“People drew conclusions,” I said.
“Coroner’s hearing declared it accidental,” she said. “Charlie let his deputy do the investigation since Charlie was a witness for most and a suspect for others. Charlie’s deputy was Earl Morgantine, two notches higher on the evolution pool than poor Marvin. Marvin accused Charlie of killing Sarah. Vera Lynn tried to talk to the boy but Marvin ran away, hid in the pastures for days. People could hear him crying and wailing. There was no evidence. It was ruled an accident. Charlie and Vera Lynn packed up. Charlie quit his job. They drove off before Marvin could come out of the woods. That’s about it.”
“What do you think happened?” I asked.
“Something different each time I think about it,” she said, “but getting right down to it, I don’t think Charlie or Vera Lynn killed Sarah. And I’ll say it right out. I don’t care anymore. I just care about what it did to Clark. I’m sorry but that’s how I feel.”
“Nothing to apologize for,” Ames said.
“I suppose,” she sighed, shifting in her chair and looking back at the door again. “Clark and I hung on for more than ten years and you would have sworn it had been forgotten, but things like that never are in a small town. So, as soon as he could, Clark retired and here we are.”
“Why didn’t you move farther away?” I asked.
“Charlie and Clark’s mother is still in Arcadia. She wouldn’t move, wouldn’t come with us. We visit her every two weeks, take her out to dinner or eat at her place. People are polite and don’t ask questions.”
“You don’t have the answers,” I said.
“Don’t like the questions they don’t ask but want to,” she said as Clark came out of the door, a tall, clear glass of water with ice in one hand.
He walked over to Ames who took it and shook his head in thanks.
We all watched Ames’s Adam’s apple bob as he drank the water and the ice tinkled and then he handed the glass back to Dorsey with a thanks.
“There are some questions a man can’t live without an answer to,” said Ames. “They find the real one or they make one up that works.”
Dorsey nodded.
“Marvin just wants to talk to his sister,” I said. “Know she’s alive. He has something to tell her. I don’t know what. It may be that he thinks the Martians are attacking or that he loves her or that… I don’t know. He wants closure.”
I knew what it was like to want closure. I knew what had made me take on the search for Vera Lynn Uliaks Dorsey. If I couldn’t have my own closure, I could work at a job that had simple closure. Hand them the papers and walk away. Find the missing person and step back. Let the story play out. In a world of chaos where brilliant, beautiful women said good-bye one morning with a smile and then were mangled by the unknown, there had to be moments of closure or there would be a world of madness. That was why I saw Ann Horowitz. That was why I would find Vera Lynn. Closure for Marvin and maybe for the Dorseys.
“I just want to find her, talk to her,” I said.
“My husband and I, we’ll talk about it,” Peg Dorsey said, looking up at her husband.
Clark Dorsey turned to her and saw a small smile of reassurance. Then he turned to us and said, “We’ll talk about it. You have a card?”
I didn’t have a business card. I didn’t want one. I wasn’t searching for more than the business I already had. But I did have a small black notebook in my back pocket with lined pages. I wrote my name and number on a sheet and handed it to Dorsey who pocketed it.
“I’ll find her,” I said softly. “If you can help me, it’ll be faster, easier, cheaper. I’m not out to hurt anyone. And I’m sorry if I’ve brought some ghosts with us this morning.”
Dorsey nodded.
Ames and I got back in the car. Dorsey plunged both hands into his overall pockets. He was a big man, a few years too young for the retirement and isolation he had brought and bought, but who was I to judge. I was trying to do the same thing with my life.
“Well?” I asked as I drove slowly down the stone driveway of whipping branches.
“They’ll call you,” said Ames.
“Think so?”
“Could feel it in the glass when he handed it to me,” said Ames. “Held it steady, but there was a tightness there. He needs something closed too. House he’s working on remind you of somethin’?”
“A kid working with unmatched building sets,” I said.
“Three little pigs,” said Ames. “Stone, wood. One he’s working on is brick. He’s getting ready for the wolf to come.”
“McKinney instinct?” I asked.
“Book I read once by a man in Chicago named Bettle-heim,” said Ames. “Good book. But he had his own wolf at the door blowing hard. Lived a lot of lies. Bettleheim. Couldn’t take it anymore. Killed himself.”
“You think Clark Dorsey is losing out to a wolf in his dreams?”
“Could be,” Ames said.
“People handle their wolves different ways,” I said. “You take your gun, hunt them down, and shoot them. Some people can’t find their wolves.”
“And some people build houses or sit in rooms waiting for the wolf to find them,” Ames said.
I had the uneasy feeling Ames was talking about me. I already had a shrink. What I needed was a friend who could ride shotgun.
We didn’t say another word till we found Laura Lonsberg Guffey’s house in Venice.
Trying to think of nothing is hard to do. Try it for ten seconds. Try to keep memory from coming unbidden. I can distract myself with old movies and work and sometimes with a painful empathy for other people and their problems, but I’m too much a part of the world to find Nirvana. Memory creeps up, as it did now, and leaps at me like a dream wolf.
We drove and the wolf hovered over my shoulder, breathing hot, panting, smelling of both animal and the half-remembered scent of my wife at night.
The wolf was just one shape that haunted me, reminding me that somewhere far behind lived the person who had killed her and driven away. The wolf reminded me.
Today a wolf, later or tomorrow a bear, cat, tiger, dog, something under the bed or in a closet, just outside a door or lurking under the dark surface of a cup of coffee.
She liked her coffee black, her tea unsweetened, herbal, but not mint. Her favorite food was grilled seafood. She wore solids, purples, greens, and grays. Old jewelry. She had a necklace that looked like the one Scarlett O’Hara wore at the ball before the war. But she also liked colorful costume jewelry that contrasted with the solid colors. I always gave her clothes or jewelry for birthdays, anniversaries, and sometimes for no reason but that I saw something that seemed right for her. She always put it on immediately, throwing back her hair, asking me to fasten, hook as I inhaled.
When she was lost in thought, she tapped gently at a tooth with the thumbnail of her left hand. Her nails were deep red because she knew it was my favorite color.
“We’re here,” Ames said.
We pulled up in front of a house. The wolf jumped out and disappeared.
7
Laura Lonsberg lived in a condo just off of Venice Beach. She was on the fifth floor of the ten-story building. It was a three-bedroom with a balcony overlooking the Gulf. Her two daughters, she told us when she answered the door, were at school.
We were expected or at least I was. Her father had called from a gas station the day before and said I would be coming.
“You should have called,” she said, ushering us in. “I’m usually at work on Fridays.”
