"U" is for Undertow (29 page)

“Had they lived in a commune?”

“Not that I ever heard, though by then they were full-blown hippies. Greg was calling himself Creed and she was Destiny. Shawn was Sky Dancer. The plan was to be self-sufficient, farming the land. Others would join them—at least in their fevered imaginations. They’d share the chores and pool their money, which I guess would go into an account to pay expenses. They thought Patrick should advance the funds, but he wouldn’t budge. Neither of us liked Shelly anyway. She was poor white trash, arrogant, foulmouthed. Shawn was born out of wedlock, just as Rain was.”

“When was Rain abducted?”

“Tuesday, July 11. There’d been a series of blowups. Lots of screaming and yelling and hysterics. The uproar finally died down and we thought they’d backed off. Then suddenly, on the sixth, they disappeared. It was the same as the first time around—no note, no good-byes, no here’s where we’ll be. Five days after they decamped Rain was ‘kidnapped.’ I put the word in quotes because we knew it was them.”

“You’re saying they snatched Rain to force the issue?”

“More like they were getting even, making us suffer because we hadn’t done as they asked,” she said. “It wasn’t a sophisticated plan, but they were stoned all the time and that’s how their minds worked. Anyway, they didn’t demand the entire forty thousand. They asked for fifteen, which I guess was their way of being clever. I’m sorry for all the editorializing. I should probably stick to the facts.”

“Actually, I find it helpful to know what was going on in your mind. How’d they pull it off ?”

“That was largely dumb luck. Rain was out in the backyard, playing in her sandbox. I’d given her some cookie cutters and a rolling pin. She had her bucket and shovel and she’d pour water on the sand, flatten it, and then cut out cookie shapes. The phone rang; some fellow taking a survey. He asked ten or fifteen questions that I answered. I wasn’t much interested, but it seemed harmless enough. By the time I looked out the back door to check on her, she was gone. Later she told me a man came with a yellow kitten and said she could play with it at his house. Don’t ask me to go through that part of it blow-by-blow. It was horrendous when it happened and it’s horrendous every time I think of it. Those first hours, I thought I’d die. I can’t revisit the trauma. It gives me heart palpitations even now. Look at that. My hands have started to sweat.”

“Understood,” I said. “I’m assuming the man on the phone wasn’t Greg or you’d have recognized his voice.”

“I’m not so sure. He’d already left and he was gone for good as far as I knew. I didn’t expect to hear from him so it wasn’t his voice I was listening for.”

“If it wasn’t Greg on the phone, there must have been someone else involved. Another guy.”

“So it would seem. Greg certainly could have picked her up and taken her without a fuss.”

“When did you first realize she’d been kidnapped?”

“Another phone call came in.”

“The same guy or someone else?”

“He sounded the same to me. I called Patrick in L.A. and he was home ninety minutes later, breaking every speed law. I was a basket case. I didn’t care who’d taken her or what it cost as long as Rain came back to us alive.”

“You called the police?”

“Later. Not at that point.”

“Why?”

“Because the man on the phone said they’d kill her if we did.”

“ ‘They’d kill her.’ Plural?”

“It might have been a figure of speech. Maybe they wanted us to picture a gang of thugs. Who knows?”

“But you were convinced her life was at stake.”

“Let’s put it this way: we weren’t in a position to argue the point. I wasn’t going to take the chance and neither was Patrick. He was convinced Shelly and Greg were behind the scheme, but that didn’t mean Rain was safe. We had no idea how far they’d take it. Patrick withdrew the money from four different banks. He managed to stall delivery while he made a quick trip to the plant to photocopy the bills. It was a time-consuming job and he had to do it while the office staff was gone for the night. While he was about it, he marked the back of each with a fluorescent marker he used when he exported inventory. The bills looked fine, but the kidnappers might have been suspicious.”

“Were the marks visible?”

“Under a black light, sure. Every kid seemed to have one in those days. If my guess is right, they’d have worried about putting that many marked bills in circulation, which can’t be as simple as it seems.”

“Couldn’t they have passed the bills in small lots? Maybe not locally, but somewhere else. Seems like Los Angeles would have been the natural choice.”

“Yes, but what fun would fifteen thousand dollars be if it was spread out like that? Patrick notified the local banks about the marked bills when Mary Claire was kidnapped. None of the money ever surfaced as far as we know.”

“Avis referred to Rain as the ‘practice child.’ ”

“Of course. She was their rehearsal for Mary Claire. If you know anything about her disappearance, you’ll recognize the . . . what do they call it . . . the MO. We didn’t believe they’d harm Rain, but we were frantic they’d refuse to return her. She was ours. We’d formally adopted her, but if they absconded with her, we’d have no way of getting her back. They had no permanent address, no phone, no employment.” She shrugged. “We did as we were told. We received another call, telling us where to drop the ransom.”

“Which was where?”

“Near the back entrance to the Ravine. One of them kept me on the phone while Patrick drove over with the gym bag and tossed it out on the side of the road. Then he came home. The other kidnapper must have picked up the money and counted it, making sure the entire amount was there. They told us to wait an hour and then we’d find her in the park off Little Pony Road. She was asleep on a picnic table, covered with a blanket, so they weren’t entirely heartless. I don’t know what would have happened if they’d realized Patrick marked the bills before we had her back in our keeping.”

“She’d been drugged?”

“Clearly. She wasn’t completely out, but she was groggy. She was fine once the sedative wore off, whatever it was. She’d been properly looked after. Fed well, at any rate, and she was clean. We had her examined and there was no evidence of sexual abuse. Thank god for that.”

“What did she tell you about what went on?”

“Nothing coherent, bits and pieces. She was four—not what you’d call a reliable witness. The only thing she was upset about was that she didn’t get to keep the kitten. Aside from that, she wasn’t traumatized. No nightmares and no psychological problems in the aftermath. We were thankful she came out of it unscathed. To Patrick’s way of thinking, this was further support of his conviction that Greg and Shelly had a hand in it.”

“If the two of them took her, wouldn’t Rain have said so?”

Deborah shook her head. “One of the kidnappers wore fake glasses with a big plastic nose attached and the other dressed like Santa Claus. We’d taken her to see Santa on two previous occasions so she was used to seeing him. He made her promise to be a good girl and she was.”

“Here’s what I don’t get. If they’d already picked up the fifteen thousand, why kidnap a second child?”

“I can tell you Patrick’s theory. When Mary Claire was taken the ransom demand was twenty-five thousand dollars. Add twenty-five to the fifteen we paid for Rain’s return and you’re looking at forty thousand dollars, which is what Greg and Shelly wanted in the first place. That’s hardly proof, but I can’t believe the total was a coincidence.”

“It does seem like an odd amount. Too bad they weren’t satisfied with what they got the first time around,” I said. I let a short silence fall while I thought about what she’d told me. “How soon after Rain’s abduction was Mary Claire kidnapped?”

“A week or so. By then we had the house on the market and we were looking at places in gated communities down south. The minute we heard about Mary Claire, we went to the police and told the detectives everything we knew. The FBI had been called into it by then. We gave them Greg and Shelly’s names and descriptions, plus a description of the school bus along with the license plate number. None of this ever made the papers. They did put out an APB, but there was never any sign of them.”

“Have you heard from them since?”

“Not a peep,” she said. “I saw Shawn when Patrick died. He spotted the obituary in the paper and drove down for the funeral.”

“Drove down from where?”

“Belicia,” she said, mentioning a little town an hour and a half north of us. “He was calling himself Shawn again, using Dancer as his last name. He looked wonderful. Tall and handsome. He has a shop up there where he builds furniture. He showed me photographs and the pieces are beautiful. He also does custom cabinetwork.”

“You think he’d talk to me?”

“I don’t see why not. You’re welcome to use my name, or I can call him if you like.”

“When you saw him at the funeral, did you ask about Greg and Shelly?”

“Briefly. He told me both of them were gone. To tell you the truth, I didn’t care that much. As far as I was concerned, Greg had been dead to me since the summer of ’sixty-seven. We parted from them on bad terms, and anything that happened to them afterward was irrelevant. Except for the business with Rain, of course.”

It bothered me that much of what she’d told me ran counter to my intuitions. “I’m sorry to keep harping on Mary Claire, but I have trouble believing they’d resort to snatching her. That’s hard-core for a pair who weren’t seasoned criminals.”

“Look. I know what you’re getting at and I agree. I can’t imagine Greg doing any of this even under Shelly’s influence, but Patrick felt if they were desperate enough to take Rain, they wouldn’t be all that scrupulous about trying again. We paid without hesitation. If the plan worked once, why not twice?”

“I wonder how they fixed on Mary Claire? Did you know the Fitzhughs?”

“To speak to. We didn’t socialize with them, but we were all members of the Horton Ravine Country Club.”

“But the Fitzhughs said they’d pay, didn’t they? I mean, they agreed to the ransom the same way you did.”

“They also notified the police, which they were told not to do. The kidnappers must have figured it out.”

“But how?”

“I have no idea. Maybe they sensed their luck had turned. Somehow they understood if they picked up the money, they’d be caught, so they left it where it was.”

I said, “If they decided to forfeit the ransom, why not just hit the road? Why kill the child?”

“I can’t believe they meant to hurt her. Greg might have been stupid and greedy, but he’d never harm a child. Not even Shelly could have talked him into going that far. To be fair, I’ve questioned whether she was capable of anything so heinous. Patrick thought it was totally in character. As for the hole being dug on our property . . . whatever the intention . . . Greg and Shelly could have chosen the location, thinking it was safe. To my way of thinking, the similarities between Rain’s abduction and Mary Claire’s are too obvious to discount.”

I said, “The one obvious difference is the introduction of a ransom note during the second kidnapping. As I understand it, when Rain was taken, the contact was strictly by phone.”

Deborah slowed and I was surprised to see we’d almost reached the wharf by then. I’d been so focused on the conversation I hadn’t been aware of the walk itself. By now the fog had fully enveloped us and the air was so saturated with mist that my sweatshirt was damp. I could see beads of moisture in Deborah’s hair, a veil of diamonds.

I was quiet, running the information in a quick loop, and I found myself itchy with misgivings. “Something’s off. You and the Suttons were good friends. If Greg was one of the two guys digging in the woods, Michael would have recognized him.”

“That’s true. On the other hand, Greg and Shelly had their druggie pals who kept them supplied with dope. They sat out in the bus and smoked so much weed, I could have gotten high myself. I realize now I should have turned them in to the police, but I was still hoping the problem would go away of its own accord.”

“Did you meet their friends?”

“I never laid eyes on them. They’d park around the corner and approach on foot, which allowed them to bypass the house and go straight to the cabana where the bus was parked. One of them had a motor scooter. I remember that because every time he left, I could hear it puttering down the street.”

“I wish I could make sense of it.”

“You and me both,” she said. “Oh, before I forget. Rain’s driving up from L.A. for a few days. She took over the family business after Patrick died. I’m sure she’d be willing to tell you what she remembers. It isn’t much, but you might pick up a useful tidbit.”

“That’s great. I’ll call and set something up.”

 

 

The four-mile beach walk with Deborah had warmed me, but once I cooled off and my body temperature dropped, I could feel the chill in my bones. I returned to my car and pulled on my socks and running shoes. My feet were still wet and so grubby with sand that the cotton sawed against my flesh like a wood rasp. While I was out and about I made a quick stop at the drugstore and stocked up on blank index cards.

At 5:00, I unlocked the studio door and let myself in. My first order of business was to strip off my damp clothes and hop in a hot shower, after which I put on my sweats and went down to the living room. For supper I made myself a peanut butter and pickle sandwich. Recently I’d been making an effort to upgrade my diet, which meant cutting down on the french fries and Quarter Pounders with Cheese that had been my mainstays. A peanut butter and pickle sandwich was never going to qualify as the pinnacle on the food pyramid, but it was the best I could do.

I set my plate and napkin on the table at one end of the sofa, then opened a bottle of Chardonnay and poured myself a glass. I returned to the living room, a round-trip of twenty feet. I found a ballpoint pen and curled up on the sofa with a quilt tucked around my legs. I opened the first packet of index cards and started taking notes.