Vanishing Point

“We do our fair share of those, too.”

“Okay. Particulars?”

I recited them.

“I’ll get back to you. When I can.”

I set the phone down, saw Rae smiling. “Adah,” she said, “she’s really something. D’you think she and Craig’ll ever get married?”

What was it about married people? As Wolf, my investigator friend, was fond of saying, they all wanted to see everyone else locked up in the same institution. Of course, he was married now and, good God, so was I!

“I don’t know,” I told Rae. “It could be that Adah and Craig don’t want the attendant hassles. Craig is from a WASPy, conservative Virginia family. And you know Adah…”

Adah was half black, half Jewish, and her aging leftist parents still participated in-or helped to organize- whatever radical protest movement was currently gaining momentum. The picture of the Joslyns and the Morlands coming together at a wedding reception made Ma’s gathering for Hy and me seem like a stroll through the park on a sunny spring day.

Rae seemed to be picturing the same scene. Her lips twitched in amusement, but then she looked up at the archway that led to the foyer. I followed her gaze, saw Ricky standing there. He dropped his travel bag on the floor, slung his leather jacket over the back of a chair, and came toward us. His expression was brooding, and he moved as if he was tired.

Rae went to greet him, going up on tiptoe to plant a kiss on his cheek. “Hey,” she said, “what’s wrong?”

He hugged her, forced a smile over her shoulder at me. “I’ve just come from the Aldins’ house, and I need a drink. Be right with you.”

Rae watched him walk toward the kitchen, turned to me, and shrugged. Ricky returned shortly, a thick crystal tumbler containing a dark amber liquid in hand. His chestnut hair was tousled, and worry lines stood out on his handsome face. He sat next to Rae, took a swallow, and said, “Something’s wrong down there, other than the obvious, and I really don’t like what I’m thinking.”

When he didn’t go on I said, “And that is…?”

“Mark’s acting very upset and concerned for Jen, but that’s exactly what it is-acting. I’m enough of an actor myself that I can tell it from the real thing. And after we’d been talking a while and he’d let his guard down some, he said that in a way it would be a relief if she disappeared for good like her mother did, because he wasn’t sure he could take any more of her obsessing.”

Rae said, “That’s normal. There’re times in any marriage when one partner thinks it would be a relief if the other disappeared into thin air. And Mark’s had to put up with more than most spouses.”

“Red, this wasn’t like that. It was the first time during our conversation that I heard genuine feeling in his voice. And twice after that he referred to Jen in the past tense. Besides…” He shook his head, sipped his drink.

“Besides?” I prompted.

“I think he’s been having an affair.”

“Oh? What makes you think that?”

“Shar, as you very well know, I’m no stranger to cheating and the kind of behavior it generates. I thought it through on the way home, and there’ve been little signs for a few months now.”

“Such as?”

“He’s late a lot of the times when we get together, and never has a good explanation for it. An attractive woman walks by, I comment on her, the way guys do, and he doesn’t respond, as if he’s trying to avoid the subject of women entirely. He’s overly complimentary in what he says about Jen and his marriage. Overly sympathetic with her obsession with her mother. Overly willing to throw money at the problem, rather than deal with it in a personal sense. Besides, the times he’s been late, he’s had the look.”

“The well-fucked look.”

“Thank you, Sister Sharon, for being so delicate.”

I smiled. “Sister Sharon” had been Charlene’s nickname for me-as in “Sister Sharon who is holier than thou, unless nobody’s looking”-and Ricky still used it occasionally.

I said, “You’re welcome, Brother Ricky, and if anybody could recognize the look, it’s you.”

Rae asked, “Am I gonna have to referee?”

“No,” we said in unison.

I added, “I think you may be on to something, Ricky. And you”-I turned to Rae-“are going to have to pursue this line of investigation while I’m down in Paso Robles.”

She frowned. “Wait a minute, Mark’s the agency’s client. We can’t investigate our own client.”

“No, Jennifer’s the client. Her name’s the only one on the contract.”

Ricky stood. “I don’t want to hear any of this. It’s none of my business and, besides, I need another drink.”

When he’d left the room I said, “You’ll do it? Check out Mark?”

“I’ll do it. If he’s done anything to Jen-”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself. It could be Ricky’s reading more into the situation than there actually is.”

“Or it could be he’s right-and we’ve got a real disaster on our hands.”

Wednesday

AUGUST 24

By the time Rae and I had finished on Tuesday night-mapping out our next courses of action and bringing Patrick up to speed on the new developments-it was late and I’d decided against driving to Paso Robles until morning. My alarm woke me at six, and I found the fog had receded; aviation weather confirmed good conditions all the way. So once again Two-Seven-Tango and I headed south.

When you’re piloting an aircraft, your senses are heightened, even on the longest and most tedious of flights. You’re checking the gauges, monitoring the radio, watching for other aircraft, maintaining your altitude, making adjustments for the wind, as well as enjoying the view of the terrain below. You experience a great feeling of freedom, having broken loose of the earth and the concerns that envelop you there. And after a while your thoughts also soar free, often in ways that they don’t on the ground.

This morning as my thoughts turned to the investigations, I found I wasn’t thinking of them as separate or even loosely connected entities. The parallels were simply too strong. After a while the facts melded into a decades-long continuum, and I began to sense what had happened to Laurel and Jennifer. I felt with a growing certainty that I would find both of them and, by the time I did, I would already understand the reasons for their disappearances. It was simply a matter of putting everything into its proper place.

After I had left the Cessna in the tiedowns and claimed my rental car, I called Jacob Ziff’s number but reached only a machine. Although I loathe the practice of hanging up when no one answers, I broke the connection before the beep; a certain amount of surprise would work to my advantage with Ziff. Next I dialed Herm Magruder’s condominium in Morro Bay; the gravelly voiced man who answered identified himself as Magruder and told me yes, he’d found my card in his mailbox. When I said he’d been recommended to me as an authority on his town, he invited me to come over as soon as I wished.

“I’ve got to warn you, though,” he added, “the wife and I just got back from vacation last night, and the place is a mess.”

The spacious condominium was something of a shambles. A heap of dirty laundry sat on the living room sofa, and unpacked cartons were stacked on the floor. Beside one stack sat a terra-cotta donkey wearing a sombrero that also served as a planter-a variation on the garden gnome, perhaps?-and atop the other were two brightly colored pinnatas.

“You’ve been to Mexico,” I said. Detective work at its finest.