Vanishing Point

by Marcia Muller

  After I’d declined his offer of a soda, Magruder took me to a small balcony overlooking a courtyard with a swimming pool and colorful plantings. The weather here on the coast was as clear as it had been inland, the air balmy. We sat at a small wrought-iron table with an umbrella tilted against the sun.

  He said, “You told me on the phone that I’ve been recommended as an authority on Morro Bay. May I ask by whom?”

  “Ira Lighthill.”

  He smiled. “Mr. Puli. I’ve called him that for years, since before I knew his true name. Breeds those ropy-haired dogs. Hear he makes good money at it.”

  “I suppose he does.”

  “And how did my name come up?”

  I explained about my investigation and my conversation with Lighthill. “He said he was surprised that you hadn’t noticed Laurel Greenwood when she left the park, since he’d seen you on the porch of your house earlier that afternoon.”

  “Drinking on the porch, he probably said. And it’s a fact; that’s what I did in those days. Lighthill tell you I wrote a column for the little local rag?”

  “Yes.”

  “I studied journalism in college. Always wanted to be a reporter. But I ended up back here where I was born, running a business- Hell, you don’t want to hear this.”

  “I do. Please, go on.” I meant it; I’ve always been interested in how people end up doing what they do, probably because when I was in college, I never would have envisioned myself as a private investigator.

  “Well, I graduated from Berkeley and I had a wife and a child on the way. There was the possibility of a job with the UPI, but before I heard on that I got a call from a friend who was starting up a self-storage business here-the standard units for people’s extra crap, plus little garages for boats, RVs, or cars. He offered me a partnership, so what could I say? I came back, and when he wanted out a few years later, I had enough money saved to buy both the land and the business.

  “But I wasn’t happy. So I left the business in the wife’s hands-Amy was the brains of the operation, anyway-and got this little job writing the column. Got full of myself, too, thinking being Mr. Morro Bay was some big deal. But underneath I knew it wasn’t, so I started gathering most of my material in the bars or from my front porch with a fifth of Scotch for company. Wasn’t until Amy threatened to leave me that I stopped drinking.” He smiled wryly. “Of course, after that the column went to hell because I couldn’t tap into my usual sources, and then the paper went belly-up.”

  “But you were still doing the column when Laurel Greenwood vanished?”

  “Yeah. I was on the front porch that afternoon, and I wouldn’t’ve missed her if she’d passed the house. I was the kind of drunk who reaches a certain level of mellowness and can go on for hours-thinking as clearly as if I were stone cold sober. At least until I passed out when I went to bed.”

  “So you remember that afternoon?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Will you describe it for me?”

  “Sure. It was sunny, like today-”

  “Herm? Is this Ms. McCone?”

  A tiny, sun-browned woman with white-blonde hair stood in the door to the balcony. Blue tank top, khaki shorts, great legs even though she must be well over sixty.

  Magruder didn’t immediately reply, although his lips twitched with annoyance, so the woman held out her hand to me and said, “I’m Amy Magruder.”

  We shook, and she took a seat at the table. “Herm, were you able to help her?”

  “I’m trying.” Stiffly spoken; she’d intruded. Magruder no longer experienced many situations where he was the center of attention, and he probably resented sharing.

  I smiled at his wife, then turned back to him. “As you were saying…”

  “What were you saying?” Amy asked.

  “I told you that Ms. McCone is investigating the Laurel Greenwood disappearance-”

  “Oh, yes, poor woman.” She turned to me. “You know she was last seen at the waterfront park near our old house?”

  “Yes, Amy, she knows that. As I was about to say, Ms. McCone, I saw a number of people: My barber. Several of the local fishermen leaving a little bar they used to frequent before it was torn down for a souvenir shop. Tourists, of course. Hordes of tourists, even back then.”

  “And there was Cindy. Don’t forget Cindy.”

  Magruder gave his wife a long, measured look. “My wife’s archenemy, leaving the bar with a man who wasn’t her husband.”

  “And you wouldn’t even mention it in your column.”

  “Had no place there.”

  “Look what she did to Dave afterwards, running off with-”

  “Water under the bridge, Amy.”

  This was obviously an old, ongoing argument between the two of them, and I wanted no part of it.

  “Anyone else, Mr. Magruder?” I asked.

  “A couple of waitresses from the seafood joint. A woman who sold shell jewelry to a little shop that went out of business the next year. The paperboy and-”

  “There was that customer of ours,” his wife interrupted. “You mentioned her two days later when I told you she took off with a week paid up on her rent and didn’t even leave a forwarding address for the refund.”

  “Who?”

  “You know, what’s-her-name. The pretty one who kept her van in number one-oh-two.”

  “Oh yeah, her.” Magruder narrowed his eyes in thought. “Came out of the park, like they said the Greenwood woman did, walked past me, and went up the hill toward the self-storage yard. What was her name?”

  Amy Magruder shook her head. “I don’t remember. Don’t even recall much about her, except she was pretty. A youngish woman, with red hair.”

  Magruder said, “I never saw her up close like Amy did.” He turned to his wife. “You sure you don’t remember what she looked like?”

  “Well, she was tallish and slender. But her hair-it was so beautiful that it was all you really noticed. Long, silky, and bright red.”

  I felt a prickling at the base of my spine.

  Josie Smith: drop-dead gorgeous with all that bright red hair.

  But Josie had been dead a year-

  “Mr. Magruder,” I said, “is there any way you could find out the woman’s name? Access old business records, for instance?”

  “Is this important?”

  “It could be. Very.”

  He looked at his wife, and she nodded.

  “Well, I suppose I could. But it’ll take a couple of hours. We keep the records at a self-storage unit in Cambria.” He smiled. “I guess you’d call it ironic-the owner of the place is the guy who bought us out on the cheap and then sold the land for big money to a goddamn developer. Now there’re tourists gobbling cheese and sucking up wine where we once had our little business.”

  As I was walking back to my rental car after leaving the Magruders’ condo, my cell phone rang. Hy. I hadn’t spoken with him since late Monday night.

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “Morro Bay. You?”

  “El Centro.”

  A desert town some seventy-five miles east of San Diego. RKI had a camp near there, where they trained their operatives in the techniques of executive protection. New employees did intensive classroom work, practiced evasionary techniques-otherwise known as car chases in clunkers-underwent rigorous practice on the firing range, engaged in paintball wars, simulated emergency field medical procedures, and held mock hostage negotiations. Since 9/11, executive protection had become one of the hottest commodities in the security field-and also the most dangerous. The possibility of death by bullet, knife, bomb, or hand-to-hand combat was a very real on-the-job hazard, and RKI made sure their operatives possessed optimal survival skills.

  “Teaching a class?” I asked. Hy was RKI’s top hostage negotiator and often gave seminars at the desert facility.

  “More like troubleshooting.” His tone precluded my asking anything more; the firm operated on a need-to-know basis, and unless the
y hired me as a subcontractor-which they twice had-their operations were none of my business.

  I felt a prickle of unease, remembering Gage Renshaw’s words to me at the party at Touchstone: We’ve got a situation coming up that’s gonna require all our resources. See that your man’s ready for it.

  “Looks like I’ll be here a couple of days,” Hy added, “so I thought I’d check in with you. I’m hoping to get up to the city over the weekend. How’s your case going?”

  “It’s coming together.”

  He didn’t press me either; certain aspects of my investigations were also confidential, and he knew he’d hear whatever I could tell him when we saw each other. We talked a few minutes more, tentatively deciding that if he wrapped up his work there and I wrapped up my work here, I’d fly to El Centro and pick him up on Friday. Then we ended the call, and I started the car and headed for Cayucos.

  Jacob Ziff was home and seemed pleased to see me. He took me to the chairs by the big windows of his office and, as before, offered me coffee, which this time I declined. When we were seated, he asked, “Did the police find out who shot at you last weekend?”

  “No.” I shook my head, let a silence build.

  Ziff frowned. “They have no idea who did it?”

  “None, but I have a couple of suspects in mind.”

  “Oh?”

  Again I made use of silence. Ziff shifted in his chair. I took a small notepad from my bag, paged through it. My last week’s grocery list, a reminder to make a dental appointment, a number of items to pick up at the hardware store, a list of supplies we needed at Touchstone, a note to add a friend’s new phone number to my address book, and a couple of pages of scribbling about a potential client an acquaintance had referred to me.

  “Here it is,” I said. “On Saturday night, you told me that you were at the bar at the Oaks Lodge when the police arrived.”

  “That’s right.”

  “That’s right-that’s what you told me? Or that’s right-that’s where you were?”

  “I don’t understand.” But he did; a flush was spreading up from the neck of his polo shirt.

  “After you left, I spoke with the bartender. He said you weren’t there.”

  “Maybe you spoke with a different bartender. The shifts change-”

  “He’d been on duty since eight.”

  “Well, then, he’s mistaken. I was there.”

  “You were there two hours before the police arrived, but left. Where did you go?”

  Ziff compressed his lips.

  “Perhaps to the courtyard, to choose your vantage point? Or to the house phone to call me and pretend to be the desk clerk? Or to wait in the shadows with a handgun?”

  “No! I had nothing to do with that!”

  “I didn’t think you did.”

  He blinked. “Then what-?”

  “I just wanted to get your reaction, to make sure I hadn’t misjudged you. Where were you, Jacob?”

  He got up, moved to the window wall, and pressed his hand to the glass, looking out at the sea. “It’s none of your business.”

  “Maybe not mine, but if I mention your lie to Rob Traverso at the PRPD, he’ll make it his business.”

  “All right!” Ziff turned, hands balling into fists. “I was in one of the guest rooms. With a woman friend. A married woman friend who has a great deal to lose if our relationship were made public.”

  A simple explanation, most likely a true one. “Thank you. That information will remain confidential, but I do have a few additional questions.” I looked pointedly at the chair that he had vacated.

  He relaxed somewhat, went back, and sat down. “I don’t know why I should continue to talk with with you,” he said, but his words lacked conviction.

  “I think you do. Both you and I suspect who the shooter was.”

  Ziff spread his hands on his thighs, looked down at them. “Kev Daniel,” he said after a moment. “He told me he arrived at the lodge at the same time the cops did, but I saw him go through the bar to the patio right before I went to meet my friend. And later, when I went back to the lobby, he came in from the direction of the far guest wing.”

  “Where the shooter stood. Does Daniel own a handgun?”

  “Maybe. He’s a hunter, has a number of rifles.”

  “A marksman, then. When did you tell him about me?”

  “… Shortly after you left here on Friday. He called to confirm our Saturday appointment, and I was jazzed at having met a real-life private investigator, so I talked about you.”

  “What was his reaction?”

  Ziff thought. “Quiet, at first. I thought he was focused on something else, maybe checking his calendar or his e-mail, but then he started asking a lot of questions.”

  “Such as…?”

  “What you’d asked me, what I’d told you. Where you were from, where you were staying-which you hadn’t told me. Then he got off the phone really fast, said he had another call.”

  “That article in the San Luis paper about me reopening the Greenwood case-did you read it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Didn’t it make you wonder who the anonymous source was?”

  “It did. I thought about asking Mike Rosenfeld-I know him, he did a profile on me once-but I knew he wouldn’t tell me.”

  Now, how often does a bit of serendipity like that drop into one’s lap?

  I said, “Why don’t you call him now? Explain that I need to know and promise him that when the Greenwood case breaks, he’ll get an exclusive interview with me.”

  After an initial hesitation, Mike Rosenfeld caved in to the offer of an exclusive and confirmed to Ziff that it was Kev Daniel who had told him about me. Ziff put me on the phone, and Rosenfeld repeated what he’d said.

  I asked, “Did Daniel say why he was giving you the information?”

  “Kev and I are drinking buddies. He feeds me a lot of gossip about the winemaking crowd; sometimes I can find a good story in it. This time-well, the Greenwood disappearance has always interested me; I’m a Cold Case junkie-you know, the TV show. I thought if I publicized your investigation, someone might come forward with information that would help you solve it. I wanted to talk with you, but Daniel didn’t know where you were staying, and your office wouldn’t give out any information. It was getting close to press time, so I just filed the story. I suppose I should’ve waited, but…”

  “That’s all right, Mr. Rosenfeld. In a roundabout way, your story did help me. And I hope to be able to tell you how very soon.”

  When I broke the connection, I saw Ziff frowning at me. “Why d’you suppose Kev planted that story?” he asked.

  “I’m pretty sure he was the biker Laurel Greenwood was seen with, and I recently found proof that her disappearance was voluntary. One thing that occurs to me is that Kev knows Laurel is alive and was trying to get a message to her.”

  “But why would Kev think he could reach her by way of the San Luis paper? If she’s alive, she’s not living around here; someone would’ve spotted her long ago.”

  “That’s true. But a lot of people subscribe to a local paper after they leave an area, and Laurel would have a vested interest in knowing if the investigation into her disappearance were still active, or if the police and sheriff’s department had developed any new leads.”

  “Why would he want to warn Laurel?”

  “For the same reason he wanted to scare me off. Now that he’s in with the winemaking crowd here, he wouldn’t want his involvement in the Greenwood case to come out.”

  Ziff closed his eyes, brows knitting. “You know, Kev could’ve been the man with Laurel. Same body type and hair color, anyway. What was his relationship to her, exactly?”

  “That’s a little hazy right now, but you’ll find out when you read Mike Rosenfeld’s exclusive.”

  When I left Ziff’s house, it was time to meet with Herm Magruder at the self-storage place in Cambria, where his old business files were kept. The facility was on the northern edge o
f the town, and before I reached it I drove through an area that was lined with upscale shops, restaurants, and motels, and clogged with cars, buses, and RVs. Slow-moving throngs of tourists crowded the sidewalks. The gateway to Hearst Castle was in full moneymaking mode, and the merchants must be enjoying every second of it.

  Magruder was waiting for me in front of his self-storage unit, leaning on a red Jeep Cherokee and talking with a slender, sandy-haired man. When I pulled up, the man walked off, raising a hand in farewell.

  “That’s the son of a bitch who made a fortune off my land,” Magruder called to me as I got out of the car.

  The man gave him the finger over his shoulder and kept going.

  “You can’t help but like a guy with his chutzpah,” Magruder added. “And besides, Amy and I made out okay on the deal. Money doesn’t matter all that much to us, so long as we can keep the motor home in good running order and get away to fish and buy Mexican crap a few times a year.”

  “Sounds like you’re enjoying your retirement.”

  “Yeah, we are.” He picked up a folder that was lying on the Jeep’s hood, handed it to me. “The records you wanted.”

  “Thanks.” I opened it, examined the two sheets inside. A photocopy of a canceled check drawn on an account at the Haight-Ashbury branch of Bank of America, dated September 1982, and a rental agreement for a single-vehicle garage at Magruder’s facility, dated the same. The check was for a full year’s rent. The signatures on the document and the check were the same: Josephine Smith.

  Josie, who by the time the agreement was signed, had been dead three months.

  “I can give you the same room you had last week, Ms. McCone.”

  I smiled at the desk clerk and said, “I’m surprised you’re letting me stay here again. That incident on Saturday night was the wrong kind of publicity for the lodge.”

  “Not your fault. And I guess you don’t know small towns-any publicity is good. Business in the bar and restaurant is up ten percent; people all want to hear firsthand about what happened.” He reached beneath the desk and pulled out a few message slips. “These came in this afternoon.”