Nancy caught my gaze at the painting.
“It’s a copy, a reproduction, the original is in the Bancroft Library. All of our Hill’s are reproductions. The real ones are all donated to museums now. Elliott loves those paintings, because he says they remind him of Lexi’s work. Honestly, I never saw it that way.”
Nancy directed my attention to a colorful abstract painting on the opposite wall.
I gave the painting a quick glance but it evoked too strong of emotions. My heart fell before I looked away. I couldn’t get sidetracked.
Nancy chattered on, “Lexi’s work was quite an advancement over Hill’s. Captured the feeling of the valley without his realism. And that is a lot harder to accomplish.” Nancy sighed. “She was damn good for a kid. Just imagine what a fantastic artist she could have become.” Nancy looked at my face. “I’m sorry Alexandra. Hardly the time for an art lesson.”
I gave Nancy a hug; gently, because she’s so thin I always worry I’ll break her. Mom told me that Nancy was actually on the chubby side in college, and instead of blonde, she was a brunette.
Now I remembered exactly what she used to look like. Now she has a new nose, and a new chin. She’s had more work done than anyone else in Mom and Dad’s circle, but she is sweet––if insecure.
“I’m sorry Elliott’s got troubles,” I said. “Thank you for inviting us.”
“I had no idea Lauren was missing,” Nancy said and hugged me back. “I’ll do whatever I can to help you.”
“You were at the Gregg farm back then, right? Did strangers ever come there?”
“There were girls. I guess you would call them strangers.”
“Who brought them?”
“I imagine every one of the guys did on occasion. Well, maybe not Elliott. He was looking for a wife and enough of a snob to want to be introduced to the right girl.” Nancy gave me a soft, sad smile. “That turned out to be me.”
“Were there ever open parties?” I asked.
“Not that I know of. Not when I was there.”
“Anything suspicious ever happen?”
Nancy looked at me for several seconds before she answered. “There was one strange thing that happened that I’ve never gotten Elliott to explain to my satisfaction. He always says it has nothing to do with us, but it’s a secret he swore to keep.”
“What?” This sounded promising.
“One Wednesday, Carol and I drove up after class. We didn’t have classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and Carol needed to get away. It was soon after Lexi . . .” Her voice trailed off, she took a deep breath and then continued. “When we got to the farm, Elliott and, I think it was Jamie, were standing near the front gate, on the cattle crossing. They looked quite serious. Elliott told us that Mrs. Mac and Tom were sick with some terrible flu, and they didn’t think we should expose ourselves to it.”
“Thoughtful of them,” I said.
“Yes, but it was weird too. Elliott leaned in the car, planted a big kiss on me. Surprised me because Elliott wasn’t normally that affectionate.” Nancy smiled. “He always wants to avoid a public display you know. And it was before we were really a couple. He was nervous, and looking kind of pale, but he insisted he felt okay. I think Carol was particularly crushed because she had been invited there to escape from reminders of Lexi. This rejection reinforced her feelings that all those guys didn’t care for her.”
“Yeah?”
“When we drove away, Carol said it was strange that Mrs. Mac’s car wasn’t there, nor was Mr. Mac’s. We both thought something funny was going on that day. And Elliott as much as admitted it years later, but he wouldn’t tell me what.”
That was the best info we got from that visit. Elliott was damn grouchy, even with us there. In fact, it seemed as though seeing us there upset him more. Nancy tried to coax him into helping us, but he insisted he didn’t know anything, excused himself without eating, and said he was going to his study.
He must not have been skipping a lot of meals; he was bigger than he looked in Carol’s photo. He had been stocky, but now he was also bloated. And his nose and cheeks were stained with a heavy drinker’s broken blood vessels instead of acne.
He pulled Nancy aside and whispered to her for a minute. She nodded and he stripped off the jacket and vest of his three-piece suit as he walked up the stairs.
“You’ll have to go to Tahoe to see the other two. Jamie is just outside Sonora. Ron lives in Tahoe City. I could drive you up,” Nancy said. “We could stay in our place tonight because I think your folk’s place is still shut down for the winter.”
Elliott and Nancy’s place was newer, bigger and fancier than ours. Our place had been in Mom’s family for generations. It was a great location on a beautiful piece of lakefront property, but it was old and hadn’t had much updating. Opening it up was a big deal. Not something you wanted to do late at night, while you were tired and freezing. Nights are always cold in the Sierras, but especially so in March.
“What do you think, Steven?” I asked.
“I’d prefer to take you home to your own bed. You need rest.” He frowned at me. “If you insist on going tonight, it’s not a bad plan.”
“Let’s make a bed for her in the back of my Lexus. It’ll be comfortable. She can sleep. I can turn the heat on up at the lake by phone so it’ll be toasty when we arrive.”
“Sounds good to me,” I said.
Nancy found warm jackets for each of us and we loaded into the car. I had a feeling she wanted to escape that house and Elliott’s bad mood.
Steven called Dad from the car, “We’re headed to the lake. Nancy’s driving us, we’ll stay with her.”
Steven hung up. “Dad said be careful.”
CHAPTER
47
The sun sparkled and flashed off ripples of water. Snow covered mountain peaks surrounded the deep sapphire Lake Tahoe with its tranquility in the cold of March undisturbed by boat traffic. I opened the French door, and stepped onto the balcony facing the quiet lake. The cold air, fresh with the fragrance of evergreens, cleared the cobwebs from my brain. It wasn’t right that this beauty would exist with Mom missing. The lake should be shrouded in fog.
I’d been half asleep when Nancy ushered me into this bedroom late last night. I vaguely remembered the kitchen was towards the front of the house. The sound of a car on the otherwise quiet road beyond the entry gates gave me a hint where that was. The smell of coffee clued me in that I wasn’t the first one up. I followed my nose.
“Good morning,” Nancy greeted me, handing over a mug of coffee and nodding at the sugar and cream on the marble island.
“Thank you for doing this for us Nancy,” I said. “It’s very kind of you.”
“Your mom is one of my oldest, dearest friends,” Nancy responded. “She has always been very good to me.”
I looked at her, hesitated before speaking and in the end, just nodded.
“I know,” Nancy smiled at me. “We aren’t all that close. Because we met through our husbands when we first started dating. The men always came first, and we didn’t share secrets knowing whatever we said might well get back to our husbands. But I love your mother. And I know she would be there for me in similar circumstances.”
I hugged her. She was so tiny, she felt like a bird in my arms. That social skeleton thing had shrunk her over the years.
“Is Steven still asleep?”
“No, he’s in the exercise room.”
I’d never been in that wing of Nancy’s cabin. Could you call fifty-five hundred square feet a cabin?
She pointed to a door off the breakfast room. I stepped into a wide hall lined with books, DVDs, and CDs. A cupboard door was open to a sound system that must have held thousands more CDs. I kept walking past a sauna, a steam room, a huge shower room, and into a high- ceilinged exercise room with three elliptical machines, two treadmills, two StairMasters, a Gravitron, a stationery bike, a weight rack, two flat screens, four speakers, a shelving unit filled with yoga mats, wri
st bands, bottles of water, and headphones. Steven was on one of the ellipticals.
“Wow!” I said.
“Yeah,” he answered and stepped off the machine. “How are you doing?”
“I’m okay. I guess I slept a long time, huh?” I was okay too, just a slight headache. The itch of my dirty hair was bothering me more than the wound. “You really have to stop letting me sleep so long. I’ll get washed up and we’ll borrow a car from Nancy.”
“Yeah, I mapquested both addresses. Meet you in the main entry hall?” Steven said.
“Yeah, I think I can find it.”
We shared an insincere chuckle as neither of us actually felt like laughing.
I passed back through the breakfast room. Nancy looked up from her laptop. “Alexandra, there’s lots of winter clothes in the closet of your room. And extra jackets in the mudroom.”
I thanked her and got ready to take off with Steven. Nancy handed Steven keys to a Range Rover and waved us in the direction of the hall that connected to the garage. She gave me a plate of bagels with cream cheese and insulated travel mugs filled with hot coffee.
We headed over Fanny Bridge into Tahoe City. Fanny Bridge got it’s nickname because lines of tourists bend over the railing to watch fish ride the Truckee river out of the lake. The result looks as though the railing is composed of butts in the air. I have no idea what its actual name is.
We found Ron’s condo in a planned community in Tahoe City.
“Do you think he’s still home? Maybe we should’ve gone to his office?” I asked.
“According to Nancy, his second divorce, together with the falling housing market has pretty much wiped him out. He’s not at his office much these days. She’s not even sure he still has one.”
When I was little, Dad took me to a place with what I thought were dollhouses. The models of planned communities scattered through a two-story lobby were just at eye level for me. My imagination wandered through them. But it wasn’t a plaything; it was Ron’s development company.
That development company was a partnership with his first father-in-law that ended with Ron’s first divorce. His second wife came with her father’s mega construction company and more development projects.
“There he is.” Steven pointed to a tall, wiry man clad in bike riding gear, a helmet, spandex leggings, and a windbreaker. Ron was walking a bike down a meandering path to the street.
“Hey, Ron,” Steven yelled. We trotted toward him.
Ron stood still, looked at us seemingly without recognition, but he grinned a lopsided smile, as we got close.
“Yo, kids. What do we have here? What are you two up to?”
“Hi,” Steven and I said in unison. Seeing him again, remembering his fun loving, amiable personality, it was hard to imagine that he would be involved in anything evil. What were we thinking?
But then wasn’t the capacity for evil in all of us?
I hugged him.
“We’re trying to find Mom,” I blurted out.
“What do you mean? Did you lose her?” he joked. Then he noticed my serious expression. “What’s up, guys?”
“Mom went missing,” Steven said.
“Then someone shot at me,” I said.
Ron pulled back his head and studied us for a moment before he spoke, “Did you think I might know something or someone who could help find her?”
“We hoped you could help us,” I said. “I don’t know what we thought. I‘ve had this idea that this whole thing had something to do with the farm you guys lived on in 1969.”
Ron stared at me.
“I can’t explain why. It’s just a feeling.” And a memory of an overheard conversation, but I wasn’t about to get into that.
“I’ve no idea how to help, but I’ll do whatever I can. Just excuse me for a minute. I need to call my riding partner. The one I was just leaving to meet.”
He punched a number in a cell, turned his back to us, and walked away six feet before he spoke to someone.
He turned back to us. “Okay, I’m all yours. Come inside. I think I have some coffee or tea or juice or something.”
We followed him back down the winding path, through a patio gate where he parked his bike, and in through a garage door where he removed his helmet exposing thinning blonde hair touched with gray. He led the way upstairs to an open and cozy living, dining, and kitchen room.
He opened a refrigerator. “Juice? I’ve got orange or apple.”
“I’m fine thanks,” I said.
Steven accepted the orange juice.
We sat on the love seat and two armchairs that furnished the living area.
“So? How can I help?” Ron asked.
“Tell us about life on the farm.”
“That could take awhile. We lived there over a year, from May of ‘68 to August of ‘69.”
“How often did Tom bring new girls around?”
He laughed, reddening. “About as often as I did. I’m embarrassed to admit it was a contest.”
“So there were a lot of strange girls around?”
‘Not a lot, but some.”
“What about around the time that Lexi was killed?”
He blanched, but that could have been at the bad memory. They, make that we, had been good friends at one point, until Lexi, that is I, had spurned his attentions.
“Ya know, we didn’t have anybody around then. We weren’t in a partying mood.”
“And what was Mrs. Mac sick with?”
“Huh?” He looked at me with a blank stare.
“Nancy said that she and Carol came to the farm a day or so after the murder, but were told to leave because Mrs. Mac and Tom had a bad flu.”
“I guess I’d forgotten that. Ya know, I don’t remember all the details.”
“Were you at the Berkeley house the night Lexi was killed?”
“Yeah. I had been around earlier that day, and I stuck around after to see if I could be of any help.”
“When did you return to the farm?” I asked.
“Let’s see. I went home––that is back to the farm––right after rush hour at the end of the week. Ya know, we used to have what we called rush hour, then it became rush hours. Now it’s all the time down there, isn’t it?” Ron was still selling the benefits of mountain living, in denial, forgetting the summer traffic jams around the lake.
“What girls had been around right before that? Over that weekend?”
“You really think I can remember that? No way, Jose.”
“Did you have a girl there then?”
“I’d been in town for a couple days. Suzy was my Berkeley girl.”
I wondered if she knew that was her classification, but then, it wasn’t cool to fuss over things like that in those days.
“What about over the weekend?” I asked.
“It’s possible, I don’t remember. That was a long time ago, ya know."
“I’ll call Mrs. Mac.” She had the best memory of them all. She hadn’t lost brain cells with drugs. Those hallucinogens were killer.
Ron looked startled, perhaps uncomfortable that I was going to talk to Mrs. Mac.
“Did Tom have someone there?”
“Tom was in Berkeley.” Ron studied my face as though trying to understand where I was going with these questions.
“Do you recall if he went back to the farm with you that Friday evening?”
“No, I distinctly remember driving back by myself.”
“Who was there when you arrived?” I asked.
“No one. Well, the Macs were probably in their place, but of course I didn’t go in there, I just went to bed. I think I had a hangover. Maybe I had the flu.” He grinned, it was that lopsided, flirty grin, the one where he kinda dropped one side of his head and his blue green eyes twinkled at you.
I couldn’t help but return the smile, but I continued, “When did the others show up?”
“I really don’t remember. Boy, you should be an interrogator. Hey. That could be a career.” A
nother grin. “Maybe the guys were in their bedrooms. Nobody was in much of a mood to socialize, ya know?”
“Do you remember when you heard about Lexi?”
“Of course.” His smile disappeared. “Police pulled us all out of bed the night it happened.” He rubbed his eyes, blinked a few times. “That was a hell of a time. For everyone, ya know. Back at the farm, Mrs. Mac was crying in the kitchen the next afternoon when I got up.”
“Who was there then?”
He thought for a moment, looked out the window at the lake. “Pretty much everybody who lived there: Jamie, Tom, Elliott,” he hesitated. “I don’t think anyone else.”
“Got any idea where my mother might be?”
He shook his head very slowly with a sad smile on his face.
“Al, maybe we should go over to our place, here at the lake,” Steven said.
“What for?” Ron asked.
Was that alarm fleeting across Ron’s face?
Steven shrugged.
“Want me to go to see Jamie with you?" Ron asked. "I know how to get there, it’s a bit tricky.”
“If you want,” I answered.
“Sure,” Steven said. “That would be great.”
“Give me a minute to change.” He hurried down the hall.
“Steven, what was the name of that place where the Macs are?”
He ran fingers through his blonde hair. “Happy Valley, I think.”
“I’ll be back in a minute.” I stepped outside onto a deck and called information. When I was connected to Happy Valley Retirement Home, I asked for Mrs. Mac, and was informed she had her own number. I called her private line.
“Mrs. Mac? Hi. It’s Alexandra. Remember me?”
“Yes, of course, dear. Can’t decide if it’s your mother you remind me of, or for some reason, you make me think of Lexi.”
This woman was the most perceptive of them all.
“Did you get sick a couple days after Lexi was killed? Or maybe right after?” I asked.
“Lord girl, I’ve never been sick a day in my life.” She chuckled.
“Didn’t you come down with a bad flu? Weren’t you and Tom both sick?”
“No. I was heartsick, but I didn’t have no flu.”
Girl With a Past Page 18
