Then She Vanished

Nineteen

The Strait home stood at the end of a rural road south of Escondido. It looked to be 1960s construction, a modest stucco two-story with a wholesome face and brown trim. The yard looked uncherished and the hedges needed trimming. A flagpole mid-yard, no flag. A FOR SALE sign. Around the home were several unbuilt lots and a few similar structures, as if these homesteaders had led the charge only to be abandoned.

Dalton stood in the doorway, a beer bottle in one hand and an apparently just delivered handful of mail in the other. He had his air of disheveled nonchalance. A small Bichon mix wagged its tail at me eagerly. The press conference was almost an hour away. I wasn’t sure how hot a ticket it might be, given last night’s bomb. Every media outlet I turned to — from local to national to the BBC — was covering the bombing deaths of Representative Nisson and his aide. Would they have time for a humble assemblyman accused of financial misdeeds?

“I’m going to stand right in this doorway when the media asks questions,” he said. “That way, they’ll see I’m a just a humble blown-up war hero and family man, defending my home and wife against lies and slanted accusations.”

“Raise a flag, shave your snout, and lose the beer,” I said.

“Not a problem. There’s a flag here in the foyer, would you mind? I’m going to go get pretty. Beer?”

“No.”

“Come on, Freddie,” he said to the dog. “Let’s go get ready for the show.”

While Dalton prettified upstairs, I carried a well-weathered United States flag to the front-yard pole. The pole had a clothesline, three pulleys, and a tie-down. As I hoisted the flag I noted the top ornament, a toilet bowl float painted gold. I wondered if Dalton was more patriot or scoundrel.

I sat in the living room and waited. Heard voices upstairs, three, male and argumentative. Freddie barked briefly. The living room was oddly dated for someone Dalton’s age: Berber carpet, matronly overstuffed sofa and chairs, a black-lacquer-and-glass coffee table with untouched magazines and a faux Pueblan vase of artificial flowers. On the walls, framed floral paintings, mass-produced and mall-marketed, painful to look at. I wondered why the Straits’ eye-popping credit card charges for the finer things in life hadn’t included one item for their own living room.

I heard loud thumping on the landing upstairs, then a tall, beefy boy came pounding down. Lee, I knew from Dalton’s phone photos, a college junior at San Diego State and part of the Navy/Marine ROTC program. He wore a lacrosse jersey, shorts, and cleats, and carried a red helmet in one hand and a defender’s long stick in the other. Lee had short blond hair and an open, carefree face like his father’s.

“Hey,” he said, clomping to a stop on the Berber. “You find Mom yet?”

“Not yet,” I said. “Any ideas where she went?”

“We never know with her,” he said. “I’m going to practice.”

He trotted past the plump sofa and recliner to the foyer tile, then out the front door. I saw the van waiting in the driveway.

When I looked back, another young man had already come down the stairs and stood at the landing, looking at me. The USC Trojan, I thought, younger, a freshman. Terrell. Shorter than his older brother, with something of his mother’s engaging face. Dark hair and blue eyes. A Seinfeld T-shirt and lounge pants and the nubby rubber spa slippers oddly favored by the young.

“I’m a PI working for your dad,” I said.

“I’m Terrell.”

“How do you like USC?”

“It’s okay. I’m thinking about moving back home to help find Mom.”

“I respect that,” I said.

“Dad told me to hang around and make a good impression at this press conference.”

“You’ll make a good impression.”

He looked at me for a beat, uncertainty on his handsome face. “Do you think this was a psychotic episode? Another break?”

“I wish I could give you one bit of useful information, Terrell.”

“So you have nothing, or nothing you can tell me?”

Nothing but a cry for help written in lipstick, I thought. And a lot of eye-witnessed hugger-mugger up near Valley Center and out by the Tourmaline Casino one Tuesday that by now must feel like a hundred years ago to this boy.

I saw the tension on Terrell’s face, so unlike the annoyance on his older brother’s.

“Are you close to her?” I asked.

He looked at me again with something of his mother’s bright expression on the TV commercials. If Lee was Dalton’s son, Terrell was clearly Natalie’s.

“Well, she’s my mom.”

“People think highly of her,” I said. “It’s my job to ask around when things like this happen.”

“Like an abduction?”

“We’re not sure of that, Terrell.”

“Why wouldn’t they think highly of her?”

I considered this a good question. One of the several things that had been bothering me about Natalie Strait’s disappearance was how lost in the shuffle she seemed to those who should be the most anxious to have her safe and back home. Such as her husband. And, apparently, Lee. We never know with her.

“People talk about this quality she has,” I said, eager to get a clearer picture of the boy. “They describe it in different ways. How would you describe her?”

He looked down and slipped his hands into his pockets. Toed the carpet with his spa slippers. “I don’t know. Um, I’m not that verbal or anything. I’m studying film. I’m going to be a moviemaker.”

He vetted me again with Natalie’s open charm, in absentia. “I made a movie that helped me get into school. It’s about her. A Day in a Life. I’m into music, too, so the Beatles reference.”

“I’d like to see it.”

“It’s not bad.”

“Do you have a copy?”

“Probably a hundred. Right back.”

He took the stairs two at a time. I heard banging, then some back and forth, across-the-house yelling with his father. The dog barking again. A moment later he handed me two plastic jewel cases and a brad-bound script.

“One disc is Blu-ray if you got it, and there’s outtakes before the credits so don’t miss those. Mom is much more interesting when she doesn’t think the camera is on. And funnier. Like most people are. The script, too, if you want.”

“I look forward to this, Terrell.”

“Maybe it holds a clue.”

I waited for the ironic smile and didn’t get one.

“I’ll do anything on earth to get her back,” he said. “You need me, you call me. My numbers are on the script.”

Half an hour later, Dalton, freshly shaven and golf-shirted, came down the stairs and gave me a brief salute. Then swung himself around the well-worn banister finial and limped into the kitchen. Heard him ordering his son to get him a beer before the vultures got here. A moment later he walked in with a fresh cold one.

“How do I look?”

“I’d almost believe you.”

“I’ll take almost.”

“You’ll need more than that,” I said. “I read the DOJ indictment. They’re throwing the book at you, Dalton.”

“Um-hmm,” he managed, upping the bottle for a long swallow. He wiped his mouth like a saloon gunslinger. “Thing is, they can’t prove any of it.”

I thought of Burt’s non-grand-jury investigation, which had yielded plenty of damning evidence. “And what if they already have?”

“I mean in a courtroom, Roland. Whose side are you on, anyway?”

“What are you going to say about Natalie’s absence?”

“I don’t know. Hit at the plate. What do you think?”

“Our chances of finding her go up if people know she’s missing.”

He gave me an assessing stare. “More than one way to play it.”

“This isn’t play, my friend.”

It wasn’t play for me, either. The idea of being caught and displayed through scores of media outlets did not sit well. Sometimes you need anonymity. You need a handful of aliases with business cards, websites, and phone numbers to back them up. You need to get yourself where you need to be with a story, a wig, a mustache, and a change of clothes. Even a pair of Jackie O sunglasses. A little can do a lot. But you can’t do that if everybody knows you. Especially through the eyes of the media — social, news, whatever. Illogically, you’re twice as memorable on a screen.

I settled on a Padres cap and windbreaker from the toolbox in my truck, and a pair of aviator sunglasses.