I turned away and looked back into the empty shed. Adrian had had a real home, but she’d left it. For this shabby little house? I doubted that. But she’d been here shortly after her school mates had last her, and then she’d probably fled in fear. For where? Where?
I decided to consult the therapy wall once more.
VI
The Conway house was warm for a change, and Donna had closed the drapes to hide the murky city view. Adrian’s room, though, was frigid. Donna saving on the heating bill now that Adrian was gone? Or maybe the registers were closed because Adrian was one of those human reptiles who never need much warmth. My ex-husband, Doug, is like that: when other people are bundled in two layers of sweaters, he’s apt to be running around in his shirtsleeves.
Before she left me alone, Donna said, “My sister-in-law called and said you’d gone to see her.”
“Yes, Tuesday night.”
“What’d you think of her?”
“Well, she’s unconventional, but I kind of liked her. She seems to have a heart, and she certainly cares about Adrian.”
Donna pushed a lock of hair back from her forehead and sighed. She looked depressed and jumpy, dark smudges under her eyes. “I see she’s fooled you, too.” Then she seemed to relent a little. “Oh, I suppose June’s got a good heart, as you say. But she also has an unfortunate tendency to take over a situation and tell everyone what to do. She’s the original earth mother and thinks we’re all her children. The straw that broke it for me was when she actually advised Jeffery to leave me. But… I don’t know. She seems to want to patch it up now, and I suppose for Adrian’s sake I should.”
The words “for Adrian’s sake” hung hollowly in the cold room. Donna shivered and added, “I’ll leave you alone with the wall now.”
Honestly, the way she acted, you’d have thought the wall was my psychiatrist. In a sense that was what it had been to her daughter.
I sat on Adrian’s bed like the time before and let the images on the wall speak to me. One, then the other, cried for attention. Bright primary colors, bold black and white. Words, pictures, then more words. And things-incongruous things. All adding up to…what?
After a while I sat up straighter, seeing objects I hadn’t noticed before, seeing others in a new light. What they communicated was a sense of entrapment, but not necessarily by the family situation. Material relating to her absent father-GONE FOREVER, THE YEAR OF THE BIMBO, a postcard from Switzerland where Jeffrey Conway now lived-was buried deep under more recent additions. So were the references to Adrian’s and her mother’s new life-JUST THE TWO OF US, A WOMAN ALONE, NEW DIRECTIONS. But on top of that…
Fake plastic handcuffs. Picture of a barred window. NO EXIT sign. SOLD INTO WHITE SLAVERY. Photo of San Quentin. Images of a young woman caught up in something she saw no easy way out of.
I got up and went over to the wall and took a good look at a plastic security tag I’d noticed before. There were similar ones on the higher-priced garments at Left Coast Casuals. Next to it, the word “guilt” was emblazoned in big letters, smaller repetition of it tailed down like the funnel of a cyclone. My eyes followed them, they were caught hypnotically in the whorls of a thumb-print on a plain white index card.
On top of all these were Adrian’s final offerings. Now that I’d discovered a pattern, I could tell which things had been added last. FREEDOM! Broken gold chain. A WAY OUT. Egret feather and silhouette of a soaring bird. She was about to break loose, fly away. I wasn’t sure from what, not exactly. But guilt was a major component, and I thought I knew why.
I started searching the room. Nothing under the lingerie or sweaters or socks in the bureau drawers. Nothing pushed to the back of the closet or hidden in the suitcases. Nothing under the mattress or the bed. Nothing but school supplies in the desk.
Damn! I was sure I’d figured out that part of it. I had shameful personal experience to guide me.
The room was so cold that the joints of my fingers ached. I tucked my hands into my armpits to warm them. The heat register was one of those metal jobs set into the floor under a window, and its louvers were closed. I squatted next to it and tried to push the opener. Jammed.
The register lifted easily out of its hole. I peered through the opening in the floor and saw that the sheet metal furnace duct was twisted and pushed aside. A nail had been hammered into the floor joist, and something hung down from it into the crawl space. I reached in and unhooked it-a big cloth laundry bag with a drawstring. I pulled the bag up through the hole and dumped its contents on the carpet.
Costume jewelry-rings, bracelets, earring, necklaces-with the price tags still attached. Silk scarves. Pantyhose. Gloves, bikini underpants, leather belts, hair ornaments. They were all from Left Coast Casuals.
Although the items were tagged, the tags were not the plastic kind that trip the sensors at the door. Left Coast Casuals reserved the plastic tags for big-ticket items. All of the merchandise was brand new, had never been worn. No individual item was expensive, but taken together, they added up to a hell of a lot of money.
This told me a lot about Adrian, but it didn’t explain her disappearance. Or her boyfriend’s murder. I replaced the things in the bag, and the bag beneath the flooring. Then I got out of there and went to bounce this one off Sharon.
Sharon was all dressed up today, probably either for a meeting with one of our tonier clients or a court appearance. The teal blue suit and silk blouse looked terrific on her, but I could tell she wasn’t all that comfortable in them. Sharon’s more at home in her jeans and sweater and sneakers. The only time she really likes getting gussied up is for a fancy party, and then she goes at it with the excitement of a kid putting on her Halloween costume.
She said she had some time on her hands, so I suggested we stop down at the Remedy Lounge, our favorite bar-and-grill on Mission Street, for burgers. She hesitated. They serve a great burger at the Remedy, but for some reason Sharon-who’s usually not fastidious when it comes to food-is convinced they’re made of all sorts of disgusting animal parts. Finally she gave in, and we wandered down the hill.
The Remedy is a creaky local tavern, owned by the O’Flanagan family for longer than anybody can remember. Brian, the middle son and nighttime bartender, wasn’t on yet, so we had to fetch our own food and drinks. Brian’s my buddy, and when he’s working, I get table service-something that drives everybody else from All Souls crazy because they can’t figure out how I manage that. I just let them keep guessing. Truth is, I remind Brian of his favorite sister, who died back in ’76. Would you refuse table service to a family member?
While we waited for the burgers, I laid out the Adrian Conway situation for Sharon. When I was done, she went and got our food, then looked critically at her burger, taking off the top half of the bun and poking suspiciously at the meat patty. Finally she shrugged, bit into it, and looked relieved at finding it tasted like burger instead of entrail of monkey-or whatever she thinks they make them from. She swallowed and asked, “All the stuff was lifted from Left coast Casuals?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Employee pilferage.” She shook her head. “Do you know that over forty-three percent of shrinkage is due to insiders?”
I didn’t, but Sharon a former department-store security guard and she keeps up on statistics. I just nodded.
“A lot of it’s the employers’ fault,” she added. “They don’t treat their people well, so they don’t have a real commitment to the company. The clerks see it as a way of getting ever for low wages and skimpy benefits.”
“Well, whatever Adrian’s reasons were,” I said, “she dealt with the loot in the usual way. Once she got it home, it wasn’t any good to her. Her mother would notice if she wore a lot of new things and ask where she got the money to buy them. Plus she felt guilty. So she hid the loot away were Donna wouldn’t find it and-more important-where she couldn’t see it and be reminded of what she’d done. Out of sight, out of mind. Only it doesn’t work that way. She was probably aware of that bag of stuff hanging between the floor joists every minute she was in that room. She probably even dreamed about it.”