The Silent Sister (33 page)

“Rad shop,” Sal said with a nod. “Grady closed it down around 2000 when vinyl officially tanked. He could open it up again now, though, and have customers lined up for blocks.”

“Can you tell me where I can find him?”

He looked suspicious as he slipped his safety glasses to the top of his head. “You going to cause him any kind of grief?”

“No,” I said. “Of course not. I just want to see if he remembers my sister.”

He stroked his beard, considering the request. I thought I looked pretty straight and innocent in my blue capris and black T-shirt, my hair in a ponytail. Apparently, he thought so, too. “He's a sound engineer at the stadium,” he said.

“Where's the stadium?”

He gave me directions back to Mission Valley, and I remembered passing a stadium not far from my hotel.

I thanked him for his help, then walked slowly to my car, reluctant to leave the beach. I was so sure I felt the vibrations of my sister in this town.

*   *   *

It took a lot of walking around the aging circular stadium and many questions of many custodians before I found the guy named Grady, but I did finally find him. He sat in a small room in the middle of a half circle of monitors of varying shapes and sizes. His back was to me, his hair in a curly gray ponytail.

“Excuse me?” I said.

He swiveled his stool around to face me and I was mesmerized by his see-through green eyes.

“You lost?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “I'm looking for you if you're Grady. Do you have a few minutes to talk?”

“Depends on who's asking,” he said, but he smiled warmly.

“My name is Riley MacPherson.” I waited to see if my name meant anything to him, but he looked at me blankly. “I think … there's a very small chance you might have known my sister,” I said. “Did you ever have a girl working for you by the name Ann Johnson?”

He lost his smile and stared at me. “No,” he said, but the look in his eyes told me he knew that name, and I felt my own eyes fill with tears.

“Please talk to me,” I pleaded. “I don't want to hurt her. I promise.”

He was still looking hard at me, but I saw something inside him begin to bend. “You're too young to be her sister,” he said.

Oh, my God,
I thought.
He knew her.

“My family was very spread out in age,” I said. “But I promise you. I am.” I wiped the corners of my eyes with my fingertips.

“Why would you think I know her?” he asked.

“I'm pretty sure that a private investigator talked to you about her long ago. Do you remember?”

He shrugged. “Some guy came in with a picture of a girl and I said I didn't know her,” he said. “And that's what I'm saying to you, too.” He swiveled his chair around so his back was to me again.

“I flew all the way from North Carolina to try to find someone who knew her,” I said. “Please.”

I saw his shoulders sag and heard him sigh. He turned back to me.

“Why do you want to find her?”

“I thought she killed herself when she was seventeen,” I said, and his pale eyes widened, “but I recently found out that she faked her suicide. That she's probably still alive. I never got to know her. Our parents are both dead. She and my brother are my only family.”

He was frowning at me now, gray eyebrows nearly knitted together. “When's the last time you saw her?” he asked.

“When I wasn't quite two.”

“Shit.” He ran a hand over the thinning hair at his temples. “Well, it seems to me if she wanted to see you, she would have found
you
instead of you having to look for her.”

I winced. The same thing Tom Kyle had said to me, almost word for word.

“I think she was afraid of hurting me or our family by being in touch,” I said. Or, more likely, I thought, she was afraid of
us
hurting
her.

“Convince me you're her sister,” he said. “You don't look like her.”

I reached into the tote bag hanging over my shoulder and pulled out the framed picture of Lisa, Danny, and me, all of us dressed in white.

He held it on his knee and let out his breath. “Wow,” he said. “This is your brother?”

“Yes. Danny. He doesn't know I'm here. He … he was in Iraq,” I added. “His life's kind of a struggle.”

A whole array of emotions passed over Grady's features, and he looked down at the picture awhile longer in silence.

“Please help me,” I said.

After a moment, he stood up. “Not sure I can.” He handed me the photograph. “But let's get out of this claustrophobic room and talk.”

He led me out of the room and we walked down the wide corridor and then out into the bowl of the huge stadium itself. The brown plastic seats were completely empty, and we sat down high above a sunlit green field.

“What's your name again?” he asked.

“Riley,” I said. “You knew her, right?”

“Did she really kill someone?” He looked at me. His green eyes were startling in the sunlight.

“Is that what the PI said?” I asked.

“Yes. Was that bullshit?”

I shook my head. “She shot a man, but it was an accident. I think she got scared then and faked her suicide.” I'd leave my father out of the story. “I didn't know about the shooting. My whole life, I grew up thinking she'd killed herself because she was depressed.” I told him about finding the box of newspaper articles and my conversation with Sondra Davis. “Which is how I found out that she'd worked in Ocean Beach. And then I met a woman who recognized her and she said she worked for you.”

He didn't say anything.

“Did she? Work for you?”

He nodded.

“Oh, my God.” A chill ran across my arms. “I can't believe it. A week ago I thought she was dead. Thank you! Can you tell me about her? What was she like?” My words came out in a rush. “Do you have any idea where she is now?”

“I don't know where she is,” he said. “I haven't seen her since she left, which was the same day that PI came into my shop. I knew she was running from something, though, and I have to tell you,” he said, “I don't think she'll want to be found.”

I turned my face away from him, afraid I was going to cry again. “I won't hurt her,” I promised. “That's the last thing I want to do.”

“She was an awesome girl,” he said, as if trying to console me, and his words
did
give me some comfort. I needed to hear them. I didn't know my sister at all.

“Thanks for telling me that,” I said.

“She knew everything there was to know about music, but I didn't realize till that private investigator showed me her picture that she was a serious violinist.”

“A child prodigy,” I said.

“How have you tried to find her so far?” he asked.

“All I know is that her name was Ann Johnson,” I said, “which is not much to go on.”

“She always went by Jade, though.”

“Jade?”

“It was her nickname.”

“So … maybe I should be searching for Jade Johnson instead of Ann?” I asked.

“I'd definitely try that.” He looked far below us, where two men had appeared on the field, kicking a soccer ball back and forth between them. “Was Ann Johnson her real name?” he asked. “I always wondered.”

I shook my head. “Please don't ask me to tell you her real name. I just can't.” I stared down at the men, one of them heading the ball toward an invisible goal. “I'm so scared for her,” I said.

“Why?” he asked. “Is something going on now that's making you afraid? I mean, I'm assuming if she's still on the run, she's been safe for a long time.”

“What's going on now is that I'm trying to find her,” I said, “and I don't want to screw up her life in the process.”

“All right,” he said. “I get it.”

“Do you still have records on your employees from back then?” I asked. “Is there a way to get her Social Security number?” A Social Security number would be like gold, but he shook his head.

“Sorry. Those hit the dustbin a long time ago.”

“Do you have any idea where I should look?” I asked, point-blank.

He hesitated, but not for long. “As far as I know, she went to Portland to stay with her girlfriend, Celia,” he said. “Whether that lasted or not, I don't know.” He looked at me. “You know she was gay, right?”

My look must have told him I'd had no idea. “I'd never heard a word about that,” I said. “But then, there was a lot I never heard about in my family.” It took me a moment to recover from the surprise, only then realizing that he'd given me two new pieces of information: “Portland” and “Celia.”

“Do you know Celia's last name?”

He shook his head. “I knew her grandfather, Charlie, really well. His last name was Wesley, but he was on her mother's side.”

“Can I talk to Charlie?”

He shook his head. “He passed away years ago,” he said. “Good man. He left me all his vinyl, but I'd closed the store by then. He never talked about Jade after she left, and I never asked questions. I figured the less I knew, the better.”

“I'm trusting you to keep this quiet.” I pressed my finger to my lips.

“You can trust me,” he said. We looked down at the bright green field for a long moment. “Here's what I think,” he said finally. “I think if Jade's made a new life for herself, you should leave her alone.”

My eyes stung. He was probably right, but I couldn't do that.

“I need my sister,” I said, when I thought I could trust my voice. “I thought she was dead. I just want to…” What
did
I want? Was I going to hurt her by finding her? I felt my lips tremble. “I need my sister,” I said again.

He rested a big hand on my shoulder then, nodding. “I think you'll do the right thing,” he said. “And if—when—you find her, tell her Grady says hello.”

 

43.

I was able to get a standby flight out of San Diego the following morning. I'd considered flying to Portland, but what would I do once I got there? Portland was a big city and I had so little to go on. I stayed up half the night searching the Internet for a Jade Johnson, thinking that would be much easier than finding Ann, but I was wrong. There were over eighty Jade Johnsons on Facebook alone. I studied their pages until my eyes ached and I finally fell asleep with my computer wide open.

*   *   *

I had to change planes in Charlotte, and as I waited for the puddle jumper to New Bern, I checked my phone for messages. Only one, and it was from Jeannie. “I'm concerned about you,” she said. “I'm stopping over tonight to check on you. Don't worry. I won't be staying and I won't be doing any work there, but I don't feel good about the way we left it the other day—a lot of hard feelings on both sides, I think—and I just need to make sure you're okay.”

I groaned. I should call her. Tell her I was fine and not to come over. We could talk next week. But I didn't even feel like speaking to her answering machine, much less to her. I'd deal with her later.

My flight was late and I tried to doze sitting up in the chair, but all I could think about was my conversation with Grady.

She was an awesome girl
.

Every time I remembered him saying that about Lisa, I smiled. Suddenly, I felt as though I knew her. Hearing about her from my parents, or more recently from Jeannie and Caterina, had never had that impact on me. But now I knew she was
awesome
. Grady hadn't based that assessment on her musical ability. He hadn't even known about that. He'd based it on the person she was, separate from her violin. That was the person I wanted desperately to find.

 

44.

Jeannie didn't even knock before walking in the front door early that evening. After my blowup the other day, I would have thought she'd have the sense to at least knock before barging in, but no. I was sitting barefoot on the living room floor surrounded by piles of paid bills and statements and tax documents pulled from the cabinets. I'd already filled two big black trash bags with paper I'd have to shred later, but I didn't want to take the time to do it now. If there was something—anything—related to Lisa in those cabinets, I wanted to find it. So far, I wasn't having much luck. Most of the documents were ancient utility bills and medical records I saw no point in keeping.

“Well!” Jeannie stood in the middle of the room, smiling. “I see you're finally making some real progress.”

I glanced up at her, but said nothing. She was dressed in white slacks and a navy blue blazer with a gold
TOP REALTOR
pin on the lapel.

“Maybe you just needed a little space from Christine and me,” she added.

“You're right.” I shoved another fistful of paper into one of the trash bags. “I needed some time on my own, that's all.”

“I understand. Oh! Look at this!” She'd spotted the photographs I'd taken with me to San Diego where they now lay on the coffee table. She picked up the picture of Lisa standing back-to-back with Matty, locks of their hair tangled together. “Is this the most darling photo or what?” she asked.

“It really is.” I had to agree.

“I haven't seen this picture in a long time,” she said. “They look like Siamese twins here, don't they? That's what they were like. You hardly ever saw one without the other.” The pink of the setting sun poured through the window and across Jeannie's smile. “She's wearing the necklace I gave her,” she said.

I'd been about to toss another stack of papers into the trash bag, but lowered my hand to the floor.

“What did you say?” I asked.

“This necklace.” Jeannie tapped the picture with her fingertip. “I gave it to her. It's jade. Lisa always wore it, and that touched me so much. It had Chinese symbols carved on the front and back. They meant ‘long life' and ‘joy,' or something like that.”