“Do you remember when Lee left Paradise?”
“Oh, yes. Big commotion over there. This was maybe a week after Marge's funeral. Lee slipped out early one morning, didn't leave a note, didn't take anything with her but her car and the clothes on her back. Hal had the town police there, sheriff's department too. Was convinced something terrible had happened to her. They expedited the search in spite of the seventy-two-hour requirement—Hal was important, and Lee had been set to go to work for the sheriff before Hal decided he needed her at home. They located her VW in a used-car lot in Oroville.”
“But they never located Lee?”
“Three days later Hal called off the search. This I got from a poker buddy at the sheriff's department. Hal told them she was a grown woman, had a right to take off if she wanted, and canceled the missing-persons report. Later he claimed he'd heard from her; she was living in Phoenix. And then he sold the business, withdrew into that house except for the necessary errands, and started the ‘I have no daughter’ bullshit.” Parrish scowled at the D’Silva house, shaking his head. “Bitter old bastard couldn't stand for her to slip out from under his thumb. Possessiveness I can understand, but to flat-out deny a daughter's existence…”
He looked down at the ground, scuffed at wood chips with the toe of one boot. “Beth and I had a daughter, Amy. She died at seventeen—boating accident on Clear Lake. If I could bring her back, I'd trade places with her in a millisecond. No matter what she'd done to me.”
Carolyn Alpert's hands were slender and long fingered, and they slipped the colorful skeins of yarn into the honeycomb shelving on the back wall of her store deftly and quickly. Spin a Yarn had no customers at three in the afternoon, although Alpert had warned me that she had a class of advanced crocheters coming at four.
“Yes,” she said as she sorted mohair and angora, “Ken Parrish was right about Lee's life—but he doesn't know the half of it.”
“You were her best friend.”
“Kindergarten through college.” She gave up on her shelving and turned—a willowy blonde in a long blue dress and boots. The delicacy of her features was enhanced by wisps of hair that curled softly against her high forehead. “Lee and I were instant friends the day Tommy Guest wouldn't let me take my turn on the rocking horse. My response was to cry; Lee preached a little sermon about fairness at him and damned if he didn't actually get off the horse and help me on.” She smiled. “Of course, in high school we found out he'd only done it because he was already smitten with her. His crush was consummated the night of the junior prom.”
“What happened to Tommy?”
Alpert began picking at the ball of soft apricot wool she held. “He was killed by a drunk driver the week after graduation. It cemented Lee's decision to go into law enforcement.”
“If it won't throw your schedule off too much, I'd appreciate it if you'd tell me about Lee. Anything at all may help me locate her.”
She nodded and motioned at a pair of white wicker chairs with pink flowered cushions. As soon as we sat down, she reached into a basket and pulled out a half-finished garment of fine-spun pale yellow. “I knit sweaters to order,” she explained. “And I think better when my hands are occupied, particularly when I'm talking about something that upsets me.”
“And the subject of Lee upsets you?”
“Makes me sad, more than anything. Where should I start?”
“Wherever you'd like to.”
“Well, we covered our meeting. Grade school, we did the usual kid things together, only it was always at my house or some of our other friends’. Lee never even had a birthday party. She explained it by saying, ‘My mother is very nervous, and she has a serious medical condition.’”
“Sounds like her father told her what to say. That's not kid language.”
“I always thought he did.”
“I've heard Lee described as a perfect child and teenager.”
“Well… yes and no. All A's. All the Brownie and Girl Scout badges. President of the church youth group. High school class secretary. The small-town stuff that makes you shine in parents’ and teachers’ eyes. But, at least in the early years, she had her other side. She liked to play harmless practical jokes. She'd climb higher and swim in deeper water than anybody. One time she got up on the very peak of my parents’ house, and the fire department had to get her down. Nobody ever reported the incident to her folks; most people knew what was going on with them, and they didn't want to make things more difficult.”
“You say that was Lee in the early years. What changed her?”
“Her mother got worse, was drinking more and more, and began behaving outrageously. Lee's response was to become obsessed with perfection and to try to ignore both her mother's drinking and her father's distress and denial. It couldn't have been easy.”
Carolyn Alpert's fingers fumbled with her knitting. She bit her lip and pulled out a wrong stitch. “Lee never invited anybody to the house, not even Tommy Guest, and by then they were going steady. But on Thanksgiving of our sophomore year, my parents were away on a free trip they'd won to Hawaii, and Mrs. D’Silva actually told Lee to invite my older brother and me to dinner. Lee was nervous about it, but happy too. Maybe she thought her life was changing.
“Mrs. D’Silva seemed fine when we got there. She'd been drinking, but was in control. But by the time dinner was on the table she was drunk—had been sipping the whole time she was cooking. She started to carp about everybody's table manners, including Mr. D’Silva's, and to complain that nobody appreciated her efforts. She drank a lot more, pushing her food around on her plate, and then passed out with her nose in her mashed potatoes.”
“What did Mr. D’Silva and Lee do?”
“He got up and retreated into the den. My brother and I offered to help Lee with her mom and with the mess in the kitchen, but she insisted on sending us home with a generous portion of the leftovers. The next day she told me it wasn't as bad as some of their holiday meals.”
“So she could confide in you.”
“Up to a point. But that Thanksgiving was a real humiliation for her; afterward we were never as close. And she began pushing harder and harder: she was a cheerleader, student council president, the lead in the senior play, valedictorian, most likely to succeed. The same in college: Ms. Perfect.”
“Let's fast-forward to the time when Lee was nursing her mother. Did you see much of her then?”
“No. I was working long hours for the phone company. Lee's mom was more than a full-time job, plus she handled all the bookkeeping for D’Silva Supplies. Right before I was married we had lunch a few times—she was my maid of honor—and I could tell the strain was weighing on her and that she was heartbroken about losing out on her chance to join the sheriff's department. The day of my wedding she couldn't even stay for the reception because her mom and dad needed her.”
“What about when her mother died?”
“My husband and I went to the funeral. Lee was like stone; she barely acknowledged anybody's presence.”
“And when she left town, did she tell you her plans?”
Alpert made another wrong stitch. Her mouth twitched, and she wrapped the half-finished sweater around the needles and yarn, returned it to the basket. “Not her specific plans, no.”
“But you did know she was leaving.”
“Not until she actually did.” Her gaze became remote, remembering, and she smoothed her long skirt over her thighs. “I was up early that morning; my husband works construction and he'd had to drive to a job site in Glenn County. I was drinking coffee in my kitchen at four-thirty when Lee's old VW pulled into the driveway and she rushed inside. She looked tired but excited—better than I'd seen her in years. She told me she couldn't leave without saying good-bye, but she was getting out for good.
“Well, I was thrilled for her. Where was she going? I asked. She couldn't say. Why not? She didn't want her father to trace her. Why? I'd know in a few days when everything came out. And then she took both my hands in hers and looked into my eyes, very sad. She said, ‘Please don't judge me too harshly for what I've done. I know if anybody can understand, it's you.’ We'd been friends all those years, and I'd never been able to make her tell me anything she didn't want to, so I gave her a thermos filled with coffee and watched her drive away.”
“Did you ever hear from her?”
Alpert's eyes were now filmed with tears. “No, I kept waiting for a letter or a postcard, but none ever came.”
“And nothing ever came out about what she'd done, either?”
“Nothing. I've always assumed it was something she did to her father, because a couple of days later he called off the search for her, and since then he's claimed she never existed. Frankly, I've had my suspicions, but I've never wanted to know.” She hesitated, lips compressed. “If your finding out might save Lee from whatever danger she's into …”
“Yes?”
“I think I know who can tell you.”
Roberta Tuggle was reading the riot act to a forklift operator who, from the looks of things, had dropped a load of cartons containing toilets on the warehouse floor at Tuggle—née D’Silva—Supplies. The burly six-footer hung his head as the wiry five-footer described his negligence in terms that lacerated even my none-too-tender ears. After he slunk off, she noticed me and demanded, “What the hell're
you
looking at?”
Calling forth my most conciliatory smile, I extended my ID and said, “Carolyn Alpert phoned you—”
“Ah, shit!” Tuggle ran her hand through close-cropped gray hair. “Sorry. Come on to the office.”
I followed her up an iron stairway to a glass-walled cage that overlooked the warehouse floor. Tuggle poured herself a cup of muddy stuff that must have been brewed that morning, raised a questioning eyebrow at me. I shook my head, and she motioned to one of the folding chairs in front of the invoice-littered desk, taking the other for herself.
“So you've seen my bad side,” she said. “I shouldn't’ve reamed the guy out like that—he's new. But, dammit, those crappers're
expensive.
Now, what was it Carolyn said …? Oh, yeah, you want to know about Hal and Lee D’Silva.”
“You bought the business from Mr. D’Silva?”
“My husband Dave and I, yeah. Two years later, old Dave—sly thing that he is—ran off with the widow Tyler. I stuck him with a good but fair settlement, took the company, and left him the house, the boats, and the bad-tempered family dog. Now I'm getting rich on all these wealthy retirees who're moving up here, but I'm too damn busy to think about retiring myself. Hell of a note, huh?” She winked, took a swig of the silty-looking coffee, and didn't even flinch.
“Carolyn said your husband worked for D’Silva before you bought him out.”
“Yeah, as a salesman. Dave was one hell of a good salesman. Sold me a great line of b.s. for years. Me, I was an accountant, had set up my own kitchen-table firm while our boys were little, which was how we ended up getting our hands on this gold mine.”
“How was that?”
“What happened, the D’Silva girl, she was running the office, handling the accounts, before she ran off. It was coming up on tax time, and Hal needed somebody fast, so he called me in. Right away I found out about it.”
“It?”
She smiled, stuck her Birkenstock-clad feet up on the desk, enjoying keeping me in suspense.
I hid my impatience. “Must've been something good.”
“For Dave and me, yeah.” Her smile faded. “For Hal D’Silva, it was pretty damn devastating. Seems his beloved daughter had been embezzling for at least a year, to the tune of nearly a hundred thou. While Hal was watching his wife die, Lee was cooking the books. The business was nearly bankrupt, so Dave and I offered to take it off Hal's hands.” She paused, added defensively, “We made him a fair price, considering.”
“I'm sure you did. Mr. D’Silva didn't report the embezzlement to the police?”
“Honey, that man is proud. His reputation around town had already taken a beating, given his wife's drinking. D'you think he wanted his perfect daughter exposed as a thief?” She sipped more of her dreadful brew, her round face troubled. “The man was shattered and wanted out. When we made our deal, one of the conditions was that we never tell what Lee had done. You're the first person I've ever told.”
“Why me?”
“Because Carolyn said Lee is in danger. And, in a real peculiar way, I couldn't blame her for taking the money and running. She tried so hard, she gave so much, but nothing was ever enough. The more she did, the more Hal and Marge demanded. I guess she just finally snapped.”
“Snapped, began embezzling, and continued it for at least a year before she disappeared? I don't buy that.”
“Honey, it looked to me that the embezzlements started almost to the day that the sheriff's department announced a hiring freeze. Lee must've realized her father had made her lose her chance at her dream. Maybe she thought she was just taking compensation for her services. Poor kid.”
Poor kid.
So I should feel sorry for her? Yes, she had a terrible life, but lots of people have terrible lives, and they don't use them as an excuse to embezzle from their own fathers. They don't use them as an excuse to invade and destroy someone else's life. Not if they're decent human beings.
I sat in the Citabria in the run-up area at the foot of runway 17, checking the mags and carburetor heat, rechecking the oil pressure, the other instruments, the controls.
And fuming. Fuming, because after having heard the story of little Ms. Perfect's terrible life, I felt a twinge or two. And I didn't like that one bit.
“Paradise traffic, Citabria seven-seven-two-eight-niner, departing one-seven, straight out.”
It's okay to have empathy for the woman; that way you can anticipate her next moves. But for God's sake don't sympathize; it'll weaken you when the final confrontation comes.
And it
will
come—soon.
I turned onto the runway, eased in the throttle, put in right rudder. The plane sped downhill, the sheer drop-off at the strip's end ever closer. When the Citabria wanted to fly, I pulled back on the stick, and we soared off the edge of the mesa into the clear winter sky. I looked out the side window, watched the land suddenly fall away, and felt a rush of elation.