Vanishing Point

Thursday

I put the Cessna into a descending turn and looked out its left window at the lower Salinas Valley. Narrow, as California valleys go, it was bordered to the east by the stark Gavilan Mountains and to the west by the more verdant Santa Lucias. Highway 101 ran more or less straight through it, paralleled by the Salinas River, its waters winking through the trees that lined its banks. King City, which I’d passed over some minutes before, spread to the north along a maze of railroad tracks, and below me the little farm town of San Ardo nestled among well-cultivated fields and vineyards.

To the south, however, the landscape changed abruptly. Oil wells peppered the pockmarked terrain and barren hills rose around them, crowned by holding tanks. I spiraled closer, saw the rocker arms of the wells moving up and down, like the heads of giant insects boring into the earth’s core. An image of its essence being sucked dry put a chill on me. Quickly I pulled up into a wide climbing turn, then headed south again. The Paso Robles Municipal Airport lay only a few miles away; with any luck, the rental car that I’d reserved would be ready for me.

The town hadn’t changed much since those pit stops I’d made during college. The drive-in wasn’t an A &W anymore, but it was still in operation. The Paso Robles Inn looked as if it hadn’t changed since it was built in the late 1800s. I saw no evidence of earthquake damage, other than scaffolding around a couple of boarded-up storefronts. To familiarize myself, I drove the length of Spring Street, the main arterial, then turned back toward the central business district, where I found a coffee shop and ate lunch while pinpointing addresses on a local map.

My first stop was on Chestnut Street, which paralleled Spring three blocks to the west. In the middle of a row of California-style bungalows shaded by tall trees, I found the Greenwoods’ former home: beige stucco with green wicker furniture crowding its small porch and wind chimes suspended from the eaves. I pulled to the curb and idled there, trying to get a sense of the lives that had gone on in this place twenty-two years ago. But too much time had passed; the house was probably not even the same color now, and who knew what other alterations had been made. When a curtain moved in a front window and a woman looked out, I took my foot off the brake and pulled away.

It was time for my interview with Anna Yardley. As I drove to Olive and Tenth streets, I reviewed what Jennifer Aldin and Terry Wyatt had told me about their maternal aunt. A retired insurance broker, Anna Yardley was unmarried and lived in the home where she and her sister Laurel had grown up. She’d spent little time with Jennifer and Terry prior to their mother’s disappearance, but afterward assumed a stern presence in their lives. “Warm and fuzzy was not Aunt Anna’s thing,” Terry had commented. “Her big sentimental gesture toward each of us was the gift of a thousand-dollar whole life policy-on which she probably collected the commission-when we graduated from high school.”

The Yardley house was white clapboard surrounded by a picket fence with an arched gate, on a corner lot. An oak tree-oaks, on Olive Street!-took up most of the front yard, and an old rope swing hung from one of its massive limbs. Anna Yardley came to the door before I could ring the bell.

She was a big woman, tall and heavy, with iron gray hair pulled back from her face and coiled at the nape of her neck. Her features were severe, her jaw strong, her lips drawn into an uncompromising line. Although the temperature must have been in the low nineties, she wore a long-sleeved black dress of a heavy fabric whose folds rustled as she led me to a formal front parlor.

At her suggestion I sat on a settee upholstered in pale green brocade. While she settled herself on a matching chair, I placed my briefcase beside me and took out my recorder.

“You can put that away,” Anna Yardley said. “Anything I tell you is to remain in strict confidence.”

“The tape is only for accuracy’s sake.”

“Take notes instead. I have no guarantee where that tape might end up.”

I wasn’t about to argue with her, so I put the recorder back in my case and took out a legal pad. After noting the date, time, and her name I began, “Ms. Yardley-”

“Before you get to your questions, I want you to know that I’m only talking to you as a favor to my niece Jennifer. Quite frankly, I think this investigation is a horrible idea. She should have made her peace with what happened years ago. There are some things we’re not meant to know, and my sister Laurel’s fate is one of them.”

Odd way of putting it. I wrote down the word “fate” and circled it.

Anna Yardley squinted at the legal pad. Before she could ask what I’d written, I said, “What about you-have you made your peace?”

“Well, certainly. It’s been nearly a quarter of a century.”

“Tell me-what kind of a person was Laurel?”

Anna Yardley’s thin lips curved downward. “A very impractical woman. A dreamer. Always reading. Painting. Dabbling in those silly greeting cards.”

“I had the impression that she was a successful businesswoman, and the greeting card business looked promising.”

“I admit that the cards were beginning to sell, and she was making a small profit. But she could have earned much more if she’d kept up with her nursing.”

“Laurel had a nursing degree from San Jose State, right?”

“Yes. She worked at a hospital in Los Angeles for a few years while Roy studied dentistry at USC. But after they moved back here and the girls were born, she gave it up. Frankly, I was surprised that she chose to have children; Laurel possessed no more maternal instinct than I.”

“Her daughters remember her as a good mother.”

“No doubt she was. She had the children, and they deserved a proper raising. It was her responsibility to provide that. We Yardley women live up to our responsibilities.”

“But in the end Laurel didn’t live up to it.”

“She would have, had she not died.”

“You’re convinced she’s dead?”

“What else? Laurel must have been a victim of random violence; that’s the only possibility. She never would have left her girls. Until she disappeared she was never separated from them for more than a night or two, except when Cousin Josie was dying of cancer. Then she went to stay in San Francisco for a while, but she called home twice a day, sometimes more often.”

I made a couple of notes, then asked, “What about the Greenwoods’ marriage? Was it a good one?”

“Of course. They had the girls, and Roy had his dental practice. They were active in their church and had a nice group of friends. There was no trouble in that marriage.”

Interesting that she thought I was implying there had been trouble; the way she’d jutted out her chin when she spoke raised a red flag for me. I hesitated, framing my next words carefully.

“But every marriage has its strains from time to time, when one partner is unhappy for reasons unrelated to the other. Or when there’s a difference of opinion about something major.”

“Well, I’ve never married, so I wouldn’t know about that, now would I?”

“You were close to the family; you might’ve picked up on something-”

“I was not all that close to them before my sister disappeared. Laurel was nearly ten years younger than I, and she’d spent years away from home. When she returned to Paso Robles, her time was devoted to her children, and I was busy with a highly demanding career. My parents and I got together with them for the holidays and family birthdays, but I didn’t really know Laurel or Roy or the children. After my mother and father passed away I saw even less of them.” Anna Yardley’s mouth pulled taut. “Of course, that changed afterwards. Roy needed me to help raise Jennifer and Terry. I wasn’t happy about the responsibility, but it was my duty. No one else was going to do it.”

No, warm and fuzzy wasn’t Aunt Anna’s thing.

I said, “Jennifer tells me you might have some of Laurel’s belongings.”

“A few, yes. Some mementos, her postcard collection, some letters. I took them when Roy… started getting rid of her things. I’ve never looked at any of them, but I thought the girls might want them someday. They’ve never asked, though.”

“You say Roy started getting rid of Laurel’s things. I understand from Jennifer that he burned her paintings only days after she disappeared.”

“… Well, yes, he did. The man was distraught, not himself at all. Afterward, he regretted his actions.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“Not in so many words. As I said, we weren’t close. But I could sense his regret.”

“Do you have any idea why he destroyed the paintings so soon after Laurel’s disappearance? What might have triggered it?”

“Roy had been… drinking a good deal that day. I suppose in his inebriated state he resented the paintings. After all, it was Laurel’s going off to paint that proved to be her undoing.”

“I wonder if I might see the items you saved.”

“They’re in the attic. I’ll have to hunt for them. If I drag them down, they’re not going back; you can take them to Jennifer and let her dispose of them if she wants.”

“I’m sure she’d like to have them.”

“Well, I can’t get to it today. How long will you be here?”

“At least till tomorrow night. Why don’t I call you?”

Anna Yardley nodded and stood, looking pointedly toward the front door. The interview was over.

Three hours later I was sitting on the balcony of my room at the Oaks Lodge, a newish, rambling resort hotel at the north end of town, with a main building containing a bar and restaurant and several guest wings set on large, lushly landscaped grounds. The temperature was still in the high eighties, and I’d changed to shorts and a tee and had a glass of cool white wine at hand. Spread on the small table in front of me were the notes I’d taken after playing the tapes of my interviews with Laurel Greenwood’s pastor and the man who had printed her greeting cards, as well as Roy Greenwood’s former dental assistant. They’d added little to the picture I’d already formed of Laurel.

The pastor, Bill Price of St. John’s Lutheran Church, had spoken of Laurel with enthusiasm undimmed by the passage of time. He remembered that she had contributed much of her time and energy to the church’s youth committees and had done the artwork for posters for various fund-raising events. “She no longer practiced nursing,” he told me, “but she often made herself available to accompany our older members to medical appointments and aided them in communicating with their doctors. It was a great tragedy when we lost her.” What did he think had happened to Laurel? “I suspect she is in God’s hands.”

Dean Sherman, owner of Sherman’s Printing, had enjoyed working with Laurel. Her illustrations were top quality, and she was open to technical suggestions about printing the cards. “She wasn’t like most artists; didn’t have a temperamental bone in her body. Had a nice little business going, and if she hadn’t died, it would’ve continued to grow. She wasn’t going to be another Hallmark, but she’d’ve made a nice living.” So he thought she was dead? “Of course. I know there were a lot of theories going around after she disappeared, but that’s all they were-theories.”

Lana Overland, the former dental assistant, had liked Laurel. “I liked her a lot, in fact. In some professional offices, you get these wives who’re always calling up, always dropping by to check on things. Not Laurel. She had her own career, was very self-sufficient. Didn’t bother Roy with the little stuff, like problems at home or with the kids.” How had Roy dealt with Laurel’s disappearance? “He was very sad for a long time. Angry, too. You can understand that; he’d had this great life, and all of a sudden it was taken from him. After a while he kind of evened out, but then he was like this empty shell, and nothing could fill it, ever.” What did she think had happened to Laurel? “Foul play, most definitely, and a shame it happened to such a great wife and mother.”

Impossibly perfect, that was the consensus on Laurel. But hadn’t she ever been derelict in her duties for the church? Missed a committee meeting? Forgotten some elderly parishioner who needed a ride to the medical clinic? Hadn’t she ever argued with the printer about the weight of the card stock or the quality of the ink? Failed to pay her bill on time? Hadn’t she ever interrupted one of Roy’s surgeries to tell him the washing machine was broken? Called at an awkward time to ask him to bring home a quart of milk? Apparently not.

But then, memories are colored by the passage of time, especially if someone has met with a tragedy. Little annoyances fade, quarrels are forgotten, minor lapses are forgiven. The last three people I’d spoken with were really very peripheral to Laurel’s life; perhaps her best friend, Sally Timmerman, whom I was later meeting for dinner at the lodge’s restaurant, could reveal more of the woman behind the perfect facade.

“Laurel a saint? You’re kidding, of course,” Sally Timmerman said.

“That’s more or less how most people I’ve talked with have described her.”

“I guess an untimely demise confers a sort of sanctity upon one, although I’ve never known why.”

Timmerman was a short, plump woman in her mid-fifties, with close-cropped white-blonde hair and a round, smooth-skinned face that belied her years. From my background information on her, I knew that she was an English teacher at Paso Robles High School and had known Laurel Greenwood nearly her whole life. The two had met in second grade when Sally’s family had moved south from Salinas, and had quickly become inseparable. Together they’d gone off to college at San Jose State, and when Laurel married Roy upon graduation, Sally was her maid of honor. Two years later, Laurel stood up for Sally at her marriage to her high school sweetheart, Jim Timmerman. The couples socialized frequently, and Sally and Laurel apparently had remained close until the day Laurel disappeared.

I waited as our server poured a Zinfandel from a local winery that Timmerman had recommended, then said, “How would you describe her, since you knew her better than anyone?”

“Human. Clever. Generous. And she had her wild side.” Someone caught Sally’s eye from across the inn’s spacious dining room, and she waved before turning her attention back to me. “The parents of one of my students,” she explained. “You can’t go anywhere in this town without running into someone you know. Now, where was I?”

“Laurel had her wild side.”

“I’ll say she did. But Josie and I did, too.”

“Josie-that was her cousin?”

“Yes, Josie Smith. The three of us were best buddies in high school and college. The Terrible Three, they used to call us, because of all the trouble we’d get into. Sneaking out at night to meet boys, parties when the folks weren’t home, smoking dope behind the gym. Then we went off to San Jose State-Laurel and Josie to study nursing and me to get my teaching certificate-and really partied hearty. We rented this dilapidated house together, and there was a little old Airstream trailer that somebody had abandoned in the backyard. We called it our ‘bordello’ because that’s where we’d take guys when we wanted privacy.”

Timmerman smiled wryly. “We thought we were really something, spearheading the sexual revolution, but it all seems so tame compared to what the kids are doing now. And, of course, we eventually settled down. Laurel fell in love with Roy. I reconnected with my high school boyfriend. Josie dropped out to marry her first husband and moved to San Francisco.”

“But the three of you remained close?”

“Laurel and I did. I kind of lost touch with Josie except for Christmas cards and what Laurel told me about her life. But they still saw each other frequently. Laurel helped Josie survive both of her divorces, and she was with her when she died. Brain cancer, at thirty-four. So young.” Sally shook her head.

“When the two of them got together, was it here or in San Francisco?”

“There, usually. Roy didn’t approve of Josie; he thought she was a bad influence on Laurel.”

“Because of their wild past?”

“Right.”

“But he approved of you.”

“Because by the time he and Laurel moved back here from L.A. I was a respectable wife, mother, and teacher. It also helped that I’d put on so much weight I wasn’t exactly turning heads anymore. But Josie was a divorcée, drop-dead gorgeous with all that bright red hair. Roy didn’t want his wife around somebody like that.”

“Did he try to stop Laurel from seeing Josie?”

“Well, they had a lot of disagreements about it, but she went anyway.” Sally grinned. “I’ve always suspected that while Laurel was visiting she and Josie lived it up some. Not,” she added quickly, “that she was ever unfaithful to Roy. But she liked a good time, and Roy wasn’t exactly a live wire.”

“Anna Yardley claims Laurel was seldom away from her children for more than one or two nights, except for when Josie died.”

Timmerman rolled her eyes. “What would Anna know about Laurel’s life? She was hardly ever around till she disappeared. But it’s true that Laurel kept her visits and her painting trips short.”

“Anna also said she was surprised that Laurel had the children, that she wasn’t the maternal type.”

“Now, there her instincts are correct. Laurel never wanted kids. In fact, she had an abortion during our junior year of college. It was Roy who wanted a family, and she finally caved in to the pressure. But once she had the girls she loved them and became a very good parent.”

The waiter arrived with our dinners-prime rib; how could either of us resist the Thursday night special?-and we turned our attention to them for a few minutes. When I got back to my line of questioning, I said, “What about the Greenwoods’ marriage? Was it a good one?”

“… As marriages between very different types of people go, I suppose it was. They made their accomodations. Roy was kind of rigid and very traditional; Laurel was easygoing and a free spirit. He could be overbearing and demanding, and her way of coping was to stand pat on the things that were important to her, while bending on the things that didn’t matter so much.”

“Obviously her visits to Josie were one of the important things. What else?”

“Her mental health days, as she called them. The religion the girls were raised in; Roy was Catholic, but she insisted they attend the Lutheran church.”

“And the things she gave in on?”

Sally considered. “Well, where they went on their vacations. She would’ve preferred to go to a resort, but Roy liked to camp, so they went camping. Where they lived; she wanted to be in the country, but he wanted to be in town near the clinic. One time, a couple of years before she disappeared, she got into this Arts in Correction program at the California Men’s Colony, the prison down at San Luis Obispo. They had local artists come in and teach the inmates all sorts of stuff, from filmmaking to painting to fiction writing. Laurel was really excited about it, taught there for maybe six months, but then Roy pressured her into quitting. Said it was taking too much of her time away from the family, but I think he really didn’t want her associating with the criminal element. She was disappointed, but she turned around and devoted more time to the greeting card business instead.”

Now, that was interesting. Nowhere in my files had there been a mention of Laurel teaching at the prison.

“Was Laurel friendly with any of the inmates she taught?”

“She was a friendly person. But if you mean, did she have any contact with any of them outside the classes, I’d guess not.”

“And she never mentioned having trouble with any of them?”

“All she ever said was that they were a well-motivated group, and that a couple showed real talent. She would’ve liked to’ve gone on teaching, but she wanted to keep peace in her marriage.”

The marriage didn’t sound very good to me. Although Hy and I had been married less than a week, we’d been together for years; neither of us had ever told the other what to do or not to do, and in our disagreements we’d always been straightforward. The Greenwoods’ relationship, on the other hand, seemed both controlling and manipulative. But was the situation sufficiently difficult to make Laurel walk away from her husband and children? That wasn’t a move a woman who took her responsibilities seriously could easily make. There would have had to be some sort of trigger…

“Sally,” I said, “this may sound like a strange question, but do you know what kind of perfume Laurel wore?”

“Why on earth do you ask that?”

“Someone said something to me about her perfume. It probably doesn’t have any bearing on her disappearance, but I’m curious.”

“Well, I do happen to know because we both wore it. Passionelle. They stopped making it around the time Laurel disappeared.”

“Speaking of that time, did anything unusual happen to Laurel in, say, the six months before she disappeared?”

Timmerman frowned, looking down and swirling the wine in her glass. “Things were pretty much on an even keel, at least as far as I know. I’d say the most unusual thing was Josie’s death, but that was a full year before.”

“You were at the house when Jennifer and Terry came home from school the day after Laurel disappeared. Did Roy ask you to come over?”

“Actually, Bruce Collingsworth, the police chief, suggested it. He was sending a couple of officers over to talk with Roy, and he thought I might have some insight into where Laurel had gone.”

“Did you tell the police your impressions of the Greenwoods’ marriage?”

“No. They didn’t ask, and I didn’t think it was my place to volunteer.”

“Anna Yardley was there that day, too. Did Roy call her?”

“I assumed so. Although it struck me as strange at the time. I mean, Anna was hardly ever there. She and Laurel didn’t get along.”

“How come?”

“Have you met Anna?”

“Yes, earlier today.”

“Then you know what she’s like-cold, disapproving. Laurel didn’t want her negativity influencing the girls. It’s a shame that afterwards she took such a hand in their upbringing. Laurel would not have wanted that. In fact, it was a role she’d asked me to assume if anything ever happened to her.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Roy made it plain I wasn’t welcome to. Oh, he didn’t come right out and say ‘You’re not wanted here,’ but he did say things like, ‘You have enough to do raising your own kids,’ and, ‘After all, Anna is their flesh and blood.’ It hurt me to be pushed out of their lives that way, but what could I do? The agreement between Laurel and me was only a verbal one.”

“This agreement-when did you make it?”

“A few months before Josie died. Laurel was facing her own mortality. So was I, for that matter. If I’d’ve died, Laurel would have helped bring up my kids-with my husband’s blessing.”

“You say ‘died.’ How certain are you that Laurel’s dead?”

“I’m certain.”

“Could she have committed suicide?”

“I doubt it. No one who knew her considered that a serious possibility. It had to be foul play.”

“You sound almost as if you want Laurel to be dead.”

Sally’s eyes clouded. “I suppose in a way I do. Because if she’s not, if she’s been someplace else living some other life all these years, it would mean I never knew her at all. It would negate our friendship and everything we ever shared during all those years.”

After I said good-bye to Sally Timmerman in the inn’s lobby, I walked back to my room across the tree-shaded central courtyard. The night air was warm and fragrant from the flowering plants that grew in profusion there; I could hear people splashing in the nearby swimming pool. By contrast, my room was chill from the air-conditioning I’d left on when I went to dinner; I turned it off and opened the balcony doors to take advantage of the summer night. Then I sat down with my files and called Derek at his Marina-district apartment in San Francisco.

He said, “I sent you files on Jacob Ziff in Cayucos and the guy in Morro Bay, Ira Lighthill.”

“Good, I’ll take a look at them tonight. Tomorrow I’m talking with the Paso Robles police officer who worked the case, then heading down to the coast. I’ll try to talk with the Greenwood girls’ babysitter tomorrow night. In the meantime, I’ve come up with a couple of lines of inquiry I’d like you to look into: first, Josie Smith, a cousin of Greenwood’s, deceased twenty-three years, lived up there in the city.”

“Josie Smith. Got it. You looking for anything specific?”

“Just fishing. Now, second: about a year before Smith died, Greenwood taught art classes for around six months at the California Men’s Colony at San Luis Obispo. Contact them and see if they have any record of it. Try to get names of inmates enrolled in the classes, and their whereabouts at the time she disappeared. If they don’t want to give out information-and I suspect they won’t-Craig has a contact at the state department of corrections who can help.”

“Will do. How soon d’you need this?”

“Tomorrow afternoon will be fine.”

My next call was to Patrick, who was still at the office. We went over my day’s activities, and I told him I’d be faxing him my notes, e-mailing a report, and messengering the tapes of my interviews in the morning. Then I made a call to the RKI condominium where Hy stayed while in La Jolla, got the machine, and left the number here at the inn. I considered calling his cellular, but if he wasn’t at the condo it meant he was probably tied up in a meeting or at a business dinner.

It had been a long day, so I decided to take a shower and go to bed early, saving Derek’s information on the two witnesses till the morning. But first I rummaged in my briefcase, took out my copies of the newspaper accounts of Laurel Greenwood’s disappearance, and once again contemplated the head-and-shoulders photograph that had been published with the stories. It showed a woman with a delicate heart-shaped face, large, wide-set eyes, and long, softly permed dark hair; she was posed in front of a rosebush, smiling radiantly into the camera, one hand raised to cup a blossom to her cheek.

I studied the photograph a long time, hoping for some hint of her secrets in the tilt of her head or the curve of her mouth. But they were well concealed-both from me and from whoever had looked through the lens at her.