California Girl

by T. Jefferson Parker

  “How come you didn’t call us?”

  “None of my business. Didn’t have a dime, either.”

  “Are you kidding me, Terry? A girl gets her head cut off and it’s not your business?”

  Terry shrugged and looked down. Nick looked at the deep lines in the weathered face. The miles-away indifference in the pale brown eyes. Drugs, maybe. Insanity. Both. Guessed him early thirties. Close to his own age.

  “But you didn’t split, either,” said Nick. “How come?”

  “I thought when the cops came I’d sneak off into the trees.”

  “But you were snoring, so they found you.”

  Neemal nodded.

  Nick thought about taking the guy downtown right now. He’d take him there later, anyhow. For sure. But he thought he could engage the man more easily now, and he seemed ready to talk. The nutcases he’d seen, they’d talk a blue streak for half an hour when they felt like it, then not say a word for six months. Or go completely batty. Or kill themselves.

  “Got another smoke?”

  Nick pushed another one through the mesh. “Terry, I’m going to tape-record this, if you don’t mind. It’s better for both of us.”

  Neemal shrugged again and Nick wondered how much time he had.

  “Don’t go anywhere,” Nick said.

  “Funny.”

  “Get your ID out if you got one.”

  “They took it away at Atascadero. That was a long time ago.”

  Nick hustled into the packinghouse, got his new case, and trotted through the wind back to Terry Neemal.

  AT ONE that morning Nick was still at his desk. The wind was still howling through the county, rattling the black windowpanes of the Sheriff’s Department building. Tape recorder and a legal pad in front of him. A bag of Carl’s Jr. fast food, too, stains working into the paper. Food cold by now and barely touched.

  Terry Neemal was in custody.

  A padlock had been found in the grove not far from the SunBlesst packinghouse. It was a good Schlage.

  Janelle Vonn’s purse had been found not far from the lock. It was a loose leather bag with fringe on the bottom and a drawstring on the top. Sold by Neck Deep Leather, Laguna Beach. What a lousy name for a store, thought Nick. Wallet with a California driver’s license and eighty-five in cash. House and car keys. A Mercury Savings & Loan checking account with a balance of just over two grand. An address and phone book. A date book. Personal items, including a diaphragm and spermicidal gel, hairbrush, lipstick, nail files, ballpoint pens, scraps of paper with phone numbers and notes scribbled on them.

  In the date book box for Tuesday, the day she died, Nick had read: Red & Ho 7.

  They’d found a black miniskirt and a pair of boots thrown into a far dark corner of the packinghouse.

  They’d not found the saw blade.

  Now Nick’s own voice came from the tape recorder and he checked his handwritten transcription. The inside of his first knuckle, middle finger, right hand, had a shiny divot in it that had started to bleed.

  Chase bad guys all day, Nick thought. See a young woman with her head sawed off, interview a psycho, and you get bloody making notes.

  Q: Describe him again.

  A: Regular-sized guy. Hard shoes the way they sounded on the wood. A jacket maybe. Something bulky around him. It was dark and cool by then. I told you all this. I couldn’t see that good.

  Q: What time did you say?

  A: Midnight. I don’t got a watch but I know what time it is usually. Remember I told you that?

  Q: Bulky, like a coat or a sweater?

  A: Maybe bigger. Longer.

  Q: Like what, a blanket or an overcoat?

  A: Maybe like that. (Yawn) I’m getting tired, Nick.

  Q: Just a few more questions.

  A: When I was little I always thought there was ghosts in wind like that out there. You know, like the wind was so strong it would gather the ghosts up, pull them right off of things. Scared me. I’d hide under the bed. And these balls of cat hair would come rolling along the floor in the draft. Right at me. Thought they were the ghosts coming to get me.

  Q: Interesting. Did you kill her, Terry?

  A: Not me. I’m still telling the truth.

  Q: Tell me what you did after you found her.

  A: Seems like about the twentieth time you asked me that.

  Q: It’s the seventh.

  A: I’m really getting sleepy now.

  Q: Come on, Terry. Just once more, from the time you found her. Look, if you killed her, that’s okay. I understand and you can just say so, then we can get this over with and move along to the next thing.

  A: I didn’t kill her. Even if I had an opportunity I could not have been the one that killed her.

  Q: And why is that?

  A: Because I never hurt anybody in my life.

  Q: People here say different, Terry. Your old juvenile investigator works burg-theft now. He gave me a nice little rundown of the people you hurt and fires you set and things you stole.

  A: That was my family.

  Q: You set your brother on fire when you were eight. He was four. He almost died.

  A: I already told you that doesn’t count.

  Q: I’m not seeing any logic there, Terry. But I’ll take your word for it. Okay? Now tell me what happened after you found the girl in there. You sure her head was off, or did that maybe happen later?

  A: No. It was off, Nick. I wouldn’t forget something like that.

  It was 3 A.M. when Nick parked along the tracks outside the SunBlesst packinghouse. Didn’t mean to slam the Fairlane door but the wind came up just as he pushed. Just about took the door handle out of his hand.

  He followed his flashlight beam up the steps and across the platform. The crime scene tape slapped against the wallboards. There was a new combination lock on the door and nobody had told him the numbers. He stood in front of the SunBlesst woman’s big faded smile, listened to the crime scene tape rippling on the old wood.

  Nick walked around back, picked an empty window, climbed up and over. Smell of creosote again, and pee and old fires. And the faint sweet smell of citrus, blown through the cracks by the wind.

  The beam danced through the trash as Nick moved toward where the body had been. Pigeons shifting above.

  He held the light steady on the blood. Still surprised there wasn’t more.

  Knelt. Thought.

  Janelle. Freckle-faced little girl with an orange in her hands. Tutu and a guitar. Molested by her brothers. Dope and booze by fourteen. Then Andy’s article, different names but some people figured it out. David’s church took her in. Miss Tustin till she did a Playboy magazine cover. All that a year ago but pretty quiet since. Heard she’d quit the dope and booze. Going to college, wasn’t she? Nineteen and all that behind her and her head sawed off in a filthy packinghouse.

  Nick listened to the wind outside, let his light beam roam the big wooden cavern. Stood up and started out. Saw one of the floorboards by the window was busted. Reached down and yanked. Going to get this fucker. The nails shrieked in the wood and the pigeons blasted into flight, frantic wings in the dark. The board broke off in Nick’s hand. Nails still in it. Nick threw it through the window and climbed out.

  11

  NINE THE NEXT MORNING. Three hours of sleep. Day warm and breezy, sun cutting the ocean into silver bevels where Nick lifted a thin curtain and looked out a window.

  “How’s a nineteen-year-old chick afford this?” asked Lucky Lobdell.

  “And two thousand in the bank,” said Nick.

  Janelle Vonn’s place was downtown Laguna, a cheery yellow cottage on a bluff above the beach at St. Ann’s. Out a highway-side window Nick saw a market, a realtor’s office, and Rainbow Connections—a shop selling hippie dresses.

  “I smell maryjane,” said Lobdell.

  “I smell incense.”

  “Like the piss thing yesterday. You got the nose but look who found the saw.”

  “It’s hard to miss patchou
li, Lucky. But good work on the saw.”

  “It wasn’t work, it was luck.”

  “Good either way.”

  Lobdell stood in the hallway. Leaned forward and touched a picture frame. He made the cottage around him look toylike.

  “The dopers use patchouli incense to hide the pot smoke, don’t they?” he asked.

  “So I’ve heard.”

  Nick took the living room and kitchen. Lucky Lobdell took the bedroom and bath.

  To Nick’s eye the place was rented furnished. Blue fabric sofa ten years out of style. Same with the glass-topped coffee table in front of it. Thought he remembered the style of rocking chair from a high school friend’s house, a Sears product with a beige background and a brown oak-leaf and acorn pattern. A big dust apron around the bottom. A scuffed-up pine floor with a braided oval rug in the middle, blue and gray.

  Easy to spot Janelle Vonn’s stuff. A Beatles Revolver album cover and a peace sign poster on one wall. A WHAT TO DO IN CASE OF NUCLEAR ATTACK poster on another wall, with a photo of a guy kissing his ass goodbye. Some framed black-and-white photos of a guitar player onstage. Nick didn’t recognize him. The pictures looked amateurish, with the microphone making a big round shadow on the guy’s face. There was an elaborate macramé plant holder hooked into one corner of the ceiling, creeping charlies spilling out from the pots. The curtains were just bedsheets thumbtacked to the window frames. White sheets with little pink roses that the sun had faded.

  The kitchen was small and had a yellow and chrome dinette. The table had been last set for three. Yellow straw place mats, three wineglasses with a little dried red left at the bottoms. Lipstick on one. Water glasses—two almost full and one with lipstick almost empty. A large faint circular red stain in the middle. Plates and silverware in the sink rinsed but not washed.

  Yellow walls and cabinets. White refrigerator. Yellow counter tile. Nick opened the refrigerator. Orange juice, relish, three eggs, three packets of soy sauce. On top of the fridge was a large jug of Bali Hai wine. And a small ceramic mushroom with two sticks of patchouli incense in it, one of them half burned. A quarter of the wine was left. Nick figured the bottle bottom matched the red stain on the dinette table and made a note to have the bottle dusted for prints.

  A wastebasket under the sink solved the dinner mystery. Mexican takeout from Pepito’s on Ocean Avenue here in Laguna. Nick fished out the receipt. Red and Ho at seven o’clock? Enough food for three—$7.45.

  There was a bay window with a bench seat. Most of the seat was taken up with textbooks. An Introduction to Economics. The Norton Anthology of English Literature Revised, Volume 1. The Art of Sound: Appreciating Music was open to page 114, with a postcard of Watts Towers holding the place. The postmark was eight days ago.

  Hello Sweet Lady,

  Hadn’t seen these since the riots. Wondered if God made different colors of people so we’d fight, to keep us from building heaven on earth. Think of you every second. Got a song this morning, going straight to the demo.

  Love,

  J.B.

  A red telephone on a pile of paper an inch high. Nick set the phone aside and glanced through the pile. There were three pads of lined notebook paper with most of the sheets gone. Crowded with numbers and doodles. Corners bent, pieces torn out. Even the cardboard backings were covered with ink. Loose sheets of typing paper, covered, too. The girl was a chronic doodler: mostly flower petals and clouds with tightly detailed cross-hatchings. Like those old woodcuts, Nick thought. Horses. Waves. Not bad. And pages torn from phone books, some with circled numbers, but the circles were so big you couldn’t tell which number she meant.

  There was a worship program from David’s Grove Drive-In Church of God, too. No surprise there. Nick was about to flip past it when he caught the date—October 6, 1968. This coming Sunday, he thought. How’d she come up with that? Do they mail them in advance or something? A reminder? David would know. The sermon was “Keeping Your Heart Young Through God’s Love.”

  Next to the pile was a shoe box half full of bar and restaurant napkins with names and numbers on them. Business cards. Pens and pencils. Matchbooks: Frank Cavalier Bail Bonds—Get Out Fast! The Sandpiper Nightclub. Lorenzo’s—Fine Steaks & Cocktails.

  Hadn’t the Journal just given Lorenzo’s a glowing review? Yes, thought Nick, four out of five forks. And the Register had said it stunk. He flipped the cover open to a tiny map and the phone number. Dropped it back into the shoe box.

  Nick smelled Lobdell’s cigarette smoke wafting into the kitchen. A moment later Lobdell walked in holding a pretty golden crown with orange-colored jewels on it, and a handful of newspapers.

  “She was Miss Tustin,” said Lobdell. “The one they took the title away from. You remember.”

  “Sure. It was only a year ago.”

  “Look—they let her keep this chintzy crown, but they stripped her title away. Must have broke her heart. All these newspaper clips are the fun stuff she did. She saved them in a drawer.”

  Lobdell held out the little crown and the papers, looking from one to the other. Then at Nick. Cigarette in the crown hand. He shook both the crown and the newspapers like he had just presented compelling evidence, then lumbered back into the bedroom.

  Nick figured that Janelle had come here to start over. Came to Laguna to get away from Miss Tustin and the Playboy cover and all that.

  Nick picked through the papers and shoe box. Janelle Vonn’s handwriting was relaxed and innocent—big loops, not much slant, i’s dotted with small circles. He flipped the pages, noting that some of the names and numbers were repeated. Too lazy to look through the stack? Why not put them in the phone and address book she carried?

  On a loose sheet of paper near the top:

  B. Beat

  Dr. T/O Sun

  Jesse B.

  CB

  UCI $

  He dialed the first one and got Blue Beat music in Laguna. Craig the owner said they weren’t open for business yet but were working on the building. Sure, he knew Janelle, couldn’t believe what happened. Great girl. Full of wonder and feeling. Into music. Into experience. Beautiful laugh and smile.

  Craig wanted to know if they caught the stabber from the Boom Boom Bungalow.

  Nick said he hadn’t heard of an arrest, but the Laguna cops were handling it.

  Peace, said Craig.

  The second was a Laguna number—no answer. The third was a Los Angeles area code—J.B. again—but it just rang, too.

  A stoned-sounding man picked up at the CB number. Nick identified himself and the guy said “kiss my butt” and hung up. Nick called right back but got no answer.

  The University of California, Irvine, admissions office confirmed that Janelle Vonn was receiving Pell grants and loans totaling one hundred and fifty-six dollars for this, the fall quarter. And an annual two-hundred-dollar scholarship award for the next four years, from the Tustin Chamber of Commerce. This award had been rescinded by the chamber last November. Nick could tell by her tone of voice that the UCI clerk knew what had happened.

  “Check this,” said Lobdell. He stood in the little hallway holding a coat hanger by one big finger. On the hanger was a black leather jacket with silver studs on it. Elegant pleats on the sides, with red leather showing through. Kind of motorcycle-looking but kind of European-looking, too, thought Nick. He knew nothing about fashion. “It was hanging on the closet door. Not in the closet, but on the door of it.”

  “What’s the label say?”

  “Neck Deep, Laguna Beach,” said Lobdell. “Made me think of her neck.”

  “Same outfit that made her purse,” said Nick. “I don’t like that name. Made me think of her neck, too.”

  THE SPARE BEDROOM had a mattress on the floor, covered with bright Mexican serapes and big pillows in a batik print with gold tassels. Three SunBlesst orange boxes with the dark-haired beauty on the label. California Girl. Someone had drawn a mustache on one of them. Nick wondered if the label model reminded Janelle of herself.


  One of the crates held paperback books and fashion magazines. One was filled with record albums. Disraeli Gears out front. The third had a folder with Janelle Vonn’s birth certificate and high school diploma, a Tustin High School yearbook for 1967, and two large envelopes of Vonn family pictures. There was a handful of pay stubs from the Five Crowns Restaurant in a bag with a smiling dog on it. She made a dollar five an hour. The most recent stub was almost six months old. Two pay stubs from the Gleason/Marx Agency in Hollywood for a total of seven hundred and fifteen dollars.

  “And check this, too,” said Lobdell, darkening the doorway again. A handful of odd-sized letters and envelopes clutched in one hand. “Our honey had a honey. ‘Until I touch your body with my fire…your two perfect mirrors of skin and soul…the city lights and the naked trees and the different yous who live in me…brush my lips across your crying eyes.’ Fucking poetry, I guess. It’s written that way, little short lines. No periods or commas. Guy’s name is Jesse Black.”