Mind to Mind: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective (14 page)

Valdiva thanked me for
alerting him directly and told me that his own wife was with
Georgia and the kids. The police community tends to come together
at a time like this, as well they should; they are all in the same
boat; whenever it is one of their number, it could as well have
been any of their number.

So he was kindly
predisposed toward me at the moment, anyway. We talked a bit about
the mystery vis-á-vis Jim's corpse in my motel room; I could offer
no sane clue about that. There was nothing from the coroner's man,
at that point, to state conclusively that the victim could not have
deposited himself in that room before dying, but considering the
nature of the wound, it hardly seemed possible. There seemed to be
no way to account for the fact that the killer, whoever, could have
known that Alison and I were occupying that particular room in
that particular motel—not unless someone had us under
surveillance—or why the killer would choose to dispose of the
corpse in that manner.

In this-world logic, none
of it made much sense. But Valdiva did not hold that against me. He
politely asked Alison to come to the station within twenty-four
hours to give her statement. She sweetly assured him that she and
her lawyer would do so.

It was about midnight when we were
dismissed. We could not go back to our room—did not wish to do
so—could not even collect the few personal items we'd left there.
The only thing I really needed, anyway, was the pair of wet shorts
I'd left to dry in the bathroom. The management offered us another
room; we declined; the desk clerk tore up my credit card slip and
we beat it.

I asked Alison, as we headed for the
Maserati, "So what do you want to do now?"

She replied, "I want to do whatever you're
going to do."

I told her, "I'm going to Ojai."

She said, "Okay. So am I."

I said, "Sure you don't want to talk to your
lawyer first?"

"Why is that such an
unpopular position?" she replied a bit testily. "Everything I've
ever heard says that you should always have a lawyer present when
you talk to the police."

I shrugged and said, "It's your right. But
it really only applies if you're being charged with a crime. These
guys are just trying to do their job."

She told me, "Well, I was sure we were going
to be charged. With murder, or accessory, or something. My God,
this whole thing is blowing my mind. Ashton. You didn't tell anyone
in the lounge that we were registered here, did you?"

I said, "I did not."

"Me, neither. So how did Jim end up in our
room'"

I said, "Beats me, kid."

I opened the door, helped
her into the car.

As I was settling into my side she said,
"Did you tell him we were coming here?"

I told her, “Didn't know
it myself until you started coming unglued. No, look, face it,
there's no rational— We've got more of the same here, the same
phenomena. We just have to...”

As I was starting the
engine she told me, almost defiantly, "Well, see, I owe
you—there's—I haven't been entirely truthful with you."

"About what?"

"Jim. We had an affair."

Okay. I wasn't exactly
stunned by that, but... I asked her, "When?"

"About a month ago. Just
lasted a week. Then I found out he was married. That ended that.
Sorry. I should have told you. I mean, a while ago, in the lounge,
when you asked me—but I figured it was nobody's business and
especially not yours. It was, after all, just a—but I don't go out
with married men. Your friend Jim was quite an
operator."

That did surprise me. I'd always thought...
I sighed and told her, "You're right, it's none of my
business."

She said, "Well, that's why I did not want
to talk to the police. I mean, how much more coincidence can this
thing take? But I suppose I will have to tell them about it, won't
I? It will probably all come out, anyhow. I guess it's better that
I..."

Yes, I guessed that was
true, and the sooner the better. But then it was not an especially
comforting idea for me, either. The cops had themselves a
ready-made triangle here. They loved this kind of stuff. Every cop
I ever met is a soap writer at heart.

I said, "An operator, eh?"

She said, "I found out about his wife and
kids from a nurse. Anything in a skirt was fair game for him, I
guess. He hit on everybody."

I said, "Well, shit," and turned off the
engine.

"What?"

"What" was the Walther PPK I keep stashed in
a trick floorboard compartment. I have a license. But none of the
cops had bothered to ask me about that. I hadn't volunteered it. I
was deciding that I should have done that, that I wanted to do
that, I wanted to do it right now. And I wanted to hand the damned
thing over, right now, get it in the record and get it cleared.

I peeled back the carpet and sprang the lid
on the compartment, telling Alison while I was doing that, "We're
going back inside. You're giving your statement. And I'm handing
over my—"

But then I changed my mind about all
that.

The floorboard compartment was empty. The
damned Walther was not there.

I kicked the engine again and got the hell
away from there. Alison cried, "What's the matter?"

I shivered as I told her what was the
matter.

Patsy? Pawn? Try sucker,
and then watch this sucker try to wriggle off the hook. I still did
not have the
cause
doped, but the
goal
of this conspiracy of insanity was becoming all
too clear to my fevered mind.

Ojai, I figured, was about the only hope I
had.

Chapter Nineteen: Oak
People

It was a couple of hours
up to Ojai. If you're not from California, you probably have
trouble with that name. It is pronounced Oh-hi, emphasis on the oh.
I took the back way, via several little two-lane state highways,
through Moorpark and Santa Paula. Hardly any traffic at all that
time of night. We stopped briefly at an all-night coffee shop in
Santa Paula, needed caffeine before starting that wriggly climb
along California 150, reached the sleeping village of Ojai at just
shortly after two o'clock.

The Ojai Valley snuggles
into a lovely little pocket of the southern edge of the Los Padres
National Forest, a half-million-acre preserve in the coastal
mountains. It's an area of campgrounds, natural hot springs,
private resorts, scenic wonders—about fifteen miles from the ocean.
Ojai itself is a teeming nucleus of artists and craftsmen, studios,
shops, private schools, new-age centers, and what have you. If
you've seen the original Hollywood production of
Lost Horizon
, the one
starring Ronald Colman, then you've seen the Ojai Valley as
Shangri-La.

Archaeologists date the earliest habitation
of the area with the so-called Oak Grove People at about 8000 B.C.,
replaced around 1000 B.C. by the Chumash Indians, some of whom are
still around. Modem settlement began in the region during the late
1800s. Ojai now regards itself as an art and music center with
emphasis on tourism, but it is also an area rich in citrus and
avocado farming. It has also become a kind of Mecca in the new-age,
awareness-raising milieu. Krishnamurti and the theosophists were
probably the first, arriving in the 1920s. There are now a dozen
or more active and flourishing organizations in the area.

My problem at two o'clock
on that Thursday morning was to find a bed. The historic Oaks Hotel
is now a health and fitness spa, renowned in the California
southland as a "fat farm." The half dozen or so motels were all
full. That left only the landmark Ojai Valley Inn and Country Club,
a plush resort-style hostelry with riding stables and the works at
the edge of town. I gave it a what-the-hell try and came up with a
choice room overlooking the golf course. Guess I caught a crease in
time there; had to sign an agreement to surrender the room on
Friday morning. Which was plenty okay with me; I doubted that I had
that much time, anyway. It seemed likely that my Walther PPK would
turn up somewhere at Sportsman's within the next few hours, that
it would prove to be the murder weapon and Valdiva would be hunting
my head by at least Thursday afternoon, which was now just a few
hours off.

So we checked in and went
straight to bed—separate beds, that is. Neither of us had a lot of
energy for carnal pursuits, certainly not the turn of mind for it.
I left a request for an eight o'clock wake-up. But then I had a
hell of a time getting to sleep, tired as I was. Too many things
crowding the mind, too much perplexity, too much regret. Couldn't
get Georgia and those kids out of my synapses for more than a few
seconds at a time, and when they were not crowding them, all the
rest of the stuff was. I felt bad about Jim, and bad about Alison's
disclosure about the womanizing, bad about a lot of
things.

Guess I finally dropped off into troubled
sleep with all of that swirling through because the dreams were
terrible. Think I woke up during every REM period, looked to see if
Alison was okay. She was sleeping like a baby—every time I checked
her, anyway. I may have had an out-of-body, somewhere in there,
because I...well, I'll talk about that later.

I came crashing out of a
dumb dream at seven-thirty and decided to call it quits, canceled
the eight-o'clock wake up, quietly dressed and went over to the
lobby area to pick up some toiletries, picked up also some
complimentary coffee, and took it back to the room.

Alison was sitting up
bug-eyed in the bed when I returned, trying to figure out where
she was and what was happening. I sat on the edge of the bed and we
drank the coffee while I gentled her fully awake with quiet talk
about the beauty of the area. I handed her the sack of toiletries
and gave her first crack at the bathroom while I stepped outside
and finished my coffee on the veranda. She needed to call the
hospital, too, let them know she was not coming in. I cautioned her
to not mention Ojai, although I had told Valdiva myself that we
were headed that way.

We were having breakfast
on the patio by nine o'clock, got into town before ten, bought a
change of clothing—a tennis outfit for each of us, 'cause it was
hot, and also 'cause we wanted to look like vacationers—then
dropped into the Chamber of Commerce for a packet of printed
leaflets describing the attractions and general information on the
area.

I did not know exactly
what I was going for there. It's a small town, yeah, but hell, the
only "clue" we had was a highway sign, and even that was more guess
than fact. According to the Chamber of Commerce handout, the Ojai
Valley itself covered some ninety square miles. They described it
as "a deep coastal valley extending from the six-thousand-foot Topa
Topa Mountains in Los Padres National Forest to the ocean."
Highway 150 skirts the upper edge, running for thirty miles or so
from inland Santa Paula to the ocean just south of Santa Barbara.
Just about the entire route is through rural countryside, so Ojai
seemed the logical place to start.

My normal approach for a
search in such an area would be toward service facilities, since
these are limited. I was reaching for an identification of "Jane
Doe," remember, an adult female, possibly a onetime resident of the
area. I would show her photo at service stations, since virtually
every adult in Southern California drives a car; at supermarkets
and fast-food restaurants, since we all have to eat; at churches,
because many of us still pray; at all of these because in a town
of seventy-five hundred there simply are not that many service
facilities to canvass.

In this particular case,
though, I was operating on a hunch or intuition or however you
choose to characterize an extrasensory quiver, and my interest was
centered on the private institutions in the educational and/or
consciousness (new-age) fields. The visitor's guide listed nine
private schools or academies, a few of which appeared to be
religiously or philosophically (new-age) oriented, and though no
metaphysical groups were listed as such, a quick scan of paid ads
among the handouts provided direction to that front. Some of these
were in town and could be coveted on foot. Others were widely
scattered around the outskirting countryside.

Due to the time pressure
we carved up the territories between us. I gave Alison the
walk-arounds—and not just because I did not want her driving the
Maserati but chiefly because I did not want to send her nosing into
isolated areas alone.

I tested the mobile phone in the car, was
surprised to find good linkage. Alison noted the number, I gave her
one of the Polaroid snapshots of Jane I'd taken in my office that
first night, and we went our separate ways.

I had covered the Krishnamurti Foundation
and the theosophy school, Krotona Institute, and was headed toward
something called Meditation Mount when Alison buzzed. Sounded as
though she'd scored a direct hit on her second stop. Her voice was
shaking with excitement as she told me, "Pick me up quick. Corner
of Ojai Avenue and Ventura, by the Oaks."

That was only a block or
two from where we'd separated. I was then about two miles east of
there. A quick and risky U-turn in the middle of a hairpin curve
sent me cruising sedately back toward downtown in a long line of
traffic; took me about five minutes to reach the pickup point. I
pulled into the curb and punched the door; Alison bounded inside
with an excited sparkle in her eyes, told me, "I'm going to knock
your socks off."