Vanishing Point

Friday

As I headed west on Highway 46 to the coast, I drove out of the sunlight and into the fog. It billowed toward the car, rushed past, and closed behind me. Suddenly I was enveloped in a grayish-white world where ordinary objects took on unfamiliar shapes and headlights of approaching vehicles appeared out of nowhere. I slowed, wishing there were taillights in front of me to show the way. Of course, I reminded myself, there was no guarantee that another driver would know the road any better than I did.

Early that morning, Rob Traverso, the Paso Robles police detective, had called to postpone our ten o’clock meeting to four in the afternoon; fortunately I’d been able to reschedule my one o’clock appointment with Jacob Ziff for eleven. I hadn’t yet reached Ira Lighthill in Morro Bay, but I’d try again after I finished in Cayucos.

Ziff, according to Derek’s report, was an architect with offices in his home. He’d been thirty-four on the day he’d stopped at the overlook to speak with Laurel, which would make him fifty-six now. He was twice divorced, had an excellent credit rating, and owned both the house in Cayucos and a condo on Maui. No arrest record; the closest he’d come to entanglement with the law was giving a statement as to his conversation with Laurel and his later sighting of her at the Sea Shack.

The fog had thinned by the time the road intersected with Highway 1. The tourist town of Cambria and San Simeon, home of Hearst Castle, were to the right, Cayucos and Morro Bay to the left. I drove south between richly cultivated farmland and the flat, gray sea, past a tiny settlement called Harmony. After some ten miles, the highway split to form a bypass around Cayucos, and I spotted a narrow lane leading to an overlook on the cliffs. I turned in there, parked near the edge, and got out. Looked along the curve of the shore that Laurel had painted that day. Her easel, a finished canvas, and supplies had been neatly stowed in her Volkswagen bus, indicating an unhasty and untroubled departure from the overlook. I wondered if that final painting had remained in police custody or had been burned by Roy Greenwood, and made a mental note to ask Detective Traverso.

The wind blew off the water, strong but not cold. Already the fog was burning off above the coastal range, promising a clear afternoon. Like yesterday when I’d sat in the car in front of Laurel’s former home, I tried to capture some sense of what had gone on here twenty-two years before, but this was merely another roadside stopping place, through which thousands of people had passed since then. I checked my watch, saw it was nearly time for my appointment with Ziff, and got back in the car.

Studio Drive was at the lower end of town, a long residential strip that parallelled the main street to the west. The buildings there were a mixture: shingled cottages, Spanish-style villas, stucco bungalows, modernistic mini-mansions. Ziff’s was one of the latter, all sharp angles and redwood and glass, on the ocean side. I parked close to its high fence, went through a gate that opened into a tiny courtyard, and rang the bell. A voice called out for me to come around the side, and I followed a flagstone path to a door where a tall man in chinos and a polo shirt was waiting. He introduced himself as Ziff and took me inside to a large room with floor-to-ceiling windows that faced the sea. A computer workstation and storage cabinets took up the rear wall, and two drafting tables were positioned under a skylight. Ziff motioned at a grouping of leather chairs near the windows and said, “I’ll be right with you. Coffee?”

“Yes, please.”

He crossed to one of the drafting tables, picked up a pencil, and made a few notations on a set of plans that lay there. Then he poured mugs full of coffee from an urn that sat on a cabinet by the workstation.

“Cream or sugar?”

“Neither, thanks.”

He brought the mugs over and set them on a low table between two of the chairs. As we sat I studied him. He had curly silver hair, a bony, tanned face, and penetrating blue eyes that regarded me with frank interest.

“I’ve never met a private detective before,” he said. “You’re from San Francisco?”

“Right.” I handed him one of my cards.

He looked it over, then placed it on the table. “And you said on the phone that Laurel Greenwood’s daughter has hired you to look into her disappearance. It’s been a long time. I don’t know how I can help you.”

I set my recorder on the table. “I’d like to go over what you remember.”

“Wouldn’t it be better if you read the statement I made to the sheriff’s department?”

“Eventually I hope to. But first I’d prefer hearing about that day in your own words; it’s possible you may remember something that you didn’t tell the police.”

Ziff smiled, the lines at the corners of his eyes crinkling. “That’s the first time anyone’s suggested that my memory’s gotten better with age. But I’ll give it a try.”

“Thanks. According to the news reports, you were driving south on the coast highway that morning.”

“Right. Around eleven. I’d been up to Cambria to look over a building site. Had a one o’clock lunch with a client here in town, so I wasn’t in a hurry. There was an old VW bus parked at the overlook, and this woman had set up an easel beside it and was painting. I don’t know exactly why I stopped; it’s not like me to approach strangers. But there was something compelling about the way she was working.”

“Can you describe it?”

Ziff leaned foward, hands on his knees, staring out the window at the sea. “You know, I haven’t thought about that day in years, but now it’s all coming back. The weather-it was exactly the same as today. Well, maybe a little warmer. The fog was just beginning to burn off, and there were occasional flashes of sun on the water.”

I looked in the direction of his gaze, where faint glints of light had begun to dapple the gray waves.

“The woman,” Ziff went on, “she was so intense. Her posture, her motions. As if she was working on something very important. She didn’t seem to hear my car, didn’t look up till I was standing right beside her. And when she did she acted as if… as if she were waking up from a dream, or maybe as if I were pulling her back from some other world she’d been inhabiting. She wasn’t at all intimidated about a strange man coming up to her, just said hello.”

“And then you talked about what?”

“Her painting. It wasn’t bad. Representational, but something more, too; she’d captured the emotional feel of the coastline. I complimented her on her technique, and we discussed that for a while. She told me where she was from, and that she was a greeting card designer. That was about it. Two hours later I went to the Sea Shack to meet with my client, and she was on the oceanside deck, drinking wine and talking with this biker type.”

“Did you speak to her?”

“No. I don’t think she even saw me. My client arrived, and we went into the dining room. When we left the restaurant an hour later, they were both gone.”

“Can you describe the biker?”

Ziff thought for a moment. “Long dark hair. Leathers. No club logo or anything like that. He might’ve had an earring, but I can’t say for sure. I only saw him for a few seconds. But he stuck in my mind because I wouldn’t have expected a woman like that to be hanging around with someone like him.”

“A woman like what?”

“Well-spoken. Obviously talented. And she was quite lovely. If I hadn’t had the appointment with my client, I might’ve considered asking her to lunch.” He turned from the window, his eyes troubled. “I wish I had. Maybe it would’ve prevented whatever happened to her. But probably not. She seemed…”

“Yes?”

“You know, the passage of all these years is putting a new spin on what happened; I’ve never articulated this before. She seemed as if something was ending for her.”

“What?”

“It had to do with the painting. When I complimented her on it, she said, ‘Thank you. But it’s done. That’s all over now.’ And she sighed. There was a regretful quality in her voice. It was as if she was saying good-bye.”

“To what, do you suppose?”

Ziff shrugged. “Maybe to her art. Maybe even to her life.”

After I left Ziff, I drove north along the main street of town. Cayucos was an old-fashioned beach community, and in spite of the proliferation of antique and tourist shops, it felt as if it hadn’t changed much since the day Laurel drove away in her VW bus. The space where the Sea Shack had been was now a gourmet-foods shop, but the liquor store where Laurel’s biker companion had been headed was still there. I parked and wandered along until I came to the municipal pier, turned, and walked halfway out, where I leaned against the railing and regarded the beach. The sky had cleared, and people were setting up umbrellas and speading blankets for picnics. Children ran eagerly toward the water’s edge. Had Laurel witnessed a similar scene from the deck at the Sea Shack? Commented to the biker on what a nice a day it had turned into? Or had they been too involved in their discussion to notice? A discussion that had to do with the regret Jacob Ziff had heard in her voice?

It was as if she was saying good-bye… Maybe even to her life.

Ziff’s words had once again suggested that the reason for Laurel’s disappearance might be suicide. I understood why no one had thought it a serious possibility at the time: by all accounts Laurel had been content, if not wildly happy with her existence. And her personality was hardly consistent with that of a person who would be prone to take her own life. Also, no suicide note or body had ever been found. Still, it was one more possibility I’d have to consider.

Morro Bay is a working fishing village, with a sheltered harbor whose entrance is dominated by a huge rock that looms like an offshore sentry. The Spanish word morro means, among other things, “snout,” and the rock must have looked like a giant sea creature rising from the water to the sixteenth-century explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo when he sailed into the harbor and christened it. In addition to the fishing industry, the local economy receives a significant boost from tourism, and as I drove along the waterfront street toward the park where Laurel had abandoned her bus, visitors were everywhere-wandering in and out of the restaurants and shops, snapping photographs, blocking the sidewalks while consulting maps or eating ice-cream cones, crossing the street without looking.

I confess to being irritated by tourists unless I’m one myself. Then anybody who gets between me and my souvenirs had better watch out!

The street dead-ended at the parking lot where Laurel had last been sighted. I left my car near the restrooms and walked along one of the paths to a bench facing the water, sat, and took out the sandwich and Coke that I’d bought at a deli in Cayucos. It was peaceful there; the only sounds were the cries of children from a nearby play area and the sloshing of the wake from a boat that motored past in the channel between the shore and a long sandbar. After I ate, I walked back to the parking lot where Ira Lighthill had agreed to meet me at two-thirty. Lighthill, a seventy-three-year-old former civil engineer, lived on the slope above the park.

At exactly two-thirty, a slight bald-headed man in jeans and a blue windbreaker came toward me, walking a black dog whose fur hung in cords that reminded me of dreadlocks. The cords on its head were gathered up in a yellow band, presumably to keep them out of its eyes, and it trotted along at its master’s side, matching its speed to his.

“Ms. McCone?” the man said.

“Yes. You’re Mr. Lighthill?”

“I am. And this”-he motioned to the dog-“is Csoda. That’s spelled C-s-o-d-a. Hungarian for ‘wonder.’”

“Unusual dog. What kind is it?”

“She’s a puli, a herding dog. My wife and I breed them for a small and select clientele. Shall we walk?”

Lighthill turned toward the path leading to the water, and I fell into step beside him. Csoda moved ahead of us on her lead, keening the air and stopping here and there to sniff at objects of interest.

“So you’re investigating the disappearance of that young woman, Laurel Greenwood,” Lighthill said. “Of course, she wouldn’t be a young woman anymore, but when someone vanishes like that, I suppose they’re frozen in time. A high school friend of mine was murdered; I remained close to the family for many years, and every time I visited them there would be Jon in the photographs on the mantel, forever sixteen, while I became twenty and twenty-five and thirty. It must be much the same for that poor woman’s daughters.”

“I suppose so. Will you tell me about seeing her that afternoon?”

“Well, I’d been walking my then dog, Kiro, along with my friend Bryan Taft and his standard poodle, Dewey. We were coming back toward the parking lot when one of those old VW buses pulled in. I took particular note of it because I’d owned one of the same color. I remember saying something to Bryan about being surprised the thing still ran. Mine was a dreadful vehicle-underpowered, and in the end it got so bad I’d actually have to put it in reverse and back up the hills. Anyway, the bus pulled into a space at the far side of the lot, and the woman got out. She locked the bus and came straight toward us, so we got a good look at her.”

We’d reached the water’s edge by now. Lighthill motioned to the right and we took a path leading toward the commercial district along the shore.

“How did she seem?” I asked. “Nervous? Upset? Business as usual?”

He considered. “I’d say purposeful. She knew where she was going and she was going to get there as quickly as possible. But first she made a detour to the ladies’ room.”

“That wasn’t in any of the newspaper accounts.”

“Possibly because Bryan didn’t think to mention it. And I-well, a rest stop seemed irrelevant, and really nobody’s business but the woman’s.”

“Did you see her come out of the restroom?”

“Yes. She wasn’t in there long. Bryan and I were still in the parking lot, standing next to his car and discussing plans to go to a regional AKC show in Los Angeles the next weekend. I only glimpsed her from behind, but it was the same woman. I recognized her by the sweater she wore-I guess they’re called ‘hoodies’ now. It was tan, and she’d pulled the hood up over her head, even though it was a warm day.”

Red flag.

“You didn’t see her face? Or her hair?”

“No. But it had to be the same woman. No one else had gone into the restrooms.”

That you know of.

Lighthill was frowning, as if he too had spotted the error in his logic. “It was the same jeans, the same sweater,” he said defensively.

“And she walked off toward town, without turning around?”

“Yes. She cut across the grass to this very path and went the same way we’re walking.”

“How long did you stay in the parking lot after that?”

“Only a few minutes. Bryan and I firmed up our plans. He left in his car, and Kiro and I walked home.”

“Your friend Bryan-I wasn’t able to locate a current address for him. Do you have one?”

“Sorry, I don’t. His wife died ten years ago, and he moved to Mexico. After a couple of years my letters were returned as undeliverable. I can provide you with that address, if you like.”

Just in case all my other leads came to dead ends, I gave him my card and said, “I’d appreciate it if you’d phone it in to my office, collect, when it’s convenient.”

We reached the end of the path and turned onto the main street, passing a row of small run-down cottages that perched above the water. Like many of the buildings I’d seen in Cayucos, they harked back to another, more gentle era.

I said, “No one here in the business district ever came forward about seeing Laurel Greenwood. Where could she have gone, that she would’ve escaped notice?”

“Hard to say. But it’s not unusual that nobody took note of her; even in those days we had a lot of tourists.”

“The town must’ve been quite different then.”

“Well, yes. Businesses have changed hands. Old buildings have been torn down and replaced with new ones.”

“D’you recall what was here? Can you describe it?”

“These cottages, they’ve been here as long as I remember, and I’ve lived here thirty years. That restaurant”-he pointed-“is relatively new; a marine supply used to be there. The shops-owners come and go, merchandise changes. Farther uphill there’re new antiques stores and boutiques of all kinds. A big wine and gourmet-food emporium is on the lot where the mini-storage and equipment-rentals place was. Like any tourist town, they take away the things that’re for the residents-I used to keep my camper in one of the little garages at the storage company-and put up things for the out-of-towners. But the lay of the land, that hasn’t changed. You can alter what’s on it, but as Morro Rock stands up to erosion, the land stands up to man.”

I hesitated. “Can you think of anyone in the immediate area who would have been here that day? Who might have noticed Laurel Greenwood and for some reason not come forward?”

Lighthill stopped walking, allowing Csoda to sniff around a sidewalk trash receptacle. “Well, I always did wonder about Herm Magruder. He was the local gossip columnist, wrote a weekly piece-‘Doings About Town’-for the little paper. Called himself ‘Mr. Morro Bay.’ Gathered most of his information in the bars or from the front porch of his house. It stood right across the street, where that shell shop is now. He was on the porch with a drink in his hand when I went by earlier that day, so he must’ve been there when the Greenwood woman came out of the park. Once Herm sat down with his drink, you couldn’t pry him off that porch.”

Magruder hadn’t been mentioned in any of the news reports. “D’you know if the police questioned him?”

“Should have. He was right there, and he was the eyes and ears of the town, but he had such a reputation as a drunk that they might not’ve bothered.”

“Where can I find him?”

“He and his wife, Amy, moved to a condo at Pacific View, a complex on the bluff south of town, after they sold the old house.”

“He still write his column?”

“No, the paper closed down about five years ago. Must be hard on Herm, having no excuse to sit in the bars and poke into people’s business. He’d probably be glad to have a visitor.”

After Ira Lighthill and I parted-he and Csoda heading up the hill toward home-I got the Magruders’ number from information and called it. No one answered. I retraced my steps to the main street and had a cup of coffee at a café, then called again. Still no answer. In response to the high temperatures inland, the fog was creeping back; Morro Bay looked bleak and inhospitable. I decided to pack it in, drive back to Paso Robles, and phone the office.

“So that’s where things stand,” I said to Patrick. “Rob Traverso at the Paso Robles PD is letting me go over their files on the case tomorrow morning. He couldn’t help me with Laurel’s final painting; it was returned to Roy years ago, and I assume he destroyed it like the others. Traverso’s putting me in touch with a Deputy Selma Barker at the county sheriff’s department. After I go over the PRPD casefile, I’ll meet with her and try to talk with the Magruders. And the babysitter has agreed to see me in the late afternoon.”

I was sitting at the desk in my room at the lodge, the air-conditioning cranked up to maximum. Today the inland temperature was in the high nineties, and showed no signs of cooling, even though it was after five o’clock.

“You want me to ask Derek to background the Magruders?” Patrick asked. “He said he’ll be working late tonight.”

“I’d better talk with him personally. Will you transfer me? And why don’t you take your files on the case home and review them over the weekend. That is, if you don’t have plans.”

“No plans. My ex is taking the kids to Disneyland, so I won’t have them this week.”

I waited for Derek to pick up, asked him to run checks on both Amy and Herm Magruder. Then I said, “I haven’t checked my e-mail yet; did you find anything on Josie Smith or the inmates who attended Laurel’s art class at the Men’s Colony?”

“The prison wouldn’t give out information, so I’m trying to get in touch with Craig’s contact at DOC. Probably I won’t be able to get you anything on that till Monday. I’ve got basic background on Josie Smith: date of birth, marriages and divorces, date of death.” He read them off to me. “Smith went by her husbands’ names during her marriages-Dunn and Bernstein-but took back her birth name after the second marriage failed.”

“Any children?”

“None. Smith studied nursing at San Jose State. Dropped out to get married after her junior year, then went back and finished the course after the first divorce. Worked at SF General for three years, did private-duty nursing after that. Otherwise I couldn’t turn up anything. You want me to dig further?”

“I don’t know as it’s necessary. We’ll talk when I come back up there next week.”

“You staying over the weekend?”

“Yes. My plate’s pretty full for tomorrow, and Sunday I have to fly down to my mother’s place near San Diego. She’s giving Hy and me what she calls ‘a little wedding reception.’ Lots of family, and my birth mother and her son and daughter are coming from Boise.”

“You don’t sound too happy about it.”

“I’m not. McCone family parties are always horrible, and this wedding reception is a disaster waiting to happen.”