Then She Vanished

Seventeen

Tola Strait led me from the fragrant, spacious showroom of the Julian Nectar Barn to her office in the back. The skunky green aroma of marijuana followed us down a bare hallway, brightly lit. An armed and uniformed guard pressed a lock code into a wall keypad and the door slid open. He was a Native American, size large. Gave me a blank look on my way by.

The office was roomy and orderly: a brushed aluminum desk behind which Tola sat down in a task chair, a shiny concrete floor littered with Navajo rugs, brick walls hung with framed landscapes in oil and watercolor, and two Outlaw Iron Horse gun safes towering side by side on either side of a wet bar. A large digital scale on the bar top, away from the sink. A cowboy chic leather sofa along one wall, Pendleton blankets draped over both arms, and reading lamps at each end. A pink bathroom behind a half-open door.

And red-haired Tola, setting her cell phone on the brushed desktop. No business attire for her today. Instead, jeans tucked into cowboy boots, a crisp white dress shirt, and a red leather vest festooned with turquoise nuggets and leather tassels.

I sat across from her on a faux cowhide armchair.

“Thanks for looking at the Nectar Barn offerings, Mr. Ford,” she said, nodding to the wall-mounted security video screen. “Though I’m disappointed you didn’t pick out some good dope. I profiled you as a pump-me-up, high energy cannabis user.”

“On account of my laid-back nature?”

“You got it. One of those guys who toke up and run on the beach. Or hit the iron pile, or whatever you do to burn off the energy.”

“Not my drug of choice,” I said.

“It can take you up, down, or sideways. Ever tried it?”

“I giggled and couldn’t walk straight.”

“And the downside? Let me guess — loss of control over your surroundings. Paranoia and right-wing fantasies. An uncontrollable lust for ice cream.”

“Peanut-butter chocolate,” I said.

“We make an incredible edible — the Nectar Barn peanut-butter-fudge brownie.”

“I wish you’d quit trying to sell me something I don’t want.”

“You just need the right hybrid.”

“I know what I need, Ms. Strait.”

An amused gaze. “I must have something you want, or you wouldn’t have called.”

“Natalie’s been missing ten days,” I said. “Complete silence from her, no credit card charges, no cell phone usage. Your grandfather fingered Kirby but I think Kirby’s had his hands full. We know she’s not on a manic-phase jag, or at least things didn’t start off that way. Two men got themselves into her car, took her for a drive, then hustled her into a white Suburban not far from the Tourmaline Resort Casino. As you have probably heard from Dalton or Virgil, she wrote the word ‘Help’ on the back seat of her car, in lipstick.”

From a desk drawer she withdrew a pack of cigarettes and set them in front of her by the phone. Gave me a long steady study.

“This may be naïve,” she said, “but why hasn’t Dalton made this public? Why aren’t the police high-profiling it?”

“He fears political fallout,” I said. “And the police are doing what they can.”

“The police have forgotten her.”

“Forgotten?”

“Because of the bombs,” she said. “A United States congressman and one of his aides blown completely away by The Chaos Committee. Did you see them last night, storming the station?”

“Everyone did. That was their goal.”

“Not their main goal, though. Their main goal is to stop things. Like they said. So we can devolve. Natalie is one of millions of citizens who need help right now. Badly. But the police are all looking for the bombers. They’re distracted and paralyzed and Natalie isn’t important.”

I was about to make a crack about cannabis and paranoia but I saw that Tola had a point, herbally abetted or not.

“Okay,” I said. “Good.”

She slapped the cigarette pack against her free hand, aimed the two-cigarette offering my way. I accepted, she pulled the other one out and I lit both of them with a Nectar Barn lighter from her desktop. It was heavy sterling silver, shaped like a barn, of course, with a push button on the roof that sent a flame jetting from a barn door that opened automatically.

Even in this well-lit office, from this clear angle, Tola looked enough like Justine to remind me of her. Same trim jaw and dubious eyes, same lurking good humor and subtle confidence. Same question-the-system attitudes, too: Justine a proud public defender of people like Tola.

“Had Natalie asked you for money recently?” I asked.

Tola shook her head.

“How about Dalton?”

“I loaned him fifty thousand dollars two months ago. No contract, just sister-to-brother. In this business, there’s always cash sitting around, waiting to be spent or stolen.”

“And before that?”

“Another fifty thousand late last year. When his campaign was kicking in.”

“You know he’s hugely in debt,” I said.

“He has hinted at that. No hard figures. Mr. Ford—”

“Make it Roland.”

“Roland, big picture is, I think what happened to Natalie is more personal than politics, or even money.” She moved a Nectar Barn ashtray closer to me. “Very personal. Punishment. Revenge. Obsession.”

The same three muses that had been barreling in and out of my mind ever since Dalton had walked into my office and told about his missing wife.

“Okay,” I said, hoping to draw her out.

“Not okay. Because, if that’s the case, when they’ve gotten what they want from her, then what? That’s what worries me, Roland Ford. What will they do with her? I’d love to see a simple-minded ransom demand.”

“It’s been nine days,” I reminded her.

She gave me an annoyed look, drawing lightly on the smoke.

“How about Dalton?” I asked.

She nodded as if she’d considered this before. “No. Dalton is weak, vain, and self-serving. But he’s not wicked like that. What good does her disappearance get him? He can’t even talk to the media about it.”

I was surprised at the depth of her disdain for her brother. But it was not as deep as Kirby’s.

“Did you take sides in Dalton’s and Kirby’s competition over Natalie Galland?”

“I was five. I thought Natalie Galland was the coolest, prettiest, most glamorous girl in the world. She didn’t live in Buena Vista like us Okies. She was from fancy Ramona. Big houses in the hills. Kirby discovered her. I wanted Dalton to get her. Dalton was the kind one. Kirby not. Now I can see that she’d have been better off without either of them. Kirby will never change. But the war changed Dalton, Mr. Ford. Drastically and forever. Took the strength right out of him. He used to believe in himself. Now it takes an entire assembly district to make him believe in anything.”

I imagined the Dalton of Fallujah, before the mine took out his Humvee and left Harris Broadman brutally disfigured for life. Dalton had been capable and well intentioned, at least. And after the IED that took half his leg a few days later? Well, maybe not. Maybe Tola was right. Maybe the war had left him an emptied-out young man whose only strength was the power of his office, the votes and money he scrambled for every two years. To prove his value.

Tola studied me curiously, tapping out her cigarette in the ashtray, which was shaped like a horseshoe surrounding a miniature Nectar Barn and barnyard. A tiny interior fan sucked the smoke into the nail holes.

“Have you followed up on Natalie’s stalker, and the creep on the campaign committee?” Tola asked.

“The stalker admitted a crush on her in a police interview, and claims to have mended his ways,” I said. “So far, so good, according to Dalton. The campaign volunteer is a slightly different story. Brock Weld. He didn’t show for work at the casino the day Natalie disappeared. Claims he stayed home sick. Neighbors say otherwise. I have an associate digging a little deeper.”

“An associate! So, you’re like a league of private detectives?”

“Exactly. Each with his or her own superpower.”

She smiled briefly. “I haven’t helped you at all. Knowing that you were going to come here today, I thought about Natalie and my brother, and everything that’s happened. Kirby, of course. I wish I could help you. But all I can do is offer you things you don’t want.”

I stubbed out my own half-smoked cigarette in the barnyard. Watched the embers fade on the green grass and the smoke snake down the holes.

“Like that half-used thing,” she said. “See?”

“You’ve been helpful, Tola.”

“But there’s something else you want from me, isn’t there?”

She held my gaze.

“I know a guy,” I said. “Some years ago he loved someone and was happy, but it… ended. And when something reminds him of that woman and that time in his life, he’s drawn to her. Like to a campfire on a cold night. That’s where you came in.”

A flat green stare. Impossible to separate from what used to be.

“By reminding you of Justine.”

“Correct.”

“I know what happened to her,” she said. “We may look something alike, but we’re so different. The noble legal mind and the drug pusher.”

“I don’t see either of you that way, but yes.”

“Yes what, then?”

“You two are different,” I said.

“But we both set off hardwired desire that draws you to us. Is that what you’re saying, Roland?”

“I believe so, yes.”

“So it’s physical.”

“It starts with that,” I said. “I have a hunch that’s nature’s way.”

“Which is part of your job. Following hunches.”

“Less than people like to believe,” I said.

I pictured Tola Strait marching down the hall of the Capitol building, toward her brother’s office. And later, standing under the streetlamp on Sacramento’s tree-lined Fourteenth Street not far from the Capitol, Zorro hat over her back and her arm draped casually over the craggy-faced man I’d seen in the San Diego FBI field office.

Tola’s flat green stare became a smile, somehow private. She moved the Nectar Barn lighter one inch to her right.

“Well, that didn’t quite come out of nowhere,” she said.

“I tried to hide it.”

“You’re not much of a hider.”

A sharp rap on the office door.

“Later!” yelled Tola.

“The eleven o’clock is here!”

“Later!”

“Yes, Ms. Strait!”

Her expression went from amused to serious.

“My turn, Roland. Ready? You remind me of absolutely nobody. You are not my type, as I understand my type to be. You don’t connect with anything I’ve known or dreamed. But you’ve been on my mind since I saw you at Grandpa’s. Not quite a lightning bolt, but a good, healthy shock. And I haven’t been able to wash you out of my hair.”

A flummoxed look.

“Which is not part of my program,” she continued. “What I do is I compartmentalize. Put everything into boxes. Big as shipping containers or as small as thimbles. A place for everything and everything in its place. But I can’t fit you into any of them. On less of a stoner’s note, I spent more time getting ready for you today than I have for any appointment in recent memory. I didn’t take a puff or a nibble because I was afraid I might miss something here. I felt as if I was preparing for something important. An audition. I’ve never felt that before, so strongly. And I feel good right now, sitting in this room with you. All sober and present. It’s very unusual. For me.”

Another long gaze from her. She fiddled with the lighter again, both hands this time, squaring it up before her, just so.

Time went by in the quiet of her office. She cleared her throat in an exaggerated way.

“The eleven o’clock is here,” she said. “Stay and watch. It’s fun.”