Okay, suppose Adrian does all of that. Maybe she even glamorizes the situation as young women will do in order to face themselves in the morning. But fetching the condiments for the hamburgers of a young man who can damned well get them himself grows old real fast, and after a while she starts to chafe at what her therapy wall calls “white slavery.” So, as she tells her friend Anna, she’d decided to “blow the whistle and game will be over.”
How? By going to the cops? Or by going to the head of mall security, Ben Waterson?
I got up, tossed my cup and taco wrappings in a trash bin, and headed for the security office.
Waterson wasn’t there. Had left around six after a phone call, destination unknown, the woman on the desk old me. I persuaded her to check their log to see if Adrian Conway had reported losing her i.d. badge about a week before she disappeared, as Waterson had told Adah Joslyn. No record of it, and there would have been had it really happened.
Caught you in another lie, Ben!
Back down to the concession area. This time I settled for coffee and a Mrs. Fields cookie.
So Adrian probably went to Waterson, since she had the phone number of the security office scribbled on an envelope in her backpack. And he…what? Lured her away from the mall and killed her? Hid her body? Then why was her backpack at Naples Street? Waterson would have left it with the body or gotten rid of it. And would Waterson have gone to such lengths, anyway?
Well, Kirby was murdered, wasn’t he?
But would Kirby have kept quiet if he thought Waterson had murdered his girlfriend? The kid was a cold one, but…Maybe I just didn’t want to believe that anybody that young could be that cold. And that was poor reasoning-if you don’t believe me, just check out the morning paper most days.
Another thing-who was this person Adrian had talked about, who would take her side and not take any shit off of anybody? Maybe Waterson had played it subtle with her, pretending to be her protector, then spirited her off somewhere and-
The prospects for her survival weren’t any better with that scenario.
I was so distracted that I bit clear through the cookie into my tongue. Swore loud enough to earn glares from two old ladies at the next table.
Back to Ben Waterson. Kirby came to the mall the other day and argued with him-not about getting hold of Adrian’s back pay, as they both claimed, because Waterson had lied about Sue Hanford leaving him in charge at Left Coast Casuals. And right after the argument, Kirby stormed out of the mall and drove off burning rubber. Waterson took off around that time, too. And tonight Waterson left again, after a phone call around six-about the time the kids, Del preceding them, left All Souls. Did Del or another of them warn him that everything was about to unravel? Is Waterson running, or did he leave for purposes of what Sue Hanford calls damage control?
Damage control. I suppose you could call Kirby’s murder damage control…
I got up, threw my trash in the bin, and began walking the mall-burning off excess energy, trying to work it out. If only I knew what Kirby and Waterson had argued about. And where they’d each gone Wednesday afternoon. And why Kirby had asked me to meet him at the Naples Street house. Had Waterson found out about the meeting, gotten there early? Killed Kirby before he could talk with me? And what about Adrian? If she was dead, where was her body? And if she was alive-
And then I saw something. It wasn’t related to my case at all, was just one of those little nudges you get when you have all the information you need and are primed for something to come along and help you put it all together. I’m sure I’d have figured it out eventually, even if it hadn’t been for the poster that made the land look so parched and windswept and basically unpleasant that you wondered why they thought it would sell tours. But as it was, it happened then, and I was damned glad of it.
VIII
The Wreck and I sped through the night, under a black sky that quickly started leaking rain, then just plain let go in a deluge. The windshield wipers scraped and screeched, smearing the glass instead of clearing it. Dammit, I thought, why can’t I get it together to buy a new car-or at least some new wiper blades? No, a whole car’s in order, because this defroster isn’t worth the powder to blow it to hell, and I’m so sick of being at the mercy of third-rate transportation.
Then I started wondering about the tread on the Wreck’s tires. When was the last time I’d checked it? It had looked bad, whenever, and I’d promised myself new tires in a few hundred more miles, but that had to be several thousand ago. What if I got a flat, was stranded, and didn’t reach Adrian in time? She was probably safe; I didn’t know for sure what Waterson had figured it out. Hell, I’d barely done that. Could anybody manage, without knowing Adrian the way I did from her therapy wall?
The rain whacked down harder and the wind blew the Wreck all over the road. My shoulders got tense, and my hands actually hurt from clinging to the wheel. Lights ahead now-the little town of Olema where this road met the shoreline highway. Right turn, slow a little, then put the accelerator to the floor on the home stretch to Aunt June’s.
She lied to me-that much was obvious at the time-but I hadn’t suspected it was such a big lie. How could I guess that Adrian was with her-right there on the premises, probably in June’s studio-and had been with her since shortly after her disappearance? Maybe I should have picked up on the fact that June didn’t seem all that worried about her niece, but otherwise I’d had no clues. Not then.
Now I did, though. The Golden Gate Transit schedule in Adrian’s backpack, for one. Golden Gate was the one bus line that ran from the city to Marin County, and she would only have needed it if she planned a trip north. There had been no one with a Marin address other than June Simoom on the list of people who were close to Adrian that the police had checked out. And then there was the graphic evidence on the therapy wall-the soaring bird so like the symbol June’s place. Wingspread, next to one broken gold chain and the word FREEDOM. But most of all it was Adrian’s own words that had finally tipped me: “somebody to protect me, somebody strong and fierce.” That was June’s way of describing herself, and Adrian had probably heard it enough to believe it. After all, her aunt had taken the name of a fierce, relentless African wind; she had called her home Wingspread, a place of refuge.
But there was another side to June-the possessive, controlling side that Donna Conway had described. Frying pan to fire, that’s where Adrian had gone. From one controlling person to another-and in this case, a control freak who probably delighted in keeping the niece from the hated sister-in-law. June hadn’t called Donna after my visit to make peace; she’d probably been fishing to find out if I’d relayed any suspicions to her.
Slowed to a crawl, peering through the smears on the windshield and the rain soaked blackness for the mailbox with the soaring bird. That stand of eucalyptus looked about right, and the deeper shadows behind it must hide Tomales Bay. Hadn’t the road curved like this just before the turnoff to the rutted driveway? Wasn’t it right about here…?
Yes! I wrenched the wheel to the left, and the Wreck skidded onto the gravel shoulder.
What I could see of the driveway looked impassable. Deep tire gouges cut into the ground but they were filling with muck and water. Better not chance it. I turned off the engine-it coughed and heaved several times, not a good sign, Willie had recently told me-and then I got out and started for the cottage on foot.
The wind blew even stronger now, whipping the branches of the trees and sending big curls of brittle bark spiraling through the air. The rain pelted me, stinging as it hit my face, and the hood of my slicker blew off my head. I grabbed at it, but I couldn’t make it stay up, and soon my hair was a sodden mess plastered to my skull.