Vanishing Point (v5) (epub)

by Marcia Muller

  We walked down the Embarcadero and had burgers at Miranda’s, my favorite waterfront diner, then headed east over the Bay Bridge in the agency van, our destination Davis, the university town west of Sacramento. On the way I conducted an informal training session on the art of the field interview: how to structure it; when to press for answers; when to sit back and wait for the answers to come; what body language to watch for; what tones of voice, inflections, and hidden meanings to listen to.

  “Even when a person has nothing to hide, there will be details they’ll deliberately omit or that will slip through the cracks,” I told him. “A bad memory, a rewriting of history, an aversion to a certain subject, or simply the idea that something isn’t important—they all can contribute to your getting an incomplete picture.”

  “You say ‘picture,’ rather than ‘answers’ or ‘set of facts.’ What exactly d’you mean?”

  “What do the facts a given individual provides you with add up to? How do they relate to the facts others have given you? Do they agree? Contradict? Where do they fit within the framework of the investigation? What other avenues of investigation do they point to?”

  Patrick shook his head. “Conducting and analyzing an interview’s more complicated than I thought. You study this in school?”

  “Nope. I was a sociology major at Berkeley—which was interesting enough, but not very practical. Some of this stuff I learned from my first boss, the man whose investigator’s license I trained under. But most of it came from trial and error. A lot of error. When I started training people myself, I realized I’d have to articulate the process, or they’d make the same mistakes I did. That meant I had to do a lot of thinking about what it is I actually do, whereas before I was just winging it.”

  “I’ll bet you could write a textbook.”

  “I was asked to, after I gave a talk at a symposium last year, but it’s not going to happen. I spend too much time at my desk as it is.”

  I took the central Davis exit and followed Terry Wyatt’s instructions to a quiet, tree-shaded block of Twelfth Street, lined with ranch-style homes that I judged to have been built in the 1950s. The uniform size of the lots indicated the area was an older subdivision, and all the houses probably had once been alike, but over the years they’d been remodeled and embellished with decorative touches so now no two looked the same. Terry Wyatt’s was the exception; its clean, simple lines were in the classic suburban style of fifty years ago.

  As Patrick and I approached the front door, a dog began barking, and I heard the scrabbling of toenails on hardwood. Then a second canine voice joined in, and a woman called, “Augie, Freddie—stop that!”

  The dogs quieted instantly.

  “Well trained,” Patrick murmured.

  The door opened partway, and a tall woman with dark blonde hair who bore an unmistakable resemblance to Jennifer Aldin looked out. She was holding fast to the collar of a black dog of indeterminate breed; the dog’s eyes were lively and inquisitive.

  “Ms. McCone?” the woman said. “I’m Terry Wyatt. Just give me a minute to put the dogs outside.” She closed the door and went away, calling, “Come on, I don’t want you bothering my company.” After a moment she returned, admitting us to an entryway.

  “They sound like watchdogs,” she told us, “but actually they’re just overly enthusiastic about visitors.” She glanced questioningly at Patrick, and I introduced him as my assistant. After they’d shaken hands, she said, “Would you mind sitting in the dining area? I’m making some jam, and I need to keep an eye on it.”

  Terry Wyatt led us through a roomy kitchen to an area containing a baker’s table and invited us to sit. Behind us was a living room with a fireplace and built-in bookcases, and beyond it a glass door overlooking the backyard. The dog I’d glimpsed earlier and another tan one stood outside, noses pressed to the glass.

  “Ignore them,” Terry said, noticing the direction of my gaze. “They’ll get bored and go play.”

  Up close, Terry’s resemblance to Jennifer was even more striking; while her hair was darker and cropped short, she had the same high cheekbones and scattering of freckles, the same direct gaze. Her movements were similar, too—quick and economical—but I sensed an absence of the tension that was present in her sister; in fact, Terry radiated calm well-being.

  She brought us soft drinks, then went back to check a big pot on the stove. A tantalizing odor rose from it as she raised the lid. “Pluots,” she explained, taking a seat at the table. “My favorite produce guy at the farmer’s market insisted I take an entire box. You can only eat so many Pluots—hence jam.”

  “Are you going to put it up in jars?” I asked, taking out my tape recorder.

  “Sure.”

  “I’ve always been afraid to do that.”

  “Botulism, you mean?” She grinned. “Maybe, if you were putting up green beans and really didn’t know what you were doing. I have a degree in home ec from UC and teach at a cooking school. Haven’t killed anybody yet.” She glanced at the recorder.

  “You mind if I tape our conversation?” I asked. “It makes for greater accuracy.”

  “Not at all. It’s just that seeing the recorder brought me back to the point of your visit. Jen’s really serious about finding out what happened to our mother, isn’t she?”

  “Yes. How do you feel about that?”

  She shrugged. “Ambivalent, I guess.”

  I glanced at Patrick. He’d taken out a notebook and was uncapping a pen.

  “In what ways?”

  “Well, it’s important to Jen’s peace of mind, and that means it’s important to me. We’re closer than most sisters; we had to be. After our mother disappeared, we had kind of a weird upbringing.”

  “In what way?”

  “Our father became very distant, wrapped up in his own grief, I suppose. Our Aunt Anna assumed the mother’s role in our lives, but she made it clear she resented the responsibility. And Mom’s best friend, Aunt Sally, whom both of us loved and would gladly have gone to live with, was more or less banished. Dad and Aunt Anna were really strict with us; we weren’t allowed to hang out with friends or date, and they always wanted to know exactly where we were at any given time. If we were delayed at school or something like that and didn’t call, we were grounded. Which was ridiculous, really, since the way we lived was like being grounded anyway.”

  “Perhaps they were afraid you’d vanish like your mother did.”

  “I suppose. But in a way, their overprotectiveness did make us vanish, because once we left for college, we seldom went home.”

  “All this started when you were four years younger than Jennifer, at a very impressionable age,” I said, “but your father’s recent death doesn’t seem to have triggered any need in you to find out what happened to your mother.”

  “I think that’s precisely because I was so young. To tell the truth, I don’t remember Mom all that well, and I never missed her the way Jen did. Besides, I have a feeling . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “A feeling that we may be opening up a Pandora’s box here. I mean, whatever you find out, it’s not going to be good, is it?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Well, odds are Mom’s dead, has been dead the whole time. Once we know for sure, we’ll have to grieve for her all over again. And if she’s alive, it’ll mean she went away of her own volition, or was taken away and didn’t try to come back to us. Her being alive is the absolute worst I can imagine, because it means that she was just acting the role of loving mother. It means she never cared for Jen or our father or me at all.”

  “I understand how you feel.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes. A while back, I found out I was adopted, and decided to locate my birth parents. I did, and it turned out they’re good people, and I’ve established a relationship with both of them. But every now and then—even though I understand the circumstances that led to them giving me up—this anger just comes out of nowhere. On some le
vel I feel that they didn’t love me enough and should have tried harder to keep me.”

  Terry nodded. “If you get angry, even though your parents had good reason for what they did, imagine how angry Jen and I will feel if our mother’s alive. Because I can’t imagine any reason that would justify her abandoning us.”

  “Yet you didn’t try to talk Jen out of going ahead with the investigation.”

  “No, and I’m willing to help any way I can. As I said before, if it’s important to her well-being, it’s important to me.”

  “Then let’s get started.”

  For the next hour we went over Terry’s memories of when her mother disappeared. Her recollections were much the same as her sister’s, although less detailed and insightful, which was natural, given her age at the time. Some details conflicted: Terry remembered being brought home from school the day after the disappearance by the neighbor woman, while Jennifer had said the school bus dropped them off; Terry didn’t think their Aunt Anna had been particularly upset that afternoon, while Jennifer had taken specific note of it; Terry remembered their father telling them at the dinner table never to say their mother was dead, while Jennifer had said it was at breakfast. Understandable discrepancies, given her youth and the passage of time.

  But one of Terry’s memories was puzzling, a new memory that had only surfaced after their father’s death, when Jennifer had begun calling four or five times a week, often late at night, to talk about their mother and speculate on what had happened to her. Terry remembered waking on the morning of her seventh birthday, some nine months after her mother’s disappearance, to the smell of Laurel’s perfume in her room, and finding a fuzzy toy lamb tucked into bed beside her. Excited, she’d shown it to her father, saying it must be from her mother. But he said he’d put it there, and that she must have imagined the perfume.

  “He was lying, though,” she told me. “Kids can tell when adults lie. I don’t know who put that lamb there, but it wasn’t Dad. Besides, it was one of those promotional items they spin off successful children’s book series, in this case the Littlest Lamb. The book that my mother was reading to me at the time she disappeared was The Littlest Lamb and the Biggest Gnu. Big coincidence, wouldn’t you say?”

  I asked, “Did you tell Jennifer what you remembered?”

  “God, no! Do you think I want to make her any more crazy than she already is?”

  “So what d’you think?” Patrick asked as we drove back to the city. “The mother sneaked back into the house to leave Terry a birthday present? Or Terry just thought her father was lying about putting the toy there? Or somebody else left it?”

  “Any and all of the above. I wonder if Jennifer has a similar recollection of her own birthday? Laurel was reading her The Wind in the Willows. Maybe Jennifer received a Mr. Toad.”

  “You’ll have to ask her.”

  “I intend to.”

  When we got back to the pier, I told Patrick I wouldn’t be needing him anymore that day. Then I went to my office and called Jennifer Aldin.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked her.

  “Much better. I’m sorry I got so emotional yesterday.”

  “No apology necessary; we were discussing an emotional issue. I met with your sister this afternoon, and we went over her recollections of your mother’s disappearance; tomorrow I’ll be heading down to Paso Robles to talk with your aunt and any of the other people involved in the case who are still in the area. I have a couple of additional questions for you before I go. Do you know what became of your mother’s postcard collection?”

  “I think Aunt Anna has it. She took a lot of Mom’s stuff. Why?”

  “I’m interested in seeing it, and anything else of hers. It may help me to understand what kind of a woman she was. Another thing: do you remember the first birthday you celebrated after your mother disappeared?”

  “My eleventh? Not really. I blanked out a lot of that year.”

  “You don’t remember anything unusual happening that day? A special present, maybe?”

  “. . . No. I don’t even remember if I had a party. I doubt I did. Mom organized great birthday parties, but I can’t imagine Dad or Aunt Anna doing that. But my birthday was ten months later. Why are you interested in it?”

  “I’m trying to put events in context.” Vague replies involving words such as “context” and “nuance” and “subtext” have stood me in good stead over the years.

  Quickly I ended the conversation and went down the catwalk to Derek and Mick’s office. Mick had gone home—it was after six—but Derek remained at his desk, hands poised over his keyboard. As I stepped through the door, he hit the print command with a flourish and swiveled around.

  “Shar!” he exclaimed, looking startled. “I just e-mailed you my file, and it’s printing out.”

  I sat down on Mick’s chair and propped my feet on the bottom shelf of the workstation. “How many people were you able to find current addresses for?”

  “Most of them. A few have died, a few are untraceable, but the others aren’t far from where they were twenty-two years ago. I backgrounded all but two of them and can finish up tonight if you need me to.”

  “Let me look at the list first.”

  The printer clicked and whirred and clattered on, sliding out pages. When it shut off, Derek put them in order and handed them to me.

  Mary Givens, the neighbor who had been close to the Greenwood family, had died five years ago, but Laurel’s best friend, Sally Timmerman, was still at the same Paso Robles address, as were Roy Greenwood’s dental assistant, the pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church, and the printer who had produced Laurel’s greeting cards. Jennifer and Terry’s regular babysitter had married and moved to nearby Templeton. Bruce Collingsworth, chief of the Paso Robles Police Department at the time, was deceased, but the detective who had handled the case was still on the force. Jacob Ziff, the Cayucos man who had stopped to chat with Laurel at the overlook where she was painting, was listed at an address on Studio Drive in that town, but the Sea Shack restaurant had gone out of business in the early nineties, and its staff had scattered. One of the dogwalkers who had spotted Laurel in Morro Bay was still living there; the other was untraceable. Derek had backgrounded all the individuals except for Jacob Ziff and the Morro Bay man.

  Not bad, given the length of time that had passed. Tomorrow I’d fly down to Paso Robles—fortunately, Hy had taken a commercial flight to San Diego so the Cessna was free—and start with the maternal aunt, Anna Yardley, then talk to the other people there. They would probably suggest still others I might interview. I like to think of the initial inquiries in this type of investigation as pebbles dropped into a pool of water: concentric circles spread out around them, each bringing you into contact with people who knew the subject in different ways and bring different perspectives to the case.

  Tomorrow afternoon, I’d drop the first pebble.

  Thursday

  AUGUST 18

  I put the Cessna into a descending turn and looked out its left window at the lower Salinas Valley. Narrow, as California valleys go, it was bordered to the east by the stark Gavilan Mountains and to the west by the more verdant Santa Lucias. Highway 101 ran more or less straight through it, paralleled by the Salinas River, its waters winking through the trees that lined its banks. King City, which I’d passed over some minutes before, spread to the north along a maze of railroad tracks, and below me the little farm town of San Ardo nestled among well-cultivated fields and vineyards.

  To the south, however, the landscape changed abruptly. Oil wells peppered the pockmarked terrain and barren hills rose around them, crowned by holding tanks. I spiraled closer, saw the rocker arms of the wells moving up and down, like the heads of giant insects boring into the earth’s core. An image of its essence being sucked dry put a chill on me. Quickly I pulled up into a wide climbing turn, then headed south again. The Paso Robles Municipal Airport lay only a few miles away; with any luck, the rental car that I’d reserved would b
e ready for me.

  The town hadn’t changed much since those pit stops I’d made during college. The drive-in wasn’t an A&W anymore, but it was still in operation. The Paso Robles Inn looked as if it hadn’t changed since it was built in the late 1800s. I saw no evidence of earthquake damage, other than scaffolding around a couple of boarded-up storefronts. To familiarize myself, I drove the length of Spring Street, the main arterial, then turned back toward the central business district, where I found a coffee shop and ate lunch while pinpointing addresses on a local map.

  My first stop was on Chestnut Street, which paralleled Spring three blocks to the west. In the middle of a row of California-style bungalows shaded by tall trees, I found the Greenwoods’ former home: beige stucco with green wicker furniture crowding its small porch and wind chimes suspended from the eaves. I pulled to the curb and idled there, trying to get a sense of the lives that had gone on in this place twenty-two years ago. But too much time had passed; the house was probably not even the same color now, and who knew what other alterations had been made. When a curtain moved in a front window and a woman looked out, I took my foot off the brake and pulled away.

  It was time for my interview with Anna Yardley. As I drove to Olive and Tenth streets, I reviewed what Jennifer Aldin and Terry Wyatt had told me about their maternal aunt. A retired insurance broker, Anna Yardley was unmarried and lived in the home where she and her sister Laurel had grown up. She’d spent little time with Jennifer and Terry prior to their mother’s disappearance, but afterward assumed a stern presence in their lives. “Warm and fuzzy was not Aunt Anna’s thing,” Terry had commented. “Her big sentimental gesture toward each of us was the gift of a thousand-dollar whole life policy—on which she probably collected the commission—when we graduated from high school.”