S Is for Silence

trust a soul. I’ve been burned more than once and I’m petrified it’s only going to happen again. Do you know how many shrinks I’ve been through? Do you know how much money I’ve spent trying to make my peace? They fire me. Have you ever heard of such a thing? They throw up their hands and claim I won’t do the work. What work ? What kind of work can you do around that? It sticks in my craw. Why’d she leave me when she turned around and took the fuckin’ dog?”

3
    I met Daisy Sullivan at my office at 9:00 the next morning. Having shown me a glimpse at her rage, she’d retreated into calm. She was pleasant, reasonable, and cooperative. We decided to set a cap on the amount of money she’d pay me. She gave me her personal check for twenty-five hundred dollars, essentially five hundred dollars a day for five days. When we reached that point, we’d see if I’d learned enough to warrant further investigation. This was Tuesday, and Daisy was on her way back to Santa Maria, where she worked in the records department at a medical center. The plan was that I’d follow her in my car, drop it off at her place, and then we’d take hers and head out to the little town of Serena Station, fifteen miles away. I wanted to see the house where the Sullivans were living when her mother was last seen.
    Driving north on the 101, I kept an eye on the rear end of Daisy’s 1980 Honda, dusty white with an enormous dent across the trunk. I couldn’t think how she’d done that. It looked like a tree trunk had fallen on her car. She was the kind of driver who stayed close to the berm, her brake lights flashing off and on like winking Christmas bulbs. As I drove, the flaxen hills appeared to approach and recede, the chaparral as dense and scratchy-looking as a new wool blanket. A gray haze of dried grass undulated at the side of the road, whipped by the breeze created by the passing cars. A recent fire had created an artificial autumn, the hillsides as bronze as a sepia photograph. Tree leaves were scorched to a papery beige. Shrubs were reduced to black sticks. Tree stubs, like broken pipes, protruded from the ashen earth. Occasionally, only half a tree would be singed, looking as though brown branches had been grafted onto green.
    Ahead of me, Daisy activated her turn signal and eased off the highway, taking the 135, which angled north and west. I followed. Idly I picked up the map I’d folded into thirds and laid on the passenger seat. A quick glance showed a widespread smattering of small towns, no more than dots on the landscape: Barker, Freeman, Tullis, Arnaud, Silas, and Cromwell, the latter being the largest, with a population of 6,200. I’m always curious how such communities come into existence. Time permitting, I’d make the rounds so I could see for myself.
    Daisy’s house was off Donovan Road to the west of the 135. She pulled into a driveway that ran between two 1970s-era frame-and-stucco houses, mirror images of each other, though hers was painted dark green and the one next door was gray. Against her house, bougainvillea grew from thick vines that climbed as far as the asphalt shingle roof in a tangle of blossoms the shape and color of cooked shrimp. I parked at the curb and got out of my car while she pulled the Honda into the garage and removed her suitcase from the trunk. I stood on the porch and watched her unlock the door.
    “Let me get some windows open,” she said as she went in.
    I stepped in after her. The house had been closed up for days and the interior felt hot and dry. Daisy moved through the living and dining rooms to the kitchen, opening windows along the way. “The bathroom’s off that hall to the right.”
    I said, “Thanks,” and went in search of it, primarily because it gave me the opportunity to peek into other rooms. The floor plan was common to houses of this type. There was an L-shaped living-dining room combination. A galley-style kitchen ran the depth of the house on the left, and on the right, a hallway connected two small bedrooms with a bathroom in between. The place was clean but leaned toward shabby.
    I closed the bathroom door and availed myself of the facilities—a polite way of saying that I peed. The tile in the bathroom was dark maroon, the counter edged with a two-inch beige bullnose. The toilet was the same deep maroon. Daisy’s robe hung on the back of the door, a silky Japanese kimono, dense sky blue, with a green and orange dragon embroidered on the back.