Bloodlines

“Right. Dan Norton searched the place for any sign of the child. Nothing was found. And the neighbor didn’t hear or see a child.”

“So he either killed the baby before he got home, or handed it off to someone else. No type O blood on the clothing Gus left in the hamper?”

“No,” he said slowly, “but an infant that young could be smothered or killed in any number of other ways that wouldn’t cause bleeding.”

“Yes, but this goes back to what I was saying when we were over at the Ducanes’-if the baby was supposed to be killed, Gus Ronden would have killed it there. And if the baby was just supposed to be held for ransom, why not take the nurse along as a hostage, too?”

“Adults are harder to manage.”

“Okay. But the fact is, no ransom note was ever delivered.”

“Maybe Gus bungled the kidnapping and the child died,” O’Co

“No, but Warren Ducane thought young Kyle Yeager-now Max-was that child, so that’s still a possibility. And if that’s true, we keep coming back to the same name again and again, and it’s the man you’ve suspected. Mitch Yeager could be the person who orchestrated all of this.”

O’Co

“My guess is that the Baer farm was kind of a hideout for this gang, and had been for years.”

“Prohibition was long over by 1958,” O’Co

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean smuggling was over. Or that criminals didn’t have a use for an out-of-the-way place.”

“Maybe.”

“Think about it-Gus has come back from killing Rose Ha

“Betty Bradford and Lew Hacker haven’t been seen or heard from in twenty years,” O’Co

“I’m not so sure they’re dead.”

“Why, because of that phone call you got the other day?”

I shrugged. “A hunch. Maybe not a good one. I don’t know. Anyway, that night, or soon thereafter, Gus is dead. The only people left on the master-mind’s team are the murderer from the Sea Dreamer and the one who killed Katy and Todd in the Buick.”

“I can think of two people who are loyal to Mitch and wouldn’t have minded doing a night’s work like this,” O’Co

“Eric and Ian? How old were they?”

“In their twenties.”

I thought about Eric holding Kyle over the railing. “I wonder if Ian and Eric know how to scuba dive.”

Barbara and Ke

I had Tuesday off and spent most of it taking my dad in for chemo and catching up on household chores and errands.

O’Co

When I told my father about it, he asked me if I had so few worries, I needed to borrow some from Barbara.

No. I had plenty of worries of my own.

I worried that my time with him was too short to waste with anything other than staying at his side. Nothing worried me more.

I worried that Mary would feel that I had trespassed on her kindness too often.

I worried that I’d never figure out what really happened that weekend in 1958, and more people would be harmed.

I worried that if I didn’t find something solid to back up all my great theories, I’d be covering a PTA fund-raiser by the middle of next week.

I worried that O’Co

I worried that someone really was following me all those times I felt watched, and I worried that no one was following me and I was losing my mind.

I worried that I liked Frank Harriman, the cop in Bakersfield, more than was healthy, because at the end of each day, no matter what else had occupied my mind, I found I had an urge to make a long-distance call to him, to ask if he was seeing anyone, to ask who was meeting him for coffee at the end of the shift these days, and-just to talk, to see if talking to him and listening to him still made me feel comfortable, at ease, in a way no one else seemed to make me feel at ease.

I didn’t make the call.

43

M Y MYSTERY WOMAN CALLED EARLY ON WEDNESDAY MORNING. “The boss had a cabin up near Arrowhead,” she said, and gave an address. “Maybe they took the baby up there. I don’t know.”

“Who was the boss?”

She ignored the question. “The cabin was in Gus’s name. Gus Ronden.”

I took a chance. “Betty, where’s Lew?”

There was a long pause, then she whispered, “Luis died in Mexico.”

She hung up.

She had spoken those last few words with grief in her voice-and pronounced his name in a way that suggested she might speak Spanish.

Lew Hacker had meant something to her. Luis. I wondered if “Hacker” was also an anglicized version of a Hispanic name. It wasn’t surprising that Luis might have found it easier to be Lew in the 1950s. Mexico. Had the two of them made an escape there?

I looked through everything that had been published about Gus Ronden. Nothing mentioned the exact address of the cabin, or even the road it was on. O’Co

I was making calls to find out if Ian Yeager was scuba-certified, when O’Co

“I’m in your friend O’Malley’s office on the construction site. You might want to come out to the farm,” Lefebvre told me. “Bring O’Co

I told him we’d be there right away.

Before we could leave, Max called. O’Co

“Want to explore the inside of Griffin Baer’s former home?” Max asked.

“You know I do. But it was sold this past weekend.”

“I know. I bought it.”

“You-what?”

“I wanted to tell you earlier, but thought I had better wait until it was official.”

“Wow…I thought… did you decide against living in Katy’s house?”

“You said it-Katy’s house. I don’t think Lily would be happy if I changed anything in it, and I don’t think I’d be happy if I kept it as a museum.”

“I can understand that. I drove by the Baer place the other day and saw it from the outside.”

“Come by and see more of it. Bring a flashlight-the power won’t be on until Friday.”

“Can you give me a couple of hours? I was just heading out.”

“No problem. I’ll go on over and open some windows to air the place out. It’s a beautiful house. And the view-well, wait until you see it.”

I hung up and stood there in a daze. O’Co

“I doubt he’ll wait for us. Listen, I’m going to drive separately. I’m meeting Max later.”

I saw a look come into his eyes, and his lips tighten across the front of his teeth. His hand clenched, then opened. But he didn’t say a word.