by Louise Penny
Haley was holding down the fort at the little stand on the boardwalk. A chill wind slashed in off the ocean, biting my cheeks.
She saw me coming, had nowhere to go.
“Remember me?”
The scorn in her eyes said she did. She was wearing a pair of pearl stud earrings.
“How ’bout this, remember this? I think you lost it.” I dangled the earring in front of her face.
She glared at me. “I didn’t kidnap her. I had nothing to do with it.”
“Then what was this doing where I found her car?”
“How would I know?”
“And that part of the forest is an interesting place. Not only did I find the earring. I also found gaffer’s tape. You know, like they use on movie sets. Like Patrick Lambert’s movie The Atom Boys, which was shot in the Angeles National Forest and which you were in, according to IMDb and yourself.”
“Get out of here. I don’t have to talk to you.”
“No, but you’ll have to talk to the cops. You were there. Emily’s car is there. I think there’s a connection.” I thought that was a good tagline, spun on my heel, walked off.
I could tell she was panicked. And she was definitely involved. She lost track of me in the crowd, crammed her phone to her ear. I ducked into an empty tattoo parlor, watching her from behind the window, like Bogart watched Geiger’s bookstore from another shop across the street. Only I didn’t have Dorothy Malone to keep me company. Haley closed up her little stand, double-timed up the boardwalk. I fell in behind her. She got into a Passat—I guess that was the ex-wife ride—and took off in a swirl of dust. I ran to my car. Beach traffic and red lights, the bane of L.A., slowed her down. I didn’t have any trouble catching up to her. She drove PCH north, I drove PCH north, all the way to Santa Barbara. I could tell she was talking on the phone—I wished I knew to whom.
Santa Barbara. Nice place to be kidnapped, if there is such a thing.
She parked outside of a small real estate office—Josie Tremaine Realty—on State Street, the main drag. I went in the front door.
“Josie. Josie Tremaine.” No sign of anyone. But I’d heard noises in the back when I first entered.
A woman came out. Pretty, not Hollywood-sexy, or should I say sexed-up? Dark hair, just a hint of makeup.
“I’m Josie.”
I just looked at her, didn’t have to say anything. She knew I wasn’t here to buy a house. And I knew her name wasn’t Josie. Her façade crumbled.
“You don’t look any the worse for wear . . . Emily.”
“Did my husband send you?” Emily said. “You’re the PI, right?”
“I’m the PI. Your sister tell you about me?”
She sat, or maybe collapsed, in a chair. Game over. “I don’t know why I thought I could get away with it.”
“What’re you trying to get away with? You wanna get some ransom money from your husband since you got screwed in the prenup like Haley?”
“Can’t you just leave me alone? Pretend you never found me.”
“I have a rep to protect.” I was being flip. I don’t think it worked. “Your husband’s worried about you.”
She stared past me. Through me. “I’m not going back. If you take me, it’ll be kidnapping.”
“Like your sister and her husband did to me. I think we’re at a Mexican standoff here.”
“Why do you care if I go back to my husband?”
I didn’t have a good answer to that. “I don’t. But he hired me to do a job.”
“And you always get your man—or woman.”
“Something like that.”
“I’ll pay you twice what he’s paying you.”
“Why are you so desperate to get away from him?”
She sat closed-mouthed. “What kind of man are you?”
“Huh?” Nobody’d ever asked me that before, not so directly. I hadn’t given it much thought. But I guess like most people I thought I was a pretty good guy—wasn’t I?
“What kind of man are you? Honest? Trustworthy? Or a bum?”
“I’m as honest as the next guy, maybe more so. I like to think I’m a pretty decent person, try to do the right thing.”
“Then do the right thing now.”
“What’s that?”
“Let me be.”
I ignored her comment. “So why’d your sister turn me on to your car up there in the forest?” I said it loud enough for the people in back to hear. I’d seen Erin’s van next to Haley’s Passat. “You can come out now.”
“We thought you’d find it, tell the police, and they’d think that someone took her, murdered her. But that no one would ever find the body,” Erin said as she and Haley warily emerged from the back room.
“And she’d just disappear,” Haley said.
“But you didn’t plan to lose an earring, a very distinctive earring.” I looked at Haley. “There was no kidnapping.”
“No,” Emily said.
I sat down, burned out. I’d been running on fumes since the Rence case. I was tired of all the assjacks I had to deal with every day. Assjacks I made my living off, but still . . . “You’re all in it together? The ex-wives club.”
“And ex-sister-in-law,” Erin said, cracking the slightest smile.
“Have you told the cops yet?” Emily asked.
“Not yet.”
“And maybe you won’t.”
“Tell me about it.”
She pulled a manila envelope out of a locked desk drawer. Handed it to me. Several photos of her, black and blue and purple. Bruised up and down her body. “He did that to me.”
“How do I know it’s real? Not a Hollywood makeup job.”
“That’s why I wanted to leave. He gets off on beating me and he was getting more violent every time. He would’ve killed me eventually. I know he would have. I’ve been planning this over a year. Squirreling money away, a little here, a lot there. He never missed it. I’d tell him I was doing spa days with the girls. But come up here, work in another real estate office, till I founded this place. I got my real estate license, set up this office. Changed my name.”
“And that’s why you left your driver’s license behind. Just to make sure everyone knew it was you, would figure you’d been kidnapped or worse.”
She nodded.
I couldn’t figure yet if she was being straight with me. “There’s no reports of your being abused. And you were married to Mr. Wonderful, the dream guy for every woman in America. Mr. Perfect.”
“Mr. Perfect has good PR and makes lots of money for the studios . . .” She fidgeted with the buttons on her blouse. “It’s not makeup.” She lifted the blouse, exposing a purple-going-to-yellow bruise that spread like a Rorschach blot over her left kidney. “He thought he could buy me with money and promises of making me a star. I don’t want the money—except what I took. And I don’t want to be an actor anymore. He was never serious about that.” She looked to Haley, who nodded. “It was just something to keep me hanging in. And I don’t want him. He’ll kill me if I go back. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time. He’s narcissistic. He doesn’t know love.”
I turned to Haley. “You too?”
“Yes. He beat me too.” She showed me the scar that she’d earlier told me was from a falling light. “Then, if I wanted anything at all, I had to sign a confidentiality agreement as part of the divorce settlement so I couldn’t go to the press or tell anyone what a bastard he was. So Emily and I hooked up. I also got my real estate license. I’m planning to move up here too.”
“And you?”
“I’m just the enabler,” Erin said.
“You won’t tell him, will you?” Emily reached for my hand.
“I don’t know.” But I did know. “You know, it’s pretty easy to be found these days with the Internet and all. Even changing your name. If I could find you, others will too. And Santa Barbara’s pretty close to L.A., too close. One of his Hollywood friends’ll see you around town or even come in here. If you really want to d
isappear, I’d move farther away, much farther, and someplace more off the beaten path.”
I turned for the door.
“Thanks. I’ll take your advice.”
“Get a new Social Security number, if you haven’t already. Both of you.”
Emily nodded.
“If you don’t know where to get one—”
“Down on Alameda.”
“Yeah, but if you want a better one, give me a call.”
She smiled. The door closed behind me.
On the way home I stopped at the Malibu pier. Walked to the end, listening to the waves crash, watching them roll in and out. The endless ocean. I reached in my pocket, pulled out Haley’s dolphin earring, gave it one last look, and tossed it as far off the pier as I could. It barely made a splash in the roiling water.
Dark clouds blew in off the Pacific. Storm warning. Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Red sky at morning, sailor’s warning. How often did that hold true? Funny what you think of at times. A sting of salty ocean spray slapped me in the face, snapping me back to the moment.
Everyone’s running from something. Emily was running from Lambert. More than that, she was running from the Hollywood thing, the phoniness. What they used to call the rat race. She just wanted a normal life now.
What was I running from?
I hit Lambert’s house. The housekeeper told me he was on location in Colorado. Really broken up about his missing wife. I drove home, clambered down into the hole, and gave him a call on his cell. Filled him in, made the case sound colder than it was.
“What do you mean you can’t find her? You found her car, the sheriff’s office told me.”
“She’s in the wind—or dead. Trail’s cold. Yeah, I found the car, but after that it’s dead ends everywhere I turn.”
“You’re one fucking lousy PI. Give me my money back.”
I enjoyed hearing the rage in his voice. “It’s not like the movies, Mr. Lambert. Everything can’t be solved in two hours. The money is for my time. Results are incidental. Read your contract.”
“I’ll destroy you. You’ll—”
“What, I’ll never work in this town again?” I laughed.
“Fuck you!” He clicked off. I’m sure he missed the days when you could slam a phone down and really show the person on the other end how pissed you were. He didn’t seem to miss his wife much—maybe he suspected what really happened. He probably already had a new starlet on the hook, and I didn’t feel guilty about letting his wife get away or taking his money. He might be able to hurt my rep a little, but what would it be without integrity anyway? On the other hand, maybe it would help once I got the truth out. Besides, my purpose in life isn’t to prop up the Patrick Lamberts of the world.
I scanned the monitors, nothing exciting. Then I saw it, leaning against the wall in the outer office. My stick. The one I hadn’t used in what seemed like a lifetime. I climbed out of the hole, walked down Windward toward the beach, board under my arm, the wind pounding in from the ocean. I guess like all those people cooped up inside, with their nervous energy building, I didn’t want to be cooped up anymore either.
Went surfing.
Joyce Carol Oates
Phantomwise: 1972
from Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine
Out of the steep snowy ravine. Clutching at rocks, her hands bloodied. And all the while snow falling, temperature dropping to zero degrees Fahrenheit.
How still, the soft-falling snow amid rocks! The yearning, the temptation to lie down, sleep.
He’d wanted her to die. He’d wanted to kill her with his hands. But she has escaped him, he will not follow her. (She vows) he will not find her ever again.
1.
By the time she allowed herself to think, It has happened. To me, it was already too late.
So unexpectedly it had begun. Almost, Alyce would think afterward, as if someone else had acted in her place. She’d stared in astonishment from a little distance.
She hadn’t been drunk. Except so excited, so elated, so—exhilarated.
That he’d even noticed her. Invited her to come with him after the reception. After the lecture. He’d known the speaker, a visiting professor from the University of Edinburgh. Before the lecture she’d seen him speaking with the distinguished white-haired professor, she’d seen them smiling, shaking hands.
A theory of language. Theories of language. How does language originate?—is consciousness a blank slate (as it had been once thought by philosophers like John Locke), or is consciousness something like a field of shimmering possibilities, generated by the particularities of the human brain?
If consciousness can be disembodied, is there the possibility of consciousness persisting after physical death? Is there the possibility of hauntedness?
He’d asked what had she thought of the lecture and Alyce said she could give no opinion, she had not enough knowledge. And he’d said what sounded like, Well, you will. You’ve only just begun.
How flattering to Alyce Urquhart, at nineteen.
They were crossing the darkened campus. Afterward she would realize how subtly he was guiding her—a light touch to her arm, an indication Yes, this way. Here.
Afterward she would recall how at dusk the old gothic buildings of the campus took on a sepulchral air. And how a light mist seemed to radiate from streetlamps as if the very air had become blurred.
Tall straight fir trees rose out of sight. Entering the region of trees was like entering an enchanted forest marking the western edge of the campus.
Her heart swelled, she felt such happiness. If she were to die—if she had already died—it would be this moment she would remember most vividly: the fir trees that were so beautiful, and the young philosophy professor at her side who had singled her out for his attention that evening.
But she did not know him, her instructor, well enough to exclaim, Oh, how beautiful! Look.
Whatever Simon Meech said to Alyce Urquhart that evening, Alyce would not recall precisely. Even in the presence of persons whom she knew Alyce was inclined to shyness, and she did not know Simon Meech at all. Yet suddenly he meant much to her; she had not guessed how much. And only vaguely would she recall how without seeming to do so he led her away from her residence hall. Away from the bright-lit, overwarm, and buzzing dining hall, where at this hour of evening she’d have been pushing along a cafeteria tray in the company of other girls and listening or half listening to their chatter, in a pleasantly neutral state of mind—mindlessness—and not required to think, But who am I, to be doing this? And what will come of it?
What will come of it: the steep snowy ravine, bloodied hands grasping at rocks, the determination to haul herself up, not to surrender and not to die.
A misty and rain-lashed autumn. Her second year at the college she’d envisioned as a sort of floating island, an oasis-island, amid the rubble of her familial life.
And what will come of it. Of me.
Alyce’s most cherished class was a creative-writing poetry seminar taught by an elderly visiting poet from Boston. Once, Roland B___ had known Edna St. Vincent Millay and Robert Frost, Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, and Marianne Moore. He counted himself a friendly acquaintance of Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, Anne Sexton. He’d known Sylvia Plath—“for a teasingly short while.”
A smooth hairless dome of a head, which seemed too large for the narrow shoulders. Suety eyes deep-sunken like a turtle’s eyes, yet luminous. Roland B___ seemed always cold, though dressed for the upstate New York winter: Harris tweed jackets with leather elbows, sweater vests, woolen scarves slung cavalierly around his neck. The backs of his delicate hands were unusually pale, the skin seemed soft, flaccid. Alyce had the idea that if she were to lean across the seminar table and press a forefinger into that skin, the indention would very slowly fill in.
Aloud in a hoarse reverent voice the elderly poet read, sometimes recited poetry as if he were alone and the students were privileged to over
hear, straining to listen. Alyce complained that her neck ached after three hours in the seminar leaning forward not wanting to miss a syllable.
This was not an actual complaint, of course. Her heart beat with awe for the distinguished poet, so blissfully self-centered he seemed a very Buddha basking in his own divinity.
At the first class meeting Roland B___ asked each young poet to recite a favorite poem—“a poem of unqualified greatness.” The request was a total surprise, no one was prepared.
Alyce recited a little-known poem by William Butler Yeats—“To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing.” Technically the poem was fascinating to her: harsh, percussive, accusatory, with a formal rhyme scheme, rage tempered by art. As a first-year student she’d unconsciously memorized the poem out of her English literature anthology; one day she’d realized that she knew it by heart.
Liking the quiet rage of the final lines. Amid a place of stone, / Be secret and exult, / Because of all things known / That is most difficult.
Whatever Roland B___ might have expected from an undergraduate at the university, it was clear that he hadn’t expected this impassioned poem by Yeats. “Well! A unique choice, Miss”—squinting at the class list as Alyce provided her last name in an embarrassed murmur—“‘Urquhart.’”
“Ah, Urquhart.” As if the name might mean something to him, Roland B___ gazed at Alyce with an expression of wonder.
Clearly Roland B___ did not know what to make of her just yet.
2.
This season of reversals. A balmy autumn followed by an abrupt snowstorm in early November. Leaves ripped from trees, the pale sky mottled with clouds, a dank air in the “historic” eighteenth-century buildings modeled (it was said) after Cambridge University.
Not a season for romance. Not a season for sentiment. If others in the residence hall could have guessed that Alyce Urquhart was newly pregnant they would have been astonished, speechless. For God’s sake—how?
No one had seen Alyce Urquhart with any man or boy publicly. Her lover was her Philosophy 101 quiz-section instructor, but each was discreet in the presence of the other, and Alyce took care to match Simon Meech’s aloofness with her own.