"U" is for Undertow (28 page)

 

 

Deborah Unruh agreed to meet me on the beach in front of the Edgewater Hotel. The spot she suggested was across from the hotel entrance, at the bottom of the concrete stairs that led down from the frontage road. It was a point she’d be passing in the course of her regular weekday walk, a loop that extended from her Montebello condominium to the wharf downtown. Avis Jent had called her on my behalf and after the preliminary chitchat, she’d summed up my mission as succinctly as I might have done in her place. Deborah didn’t seem to require much in the way of persuasion.

I arrived fifteen minutes early and parked on the narrow road that ran behind the hotel. I locked my shoulder bag in the trunk of my car and took a shortcut through the property. I crossed the frontage road and trotted down the stairs. A dense fog was rolling in, spreading a thick marine layer that blotted out the offshore islands, twenty-six miles away. The April air, mild to begin with, was changing its character. Erratic winds topped the waves, creating whitecaps in the chop. It was close to 3:00 by then, and I was already operating on sensory overload. I needed time to breathe and I hoped the bracing ocean air would clear my head. My usual morning jog didn’t bring me down this far. My circuit began and ended at the wharf, with its complicated history of good intentions gone wrong.

Coastal Santa Teresa, despite its many assets, wasn’t blessed with a natural harbor. Early trade by sea was inhibited because shipping companies, fearful of exposure to rough seas, were unwilling to risk their cargo when faced with the rocky shore. In 1872 a fifteen-hundred-foot wharf was finally constructed, allowing freighters and steamers to unload goods and passengers. Over the next fifty years, earthquakes, winter storms, and arsonists laid siege to the wharf, and while it was rebuilt time and time again, it failed to solve the problem of safe mooring for the swelling number of yachts and pleasure boats owned by its wealthy citizens and sometimes wealthier summer visitors.

In the early 1920s an informal engineering survey (which consisted of setting empty jugs and sacks of sawdust afloat at Horton Ravine beach and watching which way they drifted) indicated that locating an artificial harbor to the west of the town would be folly because prevailing currents would denude the beaches of sand and deposit it all directly into the proposed moorage basin, barring both ingress and egress. A $200,000 harbor bond issue was offered in support of this ill-conceived scheme, and voters approved the measure on May 4, 1927. Tons of rocks were barged from the islands and dumped just offshore, forming a thousand-foot breakwater. Thereafter, as predicted, 775 cubic yards of sand per day shifted to the inside aspect of the barrier, creating a sandbar of sufficient mass to choke the harbor entrance. It wasn’t long before the taxpayers were forced to buy a $250,000 dredge and a $127,000 tender in a perpetual effort to keep the harbor open, at an annual expenditure of $100,000. The sum has grown exponentially since then, with no permanent remedy in sight. All of this by way of improvement.

I did a few preliminary stretches, keeping an eye on the beach. Ten minutes later I caught sight of Deborah Unruh, approaching from my left. Avis Jent’s description hadn’t prepared me for how attractive she was. She was barefoot and the wind had buffeted her silver hair into a choppy halo. She had to be in her late sixties, looking trim and fit in black velour pants with a matching jacket that she’d left unzipped, showing a red cotton T-shirt. Her eyes were brown and her face was youthful, despite numerous soft lines that came into focus as she reached me. “Kinsey?”

“Hi, Deborah.” I reached out and the two of us shook hands. “Thanks for meeting me on such short notice.”

“Not a problem. I’m just happy I wasn’t asked to give up my afternoon walk. I usually go as far as the wharf and back if that’s doable for you.”

“Absolutely. What’s that, four miles round trip?”

“Close enough.”

I took a minute to pull off my running shoes and socks. The socks I stuffed in my jacket pockets. I tied my shoelaces together and hung my shoes around my neck, letting them dangle in back. I wasn’t crazy about the persistent bump-bumping between my shoulder blades as we trudged through the soft sand, but it was better than walking fully shod.

She was already moving toward the surf at a pace I might have found daunting if I hadn’t been faithful to my jogging routine. On the ocean, waves broke a dozen yards out, and once we reached the hard pack, the water rushed forward in an icy flurry, covering our feet with foam before sliding out again. The Pacific is cold and unforgiving. You can usually spot a few hardy souls swimming in its depths, but no one had braved it that day. Two sailboats tacked toward the islands and a speedboat, at full throttle, paralleled the shoreline, keeping a para-sailor aloft, attached by a towrope scarcely visible against the pale blue sky. Hang gliding and parasailing are second and third down on my list of the one thousand things I never want to do in life. The first is have another tetanus shot.

Deborah said, “I understand this whole business originated with Michael Sutton. What’s the nature of your relationship?”

“I wouldn’t call it a relationship,” I said. “I met him for the first time a week ago when he hired me for a day’s work.”

I sketched in the situation, starting with his appearance in my office and his story about the two pirates he’d seen in the woods. “They claimed they were digging for buried treasure, but he noticed a bundle on the ground nearby. A few weeks ago, he came across a reference to the Fitzhugh kidnapping and the penny dropped. Now he’s convinced he saw Mary Claire’s body wrapped for burial. The only snag is when the police excavated the site, they found a dead dog. According to the ID tag, his name was Ulf.”

She seemed taken aback. “Well, that’s bizarre. I can assure you he wasn’t ours.”

“I know. I drove to Puerto and talked to the man who owned him. He said he’d taken Ulf to Dr. McNally for hip dysplasia. X-rays revealed a nasty tumor instead and the vet recommended euthanasia. Someone removed the dog’s remains from a shed at the rear of the clinic and transported the body to your property, where they buried him.”

The look she turned on me was perplexed. “Pardon my skepticism, but it sounds like all of this is predicated on the notion that it was Mary Claire’s body he saw. What makes you so sure? It seems like folly to operate on the idea when all you have is his word for it.”

“Agreed. I’m not even sure we could say we had his word on it. Call it a hunch.”

“Call it anything you like, it’s still odd. If something went wrong in the course of the kidnapping and they had to dispose of her body, why would they bury her in
our
yard when Horton Ravine has acres of woods?”

“I’ve been asking myself the same question. If we’re lucky we’ll find answers. On the other hand, we may never know.”

“There’s a certain irony in here somewhere. I haven’t heard Michael’s name in years. His parents, Kip and Annabelle, were our best friends.”

I looked over at her with interest. “Really. Michael’s parents? When was this?”

“During that same period. We met at the country club when she was six months pregnant with him. They were the dearest people in the world. I lost Annabelle, Kip, and Patrick in a span of two years.”

“Avis told me your husband died in a plane crash,” I said. I was reluctant to bring up the subject of his death, but it seemed to me the conversation we were embarking on had better be rooted in reality. The fact that we were walking, with our attention directed outward, allowed a more intimate exchange than if we’d been chatting eye-to-eye over a cup of tea.

“Some days I think I’m reconciled, that I’ve dealt with the pain and it’s over and done. Other days the grief is just as fresh as it was the first moment I heard.”

“What were the circumstances?”

“Rain was just starting graduate school, working toward her master’s degree in social work at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. This was the fall of 1985. She and Patrick drove out in her car, with all her stuff in a four-by-eight cargo trailer. His plan was to get her settled and then fly on to Atlanta for a business meeting. I’d have gone with him, but it made more sense for me to tend the home fires and let the two of them have the time together. The Midwest Express flight to Atlanta went down after takeoff. The right engine failed and then a whole series of things went haywire. I was here in California without any intuition whatever. It’s hard to realize your life can change so radically with no warning at all. When Rain phoned, she couldn’t even speak. I thought it was a crank call and nearly hung up on her.”

“I don’t know how anyone gets through something like that.”

“You do because you do. Because you have no choice. I had Rain to consider. I set my own pain aside and focused on helping her.”

“Tell me the time frame. I heard about Michael’s accusations against his parents.”

“The lawsuit was settled in 1981. By then, Kip and Annabelle were crippled by the strain. Between the public outcry and the drain on their emotions, they were whipped. Let’s not even talk about the thousands of dollars in legal fees it cost them. Annabelle died in the summer of 1983, and Kip six months later.”

“They must have been a mess after what he put them through.”

“You have no idea. The four of us talked about it for hours on end and there was just no way out. Suing his therapist was their only hope of putting a stop to it. Even when it was over, the bad feelings remained. Some people were convinced he was actually abused, even after Marty Osborne as good as admitted the whole of it was her doing. The general attitude seemed to be that if Kip and Annabelle were accused, there must be a grain of truth to it. Both drank. I’m not saying they were alcoholics, but they hit the bottle pretty hard at times. Patrick and I were in much the same boat. We called it ‘social’ drinking, but we were social every chance we got. When this came up, they couldn’t suck down the martinis fast enough, and that set tongues to wagging on top of everything else. At the club, feelings ran so high, the four of us resigned. That’s how bad it got. I still run into people who refuse to make eye contact. They know Patrick and I were loyal, which apparently put us on the same dung heap as the Suttons, like we were somehow guilty by association.”

“Diana told me Michael recanted.”

She shook her head in disgust. “That was the last straw. I wanted to kill the little shit. Patrick and I were incensed, absolutely livid. Not that it made a whit of difference. Kip and Annabelle were both gone by then and the damage was done.”

“Diana says her mother drowned.”

Deborah gestured toward the surf. “She was swimming a few hundred yards offshore when she got caught in the undertow. She must have used up all her strength trying to fight her way back. In the end, the ocean took her.” She was quiet for a moment and all I could hear was the chunking of sand under our feet as we walked. “I wouldn’t mind a touch of justice for Michael, some small sign he was getting back his own. I look at the lives he destroyed and it seems unfair that he gets to enjoy the same sun that shines down on the rest of us. That may sound monstrous, but I don’t care.”

“I can understand how you feel,” I said. “It’s not about vengeance. It’s about balance, the sense that good and evil are in a state of equilibrium. At the same time, I have to admit I like the kid. I think he should be held accountable for the harm he did, but he’s paid a price like everyone else.”

“Not enough of one.” She broke off, impatiently. “Let’s change the subject. It doesn’t do any good to dwell on it,” she said, and then glanced over at me. “You wanted information about Rain’s abduction. How much did Avis tell you?”

“Nothing. She said the story was yours, which is why she set this up. I do know you had a son and you ended up raising his child.”

“Rain is the good part. She’s the love of my life. At the time we took custody, I was forty-four years old, way past the point of parenting a newborn, but there she was. The birth itself was hard and Shelly ended up having a C-section. She had absolutely no interest in mothering the child. Rain was a fussy baby and didn’t nurse well. I suspect Shelly was suffering from postpartum depression. I wasn’t entirely unsympathetic, but I was seriously concerned she’d harm the child. My worries were pointless, as it turned out. She and Greg and the boy vanished in a puff of smoke, leaving Rain behind.”

“How old was she?”

“Five days. After the initial shock wore off, we realized how totally blessed we were. I still laugh when I think about all those PTA meetings. Which I ran, by the way. All the other moms were in their twenties. I’d been chairing committees for years and I couldn’t help myself. They’d start floundering and I’d take over. That was another reason we were so close to Kip and Annabelle. They had four kids underfoot and suddenly we had one, too.” She smiled. “Sorry to run on like this.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “How long was it before you saw Greg and Shelly again?”

“Four years. June of 1967. I thought they were gone for good. I should have known better.”

“Why did they come back?”

“Well, it certainly wasn’t for love of Rain or the two of us. Patrick’s father had left forty thousand dollars in a trust fund for Greg. He wasn’t entitled to the money until he turned thirty, but he wanted it right then. Patrick and I refused to knuckle under to his demands. He and Shelly were furious, and I was terrified they’d retaliate by taking Rain.”

“Why was Greg so insistent on the money?”

“I couldn’t see the urgency myself. They told us they wanted to buy a farm so they could establish a commune. Their claim was they’d paid a thousand dollars down and needed the balance by the end of the month. Patrick asked to see the contract, but Greg said there wasn’t one; it was a gentlemen’s agreement. Patrick thought it was hogwash, and so did I.”