At 4:00 I presented myself at Liza Clements’s front door. The house itself was plain, a long wood-frame box with a nondescript porch built across the front. The Santa Maria neighborhood was nicely maintained, but it had seen better days. Trees and shrubs had grown too large for the lots, but no one had had the nerve to cut them down. Consequently, the yards were dark and the windows were obscured by evergreens that towered above the rooflines. The shade created a chilliness that seemed to shroud all the houses on the block.
The woman who answered the door looked much younger than her years. She wore tennis shoes, baggy pants, and a double-breasted white chefs jacket that buttoned across the front. Her fair hair was shoulder-length, parted down the middle, and pulled back behind her ears. She had blue eyes, wide straight brows, and a wide mouth. Her complexion was pale and creamy, with a smattering of freckles across her nose. She wore a silver heart-shaped locket that glinted in the V of her shirt. She stood and looked at me blankly. “Yes?”
“You’re Liza?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Kinsey Millhone.”
It took another half a beat before she remembered who I was and then she put a hand to her mouth. “I’d forgotten you were coming. I’m so sorry. Please come in.”
“Is this an okay time?”
“Fine. I didn’t mean to cut you short yesterday, but I was halfway down the walk when I heard the phone ring.”
I stepped into a living room that was ten feet by twelve, furnished out of Pier 1 Imports with very little money but a good eye for design: wicker, plump Indonesian tan-and-black block-print pillows, a reed rug on the floor, and lots of houseplants that, on a second glance, turned out to be fakes.
“No problem. Thanks for seeing me today. Are you a chef?”
“Not with any formal training. I bake as a hobby, but I’ve been doing it for years. I make wedding cakes in the main, but just about anything else you’d want. Why don’t you have a seat?”
I took one of the white wicker chairs with sturdy canvas cushions forming both the seat and the back. “My landlord was a commercial baker in his working days. He’s retired now, but he still bakes every chance he gets. Your house smells like his-vanilla and hot sugar.”
“I’ve lived with it so long I don’t even notice it. I guess it’s like working in a brewery. Your nose eventually goes dead. My husband always thought that was just how our house smelled.”
“You’re married?”
“Not now. I’ve been divorced for six years. He owns a party rental business in town. We’re still good friends.”
“You have kids?”
“One boy,” she replied. “Kevin and his wife, Marcy, are expecting their first baby, a little girl, sometime in the next ten days unless the little bugger’s late. They’re naming her Elizabeth, after me, though they plan to call her Libby.” Her fingers moved to the silver locket, touching it as though for luck.
“You look too young to be a grandmother.”
“Thanks. I can hardly wait,” she said. “What can I help you with?”
“Daisy Sullivan’s hired me in hopes of finding her mother.”
“That’s what I heard. You talked to Kathy Cramer earlier.”
“Nice woman,” I lied, hoping God wouldn’t rip my tongue out.
She smiled, tucking a strand of hair behind one ear. “I wish you luck. I’d love to know where Violet ended up. She changed the course of my life.”
“Really. For better or for worse?”
“Oh, for better. No question. She was the first adult who ever took an interest in me. What a revelation. I’d grown up in Serena Station, which has to be one of the crappiest little places on earth. Have you seen it?”
“Daisy showed me around. It’s like a ghost town.”
“Now it is. Back then, a lot more people lived there, but everyone was so boring and conventional. Violet was like a breath of fresh air, if you’ll pardon the cliché. She didn’t give a hoot about obeying the rules and she didn’t care what other people thought about her. She was such a free spirit. She made everybody else seem stodgy and dull by comparison.”
“You’re the first person I’ve talked to who’s had anything nice to say.”
“I was her lone defender even back then. I can see now she had a self-destructive streak. She was impulsive, or maybe ‘reckless’ is the better word. People were attracted to her and repelled at the same time.”
“How so?”
“I think she reminded them of all the things they wanted but didn’t have the courage to pursue.”
“Was she happy?”
“Oh, no. Not at all. She was desperate to get away. She was sick of being poor and sick of Foley’s knocking her around.”
“So you believe she left town?”
She blinked at me. “Of course.”
“How’d she manage it?”
“The way she managed everything else. She knew what she wanted and she outfoxed anyone who got in her way.”
“Sounds ruthless.”
“Again, that’s a matter of semantics. I’d say ‘determined,’ but it sometimes amounts to the same thing. It about broke my heart that she left without saying good-bye. Then again, I had to say ‘Go and God bless.’ I wasn’t that articulate at fourteen, but that’s how I felt. I couldn’t bear it for my sake, but I was glad for her. Do you know what I mean? She saw a chance and she took it. A door flew open and she zipped right through. I admired her for that.”
“You must have missed her.”
“It was awful at first. We always talked about everything and suddenly she was gone. I was crushed.”
“What’d you do?”
“What could I do? I learned to get by on my own.”
“She never got in touch?”
“No, but I was so sure she would. Even if it was a postcard with one line, or no message at all. A postmark would have been sufficient. Anything to let me know she’d made it to wherever. I used to imagine her in Hawaii, or Vermont-someplace completely different than this. I haunted the mailbox for months, but I guess she couldn’t take the chance.”
“I don’t see how a postcard could have put her in jeopardy.”
“You’re wrong about that. Sonia, the woman at the post office, would’ve spotted it when she was sorting the mail. I wouldn’t have told a soul, but word would’ve gotten out. Sonia was a blabbermouth, which Violet well knew.”
“You were the last person who had any substantial contact with her.”
“I know and I’ve thought about that night. It runs like a loop in my head. You ever get a song on your brain and no matter what you do, it keeps playing and playing? That’s how it is with her. Even now. Well, maybe not so much now. The images do fade, but you know what? I smell violet cologne and bang, she’s there again. It brings tears to my eyes.”
“Did it ever cross your mind something might have happened to her?”
“You mean, foul play? People talked about that, but I didn’t believe it for a minute.”
“Why not? You’d seen what Foley did to her. Didn’t it occur to you she might have come to grief?”
She shook her head. “I thought it was something else. I was there earlier that day and saw these brown paper bags sitting on the chair. I recognized some of her favorite things on top and I asked her what she was doing. She said she’d cleaned out her closet and the stuff was going to the Goodwill. Well, that seemed looney even at the time. Later-this was after she was gone-it occurred to me that she’d been packing.”
“To go where?”
“I don’t know. A friend’s house? There must have been some place.”
I blinked. “Did she say anything to that effect?”
“Not a word. Foley was gone-I don’t know where-and I’d gone over to the house to hang out. She went on talking about something else so I let it drop.”
“How come this is the first I’ve heard of it? I’ve read all the articles about Violet, but I didn’t see a reference to any bags of clothes.”