Silent Partner (40 page)

"Dr. Ransom was paying the bills?"

"That's what it said right at the top of the chart: All financial correspondence to be directed to Dr. Ransom."

"What else was in the chart?"

"All the therapy records—PT, OT. For a while Dr.

Ransom even had a speech therapist come in but that was a waste of time—Shirlee was nowhere near talking. Same with a Braille teacher. Dr. Ransom tried everything. She loved that girl—I just can't see her destroying herself and abandoning the poor thing."

"Was there a medical history in the chart?"

"Just some early stuff and a summary of all the problems written out by Dr. Ransom."

"Any birth records?"

He shook his head.

"Were any other doctors involved in Shirlee's care?"

"Just Dr. Ransom."

"No physicians?"

"What do you think she was?"

"She was a psychologist. Did she tell you she was an M.D.?"

He thought for a while. "Come to think of it, no, she didn't. But the way she took charge of Shirlee's case, writing orders for the therapists, I just took it for granted."

"Shirlee must have had physical complaints. Who handled those?"

"You'd think she would have, but funny thing was, except for all her problems, she was really healthy, had a good strong heart, good blood pressure, clear lungs. All you had to do was turn her, feed her, change her, give her postural drainage, and she'd go on forever." He gazed up at the sky, shook his head. "Wonder where she is, poor thing."

"Did Dr. Ransom ever talk about the accident?" His eyebrows arched. "What accident is that?"

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"The drowning that caused all of Shirlee's problems." "Now you lost me." "She drowned when she was a small child. Dr. Ransom

told me about it, said it was what caused Shirlee's brain

damage."

"Well, I don't know about that, because what she told me was something totally different—the poor girl was born that way."

"Born blind and deaf and crippled?"

"That's right, all of it. 'Multiple congenital deformities.' Lord knows I saw it often enough, staring up from Dr. Ransom's summary."

He shook his head. "'Multiple congenital deformities.' Poor thing started out that way, never any chance at all."

It was close to noon. I drove to a gas station nearby and used the pay phone to call Olivia's office. Mrs. Bricker-man, I was informed, had returned from Sacramento but wasn't expected back in the office today. I phoned her home number, let it ring ten times, and was just ready to hang up when she picked it up, breathless.

"Alex! I just got in. Literally. From the airport. Spent the morning taking a power breakfast with Senate aides and trying to get them to give us more money. What a bunch— if any of them had ever owned an idea, they sold it a long time ago. Cheap."

"Hate to bother you," I said, "but 1 was wondering if-"

"The system was back up. Yes, it is, as of this morning. And just to show you how much I love you, I used Sacramento Division's mainframe to run Shirlee Ransom through. Sorry, nothing. I did find a person by that name, same spelling. But on the Medi-Cal files. Date of birth 1922, not

'53."

"Do you have an address on her?"

"No. You told me '53, I didn't figure you'd be interested in a senior citizen."

"Makes sense," I said.

"You are interested?"

"I might be... if it's not to much of a—'"

"All right, all right. Let me change out of this business suit and I'll call the office, try and get my assistant to overcome her computerphobia. It'll take a while. Where can I get back to you?"

"I'm calling from a pay phone."

"Cloak and dagger nonsense? Alex, what are you up to?"

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"Digging up bones."

"Ugh. What's your number?"

I read it off to her.

"That's my neighborhood. Where are you calling from?"

"Gas station on Melrose near Fairfax."

"Oh, for God's sake, you're two minutes away! Come over and watch me play high-tech detective."

The Brickermans' house was small, newly painted white, with a Spanish tile roof. Narrow beds of petunias had been planted along the driveway, which was filled with Olivia's mammoth Chrysler New Yorker.

She'd left the door unlocked. Albert Brickerman was in the living room, in a bathrobe and slippers, staring at the chessboard. He grunted in response to my greeting. Olivia was in the kitchen, scrambling eggs, wearing a white ruffled blouse and size 18 navy skirt. Her hair was a henna'd frizz, her cheeks plump and rosy. She was in her early sixties but her skin was smooth as a girl's. She hugged me, crushed me to an upholstered bosom.

"What do you think?" She ran her hands over the skirt.

"Very board-room."

She laughed, turned down the fire under the eggs. "If my socialist papa could see me now. Do you believe, at my age, being dragged kicking and screaming into the whole yuppie puppie thing?"

"Just keep telling yourself you're working within the system to change it."

"Oh, sure." She motioned me to the kitchen table. Spooned out eggs, set out plates of rye toast and sliced tomatoes, filled mugs with coffee. "I figure I've got one more year, maybe two. Then goodbye to all the nonsense and set out for some serious traveling—not that Prince Albert would ever budge, but I've got a friend, lost her husband last year. We plan to do Hawaii, Europe, Israel. The works."

"Sounds great."

"Sounds great, but you're antsy to get into the computer."

"Whenever it's convenient."

"I'll call now. It'll take a while for Monica to get into the system."

She phoned her assistant, gave instructions, repeated them, hung up. "Cross your fingers.

Meanwhile, let's eat."

Both of us were hungry and we wolfed in silence. Just as I'd started on my second serving of
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eggs, the phone rang.

"Okay, Monica, that's okay. Yes. Type in SRCH, all capitals. Good. Now type capital M dash capital C capital R, the the RETURN button twice. CAL. C-AL, also all in caps, four three five six dash zero zero nine. Good. Then capital LA dash capital W dash one dash two three six.

Okay? Try again. I'll wait... good. Now press RETURN one more time, then the HOME

button... Under the seven... No, hold down the control button while you do it—over on the left side of the keyboard, CTRL. Yes, good. Now what comes on the screen? Good. Okay, now type in the following name. Ransom as in kidnapping... what? Nothing, forget it. R-A-N-S-O-M.

Comma. Shirlee. With two e's at the end, instead of an e-y. S-H-I-R-L-E-E... Okay, good. What comes on?... Okay, keep it there, Monica. I'm going to get a pencil and you tell me the birthdate and the address."

She began writing. I got up, read over her shoulder:

Ransom, Shirlee. DOB 1/1/22 Rural Rote 4, Willow Glen, Ca. 92399.

"Okay, thank you, Monica." I said, "Ask her about a Jasper Ransom." She looked up at me quizzically, said: "Monica, don't clear your screen yet. Type in ADD SRCH. Wait for the blinking prompt again... Got it? Okay, now Ransom, same name as before, comma Jasper... No.

J.... Right. Jasper. Good... It is? Okay, give me the birthdate." She wrote: DOB 12/25/20. Same address. "Thank you again, Monica. Got a lot left to do?... Then take off early. I'll see you tomorrow." She hung up. "Two elderly Ransoms for the price of one, darling." She looked at the paper again and pointed to the birthdates. "New Year and Christmas. Cute. What's the chance

of that? Who are these people?"

"I don't know," I said. "Willow Glen. Got a state map?" "No need," she said. "I've been there.

It's out in the

boonies—San Bernadino County, near Yucaipa. When

the kids were little I used to take them down there to pick

apples." "Apples?" "Apples, darling. Little red round things? Keep the doctor away? Why the surprise?"

"I didn't know apples grew down there."

"They used to. Then one year we went down there and

there was nothing left—all the U-pick places closed down,

the trees dead and dying. We're talking boonies, Alex.

Nothing's out there. Except Miss New Year and Mr.

Christmas."

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THE San Bernadino Freeway propelled me, like a pea through a shooter, past an exurban blur of industrial parks, ticky tack housing developments and auto lots wider than some small towns.

Just beyond Pomona and the County Fairgrounds, the scenery shifted to ranches, egg farms, warehouses, and freight yards. Running parallel to the south side of the freeway were railroad tracks. Cotton Bowl and Southern Pacific boxcars sat stagnant on the rails. The rear third of the train was meshed compartments crammed with gleaming little Japanese sedans. A brief burst of architectural fervor past Clare-mont and then everything got quiet.

I drove through empty, sun-scorched hills, past smaller farms and ranches, sloping fields of alfalfa, horses grazing sluggishly in the heat. The Yucaipa exit narrowed to a single lane that ran alongside a tractor graveyard. I slowed and cruised past a string of aluminium-sided trailers billed as "The Big Mall," an untended taco shack, and a boarded-up shop advertising "Very Rare Antiques."

Willow Glen shared billing on a road sign with a Bible college twenty miles south and a state agricultural depot. The directional arrow aimed me over a covered bridge and onto a razor-straight road that cut through more farmland—citrus and avocado plantings, ramshackle stables, and untended fields. Broad slabs of blank brown space were broken by trailer parks, tin-roofed juke joints, and cinder-block churches, and surrounded by the granite drapery of the San Bernadino Mountains.

The mountains faded from rawhide to lavender-gray in the distance, the upper peaks merging with a pearly mist of sky. Heat percolated up from the lowlands, softening the contours of the pines that clung to the mountainsides, creating fringed silhouettes that recalled ink bleeding into blotting paper.

Willow Glen Road materialized as the left arm of a boulevard stop in the middle of nowhere, a sharp hook past a splintered sign advertising fresh produce and a "Jumbo Turkey Ranch," long vacated. The blacktop twisted and climbed toward the mountains, then up into them. The air got cooler, cleaner.

Ten miles in, a few apple orchards appeared: freshly tilled small plots backed by frame houses and surrounded by barbed wire and windbreak willows, the trees cut low with wide crotches, for handpicking. Cherry-sized orbs peeked out from under sage canopies of leaf. Harvest looked to be a good two months away. Homemade signs on stakes driven into the road shoulder welcomed the U-pick crowd but there didn't seem enough fruit to provide more than a day's desultory picking. As the road climbed higher, neglected orchards began to dominate the landscape—larger, dusty stretches filled with dead trees, some felled, others whittled to limbless, gray-white spikes.

The asphalt ended at twin telephone-pole-sized posts banded with Chamber of Commerce and service club badges. A chain dangling from between the posts supported a sign that read WILLOW GLEN VILLAGE. POP. 432.

I stopped, looked past the sign. The village seemed to be nothing more than a tiny rustic shopping mall shaded

by willows and pines and fronted by an empty parking lot. The trees parted at the far end of the lot, and the road continued as compressed dirt. I drove in, parked, and stepped out into clean, dry heat.

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The first thing that caught my eye was a large black-and-white llama nibbling hay in a small corral. Behind the corral was a narrow frame house painted barn-red and trimmed in white. The sign over the doorway read WILLOW GLEN FUN CENTER AND PETTING ZOO. I searched for human habitation, saw none. Waved at the llama and got a ruminant stare in return.

A handful of other buildings, all small, all wooden, shingle-roofed and unpainted and connected to one another by planked walkways. HUGH'S WOODCARVER'S PARADISE. THE

ENCHANTED FOREST ANTIQUE SHOPPE. GRANNY'S TREASURE TROVE, GIFTS

AND SOUVENIRS. Every one shuttered tight.

The ground was cushioned by pine needles and willow leaves. I walked through it, still searching for company, spotted a flash of white and a jet of smoke rising from behind the woodcarver's shop. Low-hanging branches blocked the view. I walked past them, saw a series of weathered wood booths bolted together under a single, brand-new red roof. As I got closer, the air got sweet—the heavy sweetness of honey mixed with the tang of apples. The trees receded and I was standing in a bright clearing.

One of the booths was labeled APPLE PRESS & CIDERY, another CLOVER HONEY. But the sweet smoke was coming from next door, a green-shuttered section designated GOLDEN

DELICIOUS CAFE. DEEP DISH PIE. COBBLER. The cafe's facade was whitewashed planks and stained-glass windows—windows decorated with black boughs, pink-white blossoms, green, red, and yellow apples. The door was open. I went in.

Inside everything was spotless and whitewashed— picnic tables and benches, a white ceiling fan recirculating hot, honeyed air, a Formica-topped counter and three white Naugahyde stools, hanging plants, an old brass cash register, and a mimeographed poster advertising a Yucaipa astrologer. A young woman sat behind the counter drinking coffee and reading a biology textbook. Behind her a pass-through window provided a view of a stainless-steel kitchen.

I sat down. She looked up. Nineteen or twenty, with a sharply upturned nose, clipped curly blond hair, and wide dark eyes. She wore a white shirt and black jeans, was slim but hippy. A green-apple badge on her shirt said WENDY.

She smiled. Maura Bannon's age. Less sophisticated, no doubt, but somehow older than the reporter.

"Hi. What can I get you?"

I pointed to her coffee cup. "How about some of that, for starts."

"Sure. Cream and sugar?"

"Black."

"Would you like a menu?"

"Thanks."

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She handed me a plasticized rectangle. The selection surprised me. I'd expected burgers and fries, but a dozen entrees were listed, some of them complex, with a nod toward nouvelle, each tagged with letters indicating the proper wine: C for Chardonnay, JR for Johannisberg Riesling.