A World the Color of Salt (31 page)

I had gathered up the mail and put it on the counter, and then, while putting groceries away, I'd slid a couple of pieces of mail over, glanced at them, put something else away, poked a finger at one or another to read the envelope better, put
something else away, and then I came to the card. It had on its front a cartoon picture of a beavertail cactus—
opuntia basilaris
. Its spineless gray-green pads resemble paddles, or beaver tails. I flipped the card over. There was no message. I flipped it to the front again.

It advertised the Beaver Tail Inn, North Las Vegas, Nevada. The cactus had a smiling face and wore a pink bloom on its head as if behind an ear, and its pudgy arm waved us toward the miniature motel in the background.

I looked again at the back. Unless it was written in disappearing ink, there was indeed no message. Yet the card was addressed to me, in black felt-tip pen. I did not recognize the writing. The edges of the card were yellowed. “Beaver Tail Inn, Lake Mead Blvd. and Comstock,” is all it said in the left corner, and there was a phone number with a 702 area code.

Taking it into the living room, I studied it some more. When had I seen Patricia's handwriting? In August she'd sent me a birthday card. But I don't keep cards. When else?

I dialed the number. “The number you have dialed is no longer in service.”

Two times I returned to the card while putting my groceries away. I took it up a third time, sitting at the counter in my kitchen, staring at my bird calendar for the new year. January's picture was a long-billed curlew standing in water. We have curlews in the bay. Their call is a plaintive
cur-lee.

I looked at the postcard again. And said to myself, “This is from Patricia.”

I could go to the lab and do a fingerprint run. But that would help only if Patricia had had her fingerprints rolled in her lifetime. What are the chances of that? Then I thought, Well, if she has a tattoo and she hung with a felon, maybe . . . Cops check people out all the time: the wife, the girlfriend, the son's girlfriend, the daughter's latest, the new second-job business partner. You're a cop, you're a paid paranoid.

But it was six o'clock, I knew Betty and the other Print people would have gone home, and I really didn't want to mess with their computers. They'd probably changed passwords a dozen and a half times since I used the system anyway.

I slipped the postcard in an envelope and tucked it in my purse, then got in my car and drove to Huntington Beach
instead, to check if Patricia's car was there, or to annoy her landlady again.

“I don't know nothing about her, and I don't like being disturbed at night,” she said. Lawrence Welk's family was singing “Walking in a Winter Wonderland” on the TV as she shut the door.

When I got to the lab Friday morning, I phoned Patricia's place of work.

“She doesn't work here anymore,” a woman told me.

“Since when?”

“I don't know. This is only my third day.” Behind her, phones were ringing.

Last ditch, I asked, “Could I talk to Annabel Diehl, then?”

“Who?” she said.

I said the name slowly, spelling out the last name the way I thought it would be. The woman put me on hold. When she came back, she asked me who it was I wanted again, and then, with phones still sounding in the background, said, “There's no one here by that name.”

On my way to Stu's office I saw Bud Peterson in the hallway and asked if I could run something through the Printrak. He said, “You can, but I hope you don't want it anytime soon.”

“As a matter of fact, I sort of do.”

“Rots o' ruck. They picked
this
week to Beta-test the ProFile system,” he said, referring to a computerized mug-shot program that would blow all the others out of the water. “Nobody's access time is better than three hours.”

“You're joking.”

“I'm kidding you not,” he said, and left, the usual deadpan expression gone from his face, replaced by a slight panic in the eyes. He wanted it, he got it: his jump up the management ladder.

Stu Hollings wasn't thrilled. The only thing was, I'd been with the lab four years and hadn't used up four weeks of the eight for vacation that I was entitled to. He'd been the very one
who, when he came in new to his position, called me in one day and seriously urged me to use up my accumulated vacation—the department's new policy was to clean excess days off the books. Now he was reminding me I'd been out six weeks this year. I wasn't going to defend my medical. I stood there, not commenting. And then he said, “You took a half-day vacation not too long ago, if I remember correctly.” He started turning pages in a blue three-ring binder.

“You don't need to look it up,” I said. “You're right. I did.” He looked at me, waiting. “This is an emergency. I need the time. I wouldn't ask if I didn't.”

“A family emergency? Well, then, of course.”

“No, it's not a family emergency. I don't like making up false excuses. Why can't we just say it's an emergency of a personal nature? What's the difference if it's family, medical, or a UFO sighting, Stu? Look at my record. You'll see I'm not frivolous.” I said this kindly, smiling, saying, Come, let us reason together.

Both hands were laid on his desk near the binder as he sat peering over his wire glasses, his Wilford Brimley pate gleaming from the fluorescent lights overhead. He said, “I don't like to be told these things.”

I was standing politely near, but not too near, his desk. One hand was still on the door handle behind me as a brace. I said, “You want me to lie then.”

“No, I want you to tell the truth. Of course I want you to tell the truth.”

I took my hand off the doorknob, and I shouldn't have, for the gesture I used then was palm out, like a traffic cop. He frowned. I said it anyway: “Some things are private.”

“We're overloaded here. This is not a good time.”

“One day. That's all I'm asking for Monday. I'll be back Tuesday morning.”

“No deal.”

To Joe I can say fuck you. To Stu, if I wanted a job when I came back, I'd better bite my tongue till it bleeds. Okey-dokey, I'd phone in sick from Las Vegas, if that's the way he wanted it, the world-class idiot.

Before I left, I went into Joe's office, closed the door, and sat
down. He was “staff” now, not a supervisor, but so well regarded he got to keep his office. He'd taken the whole week off except for today. I thought that was odd, and asked him about it when he called me that first day back after Christmas—why not take the whole week? “Because I'll miss you too much,” he said. He told me he'd spent Christmas Day with Jennifer and his son, David, and I felt a little pang but didn't say anything. When he asked what I did all day Christmas, I told him I slept.

I said, “What do you think of Stu Hollings?”

“I think he's fine. I think he's doing a good job. Why?”

“Oh, nothing.”

The muscles around his eyes relaxed, and he put both hands together in a prayer gesture and laid them against the side of his face, his elbows on the desk, as he looked at me.

I said, “I came in to tell you I'm going to take vacation, starting two hours from now.”

His chair squeaked badly as he leaned back.

“This office is intolerable without you,” he said. “You can't go.”

“I haven't seen you all day. How can you say that?”

“I was looking forward to a weekend maybe—”

“There will be weekends.”

“It's one reason I spent the last few days with David. We saw some real wonder wagons at the Coliseum.”

“The car show?”

“How 'bout a Benz for fifty-six thousand to run around the mud with? Station wagons with four-wheel drive,” he said, shaking his head. “The Benz, even without a turbocharger, rates with an Audi two hundred Quattro. Oh, I'm sorry. I don't know if you're into those things.”

“I don't like to window-shop. Can't buy, don't try's my motto.”

“I should have been married to you the last twenty-five years. Now, tell me, where are you going without me, you heartless female?”

“I have some business to take care of.”

“Business.”

“Well . . . yes. Plus I need to get away awhile. I thought I'd go see a friend in Northern California. Clear my head.”

“Not of me?”

“Don't be silly.”

“That's one I don't remember ever being accused of.”

“Joe,” I said, thinking about how I was going to say this, then just saying it: “I almost went out to see Phillip Dugdale.”

“Oh.” All the cheerfulness went out of his face.

“See what I mean, then? I need time off.”

He came out from behind his desk and stood me up out of the chair. “You didn't, though.”

His presence felt wonderful, but I warred with myself. I looked down. “No, I stayed put.” A lyin' little shit-titsky, that's what I was becoming.

He kissed me lightly on the lips. “You do what you need to. Vacation sounds like a good idea. I'll miss you, but time away is good. If I'd listened to Jennifer, maybe I wouldn't have had my heart squeezing stones a while back.”

“It makes me kind of uncomfortable kissing in the office,” I said, pulling away. I had no problem with office romances, as long as they were discreet. Where else are busy people going to find each other? But I said, “I mean, is that okay?”

“Of course. You're right. I'll cool it.” He sat on the front edge of his desk, hands gripping the edge. He seemed bemused.

I moved to a chair in the corner, the back of my leg touching it for support. In the pocket of my green rayon jacket was a stubby pencil convenient for fiddling with; I pulled it out and tested the wood with my fingernail. “I want to talk to you about something,” I said.

“Shoot.”

“I am super-worried about Patricia. She's seeing one of the Dugdales.”

“I know. You told me that. Several times.”

“But Joe, listen to this—she left her job. I phoned there this morning. Joe, she would have
told
me.”

Thoughtful for a moment, he said, “People go south on you once they get involved with somebody. I've got friends once they're married you never hear from. I'm not so good about that sort of thing myself.”

This was different, with Patricia, I told him. I said, “You don't think it's a pretty drastic—well, at least, a significant
thing to do, leave your job? I mean, you usually think it over, talk it over with somebody first. She was happy there. Three weeks ago she was telling me she was making major bucks. She was doing well. Do you think I should go see her employers? Her
former
employers?”

“Absolutely not.”

“I mean—”

“How would you feel if she came to your place of employment, asking questions about you? Low marks on judgment, Smokey.”

“Even if she's gone? How could it hurt?”

“You don't know the details. I just wouldn't do it. You asked for my opinion, I gave it to you.”