Silent Partner

by Jonathan Kellerman

  “Hate to bother you,” I said, “but I was wondering if—”

  “The system was back up. Yes, it is, as of this morning. And just to show you how much I love you, I used Sacramento Division's mainframe to run your Shirlee Ransom through. Sorry, nothing. I did find a person by that name, same spelling. But on the Medi-Cal files. Date of birth 1922, not '53.”

  “Do you have an address on her?”

  “No. You told me '53, I didn't figure you'd be interested in a senior citizen.”

  “Makes sense,” I said.

  “You are interested?”

  “I might be . . . if it's not too much of a—”

  “All right, all right. Let me change out of this business suit and I'll call the office, try and get my assistant to overcome her computerphobia. It'll take a while. Where can I get back to you?”

  “I'm calling from a pay phone.”

  “Cloak and dagger nonsense? Alex, what are you up to?”

  “Digging up bones.”

  “Ugh. What's your number?”

  I read it off to her.

  “That's my neighborhood. Where are you calling from?”

  “Gas station on Melrose near Fairfax.”

  “Oh, for God's sake, you're two minutes away! Come over and watch me play high-tech detective.”

  The Brickermans' house was small, newly painted white, with a Spanish tile roof. Narrow beds of petunias had been planted along the driveway, which was filled with Olivia's mammoth Chrysler New Yorker.

  She'd left the door unlocked. Albert Brickerman was in the living room, in a bathrobe and slippers, staring at the chessboard. He grunted in response to my greeting. Olivia was in the kitchen, scrambling eggs, wearing a white ruffled blouse and size 18 navy skirt. Her hair was a henna'd frizz, her cheeks plump and rosy. She was in her early sixties but her skin was smooth as a girl's. She hugged me, crushed me to an upholstered bosom.

  “What do you think?” She ran her hands over the skirt.

  “Very board-room.”

  She laughed, turned down the fire under the eggs. “If my socialist papa could see me now. Do you believe, at my age, being dragged kicking and screaming into the whole yuppie puppie thing?”

  “Just keep telling yourself you're working within the system to change it.”

  “Oh, sure.” She motioned me to the kitchen table. Spooned out eggs, set out plates of rye toast and sliced tomatoes, filled mugs with coffee. “I figure I've got one more year, maybe two. Then goodbye to all the nonsense and set out for some serious traveling—not that Prince Albert would ever budge, but I've got a friend, lost her husband last year. We plan to do Hawaii, Europe, Israel. The works.”

  “Sounds great.”

  “Sounds great, but you're antsy to get into the computer.”

  “Whenever it's convenient.”

  “I'll call now. It'll take a while for Monica to get into the system.”

  She phoned her assistant, gave instructions, repeated them, hung up. “Cross your fingers. Meanwhile, let's eat.”

  Both of us were hungry and we wolfed in silence. Just as I'd started on my second serving of eggs, the phone rang.

  “Okay, Monica, that's okay. Yes. Type in SRCH, all capitals. Good. Now type capital M dash capital C capital R, then the RETURN button twice. CAL. C-A-L, also all in caps, four three five six dash zero zero nine. Good. Then capital LA dash capital W dash one dash two three six. Okay? Try again. I'll wait . . . good. Now press RETURN one more time, then the HOME button. . . . Under the seven . . . No, hold down the control button while you do it—over on the left side of the keyboard, CTRL. Yes, good. Now what comes on the screen? Good. Okay, now type in the following name. Ransom, as in kidnapping . . . what? Nothing, forget it. R-A-N-S-O-M. Comma. Shirlee. With two e's at the end, instead of an e-y. S-H-I-R-L-E-E . . . Okay, good. What comes on? . . . Okay, keep it there, Monica. I'm going to get a pencil and you tell me the birthdate and the address.”

  She began writing. I got up, read over her shoulder:

  Ransom, Shirlee. DOB: 1/1/22

  Rural Route 4, Willow Glen, Ca. 92399.

  “Okay, thank you, Monica.”

  I said, “Ask her about a Jasper Ransom.”

  She looked up at me quizzically, said: “Monica, don't clear your screen yet. Type in ADD SRCH. Wait for the blinking prompt again . . . Got it? Okay, now Ransom, same name as before, comma Jasper . . . No. J. . . . Right. Jasper. Good . . . It is? Okay, give me the birthdate.”

  She wrote: DOB 12/25/20. Same address.

  “Thank you again, Monica. Got a lot left to do? . . . Then take off early. I'll see you tomorrow.” She hung up. “Two elderly Ransoms for the price of one, darling.”

  She looked at the paper again and pointed to the birthdates. “New Year's and Christmas. Cute. What's the chance of that? Who are these people?”

  “I don't know,” I said. “Willow Glen. Got a state map?”

  “No need,” she said. “I've been there. It's out in the boonies—San Bernardino County, near Yucaipa. When the kids were little I used to take them down there to pick apples.”

  “Apples?”

  “Apples, darling. Little red round things? Keep the doctor away? Why the surprise?”

  “I didn't know apples grew down there.”

  “They used to. Then one year we went down there and there was nothing left—all the U-pick places closed down, the trees dead and dying. We're talking boonies, Alex. Nothing's out there. Except Miss New Year's and Mr. Christmas.”

  Chapter

  28

  The San Bernardino Freeway propelled me, like a pea through a shooter, past an exurban blur of industrial parks, ticky tack housing developments and auto lots wider than some small towns. Just beyond Pomona and the County Fairgrounds, the scenery shifted to ranches, egg farms, warehouses, and freight yards. Running parallel to the south side of the freeway were railroad tracks. Cotton Bowl and Southern Pacific boxcars sat stagnant on the rails. The rear third of the train was meshed compartments crammed with gleaming little Japanese sedans. A brief burst of architectural fervor past Claremont and then everything got quiet.

  I drove through empty, sun-scorched hills, past smaller farms and ranches, sloping fields of alfalfa, horses grazing sluggishly in the heat. The Yucaipa exit narrowed to a single lane that ran alongside a tractor graveyard. I slowed and cruised past a string of aluminum-sided trailers billed as “The Big Mall,” an untended taco shack, and a boarded-up shop advertising “Very Rare Antiques.”

  Willow Glen shared billing on a road sign with a Bible college twenty miles south and a state agricultural depot. The directional arrow aimed me over a covered bridge and onto a razor-straight road that cut through more farmland—citrus and avocado plantings, ramshackle stables, and untended fields. Broad slabs of blank brown space were broken by trailer parks, tin-roofed juke joints, and cinder-block churches, and surrounded by the granite drapery of the San Bernardino Mountains.

  The mountains faded from rawhide to lavender-gray in the distance, the upper peaks merging with a pearly mist of sky. Heat percolated up from the lowlands, softening the contours of the pines that clung to the mountainsides, creating fringed silhouettes that recalled ink bleeding into blotting paper.

  Willow Glen Road materialized as the left arm of a boulevard stop in the middle of nowhere, a sharp hook past a splintered sign advertising fresh produce and a “Jumbo Turkey Ranch,” long vacated. The blacktop twisted and climbed toward the mountains, then up into them. The air got cooler, cleaner.

  Ten miles in, a few apple orchards appeared: freshly tilled small plots backed by frame houses and surrounded by barbed wire and windbreak willows, the trees cut low with wide crotches, for handpicking. Cherry-sized orbs peeked out from under sage canopies of leaf. Harvest looked to be a good two months away. Homemade signs on stakes driven into the road shoulder welcomed the U-pick crowd but there didn't seem enough fruit to provide more than a day's desultory picking. As the road climbed higher, neglected orchards be
gan to dominate the landscape—larger, dusty stretches filled with dead trees, some felled, others whittled to limbless, gray-white spikes.

  The asphalt ended at twin telephone-pole-sized posts banded with Chamber of Commerce and service club badges. A chain dangling from between the posts supported a sign that read WILLOW GLEN VILLAGE. POP. 432.

  I stopped, looked past the sign. The village seemed to be nothing more than a tiny rustic shopping mall shaded by willows and pines and fronted by an empty parking lot. The trees parted at the far end of the lot, and the road continued as compressed dirt. I drove in, parked, and stepped out into clean, dry heat.

  The first thing that caught my eye was a large black-and-white Ilama nibbling hay in a small corral. Behind the corral was a narrow frame house painted barn-red and trimmed in white. The sign over the doorway read WILLOW GLEN FUN CENTER AND PETTING ZOO. I searched for human habitation, saw none. Waved at the llama and got a ruminant stare in return.

  A handful of other buildings, all small, all wooden, shingle-roofed and unpainted and connected to one another by planked walkways. HUGH'S WOODCARVER'S PARADISE. THE ENCHANTED FOREST ANTIQUE SHOPPE. GRANNY'S TREASURE TROVE, GIFTS AND SOUVENIRS. Every one shuttered tight.

  The ground was cushioned by pine needles and willow leaves. I walked through it, still searching for company, spotted a flash of white and a jet of smoke rising from behind the woodcarver's shop. Low-hanging branches blocked the view. I walked past them, saw a series of weathered wood booths bolted together under a single, brand-new red roof. As I got closer, the air got sweet—the heavy sweetness of honey mixed with the tang of apples. The trees receded and I was standing in a bright clearing.

  One of the booths was labeled APPLE PRESS & CIDERY, another CLOVER HONEY. But the sweet smoke was coming from next door, a green-shuttered section designated GOLDEN DELICIOUS CAFÉ. DEEP DISH PIE. COBBLER. The café's façade was whitewashed planks and stained-glass windows—windows decorated with black boughs, pink-white blossoms, green, red, and yellow apples. The door was open. I went in.

  Inside everything was spotless and whitewashed—picnic tables and benches, a white ceiling fan recirculating hot, honeyed air, a Formica-topped counter and three white Naugahyde stools, hanging plants, an old brass cash register, and a mimeographed poster advertising a Yucaipa astrologer. A young woman sat behind the counter drinking coffee and reading a biology textbook. Behind her a pass-through window provided a view of a stainless-steel kitchen.

  I sat down. She looked up. Nineteen or twenty, with a sharply upturned nose, clipped curly blond hair, and wide dark eyes. She wore a white shirt and black jeans, was slim but hippy. A green-apple badge on her shirt said WENDY.

  She smiled. Maura Bannon's age. Less sophisticated, no doubt, but somehow older than the reporter.

  “Hi. What can I get you?”

  I pointed to her coffee cup. “How about some of that, for starts.”

  “Sure. Cream and sugar?”

  “Black.”

  “Would you like a menu?”

  “Thanks.”

  She handed me a plasticized rectangle. The selection surprised me. I'd expected burgers and fries, but a dozen entrees were listed, some of them complex, with a nod toward nouvelle, each tagged with letters indicating the proper wine: C for Chardonnay, JR for Johannesburg Riesling. On the back of the menu was a full wine list—good-quality French and California vintages as well as a locally produced apple wine described as “light and fruity, similar in nose and flavor to Sauvignon blanc.”

  She brought the coffee. “Something to eat?”

  “How about an apple picker's lunch?”

  “Sure.” She turned her back on me, opened a refrigerator and various drawers and cabinets, tinkered for a while, put cutlery and a linen napkin on the counter, and served up a platter of perfectly sliced apples and thick wedges of cheese, garnished with mint.

  “Here you go,” she said, adding a whole-wheat roll and butter molded into flowers. “The goat cheese is really good, made by a family of Basques out near Loma Linda. Organically fed animals.”

  She waited.

  Olivia's eggs still sat in my stomach. I took a small bite. “Terrific.”

  “Thanks. I'm studying food presentation in college, want to run my own place some day. I get to use working here as part of my independent studies.”

  I pointed at the textbook. “Summer school?”

  She grimaced. “Finals. Tests aren't my specialty. More coffee?”

  “Sure.” I sipped. “Kind of quiet today.”

  “Every day. During picking season, September through January, we get a handful of tourists on weekends. But it's not like it used to be. People know about cherry picking in Beaumont but we haven't gotten much publicity. It didn't used to be that way—the village was built in 1867; people used to go home with bushel baskets of Spartans and Jonathans. But city people came and bought up some of the land. Didn't take care of it.”

  “I saw dead orchards on the way up.”

  “Isn't it sad? Apples need care—just like children. All those doctors and lawyers from L.A. and San Diego bought the orchards for taxes, then just let them die. We've been trying—my family and me—to get the place going again. The Orange County Register might run a piece on us—that would sure help. Meanwhile we're getting the jam and honey going, starting to do real good with mail order. Plus, I cook for the rangers and aggie commissioners passing through, get my independent study taken care of. You with the state?”

  “No,” I said. “What's with the Ilama?”

  “Cedric? He's ours—my family's. That's our house behind his pen—our village house. Mom and my brothers are in there, right now, planning out the zoo. We're going to have a full-fledged petting zoo by next summer. Keep the little kids busy so the parents can shop. Cedric's a doll. Dad got him in trade—he's a doctor, has a chiropractic practice down in Yucaipa. That's where we live most of the time. There was this circus coming through—gypsies or something like that, in these painted wagons, with accordions and tape machines. They set up in one of the fields, passed the hat. One of the men sprained his back doing acrobatics. Dad fixed him up but the guy couldn't pay, so Dad took Cedric in trade. He loves animals. Then we got the idea for the petting zoo. My sister's studying animal husbandry at Cal Poly. She's going to run it.”

  “Sounds great. Does your family own the whole village?”

  She laughed. “I wish. No, just the house and Cedric's pen and these back shops. The front shops are owned by other people but they're not around much. Granny—from the gift shop—died last summer and her family hasn't decided what they want to do. No one believes the Terrys are going to turn Willow Glen around, but we're sure going to try.”

  “The population sign said four thirty-two. Where's everyone else?”

  “I think that number's high, but there are other families—a few growers; the rest work down in Yucaipa. Everyone's on the other side of the village. You have to drive through.”

  “Past the trees?”

  Another laugh. “Yeah. It's hard to see, isn't it? Set up kind of to trap people.” She looked at my plate. I gobbled in response, pushed it away half-finished. She was undeterred. “How about some deep-dish? I baked some just twenty minutes ago.”

  She looked so eager that I said, “Sure.”

  She set a big square of pastry before me, along with a spoon, and said, “It's so thick, this is better than a fork.” Then she refilled my coffee cup and waited again.

  I put a spoonful of pie in my mouth. If I'd been hungry, it would have been great: thin, sugary crust, crisp chunks of apple in light syrup, tinged with cinnamon and sherry, still warm. “This is terrific, Wendy. You have a bright future as a chef.”

  She beamed. “Well, thank you much, mister. If you want another piece, I'll give it to you on the house. Got so much, my hog brothers are only going to scarf it down without thanking me, anyway.”

  I patted my stomach. “Let's see how I do with this.”

  When
I'd struggled through several more mouthfuls, she said, “If you're not the state, what brings you up here about?”

  “Looking for someone.”

  “Who?”

  “Shirlee and Jasper Ransom.”

  “What would you want with them?”

  “They're related to a friend of mine.”

  “Related how?”

  “I'm not sure. Maybe parents.”

  “Can't be a very close friend.”

  I put down my spoon. “It's complicated, Wendy. Do you know where I can find them?”

  She hesitated. When her eyes met mine they were hard with suspicion.

  “What's the matter?” I asked.

  “Nothing. I just like folks to be truthful.”

  “What makes you think I haven't been?”

  “Coming up here talking about Shirlee and Jasper maybe being someone's parents, driving all the way up here just to send regards.”

  “It's true.”

  “If you had any idea who—” She stopped herself, said, “I'm not going to be uncharitable. Let's just say I never knew them to have any relatives—not in the five years I've lived here. No visitors either.”

  She looked at her watch and tapped her fingers on the countertop. “You finished, mister? 'Cause I have to close up, do more studying.”

  I pushed my plate away. “Where's Rural Route Four?”

  She shrugged, moved down the counter and picked up her book.

  I stood up. “Check, please.”

  “Five dollars even.”

  I gave her a five. She took it by the corner, avoiding my touch.

  “What is it, Wendy? Why're you upset?”

  “I know what you are.”

  “What am I?”

  “Bank man. Looking to foreclose on the rest of the village, just like you did with Hugh and Granny. Trying to sweet-talk all the other deed holders, buy up everything cheap so you can turn it into some condo project or something.”

  “You're a terrific cook, Wendy, but not too hot as a detective. I have nothing to do with any banks. I'm a psychologist from L.A.. My name is Alex Delaware.” I pulled ID out of my wallet: driver's license, psychology license, med school faculty card. “Here, see for yourself.”