His father, Dance supposed.
"We played some games in the yard. Frisbee, badminton. Then I put dinner out."
Rebecca said, "I'd boosted some good Cabernet and we girls and Jimmy had wine--Pell didn't drink. Oh, I got pretty wasted. Sam did too."
"And we ate a lot." Linda gripped her belly.
Dance continued to probe. She was aware that Winston Kellogg had dropped out of the conversation. He might be the cult expert but he was deferring to her expertise now. She appreciated that.
Linda said, "After dinner we just hung out and talked. Sam and I sang. Jimmy was tinkering with his computer. Daniel was reading something."
The recollections came more frequently now, a chain reaction.
"Drinking, talking, a family holiday."
"Yeah."
"You remember what you talked about?"
"Oh, just stuff, you know . . ." Linda fell silent. Then she said, "Wait. That reminds me of one thing you might want to know about." She tilted her head slightly. It was a recognition response, though from the focus of her eyes--on a nearby vase filled with artificial amaryllis--the thought was not fully formed. Dance said nothing; you can often erase an elusive memory by asking someone about it directly.
The woman continued, "It wasn't Easter. It was another dinner. But thinking about Easter reminded me. Daniel and I were in the kitchen. He was watching me cook. And there was a big crash from n
ext door. The neighbors were fighting. He said he couldn't wait to get out of Seaside. To his mountaintop."
"Mountaintop?"
"Yeah."
Kellogg asked, "His?"
"That's what he said."
"Did he own some property?"
"He never mentioned anything specific. Maybe he meant 'his' in the sense that it was something he wanted to have someday."
Rebecca knew nothing about it.
Linda said, "I remember it clearly. He wanted to get away from everybody. Just us, just the Family. Nobody else around. I don't think he said anything about it before or after that."
"But not Utah? You both said he never mentioned that."
"No," Rebecca agreed. "But, wait . . . you know, thinking of that . . . I don't know if it's helpful, but I remember something too. Along those same lines. We were in bed one night and he said, 'I need to make a big score. Come up with enough money just to get away from everybody.' I remember that. He said 'a big score.' "
"What did he mean? A robbery to buy some property?"
"Could be."
"Linda?"
She had to plead ignorance and seemed troubled that he hadn't shared everything with her.
Dance asked the obvious question: "Could the big score have been the Croyton break-in?"
"I don't know," Rebecca said. "He never told us that's where he and Jimmy were going that night."
Dance speculated: Maybe he did steal something valuable from Croyton's house, after all. When the police were closing in, he hid it. She thought of the car he'd driven to the break-in. Had it been searched thoroughly? Where was it now? Maybe destroyed, maybe owned by someone else. She made a note to try to find the vehicle. Also, to check deeds registries to see if Pell owned any property.