U Is for Undertow

by Sue Grafton

  Friday afternoon, April 15, 1988

  Con Dolan’s house was on a narrow side street on the east side of town. It hadn’t occurred to me that he might have information to share. Cheney Phillips hadn’t mentioned him, and since Dolan was retired, I had no idea he had a hand in the case. I parked in front of a large brown clapboard bungalow with long horizontal lines, open porches, mullioned windows, and widely overhung eaves. Dolan came to the door, cigarette in hand, wearing bedroom slippers, baggy chinos, and a T-shirt under a flannel robe cinched at the waist like an overcoat. He motioned me into the house and I followed. I’d never had occasion to visit him at home, and I was making a secret study of the place.

  “Sorry I went off on you,” he murmured.

  “Think nothing of it. I didn’t,” I said, netting a smile.

  Dolan’s housemate, Stacey Oliphant, sat in the living room with a small battery-operated fan that he directed at Dolan’s burning cigarette. This place couldn’t have been more different from Stacey’s rented apartment, which I’d visited when he was being treated for cancer. He’d been told he was dying and he was in the process of vacating the premises. I’d found him disposing of the bulk of his possessions and packing up the rest for delivery to the Salvation Army. I walked in on him shredding family photographs, which made me shriek. It seemed sacrilegious to destroy the images of his kinfolk and I’d begged him to give the pictures to me. I didn’t know most of my relatives anyway so his would serve. I adopted them as my own, the odd assortment of unknown faces from times gone by.

  Once he’d rid himself of all the paraphernalia, his intention was to kill himself before the cancer put him in a position where he had no choice. Con Dolan was vigorously opposed to the plan, in part because his wife, Grace, had taken a similar route before the disease had a chance to mow her down. But Stacey had been given a reprieve, which took the subject off the agenda for the foreseeable future. In the meantime, he and Dolan ended up sharing a place, which suited them both, even with the occasional snit.

  The year before, they’d invited me to work a cold case with them since both were limited by physical ills. At the time, I’d introduced Stacey to junk food, which he’d never eaten in his life. Thereafter, I tagged along with him as he went from McDonald’s to Wendy’s to Arby’s to Jack in the Box. My crowning achievement was introducing him to the In-N-Out burger. His appetite increased, he regained some of the weight he’d lost during his cancer treatment, and his enthusiasm for life returned. Doctors were still scratching their heads.

  Dolan took my blazer and hung it on a hat rack, which was already decked out with a number of Victorian bonnets. We went down two low steps into the living room. The floor plan was open, with differences in elevation defining the rooms. If there were doors at all, they came in glass-paned pairs so that each area could be expanded to include those adjacent. The entire interior was dark-stained wood, including the walls, woodwork, cornices, window frames, and low ceiling. The furnishings were quirky. In addition to track lighting, Tiffany lamps were set on marble columns. The chairs were thrift-shop finds. The paintings looked like originals, not necessarily masterpieces, but an interesting mix of abstracts, landscapes, and portraits, in styles that ranged from photorealism to impressionistic to Grandma Moses crude.

  The glimpse I had of the kitchen showed a 1920s stove and a kitchen window filled with a display of Depression glass on clear glass shelves. The measuring cups, vases, candlesticks, bowls, and pitchers cast a soft green light onto the linoleum floor. Headless mannequins in vintage clothing stood here and there, like guests who’d arrived early for a party. Everything smelled like cigarette smoke. Stacey sat in the living room in what looked like a Stickley chair. He, too, was in his robe, and his ginger hair was covered by a bright green watch cap. He pointed at the fan. “I’m doing this in self-defense,” he said. “Sit, sit. Where’s your manners, Dolan? Get the girl a beer. We have some catching up to do.”

  I set my shoulder bag on the floor and sat down. “Water’s fine. A beer will put me to sleep.”

  Dolan went into the kitchen and came back with a coffee cup of tap water that he set on the arm of my chair, which was wide enough to serve as a desk.

  I glanced from one to the other. “Don’t you two get dressed anymore?” Stacey smiled. “Sure, sometimes. You know, if we’re going out and like that. We don’t get gussied up for company. We’re too old.”

  “Quit that,” I said, waving the idea aside. “I take it you’re doing okay? You look good.”

  “I’m better than I have any reason to hope. I figure my days are numbered, but so far, so good. We’ve been taking a lot of trips. We drove all the way up the coast and fished every chance we got.”

  Dolan said, “We also drank a lot of beer and ate all the crap we could find. Stacey’s health is getting better and mine’s getting worse. Last time I had blood work done, my cholesterol was through the roof. I cut back on cigarettes and booze. That’s the best I can do.”

  “So tell me about your house. I don’t know what I pictured, but it wasn’t this. It looks like a Frank Lloyd Wright.”

  “That’s everybody’s guess, but it was actually an architect passing himself off as Wright’s brother, Fred. Last name was the same but there was otherwise no relationship. People took one look at his portfolio and jumped to the wrong conclusion. He made a point of denying the connection, but he did it with a wink and a nudge, claiming he’d had a falling out with a ‘partner’ of his, who’d lifted most of his ideas. After that, he’d mention Frank Lloyd Wright’s name in a tone that implied phone calls were passing back and forth between the two, more Frank asking his advice than the other way around.”

  “Clever,” I said.

  “Well, he made it work for him. His ploy was to ask them to list their favorites among Wright’s houses, and then he’d draw up plans that borrowed the same elements. Since his prices were low, prospective home owners felt they were getting the real deal at half the cost.”

  Stacey said, “Let’s talk about the kidnap business before I take my siesta. I’m like a little kid these days. Half an hour more of this chitchat and I’ll be comatose.”

  I went through what I’d been up to, again starting with Michael Sutton and including Dr. McNally and assorted others I’d talked to along the way.

  When I finished, Dolan said, “You know, Deborah and Patrick took a lot of flak for not coming to us when Rain was kidnapped. By the time they gave us a description, Greg and Shelly and the school bus were long gone. The draft board was close on Greg’s heels, so chances are he was heading out of the country. Sweden or Canada. Probably the latter. Canada had numerous support groups for draft evaders. Students United for Peace. The SDS. Immigration made it easy for people to come in from all over.”

  “Is Deborah aware of this? I talked to her a day ago and she never said a word.”

  “She and Patrick might have been embarrassed. In the minds of most conservatives, draft dodgers were scum.”

  “Did you interview Rain after she was returned?”

  “Three times. The Unruhs insisted on being there, which was fine with us. We didn’t want any suggestion that the child was being coached or intimidated. After the second interview, we weren’t getting anything we hadn’t heard before.”

  “Nothing useful at all?”

  “Nothing that went anywhere. She talked about the yellow kitten, which is how they snagged her cooperation in the first place. She said she slept in a big cardboard box that they’d done up like a little house with windows cut into it. When she woke up, she played with the kitten or the paper and crayons that had been left for her.”

  “Deborah says one of the kidnappers was dressed as Santa Claus.”

  “Same thing Rain told us. She said there were two of them and one was fat and had a long white beard. The other one had glasses with paper eyes and a big nose attached.”

  “Which I assume was a novelty item.”

  “Exactly. We showed her a pair from a l
ocal costume shop and she recognized them right off. The shop had no record of a recent sale, but an item like that could have been ordered from the back of a comic book.”

  “Was she scared?”

  He shook his head. “She said she liked Santa Claus. She’d sat on his lap before. When she asked where her mommy was, he said she’d be back in a bit and then he had Rain drink her lemonade and she went back to sleep. The naps were short and from what she says, she did a lot of bouncing around.”

  “In the box?”

  Dolan nodded. “They’d made up a little bed for her. They told her it was a playhouse just for her.”

  “What about the blanket? Deborah says she was found in the park on a picnic table, covered with a blanket.”

  “No help. It was the kind wrapped in plastic on airplane seats.

  There are thousands of them out there. Pan Am, in case you’re wondering which airline. That’s as far as we got.”

  “And in all of this, no fingerprints?”

  “The only print we ever picked up was on the back of a ransom note after Mary Claire was taken. We’ve run it half a dozen times and we’ve never found a match.”

  “What about suspects? You must have had your eye on someone,” I said.

  “Pedophiles and other registered sex offenders, drifters, hired help in the neighborhood, and anyone else who might have seen someone coming or going. We talked to the friends and acquaintances of both families. Mrs. Fitzhugh said there was a yard guy with a leaf blower next door, working his way up the drive. She assumed he was from a lawn company, but the couple who owned the house were off at work and when we talked to them, they said they didn’t have a service of any kind. The husband handled all the yard work himself.”

  “Did you find the leaf blower?”

  “No sign of it. A gas-powered mower had been removed from the garage and it was sitting in the drive, but the guy must have worn gloves, because there were no prints on it.”

  “How’d he get into the garage?”

  “The doors into the house were locked, but not the garage doors. Most days they were left open. Too much trouble to get out of the car and close them.”

  “No barking dog on the premises?”

  “Nope.”

  “Interesting that Mrs. Fitzhugh saw the guy.”

  “From a distance. She said he was in coveralls and since he had the leaf blower, she assumed he was the gardener.”

  “How’d the kidnappers get to Mary Claire?” I asked. “I thought the yard was enclosed.”

  “They cut through the wire fence behind her playhouse. They might have been hiding there, waiting until she was left by herself. We’re not sure how they got her out of there. No one reported seeing anyone with a kid. Chances are, they used the bridle trails. There’s a whole network of trails that winds through Horton Ravine. If they stuck to those, probability is no one would have seen them. Someone on horseback maybe, but we never had a report to that effect. We know Rain didn’t make a fuss, so it’s likely Mary Claire didn’t either. Little girls tend to be compliant anyway, and Rain says they were nice to her.”

  “So Rain wasn’t carried off kicking and screaming.”

  “No need. The one fellow offered to let her play with the kitten and off she went. Kids that age are trusting. It’s likely they pulled the same thing with Mary Claire.”

  “What’d they feed her?”

  “Nothing fancy. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.”

  “And as far as she knew, she hadn’t encountered either one before?”

  “Nope. They were either smarter than we thought or the luckiest sons of bitches on the planet.”

  “You’re convinced there were only two?”

  “Two would have been optimal; one on the phone to the mother while the other took the kid. If more guys had been involved, we might have had a better chance for a break. With three or four guys, somebody’s bound to blab or start throwing money around.”

  For the next twenty minutes we kept the subject afloat, like a badminton cock being lobbed back and forth over a net. With the right mix of minds, tossing ideas around can be productive, not to mention endlessly entertaining.

  “Deborah tells me Patrick photocopied the bills and marked them before he paid.”

  “She told us as well. We made photocopies of his copies and sent ’em out to all the banks and savings and loans. Businesses, too, for all the good it did.”

  “They could have circulated the money somewhere else.”

  “Or they might not have spent a dime. In effect, the ransom was radioactive. Not literally, of course.”

  “I got that,” I said. “So far, I haven’t talked to Mrs. Fitzhugh because I didn’t want to intrude. You think I should contact her?”

  “She’ll probably get in touch with you. That’s how this whole thing got started. She’s been calling me once or twice a year for the last twenty-one years, asking for updates. I told her we had nothing new as far as I was aware, but I’d check with Cheney Phillips and get back to her. That’s when I heard Michael Sutton had come in and Cheney’d sent him over to you.”

  Stacey said, “What about this Sutton kid? How solid is his claim? He sounds like a nutcase to me.”

  I had to shrug. “Well, it’s really not such a stretch. He was playing on a property owned by a family named Kirkendall, just up the hill from the Unruhs. As Dolan says, there are horse trails running through that area. The spot where he saw them digging was not far from the horse trough off Via Juliana.”

  “You believe him?”

  “What he says makes sense. He sees the two guys and they see him so they know they’ve been busted. They can’t count on a little kid to keep his mouth shut so they swap out the little girl’s body for the dog’s. That way if he properly identifies the place, it looks like he’s made a mistake.”

  “Why’d they choose that property?”

  “I’ve been wondering the same thing,” I said. “It might have been an attempt to point a finger at Shelly and Greg. The Unruhs were convinced the pair had a hand in it because the total they asked for—adding Rain’s ransom to the demand made of the Fitzhughs—was forty thousand dollars, exactly what Greg’s grandfather left for him in trust.”

  Dolan said, “That’s a detail I find puzzling—and this has bugged me for years—a ransom demand for fifteen thousand dollars seems odd to me. Even a forty-thousand total seems screwy. Why not a hundred thousand? Better yet, half a million? Why risk the electric chair for chump change? I mean, who kidnaps a kid and asks for so little?”

  “I’ll tell you who,” Stacey said. “Amateurs, that’s who. Which is why they never tried it again. The second kidnap blew up in their faces and that was the end of it. Two career criminals cured of the urge. Speaking of which, I’m out of here. You come up with anything good, you can wake me later on.”

  “I have a question before you go,” I said. “Have either of you ever run across a Lompoc PI named Hale Brandenberg?”

  Stacey said, “Sure, I know Hale. He started out about the same time I did, only he was younger by a goodly number of years.”

  “You think he’s still around?”

  “Last I heard. You want to talk to him?”

  “I’d love to. It’s not about this case. It’s something else.”

  “Let me make a few calls and see if I can find out where he ended up.”

  “Thanks. I’d appreciate it.”

  Saturday morning I slept in until 8:00, a luxury for me. My breakfast meeting with Rain was scheduled for 9:00, which gave me time to dawdle over the newspaper and my first cup of coffee. Once I’d showered and dressed, I walked two blocks over to Cabana and two blocks down. On the beach I could see where ropes of kelp had washed up on the sand. The tide was going out and the waves rushed forward and then receded, tugging the gray-green fronds into the depths again. The wind was up and I could see whitecaps ruffling the water beyond the surf. In the harbor the masts of sailboats swayed back and forth in a rhythm of th
eir own. Countless gulls formed a gray funnel cloud and descended on the beach, two of them squabbling over an abandoned cellophane bag half filled with Cheetos. The public swimming pool was still closed for the season and the children’s play area was deserted.

  At the entrance to the coffee shop I paused. There was only one young woman at a table alone. She raised a hand and waved, having identified me by the same process of elimination. I indicated to the hostess that I was joining a friend. I slid into the padded Naugahyde booth across from her and signaled to a waitress who was passing with a fresh carafe of coffee. She turned my mug right-side up and filled it.

  Rain passed the stainless steel pitcher of milk and I added enough to turn the coffee beige. We introduced ourselves properly and then chatted about nothing in particular, which gave her a chance to study me while I made a study of her. She had the fresh look of youth. Her complexion was clear and her features were delicate. She had Betty Boop lips and hair like a cloud of platinum-blond frizz, bobbed level with her ears. Discreet pearl-and-diamond earrings caught the light. She wore jeans and a gossamer white shirt over a white lace camisole, a combination more elegant than I’d have imagined. Two booths over, a busboy wiped down the table with his eyes pinned on her, as though she might be a celebrity.

  “Have you ordered yet?” I asked.

  “I was waiting for you.”

  The waitress returned with her order pad in hand. I asked for a small tomato juice, rye toast, and a soft-boiled egg. Rain ordered the breakfast special. When the meal came I watched her work her way through orange juice, scrambled eggs, home fries, bacon, link sausages, and buttered biscuits with strawberry jam. Though she ate as rapidly as I did, I finished first, leaving her with two biscuits to go.

  “How old are you?” I asked.

  “I’ll be twenty-five in July. Why?”

  “Please tell me you don’t eat like that and then go to the ladies’ room and barf it all up again.”

  “And waste all this food? I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  “No laxatives? Ipecac? Finger down your throat?”