I waited as our server poured a Zinfandel from a local winery that Timmerman had recommended, then said, “How would you describe her, since you knew her better than anyone?”
“Human. Clever. Generous. And she had her wild side.” Someone caught Sally’s eye from across the inn’s spacious dining room, and she waved before turning her attention back to me. “The parents of one of my students,” she explained. “You can’t go anywhere in this town without running into someone you know. Now, where was I?”
“Laurel had her wild side.”
“I’ll say she did. But Josie and I did, too.”
“Josie-that was her cousin?”
“Yes, Josie Smith. The three of us were best buddies in high school and college. The Terrible Three, they used to call us, because of all the trouble we’d get into. Sneaking out at night to meet boys, parties when the folks weren’t home, smoking dope behind the gym. Then we went off to San Jose State-Laurel and Josie to study nursing and me to get my teaching certificate-and really partied hearty. We rented this dilapidated house together, and there was a little old Airstream trailer that somebody had abandoned in the backyard. We called it our ‘bordello’ because that’s where we’d take guys when we wanted privacy.”
Timmerman smiled wryly. “We thought we were really something, spearheading the sexual revolution, but it all seems so tame compared to what the kids are doing now. And, of course, we eventually settled down. Laurel fell in love with Roy. I reconnected with my high school boyfriend. Josie dropped out to marry her first husband and moved to San Francisco.”
“But the three of you remained close?”
“Laurel and I did. I kind of lost touch with Josie except for Christmas cards and what Laurel told me about her life. But they still saw each other frequently. Laurel helped Josie survive both of her divorces, and she was with her when she died. Brain cancer, at thirty-four. So young.” Sally shook her head.
“When the two of them got together, was it here or in San Francisco?”
“There, usually. Roy didn’t approve of Josie; he thought she was a bad influence on Laurel.”
“Because of their wild past?”
“Right.”
“But he approved of you.”
“Because by the time he and Laurel moved back here from L.A. I was a respectable wife, mother, and teacher. It also helped that I’d put on so much weight I wasn’t exactly turning heads anymore. But Josie was a divorcee, drop-dead gorgeous with all that bright red hair. Roy didn’t want his wife around somebody like that.”
“Did he try to stop Laurel from seeing Josie?”
“Well, they had a lot of disagreements about it, but she went anyway.” Sally grinned. “I’ve always suspected that while Laurel was visiting she and Josie lived it up some. Not,” she added quickly, “that she was ever unfaithful to Roy. But she liked a good time, and Roy wasn’t exactly a live wire.”
“Anna Yardley claims Laurel was seldom away from her children for more than one or two nights, except for when Josie died.”
Timmerman rolled her eyes. “What would Anna know about Laurel’s life? She was hardly ever around till she disappeared. But it’s true that Laurel kept her visits and her painting trips short.”
“Anna also said she was surprised that Laurel had the children, that she wasn’t the maternal type.”
“Now, there her instincts are correct. Laurel never wanted kids. In fact, she had an abortion during our junior year of college. It was Roy who wanted a family, and she finally caved in to the pressure. But once she had the girls she loved them and became a very good parent.”
The waiter arrived with our dinners-prime rib; how could either of us resist the Thursday night special?-and we turned our attention to them for a few minutes. When I got back to my line of questioning, I said, “What about the Greenwoods’ marriage? Was it a good one?”
“… As marriages between very different types of people go, I suppose it was. They made their accomodations. Roy was kind of rigid and very traditional; Laurel was easygoing and a free spirit. He could be overbearing and demanding, and her way of coping was to stand pat on the things that were important to her, while bending on the things that didn’t matter so much.”
“Obviously her visits to Josie were one of the important things. What else?”
“Her mental health days, as she called them. The religion the girls were raised in; Roy was Catholic, but she insisted they attend the Lutheran church.”
“And the things she gave in on?”
Sally considered. “Well, where they went on their vacations. She would’ve preferred to go to a resort, but Roy liked to camp, so they went camping. Where they lived; she wanted to be in the country, but he wanted to be in town near the clinic. One time, a couple of years before she disappeared, she got into this Arts in Correction program at the California Men’s Colony, the prison down at San Luis Obispo. They had local artists come in and teach the inmates all sorts of stuff, from filmmaking to painting to fiction writing. Laurel was really excited about it, taught there for maybe six months, but then Roy pressured her into quitting. Said it was taking too much of her time away from the family, but I think he really didn’t want her associating with the criminal element. She was disappointed, but she turned around and devoted more time to the greeting card business instead.”
Now, that was interesting. Nowhere in my files had there been a mention of Laurel teaching at the prison.
“Was Laurel friendly with any of the inmates she taught?”
“She was a friendly person. But if you mean, did she have any contact with any of them outside the classes, I’d guess not.”
“And she never mentioned having trouble with any of them?”
“All she ever said was that they were a well-motivated group, and that a couple showed real talent. She would’ve liked to’ve gone on teaching, but she wanted to keep peace in her marriage.”
The marriage didn’t sound very good to me. Although Hy and I had been married less than a week, we’d been together for years; neither of us had ever told the other what to do or not to do, and in our disagreements we’d always been straightforward. The Greenwoods’ relationship, on the other hand, seemed both controlling and manipulative. But was the situation sufficiently difficult to make Laurel walk away from her husband and children? That wasn’t a move a woman who took her responsibilities seriously could easily make. There would have had to be some sort of trigger…
“Sally,” I said, “this may sound like a strange question, but do you know what kind of perfume Laurel wore?”
“Why on earth do you ask that?”
“Someone said something to me about her perfume. It probably doesn’t have any bearing on her disappearance, but I’m curious.”
“Well, I do happen to know because we both wore it. Passionelle. They stopped making it around the time Laurel disappeared.”
“Speaking of that time, did anything unusual happen to Laurel in, say, the six months before she disappeared?”
Timmerman frowned, looking down and swirling the wine in her glass. “Things were pretty much on an even keel, at least as far as I know. I’d say the most unusual thing was Josie’s death, but that was a full year before.”
“You were at the house when Jennifer and Terry came home from school the day after Laurel disappeared. Did Roy ask you to come over?”
“Actually, Bruce Collingsworth, the police chief, suggested it. He was sending a couple of officers over to talk with Roy, and he thought I might have some insight into where Laurel had gone.”
“Did you tell the police your impressions of the Greenwoods’ marriage?”
“No. They didn’t ask, and I didn’t think it was my place to volunteer.”
“Anna Yardley was there that day, too. Did Roy call her?”
“I assumed so. Although it struck me as strange at the time. I mean, Anna was hardly ever there. She and Laurel didn’t get along.”
“How come?”
“Have you met Anna?”
“Yes, earlier today.”
