McCone and Friends (29 page)

Owens sighed again and stared glumly at the wet street. “It’s a hell of a world.” He said. “A hell of a thing when a kid dies like that. Kids are supposed to grow up, have a life. At least outlive their parents.” Then he looked at me, “You said the girl’s mother hired you?”

“Yes. I haven’t come up with any leads, and she’s getting frantic. I thought maybe if I could see the house…” I motioned at the door.

For a moment Owens hesitated. “What the hell—they said they were done there. Come on in, if you want.”

I followed him into a narrow hallway that ran the length of the cottage. “Were you here when they found the girl’s backpack?’

“Did that belong to her? Yeah. I came over and let them in as soon as they contacted me. First time I’d been here since the kids rented it. Place is a mess. I’m glad I stored most of my mother’s things in the sheds and only left the basic furnishing. They didn’t exactly trash it, but they didn’t keep it, either.”

Mess was the word for it. Dust—both natural and from finger-print powder saturated all the surfaces, and empty glasses and plates stood among the bottles and cans and full ashtrays in the front room. Owens led me back past a bathroom draped in crumpled and mildewy-smelling towels and a bedroom where the sheets and blankets were mostly on the floor, to a kitchen. It contained more dirty crockery and glassware. Wrappings from frozen entrees and fast food overflowed the trashcan. A half-full fifth of Jim Beam stood uncapped on the counter. The entire place reeked.

“The cops went through everything?” I asked.

“Yeah. They didn’t think anybody had been here for a while. At least not last night. There weren’t any muddy footprints inside, and the door was blocked by a few days’ worth of newspapers.”

“Where did they find the backpack?”

“Front room. I’ll show you.”

The table where the backpack had been was just inside the living room door. What was left there was junk mail and ad sheets—the sort of stuff you drag inside with you and dump someplace until you get around to throwing it out. “So,” I said, “this was where she’d leave the pack when she arrived. But why not pick it up again when she left?”

Ron Owens made a funny choking sound, and I realized he’d jumped to the obvious conclusion. “No,” I said quickly, “the cops would have found evidence if she was killed here. Did you see what was in the pack?”

He shook his head. “One of them said something about there being no money or i.d.”

Adrian had been smart, carrying her cash and i.d. someplace else where it wouldn’t be snatched if somebody grabbed the pack on the street or on the bus. Smart, too, because if she’d had to run out of this house suddenly—if Kirby had frightened or threatened her, as Sue Hanford had suggested—she’d at least have had the essentials on her.

I’d seen enough here, so I thanked Owens and gave him one of my cards in case he thought of anything else. I was halfway down the front walk when I remembered to ask him I could see the sheds where he’d stored his mother’s things.

For a moment he looked puzzled at the request, then he shrugged and fished a key ring from his pocket. “Actually, it wouldn’t hurt to check them.”

We ducked under the police line tape and went up the driveway. The trees dripped on the muddy ground where Kirby’s car had been parked. There were deep gouges and tracks were the tow truck had hauled it out. Other than that, you would never have known that anything unusual had happened there. It was just an ordinary backyard that the weeds and blackberry vines were trying to reclaim.

Ron Owens fit a key into the padlock on the first shed. Unfastened it and then the hasp. The door grated as he opened it.

There was nothing inside. Nothing at all except for a little heap of wood scraps.

Owens’ face went slack with surprise. Then bright red splotches blossomed on his cheeks. “They cleaned me out,” he said. “Check the other shed.”

We hurried back there. Owens opened it. Nothing except for some trash drifted in the corners.

“But how did they…?” He held up his key ring. “I had the only…There were no other keys.”

I looked closely at the padlock. Cheap brand, more pickable than most. My boyfriend Willie would have had that off of there in five minutes, max—and he’s out of practice. Willie’s a respectable businessman now, but there are things in his past that are best not discussed.

“You better call the police,” I told Owens.

He nodded, shoulders slumping. “I’m glad my mother will never have to find out about this,” he said. “Her good china, Grandma’s silver, the family pictures—all gone. For the first time I’m glad she’s never coming home. There’s no home left here anymore.”

I watched Owens hurry down the drive to a car with a mobile phone antenna on its trunk. I knew how he felt. For me, the word “home” has a magical aura. Sometimes I can actually
see
it—velvety green like the plants in my nest at All Souls, gold and wine-red like the flames in a good fire. Silly, but that’s the way it is for me. Probably for all of us people who’ve never had a real home of our own.

I turned away and looked back into the empty shed. Adrian had had a real home, but she’d left it. For this shabby little house? I doubted that. But she’d been here shortly after her school mates had last her, and then she’d probably fled in fear. For where?
Where?

I decided to consult the therapy wall once more.

VI

The Conway house was warm for a change, and Donna had closed the drapes to hide the murky city view. Adrian’s room, though, was frigid. Donna saving on the heating bill now that Adrian was gone? Or maybe the registers were closed because Adrian was one of those human reptiles who never need much warmth. My ex-husband, Doug, is like that: when other people are bundled in two layers of sweaters, he’s apt to be running around in his shirtsleeves.

Before she left me alone, Donna said, “My sister-in-law called and said you’d gone to see her.”

“Yes, Tuesday night.”

“What’d you think of her?”

“Well, she’s unconventional, but I kind of liked her. She seems to have a heart, and she certainly cares about Adrian.”

Donna pushed a lock of hair back from her forehead and sighed. She looked depressed and jumpy, dark smudges under her eyes. “I see she’s fooled you, too.” Then she seemed to relent a little. “Oh, I suppose June’s got a good heart, as you say. But she also has an unfortunate tendency to take over a situation and tell everyone what to do. She’s the original earth mother and thinks we’re all her children. The straw that broke it for me was when she actually advised Jeffery to leave me. But… I don’t know. She seems to want to patch it up now, and I suppose for Adrian’s sake I should.”

The words “for Adrian’s sake” hung hollowly in the cold room. Donna shivered and added, “I’ll leave you alone with the wall now.”

Honestly, the way she acted, you’d have thought the wall was my psychiatrist. In a sense that was what it
had
been to her daughter.

I sat on Adrian’s bed like the time before and let the images on the wall speak to me. One, then the other, cried for attention. Bright primary colors, bold black and white. Words, pictures, then more words. And things—incongruous things. All adding up to…what?

After a while I sat up straighter, seeing objects I hadn’t noticed before, seeing others in a new light. What they communicated was a sense of entrapment, but not necessarily by the family situation. Material relating to her absent father—GONE FOREVER, THE YEAR OF THE BIMBO, a postcard from Switzerland where Jeffrey Conway now lived—was buried deep under more recent additions. So were the references to Adrian’s and her mother’s new life—JUST THE TWO OF US, A WOMAN ALONE, NEW DIRECTIONS. But on top of that…

Fake plastic handcuffs. Picture of a barred window. NO EXIT sign. SOLD INTO WHITE SLAVERY. Photo of San Quentin. Images of a young woman caught up in something she saw no easy way out of.

I got up and went over to the wall and took a good look at a plastic security tag I’d noticed before. There were similar ones on the higher-priced garments at Left Coast Casuals. Next to it, the word “guilt” was emblazoned in big letters, smaller repetition of it tailed down like the funnel of a cyclone. My eyes followed them, they were caught hypnotically in the whorls of a thumb-print on a plain white index card.

On top of all these were Adrian’s final offerings. Now that I’d discovered a pattern, I could tell which things had been added last. FREEDOM! Broken gold chain. A WAY OUT. Egret feather and silhouette of a soaring bird. She was about to break loose, fly away. I wasn’t sure from what, not exactly. But guilt was a major component, and I thought I knew why.

I started searching the room. Nothing under the lingerie or sweaters or socks in the bureau drawers. Nothing pushed to the back of the closet or hidden in the suitcases. Nothing under the mattress or the bed. Nothing but school supplies in the desk.

Damn! I was sure I’d figured out that part of it. I had shameful personal experience to guide me.

The room was so cold that the joints of my fingers ached. I tucked my hands into my armpits to warm them. The heat register was one of those metal jobs set into the floor under a window, and its louvers were closed. I squatted next to it and tried to push the opener. Jammed.

The register lifted easily out of its hole. I peered through the opening in the floor and saw that the sheet metal furnace duct was twisted and pushed aside. A nail had been hammered into the floor joist, and something hung down from it into the crawl space. I reached in and unhooked it—a big cloth laundry bag with a drawstring. I pulled the bag up through the hole and dumped its contents on the carpet.

Costume jewelry—rings, bracelets, earring, necklaces—with the price tags still attached. Silk scarves. Pantyhose. Gloves, bikini underpants, leather belts, hair ornaments. They were all from Left Coast Casuals.

Although the items were tagged, the tags were not the plastic kind that trip the sensors at the door. Left Coast Casuals reserved the plastic tags for big-ticket items. All of the merchandise was brand new, had never been worn. No individual item was expensive, but taken together, they added up to a hell of a lot of money.

This told me a lot about Adrian, but it didn’t explain her disappearance. Or her boyfriend’s murder. I replaced the things in the bag, and the bag beneath the flooring. Then I got out of there and went to bounce this one off Sharon.

Sharon was all dressed up today, probably either for a meeting with one of our tonier clients or a court appearance. The teal blue suit and silk blouse looked terrific on her, but I could tell she wasn’t all that comfortable in them. Sharon’s more at home in her jeans and sweater and sneakers. The only time she really likes getting gussied up is for a fancy party, and then she goes at it with the excitement of a kid putting on her Halloween costume.

She said she had some time on her hands, so I suggested we stop down at the Remedy Lounge, our favorite bar-and-grill on Mission Street, for burgers. She hesitated. They serve a great burger at the Remedy, but for some reason Sharon—who’s usually not fastidious when it comes to food—is convinced they’re made of all sorts of disgusting animal parts. Finally she gave in, and we wandered down the hill.