Leigh

by Lyn Cote

  “And does she get top grades?” Dane asked, his eyes strayed to a group of hippies crowding around a nearby table that had just burst into raucous laughter.

  Leigh wondered if he were looking the hippies over for any particular suspects. “She did. But not this spring.”

  “Smoking pot can cloud the mind.” He sipped his brew.

  Leigh couldn’t disagree. She twirled the swizzle stick in her Coke. How had everything gone so terribly wrong? “I’d hoped,” she murmured, “that the trip here might wake Mary Beth up, get her interested in more than…”

  “More than drugs and a hippie boyfriend?” Dane finished for her.

  Leigh took off her sunglasses and then twirled them with one hand, trying to look unconcerned. Instead of helping Mary Beth, inviting her to the convention had backfired. This is all my fault. Why didn’t I just leave well enough alone?

  What if Mary Beth had been injured, but she and her boyfriend were too stoned to get proper medical care in time? What if the violence yesterday had pushed Mary Beth into even more outrageous, more revolutionary… violent activities? Leigh could understand that. Her outrage over the police brutality still rankled. Her sense of justice had been trampled, and she wanted someone to pay.

  “So when Mary Beth’s grades dropped,” Dane asked, “did her parents start putting on the pressure?”

  One of the hippies nearby wolf-whistled at her. She hated those kind of unwanted overtures. It was embarrassing. She frowned and leaned closer to Dane. “Some, but… they seemed to be pleased by her becoming a yippie, pleased that she was protesting the war. They said that some things were more important than good grades.” Leigh looked up. “Mary Beth’s dad was a conscientious objector in World War II, and both of them are members of the American Socialist Party.”

  Dane nodded. “I get it. I wonder if they were pleased when they watched what was happening in Chicago last night. They probably think the revolution has finally begun.”

  Leigh shrugged. What they thought was of no importance. “I’m going to Berkeley and see if I can find her through Chance. School starts in a few days and she needs to be there with me to start classes.”

  “Why don’t you leave this to me?”

  Leigh opened her mouth to retort.

  Dane forestalled her with an upraised palm. “This is what I do for a living. Do you really think you can do it better than I can?”

  She worried her lower lip. “Maybe. People who know Mary Beth or Chance would probably talk to me before they’d talk to—”

  “An FBI pig?” he deadpanned.

  That forced a smile from her. She took a cool, sweet-sharp draft of Coke.

  “You said this is Chance’s senior year, too? Let me put out some feelers to see if he returns to Berkeley.” He caught her eye. “I’ll deny this if you repeat it, but we have people on campus at Berkeley, and I’ll put the word out for them to look for Chance.”

  “I’m not surprised.” She swung her head and lifted her long hair off her perspiring nape. “And I won’t repeat it, either.” She grinned suddenly. “I’d appreciate your help.”

  The waitress sashayed back to them and asked Dane if he needed a refill. He shook his head. She gave him a flirty smile. He ignored her. “Then leave it to me. For a while,” he replied.

  Leigh gave the waitress a cool, superior look. “Okay, just for a while.” She realized that she might have to miss a few days of school, but she had to find Mary Beth. She had an awful feeling that her friend was heading down a treacherous path to disaster.

  Dane rose and offered her a hand up. She took it, and as their hands touched, an unexpected charge raced up her arm. She ignored it. Starting a flirtation with an FBI agent didn’t make sense right now. She had more important things on her mind. I’ll give you a week, Dane, then I’m heading west.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  San Francisco, September 10, 1968

  Chloe? Is that you?” Kitty McCaslin answered the phone from where she sat in bed in her townhouse. She leaned over to read the late hour on her bedside clock, feeling both pleasure and surprise ripple through her.

  “Don’t act like I never call you,” Chloe said with evident feeling.

  Pleased to hear from her lifelong friend and sister-in-law, Kitty tucked a bookmark in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and set the hardback on the bedside table. “It’s just that you never call me this late. It must be after midnight in Maryland.”

  “You’re right. But I just got off the phone with Leigh in New York City.”

  Kitty brought to mind photographs of a pretty little blonde girl—Bette’s daughter by Curt, all grown up now. Another childhood she had missed during her California exile. “You sound worried, Chloe. What’s wrong?”

  “She’s still insistent on going out to San Francisco to find her friend—”

  Kitty recalled a recent letter from her sister-in-law. “The flower child? The one who got lost in Chicago?”

  “Yes, I tried to talk Leigh into letting her stepfather take care of it, but she feels she must take action herself, that she was the one who encouraged Mary Beth to go to Chicago in the first place.”

  The stepfather was in the FBI. “She sounds like an admirable young woman. A loyal friend.” Kitty ran her fingers through her tousled gray curls and thought about coloring her hair.

  “She is. I just wish she would leave this to her stepfather. He’s more qualified.”

  “She feels guilty over this?”

  “Yes, and she’s planning on withdrawing from her classes tomorrow before it’s too late to get back most of her tuition. She has a ticket to San Francisco and will arrive on Saturday afternoon.”

  Kitty went on with the natural progression, “Do you want me to pick her up?”

  “I want you to invite her stay with you while she’s in California.”

  “Of course.” Kitty felt a spurt of anticipation over being able to do something for Chloe, to whom she owed so much. “She’s family. When is her flight, and what’s the flight number?”

  Chloe gave her the information. “I appreciate this, Kitty.”

  “It’s not a problem. Tell her I’m happy to do it.” More than happy. Thrilled. “Now. How’s that ugly brother of mine treating you?”

  “Oh, it’s a trial being married to the old coot,” Chloe teased, “but I manage.”

  Kitty chuckled. “Let me talk to him. Or is he already asleep and snoring?”

  “Hey, little sis, I heard that, and I don’t snore. Chloe does.” Roarke’s gruff voice came over the line. “When are you coming home for a visit?”

  The same old question. Roarke never stopped asking, even though he knew quite well why she avoided Maryland. She fell back on her standard reply. “Oh, someday. I’m awfully busy.”

  “That’s what you always say. But if we want to see you, we’re always the ones who have to do the traveling. We lead busy lives, too, even if I’ve retired from the bank and Thompson’s in charge.”

  The mention of their family’s bank and Thompson brought Kitty too close to the subject they both wanted to discuss, but wouldn’t. The old, familiar regret clutched her heart tightly. “I’ll come sometime soon, Roarke. Promise. But right now it’s good I’m here to take care of your granddaughter.”

  “Wait till you see her,” Roarke crowed. “She’s another heartbreaker like her grandmother.”

  Kitty grinned at the pride in her brother’s voice. “I’ll look forward to it. Give Chloe a hug for me, and let Leigh know I’ll be at the airport on Saturday.” Kitty hung up. She looked down at the age spots on her hands. How long had it been since she’d been to Maryland? Not since her father’s death back in the thirties. Roarke was right. It was foolish of her to stay away.

  All the gossips who’d even remembered that Roarke had a wild younger sister were probably dead and gone. And it would be good to see the old homestead and Ivy Manor again. But none of that had anything to do with the real reason she never went home. There was a truth there s
he’d never truly faced up to, no matter how many years had passed. Suddenly a glimmer of hope rose in her heart. Maybe someday soon she’d be able to face… him in Maryland. I’ll keep my promise, dear brother. I’ll visit soon.

  She got up, went to the medicine chest, and opened her jar of fading cream. She needed to get rid of her age spots before Saturday and Leigh’s arrival. The thought of having family come for a visit zipped through her once more, making her grin.

  San Francisco, September 1968

  As Leigh—tired and a bit downhearted—walked down the ramp from the jet plane to the gate, she scanned the people in the waiting area. From family photos, she recognized Aunt Kitty and waved, forcing a smile. Aunt Kitty, who was really her great-aunt, Grandpa Roarke’s little sister, stood on tiptoe and waved back.

  The obviously genuine smile of welcome on Aunt Kitty’s face warmed Leigh’s battered heart. She reached the petite, gray-haired woman and was enveloped in an energetic hug.

  “Welcome to San Francisco, my dear girl.” Aunt Kitty, who was dressed in the latest fashion, a pantsuit in deep bronze, kissed her on both cheeks. “I hope you’re hungry because I’m going to take you directly to a late lunch at Fisherman’s Wharf.”

  “I’m starved,” Leigh admitted with genuine feeling. Her subdued appetite awakened with a jolt at the mention of lunch.

  After retrieving her suitcase, Leigh followed Kitty out of the terminal where she had hailed a taxi. “I don’t keep a car anymore,” Kitty confided in the backseat of the yellow cab. “It’s such an expense, and I can get anywhere I really want to by bus or taxi. Plus all the walking I do keeps me fit. Has anyone ever told you that you are the image of your grandmother?”

  Leigh grinned. She liked it when people told her she looked like Chloe. “Yes.”

  “You nearly took my breath away. It was like being transported back to 1917. All you needed was a corset, a hat, and long kid gloves. And of course, a dress that came to your ankles—not one that—” Kitty paused to look down at the long expanse of Leigh’s thigh, showing beneath her lime-green leather miniskirt. “—displays your charms so… blatantly.”

  “Miniskirts are in,” Leigh replied in a long-suffering tone that plainly told Aunt Kitty she was tired of the topic.

  Kitty chuckled. “Mother giving you trouble about the length of your skirts?”

  “Endlessly.”

  “Well, that’s because she understands men. My dear, men are all about what catches their eye. And you give them so much to admire.” Kitty grinned. “Is that wise?”

  Leigh didn’t know quite how to take her Aunt Kitty. She was teasing, but perhaps she did side with her mother on the issue of miniskirts. But so what? Discussing the fashionable length of skirts wasn’t what had brought Leigh to California. “Thanks so much for letting me come out for a visit.”

  “My pleasure, my dear.” Kitty squeezed Leigh’s hand. “This will give us a chance to get to know each other. Chloe says you’re wonderful, and I don’t doubt it for a minute.”

  Leigh smiled again. Her grandmother’s love and acceptance never wavered, was never based on whether Leigh obeyed or not. “Thanks anyway,” she murmured.

  Kitty pressed her hand over Leigh’s again. “You are very welcome here for as long as you wish to stay.”

  *

  Leigh and Aunt Kitty shared a wonderful open-air lunch of creamy clam chowder and crusty sourdough bread at the Wharf, where Leigh fed the raucous seagulls and watched the antics of the sea lions lying on rocks in the sunny harbor. The harbor streets were also filled with tourists, flower children, street musicians, and panhandlers.

  After seeing the sights, she and Aunty Kitty waited in line and rode the creaking trolley car up the steep hill from the waterfront. From there they walked a few blocks and arrived at Kitty’s white Victorian townhouse, which perched on the top of another steep hill, overlooking the bay. Leigh couldn’t help herself, and she gasped with pleasure. “How cool!”

  “Maybe even groovy?” Kitty teased her.

  “More than groovy.” Leigh nodded with decision. “How long have you lived here?”

  “Since 1952.”

  “Wow.”

  “What’s the wow for—my longevity or the fact that I had enough sense to move here in 1952 and buy this place?”

  Leigh grinned. It was hard to be miserable around Aunt Kitty’s lively sense of humor. “Both,” Leigh teased back.

  Leigh carried her hot-pink suitcase up the stairs to the bright-red door.

  “I do love your luggage,” Kitty repeated.

  “Well, it makes it hard to lose at airports.” Leigh set down her bag inside the front hall and gazed around her. Family photos of McCaslins, some familiar, arrayed the walls in the foyer and up the staircase. A spectacular crystal chandelier hung high overhead, sparkling and casting little rainbow prisms on the wall opposite the door. Sunlight streamed through the leaded glass panels on both sides of the door, also casting rainbows. “I love this hallway. It’s psychedelic.”

  Kitty laughed out loud. “This is just the beginning. Come on. I’ll give you the grand tour.”

  On the first floor were the dining room, parlor, kitchen, and a powder room under the staircase. They were all light, airy rooms filled with antiques. On the second floor were a den packed with books, two bedrooms, and a full bath with a wonderfully old, deep, claw-footed bathtub.

  “I chose to decorate with antiques,” Kitty said, “because they fit the house and reminded me of growing up in Maryland. Our house was filled with family pieces. I went through a modern stage in the 1920s—”

  “Is that when you bought your Modiglianis?”

  “Yes, my first apartment in the Village was done all in shades of gray and white and spiced up with all the wonderful Modigliani and Chagall paintings that hang in my den now.”

  “They must be worth a fortune.” Leigh glanced over her shoulder from the hall.

  Kitty laughed again. “Yes, just ask my insurance agent. He loves me. I think I’m sending one of his children to private school. When I die, they will all go to the art museum here. Now you call your family and let them know you arrived safely and are unpacking at my place.” Kitty waved to the antique, French-style phone on the table beside the bed in the delightful guest bedroom before heading down the stairs.

  Leigh entered and gazed around at the lovely room decorated in a delicate rose-pink and off-white. It reminded her of the bedroom she had always shared with Dory at Ivy Manor, only the furnishings here were more Victorian than Colonial—an iron bed frame painted white, a dark-walnut chest of drawers, a gilded white vanity with a triple mirror, and a beautiful rose-sprigged rug with rich oak flooring peeking past its edges. Period photographs from the Victorian era—more McCaslins—were in groupings on the walls, along with a few period paintings of pastoral scenes and a few watercolor portraits. Leigh fell in love with the room immediately.

  She closed her eyes to settle her volatile emotions so that she would be able to stand up to her mother, then she dialed her home number. Each time the dial clicked around, number by number, her nerves tightened another notch.

  “Hello,” her mother answered.

  “Mom, this is Leigh. I just wanted you to know I got here safely. I’m at Aunt Kitty’s. She has a lovely house, and I can see the Pacific from my window.”

  “I’m glad you arrived safely,” her mother said tersely. “Cherise called and asked me to ask you to call her. Here, Dory wants to speak to you.”

  “Hi,” came her ten-year-old sister’s small voice. “Are you okay?”

  Leigh’s heart melted. “I’m fine, ladybug. How are you?”

  “I miss you. When will you come home?”

  Leigh wondered if her mother had put Dory up to asking these questions. But she’d give her mother the benefit of the doubt, which was more than her mother usually did for her. “I have to see if I can find my friend Mary Beth. I’ll come home as soon as I find her.”

  “What if you don’t fi
nd her right away?” Dory sounded lost and alone.

  “Don’t worry, ladybug. And I wouldn’t have been home this fall anyway. I’d have been away at school.”

  “I know.”

  The little girl’s sadness scored Leigh’s heart. “Tell Mom that I’ll call again soon. I love you, ladybug.”

  “I love you, too.” Her sister hung up.

  Leigh sighed, pressed down the button on the phone, and dialed Cherise’s home number. She’d put off talking to Cherise about Mary Beth. Cherise was a junior at Howard University and commuted to classes from her home.

  After talking with Mrs. Langford briefly, Cherise came on the line. “Hi, Leigh, I called, and your mother said you’d gone off to California on a wild-goose chase and that Mary Beth was missing. What’s going on?”

  Leigh gave Cherise the facts.

  “That’s awful.”

  Leigh could hear the sincere sympathy in Cherise’s voice. “I’m worried about Mary Beth. She’s been doing drugs.”

  “No,” Cherise said with audible shock.

  “Unfortunately, yes.” Leigh stood by the window, staring out at the rooftops and the blue Pacific in the distance. The view soothed something deep inside her. How could anything bad happen here? “I’ve been covering for her, trying to get her back on track. But obviously I failed. Now I just want to make sure she’s safe.”

  “Keep me posted. What’s your address there?”

  Leigh gave it.

  “I just can’t believe Mary Beth…” Cherise’s soft voice trailed into silence.

  “I know. And her parents just think it’s great that she’s gone counterculture.” Leigh’s resentment leaked into her words, twisting them. “They haven’t heard from her and think that’s just fine—that ‘she’s just growing, exploring,’” Leigh quoted them with the sarcasm she felt.

  “Do they know about her drug usage?”

  “I didn’t tell them.” Leigh grimaced at her own cowardice. “Don’t you think they should be able to put two and two together?”