Crossing his long legs, he looked up at the sky. An airplane was writing something illegible. He shook his head. “This father sounds obsessive to the point of nuttiness. The way he’s been bugging those people.”
“He says he hasn’t done it for years. If that’s true, it indicates self-control.”
He continued skygazing. “Actually, that does amaze me. Living in the same city with them, believing they know something, and letting it go.”
“Maybe his work keeps him going. He fills his days with good deeds.”
“Food to the poor, huh?”
“Could be I’m a chump, but he impressed me as a good guy, Milo. Trying to deal with his loss by finding some higher meaning. The only thing that bothered me was a picture he had hanging up in the kitchen over the sink. A Bible print—Dinah being abducted by Shechem. He was staring at it as he washed the dishes. I looked up the story when I got home. It’s in the book of Genesis. Dinah was Jacob’s daughter; Shechem was a Canaanite prince who kidnapped her and raped her. Two of her brothers took revenge by slaughtering him and his whole village.”
“Nice image for a man of the cloth to meditate on.”
“I don’t want to light any fires under him. I know what revenge can do.”
He lowered his eyes and looked at me.
“So what’s the theoretical scenario here? She took a nature hike on Friday night, ended up at Lowell’s place the day before the party, and got invited in?”
“Not unless she was a serious hiker. We’re talking several miles up to the top of Topanga. But maybe she was hitchhiking and got picked up. And maybe the party started early—or it was informal. People drifting in at all hours.” I held up the clipping. “This makes it sound like a loose scene rather than some formal bash.”
“All those big shots and people are just wandering in?”
“You remember how things were back in the seventies. Peace, love, people playing at social equality. Best said that was one of the reasons the sheriffs didn’t take Karen’s disappearance seriously. Times were casual, kids on the road, everyone into free-and-easy.”
He looked out at the baseball diamond and the rolling lawns beyond. “I spent the seventies grinding away in college, then shooting at guys in black pajamas, but I take your word for it.”
“I was a grind too,” I said. “But I remember hitchhikers thicker than gulls on PCH. Best says Karen was a good girl, but she’d been away from home for almost half a year, and kids can change fast when they taste freedom. Plus, she wanted to be an actress. What if she was thumbing—or just taking a short walk up the canyon, unwinding after work. And a person with a famous face pulled alongside her—in a stretch limo. Telling her there’s a hot party up the hill, lots of other showbiz types, hop in. Would an aspiring actress turn that down?”
“Guess it’s plausible,” he said. “If the partying started early. But even then, all you’ve really got is a dream and a missing girl.”
“A girl who called home every week and then stopped. And was never heard from again.”
He faced me once more. “I’m not saying she’s not dead, Alex. Sounds like she probably is. But that doesn’t mean she died up in Lowell’s place, and after all these years I don’t see how you’re gonna get any closer to it.”
“I don’t either. God, I really hope I haven’t lit a fire under Best. At the very least, I’m giving him false hope.”
“Well,” he said, “if you’re right about his being a man of faith, maybe it’ll carry him through.”
“Maybe.” I sat forward on the bench. A tiny colorless spider had crawled onto my knee. I picked it up carefully, and its thread legs wriggled frantically. Placing it on the grass, I watched it disappear among the blades.
Milo said, “Something has been bothering me, though. What you told me about brother Peter. Guy never travels, but he just happens to be out of town when she sticks her head in the oven? Unemployed, but he’s too tied up with business to get back? Then he takes the time to call Embrey and a half brother he hasn’t seen in twenty years but not Lucy? Then you tell me he’s weird. And now Lucy’s saying someone swiped her underwear, and he has a key to her apartment.”