Sue Grafton - U Is For Undertow

“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.”

“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.”