Then She Vanished

Fifteen

The next morning, wanting to contact Kirby Strait, I was referred by Virgil to granddaughter Tola, who said that Kirby was “camping” on her property in the mountains near Palomar Observatory. She said that I was free to enter the property and told me a back way in, around the main gate that Kirby had elaborately padlocked. She said with a bright laugh that she’d order him not to shoot me.

“So much for Kirby’s prison rehab,” I said.

“Yep. And by the way, my previous invite to you comes with a twenty percent first-timer’s discount at any Nectar Barn. I need to be present, though, so call ahead. You don’t get the discount without enduring me.”

Now Kirby Strait, six months fresh from the California State Prison in Corcoran, eyed me with clear reptile eyes and an engaging smile. Swim trunks and a knife sheath clipped to the waistband. He was lanky and tall and freckled, all prison yard muscle under a lopsided pompadour of red hair.

“I didn’t do it,” he said, standing in front of his tent.

The tent was an enormous rope-and-pole construction, certainly military surplus. A four-wheeler, an Indian motorcycle, and a pickup truck were parked along the shady side. A scoped long gun leaned against an oak sapling near the entrance.

“Kirbs?” asked a voice within.

“I heard about Natalie,” said Kirby. “Bad news, peckerwood. You help me get some water, I’ll talk to you. Because Tola told me I should.”

He put on flip-flops and a work shirt, pointed to an array of mismatched plastic buckets in the shade of the huge tent. Near the buckets was a two-hundred-gallon cistern with a spigot and garden hose at the bottom, sitting on sawhorses. We each took two buckets and Kirby led us down a game trail to a swale of willows through which a small stream gurgled.

“Itty-bitty trout in this stream, if you can believe that,” he said. “I catch ’em with a plastic colander and fry them up.”

“Have you seen Natalie since you got out?” I asked.

He let the current fill one of his buckets, drew it up by the handle and set it on a flat rock. Took up the next.

“I haven’t seen Natalie in twenty-five years, except on TV,” he called back over his shoulder. “In spite of what Virgil might think. He overestimates the wickedness in almost everyone’s heart. Certainly mine.”

“You have some history with her.”

“Virgil tell you about that, too? Or Dalton?”

“Neither one. I’m a PI so I privately investigate.”

“Well, ain’t that quaint. I’ve run across your type in court. Funnier than cops, dumber than lawyers. Know-it-all little bastards.”

“I stand six-three.”

He looked back at me and shook his head.

“I found out that you and Dalton fought over Natalie way back when you were teenagers,” I said. “Fairly serious. A concussion and stitches for Dalton. And later, a baseball bat and grandpa’s hospital for you.”

“Maybe Dalton bashed her over the head and dumped her,” said Kirby. He rose from the streamside, set his sloshing bucket near the first. Dug a smoke and lighter from his shirt pocket.

I filled my buckets and found a place to set them down, my ribs still sore from last year’s bout against six security men.

“Why would he do that?” I asked.

“Naw, he wouldn’t. I can’t think of a why. Dalton and Natalie always stuck things out together. As weak and gutless as Dalton always was. No matter how widely he spread his thankless seed. You couldn’t get a pry bar between them.”

I thought a moment about that. “You’re my age,” I said. “Married twice from what I learned.”

“You circle like a lawyer.”

“Just wondering if you could carry a torch for Natalie after twenty-five-plus years.”

He smiled and picked up his buckets, his pompadour swaying in the breeze. “You cannot know the frozen cold in this man’s heart. I was a kid when I tried to kill Dalton over Natalie Galland. When that failed, I grew up and said farewell to both of them.”

“And haven’t seen her since?”

“I made it clear the first time you asked.”

We lugged the heavy buckets back to the tent, took turns upending them into the cistern, then headed back to the creek for another round.

“Ford, the thing about Natalie is she’s a man magnet. She’s pretty and smart and funny and she has that other thing. The extra thing. The thing that makes you want to stand next to her. Be in the same room with her. Call it whatever you want but she’s always had it. Always known it. Hooking up with Dalton was a way to control it. And she’s always been just a little bit crazy, too. Which appeals to men such as myself. And Dalton.”

“You haven’t seen him in twenty-five years, either?”

“When he came home the hero and all blown up I saw him at the VA a couple of times. I felt sorry for him. But he was always a spoiled little wretch.”

“So he got what he deserved?”

“Looks that way to me.”

I loaded my buckets with the cold, clear water. Chased out a small trout from his beat alongside a rock. Tried to balance out Harris Broadman’s idea that even in war, character isn’t fate, with Kirby Strait’s notion that you get what’s coming according to who you are.

I set the buckets down and Kirby waded in. “Do you hate him?” I asked.

“Not hate. Disrespect. He was always the favored. Always the baby. Always the privileged. Got the looks and the easy charm. Strong enough to finally whup my ass when he was sixteen. And did so. We’re Jacob and Esau, except I don’t think God can stand either one of us.”

“There’s this,” I said.

When Kirby came ashore with his two dripping buckets, I showed him the picture that Natalie’s sister, Ash, had recently taken with her phone, in which a proudly smiling Kirby Strait stood with one arm around his uneasy sister-in-law, Natalie.

“I was just out,” he said. “Last Christmas. Family party.”

“Slightly less than twenty-five years ago,” I said.

Kirby gave me a nonchalant shrug. “Forgot about that one.”

“Any others you forgot?”

“I might have kept up with Natalie a little more than I first let on.”

“Privately?”

“I wish. She hasn’t given me a real smile since 1995. Before the slam, every once in a while, I’d make up some kind of excuse to be where she was. Just to get a look and a word with her. That’s funny, isn’t it?”

“Not if it made you mad.”

“I was never mad at Nats for one second.”

Nats, I thought — Dalton’s nickname for her, too. “Mad at Dalton?”

“Enough to hurt Natalie? Come on.”

“You did try to kill him once.”

“I was seventeen.”

I let that hang.

“See? There you all go again — everyone looking out for poor Dalton — couldn’t have been anything he would do. To me, the worst thing about him coming back crippled was I couldn’t get a rematch. You can’t kick a gimp’s ass with a clean conscience. Especially when it’s your brother — a spoiled little gimp like Dalton.”

“When did you see Natalie last?”

“That picture. Christmas.”

“Her car was found not far from here. Near the Tourmaline Casino.”

“I didn’t do it, just like I said. I’ve got an alibi and a damned good lawyer. And as of right now I’ve had enough of you.”

We carried the water back up the rise toward the tent. When we cleared the willows I saw a young woman in shorts and a bikini top lying out in the grass on a beach towel. She took an elbow and shaded her eyes as we approached, dark hair falling.

“Charity, this is the famous PI Roland Ford.”

“I just love Magnum.”

“Lucky him,” I said.

“Are you working a case, Mr. Roland?”

“I told you about Natalie,” said Kirby. “That’s what he’s working.”

“Any leads?” she asked.

“Everywhere I look.”

“There’s people in the trees that watch us, you know. Built into the bark. At night they turn into owls.”

“Charity’s a paranoid schizophrenic,” said Kirby. “But in a good way.”

She bounced up, threw a roundhouse punch that Kirby caught, folding her in close. “See you later, PI. I hope you find Natalie on some high rolling bender in Vegas or Monte Carlo. Blowing all Dalton’s money. In the company of some able gentleman who believes that she can do no wrong.”

I purposely took a wrong turn on the steep two-track road leading out. More than curiosity, less than a hunch. Headed up mountain. Put my truck into four-wheel drive and steered around the ruts. The roads were furrowed deep by the winter rain. I found myself with no room to turn around so I kept going. Finally the road ended at a rise just flat enough to back into and reverse direction.

Before doing that, however, I took a moment to enjoy the view: six large greenhouses cut into the trees and arranged with the long sides of the structures facing west and east. Solar panels and generators. Pallets of soil and fertilizers. Growers call it a mixed-light facility — sun and man-made light — for rapid growth and high yields. Anything from orchids to cannabis.

I took my binoculars to the edge of the rise, glassed the greenhouses. Which was when the buzz of the drone reached me from the wild blue yonder. Scanning with the binoculars I found the crabby little thing in the middle distance, heading my way. I thought of the attack I’d survived last year, and how it had begun with a surveillance drone flying over me, like this one. And ended with six armed men who beat me half to death.

This time there were no quad-runners screaming across the desert toward me, just people approaching through the pine-and-oak forest growing high and dense on Tola Strait’s property. Forty acres, she’d said, away from the light of the world, just like the observatory a few miles away.

They surrounded me. I held my arms out and opened my hands, slowly turning a full circle. A picturesque crew. Some with long guns, two with pistols on their hips. Two biker types, two Latinas with Sureño bandanas for scarves, a couple of California natives, and two outstandingly large Samoans. Eight in all.

One of the Samoans came close, dark eyes looking down on me from within his darkly mottled face. “ID,” he said. His voice was a soft rumble.

I produced my license, which he read closely before handing it back.

“Everything down there is Indian owned,” he said. “No county jurisdiction. No state. No federal. You are trespassing.”

I showed him Tola Strait’s Nectar Barn business card and his dark face contemplated it.

“She knows I’m here,” I said. “I was talking to Kirby and got lost on my way out.”

One of the women already had her cell phone out, staring at me as she held it to her ear.

“You better hope Tola’s heard of you,” said the big Samoan.

The Latina with the phone broke away from the group and walked to the edge of the trees. I could hear her voice but not her words.

“Cartel soldiers tried to take our plants last year,” said the Samoan. “We killed two of them here, and Miss Tola made sure the rest got sent out of the country.”

The Latina on the phone seemed to be listening more than talking now.

“Have you seen Natalie Strait lately?” If nothing else, I thought this question might disarm them.

“You just say nothing until we hear from Tola.”

We stood in stubborn silence until the Latina on the phone was back. She addressed my interrogator.

“Tola says take him to the west gate and let him go.”

They broke rank immediately.

“I’ll miss each and every one of you,” I said.

The younger of the Indians chose to ride with me, though I wasn’t sure why. I was happy to be leaving, and in no mood to press my luck with these people, employees of Tola Strait or not.

The young Indian, Marcus, told me Tola was a great businesswoman and he was already making good money with her. He said she was the only Anglo they trusted in tribal business. He said the Nectar Barn was bringing in as much as a small casino, and much easier to operate. As I looked out at the mountains and rolling hills around me, I wondered where Tola’s land ended and the tribal lands began.

The west fence was a stout construction of metal slats with a cheerless iron gate that stood open. Two greenhouse guards on horseback waited, with a third mount ready for my escort.

I put the truck into park, thanked Marcus for showing me the way out. He said I was welcome, and that a friend of Tola was a friend of his.

“Natalie Strait left her car out on the Pala res late that morning and got into a white Suburban,” he said. “Two men with her. She looked afraid.”

“What did the men look like?”

“One white. One black. Forties, maybe.”

“How do you know this?”

“Indians all through there,” said Marcus. “We talk.”

I asked Marcus for his phone number and sent him a good picture of Dalton Strait.

“Ask your witness if this was the white guy,” I said.

The picture chimed through to Marcus’s phone and I watched him bring it up and study it.

“That’s her husband,” he said. “The politician. I’ll ask my friends.”

“This is important,” I said. “I need this.”

“Nice meeting you, PI Ford.”

Ten minutes later Marcus texted me: “He doesn’t think so. But he can’t say for sure.”