“Yeah.” Magruder, a stocky, balding man with a hooked nose and horn-rimmed glasses, looked around as if he were surprised to find such objects in his condo. “We took the motor home down to Baja for some camping and fishing, then stopped in Tijuana to shop. Tequila for the son, the donkey for the daughter-in-law, pinatas for the grandkids. They live in the Midwest, think crap like this is exotic. Our Christmas shopping is done.” Then he flashed me a quick grin. “Of course, there’s the other crap we bought for ourselves.”
After I’d declined his offer of a soda, Magruder took me to a small balcony overlooking a courtyard with a swimming pool and colorful plantings. The weather here on the coast was as clear as it had been inland, the air balmy. We sat at a small wrought-iron table with an umbrella tilted against the sun.
He said, “You told me on the phone that I’ve been recommended as an authority on Morro Bay. May I ask by whom?”
“Ira Lighthill.”
He smiled. “Mr. Puli. I’ve called him that for years, since before I knew his true name. Breeds those ropy-haired dogs. Hear he makes good money at it.”
“I suppose he does.”
“And how did my name come up?”
I explained about my investigation and my conversation with Lighthill. “He said he was surprised that you hadn’t noticed Laurel Greenwood when she left the park, since he’d seen you on the porch of your house earlier that afternoon.”
“Drinking on the porch, he probably said. And it’s a fact; that’s what I did in those days. Lighthill tell you I wrote a column for the little local rag?”
“Yes.”
“I studied journalism in college. Always wanted to be a reporter. But I ended up back here where I was born, running a business- Hell, you don’t want to hear this.”
“I do. Please, go on.” I meant it; I’ve always been interested in how people end up doing what they do, probably because when I was in college, I never would have envisioned myself as a private investigator.
“Well, I graduated from Berkeley and I had a wife and a child on the way. There was the possibility of a job with the UPI, but before I heard on that I got a call from a friend who was starting up a self-storage business here- the standard units for people’s extra crap, plus little garages for boats, RVs, or cars. He offered me a partnership, so what could I say? I came back, and when he wanted out a few years later, I had enough money saved to buy both the land and the business.
“But I wasn’t happy. So I left the business in the wife’s hands-Amy was the brains of the operation, anyway- and got this little job writing the column. Got full of myself, too, thinking being Mr. Morro Bay was some big deal. But underneath I knew it wasn’t, so I started gathering most of my material in the bars or from my front porch with a fifth of Scotch for company. Wasn’t until Amy threatened to leave me that I stopped drinking.” He smiled wryly. “Of course, after that the column went to hell because I couldn’t tap into my usual sources, and then the paper went belly-up.”
“But you were still doing the column when Laurel Greenwood vanished?”
“Yeah. I was on the front porch that afternoon, and I wouldn’t’ve missed her if she’d passed the house. I was the kind of drunk who reaches a certain level of mellowness and can go on for hours-thinking as clearly as if I were stone cold sober. At least until I passed out when I went to bed.”
“So you remember that afternoon?”
“Absolutely.”
“Will you describe it for me?”
“Sure. It was sunny, like today-”
“Herm? Is this Ms. McCone?”
A tiny, sun-browned woman with white-blonde hair stood in the door to the balcony. Blue tank top, khaki shorts, great legs even though she must be well over sixty.
Magruder didn’t immediately reply, although his lips twitched with annoyance, so the woman held out her hand to me and said, “I’m Amy Magruder.”
We shook, and she took a seat at the table. “Herm, were you able to help her?”
“I’m trying.” Stiffly spoken; she’d intruded. Magruder no longer experienced many situations where he was the center of attention, and he probably resented sharing.
I smiled at his wife, then turned back to him. “As you were saying…”
“What were you saying?” Amy asked.
“I told you that Ms. McCone is investigating the Laurel Greenwood disappearance-”
“Oh, yes, poor woman.” She turned to me. “You know she was last seen at the waterfront park near our old house?”
“Yes, Amy, she knows that. As I was about to say, Ms. McCone, I saw a number of people: My barber. Several of the local fishermen leaving a little bar they used to frequent before it was torn down for a souvenir shop. Tourists, of course. Hordes of tourists, even back then.”
“And there was Cindy. Don’t forget Cindy.”
Magruder gave his wife a long, measured look. “My wife’s archenemy, leaving the bar with a man who wasn’t her husband.”
“And you wouldn’t even mention it in your column.”
“Had no place there.”
“Look what she did to Dave afterwards, running off with-”
“Water under the bridge, Amy.”
This was obviously an old, ongoing argument between the two of them, and I wanted no part of it.
“Anyone else, Mr. Magruder?” I asked.
“A couple of waitresses from the seafood joint. A woman who sold shell jewelry to a little shop that went out of business the next year. The paperboy and-”
“There was that customer of ours,” his wife interrupted. “You mentioned her two days later when I told you she took off with a week paid up on her rent and didn’t even leave a forwarding address for the refund.”
“Who?”
“You know, what’s-her-name. The pretty one who kept her van in number one-oh-two.”
“Oh yeah, her.” Magruder narrowed his eyes in thought. “Came out of the park, like they said the Greenwood woman did, walked past me, and went up the hill toward the self-storage yard. What was her name?”
Amy Magruder shook her head. “I don’t remember. Don’t even recall much about her, except she was pretty. A youngish woman, with red hair.”
Magruder said, “I never saw her up close like Amy did.” He turned to his wife. “You sure you don’t remember what she looked like?”
“Well, she was tallish and slender. But her hair-it was so beautiful that it was all you really noticed. Long, silky, and bright red.”
I felt a prickling at the base of my spine.
Josie Smith:
But Josie had been dead a year-
“Mr. Magruder,” I said, “is there any way you could find out the woman’s name? Access old business records, for instance?”
“Is this important?”
“It could be. Very.”
He looked at his wife, and she nodded.
“Well, I suppose I could. But it’ll take a couple of hours. We keep the records at a self-storage unit in Cambria.” He smiled. “I guess you’d call it ironic-the owner of the place is the guy who bought us out on the cheap and then sold the land for big money to a goddamn developer. Now there’re tourists gobbling cheese and sucking up wine where we once had our little business.”
As I was walking back to my rental car after leaving the Magruders’ condo, my cell phone rang. Hy. I hadn’t spoken with him since late Monday night.
“Where are you?” he asked.
