by Susan Dunlap
It was like Vida to think that. A woman who refers to her niece as a pain in the behind isn’t likely to picture that behind bare in bed with a stranger.
“Oh, Vejay, your beer,” she said. “I promised you a beer. And lunch. You haven’t had that.” She jumped up, then paused, staring at the gold sunburst clock above the fireplace, the only decoration in the room. “Oh, it’s almost one o’clock. I have to get back to work. I’m sorry about lunch. But there’s bound to be beer in the fridge. You help yourself. And to lunch, too. It’s the least we can offer you.”
“Okay, but before you go, tell me, where is Craig?” Craig, who hadn’t wanted to call the sheriff, also didn’t seem to find his wife’s disappearance sufficiently disturbing to keep him at home.
“He’s at the nursery. Like he said, you can’t leave a business to run itself. He’s right—there’s nothing he could do here. I told him to go on.” She opened the door. “You’ve investigated things before, Vejay. You know what to do.”
I had barely reiterated that I would do what I could when Vida rushed out the door. Left alone, I hardly knew where to begin.
I remembered Michelle. Even to beard the meter reader, she had put on makeup and clothes that were chosen to show off her figure. And in our brief conversations it was apparent to me that she wanted not only to know about her meter’s reading, but she wanted my attention. Was she, as Vida suggested, bored? Was she looking for something to break the monotony? Michelle seemed like a young woman who could be enticed into a fling. Vida was sure Michelle wouldn’t, but of course, decent young wives do have affairs. Nice girls with tired busy husbands and small children find other lifestyles seductive—find other men. And in Henderson, where in winter there is nothing more entertaining than a drive to the supermarket in Guerneville, people are thrown back on their own resources. I had spent many a winter’s evening huddled near my fire reading. For those who didn’t read there was television, the bars, and the lure of an illicit affair that gave one day a different meaning than the next.
It was now one P.M. Michelle Davidson was probably getting out of a rumpled bed in a motel in Jenner, where the Russian River exits into the Pacific, and wondering what she would tell Craig.
CHAPTER 2
IF MICHELLE DAVIDSON HAD shacked up for the night, she might return any minute to find me going through her house—a distinctly unpleasant prospect no matter how I handled it.
So, I moved quickly through the dining area, which held only a redwood picnic table and four chairs. The kitchen was that of any young mother without gourmet aspirations. Cupboards were stocked with cereal boxes, macaroni and cheese, instant this and instant that. There were few ingredients per se, and none of those copper or enamel articles one sees in kitchen catalogs. I glanced in the drawers and under the sink, but there was nothing out of the ordinary there.
Skipping the children’s rooms, I checked the master bedroom. On the dresser, framed in monogrammed silver, was Craig and Michelle’s wedding picture. Craig, just a bit taller than Michelle, appeared mature, even staid, though at the time he couldn’t have been more than twenty-five years old. He looked like a man who was born staid. And he looked unsure. I picked up the photo, holding it closer, trying to see into the faces. If Craig seemed apprehensive, the reason was obvious. Michelle, standing next to him, was tiny, but stunning. Her long dark hair was flipped back, à la Farrah Fawcett. Her dark eyes glistened, and she smiled not at Craig, but at the camera.
Putting the picture back in place, I glanced around the room. A matching bedroom set dominated it. Two twelve-by-eighteen-inch frames held clusters of pictures of Michelle and the children, a boy and girl about five or six years old. Under them, on the nightstand, was a yearbook, Michelle’s high school yearbook from eight years ago. Looking down at it I wondered what had become of mine. I didn’t recall it amongst the carloads of belongings I had moved out of the San Francisco apartment after my divorce. Probably it was still in my parents’ attic. In any case, it had never had a place on my nightstand. Perhaps college puts high school events in perspective. Or, more likely, my memories were not as glowing as Michelle’s.
I opened the yearbook in the middle, and turned the pages slowly. Indeed, my memories were not of this caliber. Michelle was the girl we had all envied in those days. Her picture graced almost every page. She was shown leading the pompom squad, with the school service league, as queen of the senior prom. Half a page was devoted to shots of Michelle at a state gymnastics meet—midway through a flip off the uneven bars, at the high point of her vault over the horse, standing on one foot on the balance beam while bringing the other foot up behind her back to touch her head. In the final picture she was receiving a medal. She was a natural for gymnastics—tiny, strong, and beautiful. I wondered if she had gone on with her gymnastics after high school.
But perhaps involvement in causes had supplanted gymnastics. Stuck between the pages of the yearbook was a snapshot of Michelle and a tall wavy-haired young man at a demonstration. He towered over her, carrying a sign. She looked on. Was this the seed for her support of later causes, including the anti-hookers’ group?
Replacing the yearbook, I glanced in the closet. Craig’s clothes occupied a third, Michelle’s the rest. And while his were mostly workclothes, Michelle’s were designer jeans, silk blouses, and a three-foot-high pile of expensive bulky knit sweaters.
I looked around the room again, and checked the hall and living room on my way out. I had expected to find a desk or table or even a box, cluttered with papers, magic markers, picket sticks, the paraphernalia of the anti-hookers’ group, but there was none of if. The house was spotless, as if Michelle had cleaned it just prior to her departure.
Having peered through Michelle’s clothes, speculated on her marriage, riffled through her yearbook, I couldn’t bring myself to raid her refrigerator. I would talk to the neighbor, the one with the cesspool, then I’d have lunch, and my beer.
I shut the front door and made my way down the stairs, avoiding a clump of ivy that trailed over two steps. At the bottom I turned back and looked up at the house. Like many of the newer hillside houses it was not painted, but stained wood. Its deck hung off the front, wide and pendulous, giving the whole structure the appearance that one good rain would wash it down the bare hillside and into the street. But it was sturdier than it looked. Homes here were built on supports sunk deep into the rocky hillside. Rains would come and the river would flood but the cabins and chalets on the hillside would survive. Still, there was something very impermanent about this house, Michelle and Craig’s. It wasn’t the structure, but the nearly bare earth outside and the sparsely furnished rooms inside. It looked as if Michelle and Craig were still in the process of moving in. Or moving out.
Below on North Bank Road came the sounds of traffic—horns blaring, brakes squealing as the tourists headed through the heat of the afternoon toward their vacation cabins or the town beach.
I walked around the garage and up ten stairs to the neighbor’s door. The house, older than the Davidsons’, was painted beige and trimmed in French blue. There was no deck in front, but a porch in the rear. These older houses were built closer into the hillside. A wooden sign announced The McElveys’. I knocked.
I had read the meter here, around back by the side of the porch, but I had never seen either of the McElveys at home. Ward McElvey I had met in passing a few times when I had been working one of the Guerneville routes. His realty company, Remson Realty (Remson after the father-in-law who founded it), had moved into Guerneville proper just before I started with PG&E. I had seen the old storefront on the outskirts of town that had housed the business when Mr. Remson started it in 1953. Mostly, Mr. Remson had handled the weekly or monthly rentals that were the bread and butter of realtors then. But the Remson Realty I saw these days was in one of the newly constructed shingled buildings along the main road leading from Santa Rosa to Guerneville. No longer did Remson’s handle the demanding trade of weeklong rentals; now the colore
d photographs out front showed condos and duplexes for sale at prices that would have made old Mr. Remson spin. ASK ABOUT SUNSET VILLAS, a sign in the window invited.
Ward McElvey opened his front door. He was middle-aged, five-foot-ten, with a solid but not heavy build and a square face. His brown hair had the fluff of blow-drying. He wore brown slacks and a white tennis sweater that was too heavy for the day. “What can I do for you?” he asked, ushering me into the foyer. After the heat outside it seemed invitingly cool in here.
I was surprised that he had let me in without an explanation. As a meter reader I was bonded. Customers knew that, but it rarely encouraged them to invite me into their homes. But perhaps Ward McElvey’s reaction was not caused so much by my business as by his. Perhaps he viewed each stranger as a prospective home buyer.
“Mr. McElvey, I’m Vejay Haskell.”
His eyes narrowed. I wondered if he were having second thoughts about letting me in.
“I know I’ve seen you in town,” he said. “I just couldn’t place your name. I’m sorry.” He looked uncomfortable.
“You’ve met me reading your electric meter, so it’s no wonder you don’t know my name.”
He looked down at my sweat-stained uniform.
“I’m not here on business,” I added quickly.
“Ah, well,” he said, apparently relieved, “then can I get you something to drink? A beer?”
I seemed to be perpetually offered beers I couldn’t drink. “No, thanks.”
“We were just having a drink before going out to the site,” he said, taking me into the living room.
The walls were covered with paintings—abstract portraits, nudes, groupings—all huge, with huge faces in reds and browns, or navy and brown, or shades of greens that melted into one another. They so dominated the room that it was a moment before I noticed Ward McElvey’s guests, an older city-dressed couple on a green brocade sofa.
“Mr. and Mrs. Underwood, this is Vejay Haskell.” To me, he announced, “Mr. and Mrs. Underwood are here to see Sunset Villas, or more precisely, the attractive riverside location where our villas will be built.”
Mr. Underwood seemed about to push himself up then decided against it. “How d’ya do?” he said. His wife merely nodded.
Before I could respond, McElvey continued. “Sunset Villas will offer a dream retirement for forty fortunate couples and a superb investment for forward-looking people.” He smiled at the Underwoods. I felt sure I was being treated to a much-used sales pitch.
“We were just looking at one of the model units pictured here—”
“Mr. McElvey,” I said.
“Ward.”
“Ward. I hate to disturb you but I’m really just looking for your neighbor, Michelle Davidson.”
“Oh, you are. Hmm. Well, anything I can do,” he said with a clear lack of enthusiasm. To the Underwoods, he said, “If you folks will excuse us. You know where the bar is, so you help yourselves.”
The Underwoods nodded slowly and I suspected that Ward McElvey had been helping them to drinks since they arrived. It explained Mr. Underwood’s decision not to try standing up.
With their assurances that he was excused, Ward McElvey led me back into the hallway and leaned stiffly against the wall. In his sweater, he looked hot and uncomfortable. And now that the novelty of being out of the sun had worn off, I felt the heat inside too.
“What’s this about Michelle?” he asked.
“I need to get in touch with her. I can’t find her. She wasn’t home last night. I just thought you might have seen her in the last day or two.” Even to me my statement sounded disjointed. I hoped Ward McElvey wouldn’t question my relationship to Michelle or why I needed to see her so urgently.
But he didn’t. He glanced anxiously back toward the living room. “Her husband—”
“He wasn’t much help. Maybe he’s too busy. I just thought…” I let the words trail off, but gave no suggestion of leaving. I was beginning to see what a ridiculous position I had allowed myself to get into. How do you ask about someone you can’t admit is missing?
Ward’s mouth twitched, as if wavering between a variety of replies. Finally, he said, “You know, I did see her last night.” Glancing back at the couple in the living room, he motioned me a few steps further into the hallway and said softly, “You work for PG and E. You know about the sewer.”
The sewer was in no way connected to the electric company, but as a homeowner, I knew as much as the next person about the sewer project that had run millions of dollars and several years over estimate. It promised to be completed soon. After all, the sewer pipe had made it through town and as far as this street.
“I know about the sewer.” Adding to the fiction of my friendship with Michelle, I said, “Michelle told me about your cesspool.”
“She did? Well, that’s what she was carrying on about last night. She’s probably told everyone in town. She even threatened to complain to her congressman. I said I was sorry about the mosquito larvae. No one wants them on their garage wall. I didn’t let my leach lines work their way there on purpose, you know.”
Cesspools and septic tanks were elements of rusticity I hadn’t been prepared for when I had moved here from San Francisco. But I learned all too quickly. Cesspools were wooden boxes; septic tanks were larger cement cylinders with one or two compartments. Both took care of the solid material. The liquid was carried out of them and into the ground by underground fingers of gravel called leach lines. Initially, the water drained only to the ends of the leach lines, but over the years the force of the water or the vagaries of the soil and rock changed or extended the flow till it came to a wall, or a stream—or in this case, Michelle Davidson’s garage.
“What Michelle has leaking into her garage isn’t pure sewage, but it’s not something she would want next to her car window either, is it?” I asked.
“Well, no. I tried to be reasonable. It’s not a disaster. I offered to come in and scoop up the mess. I would have done that. But, well, you know Michelle.”
“How did she react?”
“Like she always does. You can imagine the magnitude she’s blown it into, can’t you? Last night’s tirade was standard. She’s gotten so bad that I never go out without checking to see if she’s there. I have to park my car down the street, and when I leave the house, I use the back door and skirt around behind the people on the far side and down through their property.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to deal with the cesspool?”
He put a hand on my shoulder. “You’d think, but the thing is—I’ve explained this to Michelle, but you know how she is—the sewer will be in shortly. You can see the hole right in front of my garage, so even if I wanted to park there I couldn’t. Anyway, when the sewer is in, there will be a hook-up charge.”
I nodded. I knew that only too well.
“And the question is, how much will it cost, right? It’s based on how many people hook in, right? If it’s reasonable, I’ll hook in. If not, I’ll get a septic tank. But, as I’ve told Michelle over and over, I’m not going to get a septic tank now if there’s a chance I’ll hook into the sewer in a month. That’s reasonable, isn’t it?”
I nodded again.
He gave my shoulder a squeeze and released it, an affectation I found increasingly irritating. “Tell that to Michelle,” he said. “She’s called the county; she called Mosquito Abatement. Environmental Health sent a man out. She called the county again. They called me. You know Michelle; when she gets on a jag like this she never lets go.” He took another step into the hallway. “I’ll tell you what I think, Vejay. I think Craig Davidson spends too much time at his nursery and Michelle just doesn’t have enough to do with her time.”
I was tempted to comment that no amount of work or time spent on hobbies would make sewage leaking into your garage acceptable. Instead, I asked, “Do you have any idea, anything at all, about where she might be?”
“Maybe she went off with the Environmental Health man
.” He laughed. “No. I don’t want to say anything out of line. But Michelle is a very attractive girl. She knows it, too. She’s particularly attractive if she doesn’t open her mouth. To a guy in a bar…well, you know what I mean.” He smiled conspiratorially. “Doesn’t dress like a nun, either, up there on her deck railing in a leotard.”
That railing was two and a half feet above the deck. From it the drop to the ground was anywhere from ten to twenty-five feet. “What was she doing up there?”
He shrugged. “Walking. Sometimes backwards. One time she did a back roll. She knows how to show off her best features, if you know what I mean.”
Ignoring that observation, I asked, “Do you think your wife might have talked to Michelle recently?”
Ward glanced toward the living room. “My guests,” he said in way of explanation. “Jenny? I doubt it. You probably don’t know Jenny.”
“No, I don’t think so.” I might have seen her or spoken to her, but I didn’t connect any particular woman to this house.
“She does those little sketches on the sidewalk downtown. You know, the souvenir pictures the summer people buy.”
“Oh yes, I have seen her there. She’s very good.”
He nodded absently. “She may know something about Michelle, but I doubt it. She doesn’t like to be bothered, particularly by Michelle. But you can ask her.”
“Why particularly by Michelle?”
He looked again toward the living room. “My guests…I really can’t leave them any longer, you understand. They’re anxious to get out to the site.”
“But why particularly Michelle?”
He shrugged. “Jenny doesn’t have much patience.”
That didn’t answer my question, but I couldn’t ask again. Instead, I asked to use his phone.