When I’d called the day before, I’d mentioned Stacey Oliphant by name, thus according myself instant credibility since the two had worked together for a number of years. Schaefer and I had spent a few minutes on the phone discussing the man. When I told him I was looking for information about Violet Sullivan, I’d asked if he needed to clear anything with the department before we spoke. “Nobody cares about that anymore,” he’d said. “Only a few of us remember the case. She’s still classified as a missing person, but I don’t think you’ll have much success after all these years.”
“It’s worth a try,” I’d said.
“Did you know her?” I asked now.
“Sure did. Everybody knew Violet. Feisty little thing with that fiery red hair. She was a beautiful girl with a defiant streak. If Foley blackened her eye, she made no attempt to hide it. She’d sport a bruise like a badge of honor. Damndest thing you ever saw. Black and blue, she was still prettier than any other woman in town. I wasn’t smart enough to keep my trap shut, and my wife was so jealous I thought she’d spit nails. Violet was the kind of woman men fantasize about. A lot of wives ended up with their noses out of joint.”
“How well did you know Foley?”
“Better than I knew her, given his numerous contacts with law enforcement. That’s how I ended up dealing with him in the first place, because of his smacking her around. I probably went to the house half a dozen times. None of us liked going out on domestic calls. Dangerous for one thing, and for another, it made you wonder what the hell was wrong with folks. Violet and Foley were skating close to the edge. Bad situation. Her little girl was of an age where she’d end up standing in the line of fire. Abuse spills over. It might start with the spouse, but the kids aren’t far behind.”
“What about Violet? Did she have any criminal history?”
“Nope.”
“Foley never had her arrested for assault?”
“Nope. If she hit him, he must have been too embarrassed to call us.”
“Shoot. No mug shots and no fingerprints. That’s too bad,” I said.
“She was clean as they come. She didn’t have a Social Security number because she never held a job, so that’s one more dead end. The only outside dispute she had, she took Jake Ottweiler into small-claims court. His pit bull attacked her toy poodle and killed it outright. I think she collected a couple hundred bucks. Foley probably borrowed every cent of it to pay the bills.”
“Daisy remembers the two brawling. She says neither one went after her, but it had an effect.”
“I don’t doubt that,” he said. “We sat Foley down more than once and gave him a talking-to, but like most abusers, he was busy blaming someone else. He maintained Violet was provoking him, which made it her fault, not his.”
“This was over what period of time?”
“Two, three years, running right up to the last anybody ever saw of her. After we spoke yesterday, I called one of the deputies and had him pull the old file. He went back through the reports and says the two got into a bad one on June 27, a Saturday, the week before she disappeared. Foley flung a pot of coffee at her and it caught her on the chin. She called us. We went out to the house and arrested his sorry ass and then held him overnight until he had a chance to cool down. Meanwhile, she filed a complaint charging him with misdemeanor battery…”
“Why misdemeanor?”
“Injuries weren’t that serious. He’d broken her jaw, it’d have been another matter. We advised her right then to get a restraining order out against him, but she said she was fine. Minute he got out, he went straight to the house. He begged her to drop the charges, but before anything could come of it, she was gone and that was that.”
“When did he report her missing?”
“July 7. In those days, the law required a seventy-two-hour wait if there was no suggestion of foul play, which there wasn’t. So Sunday passed, and then Monday without a word from her. Tuesday morning, Foley came over to the station and asked to file a report. I was the one who took the information, though the story was already out by then, and we knew we had a problem on our hands.”
“How did he seem?”
“He was obviously upset, but in my estimation, mostly for himself. Given his history, he had to figure he’d be first in line when it came to close scrutiny. We put out a countywide bulletin, giving a description of Violet and the car she was believed to be driving, and then expanded that to statewide within two days. We contacted the papers up and down the coast. Didn’t generate much interest, to tell you the truth. Most ran two column inches in the second section, if they bothered at all. Radio, same thing. The story got some local airplay, but not that much.”
“Why no splash? What was that about?”
“The media wasn’t prone to jumping on stories the way they do now. Violet was an adult. Some had the feeling she’d run off of her own accord and she’d come back when it suited her. Others leaned toward the notion she’d never left at all, at least not alive.”
“You think Foley killed her?”
“That’s what I thought at the time.”
“Why?”
“Because the violence had escalated and she was serious about pressing charges, which would’ve been bad news for him. It’s like the deputy DA told me, ‘You don’t have a witness, you don’t have a case.’ If he’d gone to trial, chances are he’d have ended up in jail. It certainly worked to his advantage that she was gone.”
“I’m assuming there was an investigation.”
“Oh, yes. We could pretty much trace her activities up until the time she left the house that night. This would have been six fifteen or so, after the babysitter showed. It wasn’t dark yet and wouldn’t turn dark until closer to nine o’clock. Couple of people saw her drive through town. They said it looked like she was alone except for her little dog, standing in her lap yapping out the window. She stopped and bought gas, filling up her tank at a service station near Tullis, so we know she made it that far.”
“What time was that?”
“Six twenty-five, round about then. The fellow at the pump cleaned her windshield and checked her tires, which he needn’t have done. The car was brand new and he was interested in hearing how she handled. They spent a few minutes talking about that. I asked him if he noticed anything unusual because I was curious about her mood. If she was leaving her little girl for good, you’d think she’d be down in the mouth, but he said she seemed happy. ‘Giddy’ was his word. Of course, he’d never laid eyes on her before, so as far as he knew, she was always that way. I was hoping she’d said something about her destination, but no such luck. Her dog was barking up a storm, jumping from the front seat to the back. She finally let it out to do its business in the grass. After she put the dog back in the car, she went in the office, paid the clerk for her gas, and bought a Coca-Cola from the cooler. Then she got in the car and off she went, driving toward Freeman.”
I opened my shoulder bag and took out a pen and my map of Santa Maria. “Can you show me the location of the service station? I’d like to take a look.”
He adjusted his bifocals and studied the map, opening it to the full and then refolding it. “That’d be here,” he said, making a mark on the page. “Place is still there, though the pump jockey and clerk have both left the area. From that point, she could have gone anyplace. Down one of these side roads and out to the 101—south to Los Angeles, north to San Francisco. She could have circled back and gone home. We calculated how far she could get on a tank of gas and checked with every station within that radius—no easy task. No one remembered seeing her, which struck me as odd. That car was a beauty and so was she. You’d think someone would have noticed if she’d stopped for anything—meal, restroom, to walk the dog. I don’t know how she could have vanished like that, literally, without a trace.”
“The papers said Foley wasn’t considered a suspect.”
“Of course he was. Still is. We put that out, hoping to coax him into telling what he knew, but he wa
s a wily one. He went straight out and hired an attorney, and after that, he wouldn’t say a word. We never did come up with anything to hang him on.”
“He gave no explanation at all?”
“We managed to get a little bit out of him before he clammed up. We know he stopped by the Blue Moon and had a couple of beers. He claimed he got home a short time after that, which would have made it somewhere between ten and ten thirty. Trouble is, the babysitter, Liza Mellincamp, said she didn’t see him until sometime between midnight and one, which means if he killed her he had time to dispose of the body.”
“He must have done a good job of it if she’s never been found.”
Schaefer shrugged. “I imagine she’ll turn up one of these days, assuming there was something left of her once the critters got through.”
“Also assuming he killed her, which he might not have.”
“True enough.”
“Not that I’m arguing for or against,” I said.
“I understand. I go back and forth myself, and I’ve had years to ponder the possibilities.”
“Did anybody support Foley’s claim that he got home when he said?”
Schaefer shook his head. “Far from it. They know roughly when he left the Moon, but no one seems to know where he went after that. Might or might not have been home. Liza’s word against his.”
“What about the car? I understand there’s never been any sign of that either.”
“My guess is it’s long gone, probably broken down for parts. If not that, there’s always a demand for stolen cars in Europe and the Middle East. In California, L.A. and San Diego take the biggest hits.”
“Even back then?”
“Yes ma’am. The numbers might be different, but percentages are the same. Something like eighty-five thousand cars stolen out of those two cities just this past year. They steal ’em, take ’em to local ports, and crate ’em up for shipping. The other option is to drive a car across the border and dispose of it down there. Places in Mexico and Central America, if a vehicle doesn’t find a buyer, it’s left on the street and ends up sitting in an impound lot. You go down to Tijuana, you can see thousands—cars, trucks, RVs. Some have been there for years and never will be reclaimed.”
“Was the car his or hers?”
“He was the one signed the loan papers, but the car was hers. She made sure everyone knew that. In those days, wives couldn’t get credit even if they worked. Everything was done in the husband’s name.”
“But why would he do that? Buy her a car and then kill her the next day. That doesn’t make sense.”
“He might have killed her on impulse, struck her in a rage. Doesn’t have to be something he planned in advance.”
“But why buy the car at all? Daisy told me he could barely pay the bills. I’ve also heard she had enough cash to buy it outright.”
“I’ll tell you what I think. He did it out of guilt. That was his pattern. He’d get mad, beat the hell out of her, and then do something nice to make up for it. Maybe he realized she was on the verge of taking him to court so he tried to buy her off. She was nuts about that car.”
“From what I heard, Foley was stuck making all the payments even though he never had a thing to show for it. That seems strange.”
“Depending on his agreement with the dealer,” he said. “The fellow you want to talk to on that subject is Chet Cramer of Chet Cramer Chevrolet in Cromwell. I’ll give you his address.”
“Thanks. Daisy mentioned him. I’m surprised he’s still in business after all these years.”
“Oh, sure. He’ll never retire. He’s got his hands on the reins and he’ll be happy to drop dead before he ever lets go.”
Mentally I went back and skimmed the newspaper accounts I’d read. “One of the papers reported Violet going into a Santa Teresa bank that week and getting into her safe-deposit box. Any idea what was in it?”
“Nope. I’d assume valuables of some kind. Like you, I’ve heard she had a sizeable sum of cash, but you’d have to take that on faith. We got a court order and had the box drilled when it was clear she was gone. It was empty.”
“What about since then? I know how Stacey feels about a case like this. An open-ended situation bugs the hell out of him.”
“You’re right about that. Once in a while someone goes back to take a look, but there’s not much to go on. We never got a break on this one and we haven’t had the manpower to devote to a second full-on investigation. Detectives down in S.T. have enough on their plates. Some rookie might noodle around with it from time to time, but that’s about it.”
“What about the theory she was having an affair?”
“That’s what Foley maintains, but I have my doubts. Ask around and you’ll find out most people who heard the rumor heard it from him. Violet screwed around—no question about that—but if she ran off with someone, how come no one else was gone?”
7
The service station where Violet was last seen was near Tullis, a dot-sized town you could probably miss if you weren’t paying strict attention. Several hamlets, like stars in a constellation, were clustered in a patch with small two-lane roads forming the irregular grid that connected them. Tullis was to the east on a straight line that led to Freeman and from there to the 101.
Service stations in the area were few and far between, so it was easy to see why Violet had chosen this one. At that point, she’d only had the car for one day, but she’d apparently done sufficient driving to empty her tank. Or maybe she was topping it off in preparation for whatever she did next, which is to say died or left town. I noticed myself shifting from one position to the other. She behaved like someone who was on her merry way, but to where? And more important, did she ever arrive?
When I reached the service station, I pulled in to one side and parked near the entrance to the ladies’ room, taking advantage of the facilities while I had the chance. The toilet did flush, but the hand dryer was busted and since paper towels had been eliminated in the interest of sanitation, I ended up drying my hands on my jeans while I walked around outside.
The station sat at the junction of two roads, Robinson and Twine. The afternoon was hot and still, the sunlight relentless. This was September, and I was imagining the heat in July was fierce. There were endless flat fields on all sides; some looking ragged from the harvest and some newly planted with sprigs of green. It had been late day when Violet stopped here, and it must have looked then much as it did now. The area was windy and dry, without so much as a stand of trees to provide shade. I pictured Violet’s red hair whipping across her face while she stood chatting with the fellow who pumped her gas that day. What did she think was coming next? That’s what bothered me—the idea of her intentions and her innocence.
In my car again, I headed west, turning left out of the station onto Twine Road. I passed a sign for New Cut Road and realized Tannie’s property had to be less than a mile away. Sure enough, the big farmhouse loomed in the distance, hugging the blacktop as though hoping to thumb a ride. The incongruity of the house in the flat agricultural landscape struck me anew.
Once in Cromwell, I consulted the directions Daisy’d given me. Foley Sullivan worked as a custodian for the Cromwell Presbyterian Church on Second Street. The building was plain in the nicest sense of the word, white frame with a steeple, set on a wide lawn of green. A large brick wing had been added to one end. I parked in the side lot and took the walkway to the front of the church.
Starting with the obvious, I tried one of the big double doors and I was surprised to find them unlocked. I let myself in. The foyer was empty. The doors to the sanctuary stood open, but there was no one in sight. I said yoo-hoo-type things to announce my presence, hoping to avoid any appearance of trespassing in a house of God. The sanctuary was bathed in quiet, and I found myself tiptoeing down the center aisle in response. There were elaborate stained-glass windows on each side of the room and deep wine-colored carpeting underfoot. The massive brass organ pipes made an inverted
V behind the chancel. The empty wooden pews were gleaming in the light. The air smelled of carnations and lilies, though there were none in evidence. To the right, behind the pulpit, the choir loft was visible. At the front of the church on the right-hand side, I could see a door that I was guessing led into the minister’s study. To the left, double doors with glass uppers probably opened into the corridor that connected the church with its more modern addition.
I pushed through the double doors and found myself in a broad carpeted hallway. Sunday school rooms opened off to the right, most with folding chairs, two with low tables and chairs designed for little kids. Everything was in order. I could smell Windex, Endust, and furniture polish. I pushed through a second set of double doors into a large social hall. Long banquet-style tables had been set up, but the metal folding chairs were still stacked on rolling carts pushed up against the wall. I imagined the room could be furnished or emptied for just about any activity or any size crowd. I wondered if church members still held potluck suppers. I hoped so. Where else could you get beef-and-macaroni pies and green-bean casseroles made with cream of mushroom soup? As a child I’d been expelled from numerous denominations of Sunday schools, but I bore no grudge. As usual, thoughts of food prevailed, softening the experience to recollections as rich and sweet as warm homemade brownies.
I entered the kitchen through a swinging door, again saying “Hello?” and pausing to see if there would be a response. The room was flooded with sunlight. The counters were stainless steel, and huge soup cauldrons hung from racks above the two restaurant-size stainless-steel stoves. The white enamel sinks were snowy. I was running out of places to look. Any minute now, Foley, I thought to myself. I was so focused on finding him that when he appeared behind me and tapped me on the shoulder, I jumped and clutched my chest, barking with surprise.
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