She poured herself a vodka from his wet bar, and looked around. She admired and hated the artwork on his walls. She peeked into his closet, but when she spilled her drink, decided she probably ought to lie down for a bit.
His sofa, worth thousands no doubt, was hard but at least had some loose pillows. She put her head on one end and stretched out on the unforgiving sofa.
She would tell all.
In a way, she couldn’t wait. All these years, she had kept her life bottled up inside so tight, corked, screwed down. Ray should know, she decided, plumping the pillow with one hand, feeling a little dizzy. He ought to know who his father was, and who his mother is.
Probably he deserved to know, although such niceties of morality seemed a little like the leaves outside, blowing in hot summer winds, untouchable unless they fell to the ground and you stomped on them. She would have a nap, and then he’d be home.
22
F or breakfast, Ray found some food they could eat, canned pears, dry cereal with powdered milk. The pantry, located on a porch beside the kitchen, showed signs of vermin infestation. Kat, continuing to feel quite hungry after the ordeals of a haunted Idyllwild night, did not care. When Ray didn’t finish his cornflakes, she finished them.
The T-shirt sat in its bag on the couch. Ray kept away from it. Kat couldn’t stop looking at it.
“Plan of action,” Kat said. “Besides take the shirt back to the sheriff?”
“We didn’t finish searching this place. Maybe there’s more.”
“We hunt some more?” Kat said.
“Don’t want to miss anything, now that we’re here.”
“But it’s a crime scene. We shouldn’t mess it up.”
“Is it? I don’t believe it. Besides, we already slept here.”
They hunted. Kat made Ray search the small downstairs bedroom. She refused to go downstairs at all, in fact.
They tossed the place attic to foundation, finding nothing else that suggested Leigh had been there recently.
Kat found a picture album that documented many years of visits. Mr. Hubbel, not exactly a fine figure of a man these days, appeared godlike, handsome as a movie star. He water-skied, hiked, rode a bike, swam wearing a mighty tight Speedo. In occasional extras presumably taken by friends, his wife appeared alongside him, small and adorable. Leigh, young and accompanied by friends male and female over the years, grinned a camera-false smile. Kat, although frequently invited, had never managed to visit before.
At the back of a leather-bound volume on the bottom shelf of many albums, she found three pictures of Tom with Leigh.
In one, they sat together on a boat, heads inclined toward each other, hers so very blonde, his darker, his thick eyebrows furrowed, worried looking. Leigh looked up at him, and although the picture was black and white, her gray eyes appeared translucent. They sat in the stern of a speedboat, a white trail behind them, globules of water decorating both their faces. Tom gazed back at her, lovestruck. She appeared happy, without connection.
In another, they smiled into the camera, Tom, several inches taller than Leigh, standing against a desert backdrop of treeless, cracked ground. He had looped an arm over her shoulder. They looked relaxed, like two people who belonged together.
In the third and last picture, Tom was peripheral, not part of the framed group. He sat on a bench in the background, watching Leigh whoop it up at an evening party, champagne glass in one hand, a plate of hors d’oeuvres in the other. Behind her, an orange desert sky blazed. Tom, lurking in shadows, appeared to glower.
Leigh glowed like the moon, handsome young men hovering nearby.
Kat pulled out the photos and pushed them into her pocket. She shut the album.
“Find anything?” Ray called from outside.
“Nothing.”
“I have something.” He held his hands cupped as he showed her some broken nutshells.
“These haven’t been around long. I found them strewn all around under the back balcony where the blue jays hang.”
“Peanuts. She likes peanuts.”
“She sat out there eating peanuts.”
Neither of them said the obvious: maybe whoever had hurt her had sat out there, watching the jays.
“Put ’em in another bag, and we’ll bring them, too,” Kat advised. “For DNA testing.”
“You’ve made up your mind she’s dead,” Ray said. “Haven’t you?”
Kat held up her hands.
“I want to spend a few more hours in the area before we go back,” Ray said. “Please. I can’t go back quite yet. It’s too awful. That shirt. I need some kind of hope.”
“It’s an important discovery, Ray. I think we have to go back.”
“Just check a gas station or two. I think I remember vaguely where the reservation is.”
Kat shook her head, but in the end, she felt as though whatever harm had come to Leigh had come and gone, and a few more hours wouldn’t cause any more harm.
They packed quickly. “We need a better map of this area,” Ray said. He seemed calm, rested, on patrol this morning. They closed up and drove into the village, to a local market which carried maps. Ray studied the one they bought, saying, “Maybe,” as if to himself.
They drove north and then east along the long hill, catching glimpses of taller mountains in the distance, stopping at every convenience store, every grocery store, every gas station, moving farther and farther from Los Angeles. They showed photos of Leigh.
Nobody knew anything. Morning turned to mid-afternoon under the blue mountain sky.
Without discussion, at the foot of the next mountain, Ray turned his Porsche onto the road that led toward Palm Springs.
Kat, dozing in the comfortable coolness of the Boxster, felt the car turn left and crunch onto a road that was not highway. Ray said, “I saw a road sign. There’s a reservation down here. Let’s check it out, see if I recognize anything. It’s the only one marked on this map. It’s called Banos Calientes.”
“You think it’s the one Leigh visited?”
“I can’t remember. I don’t know if she even told me the name of it. It could be.” On both sides of them, scrub and sand stretched away. The chaparral plants were so evenly placed, so organized in their desperate struggle to find just enough water for their roots, that the landscape looked like a park. Of course, this park was assiduously tended mostly by snakes and scorpions.
“What exactly did she buy there?”
“Wood. For furniture she wanted to make.”
“What else do you remember about it?”
“Just that an old guy sold it to her. She told me she liked him. I wasn’t paying much attention. It could be this place, or there may be a dozen small reservations around here.”
“Well, hip hip hooray.” It popped out.
“What?” He sounded offended.
“I’ve felt like I dragged you along with me on this hunt for Leigh, Ray. Now here you are actually trying to help us move forward. Maybe you didn’t kill her after all.” Now that one foot was lodged in her jaw, she had to cram the other one in, too. Even as she spoke, she realized she would regret it.
Ray’s chin moved to the forefront. “She’s not dead. Stop assuming that she is. You never gave me the chance to take charge, Kat. You’re a prodder. A poker. I hate women who prod and poke. Especially ones who look like stick insects with red hair.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, real men don’t wear boxers. Especially plaid ones.”
“How would you know? You’ve never had a real man.”
“I was just trying to say-”
“The same shit you’ve been handing me all along to keep me moving.”
“Which worked, finally.”
“I worked up to it on my own, little lady.”
Kat folded her arms and stared straight ahead, though the bouncing from the potholes detracted from this dignified posture. They were sending up a rooster tail of dry sand behind them, even though Ray was doing under thirty miles an hour now.
After a minute, he said slowly, “Although the hot poker up my ass did make me jump a little faster.”
“You really were frozen. Immobilized. Except for running around L.A. peeking in houses like a hamster running in a wheel.”
“Had to do it,” Ray said.
“What did you get out of it?”
“I figured out where some keys fit.”
“That’s not all of it.”
“It’s good enough for now.”
Kat felt they had just barely avoided an impasse that would have sent them careening back home. Ray seemed relieved, too-he whistled a little under his breath. She resolved, as she had a thousand times before, to keep a close watch on the openings to the body, guard the mouth-guard the-whoa, guard all the orifices, that meant-she had a silent epiphany involving her love life, an epiphany which she managed to keep from sharing with Ray.
“I think his name was Pablo,” Ray now said. “Of course, I could be making that up to throw you further off the scent.”
Replying carefully and reasonably, she said, “Okay, Banos Calientes, here we come. We still have a few hours before we should turn around and go to the police. How far are we from Topanga?”
“Two and a half, maybe up to three hours, depending on traffic. I’ll get us back.”
Behind them, the San Jacinto Mountains loomed, their rugged shapes piercing the sky like vampire teeth. An outcropping of sedimentary rock appeared, and over a rolling hill a settlement of nondescript ranch houses and trailers in an oasis of willows.
