by Lisa Jackson
“I heard you were close to her.”
“But from whom?”
“Mrs. Holcomb at Wembley Grade School. She said you were like her mentor.” That was a stretch, but an easy guess, Ravinia felt.
“Well . . . Elizabeth was an interesting person.” Bernice seemed to be weighing how much to say. “I got a couple Christmas cards from her after she graduated. I don’t know if I can help you.”
“She’s adopted and her birth mother, my aunt, is very ill,” Ravinia said, expanding on the lie. “I don’t know if Elizabeth even wants to see her, but I’d like to give her the information.”
That seemed to touch a chord. “Her family moved to Dana Point. I remember because the street, Del Toro, was familiar to me. I had a college friend from that area and we would take Del Toro to get to her house. Whether they’re still there, though . . . it’s been a few years.”
“Thank you,” Ravinia said.
A bell rang and Bernice glanced at her watch. “I’m sorry, is there anything else I can do for you?”
“No, there isn’t.”
“If you find her, say hi from me.”
“I will.”
Ravinia left using the staircase by the gym and hurrying down the empty stairs. Her footsteps echoed against the risers in a quick beat. At the first floor, she threw open the doors and pulled her cell phone from her pocket. Still enough minutes left.
At least I’ve found out where Elizabeth went after high school, Ravinia thought as she rounded the building again and walked along tree-lined streets.
She put in a call to Rex and relayed the information, to which he said, “Good work. I looked up as many R. L. Gaines and Lendel Gaines as I could find and there was an address in Dana Point on Del Toro. I could give a call now, but—”
“No way! We have to go there! It’s better in person. You said that.” Then, “Where’s Dana Point?”
After a brief hesitation, it sounded like he muttered, “Might as well see this to the end.”
“What?”
“Had to get gas. I’ll be outside Van Buren again in ten minutes.”
“Is Dana Point in California?”
“Yep. We can go today.”
Ravinia hung up with a smile on her face. She was a definite help to Rex and it felt like she was destined to be his investigative partner. She just had to convince him of that.
Chapter 25
The afternoon with Marg and Buddy Sorenson was more of the same. Though Marg loved the house she’d found on Zillow, Buddy was more interested in pointing out everything wrong with it. Elizabeth’s head was so full of other problems that their bickering barely registered. Eventually they all left and Marg sat in silence, fuming at her husband’s need to “put everything down” and be a “horse’s ass.”
Elizabeth split with them at the Suncrest parking lot and dropped them from her thoughts, her mind touching on when Gil Dyne had brought her back after lunch. His last words had chilled her.
“Strangest thing happened to me last night. I got sideswiped by this SUV. I was just driving along, and it swerved at me and scraped the side of my car before taking off. This one’s a rental.”
“Weird,” Elizabeth said.
“It was night, but the woman had sunglasses on. For a minute, I thought it was you.”
Elizabeth’s blood froze. “What color was the SUV?”
“A dark gray, almost black. Actually, I barely noticed. I was trying to see the driver.” He shrugged. “It seemed significant at the time, but maybe she was just drunk or something. I was mad enough to chase her, but by the time I got turned around, she was gone.”
“Do you know what make it was?”
“Ford Escape. That’s why I thought it was you. Vivian said you have an Escape.”
Elizabeth gathered up her purse and work from her desk, trying not to make too much of what he’d said. Was it a reach to think he was playing with her somehow? Making it up?
He said he loved you, but I think he did some bad things.
“Who is he, Chloe?” she asked aloud again, heading out the door and glad that for once, Pat was away from her desk and unable to see when she left.
“It’s public record,” Rex told Ravinia once she was back in his car. “Easy to find if you know what you’re looking for. R. Lendel Gaines is still the owner on record at the Del Toro address.”
“Let’s just get there.”
“Sure thing.” He was half-amused by her lack of tact when it came to him, especially since she seemed to be quite the little actress when she was trying to weasel information out of people.
By the time they reached the town house on Del Toro, it was midafternoon, shafts of sunlight attempting to pierce through the low-hanging clouds. They walked to the front door where a welcome mat in the shape of a cat covered the single step. Rex rang the bell. When no one answered, he rang it again. They heard nothing for a while, then finally the sound of heavy footsteps approaching. A second later the door was pulled open by a tall man who was in his late fifties or early sixties. A horseshoe of hair crowned his head, a few strands of red holding firm within the mostly gray mix. The bald part of his pate was as freckled as his suspicious face. Dark eyes peered at them over a hawkish nose. “Yes?”
“Ralph Lendel Gaines?” Rex asked.
“Who’s asking?” the man wanted to know.
Rex introduced himself and Ravinia, then handed the man his card. “We’re looking for Elizabeth Gaines.”
The man scowled as he stared at the card. “What’s she done now?”
Now? Rex ignored that and asked, “She is your daughter, right?”
“Can’t see that it’s any business of yours, but I have a daughter by that name.”
“You and your ex-wife adopted her?”
“Who are you? What the hell is this?”
Sensing that he might get the door slammed in their faces, Rex said quickly, “Ravinia’s traveled from Oregon and she believes your daughter is her biological half sister.” That was a lie of course, but they had agreed that cousin wasn’t a close enough relative for an adoptive father to care about.
Gaines glared at Ravinia as if she’d lost her mind. “Elizabeth never had a half sister.” But there was a hesitation in his voice as he stared hard at Ravinia.
Rex wondered if he was seeing something in her, some form of recognition. “We’d like to come in and talk to you about her.”
“People say I look like her,” Ravinia piped up.
Gaines rubbed his chin, seemed about to say something, then to Rex’s surprise, the man suddenly stepped to one side of the hallway and continued to hold the door open. Before they could make a move, however, he glanced again at the card Rex had shown him and asked, “You got ID?”
Rex slid his wallet from his back pocket and flipped it open.
The man leaned forward and stared hard at Rex’s picture. After a few moments, he gave a short, sharp nod and said, “You can’t be too careful, y’know. Come on in. But call me Lendel, would ya? I never much liked Ralph as a name.”
Rex had never much liked Joel, either, but he saved that bit of information, not wanting to explain too much. The more questions they could ask and elicit information the better, but they didn’t need Gaines asking too much in return.
A few minutes later, they were situated in the living room, each occupying one of the side chairs flanking a long, leather couch positioned in front of the window. An underlying odor wafting through the rooms suggested the existence of coffee, bacon grease, and a cat or two. Actually, there were three felines that Rex noticed, two tabbies taking up residence and sunning themselves on a blanket thrown over the back of the couch and a shier black creature peering through the rails of the staircase leading to the second floor.
Who knew how many more could be hiding in the nooks and crannies of R. Lendel Gaines’s home?
“I don’t know what I can tell you,” Gaines admitted, taking a spot on the couch where the cushions seemed permanently indent
ed. He rubbed his hands over the knees of his khaki trousers and glanced at the flat screen mounted on the opposite wall. A talk show was airing, the sound muted.
“But you do have a daughter named Elizabeth?” Rex asked, noting that there wasn’t one framed picture visible in the room. He’d scanned the bookcase, tables, mantel, and walls. Nothing.
“Elizabeth and I . . . we don’t keep in touch much,” Gaines admitted. “It’s always been strained between us and these last few years—” Shaking his head, he added, “Ever since she married that shit of a husband of hers, it’s been worse. Shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, I suppose.”
“Her husband died?” Rex asked, feeling that Ravinia wanted to jump in and hoping she would cool it for the moment.
“A week or so ago. Courtland Ellis. Thought awful high of himself, he did.”
“Was there a funeral?” Ravinia asked.
“There was something. I didn’t go. What’s the point? I didn’t like him. No reason to pay my respects and be a goddamned hypocrite. Besides, Elizabeth didn’t want me there. Got one phone call from her. Pretty much told me all I needed to know.”
“What happened to him?” Rex asked.
“Car accident on the 405. Papers said he was with some woman, not Elizabeth.”
“Why don’t you see each other anymore?” Ravinia asked.
“Oh, she thinks a lot of things that aren’t right . . . about people,” Gaines said, skirting the issue. “You know about her?”
“What do you mean?” Rex asked.
“About the bridge that collapsed?” Ravinia said at the same time.
Rex glanced her way, wanting to give her a warning frown, but Lendel Gaines was watching them too closely.
“Who you been talking to?” he asked, sounding merely curious.
“We went to the Brightside Apartments,” Ravinia said, and Rex would have kicked her if he could.
Gaines responded with a snort. “Marlena. Old hag.”
“She said your wife left you,” Ravinia added for good measure, and Rex stopped trying to derail her as her tactics seemed to be working a hell of a lot better than he would have ever expected.
“That woman left us both. She made a half-hearted attempt to get Elizabeth to go to Denver and live with her, but Elizabeth balked. Can’t say as I blame her. She was in high school at the time. Wanted to finish out around here. And the truth was that Joy—that’s the bitch, my ex-wife, and don’t you believe there was any joy in her at all—and the joker she married weren’t all that thrilled to have a teenager come live with them.” Gaines’s face pulled in on itself. “Kids that age are a trial, mind you, but that man’s a prick, no two ways about it. Got what he deserved when he married Joy.”
“You ever talk to Joy?” Rex asked.
Lendel’s mouth twisted. “Nope. She’s dead; died a few years back. Cancer of some kind, I think.” He waved a hand as if what kind of disease didn’t matter. “You know what they say, ‘what goes around, comes around.’”
Ravinia asked curiously, “You think the cancer was some kind of payback?”
He shrugged, glanced at the muted television again.
“So, Elizabeth stayed with you?” Ravinia asked, getting back to the purpose of the visit.
“She slept here. That was about it. Left soon after graduation and I never saw much of her afterward. Especially after she married Courtland. Jesus, what was she thinking? A lawyer.” Gaines said the last word as if it made his point all too clearly. “She always blamed me for everything, but it wasn’t my doing.”
The vitriol the man had for his son-in-law was palpable. Even the cats seemed to feel it. The two on the back of the couch slid down to the floor and slunk out of the room while the black one on the stairs stared with unblinking eyes, his long tail twitching.
“Do you have an address for Elizabeth?” Rex asked.
Gaines nodded. “Long as she hasn’t moved.” He got up and walked, stooped over, into the kitchen where Rex could see him rifling through a small drawer near a sliding door. Perching a pair of reading glasses onto his nose, he sifted through a stack of papers until he found what he was looking for, then walked back to the living room, holding out a scrap of paper.
He turned over the handwritten scrap of paper to Ravinia, who had her hand out “Always meant to put it in my permanent file, but I know it anyway, so you can keep it. Phone number’s there, too. You’ve got that same look as she does.”
“Do I?” Ravinia asked, looking up from the address and folding the note into fourths. “What does she blame you for?”
“Wanting to make a better life for us. Trying to get her to try harder, get ahead in the world. Realize her potential.” He was bitter. “Joy was always screaming at me and she listened to that bitch for too long. Shut her right down.”
Then, as if he’d had enough of reviewing an unhappy past, he picked up the remote and pointed it at the television. “When you talk to her, don’t believe everything she says. I loved that little girl. She just got everything turned all around.” Music came on in a blast as the television came to life. “Ellen’s on,” Lendel Gaines added, and that pretty much took care of that.
“I didn’t like him,” Ravinia said on the drive up the coast, back toward Costa Mesa. It was getting dark, the headlights of other cars bright against the coming night. She was thinking over the events of the day, the people she’d met. Bernice Kampfe was nice, Gaines, a pain in the ass. But, she reminded herself, she was closer to finding Elizabeth.
Rex maneuvered around a slower vehicle, a white van of some kind and just nodded.
Ravinia leaned back into the seat. She should be gladder than she felt that she was close to finding her cousin, but she felt oddly anxious. Something was niggling at her and she couldn’t figure out what it was. A memory, or a thought, or a voice in the back of her head. That was it. That described it. Something new she couldn’t figure out. A twinge of the mind, almost as if she were receiving a message. The hairs on her arms lifted a bit. A voice . . . not clear, but faint and scratchy as if the words were dulled by static, was teasing at her brain. Elizabeth?
Closing her eyes, Ravinia tried to concentrate, to hear the words. Was Elizabeth aware that they were getting close? Was she trying to send her a mental message? Stranger things had happened.
Come on, come on, Ravinia thought, hoping that Rex just thought she was sleeping. The words in her mind remained garbled, however. Just out of reach. Was she trying too hard to understand? Expecting a sign of Elizabeth’s gift? As a little girl Elizabeth had cried that the bridge was falling and then a pedestrian bridge had fallen. That was the kind of thing that happened to the women of Siren Song. Was it that far-fetched to believe she was trying to contact Ravinia?
I’ll see you soon, Ravinia sent back, hoping she could respond to the sender.
But though she stayed still and tried to empty her brain, she never received a clear response. Who are you? she asked silently, but Elizabeth or whoever was on the other end, didn’t answer.
Elizabeth pushed the speed limit as she hurried to collect her daughter before six P.M. She’d meant to pick her up early but had gotten trapped at the office with a deluge of phone calls. Then she’d hurried to the grocery store for the making of another cheese quesadilla for Chloe, and a raft of salad greens, tomatoes, carrots, red and yellow peppers, scallions, avocados, and several boneless chicken breasts to put together a salad for herself. She wasn’t eating enough, she knew. The lunch with Gil Dyne hadn’t sparked her appetite, and what he’d said dropping her off had made her stomach clench in knots. And Peter Bellhard had called in the afternoon, trying to set up that coffee date, which made her want to clap her hands over her ears and yell, “Stop!”
She wanted nothing to do with either of them. All she wanted was to be with her daughter and feel safe. In fact, the way she was feeling about men in general, she was pretty convinced she would never want another one again. She couldn’t trust them. Her father had only been truly i
nterested in her when he’d discovered her extra abilities, and Court’s love had been too narcissistic to count.
He said he loved you, but I think he did some bad things.
Chloe hadn’t been talking about Court. Elizabeth was sure of it. She had to have a heart-to-heart with her daughter and get to the bottom of that statement, if Chloe would let her.
But when she collected Chloe from school, her daughter was in such a good mood that Elizabeth couldn’t find the heart to bring her down with questions she wouldn’t want to answer. Chloe skipped up the front steps, making straight for the television and her favorite animated program about the hive of bees that solved mysteries. Deciding to concentrate on dinner, Elizabeth pushed aside all the fear and static in her mind. She kept looking over at her daughter as she put together Chloe’s quesadilla and began sautéing the chicken breasts and cutting up the peppers and scallions. She knew ways to broach subjects with Chloe, but it was tricky. She had to come at her sideways or risk raising her stubborn streak with too many questions.
The house phone rang as Elizabeth was taking the pit out of an avocado. Startled, she nearly cut herself with the knife. Swearing softly under her breath, she reached for the receiver. None of her friends called her on the landline so she worried that it was the detective, remembering as she examined caller ID that Thronson had her cell number.
GAINES, LENDEL R was followed by her father’s number.
Elizabeth paused a moment, half-inclined to send the call to voice mail. She hadn’t spoken to her father since she’d called him to tell him about Court, and that had been a singularly uncomfortable conversation. Her father had awkwardly tried to comfort her even while both knew that he hadn’t liked Court one bit. Add that to their own estrangement, and Elizabeth had been eager to get off the phone and was probably rude in the process. She’d been too upset to worry about her dad’s feelings, and let’s face it, he’d never really cared about hers.
“Hello, Dad,” she answered. “What’s up?”