by Paul Heald
“But,” she continued, “I’ve got someone in California that no one knows about, tracking down those pictures on the web, and I know a small-town reporter who’s like a bulldog with a piece of raw meat in his jaws.” She put one hand on her hip and smiled brightly at him, issuing an irresistible invitation to accept her plan. “If I’m discreet, I can help track down Diana’s mother. You can keep interviewing people, and hopefully we’ll finally get a firm lead on the website photos.”
James nodded his head. “And I’ve got some resources that you don’t know about,” he added. “I’ve gotten to know the new priest at St. James and have already asked him to press the sheriff. And the former priest’s daughter is going to see if she can uncover any links between her father, the sheriff, and maybe even the feds.”
“That’s a good start,” she agreed. “Just tell them to be careful.”
He wondered how far they could get without the formal apparatus of justice on their side, but he had confidence in his own ability to ferret out a story, and having an experienced prosecutor helping from the sidelines was a huge plus. If nothing else, it was a joy to bounce ideas off her, but he deflated somewhat when he realized that they should not be seen together talking to potential witnesses.
“I guess today is our last interviewing roadtrip,” he said reluctantly.
She nodded. “That’s probably a good idea.” She took one last look up at the falls. “It’s dangerous, but beautiful, too,” she said with another glittering smile. “Thanks for bringing me here.”
He told her briefly how he had learned of the place, and then they ducked under a tree branch and headed back up the trail. When they got to the top of the slope that led down to the falls, he turned and helped her up the last slippery bit. Her hand was firm and dry and it lingered in his for a moment as she stepped up onto the trail.
“I’ve got an idea,” he said as they started back to the car. “Would you like to come to Clarkeston next Saturday and go through Jacob’s stuff at the newspaper with me? When he disappeared, we just threw everything in his desk in a couple of boxes. I went through it five years ago, but it would be really nice to put a fresh set of eyes on it.”
She leaned against him for a long moment, maybe because the path narrowed suddenly. “Sure,” she replied, “it’s a date.”
XIX.
ESCAPE
Stanley laughed for the first time in months. He stared at the computer screen and howled until tears splashed down his face.
After his meeting with William Simmons, the operator of Mygirlfriendsbikini.com, he had delayed conducting an Internet search for the person who uploaded the photos, identifiable only as [email protected]. On the drive home from Silver Lake, he felt something indefinably sweet about having the address and not knowing yet whether it would reveal a treasure trove of information or whether it was just the empty finale to a frustrating search. In either case, he wanted to be lounging in his recliner when he learned the answer. He stopped at the grocery store on the way back to Claremont and bought a frozen burrito and a bottle of pinot noir. He had drunk almost no alcohol since the accident that took his family, partly because he didn’t feel like drinking when he was depressed, but also because voluntary self-denial helped him cope with the absence of those things that had been denied him involuntarily and permanently. The burrito? Well, that was the consolation prize if he turned up nothing in the search.
Once the frozen snack was in the oven, he sat down at his computer and picked around the edges of the email address until he heard the ding of the timer. The name Pat Soller generated over a thousand hits with links to both men and women. Maybe one of them had divorced and was now ex-Pat Soller, now Pat Somebody-Else. Then again, the person could be an expatriate of the United States with the last name of Soller and with any first name at all. Or maybe it was someone running a solar-energy firm who had flunked spelling class, or a foreign businessman with a loose grip on English who provided solar power to American expatriates.
Once he had the steaming burrito on a plate next to his chair and a wine glass in his hand, he got serious and ran a search on just the email address. The result was a single hit. This prompted a yelp and a small spray of pinot. No searches ever returned a single hit, especially email addresses, which either multiplied across the web like horny bunnies or were held like precious secrets close to the breast of their owners.
He clicked on the link and found a single PDF page consisting of a league competition schedule, all matches taking place on Wednesday nights in Pub Wellington. At the bottom of the page, questions about the schedule were directed to Reggie at [email protected]. That was the sum of the web presence. Stanley studied the page carefully, discerning little more than the list of team names and dates of matches. There was no updated list of rankings, nor any indication of the sort of competition other than the notation that a particular match was “cricket” or “301.” The mysterious nomenclature, however, was resolved quickly enough by opening a new web page and conducting a search pairing the two words. Darts.
He pumped his fist and pitched backward in the recliner. His quarry helped to run a dart league in a pub called the Wellington. At worst, he could generate a list of pubs with that name and contact them to ask whether they hosted dart-throwing leagues. That would give him a place to start tracking down Reggie without his knowledge. Of course, he could try emailing directly to [email protected] and pretend to be interested in joining the league. There was no reason why a generic query would prompt any suspicion on Reggie’s part, and his response might provide a surname or a clue to the whereabouts of the pub.
Then, another giggle erupted and soon turned into laughter so uncontrolled that it hindered the typing for his last bit of searching. What an idiot! Look at the fucking email address! It’s not “.com” or “.edu” or “.org” … it’s “.es.” A Spanish email address for an expat dart thrower. And the name of the venue was not The Wellington Pub or Wellington’s Pub, but rather Pub Wellington, as the Spaniards would order it. And his history was good enough to remember the popularity of the good old duke who had driven Napoleon out of the Iberian Peninsula at the beginning of the nineteenth century. A final search limited to Spain revealed three Pub Wellingtons, but when he clicked on each link, he saw only one was located in Port de Sóller, where expatsoller had presumably gone to live. He had his man and there was no need to risk a direct email. He poured another glass and toasted the image of the quaint village pub that appeared on his computer screen. To Mallorca!
* * *
“Say that again: you’re going where?”
Stanley enjoyed hearing surprise and confusion from Melanie Wilkerson on the other end of the telephone line.
“Mallorca,” he repeated, “Port de Sóller. According to Wikipedia: The village consists of shops, restaurants, and bars, but is quiet and away from the major tourist areas such as Magaluf on the south of the island. Sounds to me like a nice place to track down our photographer and celebrate the end of the semester.”
He was rewarded with a burst of laughter that warmed his heart all the way from Atlanta.
“You realize that the Justice Department can’t pay for your trip? Not that I’m not totally grateful, but there’s no way to fund this at all.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said graciously. “I need to get out of Los Angeles, and I’ll figure out some way to deduct it from my taxes. I just wanted to let you know that I’ve got his name, well, his first name, and a pretty good idea exactly where he is going to be next Wednesday night. If I leave tomorrow, I’ll have a couple of days to sightsee and get over my jet lag before I track him down.”
“What are you going to do when you find him?”
“That’s the other reason I called,” the sociologist admitted, “I’m not entirely sure what you want me to do.”
There was a moment’s pause and Stanley imagined a gorgeous yet hard-bitten caricature of a film noir heroine pursing her lips and pondering the question. “
Well, first of all, I’m going to have a friend email you a picture of the photographer who disappeared with Diana Cavendish. If your dart player turns out to be Jacob Granville, then you really shouldn’t approach him at all. He’s probably dangerous, and we don’t want him running off. Things are going to get super complicated if we have to deal with an international-fugitive situation.”
“What if it’s just some slightly kinky English photographer who likes sitting on the beach and playing darts?” It had been a long time since Stanley had this kind of fun on a research project. He had already checked on early summer temperatures in Mallorca and mentally packed his suitcase.
“Well, in that case, I’d really like to know how the hell he got a-hold of those pictures.” She paused. “So, I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t chat the guy up and find out what he knows.” She thanked him once again before she hung up, a genuine gratitude ringing in her voice, an affirmation that sent him directly to his favorite travel website to purchase his tickets.
* * *
When he saw that he had to connect through Boston and Madrid, Stanley cashed in a pile of frequent-flyer miles to upgrade to business class and arrived in the air terminal in Palma de Mallorca tired but not exhausted. He had felt a thrill of release from the moment his flight took off from LAX. Why hadn’t he left Los Angeles earlier? He had had plenty of free time in the last nine months, but even during the long Christmas break he stayed home, watching television and depleting the inventory of the local doughnut shop. On Christmas Day, he walked far up into the foothills of the San Gabriels, ignoring the calls of friends and family seeking to console him. Before going to bed, he paid a visit to the urn in the laundry room and stared at it expressionless for a long time, empty of grief, empty of sorrow, empty of joy, just stuck in the tar pit of Southern California waiting for some sign that it was okay to move on.
He rented a car at the Palma airport and drove straight to the “villa” he had found online. Nigel, the British estate agent, met him in the driveway, and for once, the website photos had undersold the property. The view down over the marina was expansive, and he could trace every inch of the harbor from the blue of the Mediterranean to the shops along the wharf. The house itself was immaculately clean, a calming and cheerful mix of terra-cotta tile and varnished timber, with a small covered porch that would allow him to take in the views while he surfed the Internet and sipped on a beer.
He thanked Nigel for the tour and paid him the amount owing on the rental. “By the way,” he queried idly before his landlord left, “do you know a pub called the Wellington down in the port? A friend told me I should check it out.”
“Well,” the overly-tanned Brit replied doubtfully, “I suppose it’s all right if you’re craving a Guinness, but it’s not exactly a taste of the local color, if you get my meaning.”
“I understand. My friend is a dart thrower, and I think he must like the board there or something.” The same talents he had developed as an interviewer in his academic research served him well when he needed to dissemble. The years in law school didn’t hurt either. “He said there’s actually an expat dart league there.”
“I think I heard something about that.” Nigel ran his fingers through the sparse wisps of ginger on his head. “You can take the Englishman out of England, but … well, you know the rest. Me, I married a Spanish woman twenty years ago, and you wouldn’t catch me dead in the Wellington talking about cricket and pining for a sausage roll.” He shook Stanley’s hand and prepared to leave. “If you want the real thing, try El Langustino down by the wharf. María’s English isn’t very good, but the menu’s got pictures and she serves up an amazing plate of boquerones!”
Stanley thanked Nigel for the recommendation, followed him out to the driveway, and walked down the hill in the direction of the village. Before he had taken a dozen steps, he encountered a striking brunet in a crisp white blouse walking up the hill to the other side of his duplex.
“Hola!” He offered as she passed, expending twenty-five percent of his Spanish phrases in a single word.
“And hello to you,” she replied in a cultured English accent.
He stepped aside as she turned into the tiled entryway of her villa. “How did you know I spoke English?” Normally, he wouldn’t ask such a sophomoric question to a stranger, but he wanted to prolong the encounter.
She took off her sunglasses and opened her door. “Your shoes,” she said as she gestured to his feet with the glasses. “Plainly American.” She smiled, as if to make clear that her critique was not unfriendly, and surveyed him further with a slight tilt of her head. “And they don’t match your belt. Number one fashion sin in Spain, I’m afraid.” And then she was gone.
He laughed. Here he was in an exotic locale on a spying mission, and an imperious foreign beauty had just deigned to look him up and down.
It took him thirty minutes to make his way to the bottom of the hill and find a small grocery just before it closed for the two o’clock siesta. He bought a few beers and a bag of thick local potato chips. By the time he returned to the villa, he, too, was ready for a nap, and it was nearly five before he awoke. The sun was still shining brightly, and he spent the rest of the afternoon and evening drinking on his porch, checking his email, cruising Facebook, and catching up on a backlog of academic reading.
His guidebook told him that it was senseless to arrive at a local restaurant much before nine in the evening, so it was almost dusk when he went back down to the village in search of El Langustino and María’s delicious boquerones, whatever they were. When he got to the tiny village square, he walked up to a friendly old man with a wooden cane and stammered, “Por favor … El Langustino?” in his best accent, managing the terminal inflection that made it clear he was asking a question. A directional wave of the battered cane and two blocks later he found a small stone building that housed the restaurant. When he walked in, he could see that its back end opened up to the harbor and offered plenty of space for eating outside. He could see no one about as he walked onto the flagstone patio, except for the middle-aged Englishwoman whom he had met at the villa. He nodded at her, strolled nonchalantly past her table, and looked out over the water.
“You can sit wherever you like.” Her voice was friendly, but reserved. “María’s helping out her husband in the kitchen.”
He looked back at her and nodded as if he understood that this was the way things worked around here.
“But I’m being silly,” she continued with a frown, “surely you must sit at my table if you’d like to. We’re likely to be the only ones in here tonight.”
“Are you sure you wouldn’t mind?” He put his hand on the top of the chair. “It would be nice to have some company. I’ve only just arrived.”
“Please.” She gestured again and he sat down. “I’m Vanessa.” She extended a ringless hand, and he introduced himself. To his right was a worn stone wall and to the left was the sea, a safe place to rest his eyes should they linger too long on the space that would have been covered by the open third button on her blouse. Where his gaze was already resting.
“I changed my belt.” He blurted out, raising his eyes and eager to show he had not ignored her fashion advice.
She raised an eyebrow in response. “But not the shoes?” She lifted a glass of wine to her lips.
He was sure he saw a smile behind her drink. “I packed in a hurry, I’m afraid. Not to mention this is my first time in Spain.”
“Well, then,” she said firmly, “what you need is a solid pair of leather sandals. Good for all occasions around here.” She wrinkled her nose. “Unless, of course, you intend to wear them with black socks. You wouldn’t do that, would you?”
He laughed. “No, I’m not a barbarian!”
Stanley was thankful that he had spent a semester in Cambridge during college and had learned a little bit about the English. One admonition that stuck with him was that Americans talk about themselves far too much, so he began their conversation with
some polite questions. He even managed to impress her with the knowledge, gained on a cross-country hike, that her home near Abergavenny must be close to the English-Welsh border.
She was divorced, probably in her late thirties, given the ages of the children she mentioned who would be joining her once the school term ended. Is there a stereotypical English woman? Stanley supposed there were many radically different versions: the prim schoolmarm, the Cockney flower girl, the flirtatious Moneypenny, Spice Girls, dowager countesses, Princess Di, Bridget and her diary, and girls bending it like Beckham. But Vanessa Wilcox fit no mold that he knew. She was serious but not humorless, well educated but without an Oxbridge pedigree. Her beauty was displayed in the soft brown of her hair, the sparkle in her hazel eyes, and the generous curves that her expensively tailored clothes tastefully did not hide. Her nose might have been too large to ever grace the pages of Vogue, but her skin was flawless and fairly glowed in the soft outdoor light of the café. He found it hard to keep his eyes off her.
When María finally emerged from the kitchen, Stanley pointed at Vanessa’s wine glass, smiled, and haltingly mispronounced boquerones. She nonetheless got his meaning and disappeared once again.
“What did I just order, by the way?” He confessed his ignorance of the local cuisine. “I’m just following my landlord’s instructions.”
“Boquerones are unsalted anchovies, fileted and marinated in olive oil, garlic, and a bit of lemon juice.” She seemed to approve. “They make a nice little appetizer.”
“Well,” he replied, “so far, so good! But maybe you could recommend something for a main course? I’m afraid my Spanish is virtually nonexistent.”
She opened the menu and described the seafood dishes in a way that showed she knew the local cuisine inside and out. He decided to let her order for the both of them and avoid the embarrassment of pointing at the attractive pictures on the menu with a hungry grunt. María approved of whatever Vanessa ordered, and so began a lovely meal that extended almost three leisurely hours through several courses, dessert, brandy, and coffee.