“Mrs. Metrano, do you know a family named Ramsdale?” I asked.
“Ramsdale?” She ran it over in her mind. “Commonish name, I guess. I can’t think of anyone in particular, though. Why?”
“They had a fourteen-year-old daughter named Hillary.” I tapped a Pisces picture. “She has been identified as Hillary Ramsdale.”
“Did she run away?” Leslie asked.
“She ran or was pushed away.”
“Dammit, though,” she said in her soft voice. “If I’d known how hard it is to hang on to your kids, I would have had them all tattooed.”
“Amy has something better than a tattoo. She has her parents’ DNA. Did you and your husband give samples to the police so they can run a DNA screen?”
“I did.” She emphasized I. I couldn’t read her. All she had to do was give a small amount of blood. It was neither scary nor painful. Nothing to be embarrassed about. “They only needed one parent. Might as well be me. George doesn’t like needles.”
“My pictures haven’t helped, have they?”
“Tell you the truth? They only make things more confusing.”
I gave her my card with Mike’s home number written in below mine. “Call me anytime. You can leave messages.”
As I gathered up Guido’s pictures, Leslie Metrano gathered hers. She handed them to me. “You might as well have them. You never know what will help.”
“I’ll keep in touch,” I said. “I’ll let you know what happens.”
Following Leslie Metrano’s precise directions, I approached Belmont Shore from the east end this time. I crossed the bridge onto Naples Island, passing over the ski boat basin and the channel to the open sea. The scenery on Naples was more boats, more yacht harbor, more million-dollar houses.
I had looked up the address of the yacht club in the Thomas Guide map book I’d found in Mike’s car. The area was a maze of narrow streets and intersecting waterways. I got lost a couple of times, stymied by one-way passages and dead ends, before I found the right path.
I drove around a horseshoe-shaped bay and over a two-lane bridge. Past a swimming beach with an opalescent boat-oil veneer shimmering on the water, and past the Sea Scout headquarters, I found the yacht club.
The main building sat on a promontory that bulged out into the boat channel. A spiky collar of naked masts defined the contour of its water side. The clubhouse looked something like a Polynesian restaurant left over from the sixties, a long arc of heavy wood and fieldstone shaded by shaggy-leafed banana trees and leggy coco palms.
Though everything looked well tended, I wouldn’t have described the club as posh. It was the boats out back and the cars in front that defined its status. Here were Mercedes station wagons, sleek Jags, more Cadillacs and Lincolns than I had seen in one place outside of Detroit, and litters of Volkswagen convertibles – the California teenager’s car of the moment. What this said to me was that there were at least three generations of the affluent playing in the same sandbox.
I walked in past the brass plaque on the door that said “Members and guests only,” crossed the parquet entry, and headed straight up the stairs toward the sound of voices. Not a soul said boo to me.
On the second floor, I found the bar, a large, cozy lounge walled by glass. Terraces overlooked the Olympic-size pool on the deck below and ranks of moored boats beyond. Through the open windows a brisk breeze blew in off the water, smelling more of bait and petroleum than sweet ocean. A dozen fat brown pelicans rocked in the wake of a passing harbor patrol boat. A peaceful place.
I stood to the side, next to a popcorn machine, and surveyed the crowd, looking for an opening wedge. The atmosphere was friendly, the wealthy at ease among their familiars. My father, who teaches at Berkeley, would have described the group as Establishment. Even worse, Republican.
I don’t know why I was even thinking about my father. Actually, I do know. I say the same little prayer of gratitude every time I am in an opulent environment and I do not find my father. It’s a knee-jerk sort of thing.
When I was immediately postpubescent, my mother enrolled me in a cotillion at the Claremont Hotel in Berkeley. All the better sort from our area sent their little future ambassadors to learn to dance, bow, and curtsy so that they wouldn’t disgrace their families should they be invited to dine at the White House. The boys had been okay, and the dancing instruction wasn’t so bad. It was my father’s presence that caused me pain.
My father, who has never missed a meal without intending to, or lived in a house with fewer than five bedrooms, carries a tremendous load of guilt for the comfortable circumstances of his birth and upbringing. So, while I box-stepped and cha-cha-chaed, he sat in the parents’ gallery, double bourbon in hand, and did his best to convert the local matronage to the virtues of socialism. Some of the mothers instructed their sons not to ask me to dance, lest I taint them. I heard enough pinko jokes that I will never wear pink again as long as I live.
As much as I love Comrade Dad, I made a quick sweep of the yacht-club bar to make sure he wasn’t there before I made my move. One can never be too cautious.
A pair of elderly matrons with tight butts and champagne-colored hair brushed past in an aureole of perfumed air. The smaller of them smiled at me.
“Hello, dear,” she said. “Beautiful day.”
“Lovely,” I said, and fell in behind her. They walked out to a table on the terrace. I found a vacant stool at the bar and sat down.
The bartender in a private club is almost always the keeper of the real scoop. For the price of a drink, maybe a flash of cleavage, chances were he could be mine. As a source of information.
The bartender was at the far end of the bar from me, in the middle of what appeared to be a good joke. There was no hustle in him. I was in no hurry. I didn’t mind having a little time to figure out my opening gambit. The first problem was that drinks were being signed off to club accounts rather than paid for. I had no account. I could always ask for water.
The stool behind me changed ownership. I swiveled around and found myself eye to eye with a middle-aged man with a good tan and smooth hands, doctor hands. He was spare in his frame, in his movements, and in the smile he gave me. He pushed his sweat-stained yachting cap back on his blond head and leaned toward me.
“Nice nose,” he said. “Good workmanship.”
“Thank you,” I laughed. “I paid a lot for it.”
“Chicago, late 1970s.”
“Dallas, 1981.”
He took my chin in his hand and turned my face so he could inspect my nose from the side. “Maybe the work was done in Dallas, but the surgeon trained in Chicago.”
“Could be. Even a snake from Chicago can buy lizard-skin boots in Dallas.” I refrained from touching the itch at the bridge of my nose where once there had been a hump. A hump like my father’s. “Are nose jobs some kind of hobby for you?”
“Noses make the payments on that Bayliner tied up in slip fifty-two.” He offered his hand. “Greg Szal. I don’t remember seeing your nose around here before. Or any of the rest of you, for that matter.”
“I’ve been up in the Bay Area,” I improvised.
“What are you drinking?”
“Diet Coke,” I said.
He caught the bartender’s attention. “Dos Cocas, Sammy, por favor. Tall skinny ones.”
I filed the bartender’s name for possible future use.
Greg Szal sat forward so that his shoulder almost touched mine. At five-seven I am no giant. His eyes were just about level with mine.
“How come you aren’t out there racing with the big girls?” he asked. “Isn’t this the last day of qualifying?”
“Racing isn’t my thing.”
“I know what you mean. Sabots are kid boats.”
He brushed my hand with his as he reached for one of the glasses Sammy the bartender set in front of us. I couldn’t tell whether Szal was coming on to me or just being friendly. Not that it mattered. What I wanted from him was conversation, and he seemed to be a willing donor. I could worry about his intentions later.