McCone and Friends

by Marcia Muller

  I leaned against the counter. There wasn’t another chair in the room, and Waterson hadn’t offered to find me one. “Why’d he ask you for it, rather than Ms. Hanford? Adrian was paid by Left Coast Casuals, not the plaza, wasn’t she?”

  “Sue was out and had left me in charge of the store.” Waterson scratched at the beer belly that bulged over the waist of his khaki uniform pants. “Can you imagine?” he said again. “Kids today.” He snorted.

  Waterson was your basic low-level security guy, although he’d risen higher than most of them ever go. I know, because I worked among them until my then-boss took pity on me and recommended me to Sharon for the job at All Souls. It’s a familiar type: not real bright, not too great to look at, and lacking in most of the social graces. About all you need to get in on the ground floor of the business is never to have been arrested or caught molesting the neighbors’ dog on the front lawn at high noon. Ben Waterson—well, I doubted he’d been arrested because he didn’t look like he had the ambition to commit a crime, but I wasn’t too sure about his conduct toward the neighborhood pets.

  “So you told Kirby to get lost?” I asked.

  “I told him to fuck off, pardon my French. And he got pissed off, pardon it again, and left.”

  “He say why Adrian owed him money?”

  “Nah. Who knows? Probably for a drug buy. Kids today.”

  “Did Adrian do drugs?”

  “They all do.”

  “But did you ever know her to do them?”

  “Didn’t have to. They all do.” He looked accusingly at me. From his fifty-something perspective, I probably was young enough to be classified as one on today’s youthful degenerates.

  I shifted to a more comfortable position, propping my hip against the counter. Waterson scanned the monitors again, then looked back at me.

  “Let me ask you this,” I said. “How well did you know Kirby Dalson?”

  His eyes narrowed. “What the hell’s that suppose to mean?”

  I hadn’t thought it was a particularly tricky question. “How well did you know him?” I repeated. “What kind of kid was he?”

  “Oh. Just a kid. A weasel-faced punk. I had a daughter, I wouldn’t let him near her.”

  “You mentioned drugs. Was Kirby dealing?”

  “Probably.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  He rolled his eyes. “I told you –kids today.” Then, unselfconsciously, he started to pick his nose.

  I didn’t need any more of this, so I headed downstairs to Sue Hartford’s office at Left Coast Casuals.

  Hartford was a sleek blonde around my age, in her late twenties. One of those women who is moving up in the business world in spite of a limited education, relying on her toughness and brains. On Monday, she’d told me she started in an after school job like Adrian’s at the Redwood City branch of the clothing chain and had managed two of their other stores before being selected for the plum position at the then-new plaza. When she saw me standing in the office door, Hanford motioned for me to come in and sit down. She continued working at her computer for a minute. Then she swiveled toward me, face arranged in formally solemn lines.

  “I read in the paper about the Conway girl’s boyfriend,” she said. “So awful. So young.”

  I told her about Adrian’s backpack being found in the house, and she made perfunctorily horrified noises.

  “This doesn’t mean Adrian killed Kirby, does it?” she asked.

  “Doubtful. It looked as if the pack’s been there since right after she disappeared.”

  For a moment her features went very still. “Then Kirby might have killed…”

  “Yes.”

  “But where is the …?”

  “Body? Well, not at the house, I’m sure the cops would have found it by now.”

  “Or else she…”

  “She what?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe she ran away. Maybe frightened her somehow.”

  Interesting assumption. “Are you saying Adrian was afraid of Kirby?”

  Quickly she shook her head. “No. Well, maybe. It was more like…he dominated her. One look from him was all she needed, and she’d do whatever he wanted her to.”

  “Give me an example.”

  “Well, one time I saw them at a table near the food concessions in the middle of the mall. He had a burger, she was spooning up her yogurt. All of a sudden, Kirby pointed at his burger, then jerked his chin at the condiment counter. Adrian got up and scurried over there and brought him back some catsup.”

  “So he pretty much controlled her?”

  “I’d say so.”

  “What else?”

  She shrugged. “That’s about the best example I can give you. I didn’t really see that much of them together. We try to discourage our girls from having their friends come into the store during working hours.”

  “When I spoke with you earlier this week, you said you doubted Adrian was a drug user. Are you sure of that?”

  “Reasonably sure. I observe our girls very carefully. I can’t have anything like that going on, especially not on store premises. It would reflect badly on my abilities as a manager.” Her eyes lost focus suddenly. “God, what if something has happened to Adrian? I mean, something like what happened to Kirby? That would reflect badly, too. The damage control I’d need to do…”

  I said wryly, “I don’t think that as store manager you can be held responsible for what happens to your employees off-hours.”

  “You don’t understand, it would reflect badly on my abilities to size up a prospective employee.” Her eyes refocused on my face. “I can see you think I’m uncaring. Maybe to some degree I am. But I’m running a business here. I’m building a career, and I have to be strong. I have a small daughter to raise, and I’m fiercely protective of her chances to have a good life. I’m sorry Kirby Dalson’s dead. If Adrian’s also been killed, than I’m sorry about that, too. But, really, neither of them has anything to do with me, with my life.”

  That’s the trouble, I thought. The poet, whoever he was, said no man is an island, but nowadays every man and woman is one. A whole goddamn continent, the way some of them act. It’s a wonder that they all don’t sink to the bottom of the ocean, just like the lost continent of Atlantis is supposed to have done.

  V

  I wanted to drive by the house on Naples Street, just to see what it looked like in the daylight. The rain had stopped, but it was still a soppy, gray morning. The house looked shabby and sodden. There was a yellow plastic police line strip across the driveway, and a man in a tan raincoat stood on the front steps, hands in his pockets, staring at nothing in particular.

  He didn’t look like a cop. He was middle-aged, middle height, a little gray, a little bald. His glasses and the cut of his coat were the kind you used to associate with the movers and shakers of the 1980’s financial world, but the coat was rumpled and had a grease stain near its hem, and as I got out of the Wreck and went closer, I saw that one hinge of the glasses frame was wired together. His face pulled down in disappointed lines that looked permanent. Welcome to the nineties, I thought.

  The man’s eyes focused dully on me. “If you’re a reporter,” he said, “you’d better speak with the officers in charge of the case.” He spoke with a kind of diluted authority, his words turning up in a question, as if he wasn’t quite sure who or what he was any longer.

  “I’m not a reporter.” I took out my i.d. and explained my connection to the case.

  The man looked at the i.d., nodded, and shrugged. Then he sighed. “Hell of a thing, isn’t it? I wish I’d never rented to them.”

  “This is your house?”

  “My mother’s. She’s in a nursing home. I can’t sell it—she still thinks she’s coming back someday. That’s all that’s keeping her alive. I can’t fix it up, either.” He motioned at the peeling façade. “My business has been in a flat-out slump for a couple of years now, and the nursing home’s expensive. I rented to the first couple who an
swered my ad. Bad judgment on my part. They were too young, and into God-knows-what.” He laughed mirthlessly, then added, “Sorry, I didn’t introduce myself. Ron Owens.”

  I’d inched up the steps toward the open front door until I was standing next to him. I shook his outstretched hand and repeated my name for him.

  Owens sighed again and stared glumly at the wet street. “It’s a hell of a world.” He said. “A hell of a thing when a kid dies like that. Kids are supposed to grow up, have a life. At least outlive their parents.” Then he looked at me, “You said the girl’s mother hired you?”

  “Yes. I haven’t come up with any leads, and she’s getting frantic. I thought maybe if I could see the house…” I motioned at the door.

  For a moment Owens hesitated. “What the hell—they said they were done there. Come on in, if you want.”

  I followed him into a narrow hallway that ran the length of the cottage. “Were you here when they found the girl’s backpack?’

  “Did that belong to her? Yeah. I came over and let them in as soon as they contacted me. First time I’d been here since the kids rented it. Place is a mess. I’m glad I stored most of my mother’s things in the sheds and only left the basic furnishing. They didn’t exactly trash it, but they didn’t keep it, either.”

  Mess was the word for it. Dust—both natural and from finger-print powder saturated all the surfaces, and empty glasses and plates stood among the bottles and cans and full ashtrays in the front room. Owens led me back past a bathroom draped in crumpled and mildewy-smelling towels and a bedroom where the sheets and blankets were mostly on the floor, to a kitchen. It contained more dirty crockery and glassware. Wrappings from frozen entrees and fast food overflowed the trashcan. A half-full fifth of Jim Beam stood uncapped on the counter. The entire place reeked.

  “The cops went through everything?” I asked.

  “Yeah. They didn’t think anybody had been here for a while. At least not last night. There weren’t any muddy footprints inside, and the door was blocked by a few days’ worth of newspapers.”

  “Where did they find the backpack?”

  “Front room. I’ll show you.”

  The table where the backpack had been was just inside the living room door. What was left there was junk mail and ad sheets—the sort of stuff you drag inside with you and dump someplace until you get around to throwing it out. “So,” I said, “this was where she’d leave the pack when she arrived. But why not pick it up again when she left?”

  Ron Owens made a funny choking sound, and I realized he’d jumped to the obvious conclusion. “No,” I said quickly, “the cops would have found evidence if she was killed here. Did you see what was in the pack?”

  He shook his head. “One of them said something about there being no money or i.d.”

  Adrian had been smart, carrying her cash and i.d. someplace else where it wouldn’t be snatched if somebody grabbed the pack on the street or on the bus. Smart, too, because if she’d had to run out of this house suddenly—if Kirby had frightened or threatened her, as Sue Hanford had suggested—she’d at least have had the essentials on her.

  I’d seen enough here, so I thanked Owens and gave him one of my cards in case he thought of anything else. I was halfway down the front walk when I remembered to ask him I could see the sheds where he’d stored his mother’s things.

  For a moment he looked puzzled at the request, then he shrugged and fished a key ring from his pocket. “Actually, it wouldn’t hurt to check them.”

  We ducked under the police line tape and went up the driveway. The trees dripped on the muddy ground where Kirby’s car had been parked. There were deep gouges and tracks were the tow truck had hauled it out. Other than that, you would never have known that anything unusual had happened there. It was just an ordinary backyard that the weeds and blackberry vines were trying to reclaim.

  Ron Owens fit a key into the padlock on the first shed. Unfastened it and then the hasp. The door grated as he opened it.

  There was nothing inside. Nothing at all except for a little heap of wood scraps.

  Owens’ face went slack with surprise. Then bright red splotches blossomed on his cheeks. “They cleaned me out,” he said. “Check the other shed.”

  We hurried back there. Owens opened it. Nothing except for some trash drifted in the corners.

  “But how did they…?” He held up his key ring. “I had the only…There were no other keys.”

  I looked closely at the padlock. Cheap brand, more pickable than most. My boyfriend Willie would have had that off of there in five minutes, max—and he’s out of practice. Willie’s a respectable businessman now, but there are things in his past that are best not discussed.

  “You better call the police,” I told Owens.

  He nodded, shoulders slumping. “I’m glad my mother will never have to find out about this,” he said. “Her good china, Grandma’s silver, the family pictures—all gone. For the first time I’m glad she’s never coming home. There’s no home left here anymore.”

  I watched Owens hurry down the drive to a car with a mobile phone antenna on its trunk. I knew how he felt. For me, the word “home” has a magical aura. Sometimes I can actually see it—velvety green like the plants in my nest at All Souls, gold and wine-red like the flames in a good fire. Silly, but that’s the way it is for me. Probably for all of us people who’ve never had a real home of our own.

  I turned away and looked back into the empty shed. Adrian had had a real home, but she’d left it. For this shabby little house? I doubted that. But she’d been here shortly after her school mates had last her, and then she’d probably fled in fear. For where? Where?

  I decided to consult the therapy wall once more.

  VI

  The Conway house was warm for a change, and Donna had closed the drapes to hide the murky city view. Adrian’s room, though, was frigid. Donna saving on the heating bill now that Adrian was gone? Or maybe the registers were closed because Adrian was one of those human reptiles who never need much warmth. My ex-husband, Doug, is like that: when other people are bundled in two layers of sweaters, he’s apt to be running around in his shirtsleeves.

  Before she left me alone, Donna said, “My sister-in-law called and said you’d gone to see her.”

  “Yes, Tuesday night.”

  “What’d you think of her?”

  “Well, she’s unconventional, but I kind of liked her. She seems to have a heart, and she certainly cares about Adrian.”

  Donna pushed a lock of hair back from her forehead and sighed. She looked depressed and jumpy, dark smudges under her eyes. “I see she’s fooled you, too.” Then she seemed to relent a little. “Oh, I suppose June’s got a good heart, as you say. But she also has an unfortunate tendency to take over a situation and tell everyone what to do. She’s the original earth mother and thinks we’re all her children. The straw that broke it for me was when she actually advised Jeffery to leave me. But… I don’t know. She seems to want to patch it up now, and I suppose for Adrian’s sake I should.”

  The words “for Adrian’s sake” hung hollowly in the cold room. Donna shivered and added, “I’ll leave you alone with the wall now.”

  Honestly, the way she acted, you’d have thought the wall was my psychiatrist. In a sense that was what it had been to her daughter.

  I sat on Adrian’s bed like the time before and let the images on the wall speak to me. One, then the other, cried for attention. Bright primary colors, bold black and white. Words, pictures, then more words. And things—incongruous things. All adding up to…what?

  After a while I sat up straighter, seeing objects I hadn’t noticed before, seeing others in a new light. What they communicated was a sense of entrapment, but not necessarily by the family situation. Material relating to her absent father—GONE FOREVER, THE YEAR OF THE BIMBO, a postcard from Switzerland where Jeffrey Conway now lived—was buried deep under more recent additions. So were the references to Adrian’s and her mother’s new li
fe—JUST THE TWO OF US, A WOMAN ALONE, NEW DIRECTIONS. But on top of that…

  Fake plastic handcuffs. Picture of a barred window. NO EXIT sign. SOLD INTO WHITE SLAVERY. Photo of San Quentin. Images of a young woman caught up in something she saw no easy way out of.

  I got up and went over to the wall and took a good look at a plastic security tag I’d noticed before. There were similar ones on the higher-priced garments at Left Coast Casuals. Next to it, the word “guilt” was emblazoned in big letters, smaller repetition of it tailed down like the funnel of a cyclone. My eyes followed them, they were caught hypnotically in the whorls of a thumb-print on a plain white index card.

  On top of all these were Adrian’s final offerings. Now that I’d discovered a pattern, I could tell which things had been added last. FREEDOM! Broken gold chain. A WAY OUT. Egret feather and silhouette of a soaring bird. She was about to break loose, fly away. I wasn’t sure from what, not exactly. But guilt was a major component, and I thought I knew why.

  I started searching the room. Nothing under the lingerie or sweaters or socks in the bureau drawers. Nothing pushed to the back of the closet or hidden in the suitcases. Nothing under the mattress or the bed. Nothing but school supplies in the desk.

  Damn! I was sure I’d figured out that part of it. I had shameful personal experience to guide me.

  The room was so cold that the joints of my fingers ached. I tucked my hands into my armpits to warm them. The heat register was one of those metal jobs set into the floor under a window, and its louvers were closed. I squatted next to it and tried to push the opener. Jammed.

  The register lifted easily out of its hole. I peered through the opening in the floor and saw that the sheet metal furnace duct was twisted and pushed aside. A nail had been hammered into the floor joist, and something hung down from it into the crawl space. I reached in and unhooked it—a big cloth laundry bag with a drawstring. I pulled the bag up through the hole and dumped its contents on the carpet.