Leigh

by Lyn Cote

  “Maybe, but they’ve always been odd, don’t you think?”

  Cherise’s words bolstered Leigh. “Yes, that’s exactly what I think.”

  “My dad calls them aging Bolsheviks.”

  Leigh chuckled dryly. “He’s probably right.”

  “Have you heard from Frank?” Cherise asked in an odd voice.

  Leigh tried not to feel jealous, but she had guessed that Frank wrote Cherise more often than he wrote her. The correspondence between Frank and the trio had continued but separately. “Yes, you?”

  “Yes, I’m worried about him even though no big attacks are on right now. I’m so glad he came through Khe Sanh.”

  “Yeah.” Leigh tried to keep her voice normal though Frank’s last letter had left her wondering about him. The letter had possessed an oddly incomplete feeling. Leigh couldn’t have put it into words, but it was real.

  “Write soon,” Cherise urged.

  “I will.” Leigh hung up and sat staring at the ornate phone. Who would have believed in 1963 that five years later, Frank would be in Viet Nam, that Cherise and he would be courting by mail, that Mary Beth would be on drugs and lost somewhere in San Francisco. Was life always like this? Did the last thing one expected always happen?

  She walked downstairs, intent on hiding her low mood. Her great-aunt didn’t need a depressed relative. A noise made her turn her head. Through the leaded panels on both sides of the front door, she glimpsed the form of a man. The doorbell rang and Kitty called for her to please answer it. Leigh hurried down the last two steps and opened the door.

  “Hi.” Dane Hanley looked back at her, his dark-brown eyes studying her. His strong chin already showed the beginning of five o’clock shadow.

  His unexpected appearance took her by storm. No words came. Leigh just stared at him, wave after wave of awareness and pleasure echoing, soaking through her.

  Kitty came up behind her. “How delightful! A handsome young man at my door. I knew there’d be more than one advantage to having a beautiful young woman as a guest. Do come in.”

  Dane nodded at Kitty. “I will, if Leigh will stop blocking the entrance.”

  Leigh felt her face warm with embarrassment over letting him affect her, and even warmer for letting it show.

  Kitty chuckled and touched Leigh’s arm. “Let the poor man in. I’m dying to hear what he’s come for.”

  “He’s come to spy on me for my mother,” Leigh snapped as she gave way. How did this man get to her, make her so conscious of him? She stared at him. “Isn’t that right?”

  “Not even close.” Dane took the hand Kitty offered him. “I’m Dane Hanley, FBI, and a friend of Ted Gaston’s.”

  “Oh,” Kitty exclaimed with obvious pleasure. “Come in. I’m just making tea, and I’ve never had an FBI agent to tea before. And certainly not such a handsome one.”

  “I’m sorry,” Dane apologized, “but could you hold that tea for about an hour? I’m afraid I need to take Leigh on an unpleasant trip downtown.”

  Leigh eyed him. “Where?”

  “The morgue.

  The scene was surreal to Leigh. She stood in an overly bright gray room filled with stainless steel and looked down at Chance lying on a cold tray pulled from a wall of drawers. Were they all occupied by white, bloodless corpses?

  “Is this Mary Beth’s Chance?” Dane asked.

  A white-coated coroner’s department assistant stood with them. She hated being here, hated having to do this. Chance’s head looked odd somehow, but she recognized him. “Yes, it’s him.” She turned away abruptly, weak in her knees.

  Dane took her arm and helped her to a molded orange-plastic chair against the wall, the only blotch of color in the deadly, gleaming room. The assistant slid the drawer back into the wall and without a word left her with Dane.

  “I’m sorry I had to make you do this, Leigh,” Dane said close to her ear, “but there is more than one Chance in California. I hadn’t met him in Chicago, and I needed to be sure that he was the one Mary Beth came out here with.”

  Leigh stared at the highly polished speckled-green linoleum floor, trying to blot out the formaldehyde odor of the room. “How did he die?”

  “It looks like he took a fall from a fire escape or a roof. They’d cleaned him up already You didn’t see the back of his head. It was pretty much a cracked eggshell. Who knows how long he’d lain there before he was found.”

  Leigh shuddered. “Do you know where he was found?”

  “Yeah, a driver for a waste company found him when he came to empty a Dumpster behind an apartment house.”

  “Do you think Chance was living in the apartment building?”

  Dane took out a paper from his suit pocket. “Let’s go talk to the detective on this case. Up to it?”

  Shutting out the images that Dane’s explanation had brought to mind, Leigh nodded and stood up.

  A short walk down the street brought them to a police station. Walking beside Dane gave her a quiet source of strength. Dane showed his badge and asked for the detective in charge of the case, and an officer led them back to an office. After her experience in Chicago, Leigh found herself prick ling with anxiety. Dane’s solid presence reassured her, but she hated that she craved his support.

  Dane whispered in her ear, “Let me do the talking.” And then the two men were shaking hands. Dane introduced her to Detective Shay, and they all sat down facing each other in the crowded, cluttered office. “So you ID-ed our latest dead hippie.” Shay looked her up and down.

  Leigh suddenly wished she’d worn a longer skirt. She didn’t like how the man’s eyes slid over her.

  “Miss Sinclair,” Dane replied for her and gave the detective a hard look, “has identified him as the companion of her friend, who is a missing person.”

  “Right.” Shay leaned back, his chair creaking, and pulled out a file folder. “Miss Mary Beth Hunninger, twenty-one, missing for over a week. Last seen in Chicago. What’s the FBI’s interest in Miss Hunninger? Is she SDS or involved in the Weathermen, or something like that?”

  If it hadn’t been all so macabre, Leigh would have laughed at the man trying to connect “puppy dog” Mary Beth with the Students for Democratic Society and the Weathermen, a group of violent protesters. Chance dead. Mary Beth a missing person. The events of Chicago played in Leigh’s mind like a newsreel. Mary Beth, where are you? What have you gotten yourself into? Why didn’t I leave well enough alone?

  “So far we don’t have anything on her,” Dane replied, “But Miss Sinclair’s father is FBI, and he’s personally interested in finding his daughter’s girlfriend before something like what happened to Chance happens to Miss Hunninger.”

  This thought sent another shiver of dread through Leigh.

  Shay nodded. “We’re on it. But we have so many hippies around Haight-Ashbury. All over the city, really. And if someone doesn’t want to be found, it’s hard. Their living situations are so fluid. Guys and girls shack up together, and friends of theirs float in and out of apartments. Some even become squatters, camping in old houses or canneries until the wrecking ball sends them all to the next deserted house or factory.” He shrugged and then looked at Leigh. “I’d be careful about looking for your girlfriend yourself. As the daughter of an FBI agent, you’d be prime bait for kidnapping by one of these violent protest groups.”

  Leigh frowned. Kidnapping?

  Dane stood and pulled her up by the hand. “Well, we’d really appreciate it if you’d keep us posted on your progress, and if there’s anything we can do, just ask.” Dane handed the man his card.

  Shay pushed to his feet and shot out his hand to Dane. The men shook hands. Leigh murmured her thanks. And within minutes, she and Dane were back outside in the cool sunshine. Leigh lifted her face skyward, feeling the sun’s rays cleanse her, as Dane led her to his car. He helped her into the passenger seat and drove them off without a word.

  Leigh felt folded up inside, her emotions a tight little bundle she didn’t want to op
en and examine. “Thanks,” she murmured.

  “For what? For taking you to the morgue?” Dane’s tone was sarcastic.

  “No,” she replied, looking down at her hands. “For coming, for helping.” For caring.But that was only a mirage. Dane was just doing this because he was a friend of her stepfather’s.

  Suddenly she felt adrift on a strange, murky sea without a compass. She turned her head away as if looking out her window. Propping her elbow, she pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, pressing her lips shut so no sound of her tears would be heard.

  Dane’s hand took her other one and squeezed it. His palm was warm and strong, and his touch had power. “I won’t say, ‘Don’t worry. Everything will be all right,’ because I have no control over Mary Beth or what may happen to her. She’s left the straight and narrow and is walking the wild side—an innocent—so everything is up for grabs.”

  Leigh turned toward him with sudden gratitude. He did understand. “I know. She’s like her parents and doesn’t seem to think there is evil in the world—except in Viet Nam or the federal government. And the way she’s using drugs. It scares me to death for her.”

  He squeezed her hand and nodded solemnly. She left her hand in his, drawing comfort and strength from him for the rest of the drive home, where they parked down the street from the townhouse. He tucked her hand into his arm as they walked up the steep sidewalk. No words were needed. She felt her heart opening like a blossom to sunshine. And she had no way to stop it.

  Leigh led him up to Kitty’s door and rang the bell. With her usual gaiety, Kitty welcomed them in to tea in the white-and-ivory parlor. Leigh sat silently while Kitty and Dane carried on polite conversation. The sweet and creamy tea warmed Leigh and helped her think. What do I do now}In a lull, she addressed Dane, “How long are you going to be in San Francisco?”

  He shrugged. “When your stepfather received notification from the San Francisco police about finding Chance’s body, he sent me to be with you so you could make a positive ID. I’m also going to be pursuing a few other cases that have shifted from the East to the West.”

  “So you’re going to be here?” She tried not to be glad about this mixed blessing. Dane was all too tempting, and she was much too vulnerable right now. He’s all wrong for me.

  “Why do you ask?”

  She resisted the enticement of leaning on this man. “Be cause I want to go looking for Mary Beth myself, and I don’t want you trailing around after me.” Distracting me. Tempting me.

  He looked amused at her bluntness. “All right, then. I’ll go with you.”

  “No, you didn’t get what I’m saying.” She shook her head vehemently. “I can get people to talk to me who wouldn’t talk to you.” And I’m beginning to notice things about you, like the part in your thick, dark hair and the way your eyelashes beckon me to stroke them.

  “I can wear blue jeans, too, you know,” Dane said in that way of his—somehow deadpan, somehow taunting.

  “Look at your haircut. Everything about you screams establishment. The kind of people who would know about Mary Beth’s whereabouts would keep mum around you.”

  “You’re probably right. I’ll need a wig and some tie-dyed T-shirts.”

  Leigh shook her head at him; this time in amusement. “No, I don’t think so.”

  He lifted one eyebrow. “Were you paying any attention to Shay’s advice about your not looking for Mary Beth alone? Some of these groups would be thrilled to take an FBI agent’s daughter hostage. Some of them have been able to get classified documents. They know stuff they shouldn’t know. Your stepfather is very visible in the inner circle at the Bureau. And with your mother at the CIA, you’d be a plum bargaining chip all right.”

  She ignored this. “I’m going to look for Mary Beth.”

  “And I’m going with you.”

  Leigh let her irritation flow over her face and put her cup down with a snap. “No—”

  Kitty interrupted with a laugh. “I love the battle of the sexes, don’t you?” She lifted the vintage teapot, her bright brown eyes crinkling up in amusement. “More?”

  Over a week later

  Leigh, with Dane at her side, strolled down Haight Street, trying to look unobtrusive. She had become accustomed to Dane’s hippie disguise—a dark, long-haired, untidy wig and mustache, and ragged blue jeans and stained T-shirt. He looked raffish, and it somehow heightened her growing unease around him. Relations between them had subtly changed, progressed over the past week. She knew what it was, but refused to examine it.

  They stopped to listen to a long-haired street guitarist who was singing Peter, Paul, and Mary’s, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” Dane slouched against the pole of a streetlamp and pulled her against him. She didn’t want him this close, because she, of course, did want him close. But she knew that to him it was only part of their disguise. Dane wouldn’t want her. He thought she was too young, too impulsive, too naive. So she let herself lean against Dane’s hard body, feeling the latent strength there, aware that it could be unleashed in an instant. Dane possessed a dangerous quality beneath his cool exterior. It fascinated her. And that troubled her.

  The song ended, and Dane muttered, “Hey, man. Groovy.” Then he pulled her along as they sauntered down the street. Leigh noticed a shop that sold incense, handmade soap, and long strings of beads to hang as doors in hippie apartments. There was a Help Wanted sign in the window. Leigh led Dane inside, making the bell above the door jingle, and then walked up to a red-haired woman, dressed in a gauzy multicolored caftan, perched behind the counter. “Hi, you need someone?” Leigh pointed back toward the window.

  Dane gave her a private “What’s this about?” glance, but then began examining love beads hanging on a nearby rack.

  “Yes, do you know how to run a cash register?” the proprietress asked, eyeing Leigh in her jeans and Columbia T-shirt. Of the two of them, Dane looked the more counterculture.

  “No,” Leigh admitted, “but I’m sure I could learn.”

  “Okay,” the woman said, handing Leigh an application and a pen. “Fill this out. Do you have a phone where you are?”

  Leigh nodded and then quickly filled out the application. “I came to town to visit a friend of mine, but she’d moved and didn’t leave a forwarding address. Maybe you’ve seen her. She’s a little shorter than I am, long, dark hair, and her old man was named Chance.”

  The proprietress accepted the snapshot of Mary Beth from Leigh. And then she eyed Leigh and the photo with vague suspicion. “No, haven’t seen her. We get a lot of coming and going around here.”

  Leigh nodded and put the snapshot back into her crocheted shoulder bag. “Thanks. Will you call me, or should I just come back tomorrow?”

  “I’ll call you.”

  After giving the woman the obligatory peace sign, Leigh led Dane out of the store. He murmured, “I’ve got to see you home now. I have another appointment about a different case.”

  After disappointing days with no leads, Leigh didn’t have the energy to object. After a few changes of buses, she left him and walked to her Aunty Kitty’s townhouse. She collected the mail from the box by the door, unlocked the door, and en tered the quiet house. Her great-aunt, though over seventy, still worked a few days a week doing pro bono legal work for the needy. She’d come home each day around five, and then the two of them would cook dinner together and eat it by the windows overlooking the bay.

  Leigh loved San Francisco and Aunt Kitty. If only this were just a pleasure visit.

  She sifted the mail and found another letter addressed to her from Cherise. It was good to have another friend who was as concerned about Mary Beth as she was. Leigh dropped the other mail on the table in the foyer, which was, as usual, alive with shimmering light and rainbow prisms. She slit open the letter. She read the first page and then the second and froze. Gripping the carved finial on the bottom post of the banister, she slid down and slumped on the bottom step. No. No.

  CHAPTER NINE


  Leigh couldn’t believe she was able to dial the phone. Her fingers actually felt stiff. But this was like witnessing a train wreck—she couldn’t look away. She must learn every detail. “Hello, Mrs. Langford, this is Leigh calling from San Francisco. Is Cherise home?” Her cool voice didn’t even quaver.

  Enduring the agony of Mrs. Langford’s friendly greeting and inquiries, Leigh waited on the line for Cherise to pick up.

  “Leigh, have you found Mary Beth?”

  Of course, dear Cherise would ask about their mutual friend first. That was so like her. Leigh didn’t like the cold, hard feeling growing inside her. Cherise was a good friend, a good person, and Leigh knew she truly was concerned about Mary Beth. “No, sorry. So far we haven’t found anything except that her boyfriend has turned up dead.”

  “That’s awful,”Cherise said with undeniable sincerity.

  Why do I always think Cherise has an ulterior motive? Is it just because I knew Frank was attracted to her, writing her, too? “It was rough. I had to identify his body at the morgue.”

  “Oh, Leigh, I’m so sorry.” Cherise aggravated Leigh further by sounding deeply sympathetic.

  “I just got your letter.” Leigh couldn’t make herself say any more.

  “I feel awful,” Cherise said with audible regret, “with Mary Beth missing and all. It’s like, why do I have a right to happiness when Mary Beth may be…”

  Leigh was glad Cherise stopped there. Leigh couldn’t allow herself to think that Mary Beth might be dead, too. I thought I was helping her.Leigh had tried to pull Mary Beth along, interest her in politics, get her back on track. And maybe I got her killed, too. Or at least, I helped her to be drawn deeper into the drug-saturated counterculture movement. “I feel so guilty,” Leigh muttered in spite of herself.

  “What’s happened to Mary Beth is not your fault,” Cherise defended her fiercely. “Her parents and—from what she told me herself—her professors encouraged her to fall off the edge of the earth. Don’t blame yourself. Mary Beth has always been persuadable. Or at least, as long as I’ve known her.”