I’d seen overparenting, so why not oversistering? Considering what had happened ten years ago on that stormy night outside of Eugene, Oregon, maybe it was understandable. Maybe commendable.
But more important to me than Penelope’s attempted management of her teenage sister was that Daley’s world had just grown larger. Nick. Alchemy 101. The Cathedral by the Sea. Paradise Date Farm. All linked by SNR Security. By Adam Revell, Connor, Eric, and the six helmeted warriors who had easily laid waste to Roland Ford, PI. Why had they done that? Because I was snooping after Daley Rideout? Maybe, but they had been in some control of her, chaperoned by Connor and Eric. What threat was I? A leap, but an easy one: the sign on the silver SUV that Scott Chan had failed to read was that of SNR Security. They had her. I’d suspected that much when I saw the SNR emblem on the ticket booth at Alchemy 101. The attack at Paradise Date Farm confirmed it. If my beating was not to keep me away from Daley, then what?
I looked at the tub of ice melting in the sun. “Mrs. Rideout—”
“Penelope, please.”
“Penelope, exactly what did Daley say about San Onofre?”
“Just that it was surreal and the old power plant looked like something from a science-fiction movie. Armed guards everywhere.”
I knew the San Onofre nuclear power plant well. Almost every Southern Californian did. I’d driven by it thousands of times, in and out of Orange County.
I felt stumped by Daley Rideout’s behavior. Wasn’t even sure how to describe it. Erratic? Careless? Reckless? Quite a wake of damage her actions had left in the last two days, from Nick Moreno to me.
“Has Daley gone to San Onofre before?” I asked.
“Not that I know.”
“For all your security efforts, there are sure a lot of things you don’t know about her.”
“You can ridicule me but not my efforts or intentions,” she said. “I do feel terrible about what they did to you. But I hope I can still count on you as an employee and an ally.”
Behind me, a cloud drifted across the sun. The daylight diminished and Penelope Rideout’s blue eyes turned gray. A breeze pushed some of her curls onto her forehead.
“There’s no Second Marine Aircraft Wing at Miramar,” I said. “No Colonel Richard Hauser at Miramar, either. Never has been.”
“Are you sure?”
“Pretty damned.”
“Okay,” she said. “I believe you.”
“Okay? Then who’s that in the picture on your refrigerator?”
Another catch of breath. Impatience or exasperation. She used both hands to put her sunglasses back on, wedding band and engagement ring glinting in the sun.
“Richard, of course. We divorced two years ago, before the move to Oceanside. Richard is a clinical psychologist. That’s him in the picture, though. We rented the flight suit from a costume shop. For fun. The picture was taken at the Flying Leatherneck Museum, not an actual runway. We all liked it so much. The three of us happy and together. I don’t have many pictures like that.”
“So you leave it out for visitors.”
“To document a failed marriage with a good memory. Get it?”
“Why wear the rings?”
“They simplify.”
My face hurt. I felt mentally off-balance. The warmer my body got, the worse everything felt. I wanted to be frozen again. I wondered if the concussion that should have come earlier was finally arriving. Decided that this pretty woman sitting in front of me was one of the least trustworthy people I’d ever met. Like a talking doll. You just pulled the string and she blabbed whatever was set to come out next. I entertained the idea of a refund, a washing of hands, a day or two in bed, and an easier, more satisfying case.
“Where is Richard now?” I asked, not sure I cared.
“He took a position in Eugene. With a healthcare chain.”
“Which one?”
“I honestly don’t know.”
“The city where your parents died.”
“I met him there, actually. In Eugene. After Mom and Dad.”
“The number you gave me for him was bad.”
“He’s obviously changed it. I haven’t called that number in almost two years.”
“None of the search services I subscribe to have a record of your marriage to Richard Hauser, or to anyone else. They tend not to miss little things like that.”
“We eloped in Reno.”
“You’re beginning to exhaust me, Mrs. Rideout.”
“I do that to people.” She stood. Came around the long picnic table and sat down beside me. Set her sunglasses on the table again. The drift of time and scent. Leaned in and set both her hands over one of mine. Warm where the ice had been.
“Mr. Ford, please don’t give up on me and Daley. There’s darkness all around us. We need you. I know she’s fallen in with very bad people. I also know some of what you’ve done in your life, and gone through, and been made into. And I admire you very much. I may strike you as Little Miss Conduct, but I’m a good person. See?”
I saw her eyes from point blank then, the blue of the iris and the indigo spokes around the pupil. Kaleidoscopes of sunlight. A gathering, judgmental beauty in them. I didn’t look away. Hadn’t not looked away since I met Justine. Let this unsettling fact join the river of unsettling facts running through me at that moment.
We sat there, hand on hand for a while. A man beside a woman, a woman beside a man.
“I’ll walk myself to the car,” she said.
“I can manage that much.”
Slow going, across the patio and up the railroad ties to the circular driveway, where Penelope’s cheerful yellow Beetle sat in the shade of a central coast live oak. I saw Burt and Frank not-so-covertly watching us from the far shore of the pond, where they were fishing for bass in the cattails. I saw Justine gliding past them in the rowboat, wearing a swimsuit and the floppy white hat she always wore. Dick glanced at me from the porch of casita one, where he sat in his Adirondack chair, overcasually clipping his fingernails. And Liz, way down in front of casita six, happening to look my way as she laced her shoes, tennis bag beside her, racquets protruding. Violet studied me frankly from the front porch of casita four, talking on the phone.
“Apparently you get plenty of supervision around here,” said Penelope.
“Only when I need it.”
“Must be nice.”
11
Violet, Frank, and I sat in the Cathedral by the Sea that Sunday morning, a full house, color-stained sunlight slanting through the windows and a rock band getting ready to start things off.
It had been three days since my close loss to SNR Security. The colors of my face were a little less vivid, the swelling was down, and my stitches itched. The rib hurt only if I breathed. Daley Rideout had remained fully vanished since the call to her sister. Neither Darrel Walker, Oceanside PD, nor any of the several state and federal agencies I called would tell me anything other than that she was still missing and there had been no new developments in the case. Private investigators rank only slightly above registered sex offenders when it comes to need-to-know. Darrel, to his credit, seemed concerned about my split-decision loss to SNR Security, said he’d see what he could find out about the company.
When the rock band kicked in, Violet paused her story about hitting tennis balls with Serena at a fund-raiser one summer, folded her hands over one knee, and listened up. Frank, who rarely spoke English away from home, was silent. Fingering the straw Borsalino I’d worn to protect the public from my face, I watched Pastor Reggie Atlas stride through the camera flashes to the pulpit.