Dear Irene

I followed her into her house, one of the smaller homes on the block. She nodded toward a chair at the kitchen table; I took it gratefully, happy to be off my feet for a while. What I could see of the house was neat and clean. The kitchen was warm and filled with the aroma of baking bread. She put Brutus behind one of those indoor gates people use to keep small children out of a room. He stopped yapping, but when I looked toward him, he gave me a growl for good measure.

Molly came back into the kitchen, suddenly touching her hair. “Lordy, I must look a sight,” she said, reaching up and pulling the curlers out.

“Don’t worry about it. You weren’t expecting company.”

“Well, that’s a fact,” she said, and proved it by talking nearly nonstop for over an hour. In that time, she told me the name of every neighbor within a dozen or so houses of her own, their children’s names and approximate ages, where they worked, and at least one of their habits, interests or problems. She told me which ones had left to visit relatives for Christmas, what state the relatives lived in, and even gave a weather forecast, saying, “White Christmas” or “No White Christmas there” depending on the family destination. She paused only twice, to take the bread out of the oven and when the phone rang. It took both of us a minute to realize the ringing was coming from the cellular phone. I answered around a mouthful of warm bread.

Lydia was calling, certain I was in mortal danger. I swallowed the bread, reassured her, learned that no one had found Rosie Thayer yet, and went back to Molly Kittridge.

“How is it you know all your neighbors so well?” I asked.

She smiled. “Well, two reasons. First off, I’ve lived here since God was a baby. My grandaddy on my mother’s side built this house as a sort of a retirement place, I guess you’d say. Southern California was a paradise then. My folks ruined his retirement by packing up the family and following him out here from Oklahoma during the dustbowl days. Lots of Midwesterners settled in Las Piernas. That’s why you can find more basements here than most places in Southern California. They’re great for tornados, but lousy for earthquakes.”

“So your family moved here before any of the others?”

“The only ones that had been here longer was the Nelsons, up at the end of the street. They died and their kids sold it to that young couple that got transferred to North Dakota.”

“This is the vacant house, the one three doors up the street?” I asked, remembering her discussion of the couple who had lived there for less than a year, were “asking way too much for that old place in this market,” but were too stubborn to lower the price before they were forced to move. After several months without any offers, the couple let their listing expire and were looking for a new real estate agent. I had heard enough about them to write and ask them how they were doing. (No kids; he, a distributor for a shoe company and she, an engineer; both crazy about bass fishing.)

She chuckled. “Not three doors, exactly. There’s no doors, windows, or anything else on half of these places up here on the crest. The old Nelson place is at 1647. There’s two vacant lots between us now.”

“You said there are two reasons you know your neighbors. What’s the second?”

“Brutus.”

He started yapping in response.

“Hush!” she commanded. He gave one more bark and settled down again. “He’s a wild little fellow. Wilder than a fox raised by wolves. I have to chase him all over the neighborhood. Now all of a sudden he’s crazy about the old Nelson place. I think he knows I don’t like hauling my old buns up to the top of the hill. And all the grass in these lots gets my hay fever a-going. But most times Brutus will come back when I whistle.”

“He does seem to be well known around here.”

She cackled at that. “I’ll just bet everyone you talked to griped about him. He’s a barker, I admit it. He’s very protective of me. He’s usually good about being quiet at night, but for the past week or so he’s been a little bothersome.”

“The past week?” I asked, suddenly feeling a chill in that warm kitchen.

“Oh, about that long, I guess. Something just got into him. Middle of the night, two, three in the morning, he starts barking. ’Bout to drive me crazy.”

The hair on the back of my neck was rising. “Do you remember which night he first started barking?”

She thought for a moment. “Wednesday, maybe?”

Wednesday night. The night Rosie Thayer had disappeared.

“No idea what he’s barking at?”

“The top of the hill, for all I can tell. I get up, I turn the lights on, ask him what’s the matter, let him out in the backyard, show him there’s not a living soul to be found. He stops barking, follows me back into the house, hops back up on the bed, and looks at me like I’m crazy to be up at that time of night. And he’s probably right.”

She was disappointed when I said I’d have to be going. I gave her one of my cards and thanked her for her help. I started to leave, and felt myself losing my nerve.

“Molly, I have an unusual favor to ask.”

She looked up from studying my card. “Sure, honey, what is it?”

“I need to look around the Nelson place. Would you watch me from your window for a few minutes? I mean, just in case anyone else happens to be there…”

Her eyes widened. “Holy smokes, I just got it! You think she might be in there. You’re the one he’s been writing to…”

“Yes. The house is probably empty, he’s probably miles away, but just in case-”

“I’ll get Brutus on the leash and come with you.”

She refused to hear my objections.

I had expected Brutus to be nipping at my heels, but the leash seemed to change his personality. As we neared the house at the crest of the hill, he pulled like a huskie in his traces. Molly sneezed once, twice, three times. “What’d I tell you?” she said, reaching for a handkerchief.

From a distance, 1647 Sleeping Oak appeared to be a modest, white wood-frame house. Grass grew up around the ankles of a “For Sale” sign in the big front yard. The lawn was due for a mowing and the windows were dirty, but otherwise it looked as if it had been a place someone cared about not so long ago.

Molly kept sneezing, her eyes red and watery now. When I suggested that she just wait for me back at her house, she gave me a congested version of “not on your life.” I walked up the steps and knocked on the front door, not expecting an answer. Brutus suddenly started going berserk, making me wonder if someone was waiting inside. He would alternately bark and wheeze as he strained against his rhinestone collar. I walked over to one of the larger windows at the front of the house and looked in. I saw a sun-faded beige carpet in a bare room. Dark marks and nail holes outlined the places where pictures had been taken down. The stigmata of an abandoned home.

“I don’t think anyone’s here,” I said over the dog’s barking, hoping to God I was right. “But would you mind letting Brutus off his leash? Maybe he can show us what’s got him so worked up.”

“I guess I can catch him again,” she said, unsnapping the leash as he twisted in impatience. He bolted around the corner of the house, stopping at a wooden gate. He looked back at us, yapped, then suddenly disappeared. We could hear him in the backyard.

“Brutus!” Molly cried, but he just yapped louder.

As we came closer, we could see that Brutus had wriggled through a hole in the ground beneath the gate; apparently a project he’d worked on during his previous visits. The gate had a latch with pull string on it. I tugged on the string and cautiously stood aside as the gate swung open. I peered into the backyard. No one there but Brutus.

Still, there were signs of another presence having preceded me – something much larger than Brutus. The grass was taller in the backyard, almost to my knees. Molly and I cautiously followed the pathway of flattened grass toward the sound of Brutus’s toe-nails, scratching furiously.