by Sue Grafton
I typed up the contract detailing the work Lauren McCabe had asked me to do. I wrote her a receipt for the advance, which I’d include with the copy of the agreement. As I filled out the paperwork, it crossed my mind yet again that my mandate was weak. Find the extortionist and put a stop to the threat. Oh boy. Best not to think too deeply about what lay ahead.
In addition to her check, I pulled out a couple of other checks I needed to take to the bank and completed a deposit slip. I armed the system, locked up, and hopped in my car. I was gone fifteen minutes and when I pulled into the drive, I was greeted by the sight of a black-and-white patrol car and a uniformed officer, who was coming around the side of the building. He was young, early thirties, slim, and clean-shaven, with an air of competence I appreciated on sight. His name tag said T. SUGARBAKER.
“Is something wrong?” I asked.
“This is your place?”
“My office.”
“May I have your name?”
I gave him my name and showed him my driver’s license and a business card, watching while he made a note of the information. He kept my business card and handed back my license, which I returned to my shoulder bag. “What’s going on?”
“Your alarm went off and the company dispatcher called the number on record. When there was no answer, she contacted STPD. I was sent to check the premises. Kitchen window in the back is broken. It looks like someone took a rock to it.”
“Wow. I paid extra for a couple of glass-break sensors, but I thought I was being paranoid. Did the guy actually get in?”
“It doesn’t look like it. He was probably scared off by the alarm, but you might want to check.”
“Well, you were quick off the mark and I appreciate that.”
I unlocked the office and he followed me in. The two of us did a walk-through, he with an eye out for vandalism and me with an eye to theft. I assured him nothing seemed to be missing or out of place.
“I’ll turn in an incident report. If you want to file a formal report, you can stop by the station in the next few days. I can’t see asking your insurance company to pay for damages so minor, but it never hurts to have something on record. Sometimes you get a repeat attempt if they think you keep drugs or valuables on hand.”
“I don’t have either, but I’ll be on the alert.”
After he left, I sat down at my desk and tried to talk my way through the surge of fear I experienced once I was alone. I thought about Ned Lowe. There are times when I question my reactions, but this wasn’t one. There was nothing silly about my suspicions and I didn’t chide myself for jumping to conclusions. I had no proof it was Ned unless he’d left fingerprints, which he would have been careful to avoid. I couldn’t imagine his purpose, but his thinking was warped in any event and what he considered a legitimate motive would have subjected any other man to a seventy-two-hour psychiatric hold. A 5150, if you want to get technical.
To offset my anxiety, I put a call through to Diana Alvarez on the theory that being annoyed with her would supersede my apprehension. On the desk in front of me, I had the newspaper article she’d written about Fritz McCabe. She answered on the third ring and I identified myself.
“Well, Kinsey. This is an unexpected surprise.”
“Like there’s any other kind,” I said.
“Uh, good point. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I’m looking at your article about Fritz McCabe, wondering if you uncovered information you didn’t include.”
“I expressed my personal opinion, but my editor cut that part.”
“What’s your personal opinion?”
“I thought Fritz was fortunate he was tried as a juvenile. If he’d been tried as an adult, he might have been eligible for the death penalty or life in prison without the possibility of parole. Instead he served eight years and now he’s free.”
“Anything else?”
“There’s the matter of Austin Brown. I felt he deserved a mention. He’s on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. You know there’s a bounty on his head? Fifty thousand bucks.”
“Well, that’s generous. The reward’s been sitting there all these years?”
“Untouched. Either nobody knows where he is or they’re not willing to step up to the plate. I was hoping the story about Fritz McCabe would generate interest in Austin’s whereabouts.”
“Maybe you could write a separate article.”
“Afraid not. My editor says it’s old news.”
“But Austin Brown is a bad dude. You’d think it would be important to bring him in.”
“Not to my editor. If you ask me, this whole story is epic and deserves to be told beginning, middle, and end.”
“So far the end is missing.”
“Right, but aside from that, it’s got all the elements: youth, sex, money, betrayal.”
“Death,” I added.
“Right. I know it sounds cynical, but Austin Brown is the last dangling thread.”
“You have a theory about where he went?” I asked.
“Why? Are you going after him?”
“For fifty grand, I might,” I said, though the idea had never occurred to me.
“He’s been sighted half a dozen places, but none of those leads were legitimate. People are so eager to help, they hallucinate. Why are you so interested?”
“Strictly curious.”
“Fifty thousand dollars’ worth at any rate,” she remarked.
“Can I tell you my problem?”
“Why not? You’ve already interrupted my work.”
“Sorry about that, but here’s the deal. I want to talk to the players in the case, but I have no cover story and no bargaining power. I can hardly pass myself off as a reporter.”
“Sure you can,” she said. “People are more interested in talking than you’d think. I see it all the time when I’m trolling for interviews. Here’s the trick. Imply you have the information and you’re looking for confirmation. Better yet, tell ’em you’d like to hear their version of events before you go to press. Say your editor wants an update and he suggested you talk to them.”
“I wouldn’t need press credentials?”
“Only if you’re crashing a rock concert. People assume you’re who you say you are.”
“What about Sloan’s mother? Do you think she’d agree to meet with me?”
“God, you sound so tentative. I thought you had balls. Trust me, she’ll talk. All she does is talk about Sloan’s death. People who know her say she’s obsessed. For years now, she’s left Sloan’s room as it was. Closed the door and locked it.”
“Someone else mentioned that,” I said. “Sounds like she’s still sensitive about the loss.”
“I’m not sure grief like that ever goes away. In the meantime, she loves going back over the ‘facts of the case,’ hoping she can make it come out differently. Look her up in the phone book under the last name Seay.”
“Spell that.”
“S-E-A-Y. Like the word ‘sea’ with a Y on the end. She’s in Horton Ravine.”
“Thanks. I’ll do that,” I said. I glanced at the list of names I’d jotted down after my meeting with Lauren McCabe. “You don’t happen to have an address and phone number for Iris Lehmann?”
“The girl who got kicked out of Climp? Why talk to her?”
“I’d like to know what’s happened to her since.”
“Not much, I’ll bet. I have the home number I picked up years ago. Might not be good now, but you’re welcome to try. Last I heard, she was working in that vintage clothing shop on State. That might be the best way to contact her, but I can give you the home number if you like.”
“That would be great.”
“Hang on a sec.”
It took her a few minutes to retrieve her address book and flip through the pages. She gave me Iris’s home phon
e number with one condition attached. “You have to swear you’ll let me know if anything new develops. That might give me an arguing point for additional coverage of the old case.”
“I can do that,” I said. “In the meantime, I’d appreciate it if you’d do the same for me.”
“Happy to. Of course, then you’d owe me.”
“I can handle that.”
“Best of luck. I can’t wait to see what it feels like to have you in my debt,” she said.
After she hung up, I sat and stared at Iris Lehmann’s contact information. Hers was the first name on the list of people I wanted to talk to, but I was oddly reluctant to get in touch with her. What if the blackmail demand came from her? I couldn’t think why she’d try extorting money on the basis of a sex tape in which she starred front and center. I didn’t think her role was a criminal matter, but it certainly would be an embarrassment if it came to light.
5
THE SHUNNING
May 1979
Sloan sat on a bench in the girls’ locker room and removed her shin guards and cleats. She pulled her damp jersey over her head and blotted sweat from her neck. She slid out of her shorts, removed her sports bra, and left both in a sodden pile on the floor. She headed for the shower, which was deserted by now. It was Friday afternoon, late May, and no one had spoken to her for weeks. She was the designated social outcast, the assumption being that she had written an anonymous note to the Climping Academy vice principal, naming Troy Rademaker and Poppy Earl as two students who’d been given answers to the California Academic Proficiency Test and had cheated their way to better grades. Word of this betrayal had spread through the school within a day. Sloan had been outspoken in her exhortations to Poppy to abandon the plan to cheat, so when the typewritten note arrived, Austin Brown had persuaded the entire junior class that Sloan was guilty of violating their trust. That Sloan was innocent was beside the point. She was judged to be guilty as charged and her heated denials sounded hollow even to her own ears. Sloan was a jock: tall and sturdy and well-coordinated. She was also smart, studious, and strong-willed. Even so, the isolation was wearing her down.
As she crossed the tile floor, she pulled the rubber band from the tip of the braid that extended halfway down her back. She shook out a cascade of waves, which fell across her shoulders like a cape. If she washed her hair, it would take hours to dry, but that was better than a sweaty scalp. As usual, the shower smelled of bleach, a scent she associated with winning as well as defeat. The hot water was healing and she didn’t regret having the space to herself. The effect of the shunning was already deadening and while she feigned indifference, she was acutely aware of the disapproval washing over her. No one addressed a word to her. No one acknowledged her presence. No one made eye contact. If she spoke to a classmate, she received no response. Even a few students in the freshman and sophomore classes had taken up the ban. In the main, the seniors abstained from participation, but she sensed that they viewed her with scorn, thinking she’d brought it on herself.
The cheating scandal was set in motion when Iris Lehmann had pulled the fire alarm bell and then waited until the halls and classrooms had cleared before she scurried into the school office and photocopied the test and answer sheet, which had been distributed to the faculty cubbyholes. The test had been administered on Friday, April 13, and shortly after the grades were posted, some three weeks later, the anonymous note had showed up on the vice principal’s desk. Originally, Troy’s score wasn’t suspect because his grades were usually good. Poppy did better than past performances warranted, so suspicion had already been aroused where she was concerned. In a misguided attempt to disguise their duplicity, Troy and Poppy had answered the same two questions incorrectly. Both were summoned to the vice principal’s office, where Mr. Lucas grilled them. Poppy might have talked her way out of it, but Troy had cracked under questioning and he’d implicated her.
Sloan had heard about their intentions in advance and she’d made her disapproval clear. She might not have gotten wind of it if it hadn’t been for the cluster of students all a-buzz with the news. Fully half the class knew what was going on and yet she was blamed for the leak. As much as she disliked the idea of cheating, she would never have turned them in. She and Poppy had been best friends since their first day at Climping Academy as kindergarteners. Sloan had always been the better pupil of the two, sailing through classes without effort, while Poppy pulled mediocre grades at best. Sloan couldn’t even count the number of times she’d tutored Poppy, working through English and math, quizzing her in history and social studies. The process didn’t seem to get easier for Poppy, and Sloan sometimes felt guilty because it all came so easily to her.
Once showered, she dressed, pulled her damp hair into a ponytail, and headed for the parking lot. When she reached her stepfather’s snappy red MG, she saw that the word SNITCH had been scratched into the paint on the driver’s side. She stared at the damage, realizing she’d be forced to tell Paul what was going on. She’d hoped to endure the ostracism in silence, but the vehicle was his pride and joy and any repairs would have to be billed to his insurance. No point in confiding in her mother, who was generally zonked on booze and the various prescription drugs she took for assorted ills, imaginary and otherwise. Her mother responded to stress by taking to her bed. If she heard about Sloan’s excommunication, her impulse would be to phone the school and lodge a long, rambling complaint, which would only make the situation worse.
Sloan and her mother had been close once upon a time, but that had changed abruptly. Sloan had been conceived out of wedlock, a quaint concept that Margaret had confided to her when she was five. Margaret told Sloan she met her birth father in Squaw Valley the winter after she graduated from a small Methodist college in Santa Teresa. She’d been looking for a change of scene and managed to pick up work as a waitress at a first-class resort. Cory Stevens was a ski bum in residence, lean, good-looking, easy-going, adventuresome, and kind. Margaret had assumed he came from money since he lived with no discernible source of income. They’d had a passionate affair, and at Christmas when Margaret learned she was pregnant, she was distraught, thinking Cory was unlikely to settle down. To her surprise, he seemed to take it all in stride. Though he wasn’t prepared to marry her, he’d sworn he’d stick with her until the baby was born and provide handsomely for the child. Two weeks later, he’d been killed in an avalanche. Margaret was left with a single photograph of him and promises he couldn’t fulfill. She’d moved to Long Beach, had borne her baby girl, and made the best of it.
As a single mother, she’d worked as a secretary for a series of construction companies, making a marginal income. She’d met Paul Seay at a trade show in Las Vegas in 1966. He was a custom builder, owner of Merriweather Homes in Santa Teresa. He was a blue-collar success: stable, down-to-earth, and devoted to her and her little girl. Margaret and Paul had married when Sloan was four and Margaret found herself back in Santa Teresa, where she’d gone to school. Paul had been married before and had two sons, now ages thirteen and fifteen. Justin and Joey lived with their mother during the school year and spent the Christmas holidays and summers in Santa Teresa.
As a child, Sloan had pined for the father she never knew. In the photograph of him, which had been taken at the ski resort, he was dark-eyed and tanned, with a flash of white teeth and ski goggles pushed up in his dark hair. While Sloan was growing up, his image had been the source of fantasies—hopes that he hadn’t really perished in the accident. Her mother told her his body had never been recovered and this fact had contributed to her belief that he might still be alive and well. Maybe he’d taken advantage of the avalanche to escape the responsibility of impending parenthood. Sloan wasn’t offended to think he’d abandoned her before birth. Instead, she immersed herself in ski lore, thinking that one day she’d go in search of him.
When she was ten and poring over a stack of old ski magazines, she chanced on an article about Karl Schranz
, the Austrian skier who’d competed in the 1962 World Ski Championship. He’d won the gold medal in the Downhill, the silver in the Giant Slalom, and a second gold in the Combined. In the photograph that accompanied the text, the face was Cory Stevens’s. In point of fact, the photograph was a duplicate of the one she kept on her bed table. Sloan was dumbfounded. Was her father actually this medal-winning Austrian skier?
She had gone straight to her mother. “Is Karl Schranz my real father?”
Margaret’s expression was genuinely blank. “I don’t know anyone named Karl Schranz, Sloan. Where did you come up with that idea?”
Sloan showed her the two photographs side by side. “This is Karl Schranz and this is my dad. The two are the same and you lied to me! He’s not dead. He’s been alive all this time.”
Margaret had denied this at first, but Sloan had pushed and her mother finally broke down and admitted what she’d done. The story about Cory Stevens and the winter in Squaw Valley was completely fabricated. She’d clipped the photograph of Karl Schranz and framed it so Sloan would have an image to turn to whenever she needed the comfort of a father figure. Sloan’s real father, said Margaret, was someone she’d known in the past, but with whom she’d had little contact since. Sloan wasn’t sure what to believe. Confused and upset, she’d told Poppy the story in confidence, making her swear she’d keep the secret. Poppy had crossed her heart and hoped to die and two days later the story was all over the school. Poppy had denied telling a soul and Sloan had had no choice but to shrug the matter aside and live with the humiliation.
In point of fact, Margaret’s account changed each time Sloan pressed for information until she understood her mother had no intention of telling her the truth. The only fragment of the original tale that she insisted on throughout was that Sloan’s bio-dad was supportive of the pregnancy and promised generous financial support for the child. Beyond that, she refused to budge. Maybe money was meant as the consolation prize, but since it failed to materialize, there wasn’t much comfort there. Sloan’s fury and disappointment soured the relationship and the bond had never been repaired. Mother and daughter had agreed to an uneasy truce, but Sloan had never really forgiven her. She viewed her mother with disdain, rebuffing even the most well-meaning expressions of love and concern. Paul Seay had stepped into the breech and Sloan had transferred her devotion to him. In another couple of weeks, Paul and Margaret would be driving to Tucson to pick up the boys and bring them back for the summer.