A woman hollered, “I’m out here! Come around back!”
I left the porch and trotted along the walkway that skirted the house on the right. As I passed the kitchen window, I glanced up and saw her standing at the open window. She must have been near the sink because she leaned forward and turned off the tap as she peered down at me. Through the screen, she looked thirty-five, a guess I upgraded by ten years once I saw her up close.
I paused. “Hi. Are you Cloris Bargo?”
“Was before I got married. Can I help you with something?” She turned on the water again and her gaze dropped to whatever dish or utensil she was scrubbing.
“I need some information. I shouldn’t take more than five or ten minutes of your time.” It was weird having a conversation with someone whose face was two feet higher. I could nearly see up her nose.
“I hope you’re not selling anything door-to-door.”
“Not at all. My name’s Kinsey Millhone. I’m a private detective. Your name came up in connection with a case I’m working for the Sheriff’s Department.”
She focused on me fully, her gaze sharpening. “That’s a first. I never heard of the Sheriff’s Department hiring outside help.”
“This guy’s a retired north county detective reactivating an old murder case—that young girl stabbed to death back in 1969.”
She put something in the dish rack, dried her hands on a towel, and then reached for the radio and turned it off. When she made no other comment, I said. “Mind if I come in?”
She didn’t extend an invitation, but she made a gesture that I interpreted as consent. I continued down the walkway to the rear of the house, where the concrete drive widened, forming a parking pad. On the right, a clothesline had been strung between a wooden pole and a bolt secured to the side of the garage. White sheets flapped lazily in the breeze. The backyard was nicely landscaped; the flower beds bordered with prefabricated foot-high sections of white picket fence. Someone had recently put in flats of pansies and petunias, now drooping from the transplant process. A sprinkler head attached to a hose sent a fan of water back and forth across the grass. The outdoor furniture had seen better days. The hollow aluminum frames were pitted in places, and the woven green-and-white nylon webbing was faded and frayed. In the far corner, I could see a large expanse of tilled ground with several young tomato plants, a row of newly planted peppers, and five empty bean poles, like teepees, waiting for the emerging tendrils to take hold. I saw no sign of kids or pets.
I climbed six steps to the porch. She was waiting at the back door, holding it open for me. She stepped back and I entered. Her attitude had shifted in the brief time it’d taken me to circle the house. The set of her jaw now seemed stubborn or tense. There was something in her manner that made me think I’d best provide concrete proof of my identity. I handed her a business card.
She took it and placed it on the counter without reading it. She was trim and petite, in tan Bermuda shorts, a white T-shirt, no makeup, bare feet. Her dark hair was chin length and anchored behind her ears with bobby pins.
“Nice flowers,” I said.
“My husband takes care of those. The vegetables are mine.”
The heat in the kitchen felt like South Florida in June—not yet oppressive, but a temperature that made you think seriously about leaving the state. Two big stainless steel pressure cookers fitted with racks sat on burners over matching low blue flames. The lids were lined up on the counter nearby, their little pressure cooker caps resting on the windowsill. Freshly sterilized lids, seals, ladles, and tongs were laid out on white sackcloth towels like surgical instruments. A third kettle contained a dark red liquid, as viscous as glue. I picked up the rich, hot perfume of crushed strawberries. I counted twelve pint-capacity Mason jars lined up on the kitchen table in the middle of the room. “Sorry to interrupt.”
“That’s all right.” She returned to the sink. Everything about her smacked of Midwestern farm values—the canning, the sheets on the line, the truck garden, the unadorned face.
“You remember the case?”
“Vaguely.”
I noticed she didn’t ask to have her memory refreshed, so I volunteered the help. “A sheriff’s deputy took a report from you. According to his notes, you spotted a girl hitchhiking near the Fair Isle off-ramp July 29, 1969.”
“You mentioned the date before.”
I ignored the minor reprimand. “You indicated seeing a vehicle stop and pick her up. Turns out she fit the description of the murder victim found in Lompoc a couple of days later.”
Cloris Bargo’s expression was modified by the appearance of two swatches of pink, like blusher applied by a department store cosmetologist. “You want iced tea? I can fix you some. It’s already made.”
“That’d be great.”
She opened one of the kitchen cabinets and took down a burnished blue aluminum tumbler, which she filled with ice cubes. She poured the tea from a fat glass pitcher she kept in the refrigerator. I knew she was stalling, but I wanted to give her room to declare herself. Something was going on, but I wasn’t sure what. She handed me the glass.
I murmured, “Thanks,” and took a big healthy swallow before I realized it was heavily presweetened. I could feel my lips purse. This was equivalent to that noxious syrup you have to drink before blood draws designed to diagnose conditions you hope you don’t have.
She leaned against the counter. “I made it up.”
I set the tumbler aside. “Which part?”
“All of it. I never saw the girl.”
“No hitchhiker at all?”
She shook her head. “I’d met the deputy—the one who wrote up the report. I was new in California. My family hadn’t been here six months. I hardly knew a soul. There’d been a prowler in our neighborhood, and this deputy was sent out to talk to us. He’d gone house to house, asking if anyone had seen anything strange or unusual. I was off work. I’d just had an emergency appendectomy and I was still recovering. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been home. We ended up having a long talk. I thought he was cute.” She stopped.
“Take your time,” I said.
“A week later, the paper mentioned his name in reference to the murder investigation. I’d never told a lie in my life, but I picked up the phone and called the Sheriff’s Department and asked for him. Once he got on the line, I said the first thing that came to mind.”
“Your claim that you’d seen a girl whose description matched the victim’s was completely false,” I said, hoping I’d misunderstood.
“I just said that. A lot of people must have called in with information that didn’t pan out. All I wanted was a chance to talk to him again.”
I was silent for a moment, thinking,
Shit, shit, shit.
“Did it work?”
She shrugged. “I married him.”
“Well, that part’s good, at any rate.”
Her eyes strayed to the window. I saw a car pass along the driveway, cruising toward the rear. I looked back at her.
She lowered her voice. “Do me a favor.”
“Sure.”
“Don’t mention this to my husband. I never told him the truth.”
“He doesn’t
know
?”
She shook her head.
“Would it really matter to him after eighteen years?”
I heard the car door slam shut and her husband’s hard-soled shoes
tap-tapping
across the pavement between the garage and the back porch. There was a pause while he checked his pansies and petunias. In my opinion, they needed watering. He apparently agreed. I heard the shriek and squawk of the faucet handle when he turned off the water, moved the sprinkler, and turned the water on again. He continued toward the back door while she went on rapidly. “Every time someone asks how we met he tells them the story of how I took the time to call in the report. He admired I was such a conscientious citizen. Says it’s one of my best traits. He claims he fell in love with me on the phone. Then he said it seemed like fate since he’d seen me in person just the week before. He thinks I’m different. A cut above, he says.”
“Tricky.”
“You bet.”
The back door opened. Her husband came in, pausing to wipe his feet on the mat before he entered. Nice-looking guy. He was in his fifties with steel gray hair and blue eyes, his lineage probably Dutch or Scandinavian. He was tall and lean in a well-knit frame, without an ounce of fat. He wore street clothes—tan dress pants, a dark blue dress shirt, and a tie with a pattern of blue and tan. He had his badge on his belt. I wondered what his job was after twenty years with the SO. He’d already removed his gun and his holster, which he’d probably locked in the trunk of his car. “What’s tricky?”
“Getting the pectin just right,” she said without batting an eye. Having lied to him once, she was apparently an old hand at this.
“I’m Kinsey.”
“Joe Mandel. Don’t let her fool you. She makes the best strawberry preserves you ever ate.”
“I’ll bet.”
His face was creased, hair thinning as age began to take its toll. He looked athletic, and I assumed he was fast on his feet, still capable of tangling with the bad guys when circumstances required it. “Looks like a science lab in here. You two cooking up trouble?”
“More or less,” I said.
He exhibited no particular curiosity about who I was or what I was doing in the kitchen with his wife. He leaned over, bussed her on the cheek, and patted her arm. “I’m going to change and do some yard work. We’ll go to Sizzler tonight, get you out of this heat. You need help?”
“I’m fine, sweetie. Thanks.”
“Nice meeting you,” he said, with a quick smile at me.
I smiled and raised a hand in response. Cloris watched him depart, her expression fading from warmth to something more subdued.
“He seems nice.”
“He
is
nice. That’s why I married him. He’s decent. It would never occur to him to lie to me.”
“Why don’t you tell him, then?”
“Why don’t you mind your own business? I can handle this myself.”
6
The drive from Santa Teresa to Lompoc takes an hour by car, but I stopped at Gull Cove, which marks the halfway point. In my heart of hearts, I knew why I’d volunteered for this part of the job. Aside from the fact I needed time alone, I was flirting with the notion of going back to Grand’s old house. Like a newly reformed drunk, I’d sworn off with conviction just the day before and now found myself thinking maybe one more quick visit wouldn’t do any harm.
I reached the Gull Cove minimart at 2:00 P.M. The business had been housed in an enormous shambling structure covered with cedar shingles, an appealing mix of modern and traditional, with a few Cape Cod elements thrown in for good measure. The building had also housed a twenty-four-hour diner, a curio shop, and a tiny two-station beauty salon. Even at a distance, it was clear the entire place had been closed down. I could see windows boarded over, and the asphalt parking lot was cracked and faded to a chalky gray. The surrounding grass was a dull brown with assorted weeds and wildflowers growing to knee height. On the hillside behind the building, a lone tree had died and stood now like a scare-crow, its twisted branches raised toward the sky as though to beckon birds. The population of Gull Cove was pegged at one hundred, but I couldn’t for the life of me spot so much as one.
I parked my car near the front steps and got out. The wide wooden deck creaked under my feet. A notice posted on the main door announced that the complex was closed for renovations. Someone had drawn a Happy Face in pencil with the mouth turned down. Someone else had written “WHO CARES?” in ballpoint pen. A third party, perhaps human, had taken a big dump near the padlocked door. I peered through the minimart’s front window, which was dusty and streaked where winter rains had hammered at the plate glass. The interior was stripped; not one fixture, counter, or display case remained. It looked like the renovations would be going on for some time.
I turned and stared at the road. The Gull Cove complex was the only commercial structure for miles, a hundred feet from the highway and a natural stopping-off point for travelers who needed to take a break. It was easy to see why someone thumbing a ride might get dropped off in passing. Perhaps after doughnuts and coffee, our Jane Doe found a lift as far as Lompoc, which had turned out to be the end of the line for her.
I went back to the car and checked my notes, looking for Roxanne Faught’s last known address: Q Street in Lompoc, thirty minutes to the north. Seemed like a long way for her to travel for a clerking job. I fired up the engine and hit the road again, heading north, the Pacific Ocean on my left. Today the swells were low and without chop, the color a darker reflection of the blue sky above. Idly, I thought about Grand’s house. It was possible I’d catch a glimpse of the place if I happened to pass that way. Surely, it was visible from the highway if you knew where to look. I turned on the car radio to distract myself.
I reached the outskirts of Lompoc. The town is flat and compact, a one-story panorama of wide streets and small houses. A constant wind blows off the ocean, funneled by the rolling hills that cradle the town. Three miles to the north is Vandenberg Village and beyond that, Vandenberg Air Force Base. The entire valley is given over to horse farms and cattle ranches, much of the agricultural land planted to fields of commercial flowers, many of them grown for seeds. Though I had no idea what I was looking at, I could see stretches of bright yellow and vibrant pink. Beyond them were acres of what appeared to be baby’s breath. Many farms were being sold to real estate developers; the sweet peas, poppies, and larkspurs being crowded out by crops of three-bedroom houses in neatly planted rows.
The town itself boasts the Lompoc Municipal Pool and a substantial civic center along with all the standard businesses: the Viva Thrift Shop, banks, attorneys’ offices, automotive and plumbing supplies, retail stores and gas stations, coffee shops, pharmacies, and medical complexes. Lompoc is a base town with neighborhoods of temporary residents whose military careers will always move them from place to place like pieces on a game board. It was hard to see what people did for amusement. There wasn’t a bowling alley, a concert hall, or a movie house in sight. Maybe local culture consisted of everyone renting videotapes of last year’s money-losing movies.