When the freeway ended, I followed the signs toward Long Beach. As soon as I crossed the bridge over the cement gash labeled the San Gabriel River, the air freshened and the sky was clearer than it had been downtown. The ocean was only two or three miles farther on. I could see it on the left, a flash along the horizon.
The first public telephone I spotted was at a bus stop in front of the large state university. Parking was by permit only. So I stopped in the bus zone and left the motor running while I got out to use the directory attached to the phone.
The night before, Dennis, the jeweler, had told us that the Ramsdales were part of the yacht-club set. I wrote down the listed address for the yacht club, then flipped to the M’s.
There were two listings under Metrano: George and Leslie, and Amy Elizabeth. Both gave telephone numbers only, no address.
Out of curiosity, I called Amy’s number first.
A recording kicked on after the first ring. A soft, woman’s voice, sounding very nervous, said, “Thank you for calling the Amy Elizabeth Metrano Search Foundation. Correspondence may be mailed to…” A post office box was given. “Messages are checked regularly. If you have any information about our Amy, please wait for the tone and speak clearly.”
I wondered how often the message phone rang. Anytime that phone rang, I knew it must sound like a fire bell in the night to the family.
I dialed the second listed number. The same soft voice answered. Live this time.
“Mrs. Metrano?” I said.
“Yes?”
“This is Maggie MacGowen. We met at the morgue yesterday.”
“Oh.” A response with new energy. “Are you the one that said you have videotape of Amy?”
“I have videotape of the girl in the morgue.”
“That’s what I meant to say. The girl in the morgue.” She seemed chagrined.
“We made some stills from the tape. Would you like to see them?”
“Oh! Yes. Oh, thank you,” she said in a breathy rush. “I have to go to work right now. I have to be there when the shift changes. But I could get away right after. Where do you want me to come?”
“Maybe we could meet. I’m in Long Beach right now. At the university.”
“My job isn’t so far from there. I need about forty-five minutes or an hour.”
I said fine. She told me she worked at an outlet for Bingo Burgers, and gave me directions.
“Mrs. Metrano,” I said, “would you bring along some pictures of Amy?”
She hesitated. “All right. If you need them.”
“Thanks.”
I saw a bus approaching fast up the street behind Mike’s car.
I said goodbye to Leslie, scooped up my notepad and change, and made a dash. I didn’t peel rubber when I pulled away, but almost.
Bingo Burgers sat on a corner across from a large city park, an ideal location. As it was a beautiful Sunday afternoon, the place was humming. Dodging kids and minivans, I managed to get inside unscathed.
The menu was the usual fast-serve bland-in-a-bun the several thousand Bingo Burgers restaurants sell nationwide. This particular outlet had evolved a long way from the sticky plastic-and-linoleum places Casey used to drag me to when she was little. If Ronald McDonald and Walt Disney had done it in the dark, this place would have been their offspring. I walked into a two-story fantasy of tropical birds and giant aquariums, of ten-foot palms and tables in imitation grass shacks. A long spiral slide connected the upper dining room to the lower. The racket of over stimulated children and squawking birds merged into a steady, high-decibel roar.
My thought was that whoever owned this franchise saw life in the big picture.
I found Leslie behind the service counter, directing a couple of dozen adolescent employees. She wore slacks and a blazer with the company’s clown logo on the breast pocket. The manager’s blazer. She was pretty, trim in her uniform, but there was a hardscrabble edge about her. Leslie was a working woman, not a mom with a weekend job.
When Leslie saw me, she grabbed a manila envelope and two large drink cups and came around the counter.
“Maggie?” She handed me a cup. “Get yourself a soda. It’s a little quieter in the back. We can talk there.”
We filled the cups and I followed her into a beachless cabana with a view of the street in front. When we sat down, we did show and tell, lining up both our sets of pictures on the table.
I gave her a minute to look them all over.
“What do you think?” I asked when she sat back.
“I just don’t know.” There was some country twang in her speech. “I really hate it when I get told that Amy would have changed a lot by now. Like I didn’t already know that? I look at my older girls.” She glanced up at me. “Did you know I’m a grandma now?”
“Congratulations,” I said.
“Don’t congratulate me. I didn’t have anything to do with it. It was just one of those things. Or that’s what my oldest told me at the time.” She smiled, resigned.
“What I mean to say is,” she continued, “they look so different when they start to fill out. Amy had real fair hair when she was little. I suppose it darkened up some. Like mine did. I never was as blond as she was. The last time I saw my natural color it was sort of lightish brown.”
Her hair that day was about the color of honey. She held one of the Hillary pictures at arm’s length to study it. Hillary’s hair had been bleached white. “What color do you think her real hair was?”
I shook my head. “Maybe the coroner can tell us.”
She had to swallow hard, and I regretted having said that so baldly. She shook it off. “I’ve been going through this routine for a lot of years. You’d think I would get used to it by now. But I just don’t seem to.”
“I think that’s normal,” I said.
“I guess so.” She dropped her eyes and busied her hands unwrapping her straw. She stuck the straw into the cup.
Some people have about them an appealing mantle of vulnerability. You are drawn to them because you think they need protection. They make you feel like big stuff, strong and capable. Leslie made me feel that way. Until she took a drink through her straw.
Leslie pushed her cup aside and roughly grabbed the arm of a passing busboy. Her expression was severe enough to scare the boy.
“Tell Arturo to come over here,” she ordered. “Tell him I said move fast.”
I turned to watch the boy scuttle away. “Something wrong?”
“These kids. Just when you get one trained right, they go quit on you. It’s just constant aggravation.” She softened again.
“I’m used to it, though. I always said I had six big babies, five kids and George. Now I have about ten times that many. Believe me, you gotta know how to handle them.”
A tall, lanky boy about seventeen sidled over. He had dark, close-cut hair and a single stud earring. If I’d had to choose which of them, him or Leslie, needed a protector, I would have taken the boy. His knees shook.
“You want me, Miz Metrano?” His voice changed register twice.
She handed him her cup.
He paled as he took it. “I forgot.”
“Arturo, your job is recharging the soda base. There’s nothing in this cup but fizz and water.”
“The fry timer went off when I was standing right there. I had to take care of the fries.”
“Are fries your responsibility?”
“No, ma’am.” He looked weepy.
“Were the fry people around to take care of their job?”
“Yes.”
“Your job is the soda dispensers. You come on in the middle of the lunch rush, Arturo. The soda base is gettin’ real low by then. If you don’t do your job, what happens when the customers get their drinks?”
“I’m sorry, Miz Metrano.” Arturo was backing away. “I won’t forget again.”
“You got that right,” she said. “Go back to work.”
I did a quick reevaluation. The woman was no creampuff. She turned her attention back to me. “Sorry. Where were we?”