Vanishing Point

by Marcia Muller

  While he ran my credit card, I thumbed through them. Rae, Craig, Patrick, Adah. None of them had called my cell, but that didn’t mean their business wasn’t urgent; my friends and operatives knew the unit would be turned off when I was flying, and I’d often enough warned them against interrupting me when I might be conducting a field interview. Sally Timmerman. How had she known I was here? Someone named Emil Tiegs, with a number with a familiar prefix.

  I took the key and my credit card from the clerk, wheeled my travel bag across the courtyard, and went upstairs to the familiar room. The maid had left the air conditioner on preparatory to my arrival, and it was frigid in there, so I turned it off. Immediately I took my.357 from my bag and locked it in the little safe in the closet, then opened the balcony door and went out there to make my calls.

  Adah was out on an investigation. Patrick wasn’t in the office, but Craig was there. Rae had left instructions with Ted for me to call her on her cellular. I went over some routine matters with the Grand Poobah, then asked him to put me through to Craig.

  “Shar,” Craig said, “my contact at DOC finally got back to me. Kevin Daniel attended Laurel Greenwood’s art class the whole time she taught at the Men’s Colony. He-my contact-provided the name and home number of the retired prison official who oversaw the educational programs, and he’s expecting to hear from you.” He read them to me.

  “Contacts-they’re wonderful, aren’t they?” I said.

  “This one is gonna cost me; he’ll be down here next week and wants to meet for lunch at the Slanted Door-my treat, of course.”

  “Put it on your expense report.”

  “Gotcha.”

  I ended the conversation and looked at my watch, then dialed the number of the former prison official, Orrin Anderson. No answer there, but Rae picked up her cellular on the first ring.

  “Interesting stuff, Shar,” she said.

  “I’m listening.”

  “I followed up on Josie Smith’s estate. Guess who was her only heir and also executor?”

  “Laurel.”

  “Right. Laurel inherited a small savings account and Josie’s house on Thirty-third Avenue, which she sold two months after Josie’s death for a profit of a hundred and six thousand dollars.”

  “Big profit, considering Josie only bought it the year before.”

  “From the figures I saw, I’d say it was undervalued at the time of purchase, and nineteen eighty-two was probably a good year for San Francisco real estate.”

  “So Laurel would’ve had plenty of money to disappear on.”

  “Close to a hundred and ten thousand.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yeah, and it’s not good. I did deep background on Mark Aldin. Thirteen years ago, before he met Jen, he and a partner were managing a hedge fund headquartered in Kansas City.”

  “Hedge fund-high-risk investment, big returns?”

  “Always high risk, sometimes big returns. I got the skinny on them from Charlotte. Basically, they’re lightly regulated investment pools for wealthy individuals and institutions like pension funds. Anyway, Mark was connected with a large financial planning firm, and he persuaded them to put a lot of their wealthy clients into the fund. Six months later, a routine audit showed that the assets of the fund were nearly depleted; and right after that Mark’s partner disappeared. He’s never been found, and neither has the money. Mark rode out the scandal, cooperated with the SEC, and then went to Los Angeles, where he started his own money-management firm. Six years ago he moved up here, where he met and married Jen.”

  “That is interesting. Raises quite a few questions.”

  “Yeah, like what happened to the partner? And where did Mark get the capital to set himself up in L.A.? And it raises questions of trust for Ricky and me. Mark’s never disclosed any of this to us.”

  I considered. My initial impression of Aldin was of a loving, concerned husband, but that’s what I’d been led to believe by Rae. And I’d had no reason to doubt his honesty; after all, he handled millions for Ricky. But these new revelations bore looking into.

  I said, “It’s definitely cause for concern. In light of Jennifer’s disappearance, I should confront Mark-”

  “Ricky’s doing that as we speak. Both of us feel Mark should have been honest with us from the beginning.”

  “God, Rae! If Mark had anything to do with either Jennifer’s or his partner’s disappearance, confronting him could be dangerous!”

  She laughed. “Ricky may present the appearance of a country boy onstage, but you and I know that’s just a facade. He asked Mark to come to the house, where one of the guys from our security firm will be highly visible. And he’ll tape the conversation.”

  “If Mark’s involved in either disappearance he’ll just stonewall Ricky.”

  “And then we’ll know he is, because Ricky’s going to make it plain up front that if he doesn’t get some damn good answers, Mark is going to be out mega bucks in fees every year. An innocent person doesn’t throw away that kind of loose change.”

  In spite of the seriousness of the situation, I couldn’t help but smile. Ricky had come a long way from the scruffy dreamer and scribbler of unsold songs who had married my sister. And Rae had come a long way from the insecure young woman with chronic credit card debt and-as I had found out much later-a history of shoplifting whom I had hired years ago to be my assistant at All Souls Legal Cooperative.

  But then, I’d come a long way, too: wine bottles with corks in them; haircuts by an in-demand stylist; my own agency; three houses; an airplane; a terrific husband-

  Good God, what other wonderful surprises would life shower upon us?

  It was a good thought to hold on to every morning when I had to clean out the cats’ litter box.

  Adah didn’t pick up at any of her numbers. Patrick still hadn’t returned to the office and wasn’t at home. He’d yet to join the legions of us who were tethered to cell phones-even though I’d told him he could buy one at the agency’s expense-so I had no way to reach him till he arrived at one place or the other. Again I tried the retired prison official, and got no answer. No one was home at the Timmerman residence, so I left a message.

  Now what? Oh, yes, the remaining message-Emil Tiegs. The phone book showed his was a Cayucos prefix. I dialed, and after six rings a man picked up. He sounded as if he had respiratory problems.

  “This is Sharon McCone. You left a message for me at the Oaks Lodge.”

  “Right. I heard about the story in the Trib. Got some information about the Laurel Greenwood disappearance that you’ll be interested in.”

  From the sly way he spoke, I knew what was coming. “Would you like to set up a meeting, Mr. Tiegs?”

  “Not yet. First there’s money matters to settle.” He coughed, then went on, “This information is valuable-”

  “How valuable?”

  “Five thousand dollars, in advance.”

  “Five thousand-! And before I know what the information is? I don’t think so.”

  “Half up front, half when I tell my story.”

  “My client won’t front that kind of money for information that may not be useful to us. Why don’t you describe it-in a general way.”

  “I’m not givin’ away no freebies here.”

  “I said, in a general way.”

  “… Okay. Laurel Greenwood. How she disappeared. And who helped her.”

  “Sounds promising. But my client and I have no assurances that your information is accurate.”

  “It’s accurate.”

  “I have only your word on that. Let’s meet, at least, so I’ll know who I’m dealing with.”

  “I’ll agree to a meeting for fifteen hundred up front, the rest afterwards.”

  I considered Mark Aldin’s net worth. “Five hundred up front, another five hundred if the information is useful.”

  Silence.

  “The ball’s in your court, Mr. Tiegs.”

  A frustrated, rasping noise. “Ok
ay, we’ll meet. You know the pier in Cayucos?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll see you there. Ten o’clock tonight.”

  Wait a minute! Was this a setup engineered, perhaps, by Kev Daniel?

  “Mr. Tiegs, as I said before, I need to know who I’m dealing with. And since I don’t, I’m not about to meet you at night in a deserted place.”

  “Christ! Okay, tomorrow. But you make sure you got the five hundred on you. I need my earnest money.”

  I had only about a hundred dollars with me, and I doubted that the lodge would cash that large a personal check, but I’d spotted a branch of my bank a couple of blocks away. In case this guy was offering a legitimate lead, I could withdraw the maximum daily amount from the ATM tonight and the same again in the morning.

  I said, “I’ll have it. How about nine o’clock tomorrow?”

  “No, I got another appointment. Can’t make it till noon. I’ll be down near the end of the pier. A real tall, skinny guy in a black windbreaker and a Giants cap and a big Labrador retriever on a halter. Have the money, and you won’t be sorry.” Emil Tiegs hung up.

  Quickly I dialed the office and got Derek started on a background check on Tiegs. Then I consulted the phone directory; Tiegs was listed: 30 Hillside Drive in Cayucos. I was starving, so I decided to grab a burger and then stop by the ATM before I drove over there to scope out who I’d be dealing with.

  Hillside Drive was in the older part of the beach community, a narrow two-block-long strip of pavement lined with small clapboard houses that rose above the commercial district. I spotted number 30 as I drove past, continued to where the street dead-ended at a high retaining wall supporting the larger residences above, and parked. From that vantage point I could easily study Tiegs’s house. It was one of the smallest-boxlike, with a flat roof and two windows overlooking the street, beige in color, except where the paint had been scoured gray by the elements or stained dark by mildew. An old-fashioned TV antenna leaned drunkenly above it, and a rusted white Toyota Tercel was parked in the driveway.

  Having nothing better to do this evening, I waited for signs of activity. There were none. People walked their dogs, came and went at the other houses, but Tiegs’s looked deserted. In the distance the sun sank closer to the horizon, infusing the sky with pink and gold and orange; when the purple hues of the late sunset appeared, I decided to stay till dusk, then check out the house on foot.

  My cellular rang. Derek.

  “Got the preliminary on Tiegs,” he said. “Born San Luis, nineteen fifty-six. Parents- D’you want the boring stuff, or should I just e-mail it to you and cut to what’s important?”

  “Cut, please.”

  “Okay, Tiegs was at the Men’s Colony down there at the same time Kevin Daniel was. Doing a term for forgery. Was paroled the year before Daniel got out and went to live with a sister in Cayucos. The sister died of a drug overdose five years later, and Tiegs took over the lease on her house.”

  “Thirty Hillside Drive.”

  “Yeah. And that’s what I’ve got so far.”

  A forger. Maybe he’d turned his talent to art while incarcerated, taken classes from Laurel. If only I could get hold of Orrin Anderson, the former prison official who had overseen the educational programs-

  “Shar?” Derek said. “You want me to continue digging on Tiegs?”

  “Please. I’m supposed to give him five hundred of the client’s dollars tomorrow, and I want to make sure it’s a worthwhile investment. Try to find out what the specific charges against Tiegs were.”

  After Derek and I ended our call, I sat in the gathering darkness, thinking. Emil Tiegs, a forger who might have known Kev Daniel in prison. Who had been released a year earlier than him. Who lived in Cayucos, where Daniel had lived after his parole and where Laurel had been sighted with a biker whom I presumed was Kev. Before I went up against Daniel I needed to hear what Tiegs had to tell me. Five hundred dollars of Mark Aldin’s money was a small amount to risk-especially when the risk posed to me by Daniel was so much greater.

  As darkness fell, I watched one window of Emil Tiegs’s house glow into a rectangle of light. Someone there, after all. I slipped from the car, pulling the black sweater I’d brought with me over my head, and walked slowly along the opposite side of the street. Through the window I could see a woman-heavyset, dark-haired-sitting on a green sofa, knitting and occasionally looking up at a TV.

  Tiegs’s wife? Girlfriend?

  After a while a man came into the room-thin and tall, carrying a can of beer. He moved haltingly toward the sofa, as if he didn’t wish to be there, and sat down. A few seconds later, a blond Lab followed, settling itself at his feet.

  Okay, this was probably not some setup Kev Daniel had engineered. Tiegs was as he’d described himself, and he certainly didn’t look dangerous. Tomorrow, on the pier, I’d hear his story.

  Thursday

  AUGUST 25

  “I wanted to talk with you because my conscience has been troubling me,” Sally Timmerman said. She sat opposite me in a booth in the lodge’s restaurant, clutching a coffee cup with both hands. She’d pushed aside her plate of half-eaten French toast.

  “Something you told me about Laurel that was untrue?” I asked.

  She nodded, brow furrowed. The frown seemed unnatural; hers was a face made for smiles.

  Timmerman had called my room fifteen minutes ago, saying she was downstairs having breakfast and working up the nerve to ask me to meet her. When I’d entered the coffee shop she was drowning her plate in syrup, but now it seemed she’d lost her appetite. I, on the other hand, was looking forward to the scrambled eggs, hash browns, and bacon strips I’d ordered. A full breakfast is a rarity for me, but when I do have the meal, I eat heartily and cast aside any guilt about cholesterol.

  Sally said, “After I heard about you being shot at on Saturday night, I got scared for you. I mean, I hadn’t realized looking for Laurel might put you in danger. And then I thought that because I… Well, I didn’t exactly lie, but I withheld something from you, and I was afraid that your not having all the facts might put you in more danger. On Monday I tried to call you here, and they said you had left, so I thought, ‘Okay, that’s it. She’s gone, let it go.’ But I couldn’t, so yesterday I called your office and they said you were back down here.”

  It looked as if she were trying to strangle the coffee cup. I put a hand on her arm and said, “I understand. Why don’t you relax and tell me about it?”

  “Okay.” Deep breath. “You were interested in the relationship between Laurel, Josie, and me. I said I lost touch with Josie after she dropped out of college to get married, but that wasn’t exactly the way it happened. I stopped dealing with her after she came down for a visit about a year later. I caught her in bed in the house Laurel and I still shared-with Laurel’s fiancé, Roy Greenwood.”

  “Did you tell Laurel about this?”

  “No. Josie threw on her clothes and left-acting like it was my fault for coming home at the wrong time-and Roy pleaded with me not to tell. Said it was a stupid mistake, they’d been drinking wine, and Josie came on to him. I told him I’d keep it to myself if he promised never to see Josie again.”

  I sensed there was more, waited.

  “Roy kept his promise-I thought. He and Laurel married, had the girls, seemed happy. Laurel couldn’t understand why he disapproved of her spending time with Josie, but I did. Or at least I thought I did until five years before Laurel disappeared, when I got together with an old friend from San Jose State who had recently run into Josie in a restaurant in San Francisco. You can imagine how I felt when she said, ‘Wasn’t Roy Greenwood engaged to Laurel Yardley in college? Strange that he’d end up with her cousin.’”

  “So Roy had been seeing Josie all those years?”

  “Maybe not all of them, but at some point they’d started up again. I confronted Roy, and at first he denied it, then he admitted he was seeing her and again begged me not to tell Laurel. The man cried, actually c
ried, and Roy was not a very emotional person. So once more I said I wouldn’t tell, if he’d break it off with Josie.”

  “Did he?”

  “He did not. I caught on to what was happening about a year before Josie died, when Laurel was telling me about phoning Josie and a man answering. She said, ‘I could’ve sworn to God it was Roy, but it turned out to be Josie’s new boyfriend. Isn’t that the strangest coincidence, that she’s dating a man who sounds exactly like my husband on the phone!’ After that, I checked with Roy’s office, and found out he supposedly was in San Francisco at a dental convention that weekend.”

  “Did you tell Laurel?”

  “No, but I confided in my husband. He advised me to keep quiet, said that I didn’t have actual proof, and that telling Laurel would only hurt her and the girls, possibly destroy their family. It wasn’t easy, but I did as he said. Then Laurel went up to San Francisco to be with Josie when she was dying. I couldn’t stand the idea of her tending to a woman who had betrayed her in the worst way anyone can. The idea of Laurel emptying Josie’s bedpan and washing her and feeding her, and Josie thinking she’d gotten away with something-that was more than I could bear.”

  When Sally didn’t go on, I said, “And?”

  “And I called Laurel at Josie’s. Told her everything I knew. She didn’t want to believe me. Finally I yelled at her. I said, ‘You may as well face it, your husband’s been banging Josie ever since college.’ Laurel accused me of lying. I can remember her exact words: ‘You’re making it up! You’ve always been jealous of my friendship with Josie, and now for some reason you want to hurt me.’ And she hung up.”

  So it had been Sally whom Melissa Baker had overheard Laurel talking to through the airshaft in the Fell Street building.

  Sally said, “The next day, Roy called to tell us Josie was dead. He came right out and asked me if I’d ever told Laurel about his relationship with her. I said no; I couldn’t bring myself to tell him what I’d done. And he said it was best to let it go, let Laurel remember Josie as a good friend. Jim and I didn’t go to the funeral, and after that I saw Laurel around town, but we never spoke. Then, a year later, she was gone.”