S is for Silence (Kinsey Millhone 19)

“I bet that was a popular move.” I indicated the next name on the list. “Who’s this?”

“Calvin Wilcox is Violet’s only brother. I think he saw her that week, so he may be able to fill in a few gaps. This guy, BW, was the bartender at the dive where my parents hung out, and these are miscellaneous customers who witnessed some of their famous public shoving matches.”

“Have you talked to all these people?”

“Well, no. I mean, I’ve known them all for years… but I haven’t asked about her.”

“Don’t you think you’d have better luck than I would? I’m a stranger. Why would they open up to me?”

“Because people like to talk, but a lot of stuff they might not be willing to say to me. Who wants to tell a woman how often her dad punched her mother’s lights out? Or refer to the time when her mom got mad and threw a drink in some guy’s face? Now and then I get wind of these things, but mostly people are falling all over themselves keeping the truth under wraps. I know they mean well, but I get weirded out by that. I hate secrets. I hate that there’s all this information I’m not allowed to have. Who knows what’s being said behind my back even to this day?”

“Well, I’ll be giving you regular written reports, so whatever I learn you’ll be hearing about.”

“Good. I’m glad. About time,” she said. “Oh, here. I want you to have this. Just so you’ll know who you’re dealing with.”

She handed me a small black-and-white snapshot with a scalloped white rim and then watched over my shoulder as I studied the image. The print was four inches square and showed a woman in a floral-print sleeveless dress, smiling into the camera. Her hair, which could have been any color, was a medium-dark tone, long and gently wavy. She was small and pretty in a 1950s kind of way, more voluptuous than we’d consider stylish in this day and age. Over one arm she carried a straw tote from which a tiny fluffy pup appeared, staring at the camera with bright black eyes. “When was this taken?”

“Early June, I think.”

“And the dog’s name is Baby?”

“Baby, yes. A pure-bred Pomeranian everyone hated except my mom, who really doted on the little turd. Given the chance, Dad would have taken a shovel and pounded her into the ground like a tent peg. His words.”

A two-by-four porch post appeared to be growing from the top of Violet’s head. Behind her, on the porch rail, I could read the last two house numbers: 08. “Is this the house where you lived?”

Daisy nodded. “I’ll take you by when we’re over there.”

“I’d like that.”

We were silent on the drive to Serena Station. The sky was a flat pale blue, looking bleached by the sun. The hills rolled gently toward the horizon, the grass the color of brown sugar. Daisy’s was the only car on the road. We passed abandoned oil rigs, rust-frozen and still. To my left I caught a glimpse of an old quarry and rusting railroad tracks that began and ended nowhere. On the only visibly working ranch I saw, ten head of cattle had settled on the ground like brawny cats in the slatted shade of a corral.

The town of Serena Station appeared beyond a bend in the two-lane road, with a street sign indicating that it was now called Land’s End Road. The street ran in a straight line for three blocks and ended abruptly at a locked gate. Beyond the gate, the road wound up a low hill, but it didn’t look like anyone had traveled it for quite some time. There were numerous cars parked in town-in driveways, along the streets, behind the general store-but nothing seemed to move except the wind. A few houses were boarded up, their exteriors bereft of color. In front of one, the paint on the white picket fence had been stripped to the wood, and portions of it sagged. In the small patchy lawns, what little grass remained was dry, and the ground looked hard and unforgiving. In one yard, a camper shell sat under an overhang of corrugated green plastic sheets. There were tree stumps and a tumble of firewood. What had once been the automobile-repair shop stood open to the elements. A tall, dark palm tree towered above a length of chain-link fence that extended across the rear. A stack of fifty-five-gallon oil drums had been left behind. Weeds grew in dry-looking puffs that, in time, the wind would blow free, sending them rolling down the middle of the road. A hound trotted along a side street on a doggie mission of some kind.

Behind the town the hills rose sharply, not mountains by any stretch. They were rugged, without trees, hospitable to wildlife but uninviting to hikers. I could see power lines looping from house to house, and a series of telephone poles stretched away from me like hatch marks on a pencil drawing. We parked and got out, ambling down the middle of the cracked blacktop road. There were no sidewalks and no streetlights. There was no traffic and, therefore, no traffic lights. “Not exactly bustling,” I remarked. “I take it the auto-repair shop went belly-up.”