. If I'd talked to him a day earlier, he might not have said a word. It was a lesson I needed to keep in mind: People change, circumstances change, and what seems imperative one day becomes insignificant the next. The reverse is true as well.
* * *
My VW was returned within the hour, my tires looking as crisp and clean as brand-new shoes. In addition, I saw that someone had treated me to a complimentary car wash. The interior now smelled new, thanks to a deodorant tag hanging from the rearview mirror. I caught sight of Steve Ottweiler as I was pulling out and gave him a wave.
Heading west on Main, I realized I wasn't that far from the neighborhood where Sergeant Schaefer lived. I took the next right-hand turn and circled back, parking out in front of his house as I had on my earlier visit. When he didn't answer my knock, I followed the walkway around the side of the house to the rear, at the same time calling his name. He was in his workshop and when he heard my voice, he peered out the open doorway and motioned me in.
I found him perched on a stool with a miter box and clamps on his workbench. He'd cut lengths of framing and he was gluing them together. Today he wore denim overalls, and his white hair pushed out like foam from under a black baseball cap.
"I expected to find you working on a chair."
"I finished that project and haven't yet started on the next. These days, I'm so tied up with hobbies, it's lucky I don't work or I'd never fit it all in. What brings you this way?"
"I thought I'd give you an update." I told him about my tires, my call to the sheriffs department, and my subsequent visit to Steve Ottweiler's shop.
"Sounds like you're making someone sweat."
"That's my take on it. The problem is, I have no idea who or how."
"Tell me what you've done and maybe we can figure it out."
I filled him in on my interviews, starting with Foley Sullivan, saying, "I hate to admit it, but I thought Foley made a pretty good case for himself."
"Sounding sincere is a speciality of his. What about the others?"
"Well, the people I've talked to fall into two categories: those who think Violet's dead — you, me, and her brother, Calvin — and those who think she's alive, namely Foley, Liza, and possibly Daisy. I'm not sure where Chet Cramer stands on the question. I forgot to ask."
"Too bad we can't just put it to a vote," he said. "I can see how Liza and Daisy ended up in the same boat. Neither wants to entertain the idea that Violet's gone for good."
"Maybe we're the cynics, assuming she's dead when she might be alive and well and living in New York."
"Can't rule that out."
I went on down the list, telling him what Winston had confessed about seeing Violet's car.
Schaefer said, "I've been thinking about that car. Couple of us old retirees get together for dinner once a month and talk about the old days. I was telling them about you and what you're up to. The one fellow worked Auto Theft, and he said if the Bel Air landed in a junk yard, the VIN might have been stripped off and switched to another vehicle. You want to make a stolen car disappear, that's how you go about it. The beauty of it is it then allows you to register a stolen car as salvage. You claim you bought some old clunker and fixed it up and who's going to be the wiser? They call 'em ghost cars. Any rate, next day I phoned the SO and had one of the deputies read off the vehicle identification number from Violet's Bel Air."
"You had that?"
"Oh, sure. Chet Cramer gave it to us in one of the early interviews. I called up the Sacramento DMV and had them do a computer search. They show no record of the VIN. Dang. For a minute, I was hoping for a hit, but the car's never surfaced, which sets me back to the notion it was shipped overseas."
"You're assuming the number Cramer gave you was correct," I said. "All he had to do was alter one digit and the computer would spit it back as a no match."
"That's a troubling possibility. You'll be careful?"
"I will."
"And keep me in the loop."
I assured him I'd be doing that as well.
* * *
I stopped at a delicatessen and picked up some sandwiches and Cokes, then took Highway 166 out of Santa Maria until it intersected New Cut Road. By now the route was familiar and I drove with only half my attention focused on the road. With the balance of my mental energy, I was sifting through the miscellany I'd collected over the past two days. I wasn't much wiser but at least I was getting all the players sorted out.
I reached the Ottweiler property at 11:15. Tannie's contractor had arrived early, and he pulled into the driveway the same time I did. She introduced him as Bill Boynton, one of the two Padgett had suggested the night before. I told her about the sandwiches I'd brought and then left her alone to chat with him while I took the opportunity to tour the interior of the house. From the porch, I could see two guys working at the edge of the property, cutting heavy brush as she had. A swath had now been cleared from the foundation to the depth of the yard. The ground looked naked and apologetic without all the high weeds, brambles, and old shrubs.
Even at first glance, I found myself agreeing with Padgett, who considered the place beyond redemption. No wonder her brother was urging her to sell. The first floor had all the charm of an inner-city tenement. I could see touches of former splendor — ten-inch crown molding, beautifully plastered ceilings with ornate medallions and cornices as delicate as cake icing — but in most rooms, decades of leakage and neglect had taken their tolls.
When I reached the stairs, I began to pick up the acrid scent of charred wood, and I knew that the floors above would be damaged not only by the fire, but by the water from the firemen's hoses. I went up, following a once beautiful oak banister that was now dingy with soot and age. A fine layer of broken glass crunched underfoot, making my progress audible. Fixtures had been stripped. In the largest of the bedrooms at the front of the house, I was momentarily startled by what appeared to be a vagrant curled up in one corner. When I moved closer, I could see that the 'body' was an old sleeping bag, probably left by a drifter taking shelter uninvited. In the large walk-in linen closet, I could still see labels written in pencil on the edges of the shelves — SINGLE SHEETS, DOUBLE SHEETS, PILLOW CASES — where the maids had been directed to place the freshly laundered linens.
The third floor was inaccessible. Yellow CAUTION tape had been stretched across what was left of the stairs. Gaping holes in the stairwell traced the course of the fire as it ate its way through the rooms above. There was something unbearably creepy about the ruin everywhere. I returned to the second floor and made a circuit, pausing at many of the windows to take in the view. Aside from the field across the road, there wasn't much to see. One field over, a new crop of some kind was sprouting through layers of plastic sheeting that served t
o keep the weeds down. The illusion was of ice. Closer to the house, Tannie's battle with the brush had uncovered meandering brick paths and a truck garden now choked with weeds. During the summer, a volunteer tomato plant had resurrected itself, and it sprawled over a wooden bench, cherry tomatoes in evidence like little red ornaments on a Christmas tree. I could see the outlines of former flower beds and trees stunted by lack of sun for all the overgrowth.
To the left, at an angle, I gazed down at an ill-defined depression that might have been a sunken pool, or the remnant of an old septic system. There wouldn't have been sewer lines in place in the early 1900s when the house was built. A mound of newly cleared snowball bushes was visible along one edge. The uprooted plants boasted once bright blue blossoms as big as heads of cabbage. I felt bad at the sacrifice of bushes that had grown so impossibly grand.
In the side yard of the lot where our trailer had sat, my aunt had planted hydrangeas much the same color, though not quite so lush as these had been. The neighbor's hydrangeas were a washed-out pink, and Aunt Gin took delight in her superior blooms. The secret, said she, was burying nails in the soil, which somehow encouraged the shift from pink to the rich blue shade.
Afterward I felt I'd been incredibly dense, taking as long as I had to add that particular two plus two. I stared down at the cracked and slightly sunken oblong of soil and felt a flash, the sudden gelling of facts that hadn't seemed connected before. This was where Winston had last seen the car. Amid dirt mounds, heavy equipment, and orange plastic cones, he'd said. A temporary road barrier had been erected, denying access to through traffic. No sign of Violet, no sound from the dog, but from that night forward, the Bel Air was never seen again.
Perhaps because it was buried here. Maybe all these years, the rich blue hydrangeas had been feeding on the rust.
Chapter 20
* * *
I drove to the service station near Tullis and used the pay phone to call Schaefer. I told him what had occurred to me and asked how we might confirm or refute my hunch about the oblong depression in the earth. Schaefer was dubious but said he had a friend who owned a metal detector. He agreed to call the guy. If the guy could help, they'd meet us at the property as soon as possible. Failing that, he'd drive out on his own and assess the situation. I hadn't told Tannie what I was up to, but now that I'd set the wheels in motion, I worried I was making a colossal ass of myself. On the other hand, oh well. There are worse things in life and I've been guilty of most.
By the time I pulled up at the house again, she'd finished her business with Bill Boynton and he was gone. "Where'd you disappear to? I thought we were having lunch."
"Yeah, well, something's come up. I want you to take a look."
"Can't we eat first and then look?"
"This won't take long."
She followed me to the side yard and I pointed to the irregular rectangle that had attracted my attention. At ground level, the depression wasn't as defined as it appeared from above, especially with half-dead hydrangea bushes piled to one side. At close range, it looked more like a mole had been tunneling across the yard. The soil was uneven, but it took a bit of squinting to see that it was sunken in relation to the surrounding lawn. This was about the same as staring at the night sky, trying to identify Taurus the Bull by visualizing lines between stars. I never saw anything remotely resembling livestock, a failing I attributed to my paltry imagination. Yet here I was pointing like a bird dog, saying, "Know what that is?"
"Dirt?"
"Better than dirt. I think it's Violet Sullivan's grave."
Tannie stared down at her feet. "You're shitting me."
"Don't think so, but we'll find out."
We sat on the porch steps waiting for Tim Schaefer. Tannie had lost her appetite and neither of us was in the mood to talk. "But I got dibs on the braunschweiger once we get around to the sandwiches," she said.
At 1:10 Schaefer drove up in his 1982 Toyota and pulled into Tannie's drive with his metal-detecting pal. The two got out, car doors slamming in unison, and crossed to the porch. Schaefer carried a shovel and a long steel implement, like a walking stick with a point on one end. He introduced his friend, whose name was Ken Rice, adding a two-line bio so we'd know whom we were dealing with. Like Schaefer, he was a man in his early eighties, retired after thirty-eight years with the Santa Maria Police Department, working first as a motorcycle officer, then foot patrol, Narcotics, and later as the department's first K-9 officer. For the past twenty years, his passion had been the location and recovery of buried relics, caches of coins, and other forms of treasure. We shook hands all around and then Rice turned on his detector, which looked like the two halves of a toolbox, connected by a metal rod. "Let's see what we got."
The four of us trooped across the property to the side yard, me tagging behind Rice like a little kid. "How does that work?"
"System has a directional transmitter and directional receiver built into these interlocking cases. Powered up, it emits an electromagnetic field that penetrates the soil. This is the same equipment used by public-utility employees looking for pipes underground. When the search pattern encounters metal, the signal is interrupted and that generates an audio response."
"How far down?"
"The Fisher's capable of revealing a target as far down as twenty feet. Depending on soil mineralization and ground conditions, it's possible to detect an object even deeper."
When we reached the spot, the three of us watched as Rice swept the detector across the ground. He'd put on a headset, and I gathered the device made a continuous sound that grew louder when he made a find. On his first pass, I saw the needle on the gauge leap hard to the right and stay there as though glued. He pressed a hand to his ear, frowning to himself as he continued sweeping across the area. Having finished, he said, "You've got something the size of a boxcar down there."
I laughed. "We do?"
"Schaefer tells me you're looking for a car, but this might be something else."
"Such as what?"
"A dumpster, underground storage tank, a chunk of sheet metal roof."
"So now what?" I asked.
"That's what I'm trying to figure out."
He and Schaefer conferred and then Schaefer returned to his car, where he opened the trunk. He came back bearing a ball of twine and a plastic bag full of the golf tees he used in recaning chairs. While Rice made a series of passes with his box, Schaefer followed in his wake and stuck golf tees in the ground, roughly conforming to the signal Rice was picking up. Tannie and I each took a turn listening, passing the headset from one to the other. If Rice moved the device too far left or right, the tone diminished. Schaefer ran a line of twine from tee to tee. When they finished mapping, the string was laid out in a rectangle eighteen feet long by approximately eight feet wide. I could feel the skin pucker on my arms at the notion of an underground object of that size. It must be equivalent to sailing on the ocean and realizing a whale was on the verge of surfacing under your boat. The very proximity seemed ominous. Unseen and unidentified, it radiated an energy that had me edging away.
Schaefer picked up the metal bar he was using as a probe. He chose a spot and pushed down, leaning his weight into the rod. It sank eight inches, but not easily. The soil in this part of the state has a high clay content, larded with numerous rocks and sizeable sandstone boulders. This makes digging tedious under the best of circumstances. Strike a boulder with a shovel blade and the impact will reverberate all the way up your arms.
Rice added his weight to the job. The probe sank another foot and a half and stopped. He said, "What do you think?"
"Let's see if it's rock or we're hitting something else."
Schaefer took his shovel and set to work, cutting into the hard-packed topsoil. I'd thought the ground would yield, but it proved to be slow going. Twenty minutes of steady effort produced a trench eighteen inches wide and about three feet long. Frail roots were exposed and hung from the perpendicular sides of the cut like a living fringe. Th
e dirt pile beside the hole mounted.
At a depth of twenty-six inches, he made contact with an object, or a portion of an object. The four of us paused to stare.
"I've got a trowel if you want to dig by hand," Tannie said.
"Might be smart," Rice replied.
When she returned, she said, "May I?"
Schaefer said, "Have at it. It's your land."
Tannie got down on her hands and knees and began to scrape away the dirt. The object might have once been chrome though it was so badly rusted it was difficult to tell. I found myself tilting my head, saying, "What is that?"
By the time she'd dug down and cut an additional five inches, she'd uncovered something with a metal lip that extended over a shallow curve of glass. She looked up. "It's a headlight. Isn't it?"
Schaefer rested his hands on his knees and leaned closer. "I believe you're right."
Tannie scraped away another narrow trough of dirt, revealing what looked to be the rusted metal curve of a front right fender.
Rice said, "One of us better call the station and get some help out here."
* * *
By 3:00 there were eight officers at the site: an ID detective and a young deputy from the Santa Maria Sheriffs Department; a sergeant, two homicide detectives, and two nonsworn officers from Santa Teresa. In addition, an investigator had driven up from the State Crime Lab, which is located in Colgate, near the Santa Teresa Airport. A temporary parking area had been set up for official vehicles, including the crime scene van.
The first officer on the scene, the young Santa Maria deputy, had secured the area, relegating Schaefer, Ken Rice, Tannie, and me to a spot twenty-five yards away. Anyone in a secured crime scene is considered the same as a primary witness and might be asked to testify in court, which was why we were kept at such a distance. In addition, if this turned into a homicide investigation, there was always the risk that unauthorized persons might contaminate the site.