The inner court was paved with imitation flagstones and lined with shrubs and small trees growing in Mexican clay pots. The orange of the persimmon leaves, the pink of the hibiscus blossoms, the purple of the princess flowers, the crimson of the firethorn berries, all seemed lusterless and pale compared to the gaudy high-gloss paint on their containers. The word WELCOME printed on the mat outside the front door looked as though nobody had ever stepped on it. Devon’s sandals sank into the thick deep velvety pile until only their tops were visible, crossed straps like two X’s marking the spot: Devon Osborne stood here.
She pressed the door chime. Her arm felt heavy and stiff like a lead pipe attached to her shoulder.
“I don’t know what to believe,” she said. “I wish you hadn’t told me any of it.”
“Sometimes it’s easy to make a hero out of a dead man, especially with the help of his mother. Well, I can’t compete with heroes. If I have to cut the opposition down to size in order to win, I’ll do it.”
“You mustn’t talk like that.”
“Why not?”
“She might hear you.”
“She only hears what she wants to. Anything I say isn’t likely to be included.”
A gust of wind blew across the courtyard. The horses on the tiny merry-go-round danced to their own music. Royal petals escaped from the princess flowers, and bamboo clawed and scratched at the living-room window.
The drapes were open and most of the room and its contents were visible. Side by side along one wall were the special possessions Mrs. Osborne had taken with her from the ranch house — the mahogany piano and the antique cherrywood desk. Both were open, as if Mrs. Osborne had played a tune and written a letter and disappeared. The rest of the furniture had come with the house, and Mrs. Osborne hadn’t bothered to change any of it — a pair of flowery wing chairs facing each other across a backgammon table, a glass-fronted bookcase, and on the walls oil paintings of someone’s childhood, remembered rivers, clear and sweet, emerald meadows, golden forests of maple.
Leo had walked around to the side of the house to check the garage. He returned looking irritable and worried, as though he suspected fate was about to pull another trick on him, that wheels were in motion he couldn’t stop and booby traps set in places he didn’t know.
“Her car’s here,” he said. “You’d better try the door.”
“Even if it’s unlocked we can’t just walk in.”
“Why not?”
“She wouldn’t like it.”
“She may not be in a position to like or dislike it.”
“What does that mean?”
He didn’t answer.
“Leo, are you suggesting she might have—”
“I’m suggesting we make an attempt to find out.”
The knob turned easily and the door swung inward, slowed by its own weight and Devon’s reluctance. As the door opened, a draught of air blew several of the papers off the desk. Leaning over to pick one up, Devon saw that it was covered with printing done with a thick-tipped black marking pen. There were sentences and half-sentences, single words, phrases, some in English, some in Spanish.
Reward Premio (Remuneracion? Ask Ford)
The sum of $10,000 will be paid to anyone furnishing information
(No, no. Keep it simple.)
On October 13, 1967
Robert K. Osborne, age 24, blond hair, blue eyes, height 6’1” weight 170
(More money? Ask Ford)
Have you seen this man? (Use 3 pictures, front, side, 3/4)
¿
¡Atencion!
Please help me find my son
Devon stood with the paper in her hand, listening to the sound of Leo moving around the dining room and the kitchen. She wondered how she could tell him that this wasn’t to be the last day after all. Mrs. Osborne intended to offer another reward and the whole thing was going to start over again. There would be still another round of phone calls and letters, most of them patently ridiculous, but some reasonable enough to raise faint new hopes. The lady who claimed to have watched Robert land in a flying saucer in a field near Omaha needn’t be taken seriously, yet some consideration had to be given to reports that he’d been seen working as a deckhand on a yacht anchored off Ensenada, picking up a suitcase at the TWA baggage-claim department at Los Angeles International Airport, drinking rum and Coke at a swish bar in San Francisco, running an elevator in a hotel in Denver. All reports within reason had been checked out. But Valenzuela said, “He’s not working or drinking or traveling or anything else. He lost too much blood, ma’am.”
Please help me find my son.
Devon put the sheet of paper back on the desk very carefully as if it were contaminated material. Then she followed Leo into the kitchen. The room had been used recently. There was a pot of coffee on the stove, the heat turned low under it, and on the work counter of the sink half a head of lettuce, two slices of bread curling a little at the edges, and an opened jar of peanut butter with a knife stuck in it. It was an ordinary table knife, blunt-tipped and dull-edged, but it may have reminded Mrs. Osborne, as it did Devon, of another more deadly knife, and she had fled the memory.
“It looks as though she started to make a sandwich,” Leo said, “and something interrupted her — the doorbell maybe, or the telephone.”
“She told us she was too tired to eat, that she wanted just to rest.”
“Then we’d better check the bedrooms. Which is hers?”
“I don’t know. She keeps changing.”
The front bedroom had a window on the courtyard protected by iron grillwork and framed with bougainvillea blossoms that fluttered in the slightest breeze like bits of scarlet tissue paper. It was fully furnished, but it had an air of abandonment about it as though the people who really belonged there had long since left the premises. The closet door was partly open and inside were half a dozen large neatly stacked cartons with Salvation Army printed in red marking pencil on each one. Devon recognized the printing as her own and the cartons as those she’d packed with Robert’s stuff and given to Mrs. Osborne to deliver to the Salvation Army.
The other bedroom was occupied. Its sleeper lay face down across the bed, her body wrapped in a faded blue silk housecoat. Her arms were bent at the elbows and both hands were pressed against her head as if they were trying to protect the places where the hair was thinning. On the bureau was a Styrofoam wig stand holding the orderly curls Mrs. Osborne showed to the public. The blue hat she’d worn in court had fallen or been thrown on the carpet and her ribbon knit dress hung limply across a chair like an abandoned skin.
Both windows were shut tight. Suspended in the still air was the faint sour odor of regret, of little sins and failures mildewing in closets and damp forgotten corners.
“Mrs. Osborne,” Devon said, but it sounded wrong, as if this silent helpless woman was a stranger with no right to the name.
“Mrs. Osborne, answer me. It’s Devon. Are you all right?”
The stranger stirred, disclaiming the identity, protesting the invasion of her privacy when Devon leaned over and touched her temple and felt the pulse in her thin white wrist. The pulse was slow but as steady as the ticking of a clock. On the night table beside the bed there was a half-empty bottle of yellow capsules. The label identified them as Nembutal, three-quarter grain, and the prescriber as the Osbornes’ family doctor in Boca de Rio.