Sue Grafton - U Is For Undertow

“Which is what?”

“She’s a model.”

“And in the meantime, you provide meals, housing, transportation, bail money, and Goldie’s dog food, right?”

“She’d do the same for me.”

“I’m not convinced of that, but let’s hope.”

His smile faded. “You don’t seem happy with me. What’s wrong?”

“I don’t even know where to start,” I said. I blew out a big breath, marshaling my thoughts. Try as I might, I couldn’t find a nice way of putting it. “Yesterday Ryan and Diana came to the office. She brought in a scrapbook that included memorabilia from your sixth-birthday party.”

“Memorabilia?”

“Yeah. You know, snapshots, ticket stubs, stuff like that.”

“Ticket stubs. What are you talking about?”

“July 21, you were all at Disneyland. Your mom and dad, Ryan, David, Diana, and you.”

I watched the animation draining out of his face. “That can’t be right.”

“That was my first response.”

“She’s making things up, trying to get me in trouble.”

I indicated the folder on the bench. “She made copies of the photographs. You can see for yourself.”

“She’s wrong. She has to be.”

“I don’t think so. She’s a reporter. She may be irritating, but she knows how to write a story and she knows she better get her facts straight. Take a look.”

“I don’t need to look. I was at Billie’s house. My mother dropped me off.”

“The Kirkendalls were gone by then. Billie’s dad stole a shitload of money. You said so yourself. He knew the police were closing in on him so he took his family and fled. The house was empty.”

“You think I lied?”

“I think you made a mistake.”

“I saw the pirates that day. The two of them were digging a hole. It could have happened before we left for Disneyland.”

“The timing is off. Whatever you saw, it must have been the week before. And as Diana so aptly pointed out, if you saw the guys on July 14 instead of July 21, it couldn’t have been Mary Claire’s body wrapped for burial. She wasn’t kidnapped until five days later.”

He stared off at the sky, rocking his body on the bench. It was the self-comforting motion of a kid whose mother’s an hour late picking him up from nursery school. He was almost beyond hope.

“Look, Michael. No one’s faulting you,” I said.

When dealing with someone else’s emotional distress, it’s best to gloss over the enormity of the disaster. It doesn’t change reality, but it makes the moment easier… for the onlooker, at any rate.

“Are you kidding? She must have had a good laugh at my expense. Ryan, too. They were always in cahoots.”

Shit. Now he’d turned it into a conspiracy. I kept my mouth shut. I’d already offered as much comfort as I could muster.

“What about Lieutenant Phillips? Does he know?”

I glanced away from him, which told him what he’d already guessed.

“She told him, too?”

“Michael, don’t do this. Yes, she told him. She had to. He was in on the story from the first. She gave him the same file folder she gave me, and so what?”

He blinked and put his right hand to his face, pulling down until his hand covered his mouth. “I saw the pirates. They knew I’d caught them in the act.”

“Okay, fine, but not when you thought you did. July 21, 1967, you and your family were a hundred miles away.”

“They were burying a bundle…”

“I believe you saw something, but it wasn’t Mary Claire.”

He shook his head. “No. They took the body somewhere else and put a dog in the hole. It was right where I showed you.”

“Let’s quit with the arguing and deal with what’s true instead of what you dreamed up.”

He lifted a hand. “Never mind. You’re right. I wasted your time and I misled the police. Now all parties concerned are fully aware of it. So much for me and anything I might say.”

“Would you stop that shit? I can’t sit here and sympathize when you’re wallowing in self-pity. I understand your embarrassment, but take your licks and move on.”

He got up abruptly and walked away.

Watching him, I could see how he wanted the scene to play out. My role was to hurry after him, offering reassurances. I was supposed to fling myself into the conflict to help him save face. I couldn’t do it. The bottom had dropped out. The search for Mary Claire was over and he knew it as well as I did. She might be buried somewhere, but it had nothing to do with him. While I understood his humiliation, his behavior was calculated to generate a response. He was the vacuum. I was meant to be the air rushing in to fill the space. Stubbornly, I stayed where I was.

I heard the car door slam. The engine roared to life. I looked over and watched him back out in a wide arc before he threw the car in first and drove off with a chirp of his tires.

To no one in particular, I said, “Sorry about that. I wish I could help you, but I can’t.”

I picked up the folder and returned to my car. I slid under the wheel and sat for a moment, watching pigeons pecking in the grass. I was only five blocks from home and my instinct was to run for cover. What I was facing wasn’t new. Past investigations had occasionally come apart in my hands and I hadn’t felt the need to fall on my sword. I’m an optimist. I operate on the assumption that if a question is legitimate, there’s an answer out there, which is no guarantee I’ll be the one to find it. While the current failing wasn’t mine, I couldn’t shake the sense that I’d messed up somehow.

It was midafternoon and I probably could have talked myself into quitting for the day, but one can only do that so often before it becomes habitual and, therefore, unprofessional. Playing hooky wasn’t the antidote to disappointment. Work was. I had a business to run and I needed to get back to it. Easier said than done.

When I reached the office I set up a pot of coffee and then I sat at my desk and did nothing. I’d chastised Sutton for feeling sorry for himself, but it wasn’t such a bad idea. When you’ve been dealt a blow, self-pity, like rationalization, is just another way of coping with the pain.

A sound penetrated my consciousness and I realized someone was tapping on one of the panes in my outer office door. I glanced at my calendar. I wasn’t expecting anyone and there was no note of an appointment. For a moment I had the bizarre sense of skipping back in time. I pictured myself getting up to look around the corner at the front door. Through the glass, I’d catch my first sight of Michael Sutton. It would be April 6 again and I’d be forced to relive the same series of events.

I left my desk and crossed to the inner-office door, where I peered into the reception area. There was a woman on my doorstep, pointing at the knob. For the second time in two weeks I’d locked up automatically after letting myself in. I turned the deadbolt and opened the door. “Sorry about that. Can I help you?”

“I wondered if I might talk to you.”

“Sure. I’m Kinsey Millhone. Have we met?”

“Not really. I’m Joanne Fitzhugh. Mary Claire’s mother. May I come in?”

“Of course.”

I stepped aside as though admitting an apparition. She was probably in her mid-fifties, with one of those lovely mild faces assigned to dead saints on Catholic calendars. She was half a head shorter than I, with shoulder-length blond hair worn in the sort of flip I’d longed for in high school. She wore a dark skirt and a matching cropped jacket with a green silk blouse under it. For having thought about her so often, I was unprepared for an encounter. What was I going to say to her? I’d come up against a blank wall. How could I explain where I’d started and where I’d ended up?