The voice that spoke was throaty-what in old movies they called a whiskey voice. “Of course I remember Miri,” she said after I explained why I’d called. “She was a pleasure to have in our household, more like family than the other children in trouble we usually took in. And we loved Hayley as if she were our own granddaughter. But eventually Miri married Jimmy Perez and they moved to Mono County.”
“You sound as if you didn’t approve of the marriage.”
“When Miri met Jimmy, he’d been around our neighborhood for a little more than a year, doing gardening and handyman work. We never used him because I’d heard that he was unreliable. My husband and I questioned whether he’d be able to give Miri, Hayley, and any future children they might have a good life, but he said he had a brother who owned a ranch outside of Vernon and would give him a good job.”
The brother: Ramon Perez. The ranch: Hy’s and my small spread.
“Did you hear from Miri after she moved away?”
“A few letters at first. Christmas cards. Four birth announcements. Then nothing.”
“Jimmy left her right after their fourth child was born.”
A sigh. “So we were right after all.”
“Unfortunately, yes. The house where you lived in Sacramento-I imagine you’ve sold it.”
“Oh, yes. When my husband was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, we had to stop taking in troubled children. And when he died… well, it was like living alone in a drafty old barn. I had friends here in Carmichael I wanted to be closer to, so five years ago I sold the house to a company that was going to convert it into commercial space. So far as I know, nothing’s been done with it.”
“Would you give me the address?”
“Certainly. But may I ask why?”
“Miri’s running, trying to escape her life. I have a hunch she might have gone to the one place where she was happy.”
“I see.” She gave the address and asked me to call again if I had any news.
I set off to rent an airplane to fly to Sacramento.
The former Ironwood home was on Twenty-fifth Street in midtown Sacramento, a block off J Street, in an ethnically diverse area of mixed-use buildings-small shops, restaurants, offices, and private residences. Huge old elm trees and shrubbery that had run wild screened it from the sidewalk, but I could make out a white, three-story shape with a big porch and dormer windows. A flimsy-looking chain-link fence surrounded the deep lot, and a rusted sign proclaimed it as being under renovation for commercial space by Four Star Associates and gave a number for leasing inquiries. It didn’t look as if any renovations had ever been made, and I doubted anyone had called the number in a long time. All the same, I copied it down.
Next door was a similarly old but better-kept-up house, outside which a law firm had hung its shingle. On the other side, a big light blue clapboard house with multicolored banners hanging on the porch and a bicycle on the neat lawn- a private home. Across the street a secondhand bookshop, a dental clinic, and another private home.
My prospects for getting onto the property now didn’t look good, even though the runaway shrubbery screened it to either side. The attorneys next door might go home at five, but then again they might not. The family on the other side would probably be there in the evening. The bookshop and dental clinic would close down, but the home next to them had large windows overlooking the street.
Why was I even bothering with this? If I was doubtful of gaining entry, how could Miri have done so?
Because she knew the property. She’d lived there for five years.
It was now close to four-thirty. It had taken a while to get a plane from Hy’s buddy in Carson City, longer to get a rental car at Sacramento Executive Airport. And then the rental clerk had given me the wrong directions. In a way, the delays had worked to my advantage: it wouldn’t be long until dark.
I started the car, U-turned, and drove to a coffee shop I’d spotted along the way. Primarily I wanted to use their restroom, but I also bought a large coffee and a sandwich to go. Then I drove back and parked a few spaces down from where I’d been before. And waited as dusk fell.
Across the street the bookshop and dental clinic were already closed. Lights were on in the private home, but they glowed from behind closed curtains. Lights shone in an upper window of the law firm, but once it became fully dark they went out. Shortly after, a figure descended the front steps, got into a nearby car, and drove away. The private home on the other side of the former Ironwood property remained dark. I waited half an hour longer, then took my small flashlight from my purse, got out of the car, and slipped into the shadows on the side of the property that abutted the law firm’s.
The fence continued to the back of a deep lot. A breeze had come up, rustling the leaves of the old elms. I stopped at the fence’s rear boundary, saw that it backed up onto a paved space between two buildings on the next street-parking lot, probably, and empty. I moved along, muting the flash’s light with my cupped hand. Shone it on the fence and finally saw a place shielded from the parking lot by a disposal bin, where the chain link had been pried up to the height a normal-sized person could slide under.
I looked around, then scrambled under the chain link on my back, headfirst.
The ground was covered with fallen leaves; they clung to my hair and my back. A vine on the other side of the fence took a stranglehold on my ankle and I kicked it free. Then I was inside, sitting on the damp leaves and feeling moisture soak through the seat of my jeans; it must have rained here recently.
I scooted away from the fence and under the drooping branches of a huge cypress. Ahead I could make out unidentifiable shapes and then the house itself. The moon hadn’t yet risen-or at least it couldn’t be seen from my vantage point-so in order to make my way across the yard I’d have to risk using my flashlight. Small risk, I thought as I turned it on and started out.
The trees ended after a few more feet, followed by an area of waist-high grass that once must have been a lawn. Trees shielded the property to either side. My flash picked out a jungle gym-iron piping, not the colorful plastic ones they have now. Halfway to the house I banged hard into something hidden by the tall grass: that was going to leave a nasty bruise on my thigh. I brushed the grass away and found a concrete birdbath, its bowl cracked and crumbling. What else was out here-
“Oof!”
My foot had come down on something round and as it rolled away, I fell on my ass. Jesus, what was
Terrific. I’d probably trip over a mallet next, or bugger myself on a wicket.
I straightened and moved more slowly toward the house, feeling around with my hands and feet for other hazards. Arrived unharmed and started up the wide back steps toward a set of French doors.
One of the boards broke under my weight, and I fell through, trapped up to my ankle.
I dismissed the questions, extricated my foot from the hole in the boards, and tested each step before I put my weight on it. The French doors proved to be no problem: vandals had broken most of their glass panes, and one side stood slightly ajar. I moved slowly into a large room with a fireplace. The walls were marred by graffiti; beer cans and liquor bottles littered the warped hardwood floors. Used condoms and a pair of woman’s lacy panties, too.
Only five years, and all this destruction-courtesy of a company that had bought a handsome, valuable property and allowed it to go to seed. I imagined Miri’s distress at finding her former home in this condition. Had she run again-and this time to where? Back to the house in Vernon, where she’d led an unhappy life since Jimmy Perez deserted her-and probably before? I didn’t think so.
I moved across the destroyed room and through an archway. This space had not been damaged as much, probably because it faced the street from which lights could be seen by neighbors and passing cars. It was a big, old-fashioned foyer. A staircase ran up either side wall toward the rear, then met in the center and continued.
I went up, too, along the right-hand branch of the stairs. Turned down the hallway, where open doors revealed rooms empty of anything but more graffiti and trash. Something scuttled across the floor in front of me-a mouse or a rat. Cobwebs brushed my face and clung to my hair. It was cold, and the scents of mold and dry rot clogged my nostrils. Miri couldn’t possibly have stayed here…
