"U" is for Undertow (34 page)

The check she’d enclosed was written for twenty-five dollars. There was no sign of the proposal she’d mentioned, so maybe Grand had reconsidered the wisdom of tendering the plan.

The next two letters were variations on a theme, offers of comfort, solace, and cash in just about that order, with the continuing suggestion that “little Kinsey” would benefit from their generosity and long experience with young children. I started skimming, picking up a paragraph here and there to see if the tone or content changed over time.

In a letter from Grand dated August 8, 1955, she began to pick away at Aunt Gin’s lifestyle. The school year was rapidly approaching, and Grand probably wanted me settled with her in Lompoc so I could be properly enrolled. Since the envelopes were still sealed and being returned to Grand as soon as they arrived, she knew her good counsel was falling on deaf ears. This forced her to operate in the dark, without feedback of any kind, spurring new efforts on her part to break down Virginia’s resistance, which was steely to say the least.

The irony wasn’t lost on me. Here all these years I’d resented Grand’s apathy when, in fact, she’d been doing her utmost to pull me into her orbit. My wants, needs, and desires were scarcely mentioned except to suggest that she could serve me better than Aunt Gin. Two letters later, she was saying,

I set the rest aside and turned to the small bundle of letters addressed to me.

The rest of Grand’s letters to me were the same saccharine and simple-hearted tomes, addressed to an imaginary child, as she knew nothing about me. I could hardly fault her for that. It had been years since her mothering had been called upon. She might have done a bang-up job raising five daughters when the role was hers. Here she was, working to insinuate herself into my life while Aunt Gin blocked her every move.

I had to admit Grand’s question about child care was legitimate. I hadn’t thought about the fact that Aunt Gin, working full-time, would have had to find someone to watch me during the day. I was certain she’d done no such thing. My memory of those early days is sketchy at best, but I would have shrunk in horror if I’d been left in the hands of anyone else. Aunt Gin was my anchor. The death of my parents was probably what triggered the overwhelming sense of timidity with which I lived all through my school days. If Aunt Gin had tried handing me off I’d have set up such an unrelenting howl she wouldn’t have tried it again. I knew she hadn’t asked for time away from her job, as Grand had suggested. From early June until September, she took me into work with her. Virginia Kinsey was high-energy, a tireless worker, with no patience at all for slackers. She’d been with California Fidelity Insurance since she was nineteen years old, probably without having taken a sick day or a vacation day, both of which she considered a form of self-indulgence.

When I started school that fall, she dropped me off in the morning and then picked me up at twelve-thirty, when she’d usher me into the office with her. I had a little table and chair on one side of her desk, and I would amuse myself with picture books, coloring books, and other quiet pursuits. I wondered how California Fidelity Insurance felt about having a child underfoot. By the time I went to work for the company myself, investigating arson and wrongful-death claims, there was a child-care facility on the ground floor of the building, where parents could drop off their children on their way to work.

I felt the penny drop. Virginia Kinsey had done that. When she assumed the role of faux mother, it was the ’50s and I was sure CFI had no provision for child care and no interest in initiating such a program. The idea of children on the work premises was years in the future, but she was a force to contend with. It would have been exactly like her to compel the company to bend to her wishes, allowing me to spend half-days with her. CFI would have jumped for joy at the chance to do as she required. Unless they capitulated, they’d have never heard the end of it. My guess was that once she established the precedent, other employees with youngsters leapt at the opportunity to have their little ones close at hand. The company must have balked at providing trained teachers or teachers’ aides—there were none on the premises during my tenure—but they did provide child-care workers whose salaries the parents paid. Having their children under the same roof must have been well worth it.

I was smiling to myself when the phone rang.

“What’s this crap I hear about you opening a can of worms in the Mary Claire Fitzhugh case? I can’t believe you’d have the gall to meddle in police business . . .”

The guy was yelling so loud it took me a minute to figure out who it was. “Lieutenant Dolan?”

My relationship with Lieutenant Dolan had spanned a number of years. Health issues had forced him to retire, but he was still plugged into the department grapevine. Having knocked heads early on, we’d finally come to an understanding based on mutual admiration and respect. I should have been inured to his occasional sharp tone, but it always took me by surprise.

“Who the hell else?”

“What can of worms are you talking about?”

“You know damn well. You’re off on some tangent, stirring up talk.”

“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

“Not from Mrs. Fitzhugh’s perspective. She’s had enough wackos making claims about the child over the years.”

“Could you just tell me what you’ve heard and who you heard it from?”

“Cheney Phillips. He says he talked to some kid who thinks he saw Mary Claire’s body being buried. Phillips sends the guy to you and you get the cops all in a lather, thinking there’s been a break. Turns out it’s all bullshit and you’re responsible.”

“You want to hear my side of it?”

“No, I do not! How come I’m calling you when you’re the one who should be calling me? You should have told me about this on day one.”

“Why would I tell you?”

“Because it was my case,” he snapped. And then, grudgingly, “At least until the FBI stepped in.”

“How was I supposed to know?”

“Because everybody knew.”

“I was in high school. We didn’t meet until years later.”

“Didn’t Cheney mention my name when he sent the Sutton kid your way?”

“No. If I’d known you were involved, I’d have been on your doorstep, begging for information. I’ve been working out here on my lonesome and I could have used the help.”

“You didn’t know I was the lead detective?”

“Cheney never said a word. This is the first I’ve heard.”

“Are you blind? It’s right there in the files.”

“The files are sealed. And even if they weren’t, the police aren’t going to invite me down for a cozy chat about the case.”

“Well.”

“Yeah, well,” I said.

“Maybe I spoke in haste.”

“You certainly did. You owe me an apology.”

“Consider it done.”

“I want to hear you say it.”

I could hear him take a puff on his cigarette. “Okay, then. I’m sorry. Is that good enough?”

“Not quite, but I’ll give you the opportunity to atone.”

“How so?”

“Invite me over for a drink. You and Stacey and I can sit down and talk about old times while I pick your brain.”

A pause while he took another puff. “What have you come up with so far?”

“I’m not telling you without an invitation.”

Dead silence.

“Be here at three,” he said, and hung up.

 

 

Con Dolan’s house was on a narrow side street on the east side of town. It hadn’t occurred to me that he might have information to share. Cheney Phillips hadn’t mentioned him, and since Dolan was retired, I had no idea he had a hand in the case. I parked in front of a large brown clapboard bungalow with long horizontal lines, open porches, mullioned windows, and widely overhung eaves. Dolan came to the door, cigarette in hand, wearing bedroom slippers, baggy chinos, and a T-shirt under a flannel robe cinched at the waist like an overcoat. He motioned me into the house and I followed. I’d never had occasion to visit him at home, and I was making a secret study of the place.

“Sorry I went off on you,” he murmured.

“Think nothing of it. I didn’t,” I said, netting a smile.

Dolan’s housemate, Stacey Oliphant, sat in the living room with a small battery-operated fan that he directed at Dolan’s burning cigarette. This place couldn’t have been more different from Stacey’s rented apartment, which I’d visited when he was being treated for cancer. He’d been told he was dying and he was in the process of vacating the premises. I’d found him disposing of the bulk of his possessions and packing up the rest for delivery to the Salvation Army. I walked in on him shredding family photographs, which made me shriek. It seemed sacrilegious to destroy the images of his kinfolk and I’d begged him to give the pictures to me. I didn’t know most of my relatives anyway so his would serve. I adopted them as my own, the odd assortment of unknown faces from times gone by.

Once he’d rid himself of all the paraphernalia, his intention was to kill himself before the cancer put him in a position where he had no choice. Con Dolan was vigorously opposed to the plan, in part because his wife, Grace, had taken a similar route before the disease had a chance to mow her down. But Stacey had been given a reprieve, which took the subject off the agenda for the foreseeable future. In the meantime, he and Dolan ended up sharing a place, which suited them both, even with the occasional snit.

The year before, they’d invited me to work a cold case with them since both were limited by physical ills. At the time, I’d introduced Stacey to junk food, which he’d never eaten in his life. Thereafter, I tagged along with him as he went from McDonald’s to Wendy’s to Arby’s to Jack in the Box. My crowning achievement was introducing him to the In-N-Out burger. His appetite increased, he regained some of the weight he’d lost during his cancer treatment, and his enthusiasm for life returned. Doctors were still scratching their heads.

Dolan took my blazer and hung it on a hat rack, which was already decked out with a number of Victorian bonnets. We went down two low steps into the living room. The floor plan was open, with differences in elevation defining the rooms. If there were doors at all, they came in glass-paned pairs so that each area could be expanded to include those adjacent. The entire interior was dark-stained wood, including the walls, woodwork, cornices, window frames, and low ceiling. The furnishings were quirky. In addition to track lighting, Tiffany lamps were set on marble columns. The chairs were thrift-shop finds. The paintings looked like originals, not necessarily masterpieces, but an interesting mix of abstracts, landscapes, and portraits, in styles that ranged from photorealism to impressionistic to Grandma Moses crude.