Then She Vanished

Seven

We climbed down the stairs to the basement. Cold rock walls, poor light, and the smell of earth. Virgil pushed through a rusted iron door on squeaking hinges and into a dark room. He flipped a wall switch but no light came. He pulled me in and shut the door. Before us, luminescent blue-green creatures scuttled and stopped, scuttled and stopped.

“They’re most active at night,” said Virgil Strait. “So I keep it dark here during the day, hit them with the UV so I can see them frolicking.”

As my eyes adjusted to the dark I saw the terraria built into the walls and the big desk in the middle of the room, stacked with books and papers, and a high-backed leather chair behind the desk and the two folding chairs opposite. The scorpions surrounded us in their glass cages, heavy armed and high tailed, all sizes, some small as a house key, some half a foot long at least.

“I liked them as a boy and never outgrew the fascination,” said Virgil. “Carried them around in my lunch bucket at school. Used to keep a new specimen or two in my chambers, which had a distracting effect on squabbling lawyers. Scorpion venom is mostly overrated. Still, you don’t want an Arizona bark scorpion or a spitting thick-tailed black to get you.”

“That’s a big one,” I said, nodding to a crawdad-sized scorpion eyeing us from a top-row cage.

“Emperor scorpion from Africa.”

“Why did Natalie want to see you?”

Virgil regarded me in the near dark, though I couldn’t make out his face.

“She wanted to talk about moving her family here. In with me — Dalton, her, and the younger boy.”

“Why?”

“Circle the wagons. Debt. Years of living beyond their means.”

I thought of Dalton’s comments about his assemblyman’s salary of a hundred grand and change, coupled with that of a part-time car salesperson. They were not a money machine, but they made just enough to live a decent, frugal life. You had to factor in a son away at USC — one of the most expensive private colleges in the nation. You had to factor in a forty-grand gambling/shopping loss and the cost of Natalie Strait’s medical care. Which, my research had discovered, was only partly covered by the Straits’ State of California and Natalie’s BMW health plans. You had to factor in Dalton spending more of his own money on reelection than he’d ever spent before. And maybe the fact that he couldn’t even pay my up-front engagement fee.

I watched the blue-green scorpions moving about, determined but defeated by glass. “Have Dalton and Natalie borrowed money from you?”

“Those days are over.”

“Were you going to let them move in?”

“Sure, but it’s a crazy idea. Both boys in college. She works in Escondido and Dalton’s in and out of Lindbergh Field every other week it seems. This place is hours from everywhere they need to be. And look at it. Who’d want to live in this rock pile of hell in the first place?”

“They must be desperate,” I said.

“Yeah, well, you dig a hole, you fall in. That’s what I used to tell the unfortunate souls who ended up in my court.”

“Until you fell into your own.”

“Who are you? Roland F. Christ?”

“I’m just a PI, locally sourced and hopefully sustainable.”

“Life is surprise.”

Virgil hit the lights and the glowing arachnids receded into the pebbled flooring of their cages. Up close and in good light his face looked like a wrinkled map, cross-hatching and contradictory lines in all directions.

“You want enemies of Dalton and Natalie?” asked Virgil. “You were right about Dalton’s older brother. Kirby’s the one who took up with her first. He never got readjusted quite right after she went with Dalton. Nobody falls in love like a Strait.”

I bumped down the mountain drive from Virgil Strait’s rock castle, followed by one of his watchdog trucks with the rifles in its window. Howard Wilkin, my contact and sometimes ally at the Union-Tribune, called, his voice cutting over the radio speakers loud and clear.

“I’m working on a story about Natalie Strait,” he said. “But nobody knows how I can get in touch with her. Do you?”

“I saw you out in Valley Center,” I said.

“They’re treating it as a crime scene,” said Wilkin. “And asking me to stand down for now. Asking as a reporter, Roland, what were you doing there?”

“I got a tip, Howard. Just like you probably did.”

“From Dalton?”

“Maybe.”

“It would make sense, with him being in Sacramento.”

“What did the crime lab find in her car?” I asked.

“They won’t say anything. They won’t even confirm that the vehicle belonged to Natalie Strait. My contact at the DMV came in handy. Help me out here, Roland.”

“They’re telling me less than they’ve told you,” I said.

“But you got a lot closer to the crime scene team than I did. They must have shot two hundred pictures. What did you see in there?”

“Nothing unusual that I could see. I can’t comment for publication, Howard. You know that.”

“Do you have a number for her? For Natalie Strait?”

“Talk to Dalton.”

“He said talk to you.”

I had expected more of Dalton. Maybe name, rank, and serial number. And some good old-fashioned political evasion.

“I’ll ask her to call you when I find her, Howard. Let’s let the cops handle this for now. Give the Straits their privacy.”

“He’s the assemblyman for the eighty-second district, Roland. People should know if his wife has been the victim of a crime.”

“Nobody’s saying that, Howard.”

“That’s what bothers me. I know something’s wrong here. The Straits have been living pretty big for years now. I’m the only media on this story, and this could be big with the election six months out. I need more than an abandoned car. You owe me from last year.”

“I haven’t forgotten.”

I ended the call, turned the radio back on, made a fist and tapped it on the steering wheel. I called Dalton to find out why he’d handed me over to Wilkin, and to find out what, if anything, Lew Hazzard of the Special Enforcement Detail had told him about Natalie’s vehicle. The call went to message.

Next I called Dalton and Natalie Strait’s three current credit card companies, gave Dalton’s account numbers, PINs, passwords and security codes, and the last four digits of his social security number. Yes, I was calling from a new phone number. Asked for balances and recent activity. The balances for April — the most recent full month of activity — were $5,705, $4,013, and $7,922, and all of the monthly minimums were past due. None of the credit cards had been used in the last four days. Would I like to speak to an account representative?

I logged in to my mobile IvarDuggans account to pry into Dalton and Natalie Strait’s credit history. The security site doesn’t have access to current balances, but they do have a list of credit cards, both active and closed, that are “associated” with practically any individual who has ever used a charge card.

Dalton and Natalie Strait’s information popped right up. I noted the card issuer and account numbers, logged off and started calling.

By the time I hit Alpine, I’d come up with three more active credit cards not listed by Dalton but used by both Straits and discovered balances totaling $37,039.

I clicked off, wondering how Dalton’s hundred grand and Natalie’s up-and-down commissions in the fickle car market could cover mortgage, private college expenses, taxes, insurance, food, utilities, gambling, everyday expenses, and roughly $55,000 in credit card debt.

A few minutes later the phone went off again, this time with a San Diego County Emergency Alert:

Which is about two blocks from the city building where the bomb addressed to the mayor had gone off five days ago.