S Is for Silence

curious about her mood. If she was leaving her little girl for good, you’d think she’d be down in the mouth, but he said she seemed happy. ‘Giddy’ was his word. Of course, he’d never laid eyes on her before, so as far as he knew, she was always that way. I was hoping she’d said something about her destination, but no such luck. Her dog was barking up a storm, jumping from the front seat to the back. She finally let it out to do its business in the grass. After she put the dog back in the car, she went in the office, paid the clerk for her gas, and bought a Coca-Cola from the cooler. Then she got in the car and off she went, driving toward Freeman.”
    I opened my shoulder bag and took out a pen and my map of Santa Maria. “Can you show me the location of the service station? I’d like to take a look.”
    He adjusted his bifocals and studied the map, opening it to the full and then refolding it. “That’d be here,” he said, making a mark on the page. “Place is still there, though the pump jockey and clerk have both left the area. From that point, she could have gone anyplace. Down one of these side roads and out to the 101—south to Los Angeles, north to San Francisco. She could have circled back and gone home. We calculated how far she could get on a tank of gas and checked with every station within that radius—no easy task. No one remembered seeing her, which struck me as odd. That car was a beauty and so was she. You’d think someone would have noticed if she’d stopped for anything—meal, restroom, to walk the dog. I don’t know how she could have vanished like that, literally, without a trace.”
    “The papers said Foley wasn’t considered a suspect.”
    “Of course he was. Still is. We put that out, hoping to coax him into telling what he knew, but he was a wily one. He went straight out and hired an attorney, and after that, he wouldn’t say a word. We never did come up with anything to hang him on.”
    “He gave no explanation at all?”
    “We managed to get a little bit out of him before he clammed up. We know he stopped by the Blue Moon and had a couple of beers. He claimed he got home a short time after that, which would have made it somewhere between ten and ten thirty. Trouble is, the babysitter, Liza Mellincamp, said she didn’t see him until sometime between midnight and one, which means if he killed her he had time to dispose of the body.”
    “He must have done a good job of it if she’s never been found.”
    Schaefer shrugged. “I imagine she’ll turn up one of these days, assuming there was something left of her once the critters got through.”
    “Also assuming he killed her, which he might not have.”
    “True enough.”
    “Not that I’m arguing for or against,” I said.
    “I understand. I go back and forth myself, and I’ve had years to ponder the possibilities.”
    “Did anybody support Foley’s claim that he got home when he said?”
    Schaefer shook his head. “Far from it. They know roughly when he left the Moon, but no one seems to know where he went after that. Might or might not have been home. Liza’s word against his.”
    “What about the car? I understand there’s never been any sign of that either.”
    “My guess is it’s long gone, probably broken down for parts. If not that, there’s always a demand for stolen cars in Europe and the Middle East. In California, L.A. and San Diego take the biggest hits.”
    “Even back then?”
    “Yes ma’am. The numbers might be different, but percentages are the same. Something like eighty-five thousand cars stolen out of those two cities just this past year. They steal ’em, take ’em to local ports, and crate ’em up for shipping. The other option is to drive a car across the border and dispose of it down there. Places in Mexico and Central America, if a vehicle doesn’t find a buyer, it’s left on the street and ends up sitting in an impound lot. You go down to Tijuana, you can see thousands—cars, trucks, RVs. Some have been there for years and never will be reclaimed.”
    “Was the car his or hers?”
    “He was the one signed the loan papers, but the car was hers. She made sure everyone knew that. In those days, wives couldn’t get credit even if they worked. Everything was done in the husband’s name.”
    “But why would he do that? Buy her a car and then kill her the next day. That doesn’t make sense.”
    “He might have killed her on impulse, struck her in a rage. Doesn’t