She looked skeptical about that idea, but merely said, “Have you made any headway with your brother?” She has a way of switching subjects that only those who understand how her mind works can follow.
“Not much. He’s as stubborn as the rest of us.”
“Try again, will you please?”
“Yes, Ma.” I kissed her lightly on the cheek and started out.
“Sharon,” she said.
I turned.
“Be careful, while you’re... uh, shopping.”
I have never been able to fool my mother. Never.
The first thing I did was drive downtown to the phone company to check their directory for Borrego Springs. Since no one was home at Arthur Darrow’s house, I needed more to go on than just his address. There was no listing for Les Club, or anything other than the town’s two country clubs. Somehow I doubted either of them was it.
Then I went over to the recorder’s office in the county courthouse and asked a few questions of the white-haired old man behind the desk. He was friendly, with bright blue eyes that twinkled like a man’s half his age, and he flirted a little as he showed me how to search for property listings. Soon I was ensconced at a long table with a big registry for the Anza-Borrego desert area.
And about an hour later I had the location of a piece of property listed in the name of Les Club, Inc.
So it was incorporated. That meant the state would have a listing of the corporation’s officers, and, given enough time, I could find out who was behind it. The trouble was, I had no time to spare.
I went back to the desk and asked the man if he could help me figure out the property’s exact location. He came over and explained about tracts and lot numbers, then sketched a rough map on a piece of scratch paper.
I thanked him and hurried off to find out about Les Club.
32: “Wolf”
Neither Nancy Clark nor I moved for another few seconds after she spoke. I could feel the sweat trickling down my face, down from my armpits; the hot Mexican sun burned against the back of my neck. From out on the terrace, the little boy’s voice rose in a shrill excited cry — a sound that some tropical bird hidden nearby mimicked with surprising accuracy.
I wanted her to move first, to break the tableau, because I wanted to see what she’d do. She didn’t do much. Just came toward me in a herky-jerky stride, with her long legs flashing in the sunlight and shadow. She was wearing a two-piece black bathing suit that didn’t cover much territory and her skin was browned to the color of toast; but when she got up close I could see that her face had gone pale under the tan. Her eyes had a stricken look.
“Who are you?” she said. “What do you want?”
“I came looking for Timmy.”
“How did you find us?”
“Something the boy said when I talked to him in San Diego.”
“Why? What do you want with Timmy?”
“That depends. His mother’s in San Diego now, you know.”
Her mouth opened a little; her tongue flicked out like a cat’s to lick away a droplet of sweat from her upper lip. The stricken look stayed in her eyes, but it had been joined by smoldering anger.
She said, “What are you, some kind of detective?”
“Yes, ma’am. The private kind.”
“Did Lauterbach send you? Is that it?”
“No.”
The negative seemed to throw her off-balance for a moment. Then she said, “That bitch, then. Did she send you?”
“You mean Mrs. Ferguson?”
“Who else would I mean? Well, I’ll tell you this, mister — you’re not taking Timmy back to her. He belongs here with his father.”
“That’s not what the courts in Michigan decided.”
“The courts in Michigan don’t know what a nasty cunt Ruth Ferguson is. If they did they wouldn’t have granted her custody of a dog, much less a child.”
“Meaning what, Miss... Clark’s not your real name, is it?”
“It’s Pollard, and I don’t give a damn if you know it.”
“Meaning what about Ruth Ferguson, Miss Pollard?”
“Meaning just what I said. She abused Timmy. You don’t know that, do you? Well, it’s true.”
“Abused him how?”
“Whipped him. Locked him in a dark closet for hours at a time, without food, when she decided he’d been naughty. God, what I’d like to do to that woman!”
“How do you know all this?”
“Carl found it out. She’s not the only one who can hire detectives.”
“So you snatched Timmy and brought him here. Kidnapping is a major crime, Miss Pollard. You can get twenty years in jail for it.”
“I don’t care about that. Don’t you understand? We had to get Timmy away from his mother before she really did something ugly to him.”
“‘We’?” I said. “What’s your relationship to Carlton Ferguson?”
“I live with him. I have ever since he divorced that bitch and moved down here.”
Which made her the “very beautiful woman” Pablo Venegas had told me about, the one who shared this villa with Ferguson. Yeah, that figured. Having her grab the kid out of his school was better, safer than hiring somebody. The fewer people who knew where Timmy was being taken, the slimmer the odds that he could be traced. Keep it in the family, I thought cynically, that’s the best way to do it.
“Aunt Nancy! Hey, where are you?”
We both turned. Timmy came running out of the tunnel in the back wing — a white streak in a pair of flowered swim trunks, wet blond hair flattened down on his head. He slowed when he saw us, stopped altogether when he recognized me. But then he smiled and came the rest of the way to where we were; he seemed pleased to see me, the way kids are when they get an unexpected visit from an adult who was nice to them.
“You’re the man from San Diego,” he said. “The man with the funny name.”
I nodded. “How are you, Timmy?”
“Great! My dad’s got a neat pool.”
“He does, huh?”
“Yeah. Aunt Nancy wouldn’t let me go swimming any of the other places, but ever since we got here I can swim all I want.”
“Good for you.”
“I’m getting a tan too. See?”
He turned around so I could see that the white skin of his back was reddened with a light sunburn. But I could also see something else, something that brought a tightness into my chest and made my hands flex involuntarily. Down low on the boy’s back were a series of horizontal, all-but-healed marks that looked to have been lacerations — the kind you get when somebody lays a stick across your hide.
I glanced at Nancy Pollard. She knew I’d noticed the marks, and her mouth was set in a thin, tight line. Her expression said: There, you see?
Timmy was facing me again. “Did you come here to see my dad?” he asked.
“Yes. But I wanted to see you, too.”
“You did? Really?”
“Really. Is your dad here now?”
“Sure, he’s out by the pool. Come on, I’ll show you.” He wheeled and ran a little way and then stopped to see if we were following. “Come on! You too, Aunt Nancy!” Then he was off again, into the shadows of the tunnel.
I went after him, not hurrying; Nancy Pollard fell in alongside, walking in a stiff-backed way, eyes straight ahead. When we emerged onto the terrace I saw that it was about the size of a football field, floored in squares of colored tile, with a waist-high stone parapet all around. The pool was on the left, an L-shaped job made out of gray stone, without the usual diving board and chromium ladders, so that it resembled a pond. A couple of wooden walls had been erected on the inner sides, to help support a clear Plexiglas roof; the other two sides were open and had pole supports and rolls of mosquito netting — a nifty arrangement that would allow you to drop the netting and swim at night without getting gnawed on.