"U" is for Undertow (10 page)

With Shelly in such a vulnerable psychological state, Deborah was afraid she’d take out her frustrations on the baby. She finally made up four ounces of formula and fed Rain herself. Rain settled in to eat, taking the entire four ounces before falling asleep. She put the baby in her crib, which they moved into the sewing room down the hall so Shelly could rest undisturbed if the baby fretted in her sleep. Deborah could remember how attuned she’d been to Greg as a newborn, when any slight sound from the crib would have her on her feet and standing over him.

She peered into the guest room where she saw that Shelly was awake. “You can try the breast again when she wakes up. Dr. Erbe says some babies take a little longer catching on.”

“Who gives a shit?” Shelly said, and turned over on her side.

Deborah waited for a moment and when it was clear Shelly wasn’t going to volunteer another word, she went downstairs and cleaned up the breakfast dishes. Twenty minutes later, the baby started crying again. Deborah heard Shelly’s bare feet hit the floor and thump down the hall. Deborah dropped the flatware she was putting in the dishwasher and headed up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

Shelly was leaning over the crib. “Goddamn it, shut the fuck up!”

She was just reaching for the baby when Deborah blocked her arm. “I’ll take care of her. You rest. Everything will be fine.”

“What do you know, you fuckin’ Pollyanna.”

Deborah knew better than to respond. Shelly had reverted to her old ways and any reassurances would be met with hostility.

Shelly stared at her darkly and finally turned on her heel. “Have at it,
Deborah
. You think you’re so smart, you do it.”

She went back into the guest room and shut the door.

Deborah picked up the baby and took her downstairs. She settled in the rocker, put a diaper across her shoulder, and laid the baby up against her, patting her gently until she erupted in a satisfying burp. Rain was quiet then. Deborah continued to pat her, humming, until the baby drifted off to sleep. She debated about returning her to her crib and thought better of it.

Still holding her, Deborah crossed to the wall-mounted phone in the kitchen and lifted the handset. She called Annabelle and gave her a brief account of what was going on. “I need a cradle so I can keep the baby downstairs with me during the day. Do you still have Michael’s on hand?”

“Sure. I set aside all the baby paraphernalia for the next garage sale. I’ve been letting it sit until I was sure I wasn’t going to opt for one more. Let me haul it out and dust it off. I’ll be there in a jiffy.”

“Don’t ring the bell. Come around to the kitchen door and I’ll let you in.”

Fifteen minutes later Annabelle pulled into the driveway with Michael in his infant seat next to her, David, Ryan, and Diana in the backseat. She got the kids out of the car, opened the back of the station wagon, and grabbed the cradle by one end. She herded everyone up the drive and around to the back. Deborah was waiting and opened the door before she had a chance to knock. She put a finger to her lips. “Thank you so much,” she whispered.

“Not a problem. Anything else I can do to help?”

“This is fine. I’ll call later. You’re an angel.”

Annabelle blew her a kiss and ushered her brood of kidlets back to the car. There was a delay while she got everyone settled.

Deborah heard the car start and caught a glimpse of Annabelle pulling out of the drive. She jiggled the sleeping baby on one arm, using her free hand to carry the cradle into the living room. The thick drapes and wall-to-wall carpeting would muffle Rain’s cries if she woke. Maybe with rest Shelly would feel better able to handle the child. Annabelle had not only dusted the cradle, she’d tucked a crib sheet over the mattress and added a pile of flannel baby blankets at one end. Deborah lowered Rain into the cradle, shook out one of the blankets, and covered her. These were blankets Annabelle made by hand as gifts for the newborns among her friends. She also donated blankets to the nursery at St. Terry’s, along with knitted booties and caps, so every new mom, even those without money to spare, would have something warm for her infant to wear home.

Deborah returned to her dishes, troubled by the conflict she could see looming on the horizon. She had never understood child abuse. She’d read occasional accounts of babies being shaken to death, babies being beaten and smothered by parents who lacked the patience or maturity to deal with their screaming infants. She’d even read of one young father who took his baby by the feet and swung her against the wall. Now she could see how such atrocities occurred, tempers simmering to a boil. She had no intention of leaving Shelly alone with the child, but she’d have a battle on her hands. Shelly hated interference, hated any action or comment on anyone’s part that suggested she was falling short. She also hated being mothered and hated being perceived as needy, which didn’t leave many options.

Midafternoon, Deborah knocked on the guest room door and then opened it a crack. “Would you like some lunch? I can make you a sandwich.”

Shelly’s refusal was scarcely audible.

Deborah had nothing else to offer. She fixed a sandwich for herself and sat down in the living room and read a book while she ate. She fed Rain two more bottles of formula at three-hour stretches. Rain was actually settling down; her periods of sleep and hunger falling into a routine.

Greg and Shawn came in at dinnertime, filled with talk of the zoo. Deborah had made a vegetarian lasagna and served it with a bowl of canned peaches and cottage cheese, not a dish she’d ordinarily serve. To her surprise, Shawn gobbled up everything on his plate and asked for more. With Shelly gone, the atmosphere at the table was actually pleasant. Now that Shawn wasn’t subjected to his mother’s running comments on the righteous way of doing things, he ate without being threatened or cajoled.

After dinner, Deborah cleaned up the kitchen while Greg and Shawn remained at the table playing Candy Land. The two of them left at 8:30 so Greg could put Shawn to bed.

Deborah said, “Why don’t you fill the tub for Shawn before he goes down for the night? I left a container of bubble bath and a stack of fresh towels in the pool house.”

Shawn gave a whoop and was out the door before Greg could get up. He skipped down the steps and galloped across the grass. Deborah gave Greg a kiss on the cheek before he left. Moments later, she saw the lights in the pool house come on. She looked up at the ceiling. Still nothing from Shelly, who was probably too proud to ask for anything, having been so stiff-necked and belligerent to this point. Deborah left the lasagna in the oven. She laid out a plate, a napkin, silverware, and a brief note. If Shelly came down of her own accord, she could fill a plate and take it back upstairs.

In the meantime, Deborah moved Rain to the sofa and placed pillows on one side to secure her while she took the cradle upstairs to the master bedroom. She came back for the baby, a fresh bottle, and a stack of diapers, and retreated to the bedroom, going about her business as quietly as she could. Later she realized how unnecessary the courtesy had been.

In the morning the door to the guest room stood open. The bed was unmade and there was no sign of the few belongings Shelly had brought into the house with her. Puzzled, Deborah carried Rain downstairs and peered out the kitchen window. The big yellow school bus was gone.

 

 

I’d swung by Sutton’s place to pick him up on the way over to Ramona Road. Gone was the dress shirt and tie. He’d changed into jeans, a red sweatshirt, and scuffed running shoes. I counted fifteen houses on my first pass down the street, circling the block to get a feel for the neighborhood. Ramona Road was one block long, looping back on itself like a lasso. The lots were hilly, largely given over to trees and scrub. The natural contours of the land left little room to build. Graders and excavators had gone to work, carving out the flats on which construction had gone up. The houses dated back to the ’50s, all of them the work of one architect, whose modern style still looked fresh thirty years later. I parked the Mustang on a grassy patch across the road from 625. Sutton leaned forward in the passenger seat and looked searchingly through the windshield.

A swath of green lawn sloped upward toward the house, the long paved driveway forming a half-circle as it curved down and touched the road again. The Kirkendalls’ former residence was a one-story structure in the shape of an inverted L, with the short arm extended toward the street. The exterior of the house was red brick and darkly stained redwood with bold horizontal lines and generous expanses of glass. The flat concrete roof formed a wide overhang that shaded the verandah along the front. There were no flourishes, no embellishments, and no unnecessary touches.

“This can’t be right,” Sutton said.

“Yes, it is. In 1967, there was only one Kirkendall in town and this is where they lived.”

“But where’s the second floor? Billie Kirkendall was sick. He stayed upstairs and I stayed down.”

“Oh, shit. I’d forgotten that. Wait here and I’ll see if the owner’s home. Maybe we can get permission to explore.”

I got out of the car and dog-trotted across the road. The driveway didn’t appear steep, but I was winded by the time I reached the top. The place had an air of emptiness, a house enveloped in quiet. The windows were bare and there was no sign of a doormat or any of the homely touches that indicate someone in residence. A band of damp paving along the front suggested that the sprinklers were still active, probably governed by the same automatic program that regulated indoor temperatures and turned lights off and on. I went up a low step to the entrance, where a panoramic wall of glass afforded me an unobstructed view of the interior.

The architect had kept the non-load-bearing walls to a minimum and the blond hardwood floors seemed to stretch in all directions. Light poured in from everywhere. A stone fireplace was offset on the far wall and I could see a length of kitchen counter that had been stripped of small appliances. To the right was the empty dining room, with a low-hanging light fixture centered in the ceiling. I walked to my right along the verandah, where I could see a large bedroom with white wall-to-wall carpeting and mirrored sliding doors, one partially open to reveal cavernous closet space.

I returned to the front door and noticed for the first time an alarm company decal saying ARMED RESPONSE pasted to one corner of the glass. The warning was probably more form than content. It seemed unlikely that anyone would pay for security services when the house stood empty. I was assuming the property was on the market, but there was no realtor’s lockbox and no stack of brochures detailing the floor plan, the square footage, or the number of rooms. For Sale signs were prohibited by the home owners’ association. For all I knew, every house in Horton Ravine was up for grabs. I rang the bell with no expectation of a response.

I left the porch, intending to circle the premises. Sutton must have been clued in to the fact that the house was vacant because he emerged from the Mustang and crossed the road as I had. I waited while he climbed the drive and then the two of us traced a path around the house to the rear. Below, on a wide concrete apron, there was a swimming pool and cabana surrounded on two sides by a plain concrete wall with an outdoor fireplace and built-in barbecue pit. Sutton turned and looked at the rear elevation. From this vantage point, the two-story construction was evident. The house had been tucked in against the steep hill and a series of windows looked out on the view. Beyond the patio, the property sloped down again sharply and thick railroad ties had been cut into the hillside to form a crude staircase. The neighbors’ rooftops floated like rafts on a lake of dark green treetops.

“Look familiar?”

“I guess. I thought the house was much bigger.”

“A lot of things look bigger when you’re six.”

“There wasn’t a swimming pool. I’d have remembered it.”

“I’ve done the research and this is where you were. The pool and barbecue could have been added later,” I said. “Let’s take a walk down the hill. If you wandered, that would have been your only choice.”

The brush had been cleared within a twenty-foot radius along the slope, probably by order of the fire department. Sutton followed me reluctantly as I crossed the grass and made my descent. There was no handrail and the steps themselves were deep, with ten-inch risers that forced us to descend the stairs like toddlers, putting both feet on every step before moving to the next. This portion of the lot was useless to all intents and purposes. A series of terraces had been carved out of the hill. The first level was planted with dwarf fruit trees. The second offered shelter in a weathered wood pagoda lined with benches and bleached by the elements to a soft silver gray. The third was given over to rose beds that, at this point, were sadly neglected.

After that, the land fell away gradually. The bottom of the hill butted into a grove of trees that stretched out on either side, in varying degrees of density. I counted three large oaks and six mature black acacias. Clusters of pittosporum and eucalyptus were intermingled with saplings. I wouldn’t have called this “the woods,” but to Sutton, at the age of six, it might have looked like one. Where the undergrowth was thin, I could see sections of a paved road that must have been Via Juliana, one of the primary arteries through Horton Ravine. If I’d been searching for a secluded location to serve as a grave site, I wouldn’t have picked this. From above, the hillside was open to view. Given the staggered pattern of trees below, the area would have been visible from the road as well.

Sutton stood there, his hands in his pants pockets, his gaze moving across the landscape as he struggled to get his bearings. I could see his confusion now that he was faced with a scene that had seemed so vivid in his mind. He moved to his right, traipsing through knee-high weeds before he came to a standstill. A fence blocked his path, the chicken wire sagging under a swarm of morning glory vines. The sign affixed to the fence post read: