The final box stuffed into the trunk of his car, the bagged shirt and peanut shells now sitting on the passenger seat beside him like an accusation, he twisted the key. The car roared to life.
Pounding at the window.
What the hell?
He let the window down.
“Oh, honey. Don’t think you’re leaving without me.” Denise was smiling like the brave little creative professional she was. “Give me a second to go steal some pertinent drawings and files. I’m going where you’re going.”
“I have no plan.”
“It’s okay. I’ll help you with that.” Denise came back in five minutes, finished filling up the trunk of the Boxster, leaned in the window again, pulled out a business card, eyed it like someone paying attention, then said, “New name.”
“What?”
“ Bell Jackson.”
“Oh, Denise, no. I can’t offer anything like the benefits Martin’s got lined up, at least not yet.”
She didn’t care, she informed him. She would go where he went because, and he felt the first joy in a long time hearing this. Ray had a vision, he was the talent in the firm.
“My ideal is to be a full partner in two years. Martin would never let that happen. He’s so greedy, Ray. He wants to retire at fifty. Did you know that?”
“What’s that got to do with your promotion?”
“He has his own agenda, and I don’t fit it. Makes me sad for myself. He’s got two proteges, neither one of whom is me. I want to go where you’re going. What do you say, Jackson-Bell Associates? Now doesn’t that sound fine!”
He couldn’t help laughing.
She smiled, and two dimples popped out in her cheeks. “You might not like hearing this, but all these years with Martin have rubbed off on you. You’ve become quite the salesman these days. You sold me as well as Antoniou.”
He sent her home to draw up a business plan for Jackson-Bell Associates.
And he finally went to see Rappaport.
Kat had a house in Hacienda Heights to assess. She could make Whittier her last stop fairly easily.
After surveying the Hacienda Heights house, standard three bedroom but lacking that all-important second bath, she drove to Whittier, to Franklin Street. Whoever had bought their old house after their mother sold it had kept the paint on the house gray and white, just like it had been when she had lived in the place decades before. Strange. It had reverted to its true nature.
Across the street at the Hubbels’ Spanish-style mansion, the curtains were closed. No cars. No telling if they were around on this windless, eye-stinging hazy day. The green, anomalous yard made her think about the high desert past Idyllwild. Southern California was just a continuation of the Mexican Mojave, and the sooner they started living like the desert-dwellers they were, the later the basin would run out of water.
Kat sat in the Echo, parked on the curb of the wooden-frame house she had grown up in, across the street from the house Leigh had grown up in, sipping a Fresca, playing with her cell phone.
No one came in or out of her own old house for a while, then a boy aged maybe twelve blasted out the front door. He propped his skateboard against the thirties glass brick flanking the entryway, fiddling with a helmet. She prayed, since apparently his parents were unavailable to pray, that he did not plan to go down the steep hill. Surely, at ninety miles an hour toward the bottom, he would die when he hit the busy intersection below.
He finally got the strap attached, then headed up a side street toward the college. She let out a long relieved breath. Then she called Ray again, who did not answer.
Lights came on in her old house. Panicked parents? She wished she could reassure them. “Your son went up the hill, not down.” Instead, she called Ray one more time. This time, he answered.
“I’m in Whittier,” she said. “The house looks empty. Did you see Rappaport?”
“He’s got the shirt. I’m not sure what they think but I should get a lawyer,” he said. “I think they’re going to arrest me and it won’t be long. He thinks the shirt is important.”
“He listened to everything I had to say about Idyllwild and the reservation. He taped it and said he’d be back in touch about it. He’s got your phone number and he wants to see you, too. And-”
“But what?”
“He showed me the bank video of the ATM withdrawal. He was very interested in seeing if I could identify Leigh. I saw a person hiding under a watch cap and sunglasses. I saw someone who was nobody or who was anybody.”
“Damn it! Was it Leigh or not? Could it have been her? Can’t you recognize your own wife? The way she moves? Her nose? You really couldn’t recognize her?”
“Could have been Leigh! Could be you!” he said. “It was just a feeling.”
“What?”
“That it was her.”
“You had a feeling it was her?”
“Just a movement-something. Like-I don’t know.”
Was he lying? “So what are the cops going to do?” she asked.
“He says Leigh’s been gone ten days and it’s a matter of concern and he is assigned to it. He’s going to see Leigh’s parents and go to Leigh’s office. It’s really starting now, Kat. And he asked me again if I knew where she is. What’s your plan right now?”
“I’m just sitting here. A fool on a hill. I don’t know where the Hubbels went.”
“Let’s see, it’s almost six. He walks his dog at Penn Park after he gets off duty. He’s done it for years. It’s a beagle. I’ll bet that’s where he is,” Ray said again. “He stays out there feeding the ducks and cooling off from his job until sunset. I’m coming out. Wait for me.”
“But you said-”
“I called my mother right before I called you and she picked up and then she hung up on me. So I know she’s physically okay. Let’s do this together. I need to have it out with him anyway.”
25
O n a summer’s eve, the lingering heat of the day drifting romantically around like incense, the sun glowing, no other word for it, people in Penn Park had a right to feel superior to most other folk. They had their kids, their steaks and barbecue sauce, their dogs, and their greensward. Greensward-Ray loved that word. Up the grassy hill, couples kissed in that golden light and ducks quacked along the slow-moving creek that ran through the center of the park.
They stepped through air thick with the sweetness of blooming flowers over boulders and dips in the path.
Leigh had grown up close to Penn Park. She had told him about the summer programs and the heat, and how much she longed for those lengthy days to come again when she had no needy clients coming after her, no deadlines to work her up.
“We spun on the merry-go-round,” she said. “Oh, you have no idea how hot it used to get, how dizzy we got. We fell on the ground. It tasted sweet, the dirt.”
His memories of heat mostly involved bungalows without air-conditioning, the air so tight it choked you. He remembered Penn Park only vaguely, like Disneyland, a one-time event, magical, hazy. Why hadn’t Esme brought him more often when they lived on Bright Street? He really didn’t know. Maybe she was too busy working, trying to keep them fed.
“They had craft programs. I learned how to weave a plastic bracelet. Kat and I brought our dolls here and made a whole world for them. And if we forgot them, the lantana made a pretty hoop- skirted doll.”
Searching for James Hubbel, Ray and Kat strode into the swing area. Ray found himself amazed at how high these swings seemed to be. He sat down on one. Kat shoved him hard, and he flew.
“You see him there?” Kat muttered, because James Hubbel stood in the nearby meadow while his dog crouched only a few dozen yards away from them.
“Yeah.” Ray slowed to a stop.
“He didn’t even bag it!” Kat said, outraged.
“I imagine the minute he arrived in the park with a dog he was breaking rules.”
“Well, people shouldn’t-”
“Listen, Kat. I want you to stay right here.”
“What? It was my idea.”
“Haven’t you ever noticed how much harder it is to speak from the heart when there’re more than two people talking?”
Still holding on to the swing’s chain, she gulped. “Well, okay. True.”
“So I’m going to talk to him.”
“I have a more friendly connection. He remembers me, Ray. I knew him when I was a kid.”
While they argued in whispers, a couple of kids screamed by them, fighting over a bouncing ball. “Gimme.”
“No, you gimme!”
Before the fight ended up deadly, a graybeard picked one up by the neck of her shirt, like a tomcat lifts a kitten. “It’s her turn,” he said firmly, then carried the kicking child back to the red gingham-covered picnic table. “Your mom has a hot dog for you, if you can shut your mouth long enough to open it.”
The child shut up and stuffed her face with a hot dog loaded with mustard. The child who had won the ball returned and sat across from her. The two little girls made ugly faces at each other. They tossed fries and competed as to how much ketchup.
“He thinks I killed his daughter,” Ray said quietly. “He needs to talk with me.” He got off the swing and walked toward Hubbel.
Kat let him go. She sat down on the swing and watched.
“Here, Marley. C’mere, boy!” Hubbel had let the dog off the leash. Marley chased a little boy. The boy’s father arrived, purple-faced, to chastise Hubbel, who apologized, although not profusely.
