Missing White Girl

by Jeffrey J. Mariotte

  Buck thought he’d seen Oliver around the area a couple of times but had never met him. When the door opened, he knew he had been right.

  “Mr. Bowles?”

  “That’s right. Oliver Bowles. Come on in.” Oliver Bowles extended a hand, and Buck took it. The man’s grip was firm and he gave a friendly handshake. Nothing sketchy there, Buck thought. Oliver directed Buck through the dining room and into a living room, really an extension of the same area, defined by furniture more than walls.

  Oliver looked to be in his late thirties. Lean but muscular, he appeared to be a guy who worked out some. Maybe he played tennis or soccer, not football or baseball. That was just a guess, but a cop had to learn to make quick judgments about people, sometimes instantaneous.

  Oliver had short black hair, about a third of which had turned to gray; black wire-framed glasses, stylish, with small oval lenses; deep creases in his thin cheeks that probably acted as dimples when he smiled. He wasn’t smiling now. He wore a black polo shirt, jeans and leather moccasins, with no socks or jewelry.

  “Has something happened at the Lavenders’?” he asked. “Stupid question; you wouldn’t be here if it hadn’t. What’s going on?”

  “I’d like to be the one to ask the questions, if you don’t mind,” Buck said. “After I’m done, then you can have a turn, and I’ll tell you what I can.”

  “Should my wife be here?”

  “She home?”

  “She’s painting in the other room,” Oliver said.

  “Sure, fetch her too, please.”

  Oliver pointed to a leather armchair and left the living room. Buck sat down, examining the room. Nicely decorated with lots of floral fabrics on chairs and sofa—the leather chair was an anomaly, and Buck guessed Oliver had offered his own favorite seat. Cut flowers and live plants spilled from pots here and there, mostly copper with white china handles and ornamentation. The smell of fresh paint masked any aroma from the plants and flowers.

  Buck heard murmured conversation, then both of them came into the room. The wife was a looker, a little younger than her husband and with a body on her that made Buck think of the calendar hanging on the wall at Hank’s Auto Repair and Tires. The Arizona sun had tanned Oliver Bowles, but his wife kept out of it or slathered on the SPF 50. Only a spray of freckles across her nose showed that she had ever stepped outside the house.

  “This is Jeannie,” Oliver said.

  “Pleased to meet you, Sheriff,” she said. “I only wish it were under different circumstances.”

  “You can call me Lieutenant Shelton, ma’am,” Buck said. He had taken off his hat and held it in his lap, in the leather chair Oliver had indicated. Holding his hat with his left hand, he half-stood and shook Jeannie’s with his right. “Or Buck. Cochise County only has the one sheriff and he don’t like us to forget it. You’re doing some painting?”

  “That’s right,” she said.

  “You didn’t just move in, did you?”

  “We’ve been here since January, Lieutenant,” Oliver answered coolly. He and Jeannie sat together on the couch across from Buck. “We didn’t do a whole lot of work on the house right away, because we wanted to see how we liked it here, how my job would pan out, that kind of thing. We’re feeling a little more settled now, so we’re going ahead with some projects. Now, what is it we can we do for you?”

  Buck had wanted to get a sense of both of them, but now that he had he wanted to question them separately. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I’d like to talk to each of you in turn. All right if I take your husband outside for a few minutes? You can go back to your painting and we’ll be right back.”

  Her smile wrinkled the skin around her nose. “Be my guest.”

  Oliver Bowles shrugged and led the way back outside. “Is this how it’s usually done?”

  “That’s right,” Buck said. “I like to hear from one person at a time.”

  They stood under an overhang just outside the front door. The lawn needed cutting. Buck knew how that was—during the monsoon season grass you had to coax out of the ground burst forth so fast you could hardly keep up with it. “What do you want to know?”

  “You all know the Lavenders very well?”

  “We’ve met the whole family a few times,” Oliver said. “But we haven’t really socialized much, I’m afraid. Been kind of busy. Really the only one we know well is Lulu.”

  “How did you come to know her?”

  “She’s been in a couple of the classes I teach at Cochise College. And she’s been very helpful since we moved in here. She came over the day we moved in and introduced herself. Since then, anytime we’ve needed to know something like how to get cows out of the yard or what to do about tarantulas or centipedes, she’s been the one we turn to.”

  “How often would you say you see her?”

  “Monday, Wednesday, Friday,” Oliver said. “Last quarter she was in a Tuesday/Thursday class. Sometimes she rides to school and back with me, but only if she’s not doing something else before or after classes.”

  “And what about your wife?”

  “She sees Lulu, I don’t know, maybe once every week or two. We have her over for dinner sometimes. And she’s watched our house a couple of times when we went out of town. Is Lulu okay, Lieutenant?”

  “Like I said before, Mr. Bowles,” Buck dodged, “you’ll get your turn, but it’s not here yet. Can you tell me when the last time either of you saw her was?”

  “Monday,” Oliver answered flatly. “I drove her to school, then saw her in class. She had an activity after school so she didn’t need a ride home.”

  “What about the rest of the family?”

  “When did we see them last?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I don’t know. When I’m driving Lulu she usually comes over here and meets me. Has a cup of coffee with us, and then we take off. When I drop her off, sometimes there’s somebody outside and other times there’s not. I guess it’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve seen them.”

  “Have you been in their house?”

  “Yes,” Oliver said. He watched a curve-billed thrasher hop from a soaptree yucca to the ground, no doubt chasing some tasty insect. “They had us over for dinner after we got settled in. We had them over once too. They’re nice people and everything, but we really didn’t have much common ground, so we didn’t keep it up.”

  “How long since you’ve been inside there, would you say?”

  “Probably four or five months,” Oliver said, then corrected himself. “Or, no. Couple of months ago Lulu had a DVD she wanted to loan me, so when I dropped her off I went in the front door, stood there talking to Hugh for a couple of minutes while she found it. Nothing more extensive than that.”

  “You don’t have any idea where Lulu spent last night, do you?”

  “I would assume she spent it at home. She’s a good girl, gets along with her family. There’s no tension there that I’ve seen, if that’s what you’re driving at.”

  So far Buck had no reason to suspect that he was lying or trying to cover anything. Time had come to drop the bomb, watch Oliver’s reaction.

  “Lulu’s missing,” he said. “And the rest of the family has been murdered. Hugh, Manuela, the boys, they’re all dead.”

  Oliver’s reaction was subdued. A narrowing of the eyes, parting lips, a slight blanching of the skin. “Are you serious?”

  “Absolutely,” Buck said. “I just came from there, as you know.”

  “But—someone killed them?”

  “That’s right. All except Lulu, who’s nowhere to be found. I know this will be hard for you, since you seem close to the girl, but I have to ask: Do you think she’s someone who could have killed her own family and run away?”

  Oliver shook his head dramatically. “Definitely not. No. No. She isn’t that kind at all. She’s peace loving, gentle. She’s a bit of a progressive activist, actually, certainly not a person with any violence in her.”

  “We’ve all got som
e violence inside us, Mr. Bowles,” Buck corrected. “Sometimes it’s just a matter of how far down you have to dig to turn it out.”

  “Not Lulu Lavender.”

  “I don’t think so either, sir,” Buck said. “If it’s okay with you I’d like to talk to your wife now. You can wait out here until we’re done.”

  “You say that like I have a choice.”

  Buck tossed him a smile. “Guess I’m peculiar that way.”

  He left Oliver on the covered walkway and found Jeannie inside, trying to resume her painting but obviously unable to focus on anything but her anxiety over what he and her husband were discussing. She invited him to sit in the same chair he’d used before, and he complied, again removing his hat. They talked for about ten minutes, covering much of the same ground, but she had nothing different to say about the Lavenders than her husband had.

  Finally, he told her the same thing he’d told Oliver about the murders and Lulu’s disappearance. “Your husband doesn’t believe that Lulu could kill her own family,” he added.

  “I agree,” Jeannie said. “Lulu would never do anything like what you’re suggesting. She didn’t even want us to kill rattlesnakes.”

  “Good for her,” Buck said. “It’s against the law to kill them.”

  “That’s what she told us,” Jeannie said. “But more than that, she said, they’re God’s creatures too, and if we just left them alone they’d leave us alone. So far, she’s been right.” She paused a moment, then brought her hand up to her face, as if she could catch the escaping sobs. “Oh, God, she’s got to be okay.”

  Buck let her plea hang in the air for a few moments, wanting to see how she would follow it up.

  “Do you have any idea who might have done it, Lieutenant?” Jeannie asked, breaking the silence. “Or where she might be?”

  Buck spread his hands. “I have nothing at all yet, except a houseful of bodies and a missing girl,” he admitted. “But we’ll find her, and we’ll figure out what happened. You have my word on that.”

  9

  Jeannie held her hands over her mouth like the speak-no-evil monkey, trying to digest what the lawman had told her. Anyone bearing news like his should look more distressed, she believed. This man just sat upright with his cowboy-style hat across his lap and his hands on its brim. There might have been sadness in his brown eyes, hooded by heavy lids and with a slight downturn at the outer corners, but she had never seen him before so that could have been his standard expression. His hair was dark brown, with a flattened ring where his hat usually rested. He had a prominent nose, a wide mouth with thin lips, a pronounced jaw. Exposure to sun and wind had leathered his skin, so that the wrinkles around his eyes and mouth resembled cracks or fissures in its surface. He was probably six-one or-two, and his tan uniform was clean but worn, with long sleeves snapped at the cuffs, black cowboy boots mostly hidden beneath the pants. He sat on the edge of the leather chair so his gun, handcuffs and whatever else dangled from his belt didn’t mar its finish.

  Nothing about him indicated that he had just come down the road from the neighbors’ house, where he had looked at four dead bodies. Jeannie didn’t even want to think about the fact that there had been a killer on their road—a road with only the two houses on it. Had the killer picked the Lavenders at random, driving right past their place to get to it? She couldn’t imagine any reason why a struggling ranch family should be the target of such an act. But how did one rationalize the insane, or understand that which was inexplicable?

  “Do you have any idea why someone would have…would have done that?” she asked as he was leaving, her voice catching as she spoke.

  “None at all, ma’am. That’s what we have to figure out. Once we’ve done that, then I reckon we’ll have a much better idea who did it.”

  Having joined them inside, Oliver said, “Solved a lot of mass murders, Lieutenant?” There was an edge to his voice that Jeannie didn’t like, as if he were angry at the deputy and purposely baiting him. Not beyond the realm of possibility, she knew. Oliver had never cared much for authority figures to begin with, and after the last year that dislike had turned bitter.

  The lieutenant let it roll off him. He spoke softly, casually, and if she hadn’t become accustomed to the country accents of rural Arizonans, Jeannie would have assumed he’d been raised in the South. “Fortunately it doesn’t come up that often in these parts,” he said. “But don’t you worry, we’ll get it taken care of, all right.”

  “I hope you do,” Oliver said, with less hostility this time. Which was good—the last thing they needed, Jeannie thought, was to make an enemy of local law enforcement.

  “Well, I’ll get out of your way now, let you go on with your day,” Buck Shelton said. He fished a business card from his shirt pocket and put it down on the coffee table. “That’s got my numbers on it, office and mobile. If you think of anything that might help, no matter how mundane it might seem, give me a call. Same thing if you feel nervous or threatened, like anyone’s coming around here that oughtn’t to be.”

  “Thanks, Lieutenant Shelton,” Jeannie said quickly, before Oliver could answer. “We’ll do that.”

  The lieutenant left, and Jeannie and Oliver stood in the doorway staring at each other. “My God,” Oliver said after a few moments of uncomfortable silence. “Can you believe…the Lavenders?”

  “And poor Lulu,” Jeannie added. “She must be frightened out of her wits.”

  “Lulu’s tough,” Oliver said. “Of course she’s scared. But if I know her, she’s already looking for a way out, and a way to kick the ass of whoever’s got her.”

  Thinking about Lulu choked Jeannie up again. She stepped forward, pressed herself against Oliver’s wide chest. His arms wrapped around her, fingers pressing into her back. Even after everything they had been through, he remained her rock, her anchor, in a way that surprised her whenever she dared to think about it. She fancied herself an independent woman, and she knew she could get by without him.

  But she would rather not have to. It always came down to that.

  On his way out, Buck Shelton had asked them to keep what he’d said to themselves. He had referenced the media madness surrounding poor Elayne Lippincott’s disappearance, and Jeannie had understood immediately. Rita Cosby had practically moved in with the Lippincotts, although rumor had it she was getting bored with Sierra Vista’s nightlife and hoping for a quick end to the case. Jeannie would not have wanted Larrimore Trail to become the latest press encampment, especially since the only neighbors to interview or harass would be herself and Oliver.

  The lieutenant had indicated also that it was a law enforcement decision, something to do with keeping Lulu’s abductor off-balance by not letting news of his crime leak out. She was happy to go along with his request, and Oliver agreed.

  After a few minutes, she returned to her painting. She had almost finished the two walls she was turning sage green, leaving the other two white for contrast. As she brushed up against the masking tape she had applied at the corner, her mind kept reeling back to the lieutenant’s visit. He had never specifically said why he had come over. She had assumed, at first, it was because of the proximity of the houses. He hadn’t seemed to know, until Oliver mentioned it, that Oliver and Lulu knew each other and sometimes drove to school together.

  Then again, what if he had? What if there had been some clue—a diary entry, a note, something, he had found at the Lavender house that had sent him their way? Did he know something about Oliver and Lulu that she didn’t? There had been a time when she wouldn’t even have wondered, but the trust on which their marriage had been based had been broken, and although they had moved on together, reestablishing that trust had proven difficult.

  Jeannie shook her head, embarrassed at herself for even thinking along such lines. What Shelton had described involved unspeakable violence. Oliver might have been capable of deception, dishonesty, but not murder or kidnapping. Such things weren’t part of his makeup. Just because you were burn
ed once, she told herself, doesn’t make the man you love a killer.

  She resolved to put such thoughts out of her head and returned her focus to her painting.

  10

  “I mostly came to the area because I wanted to serve at Fort Huachuca,” Hugh Lavender had said. “It’s the only military post still operational from the days of the Indian Wars, and it was the home base for the buffalo soldiers of the day.”

  “Buffalo soldiers?” Jeannie repeated. She passed a bowl of mashed potatoes to Manuela (real ones with crushed fresh garlic added, not the instant boxed kind she and Oliver usually ate). The boys, Kevin and Neal, were parked in front of the TV, watching Toy Story 2. “I’ve heard the phrase, but…”

  Hugh rubbed the tightly curled hair on top of his head. “The Indians had never seen hair like black men have. They were used to long, straight hair. Maybe some natural waves, but nothing like this stuff. If you check out some of the pictures of the Apache warriors and their women, you’ll see it looks like they spent time at the salon, used all the latest hair products, but it was just their own natural hair. They thought our hair looked like bison fur. So they called the black troopers ‘buffalo soldiers,’ and the name stuck.”

  “And how did you two meet?” Oliver asked.

  Lulu giggled. “He thought she had great cans.”

  “And she does,” Oliver said. “But I’m sure there was more to it than that.”

  Manuela laughed too. She had probably put on weight in the intervening years, but she was still a looker, Oliver thought, voluptuous and pretty, with some of the softest skin he had ever touched. “That was part of it, though,” she said. “I had gone to a movie, with some girlfriends, over there in Sierra Vista. I was young, you know. When I left home, I had a school sweatshirt on, but underneath it I had this tight top, cut down to there, with a push-up bra underneath shoving everything I had up and out.”

  “I still remember the way she looked,” Hugh said, gazing admiringly at his wife. “Caught my eye, that’s for sure.”