Pismo Beach, Orcutt, Oceano.
Lompoc, Lake Nacimiento, San Luis Obispo.
Shell Beach, Sisquoc-
And then a card with a message. A photograph of the pier in Cayucos and a postmark a day after the disappearance.
Roy-
Please don’t notify the police that I’m missing, or look for me. It’s no use. I ask only that you and the girls remember me as I was, not as I have become.
Laurel
Deliberate disappearance, then.
In spite of the fact that I’d suspected it all along, I felt shaken and saddened. Angry, too. Laurel Greenwood, loving wife, mother, and friend, had abandoned everyone she’d supposedly loved.
Given the circumstances of her marriage, I’d felt a certain empathy for Laurel Greenwood, but now it was gone. It wasn’t in my nature to connect with someone who could so calculatedly abandon all the people who cared about and depended on her-particularly her young children. What Laurel had done to her family and friends raised echoes of what my brother Joey had done to ours: gone off, infrequently maintaining contact by postcard, and then committing suicide.
Laurel’s actions, in my eyes, were worse than Joey’s, because they were so clearly planned. And because of the uncertainty of her fate, they had created an even more widespread and damaging ripple effect of pain and grief.
Suicide is the absolutely worst thing a human being can do to those who love him or her. It is unforgivable. The second worst is a coolly calculated disappearance.
So here was the trigger that had caused Roy to burn Laurel’s paintings. And to call off the police investigation.
The evidence had existed in this box for twenty-two years, undiscovered by Anna Yardley because, as she’d told me, she’d never looked through Laurel’s things. Placed there by Roy, out of chronological order where no one would find it. I pictured him taking the card from the mailbox, reading her words, and-once the shock wore off- slipping the card into the collection.
But why keep it? Why not destroy it along with the paintings, rather than hide it in Laurel’s “legacy” to Jennifer and Terry?
Simple-he’d wanted them to eventually know the truth.
My own father had done a similar thing: collaborated with Ma in keeping the fact of my adoption from me, but stored the official documents in a box of papers he’d known I would be responsible for going through upon his death. The discovery had shocked me, sent me on a wild quest that, fortunately, had culminated in new, rewarding relationships. But nothing rewarding would come of Roy’s bequest to his children.
Nothing but disillusionment and devastation.
Tuesday
“So are you going to tell Mark Aldin and Terry Wyatt about the postcard?” Patrick asked.
“Not yet. They’ve got enough on their minds. I won’t mention it until we locate Jennifer, and maybe not then.”
It was ten in the morning, and we were seated on the floor of my office, files strewn around us, a big flowchart that Patrick had constructed spread between us. The chart impressed me: each line of investigation was delineated in a different color of ink, and it looked as if he hadn’t omitted a single piece of information. Questions and theories were jotted and circled in the margins. If only my mind were that orderly…
He said, “Don’t you have to make periodic progress reports to the clients?”
“Only if they request them. Even then, I don’t share everything-too much danger of discouraging them or raising false hopes. When I wrap up a case, I make a verbal report, and present them with a copy of the written.”
“Clients ever get pissed at you if the news is bad? Want to kill the messenger?”
“Sometimes. Goes with the territory. So let’s see what you’ve got there.” I motioned at the chart.
“Okay. This is the Laurel case. And this”-he moved the paper aside to reveal a second chart-“is the Jennifer case. Since we’re acting on the assumption that Jennifer’s disappearance is linked to-or maybe it would be better to say caused by-what happened to her mother, we should go over the Laurel chart first.”
“Right.”
“Basic lines of inquiry: Laurel’s last moves. You’ve interviewed Jennifer and Terry, Anna Yardley, Sally Timmerman, and all the official witnesses who could be located except for Bryan Taft, the second dogwalker in Morro Bay. Those lead to secondary lines: Herm Magruder; Jacob Ziff, because he lied to you; Kev Daniel, another liar; Josie Smith, the deceased cousin, because Jennifer seems to think she was posthumously connected with the disappearance. And then there’s the question of the biker.”
“Ira Lighthill, the other dogwalker, phoned to say he couldn’t find Taft’s last known address in Mexico, so that’s a dead end, at least for now. Magruder’s not due to return from vacation till later in the week. I’ve got Derek doing deep background on Ziff and Josie Smith, and starting to background Daniel. The biker could conceivably be someone who was in Laurel’s art class at the Men’s Colony, but we’re having difficulty getting information from DOC.”
Patrick was silent, drawing a circle in pencil around Josie Smith’s name. “I agree with you about Smith. You take a discontented woman like Laurel apparently was, and when a contemporary dies, it makes her question why she’s leading the kind of life she is.”
“The postcard she sent pretty much confirms it. Let’s look at Jennifer now.”
He moved the Laurel chart aside. “Basic lines: bank accounts and credit cards. Haven’t been used. Second home and boat at yacht club. Unoccupied, and the husband’s continuing to have them monitored. Flat on Fell Street. Rae’s looking into that.” Patrick paused. “Why’d she decide to work on this? I mean, she’s got a book to write, and her husband has millions.” When I didn’t respond immediately, he added, “I don’t mean to pry.”
“You’re not. Rae admits she’s blocked on this second book and is looking for a distraction. Plus she genuinely cares about Jennifer. But I see another factor: Rae really loved investigative work; she probably misses it.”
“Then why’d she quit?”
“She’d always wanted to write, and once she and Ricky married, he encouraged her to try. Now she just needs a vacation from it.”
Patrick’s freckled face relaxed some.
“You weren’t afraid she was going to come back permanently and take your job?” I asked.
“A little.”
“Well, you shouldn’t’ve worried. Even if she wanted to come back there’s more than enough work for both of you. And when I hired you, I made a commitment; I wouldn’t go back on that. Besides, I never in my life have seen anything like these charts.” As I spoke, a flash of inspiration hit me: maybe I should assign Patrick to coordinate cases in this way for all the operatives. I’d have to think about that.
“Thanks.” He turned his attention back to the chart. “Okay, the highway patrol’s got a BOLO out on Jennifer. I’ve been monitoring that; no sightings. She may have ditched her own vehicle and rented another. But the husband says she doesn’t carry much cash, and she’d’ve had to pay cash in lieu of using the credit cards and bank accounts.”
“She could have borrowed a friend’s car, but she’s out of touch with all of them except Rae.”
“Unless there’s a friend we’re not aware of.”
“I’ll put Craig onto that and I’ll ask Rae if she can remember anybody we haven’t contacted.”
