Noticing my skeptical look hadn’t diminished, he continued: “I might have been wearing the security guard uniform I was supposed to take to the cleaners for my cousin. Women do like a man in a uniform. I give her my cousin’s card too. If she hooks up with him, she gonna have some surprise ‘cause no way he’s as handsome as me.”
I rolled my eyes, but as we’d just stepped into the sunroom, I kept quiet.
Technically, this wasn’t my first home invasion. A few months into my recovery from head trauma, when I noticed that the legal boundaries where I once lived comfortably now felt restrictive, I decided to explore illicit behavior. I accompanied Dante during his ‘research phase’ of several criminal projects: breaking corporate firewalls, studying security at museum exhibits, interviewing potential victims of real estate scams. What I’d once found repellant, I now found alluring.
Not that I’d kept any ill-gotten gains. I found pleasure in the work, but not so much in the results. After scrubbing any connection to me and my co-conspirators, I’d returned everything from a small Meso-American artifact to my cut of monies deposited in an offshore bank. I still retained a bit of my shrinking morality.
Dante had his own values. He peered into but didn’t enter Mr. Durbin’s bedroom, even with cash lying on the bureau. Nor did he head for the jewelry case we saw from Lisa Durbin’s bedroom door.
“Small stuff,” he whispered. He winked and added, “Overlooks the pool where Clara’s drinking her tea. Best she don’t see us at the windows.”
Dante led me across the hall to a child’s bedroom that overlooked the driveway and a stunning view of Crystal Cove. “Clara said it was the grandkid’s room. The one kidnapped a couple a years ago.”
Feeling the tiger scar tingling, I headed for the child-sized desk near the window. “You check the bureau. Let me know if you find anything proving a kid’s been here within the last 17 months.”
Criminal and detective skills are remarkably similar. Moments after Dante opened the closet, he whistled softly. “I got something, Miz Graff.”
He emptied a backpack onto the bed. Besides an assortment of river rocks, an unidentified school project of foliage bits glued to paper, granola bar wrappers, pencils—some broken and some whole, a shed snake skin that made my skin crawl, a bedraggled fishing lure wrapped in felt, a dog collar with the name Flash engraved on the tag, desiccated fish bones in an odorous sandwich bag complete with bread crumbs, and a small thermos.
Dante unscrewed the lid of the last item and sniffed carefully. “Tomato soup, not too far gone. Definitely not two years gone.”
“No name.” Dante fingered the school project. “The Durbins got other grandkids?”
“Clara didn’t say?” My tone might have been a tad snide. I’d been banking on Lisa Durbin being party to Jackson’s kidnapping and signs of a current connection at her house. Ignoring Dante’s response, I said: “They only had one child, and he’s dead.” Then I took a closer look at the backpack and the tiger scratches burned hotly down my left thigh.
Neither of us had noticed the ID tag on the reverse side. Colin Jackson, Grade 2, Temecula Glen Elementary School.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A stop in Orange before the psychiatrist appointment
With a jaunty flourish, Dante pocketed the parking ticket he found under his windshield wiper. This time I sat in the passenger seat next to him. We rested in companionable silence from our shaded hill spot in the fire lane, and watched a lone boat sail across the blue waters of Laguna Beach.
“You think Colin Jackson and Jackson Galon are the same kid, Miz Graff?”
I nodded. Since hearing about the neighbor lady and her missing rabbit appearing when Jackson had been taken, it had seemed probable that Lisa Durbin, a grandmother protecting her grandson, was an accomplice from the start. I hadn’t thought there’d be clues of a child present in the house 17 months later. I’d caved to the lark of breaking into the house. It would have been dangerous for the boy to be living with the Durbins or even visiting, knowing they had actively tried to get custody of the child since their son’s death. Yet we had found evidence that he’d been present at the house and not that long ago. I wondered if their grandson visited regularly. Except for the backpack, there had been nothing to show he’d been there since his abduction. Had they grown careless over time?
Along with the exhilaration of finding the backpack, I felt a deep relief for discovering (possibly discovering, I reminded myself) that Jackson Galon was alive.
Dante’s thoughts seemed to be tracking with mine. “Clara’s off Saturday noon till Monday noon. Long as no one’s looking, they could sneak a kid in or out. Backyard’s situated so no one can see in. Question is, who’s sneaking the kid in from wherever they got him stashed during the week?”
“I’ve some ideas about that,” I said.
When I didn’t continue, Dante sighed. “Yeah, keep it to yourself then. Gives me plausible deniability.”
“Your command of legal jargon fills me with trepidation.” I tapped the steering wheel. “Would you drop me off at the Circle of Orange? I want to have a quick word with someone before my appointment at 4:30.”
He sighed again, but started the car. “Suppose you want me to hang around and drop you somewheres else after that?”
Ignoring the fact that we’d just broken into a house, I said sweetly, “We should all be thankful that I’m keeping you too busy today to be arrested.”
I made two more phone calls as he navigated the 405 and 55 freeways. With Dante listening so attentively that he leaned into the passenger seat, I kept the calls short and cryptic. The first call I made to Bobbi, to get a home address for Colin Jackson. The second to Jimmy Bettaker to line up a ride for tomorrow.
Apparently, I wasn’t as cryptic as I’d thought. “Yo, Miz Graff, I can drive you tomorrow. Didn’t I back you fine today?”
I didn’t think he was serious till I saw real hurt in his expression. “Mr. Ruiz, you are always a superior partner in crime, but tomorrow’s work requires no special skills. I did promise Vice Principal Bettaker to use some of his students needing community service credit this week. I’m sure you understand.”
He glowered. “You might be in danger. Don’t like thinking about you alone out there with only a high school kid as backup.”
Surprised, I said: “Careful there, Dante. That sounded like you actually care about me.”
He spent the rest of the trip on the 22 freeway assuring me that wasn’t the case, that he still found me useful for criminal acts requiring science, and that he’d sorely miss the occasional felonies I offered like today’s if I should die suddenly. I cut off his musings as we drove north on Glassell with, “I need 15 minutes at Virgil’s. I’ll meet you at Starbucks afterwards.”
He brightened at the thought of Starbucks, and dropped me at the antique store with a cheery salute.
Before entering the musty store, I glanced south. I had a clear view of Mrs. Agra’s doggie daycare and the house across the street where Raggedy Ann may or may not live. I didn’t see Jackson’s former babysitter or the young red-haired, black-button-eyed neighbor in their respective yards.
The door buzzed as I pushed it open. An elderly customer sat in a wheelchair among the book stacks and dozed over a magazine. The young woman behind the counter said: “Welcome to Virgil’s Emporium. Let me know if I can help you find anything.”
“Antique combs?” I asked.
She slipped around the counter. “Right over here.”
On the other side of the cash register, a display of hair accessories covered the top of a chest of drawers with some finer pieces in a display case on the wall. “I’m looking for something for my aunt,” I said. “She likes pearls and old-fashioned silver pieces.”
Framed with the same strawberry blonde hair as her son’s, Tracy Locksley’s face creased with a smile that disappeared almost as soon as it appeared. “We’ve loads of silver combs with pearls. Victorian and vintage. Indonesian, English
, Balinese, Mexican, and Indian. Just combs or did you want to see barrettes too?”
“Just combs.” I cocked my head. “You sound like my ex-boyfriend. You’re not from Colorado, are you?”
Startled, this time her faint smile lingered. “I didn’t think we had an accent.”
“I’m something of a linguist, specializing in American regional accents.” Cresting a wave of outrageous fiction, I tapped my lips. “Do I hear rural, southern Colorado?”
She blinked. “Wow, you’re really good.”
I smiled modestly. “Thank you. May I see that comb, top shelf, far left end?”
She nodded, removing the key from the beaded lanyard around her neck and unlocked the case. She shot speculative glances at me as I examined the piece heavily encrusted with pearls of all garish sizes, the exact opposite of anything Aunt Ivy wore.
“Not this. Maybe something with turquoise?”
“Pearls and turquoise?” she asked dubiously.
“Just turquoise if you don’t have both,” I improvised furiously. “And it’d be an added bonus if it’s been mined from the Mesa Verde area of Colorado.”
My words caught her sharply while replacing the first comb in the case. Her hand froze. Casting me a suspicious glance, she locked the case and re-hung the lanyard around her neck. I wondered if I’d stretched coincidence too far.
“My family’s from a small town in Mesa Verde.” She slanted me another guarded look.
“Really?” I casually touched a feathered barrette on the top of the glass case. “My aunt likes the grain of turquoise from the caves there.”
Another complete fabrication. Aunt Hillary did like turquoise, but I doubted she’d been particular about its origin. I didn’t even know if turquoise had a grain.
I continued, “I had an ex, an ardent spelunker, who found a great chunk of greenish turquoise in Mesa Verde and gave it to her. She was ecstatic and about disowned me when we broke up.”
Only half listening to me, Tracy seemed pained by past memories. “You broke up?”
“Not about the turquoise, about him always being in a cave somewhere. They’re dangerous, you know.”
She flinched, and I waggled a finger. “Ah ha! You know what I mean, yes? People get hurt, people go missing, people die in caves all the time, right? You’d know coming from a place filled with them.”
She swallowed. “My brother liked caves.”
I slapped a hand across my mouth. “Have I put my foot in it? Did your brother die in a cave?”
“I don’t know. I mean he disappeared when he was ten. They think he fell into the river.”
“That’s so terrible! What a ghastly thing to happen.”
Dazed, she turned slightly, groping through the shelves behind her and brought out a tray of turquoise bracelets, rings, and chokers. No hair combs, but I wouldn’t draw her attention to that and interrupt the flow of memories.
“He liked caves,” I prodded gently.
She nodded numbly. “Couldn’t keep him out of them, always dragging campground kids, visitors, family into caves. My parents wouldn’t let him go alone so he was always hauling anyone who’d go with him. Strange that it was the riverbank where they’d found his shoes. I thought they’d find him in the caves.”
“Surely they looked …”
“Of course.” Her words hurried over mine, our thoughts crossing together, hers moving in a different direction. “But Mesa Verde was, as you said, full of caves, probably no one knows how many. They looked at the ones close to where we had lunch, but …” Her fragile hands twisted with such despair, I felt a twinge of guilt. Happily the brain damage allowed me to forge ahead.
“So awful, I just can’t imagine, but time heals, doesn’t it? Losing a brother is such a blow. Even more so for your parents, especially your mother. They say there’s nothing so terrible than for a mother to lose her child.”
If there are special places in hell for the worst of sinners, then what I’d just said would put me closest to the fire. She went so pale, I grabbed her arm, thinking her close to fainting. She pulled away.
“Who are you?” she whispered.
“Pardon me?”
Still shuddering, her voice hardened. “Are you a reporter?”
“Me? No, why …?”
Her gaze shifted to the woman in the wheelchair. Without looking at me, she pushed the tray of turquoise pieces back into the cabinet. “I need to see to the other customers. Let me know …” Then she fled without looking back.
I watched her reach for the magazines the woman handed her and take them to the cash register, too modern among the antiques. Through the window, I saw Dante holding a Starbucks Venti Something and headed for the door. I’d pushed too far, but I’d gotten what I wanted.
I now knew why someone abducted Jackson.
CHAPTER EIGHT
At the psychiatrist’s office
“Jo can see you now.”
One of the many things that bothered me about my psychiatrist was that she goes by the diminutive Jo. One’s doctors should be called by the appellative Doctor followed by a long last name of something either pretentious or foreign. Jo does not inspire confidence in her profession. Jo reminded me too much of Little Women and family angst.
In a spare Danish Modern office, naked of ornament and pictures on the wall, the furniture was also minimalist and uncomfortable. Jo, a woman about my age but looking ten years younger, moved forward with a warm smile and firm handshake.
“Pamela, how are we doing today?”
“We prefer Pam,” I said.
Her smile widened. “I’ll make a note. Please sit.”
I took the club chair near the window, not because it was a shade more comfortable than the tightly stuffed wing chair or the recliner near the door, but because it was as far from her teak chair as I could get.
I glanced at my watch, which she immediately noted on her pad. Did she make a note not to call me Pamela on our next visit? No. Quirks, fidgets and involuntary gestures were taken down with religious fervor. I think she was writing an article.
Ivy selected her, a recommendation from one of her many sources. Associated with a local university, Jo was much published, much quoted, and much footnoted. I rarely saw anyone in her waiting room, which could have been by design. I planned checking her reviews on Yelp, but hadn’t gotten around to it.
“I’m working a missing child case,” I began. I found it best to take control of these sessions immediately.
An eyebrow rose. “As a detective?”
“Yes,” I said. What did she think—the victim?
“Is this anything to do with your episode yesterday?”
I hated the fact that my family conspired to inform everyone of things they really didn’t need to know. Or friends. This sounded like something Bobbi would do.
“Bobbi called you?” I kept my voice calm.
“It’s not important…”
“Aunt Ivy?”
She spread her hands. “Pamela, it’s not important…”
“Jimmy Bettaker? It was Vice Principal Bettaker, wasn’t it? As usual, covering his…”
“Pamela.”
My eyes narrowed.
She amended: “Pam. We need to talk through this development. Can we do that now?”
“What’s to talk about? I’ve been nearly episode-free for months. I did my due diligence: saw the neurologist, had an MRI, am now talking to you, and stopped driving till I get the medical establishment’s approval. Nothing to talk about till I have the results of the scan.”
Again she raised her hand. You’d think as a teacher I’d appreciate it, but I listed it number four of the things that irritated me about Doctor Jo.
“All good things, Pamel … Pam. But I want to know how you feel about it.”
Soft sciences. You gotta love them, the time spent on non-essential, intangible transients. Wasted time on emotional folderol when I could be focusing on finding Jackson. Another artifact of the brain damage, th
at I was forced to have these sessions with Jo. Something to be endured and marked off, like an act of mental hygiene.
“I have no tiger scratches on my left leg.” I fixed my gaze on her.
Her eyebrows rose. “Do you believe …?”
I rolled my eyes. Getting a straight answer from a psychiatrist was a forlorn hope. “And my so-called accident was not at a circus.”
“Do you think …?”
“No.” I spoke emphatically, more to elicit something concrete from Jo than to reveal what I thought.
“Then,” she said carefully. “I can confirm you were not injured at a circus.”
Finally. One tiny admission about what happened 17 months ago. I swallowed. Not that it narrowed the field of possibilities much. I felt her gaze on me, and my thoughts shifted, fetters dropped from truth telling, and I felt the drive to lie. Falsehoods I could put to good use.
“I feel …” I used the word “feel” to arrest her attention. She stilled in her teak chair, pen positioned on the pad.
I leaned forward. “I have a friend,” I said. “Do you know what I mean?”
She cocked her head. “I think so. Please continue.”
“This friend …” I winked when I said “friend.” “She was involved in an accident, one so disastrous that no remains were found.”
Jo frowned. “You’re not talking about something that’s already happened, right? Or is it something you’re considering doing?”
“My friend,” I said. “Something she’s thinking of doing. Lost her job, lost friends, but worst of all, the guy she loves needs saving. And the only way she can help him is to disappear and take him with her.”
“Boyfriend?” Jo shifted in her chair uneasily. “What did he do that …”
“Not important,” I said. “I’m talking about my friend, not him.”
I remembered thinking earlier today about those that had taken advantage of 911 and Hurricane Katrina, the ones who had disappeared and created new lives elsewhere. Who would I take to that place of starting over? Who needed sanctuary most? That old boyfriend Harry, a DEA agent, badly injured last year, the shooter never found? My brother Frank, threatened often for his fight against human trafficking, nearly run down last month while rescuing a child at an Inland Valley truck stop? Dante in the Dead before 30 bucket?
Jack Fell Down: Deluded Detective Book One (Deluded Detective Series 1) Page 5
