“Not yet.”
“I understand. You may want to handle this personally. Go another round, in the style of Rolling Thunder Ford.”
I didn’t respond to that. My thoughts were clear but my mouth unwilling.
“Next,” said Burt. “One Penelope Rideout came to your downtown office early this morning, while we were having our desert adventure. A helpful Dublin Pub barista directed her here. Through the front-gate intercom, Rideout told Dick she was looking for you, that she’d hired you to find her sister. That you weren’t returning calls and her sister was still in the wind. An unsatisfied customer. Through the intercom, Dick took her numbers and ran her off.”
I forced my memories into sluggish words. Told Burt about Mrs. Rideout coming to my office, yesterday morning about this time. About Daley, Nick Moreno, Adam Revell of SNR Security. About climbing the fence, the date farm, the ATVs. I felt completely disembodied, and my voice seemed to be someone else’s, but my mind seemed sharp. I was under the impression that if I moved anything more than my lips I would break some spell that had been cast over me.
“So while Liz and Violet were picking the gravel out of your back, I called Penelope,” Burt continued. “She’d settled down enough to tell me that her sister had called her early this morning. Very early. Daley said she’d cut school with friends, driven up the coast with them. Partied on the beach at San Onofre. Heard that Nick had been shot dead. Decided her friends weren’t such good friends after all. No details. Ditched former friends, hitched a ride into San Clemente, and called her sister from a pay phone because friends had taken her smartphone. Penelope couldn’t get you, so she called your cop friend Walker in Encinitas, who was out of jurisdiction but called confederates in San Clemente. Penelope made it to the San Clemente 7-Eleven in less than an hour, but the sister was gone. San Clemente deputies were on scene. The clerk told Penelope the same thing he’d told the San Clemente deputies — that the girl had been there until less than half an hour ago. She’d bought candy and an energy drink and talked on the phone outside. Then two guys drove up and they all argued. She got into a silver SUV with them, and off they went. About five minutes later the cops pulled up.”
I felt like my body had vanished. Like I was just a brain having thoughts. “Nothing since, from Daley?”
“Nada.”
“Amber Alert?”
“Declined. Mrs. Rideout pressed the deputies, but they told her it was for the most urgent cases only. That a truant ditching school to party with friends and getting into an argument made this less urgent. They offered to call in a county BOLO on the SUV, told her it was the best they could do.”
I had a frozen memory of Penelope Rideout’s anger at me for not returning her calls during my Monarch Academy interviews. Of her almost trancelike control of that anger, her clenched eyelids and balled fists and the silent prayer or spell or curse. I’m ninety percent lover and ten percent killer.
“How are you feeling, Roland? Warm yet?”
“Just a little.”
“Then you’ve been in long enough. You’ll feel like a new man once you thaw out.”
“I look forward to that.”
“I’ll be damned,” said Burt. “Champ, this may be troubling news, but based on Dick’s description of Mrs. Rideout’s car, I’d say she just drove up to the gate again.”
“Yellow V-Dub ragtop?”
“None other.”
A numb lifting of my head. Some of the ice bags slid off. “Ring her in and help me get into the house, Burt.”
10
As the shivering tapered off, I felt better. Dried my tight pink skin, got on workout pants and a zippered hoodie, and arranged my hair above my crime-scene face. Then went back down to the patio, where Penelope Rideout paced heavily in the shade of the palapa.
“Why can’t I get you when I need you? I will not be ignored. I will not be — oh. Oh my God. Look at you.”
“Do I have to?”
“What can I... I mean, what should... just, what?”
“Sit and I’ll tell you.”
We faced each other across the big picnic table. I gave her the pond view. I started with Alchemy 101 and ended with my ice bath. She looked back and forth from me to the bathtub on the cinder blocks near the water. I kept my saga brief and to the point. Tried a cryogenic smile, but it hurt. She wore a yellow summer dress and white gladiator sandals and Jackie O sunglasses.
“I just raised your pay,” she said softly.
“Not necessary. Tell me about Daley’s call, everything.”
She gave me a more detailed version than she’d given Burt over the phone. Daley called just after three a.m. She was in San Clemente. She had gone to the beach at San Onofre earlier with friends. She was almost hysterical over what happened to Nick. Angry at her friends, who didn’t know anything about it except he was dead but they would protect her. She said the beach looked weird because there were armed guards everywhere. She refused to say which friends she was with. She’d split and hitched a ride to 7-Eleven with a creep. Daley was terse and vague.
“She leaps before she looks,” said Penelope. “I told her that I’d just been through forty-plus hours of worried hell over her, and she told me to come get her and make it snappy. Now she’s gone again. I was so close to getting her.”
“Who are Connor and Eric, and why is she with them?” I asked.
“I told you yesterday I don’t know them.”
“Do you know SNR Security?”
“I do not.”
“Adam Revell doesn’t ring a bell?”
Penelope stared at me from behind her dark glasses. I could see her eyes through the darkness. “I don’t like your tone of voice.”
“I don’t like getting jumped by six goons, following a lead I got from you.”
“You’re very suspicious.”
“Part of my charm.”
“I fail to see it.”
“Do you know this Cathedral by the Sea?”
A dismissive exhale. “I don’t approve of it.”
“Explain.”
“I read about it when they opened their doors. It’s in a funny-shaped building. Some of Daley’s friends go there.”
“Does Daley?”
“Yes, once. With two girlfriends. Just a few weeks ago, the last Sunday in August. He came at her aggressively.”
“‘He’?”
“The youth minister. I forget his name.”
“He came at her?”
“Recruited her for the youth group. For the Cathedral by the Sea rock band. For a cycling trip to Mammoth. After one visit from Daley, they had her booked up every weekend for a month. I had a bad feeling about him and the church.”
“Did Daley?”
“She thought the church ‘had promise.’ Her words. So I forbid her from attending again, and recommended St. Mary, Star of the Sea, in Oceanside.”
“Because—”
“It’s Catholic and I heard good things about it.”
“Were you raised Catholic?”
“I’ve never set foot in a Catholic church. Or any other, in recent memory.”
“Help me with your reasoning,” I said. “You attend no place of worship. You won’t let your sister go to one she’s interested in. So you send her to the Catholics, though you know little about them.”
She pulled off her sunglasses and set them on the table, her blue prying eyes locked onto mine. Eyes that told a story. A hard one. Beautiful but chilling.
“Only faith lasts,” she said. “It can’t be broken or taken away.”
I wasn’t sure of that, but my sureness wasn’t the point. “And Daley’s faith is supposed to conform to yours?”
“She’s fourteen years old, Mr. Ford. I’m not only her sister but her guardian. Every decision I’ve ever made has put Daley first. That’s my job on earth, and I take it seriously.”