The next morning, after consuming several slices of toast and imbibing doses of Tylenol and caffeine out on her deck for her aching, hung-over head, after immersing herself in the process of watching misty fog lifting itself from the street and the trees as well as her own mind and body, Kate felt enough in command of herself to check in by phone to the hospice.
“Maggie had a reasonably good night,” Marla told her. “The doctor will be in around eleven.” She added quietly, “She seems comfortable, Kate. We’re doing our best to keep her that way.”
“I know. I’m grateful,” Kate said. She provided Marla with her cell phone number for any critical updates.
She then called Walcott. “I’m sorry I didn’t check in yesterday, I had to leave Victorville to get back to the hospice and the day just—”
“Don’t apologize, Kate,” Walcott interrupted. “I know you have a lot going on. How is your friend?”
Kate sifted through several possible responses and settled on Marla’s latest report. “She seems to be comfortable.”
“I guess that’s the best we can wish for,” Walcott offered.
“Yes. Thank you, Captain,” Kate said, touched by the “we.” She proceeded to summarize her reception in Victorville—the door-slamming friend of Joe’s sister, Dora-the-bitch in the next-door trailer—and the paucity of information gleaned from the brief, hostile interview with Jean Velez.
“That desert sun must bake people’s brains,” Walcott remarked. “What do you make of it?”
“Pretty much the same as you do.”
“So, bottom line, we’ve yet to make an inch of progress in finding Joe.”
“That’ll happen today,” Kate said. Knowing Walcott would see through her confident statement as the bluff it was, she continued, “My plan is to be on my way back to Victorville as soon as we finish this call, and work a few other angles.”
“Fine. But we haven’t much leeway,” Walcott warned, her tone low and somber. “The palm print hit we got on the Carter case, the fact he’s on ice in the prison system is fortunate, Kate, but in good conscience we owe it to the Carter family to let them know we may have found Tamara’s killer.”
“I know that, Captain. I agree. I hear you.”
“Speaking of prison,” Walcott said, amid a crackling of either static or a scattering of papers, “let me run this mysterious brother of Joe’s through the prison system, see if there might be an incarcerated Jack Cameron from Victorville. That’ll either eliminate the possibility or explain him.”
“Good idea. I’ll be in touch,” Kate promised.
“Likewise,” Walcott said, and clicked off.
Kate made one additional phone call—to the Dr. Sherman listed on the card Dearborn had given her. Then she gave Miss Marple fresh food, a final few pats, and went down to the garage to her car.
* * *
Occupied by circular thoughts about Cameron, about Maggie, about Aimee and Dylan and Calla Dearborn, Kate drove though the LA basin and into high desert country with the landscape flying by unseen until she reached the outskirts of Victorville. The day was again bright and hot, which she supposed most days here would be from now until late fall. At just after eleven in the morning the temperature was eighty-nine degrees. She made her way back to Golden Sunset Trailer Park.
Dry palm fronds fluttered and clattered in gusty breezes over the trailer belonging to Jean Velez. Neither the Toyota Corolla nor the Ford F-150 was parked outside the trailer or anywhere along the street. But Jean’s trailer was not the immediate focal point of her attention today.
In contrast to Jean’s haphazard cactus landscaping, the front yard of Dora’s next-door trailer had Zen-like circular patterns of sparkling white rock with a few rows of prickly pear and other species of cactus interspersed. Kate walked along a narrow concrete pathway lined with a half dozen knee-high pink plastic flamingoes, up the four steps of the small porch, and rapped on the flimsy screen door. The door was opened immediately.
The constant desert sun and Dora’s deep tan seemed to have inflicted minimal skin damage on her face, but from the wrinkles imbedded in her neck and throat Kate gauged her to be in her sixties. The pink rollers of yesterday had given way to wings of bouffant platinum hair, and today’s outfit was knee-length yellow shorts with a stripe of yellow sequins down the sides and a leopard print scoop-neck top stretching over ample breasts. Arms crossed, she surveyed Kate, her bright blue eyes glinting with curiosity.
“Dora,” Kate said, smiling at her. “That’s your name, right?”
She grinned. “How did you guess?” She gestured to the other trailer, ivory bracelets clattering on her wrist. “Jean’s gone,” she said succinctly. “The both of them,” she added. The nails on her gesturing hand were painted yellow and red and looked like flames were coming out of her fingers.
“Gone,” Kate repeated.
“Yeah, like, with suitcases and lots of other crap.”
Kate shook her head. This was as inexplicable as any of the rest of Jean Velez’s previous behavior. “My name is Kate. Kate Delafield. Would it trouble you if I came in and asked a few questions?”
“Come on in. You might brace yourself first.” The flame-tipped fingers rose again, this time beckoning welcome.
Kate entered, expecting, from Dora’s warning, considerable clutter. She stood rooted in thick shag carpet, blinking in amazement. The carpet was white and black zebra stripes, the wallpaper a leopard skin pattern that included the ceiling. The same carpet and wallpaper extended throughout the trailer including the kitchen and its floor. In the living room a gold sofa and love seat were decorated with pillows embroidered with animal images or shaped like lion and tiger heads, Scottie dogs and Persian cats. A TV on a cabinet was partly obscured by various sizes of bird, animal and reptile glass sculptures. Accent tables and a coffee table were also festooned with figurines that ran the gamut, Kate was certain, of every creature that sought refuge on the Ark. A bookcase held not books but ceramic animal and bird statuary crowding all its shelves. Next to the picture window, spread before a faux fireplace in a corner of the living room, was a pure white bearskin rug on top of the zebra carpet. Small fabric-covered giraffes stood in gangly formation along the hearth.
Kate had been in many strange homes throughout her police career; this one ranked with the strangest. An image flitted through her mind of an art exhibit she and Aimee had wandered into years ago in New York: this could be the animal kingdom as envisioned by Picasso. The trailer’s fantastical interior was so out of place in this prosaic desert town it was as if some conveyance had accidentally deposited Dora and her trailer here instead of in outlandish Las Vegas where eccentricity like hers was the norm.
For lack of any other response, she stated the obvious: “You really love animals.”
Dora had been watching her, arms crossed, grinning. “How did you guess?” she repeated in what was apparently a standard phrase. “What can I get you to drink? I’ve got everything.”
Kate suspected she did, imagining liqueurs she’d never even heard of. “Nothing, Dora, I’m fine.”
“Of course you’re not. This is the desert. Don’t you know you need to stay hydrated? I’ll get us some water.”
Dora padded toward the kitchen, waves of flowery scent wafting behind her. Kate could hear the whirr of an air conditioner somewhere in back, but the place was warmish and smelled cloyingly of perfume and hairspray. Although brilliant light flooded through the picture window and the windows on the sides of the trailer, Kate felt as enclosed by the animal skin floor and walls and ceiling as if she were in a submarine. Faintly repelled, she walked to the leopard wallpaper, shoes sinking deeply into the carpet, and focused on a large grouping of photos occupying much of the wall. They showed Dora with a variety of men clad in a range of attire—from bathing trunks and Hawaiian shirts, shorts and safari shirts, to formal suits—against different backgrounds at various times in Dora’s life, at parties and formal events, quite a number of the photos appearing to have been taken in Africa. In all of them, Dora, with her bouffant white-gold hair, her busty chest, wore her splashy dresses like the plumage of a flamboyant bird. She had been, Kate decided, quite a looker in her younger years.
Dora returned bearing ice water in two huge tankards shaped like elephants, their trunks forming the handle, and plunked them down on the coffee table, bracelets jangling, not bothering with coasters. As she bent down her brackets of hair did not move at all. “My rogues’ gallery,” she said to Kate, nodding toward the photos. “I’ve had plenty of fun in my time.”
I’ll bet you have, Kate thought, making a place for herself amid the animal pillows on the sofa.
Dora settled herself on the love seat and pointed to several of the photos. “I’ve survived three husbands. And all the boyfriends in between. Now I live exactly the way I want.” She swept an arm in a circle. “With my friends all around me.”
“Good for you, Dora, I’m glad for you,” Kate said, content to establish some rapport.
“Animals—the best creatures on earth. Absolutely dependable, you know exactly what you get. A lion, depend on it, it wants to kill and eat you. A vulture, it’ll pick at what’s left on your bones. A dog, you feed it, it’s gonna love you to death. Cats…” She shrugged. “Cats, whoever knows about cats, so I guess they deep-six the whole theory.”
Chuckling, Kate said, “I have one, I know exactly what you mean.” She picked up her elephant glass, took a sip. The icy cold water was refreshing, head-clearing.
“This place,” Dora said, suddenly serious. “My animal friends all around me all day, all night, they bring me peace.”
Peace. Kate envied her. When was the last time she’d felt any peace? She said, “Very different from the kingdom of humans. You seem to have a pretty bad relationship with Jean next door.”
Dora’s solemnity dissolved in a harsh, cackling laugh. “How did you guess? ‘Bitch’ is the least of the things she calls me.”
“You say she’s gone. When was this?”
“Yesterday. Right after you left. What the hell did you say to her?”
“Nothing.” Kate held up a hand. “I swear. Nothing I know of to cause what you’re telling me.”
“Well, you’d think you threatened to kill her the way Brandon came busting down the street a million miles an hour and piled out of that truck like he had bees up his pants.” One fiery fingernail pointed out the picture window.
Confounded by what she was hearing, Kate could see that Dora had a perfect view of the street and a partial view of the front of the trailer next door.
“Jean must’ve called him on his cell phone. Soon as he got in the door I could hear them going at each other, him yelling he had other stuff to take care of besides her and her screaming how dumb it was for him to go right after you were here the first time with a mouthy bitch like me next door and he’d left her alone to deal with this mess.”
“This mess?”
“Mess. That’s what she said.” Dora cackled again. “Are you a mess? Did you know you’re a mess?”
Kate grinned. “Jean Velez has no idea how big a mess I actually am. How long have you two been neighbors?”
Dora lifted both feet simultaneously and propped her jeweled sandals on the blond coffee table, stretching her arms out along the back of the love seat. “Since she came back from Phoenix. At least two years ago.” She languidly raised one hand from the sofa back and aimed a finger toward the neighboring trailer. “She’s a renter. Been driving that car on those Arizona plates this whole time. Some people…” She sniffed disapproval.
“What do you know about her, Dora?”
Dora held her relaxed posture on the sofa and said easily, “I guess I should first maybe ask why you want to know. And what you came here for yesterday.”
Suspecting Dora would tell everything she knew regardless of any motive she gave her, Kate reflected yet again that only the willingness of people to talk made any success in police work possible. Not that this was actually police work—if it were she’d be asking the questions and providing precious few answers to any that were asked of her.
“I’m a close friend of her brother Joe,” she told Dora. “I’m looking for him. That’s it. That all I came here for, that’s all I asked her, I promise you.”
Dora shrugged and muttered, “Then none of this makes much sense.”
“Have you seen Joe around?”
“Not in a while. Not for ages.”
At least she knew him. “Would you happen to remember when that was?”
“Yeah. Because it was odd.” Dora pulled her arms from the back of the sofa, removed her feet from the coffee table. She sat forward and picked up her elephantine container of water and sipped from it. “It was a coolish day here. He was wearing a khaki jacket. I’m thinking maybe February.”
Kate nodded. She knew the jacket. Dora was an ideal witness, nosy and highly observant. “Did he stay long? I mean, like, the day, the weekend?”
“Actually he didn’t. Maybe an hour. It was strange, like I said.” Dora’s eyes narrowed as she extracted more memory of that day. “I remember thinking he’d driven here through all that LA traffic and why would he do that for just an hour? Maybe he had someplace else to go but the way he looked, I don’t think so. He looked grim as death going into Jean’s place, his shoulders all hunched over like someone might fly down from the sky and hit him, and when he came out Jean was with him and they hugged and patted each other like one of them was going to the moon for a year.”
Prickling with apprehension, Kate used this information to total a few thoughts into a hypothesis. He had driven here to deliver news he couldn’t or wouldn’t say over the phone. She asked, “Would you tell me what happened to bring on the bad feeling between you and Jean?”
“Noise,” Dora retorted. “Just noise. But noise, noise, noise till I couldn’t take it anymore.” She flicked a hand, bracelets clacking, toward the adjacent trailer. “The place was way too small for all those people.”
“What people? Besides the two of them?”
“It was supposed to be just the two of them, that’s the thing. Bad enough with him carrying on like he does and the television and his video games, but then that bozo boyfriend Brandon was there, and it got so much worse I couldn’t sleep nights. They wouldn’t pay attention to one thing I said so I called Mack who owns the trailer, to have him talk to her. Mack and I go way back,” she said meaningfully. “And when Mack came over and yelled it was supposed to be just the two of them in the trailer, that’s when she went bonkers and I’ve been Dora the bitch ever since.”
Kate just nodded while she tried to sort through the welter of information. In a park like this with people living in close quarters, friction if not open belligerence was inevitable. It happened all the time in her own condo building, squabbling over everything from parking to parties to hogging the common areas. She ignored it all; she couldn’t be bothered, she would not be drawn into the building’s quarrels. “The noise, Dora—was it fights too? Parties?”
“No,” Dora said emphatically, “no parties. Fights, I really don’t have a problem with fights if it’s just yelling and no hitting. Everybody fights sometimes. I had enough of them myself with some of the losers I married. Mostly it was that kid.”
“What kid?”
Dora frowned and looked at Kate with a first glimmer of suspicion. “Her kid. You sure you’re a friend of Joe’s?”
Even more confused, Kate managed a smile. “Very sure, Dora. He was my partner for seven years. I could show you a shoebox full of photos of the two of us.”
“Then how come you don’t know his sister has a kid?”
Has a kid. Kate looked away to conceal her surprise. So that explained Jean’s odd lack of emotion when she said her son was dead. Everybody lied, everybody—she’d learned that reality probably her first day as a sworn police officer—but why had Jean laid claim to something so bizarre as a dead child? What the hell was going on with this family?
Kate answered Dora honestly, “We were close, but Joe always seemed reluctant to talk about his family, about his years in Victorville. Whenever I asked him anything, it was like he didn’t want to remember. So I don’t know much about his family or anything to do with here.”
“Guess I can understand that,” Dora said with a dark glare toward the adjacent trailer. “His sister calls me a bitch, she could give lessons in being a bitch.”
Kate asked cautiously, carefully phrasing her question, “What can you tell me about her…kid?”
Dora nodded, her eyes softening. “A good boy. I like Jason in spite of everything. He’s a beautiful kid. Hardly ever see a smile on him but when he does it about breaks your heart. I blame his father. It’s the father’s sperm that makes a mess of the genes, you know.” She took a drink of water.
Kate reached for her own tankard, wondering what whacko radio show Dora might have picked up that particular belief from. “How old is he? she asked, wondering why Cameron had never ever mentioned this apparently mentally challenged son of his sister’s.
“Hard to say, a boy like him. Maybe nine, ten? You see what happens,” Dora went on earnestly, “you get a kid like Jason from the father. Autistic, you know. Maybe it’s his daddy’s genes, but how he behaves, that’s the mother. And he’s bright enough, you can’t tell me she couldn’t have better control over him, you can’t tell me he doesn’t know better than to scream and yell and play his video games loud enough to drown out the voice of God.”
“He wasn’t there yesterday.”
“No, of course not. He’s gone.”
“Gone? Gone where?”
“Dunno.” Dora shrugged and waved a hand. “Jean’s not about to tell me.” She added, “I could kill the bitch. I like that boy.”
“When was this? The last time you saw Jason?”
Dora sat back and thought for some moments. “Two, maybe three weeks ago.”
Around the time Cameron was organizing his disappearing act. “Did someone pick him up, take him?”
Even the vigorous shake of Dora’s head did not budge her platinum bouffant. “Last I knew, he was climbing into that truck of Brandon’s. Brandon came back that night by himself.”
“So he dropped him off somewhere.”
“Had to be.” Again she shrugged. “Maybe with his father. Whoever that might be. I went over there and told Jean I hoped she didn’t send him away on my account. I never meant for that to happen, I just wanted the kid to behave and all of them to be less noisy. She told me to go do you-know-what to myself and slammed the door in my face.”
Kate smothered a smile. “Dora, have you ever seen Jack Cameron?”
“Who’s that?”
“Another brother.”
“No kidding. Where does this one live?”
“I’m not sure,” Kate said. “But I thought here.”
“I guess if I did see him, I wouldn’t know it.”
“Maybe not.”
“They sure as hell are one funny family.”
She couldn’t argue with that. “Dora, you said when they left they had other stuff besides suitcases. What do you mean?”
“It looked like they packed up clothes and took things out of the kitchen, food and some plates and pots and stuff. Wherever they’re going, they’re gonna be awhile.”
Kate shook her head. Still, this new development hardly mattered when Jean had made it more than clear she was not a source for further information. “Dora, did you know Joe is a police officer?”
“Well, sure. And that makes you one too, right? You being his partner?”
Deciding not to correct her, she said, “He started here. Years ago he was a cop here in town.”
“I knew that too. Jean told me all that before we got on the outs with each other.”
Kate asked, with very little expectation, “Joe has a friend here from his days as a cop. A guy named Dutch.”
“Dutch Hollander. I know Dutch. He does all kinds of stuff for animal rights, I see him at our meetings. He’s about as Dutch as I am. It’s a nickname because of his last name.”
Kate was elated. Let’s hear it for small worlds and animal rights and animal lovers. She had already planned an approach to the Victorville Police Department but now that she had Dutch’s last name, it would be much, much easier. She pulled a notebook out of her pocket and wrote the name down. Turned to another page and wrote out her contact details, tore the page out and placed it on the coffee table. “If you see anything, hear anything, if Jean or any of her family come back, would you be willing to call me right away?”
“Sure.” Dora looked at her in grave concern. “All this peculiar behavior, something bad’s going on over there, that right?”
“I don’t know yet. I hope not. I’m trying to find out. One last question, Dora. As much as you love animals, how come you don’t have pets yourself? I hear dogs barking all around the place.”
Dora sighed deeply. “One good reason. I always adopted old dogs—them’s the ones that need it, everybody else wants puppies or kittens. Those older ones, that short life span they have, I’ve mourned so many of my little friends. That on top of so much in my life I’ve lost, I’ve had too much loss, Kate, I can’t do it anymore.”
When Kate didn’t answer, Dora peered at her and then said softly, “Hit you where you live, did I?”
“You did,” Kate managed through a thick throat. What the hell is wrong with me? She was losing emotional control even in public.
She got up. “Dora, thanks for your time, for talking to me.”
“Anytime.” Dora also got up. “Gimme a piece of that paper, I’ll give you my phone number, you call too if you need anything.”
She went to the TV cabinet, pushed a few sculptures aside and scribbled quickly. Kate hoped she’d included her last name.
Dora handed her the paper, touched Kate’s hand with her fire-tipped nails. Then threw her arms around her and hugged her. “You come back anytime. I like people with good hearts.”