"I'm not from the school!" I shouted. "I'm here about a girl who was kidnapped!"
Marilyn, nearly to the bus stop, glanced over her shoulder at me. The little old lady got on the bus. The driver had his hand on the crank that closed the door. Twenty yards away. Since the kid didn't stop at first, I thought that was it, she was gone, but then she finally slowed. Looked back at me.
I slowed, too, gasping to catch my breath, but forcing myself to walk calmly. The driver stared at her, waiting, the rumbling engine so loud I could barely hear Marilyn when she spoke.
"Who are you?" she demanded.
"Not your enemy," I said. "Just give me a second."
"No trick?"
"No trick," I said.
She frowned, obviously skeptical, but the bus driver had obviously had enough. He slammed the door and drove away, clouds of diesel fumes pluming in the frigid air. The woman in the bloody dress watched me from a rear seat. She sat next to a young man about her age who had the kind of dead-to-the-world face I often saw on people who had endured terrible tragedies. Or created them.
Marilyn, edging her way along the opaque glass bus stop enclosure, glared at me. "I'll scream rape if you try to pull something," she said.
"I just want to ask you some questions."
"What kind of questions?"
The sun ducked behind some clouds, the light graying, the temperature dropping just that fast. I looked at the kid, so skimpily dressed, trying so hard to be an adult when she had all the time in the world for that later, and I felt sad for her. I smelled something foul, something rotten, coming from the overflowing garbage can next to the bus stop. I spotted a coffee shop across the street, the local kind, with blinking red Christmas lights in the window that were probably there all year round, and I nodded toward it.
"It's cold and it stinks out here," I said. "How about we talk over hot chocolates across the street?"
"I don't like hot chocolate. It's too fattening."
"Okay. Something else, then."
"I'll have a Diet Coke."
"I can do that."
"This is about that girl who was kidnapped?"
"That's right."
"You a cop?"
"No, a private investigator."
"Wow. That's cool. I don't know why you want to talk to me, though. I didn't know her or anything."
"Well, why don't you let me ask a few questions and see what comes of it. If nothing else, you get a free Diet Coke."
We walked across the street. She still had the rabbit fear in her eyes, the jittery look of someone who might bolt at any moment, but it didn't take her too long to warm up to me. The inside of the coffee shop was all dark-stained wood panels and corkboards covered with flyers for indie bands and slam poetry readings, French music playing over the speakers, hardly anyone there. By the time we reached the counter, and Marilyn saw I had no nefarious plan, she noticeably relaxed.
She asked who hired me, and I told her the family, not wanting to complicate matters by bringing John's death into it. She asked how I'd gotten into this line of work, and I told her how I'd been a cop once but this seemed like a better fit. When we sat at the table, me with a big porcelain mug of coffee, her with a clear glass of Diet Coke, she had not only relaxed, she was outright flirting with me. Batting those dark eyelashes. Leaning forward so that her low-cut T-shirt gave me a clear view of her ample cleavage. It made me sad, how desperate she was for a man's attention, especially one more than twice her age.
"So you have a gun and everything?" she asked.
"And everything."
"Cool. You know, you're kind of cute. You got a girlfriend?"
"I do."
"Oh. Well, I got a boyfriend anyway. He's not really a long-term thing, though. Just something for now. I don't think I'm ready for anything serious. It's time to play the field, you know."
"That's very self-aware of you."
"Huh?"
I rotated the mug on the table, cupping the hot porcelain with both hands, letting it warm my numb fingers. "Never mind. Aren't you fourteen?"
She rolled her eyes. "You're not going to do that thing Uncle Jack does, are you? Make me feel bad for being so mature. I can't help it, you know. I just kinda ended up with this body. I'm more mature than my years."
We could have gone back and forth like this for quite a while, and maybe, if I tried very hard, I could get her to see how fleeting and precious childhood was, but I didn't have time. I took out my phone, brought up a picture of Olivia, and showed it to Marilyn. "Recognize her?"
She squinted at it, then reached across the table and took hold of my hand, pulling the phone closer, absurdly close, really, and holding my hand so long I felt the sweat on her fingers.
"Nope," she said.
"Nothing, huh?"
"Don't know her."
"Her name's Olivia Ray."
"Yeah, I think somebody told me that."
"Okay. You mind letting go of my hand?"
"What? Oh, yeah, sorry."
She let it go, but even as she did so, she stroked her thumb across my fingers, an intimate gesture. She smiled. I felt sick. I wondered if she was even conscious of how overt her sexuality was. I thought about the woman who must have been her mother, sitting there on the doorstep in her underwear and smoking away eternity. How long before Marilyn joined her?
"All right," I said, "I want to ask another couple of questions, and they're going to sound kind of weird. Just bear with me, okay?"
"Mmm. Sounds kinky."
"Not those kinds of questions. You say you don't know Olivia. But have you had any weird dreams lately?"
"Huh?"
"Anything different in your dreams."
"No."
"Have any animals acted differently around you?"
"Wow, that is a weird question."
"Please, just answer it."
"No. All we have is a cat, and she's fat and lazy and doesn't do anything all day except sit in the window."
"How about birds?"
"We don't have any birds."
"No," I said, "what I mean is, have you noticed any birds outside, maybe crows or something, acting strangely? You know, like a whole bunch gathering on the tree and seeming like they're all staring at you?"
"No. What did you say your name was again?"
"Myron Vale."
"And you're, like, a normal private investigator, right?"
I took a sip of my coffee. I realized I hadn't taken a sip before now, and it was already lukewarm. "Well," I said, "I guess I'm as normal as any person can expected to be in my … particular line of work. I told you these would be weird questions. Just bear with me a little bit more. Have you felt like you've forgotten anything lately? I mean, do you feel like you should remember something, being somewhere or doing something at a particular place or time, and it just comes up blank?"
"No." She glanced at the door. I got the sense she was measuring the distance, debating about what kind of lead she could get on me. All that flirtatious behavior was gone. "No, nothing like that."
"Any strange, nicely dressed women entering your life out of the blue?"
"No. Look, I really gotta get going."
"I understand."
"It's nothing personal. I hope you find this kid. It's just, I got homework to do and stuff."
"I'm sure you do. Can I give you my number, just in case you think of something?"
She shrugged. I wrote it on a napkin and handed it to her. She folded it and shoved it into the pocket of her vest.
"All right," she said. "Bye, I guess."
"Bye, Marilyn. And you know, you can call me if you just want someone to talk to sometime. That'd be fine."
She gave me a curious look, as if trying to read my intention, but I didn't know what my intention was. I wasn't trying to put a move on her, that was for sure. I just wanted to help her. Her forehead wrinkling in contemplation, she slid off the chair and started for the door. I thought that was it, another empty lea
d, and I felt the usual sinking depression when I knew I was no closer to solving a case. And with this particular case, the depression came faster and darker. But then Marilyn stopped with her hand on the doorknob and looked back at me.
"You know," she said, "all these weird questions, you probably would have gotten along with my grandmother."
"What's that?"
"She was a psychic. Or at least, that's what she said. She even had a shop and everything. Telling fortunes, talking to dead people, you know, that sort of thing. At least that's what Mom told me. I never knew her."
"Interesting," I said, trying to muster the feeling behind the word and failing. I didn't have energy to make chitchat.
"Yeah, you probably would have gotten along with her real well."
"Good to know."
"She died right before I was born. I was even named after her. She went by Mary, not Marilyn. Mary Rittles."
Chapter 10
It was going on five o'clock when I parked the Prius across the street from the little yellow house on Lincoln Street, not far from both the Marquam Bridge and OMSI.
Night had fallen, the sky a somber shade of purple. Phone and electrical wires crisscrossed above the mixture of residential and industrial buildings like a spider's web, a starker black that would soon be invisible in the darkening sky. The house's front window was lit and I saw the profile of a middle-aged woman with curly hair, her glasses glowing blue from what must have been a computer monitor. I doubled-checked the address I'd written down from my hour at the public library. It matched. The wooden sign out front also matched what I'd learned when I'd punched in that address in Google: Dorothy Palpin, Bookkeeping Services and Tax Preparation.
Judging by how much snow coated the silver Honda CRV parked in the narrow driveway, enough that I doubted the vehicle had moved since the first snow had fallen over twenty-fours earlier, my guess was that Ms. Palpin not only worked in the house, she lived in it, too.
I killed the Prius's silent engine and watched. I didn't see anyone other than the woman. No other cars were parked out front. There was a little attic window, but judging by the size of the area under the roof, I doubted it was a useable room. It was a long shot, really, thinking Marilyn's dead grandmother would still be hanging around the house.
I debated what to do. Go talk to the bookkeeper, sit and observe for a while, or just call it a night? Back at the cafe, after I'd gotten over my initial surprise at Marilyn's disclosure—during which I'd watched her walk out the door with a shrug—I'd quickly tracked her down and ferreted out more information. Unfortunately, she didn't have an address, but she did remember her own mother parking in front of the house about five or six years earlier, not long before she died herself, and telling Marilyn about all the fun she'd had living there until her mom had one of her frequent seizures and this time didn't wake up.
The reason Marilyn had remembered the basic location was that the point of the trip had been a visit to OMSI, the children's science museum on the waterfront, and she remembered that they'd only driven a few blocks from the house before they'd arrived. I'd used that information to dig through twenty-year-old phone books at the public library until I'd found a listing for Rose City Psychic at this address. I'd checked the property records, and sure enough, the building had been owned by Marilyn Rittles before she died. It seemed she'd owed quite a bit of money, so the state sold the building and dispersed what little equity there was to the creditors.
There was something about that attic window. A thick curtain blocked it, and maybe something else behind it, like a piece of furniture, but I thought I could just barely make out a faint yellow glow. Then, after only five minutes of watching, I saw something even stranger. A man in a business suit left the building and walked east on Lincoln. This by itself wouldn't have been unusual—men in suits were just the sort of people you'd expect to leave a bookkeeper's office—except that the man had not opened the door. He had walked through it.
Five minutes after that, an old woman dressed in a thick fur coat, the kind only rich people who wanted to know you were rich wore, entered the building—also walking right through the door.
The woman at the computer never moved.
Since I couldn't wait her out, I'd have to do my investigating with her in the building. I opened the glove box and retrieved the broken barcode reader I'd picked up at a Salvation Army thrift shop a few years earlier. It was big and blocky, with a gun-like handle, a tiny screen, and lots of little buttons. Those buttons could be used for anything, I'd found, anything at all.
When she answered the door, I tapped the scanner.
"Methane gas," I said.
"Excuse me?" she said.
She was smartly dressed in a charcoal pantsuit, a red scarf around her neck that matched the color of her Santa earrings. She squinted at me over the tops of her reading glasses.
"Sorry, ma'am," I said, "I'm always cutting to the chase and forgetting to introduce myself. I'm Larry O'Henry with DEQ. We've had some disturbing reports of methane gas buildups in this area, and I've been sent out to ensure that all homes and businesses are in the clear. Mind if I look around? It will only take a little while, and I'll be out of your hair soon enough."
"Methane gas?" she said. She sounded worried.
"That's right, ma'am. I'm sure your house is fine, but we just need to make sure. You're the owner, correct? Dorothy Palpin?"
"That's right."
"How long have you been here, Ms. Palpin?"
"About five years. An architect had it before me. I rented it from him at first, after he upgraded to a bigger location, then he sold it to me."
"Have you noticed anything unusual while you've been here?"
"No. What do you mean?"
"Well, methane gas can cause all sorts of issues. Strange noises. Even hallucinations."
"Oh heavens."
"I even had one person exposed to a methane leak say they saw ghosts. You never saw anything like that, did you?"
"Oh no. Nothing like that. The house has been totally fine. A little creaky, I guess, but that's normal for an old house, right?"
"Could be, could be. Can I come in?"
I tapped the scanner again. She nodded and stepped aside, her face slightly pinched now, the worry weighing on her. The brief entryway off the porch was painted a similar yellow as the exterior, the walls decorated with pictures of famous Oregon landmarks: Mt. Hood. Smith Rock. Crater Lake. I passed a pair of green wingback chairs, an end table adorned with copies of People and National Geographic, then in the office I'd seen outside, a big oak desk dominating the room surrounded by oak paneling of a similar stain. She didn't have one monitor, but three, and the desk was covered in mountains of paper and folders.
She led me past a bathroom and through a door that led into a kitchen and into the area where she lived, two bedrooms and a full bathroom. I didn't see the ghost I'd spotted entering the house earlier. I asked her if there was a basement and she said there wasn't, just a crawlspace. I asked her if there was an attic and she nodded.
"Yes," she said. "I haven't been up there in a long time, though. There's a lot of junk up there from when I got divorced. I haven't had the heart to go through it."
"How do you get up there?"
"There's a pull-down ladder thing in the second bedroom."
"Mind if I take a look?"
"Really? You need to go up there? I have a lot of junk in that room. It'd be hassle to get to it."
"Well," I said, doing my best to both look and sound like this was a serious matter we were dealing with here, "I guess we could let it slide. Your house is fine so far. There's probably no issue up there. It'd only take me a minute to tell you for sure, but as long as you're fine with the risk…"
"Oh, okay," she said, "I guess you better check. I'd worry about it constantly if you didn't."
She was right about the room. It was a minefield of boxes, bicycles without wheels, plastic totes, an old sewing machine, stacks of magazines,
and lots of other junk. I saw the rope hanging from the ceiling in the corner, where there was an outline of what must have been the drop-down stairs. Before she'd even moved one box, I thought I heard voices upstairs, soft but distinct. I looked at Dorothy.
"What?" she said, clearly not hearing anything.
"Just thinking about the last house where I went up in the attic. Lots of rats."
"Rats!"
"You better let me go up by myself."
"Oh, that's fine. Just—just be careful."
I started moving some of the junk, as Dorothy's desire to do so had apparently just vanished. "Don't worry about me, ma'am. I'm a trained professional."
A few minutes later, I'd cleared enough space to pull down the ladder. It came down with a creak and a cloud of dust. I gaped into the darkness, listening for voices. I heard none. Dorothy told me there was a pull cord up there for a light, but she wasn't sure if it worked. I tested the stairs. They crackled a bit under my weight, but they held. A few steps up, I saw the white string dangling in the darkness, and gave it a little yank. An exposed light bulb attached to one of the beams flickered on, casting limp light on the edges of cardboard boxes and dust hanging in the air.
Cautiously, I stuck my head into the gap. Dorothy was also right about the attic being packed. Old suitcases, an ironing board, some filing boxes—I couldn't see far, but I got the sense of a much larger space beyond my immediate area, toward the front of the house. I smelled dust burning on the bulb.
"Hmm," I said.
"Hmm?" Dorothy said.
"Rat droppings."
"Oh no."
"Oh yes. I'd suggest you wait in the other room. It's possible some rats might try to escape down the ladder while I'm up here disturbing things. If you stay in here, I can't guarantee your safety."
Poor Dorothy didn't need any more invitation to vacate the area. I climbed into the attic, navigating past more boxes, a stack of plastic lawn chairs, a mini fridge, two wedding albums, lots of other junk, everything stacked to the low ceiling, everything smelling slightly musty. When I'd gotten beyond the reach of the bulb, I used my cell phone flashlight, heading for the front window. A large framed picture of a horse ranch and a rack of dresses and jackets wrapped in plastic created a cordoned-off area.
The Ghost, the Girl, and the Gold Page 11
