Desert City Diva
Page 17
Ozzie took another sip from his whisky glass and wiped his mouth. ‘I guess you could say the rest is history. I got on the JV team at high school the next year and moved up to varsity halfway through my first year. Baseball became my whole life. Coach Sullivan kept me going. I got drafted out of high school, which was good, ’cause I woulda had a hard time in college. Double-A first, then to Hawaii for a year and a half before I got called up to the majors.’
‘That’s where the picture was taken?’ said Rolly. ‘Betty came to Hawaii?’
‘They both did,’ said Ozzie. ‘I paid for their tickets. My mom and Betty. That’s when I first heard about the UVTs. I thought it was weird stuff, but at least my mother was sober. She said she owed it to these UVT people, how’d they helped her see the power inside her, this golden alien thing. Betty seemed happy too. I figured it was better for them to believe in aliens and have a place to stay than it was being out on the street. I gave them some money. I wasn’t seeing much yet, but I did what I could. It was later that I found out all the money I sent home went straight into the UVTs bank account. And then into gold.’
Ozzie paused and took another drink. The ice clinked in his glass. He tapped his fingers on the table. Rolly rubbed his sternum.
‘So Betty was there too?’ he said. ‘With your mother and the UVTs?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why isn’t her name on the memorial?’
‘My sister was as much a victim as the others, just not at the same time.’
‘Who else knows?’
Ozzie stood up. ‘I think I’ll freshen my drink,’ he said. ‘You want anything?’
Rolly shook his head. Ozzie went into the kitchen, got a new cube of ice and poured another shot of the Macallan 18. He returned to the table.
‘I didn’t even know what had happened until two days after they died,’ he said. ‘We were on a road trip, in Houston, my first year in the majors. I was batting one-ninety-seven, stinking it up. I heard a couple of the coaches talking about something they saw in the paper. Gave me this sick feeling inside. They showed me the article. I took some days off and flew back to San Diego. Identified my mother’s body. That made the papers, too. The sportswriters knew me because of my prep days. I stayed at Coach Sullivan’s house. That’s where he called me.’
‘Who?’
‘Chief Harper. He’d figured it out. That she was my sister.’
‘Betty was alive, then?’
Ozzie nodded. ‘He asked if I’d like to see her, that we could avoid the press and the police. I wanted to make sure it was really her. He gave me directions to his place, this little house on a canyon, out there near that tower thing that looks over the desert.’
‘Desert View Tower,’ said Rolly.
‘You know the place?’
‘I had a meeting with someone there just the other night.’
Ozzie gave Rolly a funny look, as if Rolly were joking.
‘So you know there’s pretty much nothing out there,’ he said. ‘Chief Harper had my sister with him in the house. He said we could keep her out of the limelight, away from the police and the papers. He was married. He seemed like a good man. We came to an agreement.’
‘Daddy Joe adopted your sister?’
‘Betty, you see, she had challenges. She was kind of simple-minded. She couldn’t really take care of herself. I thought I might have to put her in an institution or something. It seemed worth it just to give Chief Harper some money to keep her out of the way until the season was over and I had more time to figure out what I wanted to do.’
‘How long did this last?’
‘He called me a month later. He told me she was gone, that she had run away from their house one day. He promised to find her. I took him at his word. Chief Harper behaved like an honorable, decent man. He called me, once a week, then once a month. Later, we only spoke once a year.’
‘Did you ever find out what happened to your sister?’
‘Chief Harper had lots of theories, I guess, but none of them seemed to lead anywhere. I’d pretty much given up finding her, dead or alive. Then you showed me that photograph. All sorts of thoughts ran through my mind. I thought it might be some kind of extortion scheme you were running.’
‘I understand.’
‘My sister’s disappearance haunts me, Mr Waters, even more so than my mother’s death. I was young. I was under a great deal of pressure. I made an expedient choice instead of a wise one.’
Rolly rubbed his chin and looked over at Max. ‘Did you know about this?’
‘I didn’t know the whole story until yesterday,’ said Max. ‘I helped Eric set up the trust for Beatrice House, so his name wasn’t attached. I knew he named it after his sister, but I didn’t know what had happened to her. Wasn’t my business, really. We were able to get some money to the UVTs’ relatives by buying the place.’
‘When was this?’
‘Maybe two years after the UVTs event. After the criminal trial there was a civil case against the lady who started the whole thing. One guy had gone to jail, but she was the one who owned the house. She had to sell the house to pay for the judgement. Eric came to me, asked if there was some way he could buy the house without the newspapers finding out. I set up a charitable trust. He put in the money and we bought the property. We set up a non-profit and folded the home into it.’
Ozzie took the photo album back and leafed through it. ‘These are my girls, you know. I’m taking care of them, helping them get through a tough time. I didn’t do right by my sister, but I can help these girls, give them a chance.’
Rolly nodded. It was nice to know all this, but he wasn’t sure it was going to help him find Macy. He pulled Macy’s flyer out of his pocket and placed it in front of Ozzie. ‘Have you ever seen this woman?’ he asked.
‘Not in person,’ said Ozzie. ‘I’ve seen her picture before, though.’
‘Where?’
Max cleared his throat. Ozzie looked over at him. Max twisted his lips to one side and nodded. Ozzie left the table. He returned in a moment. ‘Randy Parker gave this to me,’ he said, placing another copy of Macy’s flyer on the table. ‘He asked if I knew this woman, just like you did.’
‘What else did he say?’
‘He seemed very interested in that charm around her neck.’
Rolly took the flyer from Ozzie.
‘There’s something on the back,’ said Ozzie.
Rolly flipped the flyer over. TEOTWAYKI. ‘Do you know what this means?’ he said.
‘I didn’t before Mr Parker told me. How did he die?’
‘He drowned, at these hot springs out in the desert. The police are investigating. They haven’t ruled anything out. Macy was there.’
‘They think she killed him?’
‘I have to tell you this, Mr Ozzie: Macy thinks she may be Betty’s daughter. Do you have any reason to believe that’s possible?’
‘I never heard anything about Betty having a baby. But … well, I noticed those eyes. I got a little of that gold in my eyes. My sister Betty had even more.’
‘What else did Randy ask you?’ said Rolly. ‘Why did he come to talk to you?’
‘He told me about his business, how he collected and sold UVT stuff. He said it was urgent he find some things of theirs soon.’
‘Did he say why it was urgent?’
‘He just said our time was getting short. There was some event happening.’
‘The Conjoinment? Is that what he meant?’
Ozzie’s phone rang. He reached in his pocket, pulled it out and answered it. A puzzled look came over his face. He hung up. ‘I hate that,’ he said.
‘What?’ said Rolly.
‘You know, when there’s just a bunch of beeping sounds, like a computer.’
TWENTY-FIVE
The Blog
There was a dim light on in his mother’s house when Rolly got home. He changed his clothes, grabbed his composition book, slipped into a pair of hard-soled slippers he kept by the d
oor and scrunched across the gravel driveway to his mother’s back door. He needed to return her car keys and borrow her computer. He tapped on the door – two short taps, repeated three times. It was the same way he always knocked – a coded knock so she’d know it was him. He tried the door. It was locked. He found her house key on the ring with the car key, opened the door and stepped into the kitchen.
‘Mom?’ he said. ‘It’s me. I’m returning your keys.’
He continued on through the kitchen and into the dining room, where he found his mother sitting at the table, the ghostly glow of her laptop computer illuminating her face.
‘Mom?’ Rolly said, keeping his voice low.
‘Hello, dear,’ she said, without turning to look at him. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I’m fine. I wanted to use the computer.’
‘I was looking up some things,’ said his mother.
‘It won’t take long.’
‘I should take a break, anyway,’ she said, rising from the table. ‘Can I get you some tea? I think I’ll make chamomile.’
‘Sure,’ Rolly said.
‘Chamomile’s very soothing. For the nerves. I know I could use some.’
‘That would be nice.’
His mother stood looking at him, as if she had something on her mind. ‘I was reading about them,’ she said. ‘That’s why it’s on the screen.’
‘Who?’
‘The Universal Vibration Technologists. The UVTs.’
‘Oh.’
‘I couldn’t sleep. I felt very agitated after we talked. It was a terrible thing that happened to them. That man you told me about, I remembered him. The one they arrested.’
‘Parnell Gibbons?’
‘He was quite imposing.’
‘You met him?’
‘Oh, yes. I think that’s what gave me such unease when I visited. There was a kind of animal magnetism to him. Something dark under the surface. Very controlling. Of course, I’d just left your father, so I was hyper-aware of alpha male controlling behaviors.’
‘Dad didn’t start any cults,’ said Rolly. If there was one thing his mother was hyper-aware of, it was pop psychology catchphrases.
‘His cult was the U.S. Navy, dear,’ said his mother. ‘Giving orders. You’ve seen how he behaves when he gets around his buddies. Always making sure he’s captain of the ship.’
‘Dad likes to be in charge, I’ll give you that.’
‘Well, anyway, I left the article up there on the screen. Since you’re involved with these people, you might want to read it.’
His mother went into the kitchen. It was a surprise to Rolly that there had been an event in his mother’s life that she hadn’t told him about. She’d dragged him to so many things when he was a teenager, from yoga sessions to music appreciation classes to lectures by mumbling dolts who thought that sending postcards would lead to world peace. It was his mother’s revenge, of a sort, on his father, after the divorce. Rolly’s father never wanted to go anywhere. He only cared about three things: his country, his Navy and his bourbon. The order of those allegiances changed daily, but his father remained consistent on general principles. He expected others to honor them. Dean Waters didn’t want his wife attending yoga classes or his son playing the electric guitar.
Rolly sat down in front of the laptop and looked at the article his mother had been reading. He scrolled to the top of the page. It was Randy Parker’s blog, also called Alien Artifacts. He read the article on screen about the trial and subsequent incarceration of Parnell Gibbons. It didn’t answer all his questions but it filled in a few gaps.
The UVTs had all died from drinking their morning soup – the gold soup, as Macy had described it. Except on that particular morning, the soup had somehow been laced with sodium cyanide. There were two known survivors: Parnell Gibbons and a woman named Dorothy Coasters. Gibbons went to jail. He’d worked as a professional exterminator, killing rats and vermin. A purchase receipt he’d signed for sodium cyanide was the key evidence against him, as well as Dorothy’s testimony that Gibbons had embezzled money from the organization.
The circumstances of Gibbons’ arrest went against him, as well, though anyone who had just found seventeen people dead might be expected to panic. Gibbons had been pulled over in his car, heading for the Mexican border at Tecate. Found in the car with him was a tote bag filled with one-ounce gold bars worth about thirty thousand dollars at the time. Gibbons offered the gold to the arresting officer, under the impression that tribal policemen were underpaid dupes. The arresting officer was Sergeant Joe Harper. The bribe didn’t work. Rolly made a note in his composition book.
In his initial deposition, Gibbons claimed that two other members of the UVT group had been responsible for the poisonings. Neither of those people had ever been found, dead or alive. The first was a young black woman Gibbons claimed had been with him when he was arrested. Officer Joe Harper denied Gibbons’ claim on the witness stand. The jury found Daddy Joe to be a more creditable witness than Gibbons. Daddy Joe had turned down the bribe, after all.
Gibbons also claimed that he’d purchased the cyanide at the request of another member, a man named Buddy Meeks. According to Gibbons, Meeks had asked him to purchase the sodium cyanide solution in order to process gold ore from other rocks and minerals they found in an old gold mine near the property. The use of sodium cyanide for this purpose was well known and accepted among gold miners. Gibbons testified that he and Meeks had explored the old mine together, looking for ways the UVTs might use it. Rolly made another note in his composition book.
At the end of the page there was a link to the next article – Alien Gold? Rolly clicked on the link and read through the page. Parnell’s testimony, as well as the gold he had on him when he was arrested, became the subject of much speculation in the years following the trial. UVT members had sold off their personal possessions and transferred the proceeds to the bank account Gibbons had set up, but the numbers didn’t add up. Gibbons had drawn on the account and converted the cash into gold, but estimates put it well above the amount of gold he had been carrying with him. His tales of the old mine inspired more speculation. There were rumors of a secret hiding place in the mountains, a designated safe spot where the UVTs would wait for the looming arrival of their alien brethren. There were documents found at the scene indicating the members were planning on leaving, and a list of items with each member’s name above it had been found at the communal table. They’d been used as evidence by Parnell’s defense team, who suggested the UVTs knew exactly what they were doing when they drank the fatal doses of cyanide.
Rolly’s mother called to him from the kitchen. ‘Your tea is ready,’ she said.
Rolly got up from the table and walked into the kitchen. His mother had laid out a plate of cookies to go with the tea. They looked like cookies anyway – a chocolate color pressed into round cookie shapes. Rolly could never be sure what his mother had brought home from the natural food stores. He tried one of the cookies. It tasted like raw honey mixed with an indeterminate root vegetable, perhaps beets. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t anything like chocolate.
He sat down at the table and stared at the steam from his tea mug, waiting for it to cool.
‘You look tired, dear,’ said his mother.
‘I guess I am.’
His mother picked up the plate and offered it to him. ‘Have another one,’ she said. He took one of the not-chocolate round things and chewed on it. It gave him something to do while he stared at his tea.
‘That man, Parnell Gibbons,’ he said. ‘The leader of the UVTs?’
‘He wasn’t really their leader,’ said his mother. ‘Not spiritually. There was that woman. I found her quite fascinating. It was really her theories, you know, about the tones and the frequencies. She came up with the original vibration technologies. I found the precepts quite compelling. If it hadn’t been for that horrible man I might have stayed.’
‘What did she look like?’r />
‘Beautiful corn silk hair and a radiant smile. She was wearing a long purple dress the day I went up there.’
The so-called cookie felt like sawdust in Rolly’s mouth. He swallowed it and looked over at his mother. ‘Do you remember her name?’
‘D something, I think it was.’
‘Dorothy Coasters?’
‘No, that wasn’t it. It was similar.’
‘Dotty? Did anyone call her Dotty?’
‘Now that you mention it, I think they did.’
Rolly nodded and blew on his tea. It was still too hot to drink. His phone rang. It was Bonnie.
‘It’s a pay phone,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘That number you were asking about, the one that keeps calling you. It’s a pay phone.’
‘Where do you find a pay phone these days?’
‘Out in the desert. That’s where. 17817 California Route 111. It’s in Coachella. I checked the satellite maps online. It’s outside a 7-Eleven, right on the highway.’
Rolly walked into the living room and jotted the address down. Coachella was where Macy gone to attend the music festival with Randy Parker.
‘Any sign of Macy or Parnell or Dotty yet?’ he asked.
‘Nothing yet. We’re working on it.’
‘Can’t you put out one of those amber alerts?’
‘Those are for kids. She’s an adult. We don’t know for sure she didn’t dump you.’
‘I told you what happened.’
‘You didn’t actually see anyone force her, though. I’m working on it.’
‘Listen, Bonnie – that UVT thing, twenty years ago. How much do you know about it?’
‘More than I did two days ago. I’m going through the case files.’
‘I was looking at Randy Parker’s blog. He said there was a woman named Dorothy Coasters who testified against Gibbons.’