Authors: Kevin O'Brien
There was a photograph of Clay Spalding on page two. Karen remembered Amelia’s description of her neighbor, the nice Native American man with beautiful, long black hair. He’d converted a backyard toolshed into a playhouse for her. She’d eaten cookies in there at a little red plastic table.
The driver’s license photo of Clay Spalding showed a swarthy, handsome man with straight, near-shoulder-length black hair and a slightly defiant look in his dark eyes. According to the article, two years before, Spalding had inherited the ranch house on Gardenia Drive, along with a large sum of money, from the home’s previous owner. Prior to moving to the Schlessingers’ neighborhood, Spalding had lived on the Potholes reservation.
Two paragraphs later, the article pointed out that of the four recently reported missing women from the area, Eileen Sessions was the only one confirmed dead. Her remains had been discovered in a forest at Potholes State Park, not far from the reservation.
Still, perhaps not to show too much bias against the alleged child snatcher, the article quoted Naomi Rankin, a friend of Clay Spalding’s, as well as a longtime Moses Lake resident: “I’ve been very close to Clay for several years. He was a brilliant artist and a lovely person. I don’t think he was capable of hurting another human being, especially a child.”
Karen wondered how Amelia could have only a vague, pleasant memory of this neighbor man, and not recall any of those nightmarish events from that October afternoon. “I liked him,” Amelia had said, “but I don’t think I was supposed to be around him.”
“I don’t get why we’re supposed to stay in a hotel tonight,” Jody said.
He sat in the front passenger seat with one foot up on the dashboard. Stephanie was in back, sorting through an old Bon Marché bag of kids’ books, puzzles, and toys that had been on the Ping-Pong table in Karen’s basement. The junk had originally belonged to Karen when she was a child. Jessie used to break out the bag of toys whenever Frank Junior or Sheila came to town and brought their kids to visit old Frank—anything to keep the children entertained for a while. She figured Stephanie would need something to while away the next few hours at the hotel.
There was a sci-fi convention in town, as well as an endodontists’ convention, just her luck. All the hotels were full. But the clerk at the Edgewater Hotel had taken pity on her and found her a room at the Doubletree over by Southcenter Mall. Her timing was doubly awful, because of rush hour. They sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic on southbound I-5.
“I’d rather be in hell with my back broken,” Jessie muttered, one hand on the steering wheel of George’s car. She glanced in the rearview mirror again: no sign of Karen’s Jetta or a black Cadillac. That was one consolation. If Karen was worried about them, they weren’t in any danger right now. Nothing was going to happen to them in the middle of this traffic jam. Nobody was moving.
“Jessie, why do we gotta stay at a hotel?” Jody asked again.
“Oh, um, your dad thought it would be a good idea,” she lied. “They—they’re doing some work on the power on your block for the next few hours. We won’t have any electricity, and rather than rough it, we’re gonna live high on the hog at a nice hotel for the next few hours.”
“They’re waiting until
night
to screw around with the electricity?” Jody said. “That’s kind of dumb. You’d think they’d do it during the day—when we don’t need the electricity so much.”
“So write to your city councilman,” Jessie said. “There’s stationery at the hotel, and there’s also pay-per-view TV with new movies,
and
room service. You’ll love it, Jody, I promise. With the room-service dinner, they give you these little bottles of ketchup and mustard. It’s really neat. The best part of all is you don’t have to do your homework while you’re there.”
She figured he wouldn’t argue or ask questions about that.
“I hate mustard!” Stephanie announced from the backseat.
“Well, you can just keep it for a souvenir, sweetie,” Jessie replied. “They also have little bars of soap and little bottles of shampoo. And here’s hoping they have an honor bar for dear old Jessie.”
Once the kids were settled, she would treat herself to a glass of wine, or rather,
Karen
would treat her. That bizarre episode with Amelia had really shaken her up. She’d never seen Amelia act that way before, so creepy and smug, like a totally different person. And it was pretty darn unnerving to hear she was supposed to have been on the lookout for a black Cadillac today. That big, old beat-up car had been parked down the block from George’s house since before Jody even got back from school. She wondered if anyone was sitting inside it, and if they were still there, waiting for her and the kids to come back.
“Are we gonna be at the hotel soon?” Stephanie asked.
“Well, unless I can shift this car into
leap
, we aren’t going anywhere,” Jessie muttered, eyeing the gridlock ahead. They weren’t even past Safeco Field yet. “Hang in there, Steffie. We should be checking in to the hotel in about a half hour, tops.”
“Y’know, we gotta go home first before we go anywhere else,” Jody said quietly. “Steffie needs her inhaler.”
“Oh, shhhh—” Jessie stifled herself. “Do you know the brand, honey? Can we pick another one up for her at a drugstore?”
“Can’t,” Jody said. “It’s a subscription.”
“Prescription, honey.” She sighed. “Oh, Lord….”
“She really needs it, too,” Jody pointed out. “Mom used to say it was like asking for trouble if Steffie went anywhere without her inhaler. That’s kind of a weird expression. Do you know what that means exactly?
Asking for trouble?
”
Jessie saw the sign for the West Seattle Bridge ahead, the exit for George’s house. “Yes, I know exactly what it means,” she said.
Biting her lip, she put on her turn signal, and started merging toward the West Seattle turnoff.
Sitting in the crummy little office across the street from Sherry’s Corner Food & Deli, the sheriff had I Don’t Have Time for This Shit written across her face.
She stared at George from behind a computer and a pile of paperwork on her big metal desk. Decked out in her brown sheriff’s uniform, she was about forty-five, with short, dishwater-blond hair and a long, narrow, horselike face. Her lipstick was on crooked. “Let me get this straight,” she said. “You want me to go over to the old Schlessinger ranch and start digging up their backyard? And this is based on the fact that you were snooping down in their basement and found a name tag with ‘Nancy Rae’ printed on it?”
“Yes,” George said, showing her the waitress badge again. “Nancy Rae Keller; she worked at a restaurant in Corvallis.”
The cut on his leg from the fallout shelter door scraping him wasn’t too serious. But it still stung like hell, and he’d torn his pants leg. He’d cleaned it up in the restroom in the sheriff’s office.
George now sat in a metal chair with a green Naugahyde-covered cushioned seat and sturdy armrests. He imagined those armrests were used to keep a felon cuffed to the chair. But he couldn’t see that happening around here much. One look at the place seemed to confirm that it wasn’t exactly a hub of activity. A map of Marion County decorated the off-white wall, along with scores of police bulletins, many sun-faded, dusty, and starting to curl at the edges.
Yet, the sheriff acted as if she was in the middle of a major crime bust, and he was taking up her time.
“Nancy Rae has been missing for five years now,” George pointed out. “She’s one of several missing-person cases in the area, all young women.”
“I’m well acquainted with those old missing-person cases,” the sheriff said. She waved at the four ugly metal file cabinets behind her. “I have all of the files there…somewhere. I also have all this
here
,” she said, slapping at a pile of papers on her desk. “And it needs to be processed and filed. Now, I can’t just drop everything and go on an archaeological dig with you in the Schlessingers’ backyard. First of all, you’re lucky I don’t charge you with trespassing, Mr. McMillan. That ranch is private property.”
“Well, I don’t think I’d be the first one to trespass there,” George replied, at the risk of incurring her wrath. “The place is pretty trashed. I saw a lot of beer cans and garbage.”
“Yes,” the sheriff nodded. “For a while there, certain morbid teenagers hung out there to get drunk, but we put a stop to it. That waitress tag probably belonged to one of them.”
“I doubt it. If you knew where I found it—”
“All right, so you want to go out there now and start digging?” she cut in. “Based on what—a
hunch
? And some tidbit you read in a book of amazing facts about wildflowers indicating grave sites? We can’t do that, Mr. McMillan. First, we’d have to call a judge for a search warrant, which we’d be damn lucky to get by noon tomorrow. We’d also have to notify the current property owner. The ranch was bought by some chemical company in Boise eighteen months ago. A fence was supposed to go up around the place last year, but it didn’t happen…”
She stopped to look at her deputy, who ambled through the doorway. The skinny, dark-haired young man wore a brown uniform and had a goofy-looking buzz cut. Walking around the counter, he carried a small bag and a can of Diet Coke.
“Twenty minutes for a lousy roast beef sandwich?” the sheriff asked him. “What did Sherry have to do? Kill the cow?”
The beleaguered deputy set the bag and soda on her desktop. “They were out of potato salad, so I got you chips,” he muttered.
“Fine, fine, thanks, Tyler,” she grumbled. The sheriff tapped a pile of folders on the corner of her desk. “File these, and then clock out. I don’t want the county paying you overtime tonight. That’s just more paperwork for me. I get more done without you here, anyway.”
Sighing, he collected the files and stepped toward the metal cabinets behind her.
The sheriff opened up the can of Diet Coke. “If you’re serious about this, Mr. McMillan, we can’t just start digging over at the Schlessinger ranch. We need to go through the proper procedures. That’ll take time. Now, I see you there, tapping your foot, and if you’re anxious to get going on this, you have a long wait ahead.”
George squirmed in the chair. What had made him think he could get back to his kids tonight? If the cops actually followed his tip and found some bodies at the Schlessinger ranch, they’d want him to stick around. Hell, it might take days before they even uncovered anything.
“I’ll tell you what,” the sheriff said, reaching into the carryout bag. “You leave Nancy Rae’s name tag with me, along with a number where I can get ahold of you. I won’t charge you with trespassing. And I’ll pass your tip onto the state police in the morning.”
George sighed. At least that freed him up to go home. But it meant waiting for confirmation that Lon Schlessinger was responsible for the disappearance of all those women. George also wondered if the sheriff even took him seriously enough to bother contacting the state police.
“Listen,” she said, obviously reading his hesitation. “The last of those missing-person cases was over three years ago….”
Behind her, the deputy stopped filing and glanced over his shoulder. “I went to school with Sandra Hartman,” he said. “She was the last one—”
“Yes, Tyler, I know,” the sheriff said, dismissing him. She unwrapped her sandwich. “You’ve already told me all about it. I’m not talking to you right now.”
The deputy sneered at her back. Shaking his head, he resumed his menial task.
The sheriff rolled her eyes, then turned to George. “Anyway, my point is, it’s an old case. If the late Lon Schlessinger is somehow involved, and there are indeed bodies buried on his property, nothing about that will change between now and tomorrow morning. I can assure you, Lon will still be dead. And on the off-off-off chance some bodies are buried on his ranch, they won’t be going anywhere, either.”
Frowning, she peeled the wheat bread back and inspected her sandwich. “It can wait until morning, Mr. McMillan,” she said distractedly. “So please, quit tapping your foot. Leave the name tag and your phone number. And let me eat my lousy dinner in peace.”
Ten minutes later, George was parked across the street at Sherry’s Corner Food & Deli. He’d left his rental on the far side of the lot, behind a Winnebago so the car couldn’t be seen from the precinct office. He was surprised the Food & Deli had shovels for sale, but then it made sense, considering the neighborhood. George bought some Neosporin for his leg, as well as a shovel and pick. He felt like a smuggler carrying them out of the store in full view of the sheriff’s office across the street. He quickly loaded the tools into the trunk of his car.
Shutting the trunk, he peeked around the back of the Winnebago. George saw the deputy come out of the police station. He headed across the road again for another trip into Sherry’s Corner.
“Tyler?” George said, moving toward the store entrance. “Deputy?”
The young man stopped to stare at him. “Hey, you’re still around,” he said, half smiling. “So the bitch didn’t scare you away?”
“No, she didn’t,” George said. “Listen, deputy, how would you like to help solve Sandra Hartman’s disappearance, and maybe make your boss look like an idiot in the process?”
“Well, last I heard, dear,” the old woman said. “They sent Amelia to live with Joy’s relatives up in Canada someplace.”
Miriam Getz was petite with thick, cat’s-eye glasses and short curled hair that was light brown with a pinkish hue, obviously from a bad dye job. She wore a string of pearls and pearl earrings with her lavender sweat suit.
After making a few calls, Karen had found out Clay Spalding’s former next-door neighbor was still alive. But the 84-year-old Miriam was no longer living in Moses Lake. She now resided in New Horizons, a rest home in East Wenatchee, just a fifteen-minute drive from the library.