unconventional. If older people did it, we couldn't possibly do it. My father was in the Rotary Club, for God's sake. My mother played fucking bridge!'
'So what about Barry and Emily?'
'Emily would go off and have an interlude with some guy who looked like Rasputin, and when he dumped her she'd come back to Barry.'
'And Barry took her back.'
'He didn't want to look conventional, I think. You know? Never darken my door again? I was in a pretty long- term fog during the time.'
'And they lived in La Jolla?'
'La Jolla?' Sybil laughed. It was an unpleasant guttural. 'My father and mother lived in La Jolla. Emily and Barry lived under a Coronado Bridge ramp.' She laughed the guttural laugh again. 'La Jolla!'
'After Emily's death, Daryl went back to her father?'
'Yes.'
'And when's the last time you saw her?'
'That was it,' Sybil said. 'I guess Barry didn't feel very good about the Gold girls.'
'That was your maiden name?'
'Yep. Gold.'
Sybil started on her third cigarette.
'Is there a Mr. Pritchard?'
'And before that a Mr. Halleck and a Mr. Layne and a Mr. Selfridge. After Pritchard, I stopped marrying them.'
'You have any idea who might have killed your sister?'
'One of the hippies in the bank,' she said. 'Nobody knows which one.'
'Just for the hell of it,' I said.
'That's what the cops told me,' she said.
'Any reason to doubt it?'
'Nope.'
'Any idea who the hippies are?'
'Nope.'
'Or where?'
'Nope.'
'How about the guy she was in Boston chasing? Any thoughts on him?'
'He was probably a jerk,' Sybil said. 'It's what she went after.'
'Any special kind of jerkiness?'
'She liked the blowhard revolutionaries, mostly. You know, a lot of hair? Power to the people? Got any dope?'
'And you're out of that life now?'
She smiled. 'Got awful hard being a hippie by 1980 or so.'
'Was probably never easy,' I said.
'You got that right-constant worry that you might turn into your mother. Had to stay alert all the time.'
'And you've not had any contact with Daryl all that time?'
'I send her a card every Mother's Day. I'm not sure why. I do them myself. I'm a painter.' She nodded at the execrable seascapes. 'I did all of those.'
'Splendid,' I said.
'I do enjoy my poetry. But it's not as good-yet. My real talent is painting.'
I took a card out and gave it to her.
'If anything occurs to you, please let me know,' I said.
'Sure,' she said and went to her Shaker table and tucked the card under the blotter. Then she went to a short, narrow bookcase and took out a slim volume of computer printouts. There were several others left on the shelf.
'Take a copy of my poetry with you,' she said. 'I think you might enjoy it.'
'Thank you,' I said.
On the way back to Boston, I stopped in Kittery for a sandwich and a cup of coffee. While I ate, I read some of Sybil's poems, and when I departed, I left them in the trash can along with the empty coffee cup and the wrapper from the sandwich.
