“You got business?” she said. Her voice had a desert dry rattle, resulting I imagined from eating nothing but crackers from the cracker barrel and conserving her voice for the opera.
“I got business,” I said, getting into the swing of things.
“They’re new, practically everyone is here,” she said, looking at me in a way that made it clear that I would not be a welcome addition to Plaza Del Lago.
“Why’d they all come?”
“The springs,” she said, pointing at a display across the aisle behind me. The store wasn’t big, and the two aisles were narrow and filled from floor to ceiling. The display she pointed to was bottles of something called Poodle Springs water. The labels were yellow with a white cartoon poodle on them, standing on its hind legs, with its tongue out. The water inside the bottle was a little murky.
“Spring under the town,” Mrs. Cal explained, growing talkative. “Been there since God created it.”
“That a fact?” I encouraged.
“Stuff tastes like turkey piss,” she said, shaking her head.
Never having tasted turkey piss I said, “No kidding.”
“I don’t kid,” she said, leaning on the counter.
“How’d it all start?”
“Fella named Grayson, the one you’re looking for, come down here maybe ten years back, bought up most of the land. People were happy to sell it to him. Thought he was a idiot.”
“He wasn’t?” I asked.
“Look around if you got eyes,” she said, turning her head in every direction. All I could see was piles of groceries, but I assumed she meant the buildings beyond. “He got all kinds of fools from places like San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Reno to put up money and build houses and those two hotels. Sunk money into ads in the papers. Told people this turkey piss could cure anything. Pretty soon old people were down here buying, swimming in the stuff, drinking it. Some people will buy a goat’s ass and stick it on their head if a smart talker gets his jaw going at them.”
“Some people,” I agreed.
“We make out all right with it,” she added. “I ain’t complaining.”
Since it had sounded to me like complaining, I considered debating the point with her, but remembered my job.
“Grayson’s?”
“Keep going two roads east, turn left and drive till you can’t drive no more. Big ’dobe house with an old mission bell on top and a Joshua tree in the yard.”
“Thanks,” I said, taking my package and turning.
Mrs. Cal went back to her stacking and piling without another word.
The directions were fine. Plaza Del Lago wasn’t that big. I passed the two face-to-face hotels with porches covered with old people wearing floppy hats and drinking murky turkey piss. None of them had a goat’s ass on their head, unless it was under the floppy hats.
The fronts of the houses further down were landscaped with sand, rocks, and cactus. Poles with telephone and electric lines hovered over the houses and connected them down the road.
At the end of the road touching the desert was a yellow adobe house with a mission bell on the roof and a Joshua in the yard. I parked at the rough wooden gate and went up the sandy path. The Joshua was in bloom.
The Joshua isn’t a real tree, just a California imitation, a kind of yucca, named by early Mormon settlers, who remembered the book of Joshua: “Thou shalt follow the way pointing for thee by the tree.”
The Joshua starts out life branchless, standing like a pole on the desert, then starts putting out clumsy limbs pointing out and up with green bristles on the end like bayonets. The leaves die, turn gray-brown and lie back along the branches giving the plant a weird shaggy outline. Blossoms appear on the end of each branch from March to June, clusters of waxy cream white flowers. They smell like mushrooms.
My old man, when he had a spare afternoon, used to like to drive out and look at the Joshua trees. He remembered the time the London Daily Telegraph had sent out crews of Chinese to cut down trees to make paper pulp. But, he said, God had intervened, spoiled the first shipment back to England, and a terrible rainstorm had routed the Chinese cutting crew.
I moved on to the front door shaded by a small porch. On either side of the door were wooden lounge chairs so that Grayson could sit in the evening and watch his town go to sleep.
I knocked and knocked again-nothing but a faint sound inside the house that might have been someone moving around or could have been the normal aches and groans of a late afternoon. I walked around to the side of the house, loosening my jacket, and popped the button that had been threatening to depart for a month. I knelt to retrieve it among the stones and sand and felt a shadow over me.
“What are you doing?”
The voice was a woman’s. The age was unclear. I squinted up into the sun and saw her outline. She seemed to be naked.
“I lost my button,” I said, spotting it and stuffing it into my pocket. I got up and could see that she wasn’t naked but wearing a white bathing suit.
“I meant, what are you doing here, sneaking around our house?”
“Mrs. Grayson?” I said, stepping to the side to get a look at her.
“Miss Ressner,” she said. “Delores Ressner. What are you doing here?”
She was tall, maybe even taller than I, with a good, trim figure, short brown hair, and blue eyes. She seemed to be about thirty.
“I want to talk to your mother,” I said, trying not to finger the threads on my jacket, which had just given up their responsibility for holding that button. I was sweating and uncomfortable. She was tall and demanding.
“What about?” she said without moving.
“Your father.”
“Harold Grayson isn’t my father,” she said flatly.
“I know. It’s Jeffrey Ressner I want to talk about.”
Something fell in her face and facade. A shudder or shiver ran through her tan body. She turned and walked slowly to the back of the house. I followed her. The swimming pool there was small and filled with blue water, not the product from the local spring.
Delores Ressner picked up a towel from a lounge chair near the pool and began to dry herself, giving her time to think, which was all right with me. I had no place to go, and I didn’t mind looking at her. When she was through toweling, she slipped into a blue robe. Finished, she turned toward me, folded her arms, and asked: “What do you want to know about my father?”
“I want to know where he is.”
“Who are you?” Her eyes had narrowed, and she shook her hair to rid it of a few remaining drops of water or to let it hang loose. It was a nice gesture.
“I’m a private detective. Name’s Toby Peters. I’ve been hired by Dr. Winning of the Winning Institute to find your father. He broke out of the institute four days ago.”
“And Dr. Winning thinks he might come here?” Her hands tightened and turned white as they clutched her arms. I couldn’t tell if there was an undercurrent of fear or disbelief in her voice.
“No,” I said, looking at the house for signs of life before turning back to her. “It’s a place to start. Dr. Winning doesn’t want him hurt and doesn’t want him to hurt anybody.”
“My father never hurt anybody,” she fired back.
“Maybe,” I said. “I think we met the other night, and he expressed something more than verbal hostility.”
“I never wanted him in that place,” she said. “That was my mother and her husband’s idea.”
“Maybe I could talk to your mother and …” I said, taking a step toward the house.
She unfolded her hands and stepped in front of me.
“My mother isn’t here. She went to San Diego to visit her sister. My stepfather is in the house sleeping. He hasn’t been feeling well and doesn’t want to be disturbed.”
We stared at each for two or three minutes, waiting for a break. She didn’t give me one, so I tried, “I’ve got a warm carton of milk and some Wheaties in my car. Maybe we can share a bowl and watch the sun go down while we wait for stepdaddy to wake up.”