Vanishing Point

by Marcia Muller

  He said, “Don’t you have to make periodic progress reports to the clients?”

  “Only if they request them. Even then, I don’t share everything-too much danger of discouraging them or raising false hopes. When I wrap up a case, I make a verbal report, and present them with a copy of the written.”

  “Clients ever get pissed at you if the news is bad? Want to kill the messenger?”

  “Sometimes. Goes with the territory. So let’s see what you’ve got there.” I motioned at the chart.

  “Okay. This is the Laurel case. And this”-he moved the paper aside to reveal a second chart-“is the Jennifer case. Since we’re acting on the assumption that Jennifer’s disappearance is linked to-or maybe it would be better to say caused by-what happened to her mother, we should go over the Laurel chart first.”

  “Right.”

  “Basic lines of inquiry: Laurel’s last moves. You’ve interviewed Jennifer and Terry, Anna Yardley, Sally Timmerman, and all the official witnesses who could be located except for Bryan Taft, the second dogwalker in Morro Bay. Those lead to secondary lines: Herm Magruder; Jacob Ziff, because he lied to you; Kev Daniel, another liar; Josie Smith, the deceased cousin, because Jennifer seems to think she was posthumously connected with the disappearance. And then there’s the question of the biker.”

  “Ira Lighthill, the other dogwalker, phoned to say he couldn’t find Taft’s last known address in Mexico, so that’s a dead end, at least for now. Magruder’s not due to return from vacation till later in the week. I’ve got Derek doing deep background on Ziff and Josie Smith, and starting to background Daniel. The biker could conceivably be someone who was in Laurel’s art class at the Men’s Colony, but we’re having difficulty getting information from DOC.”

  Patrick was silent, drawing a circle in pencil around Josie Smith’s name. “I agree with you about Smith. You take a discontented woman like Laurel apparently was, and when a contemporary dies, it makes her question why she’s leading the kind of life she is.”

  “The postcard she sent pretty much confirms it. Let’s look at Jennifer now.”

  He moved the Laurel chart aside. “Basic lines: bank accounts and credit cards. Haven’t been used. Second home and boat at yacht club. Unoccupied, and the husband’s continuing to have them monitored. Flat on Fell Street. Rae’s looking into that.” Patrick paused. “Why’d she decide to work on this? I mean, she’s got a book to write, and her husband has millions.” When I didn’t respond immediately, he added, “I don’t mean to pry.”

  “You’re not. Rae admits she’s blocked on this second book and is looking for a distraction. Plus she genuinely cares about Jennifer. But I see another factor: Rae really loved investigative work; she probably misses it.”

  “Then why’d she quit?”

  “She’d always wanted to write, and once she and Ricky married, he encouraged her to try. Now she just needs a vacation from it.”

  Patrick’s freckled face relaxed some.

  “You weren’t afraid she was going to come back permanently and take your job?” I asked.

  “A little.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t’ve worried. Even if she wanted to come back there’s more than enough work for both of you. And when I hired you, I made a commitment; I wouldn’t go back on that. Besides, I never in my life have seen anything like these charts.” As I spoke, a flash of inspiration hit me: maybe I should assign Patrick to coordinate cases in this way for all the operatives. I’d have to think about that.

  “Thanks.” He turned his attention back to the chart. “Okay, the highway patrol’s got a BOLO out on Jennifer. I’ve been monitoring that; no sightings. She may have ditched her own vehicle and rented another. But the husband says she doesn’t carry much cash, and she’d’ve had to pay cash in lieu of using the credit cards and bank accounts.”

  “She could have borrowed a friend’s car, but she’s out of touch with all of them except Rae.”

  “Unless there’s a friend we’re not aware of.”

  “I’ll put Craig onto that and I’ll ask Rae if she can remember anybody we haven’t contacted.”

  Patrick nodded. “Now we come to the subject of the husband. The theory that he may have made Jennifer disappear because she’d become a liability.”

  “That we have to pursue very carefully. Ricky’s flying back from L.A. this afternoon and plans to visit with Mark. He may pick up on something. Frankly, I’m hoping he doesn’t.”

  “But you’re the one who came up with that angle.”

  “I’ve got a naturally suspicious mind. That doesn’t mean I have to like my theories.”

  “My mind works that way, too.” Patrick smiled wryly. “Of course, given my relationship with the Ex from Hell, that’s to be expected.” He consulted the chart. “I see only one question left: motive for Jennifer’s disappearance?”

  I thought, shook my head. “She was impatient for results from us, but that’s not enough.”

  “The thing about the cousin’s death being responsible for her mother’s disappearance? The first time that came up was the day she took off.”

  “It sounds like a mental tic on the part of a stressed-out person. And it’s not enough either.”

  He pushed the chart aside. “Then we’re done with this. But I misspoke before-there is another question left, the biggest of all: where the hell is she?”

  I spent the next two hours closeted in my office with Ted, going over agency business. Kendra Williams, he told me, was working out splendidly, in spite of her neglecting to tell him about the San Luis newspaperman’s inquiry about the case.

  “She apologized, and I didn’t make a big deal out of it,” he said. “Don’t you either. I can’t lose her. She is indeed a paragon of the paper clips.”

  “What kind of an ogre do you think I am?”

  “I know exactly what kind of an ogre you can be. Make nice, please.”

  A while back, when I’d given Ted a raise and authorized him to hire an assistant, we’d jokingly discussed his new job title, and he’d opted to be called Grand Poobah. Now I sensed he was rapidly growing into the exalted position.

  Just as Ted and I were wrapping up our session, Derek appeared in the doorway. “Got a minute, Shar?”

  “I’m outta here,” Ted said, gathering up his files.

  I motioned for Derek to take one of the clients’ chairs. “You have something for me?” Unnecessary to ask; his dark eyes shone with excitement.

  “Well, nothing on Smith, and nothing more on Ziff. But Daniel’s another story.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Kevin James Daniel. Born Marin County, June ten, nineteen fifty-nine. Parents James William and Janet West Daniel. Father owned a wholesale foods company which was later acquired by a conglomerate, making him a very wealthy man. Plus there was inherited money on both sides. Mother died when Kevin was only eight. He grew up in Ross, attended Catholic schools. Was expelled from high school several times for various offenses, including drug use; then the father sent him to a school for incorrigible teens in Colorado. He seemed to straighten up, so after he graduated his father rented him an apartment here in the city and he began studying business at Golden Gate University. Daniel spent more time in the bars than on the books, however, and in nineteen seventy-nine he was convicted of DUI manslaughter-motorcycle hit-and-run accident-and sentenced to prison at the California Men’s Colony, San Luis Obispo. Served four years of a twelve-year sentence, with time off for good behavior. Was released on probation, and has been clean ever since.”

  Which put him in CMC when Laurel had been teaching her art classes there.

  “What was his release date?”

  “May twenty-third, nineteen eighty-three.”

  In time to encounter Laurel Greenwood in Cayucos.

  “And where was he paroled to?”

  Derek smiled triumphantly. “SLO County. The records show a Cayucos address for him.”

  I said, “I think we have our biker.”

&n
bsp; It all fit: Kev Daniel had been sentenced to the Men’s Colony for a DUI manslaughter-involving a motorcycle. He was there at the time Laurel taught her art classes. He was released on parole the month before she disappeared. For some reason they met in Cayucos. And then…?

  If Daniel was responsible for Laurel’s disappearance, I would need to proceed very cautiously. I already had good reason to be wary of him: he had lied about his whereabouts when the shot was fired at me in the courtyard of the Oaks Lodge.

  I sat in the armchair by my office window, putting together a theory while staring at a wall of fog.

  Start with the premise that Daniel is the biker. Someone the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Department searched intensively for twenty-two years ago.

  Even if he was innocent of any wrongdoing in connection with Laurel’s disappearance, a recent parolee wouldn’t have wanted to come under the law’s close scrutiny, so when the call went out for information about her, he didn’t volunteer. Or if he wasn’t innocent, he had even better reason to remain silent.

  Jacob Ziff had indicated to me that Daniel came down from San Francisco four years ago, so he’d probably left SLO County at his first opportunity. But now, because he’d returned and bought into a winery there, he found himself in a position of some importance in a community that would not be forgiving were his incarceration and later involvement in the Greenwood case-however innocent-to come out.

  So far, so good.

  Okay, then I showed up. Daniel found out about me from Jacob Ziff, who thought it interesting to have met with a private investigator, and talked casually about our interview with his client. Daniel was afraid that I would find out about him if I went on probing, so first he tipped the reporter from the San Luis newspaper in the hope that publicity would hamper my investigation-

  Wait, when had Ziff told him about me? Before or after the article came out? I’d have to ask him.

  The newspaper article aside, Daniel wanted to discourage me. Ziff had referred to him as something of a loose cannon-the kind of man who might discharge a weapon in a public place if the stakes were high enough. From our brief conversation over wine on the patio, I could tell that Daniel thought being shot at would scare a woman off.

  Wrong assumption, Daniel.

  What to do now? I couldn’t take my theory to Rob Traverso at the Paso Robles PD. He struck me as a man who acted strictly upon facts, and I really didn’t possess anything concrete. I’d first have to ask Ziff to explain his lie about being at the lodge’s bar when the shot was fired, as well as about when he discussed me with his client. Perhaps talk with Mike Rosenfeld, the reporter, too. Only then would I go up against Daniel.

  After a moment’s thought I got up and went along the catwalk to Ted’s office, where the agency’s safe is located. He and Kendra were in the supply and copy-machine area in back, so I hurriedly worked the safe’s combination and took out my.357 Magnum. Ted worried about me every time I flew and every time I removed the gun from the safe. That meant he worried often about the former, infrequently about the latter. In this busy time, it was best I kept his unease to a minimum.

  When I returned to my office, the fog outside the window looked thicker. I put the gun in my bag, then called aviation weather. Socked in at Oakland; I wouldn’t get off the ground in the Cessna tonight. Clear skies all the way down the Salinas Valley. Naturally.

  Commercial flights from both Oakland and SFO would be delayed under these conditions, and no carriers went to Paso Robles anyway. Even if I could get a flight to Monterey or San Luis, I’d have to rent a car and drive some distance and, under the current tight security regulations, I might have difficulty taking the gun aboard, even disassembled and in a checked bag. Better to drive down in the MG-

  “Shar?” Derek.

  “Yes, what have you got?”

  “The additional information on Kevin Daniel. He was paroled to the San Luis area, but in July of the year of his release asked for permission to serve out the rest of his probation in the San Francisco area. The request was granted, he returned to his father’s home, finished his undergrad and graduate degrees-in marketing-and became a model citizen. Worked for his father until the company was sold, then stayed with the conglomerate that bought it until four years ago, when the father died and he inherited big bucks. A few months later he went down to Paso Robles and bought into what was then called the Kane Winery. Daniel has never been married, races motorcycles in area competitions, lives in a million-dollar home on winery property. I’d say he probably gets a lot of women.”

  An astute observation from someone who also got a lot of women. I remembered Jamie’s tentative question-“Does Derek ever ask about me?”-and the way Chris had smiled up at him at the party at Touchstone. And frowned.

  “Something wrong?” he asked.

  Stay out of your employees’ private lives, McCone.

  “Uh, no. That’s good stuff. Nothing else on Ziff, or Smith?”

  “Ziff looks squeaky clean. Smith I haven’t started on.”

  “Thanks, Derek. I’m heading out this afternoon for Paso Robles. You can reach me by my cell or at the Oaks Lodge.”

  He nodded and left the office. I reached for the phone, to buzz Ted and ask him to reserve me a room, guaranteed for late arrival, but before I could, he buzzed me.

  “Rae on line two.”

  I picked up. “Hi, how’s it going?”

  “I’m at the building on Fell Street. Property records show it’s owned by one Carl Dunn.”

  “Why is that name familiar?”

  “He’s Josie Smith’s first husband. He says that the year she died, he was letting her live in the second-floor flat while she tried to evict the tenants from a house she’d bought out in the Avenues.”

  “He lives in the building?”

  “Right. He occupies the same third-floor flat now that he did then. I’ve already confirmed that he rented the second-floor flat to Jennifer, but I think you’d better get over here so we can both interview him. I’ve got a feeling my skills along those lines are kind of rusty.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  “I had no idea Jennifer Aldin was Josie’s niece,” Carl Dunn said. “I knew her and Terry when they were children, but the last time I saw Jennifer was when she was nine or ten. Why didn’t she tell me who she was?”

  I said, “Perhaps she didn’t remember you.”

  We were seated in Dunn’s living room in the third-story flat of the Fell Street building, a bright comfortable space with large abstract paintings on the walls. Dunn was a big, bearded man with a mane of silver-gray hair, a real estate agent, Rae had told me.

  Dunn frowned. “She might not’ve remembered my name or face, but I’m surprised she didn’t recognize the building. She stayed here several times with her mother.”

  “How did Jennifer Aldin come to rent the flat from you?”

  “My former tenants vacated it four months ago, and I listed it with my agency, plus posted a sign in the window. A few days later, Jennifer Aldin rang my bell, said she was driving by and saw the sign. I showed the flat to her, and she liked it. Said she would prefer a long-term lease and would be using the place as a studio only one or two days a week. The idea of a tenant who wouldn’t be around much appealed to me; the last pair were noisy and disruptive. And I like long-term leases; the woman on the first floor has been here since I bought the building in nineteen seventy-nine. So I accepted a deposit, and she gave me the names of three of her clients as references. They checked out, and we signed a year’s lease two days later.”

  “You still have those names?”

  “Somewhere in my files. Let me see.” He got up and went down the hallway.

  I said to Rae, “Jennifer just happened to rent the same flat where Josie lived? I don’t think so.”

  “Me either. And I now know why she lied to me about how long she’d had it; she didn’t want me to realize that it was connected with her obsession over her mother’s disappearance. Figure it out
: her father dies five months ago, she begins to dwell on Laurel. Four months ago she rents a place that she associates with her.”

  “Dunn said she came to the door after she saw his sign while driving past. Maybe she was on a sentimental tour.”

  “Or had driven by more than once.”

  Dunn came back into the room, a slip of scratch paper in his hand. “Here you go. Keep it, if you like.”

  “Thanks.” I glanced at it, saw three unfamiliar names. One of the phone numbers was familiar, however: the Aldin residence. I handed the slip to Rae, my eyebrows raised.

  She examined it and said, “Home, studio, cellular.”

  Jennifer had supplied her own references.

  “Mr. Dunn,” I said, “what can you tell us about Josie?”

  He smiled-gently, for a man about to discuss his former wife. “When I met Josie, I’d just graduated from San Jose State and was moving up here to take a job at Wells Fargo Bank. We had a hot and heavy romance, and the next spring she dropped out of college to marry me. The marriage was a mistake from the beginning. Not her fault, not mine either. We were just too young, too different. We split up after five years, but remained friends. We’d have lunch every few months, talk on the phone. When she met Don Bernstein, we kind of lost touch, but after he dumped her-the bastard took off with another woman, left her with a heap of credit card debt-we started seeing each other again.”

  Dunn paused, narrowing his eyes as if he was in pain. “Josie partied too much-one of the things that broke us up in the first place-but she was also a hard worker. She’d gotten her RN after we split, and when Bernstein took off, she started taking on private-duty nursing jobs, made very good money. Neither of us suspected she’d soon be in need of private-duty nursing herself.”

  Another pause, a headshake. “Anyway, she made good on the debts, invested her money, bought a house out on Thirty-third Avenue. But the tenants were putting up a fuss about moving, and until the dispute went to court, I suggested she move into my empty flat. The dispute dragged on and on-suits, countersuits-and just after it was settled she was diagnosed with brain cancer.”