Gone

CHAPTER 47

The woman said, “I still can’t believe you tracked me down that way.”

Her name was Elise Van Syoc and she was a Realtor working out of the Coldwell Banker Encino office. It had taken a long time but I’d found her using her maiden name, Ryan, and a decades-old nickname.

Ginger.

Groovy bass player for the Kolor Krew!

Her identity and a print of the photo I’d seen at the PlayHouse finally surfaced courtesy www.noshotwonders.com, a cruelly mocking compendium of failed pop bands flung by the gargantuan slingshot that was the Internet.

When I called her, she said, “I’m not getting involved in any court stuff.”

“It’s not about court stuff.”

“What, then?”

“Curiosity,” I said. “Professional and personal. At this point, I’m not sure I can separate the two.”

“That sounds complicated.”

“It’s a complicated situation.”

“You’re not writing a book or doing a movie?”

“Absolutely not.”

“A psychologist…whose therapist are you, exactly?”

I tried to explain my role.

She cut me off. “Where do you live?”

“Beverly Glen.”

“Own or rent?”

“Own.”

“Did you buy in a long time ago?”

“Years ago.”

“Have any equity?”

“Total equity.”

“Good for you, Dr. Delaware. A person in your situation might find it a good time to trade up. Ever think about the Valley? You could get a much bigger place with more land and some cash back. If you’re open-minded about the other side of the hill.”

“I pride myself on being open-minded,” I said. “I’m also big on remembering people who’ve extended themselves for me.”

“Some negotiator- you absolutely promise I won’t end up in court?”

“Swear on my trust deed.”

She laughed.

I said, “Do you still play bass?”

“Oh, please.” More laughter. “I got asked to join because I had red hair. She thought it was some kind of omen- the Kolor Krew, get it?”

“Amelia Dowd.”

“Crazy Mrs. D…this is sure taking me back. I don’t know what you think I can tell you.”

“Anything you remember about the family would help.”

“For your psychological insights?”

“For my peace of mind.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s a horrendous case. I’m pretty close to haunted.”

“Hmm,” she said. “I guess I can sum it up in one sentence: They were nuts.”

“Could we discuss it, anyway?” I said. “Time and place of your choosing.”

“Would you seriously consider a trade-up?”

“I hadn’t thought about it, but- ”

“Good time to start thinking. Okay, I need lunch anyway, what the heck. Meet me at Lucretia on Ventura near Balboa, hour and a half, I need you to be prompt. Maybe I can show you life on the other side of the hill can be tasty.”

The restaurant was big, pale, airy, nearly empty.

I arrived on time. Elise Van Syoc was already there, bantering with a young male waiter as she nursed a cosmopolitan and chewed on a single Brazil nut. “Ginger” was no longer a redhead. Her coif was puffy, collar-length, ash-blond. Tailored black pantsuit, tailored face, wide amber eyes. A deal-closing smile accompanied a firm, dry handshake.

“You’re younger than you sound, Dr. Delaware.”

“You, too.”

“How sweet.”

I sat down and thanked her for her time. She glanced at a diamond Movado. “Did Brad and Nora really do what everyone’s saying?”

I nodded.

“How about some juicy tidbits?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“But I do.”

“You really don’t,” I said.

“What, it’s disgusting?”

“That’s an understatement.”

“Yuck.” She sipped her cosmopolitan. “Tell me anyway.”

I parceled out a few details.

Elise Van Syoc said, “How’d you get all that equity working with the police? It can’t pay very well.”

“I’ve done other things.”

“Such as?”

“Investments, private practice, consults.”

“Very interesting…you don’t write?”

“Just reports, why?”

“It sounds like a good book…I’m afraid this isn’t going to be lunch, just a drink. I’ve got an escrow to close, huge place south of the boulevard. And there’s really nothing I can tell you about the Dowds other than they were all weirdos.”

“That’s a good place to start.”

The waiter came over, lean, dark, hungry-eyed. I asked for a Grolsch and he said, “For sure.”

When he brought the beer, Elise Van Syoc clinked her glass against mine. “Are you in a relationship? I’m asking in terms of your space needs.”

“I am.”

She grinned. “Do you cheat?”

I laughed.

She said, “Nothing ventured,” and finished the last bit of Brazil nut.

I said, “The Kolor Krew- ”

“The Kolor Krew was a joke.”

“How’d you get involved?” I said. “The other three members were sibs.”

“Like I told you over the phone, I was recruited by Crazy Mrs. D.”

“Because of your hair color.”

“That and she thought I had talent. I was in the same class as Nora at Essex Academy. My dad was a surgeon and we lived on June Street. Back then I thought I liked music. Took violin lessons, switched to the cello, then I conned my dad into getting me an electric guitar. I sang like a goose on downers, wrote ridiculous songs. But try telling me, I thought I was Grace Slick. Brad and Nora really killed all those people?”

“Every one of them.”

“Why?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

“It’s so bizarre,” she said. “Knowing someone who did that. Maybe I should write a book.”

Something new in her eyes. Now I understood why she’d agreed to meet with me.

“I’ve heard it’s tough,” I said.

“Writing?” She laughed. “I wouldn’t do it myself, I’d hire someone, put my name on it. There are some big best sellers who do that.”

“Guess so.”

“You don’t approve.”

I said, “So Amelia Dowd thought you had talent- ”

“Maybe I shouldn’t give you my story.”

“I have no interest in writing it up. In fact, if you do write a book, you can quote me.”

“Promise?”

“Swear.”

She laughed.

I said, “Amelia Dowd- ”

“She heard me play cello in the Essex Academy orchestra and thought I was some kind of Casals, which tells you about her ear. Immediately, she calls my mother, they knew each other from school affairs, teas at the Wilshire Country Club, acquaintances more than friends. Amelia tells Mother she’s putting together a band- a wholesome family thing, like the Partridge Family, the Cowsills, the Carpenters. My hair makes me perfect, I obviously have a gift, and bass is just another form of cello, right?”

“Your mother bought that?”

“My mother’s a conservative DAR lady but she’s always loved anything to do with showbiz. The ‘secret’ she tells everyone once she knows them long enough is that she dreamed of becoming an actress, looked exactly like Grace Kelly, but nice girls from San Marino didn’t do that even if nice girls from the Philadelphia Main Line did. She was always on me to join drama club but I refused. Ripe for Mrs. D’s picking. Plus, Mrs. D made it sound like a done deal- big record contract pending, interviews, TV appearances.”

“Did you believe it?”

“I thought it sounded idiotic. And lame. The Cowsills? My taste was Big Brother and the Holding Company. I went along with it on the off chance something would happen and I’d be able to miss school.”

“Did the Dowd kids have any musical experience?”

“Brad played a little guitar. Nothing fancy, a few chords. Billy held a guitar like a spaz, Amelia was always adjusting it. If he could carry a tune, I never heard it. Nora could but she couldn’t harmonize and she was always bored and spaced out. She’d never shown interest in anything other than drama club and clothes.”

“Fashion plate,” I said.

“Not really, she always dressed wrong. Way too fancy. Even at Essex things had gotten casual.”

“Was joining drama club her idea or her mother’s?”

“Hers, I always thought. She always pushed for the big parts, never got them because she couldn’t memorize lines very well. A lot of people thought she was semi-retarded. Everyone knew Billy was, I guess the assumption was it was hereditary.”

“What about Brad?”

“Smarter than those two. Anyone would be.”

“How’d he adjust socially?”

“Girls liked him,” she said. “He was cute. But he wasn’t what I’d call popular. Maybe because he wasn’t around much.”

“Why not?”

“One year he’d be there, the next year he’d be gone- at some out-of-state school- because of trouble he’d gotten into. But Mrs. D sure wanted him around the year she tried to start the band.”

“How far did you guys get?” I said.

“Halfway to nowhere. When I showed up at their house for the first rehearsal and saw what utter bullshit it was going to be, I went home and told Mother, ‘Forget it.’ She said, ‘We Ryans don’t have quitting in our blood,’ and notified me that if I wanted my own car I’d better buckle down.”

She slapped one palm against the table, then the other, sounded a slow, ponderous four-four beat. “That was Nora’s idea of playing drums. Billy was supposed to play rhythm guitar and he’d managed to learn two screechy chords- C and G, I think. But it sounded like a pig being strangled.” She screwed up her lips. “As if that wasn’t bad enough, we tried to sing. Pathetic. That didn’t stop Crazy Amelia.”

“From what?”

“Dragging us to have promo pictures taken. She found a discount photographer on Highland near Sunset, some old fart who slurred his words and had forty-year-old black-and-whites of people you’ve never heard of taped to the walls of his studio.” She wrinkled her nose. “The place smelled like cat pee. The costumes smelled like an old-age home. I’m talking boxes of stuff, all jumbled together. We had to pose as Indians, pilgrims, hippies, you name it. Everyone in a different color. ‘Varied garb and hue,’ as Mrs. D phrased it, was going to be our ‘signature.’ ”

“It worked for the Village People.”

“So where are they? Once the photos were done, it was agent-time, one blow-dried sleaze after another. Amelia flirted with every one of them. I’m talking hip rub, deep cleavage flash, calculated eyelash flutter, the works. She had this blond bombshell thing going on, played it to the hilt.”

“That doesn’t sound like someone a conservative DAR lady would trust,” I said.

“Funny about that, isn’t it? I guess showbiz trumps everything. You ask people in this city if they’d give up a vital organ for a walk-on in a movie, I guarantee you most would ask where’s the scalpel. Half the people in my business have had some connection to the industry. Come over to the office and you’ll see faces you vaguely recognize but can’t place. I’m talking the girl who served coffee to the banker lady on The Beverly Hillbillies during the second act of one episode. She’s still got that SAG card in her purse, works it into every conversation. The smart ones learn that even if they make it, it lasts as long as warm milk. The others are like Amelia Dowd.”

“Living in fantasyland.”

“Twenty-four seven. Anyway, that’s the history of the Kolor Krew.”

“The project never got anywhere.”

“We must’ve done two dozen auditions. None lasted longer than fifteen seconds because the moment the agents heard us sing they winced. We knew we were horrendous. But Amelia would be standing there, snapping her fingers, beaming. When I got home I’d light up a doobie, call my friends, get all hysterical-giggly.”

“How’d the Dowd kids handle it?”

“Billy was an obedient robot, might as well have come with wheels. Nora spaced out, just like always, did the whole Mona Lisa thing. Brad was always hiding a smirk. He’s the one who finally spoke up. Not disrespectfully, more like, ‘C’mon, we’re not getting anywhere.’ Amelia ignored him. I mean, literally, just pretended he wasn’t there and went on talking. Which was a switch.”

“In what way?”

“Generally she paid plenty of attention to Brad.”

“Abusive?”

“Not exactly.”

“Special attention?”

Elise Van Syoc tried to impale a lime wedge on her stirrer. “This could be the important part of my book.”

“She seduced him?”

“Or maybe it was the other way around. I can’t even say for sure something happened. But the way those two related wasn’t exactly mother-son. I never noticed until I started spending all that time with them. It took a while to notice Mrs. D being odder than usual.”

“What’d she do?”

“She was no great shakes as a mom. With Billy and Nora she was distant. But with Brad- maybe she figured, technically, because Brad was an adopted cousin and not her son…still, he was fourteen and she was a grown woman.”

“Hip rubs and cleavage?” I said.

“Some of that but usually it was more subtle. Private smiles, little looks that she’d sneak in when she thought no one was watching. Occasionally I’d catch her brushing his arm and he’d touch her back. Nora and Billy didn’t seem to notice. I wondered if I was imagining it, felt like an alien dropped on Planet Strange.”

“How did Brad react?”

“Sometimes he’d pretend not to be aware of what she was doing. Other times he’d clearly be liking it. There was definitely some kind of chemistry going on. How far it went, I don’t know. I never told anyone, not even my friends. Who thought in those terms, back then?”

“But you were grossed out.”

“I was,” she said, “but when Amelia’s own kids didn’t seem bothered I started to wonder if I was seeing things.” Small smile. “Being fortified by puffs of an illegal herb fed my doubts.”

“Amelia was seductive,” I said, “but she sent Brad out of state.”

“Several times. Maybe she wanted him out of the picture so she could deal with her own impulses? Would you call that a psychological insight?”

“Sure would.”

She smiled. “Maybe I should be an analyst.”

“How many times is ‘several’?”

“I’d say three, four.”

“Because he’d gotten into trouble.”

“Those were the rumors.”

“Did the rumors get specific?” I said.

“Your basic juvenile deliquency,” she said. “Do they use that term anymore?”

“I do. What’re we talking about, theft, truancy?”

“All that.” She frowned. “Also, some people in the neighborhood had pets that went missing and there was talk Brad was involved.”

“Why?”

“I honestly don’t know, that’s just what was said. That’s important, isn’t it? Cruelty to animals is related to being a serial killer, right?”

“It’s a risk factor,” I said. “When was the last time Brad was sent away?”

“After Amelia gave up on the band. Not right after, maybe a month, five weeks.”

“What convinced her to quit?”

“Who knows? One day she just called up Mother and announced that there was no future for popular music. As if she’d made the choice. What a loon.”

“And soon after that, Brad was gone.”

“Guess she no longer needed him…now that we’re talking about it, I realize how bad it must’ve been for him. Used and discarded. If he was bothered, he didn’t show it. Just the opposite, he was always calm, nothing got to him. That’s not normal, either, is it? Would you be my psychological consultant?”

“Get a contract and we’ll talk. What about Captain Dowd?”

“What about him?”

“Was he involved in the band?”

“He wasn’t involved in anything I ever saw. Which wasn’t that different from most fathers in the neighborhood. But they were gone because of work. Captain Dowd lived off inheritance, never held down a job.”

“How’d he spend his time?”

“Golf, tennis, collecting cars and wine and whatever. Lots of vacations abroad. Or, as my mother called them, ‘grand tours.’ ”

“Where?”

“Europe, I guess.”

“Did he travel with his wife?”

“Sometimes,” she said, “but mostly it was by himself. That was the official story.”

“Unofficially?”

She played with her glass. “Let’s put it this way: once I overheard Father joking to a golf buddy about how the captain had joined the navy to be close to boys in tight blue uniforms.”

“He traveled with young men?”

“More like traveled to find young men.”

“The rumor mill,” I said.

“Keeps the grass green,” she said.

“Captain Dowd being gay was public knowledge?”

“If my father knew, everyone did. He seemed like a nice enough man- the captain. But not much of a presence. Maybe that’s why Amelia flirted with everyone.”

“Including Brad,” I said.

“I guess they were all crazy,” she said. “Does that explain what happened?”

“It’s a start.”

“That’s not much of an answer.”

“I’m still figuring out the questions.”

Amber eyes hardened and I thought she’d come back with a sharp retort. Instead, she stood and smoothed the front of her trousers. “Gotta run.”

I thanked her again for her time.

She said, “I know you were snowing me about keeping an open mind, but I’d like to call you if a hot property comes up. Something really worth your while, it’s a terrific time in the market for someone in your position. How about a phone number?”

I gave her a card, paid for the drinks, and walked her to her silver Mercedes roadster.

She got in, started up the car, lowered the top. “I’ll probably never do a book, hate writing. Maybe a cable movie.”

“Good luck.”

“It’s strange,” she said, “after you called, I tried to make sense of it- looking back for something that could’ve predicted it.”

“Come up with anything?”

“This is probably irrelevant- I’m sure I’m reading all kinds of crazy things into insignificant stuff. But if what they’re saying about what happened to those people is true…the gory details, I mean…”

“They’re true.”

She drew a compact from her purse, checked her face in the mirror, tamped her hair, put on a pair of sunglasses. “Mrs. D had this routine she’d go through. When we goofed off during rehearsal, which was often, and she lost her patience but was trying not to show it because she wanted to be one of the gang. Like Mama Cowsill or Shirley Jones.”

“Cool mom,” I said.

“As if that’s ever possible…anyway, what she’d do is start clapping her hands to quiet us down, then she’d make like she was the Red Queen- from Alice in Wonderland. The first few times she announced it. ‘I am the Red Queen and I will be obeyed!’ Eventually we caught on. Whenever she clapped it was going to be a Red Queen routine. Which consisted of her spouting lines like ‘I’m five times richer and cleverer than you,’ or ‘What use is a child with no meaning?’ I took it for just another of her eccentricities, but maybe…”

She went silent.

“Maybe what?”

“This will probably sound literal to you. After spouting all this Lewis Carroll stuff, she’d scrunch up her eyebrows and cackle and raise a finger in the air and start waving it around. Like she was testing the wind. If we still weren’t paying attention- which we usually weren’t- she’d let out this honking noise, could’ve been a man’s it was so deep. Then she’d make goofy eyes and shake her chest like a stripper gone berserk. She was big up there, it was ridiculous.”

Running her hands over her own narrow torso.

“Finally, if we still weren’t toeing the line, then she’d lower her hand like this, and run it across her throat and place both hands on her hips and scream, ‘Off with your heads!’ It was silly but creepy, I hated when she did it. Nora and Billy didn’t seem to care.”

“And Brad?”

“That’s the thing,” she said. “Brad used to smile. One of those private smiles. Like it was a private joke between him and Amelia. You know about his hobby, right? He was really into it back then. Had all kinds of knives, used to carry knives around. I never saw him hurt anyone and he was never threatening. At least not to me. So it probably means nothing- Amelia with her hand over her throat.”

I said nothing.

Elise Van Syoc said, “Right?”