Slow Kill (5 page)

“Why? What happened?”

“I can’t discuss it with you until all family members have been notified,” Kerney replied. “It’s policy. May I speak to Mrs. Spalding?”

“It’s best that you do it in person,” the woman said. “Alice has Alzheimer’s disease, and she doesn’t use the telephone much anymore. It confuses and upsets her.”

“How advanced is her condition?” Kerney asked.

“Deteriorating. It’s quite likely she won’t understand all of what you tell her, but I can never be sure. Sometimes she’s lucid, at other times she’s incoherent. Her mind wanders, her memory is impaired, and she goes off-topic frequently.”

“I can be there in two or three hours.”

“Don’t make it any later than that,” the woman said. “Alice fades in the evening.”

Kerney asked for directions and scratched them down on his road map, starting with which Highway 101 off-ramp to take once he reached Santa Barbara.

He left the ranch and headed south. Given Alice Spalding’s medical condition, Kerney wasn’t sure what he might gain from meeting her. But it felt good to be doing something.

The route to Alice Spalding’s house took Kerney through a tidy Santa Barbara neighborhood of charming Spanish Mission and Romanesque houses. He passed the Presidio, a low-slung adobe building joined to a large mission church with twin bell towers that framed the coastal mountains rising behind it. Tour bus visitors busily took pictures as they strolled the grounds.

Beyond the Presidio, the winding road climbed into hills where the houses were much larger, and more difficult to see through an increasing profusion of plants, shrubs, and trees. None of the flowering vegetation, a riot of rich blues, deep reds, vivid purples, and vibrant yellows, was familiar to Kerney. About all he recognized were the towering palm trees.

He found the right street and house number, and turned into a driveway barred by an electronic gate. He announced himself over the intercom, and the gate swung open.

He parked next to a high-end Japanese sedan and looked around. Pink and red flowers bordered a step-down cobblestone walkway to the house. Tall, thin evergreen trees that reached to the second-story tile roof line bracketed the entry.

Before he could knock on the thick, antique plank door it swung open to reveal a woman with blue eyes, long dirty blond hair, and a fair complexion. She was somewhere in her mid- to late forties.

“Officer Kerney,” the woman said, looking him up and down, taking in the jeans, boots, and western shirt. She hadn’t expected a cowboy cop to come to the door. But then, Paso Robles wasn’t as stylish as Santa Barbara.

Kerney nodded and flashed his shield, which he’d carried to California in his overnight bag.

The woman gave it only a quick glance as she extended her hand. “I’m Penelope Parker,” she said with the slightest hint of a Southern accent. “Come in.”

Kerney followed Parker into a large room with a line of windows looking out to a covered loggia supported by four columns and surrounded by a semicircular wall. Beyond was a view of mountains, the city below, and finally the bay, where masts of pleasure boats bobbed like tiny toothpicks in the water.

“Alice is napping right now,” Parker said, “and I don’t want to wake her. It shouldn’t be too long before she rings for me.”

“I don’t mind waiting,” Kerney said.

Parker gestured to the patio, opened the door, and led Kerney outside. “How did Mr. Spalding die?” she asked.

“For now, it appears to be by natural causes,” Kerney said as he joined her at the patio wall. Below him an abandoned three-story stucco house sat with a patched tar-paper roof and plywood-covered windows and doors. A paved drive ran behind the building to a dead-end parking area where a few benches had been positioned to take in the view of the bay.

“Alice won’t be happy to hear this,” Parker said. “She’ll probably reject what you have to say.”

“Why is that?” Kerney asked, wondering why a derelict house on an overgrown lot with a parking area stood in the middle of such an expensive neighborhood.

“Because of her condition, and because of Mr. Spalding’s legally binding agreement to make continued good faith efforts to locate their only child, a son named George. Alice had her lawyer make that language part of the divorce settlement, and she refers to it obsessively.”

“They have a son who’s gone missing?” Kerney asked. The grounds around the abandoned house overflowed with huge palm trees, and more lush shrubbery, vines, and flowers he didn’t recognize. But these plants were growing wild, not carefully tended like those in the gardens of the houses all around.

“If only it were as simple as that,” Parker replied. “George was killed in the Vietnam War. However, Alice refuses to accept that reality.”

“Because of the Alzheimer ’s?”

“Oh, no,” Parker said. “The onset of the Alzheimer’s occurred two years ago. The hunt for George has been going on much longer, almost thirty years. Alice’s obsession about it was one of the things that drove a stake in her marriage.”

“You knew them back then?”

“No,” Parker said with a shake of her head. “I’ve been Alice’s personal assistant since the divorce. In fact, in a way, I’m also part of the divorce settlement. Mr. Spalding pays my salary and benefits. Before they split up, I worked for both of them for about two years.”

“Has the son’s death in Vietnam been fully documented?” Kerney asked.

“Completely,” Parker said. “Still, Alice persists in her belief that he’s alive. You’ll see what I mean after she’s up. There’s a room in the house devoted completely to George. But no one’s allowed in it unaccompanied. Not even me. If you ask, she’ll show it to you.”

“Do you know the current Mrs. Spalding?” he asked.

“I’ve never met her,” Parker replied. “Clifford bought her a Tuscan-style mansion in Montecito. But as I understand it, she rarely stays there.”

“Do you know where it is?”

Parker nodded. “I can give you directions before you leave.”

“That would be great,” Kerney said. He pointed at the abandoned house. “What is that place?”

Parker leaned against the patio wall. “It’s a park owned by the city but rarely used. Originally, it was a residence and a plant nursery started by an Italian named Francesco Franceschi, who came here in the 1890s. He was responsible for importing almost a thousand foreign species and varieties of horticultural plants to the area. They still grace many of the older homes and mansions. He almost singlehandedly beautified the city. These were treeless, brush-covered hills back then.”

“Why is it so run-down?”

Parker laughed. “The city would love to restore the house and grounds as a venue for concerts and community events. But the neighbors won’t hear of it. They don’t want the peace and quiet of the area disturbed.”

A bell sounded from inside the house. “That’s Alice,” Parker said. “I’ll go prepare her for your visit.”

Kerney stood on the patio and looked up. A covered second-story balcony dominated the back of the house, and, he guessed, gave onto the master bedroom. He wondered if an adjacent room served as George Spalding’s shrine. Although Mrs. Spalding’s obsession with her son probably had nothing to do with her ex-husband’s death, it was intriguing.

A ground-floor breezeway connected to what Kerney assumed were Parker’s living quarters. Parked in front was a sporty silver SUV that had probably never been off the pavement.

Penelope Parker stepped out on the patio and beckoned to him. He followed her through a spacious living room filled with ornate Spanish Colonial period furniture and tapestry rugs, and up a staircase to the master bedroom, where he was introduced to Alice Spalding.

A tiny woman dressed in powder-blue slacks and a creamy white blouse, Spalding smiled up at him from a beige leather easy chair near the windows. Her feet barely touched the floor.

She smiled vaguely at him. “What do you have for me today, Captain Chase?”

Parker touched Spalding on the shoulder. “This is Officer Kerney from Paso Robles, Alice, not Captain Chase.”

“Oh,” Spalding said, looking worriedly from Parker to Kerney. “What happened to Captain Chase?”

“Nothing,” Parker replied. “The officer has something to tell you.”

Spalding’s expression brightened with anticipation. “Yes?”

“I’m sorry to tell you that Clifford Spalding is dead,” Kerney said.

Confusion and anger washed over Alice’s face. “George isn’t dead.”

“I’m talking about your ex-husband, Clifford,” Kerney said.

“Well, he isn’t dead either,” Alice said emphatically. “Have you found George?”

“Not yet,” Kerney said, thinking he’d wasted his time coming to see her.

“I didn’t think so,” Alice said huffily as she rose. “Come with me, I have something to show you.”

She took him into an adjacent room. It was indeed a shrine, filled with framed photographs of George Spalding as a child, boy, teenager, and finally a young man in his Army uniform. On a heavy oak table were stacks of out-of-state newspaper clippings, some of them slightly yellow with age, others worn from constant handling.

She removed two recent news stories posted on a bulletin board behind a desk and handed them to Kerney. One, from an El Paso newspaper, had a picture of a middle-aged man accepting a civic award. The other article, with a photograph of a different man pushing a shopping cart filled with aluminum cans, was a story about homelessness.

“That’s George,” Alice Spalding said. “Now, all you have to do is go get him and bring him home to me. I never should have let him go. I need to tell him how sorry I am.”

Kerney stifled the impulse to ask which man was George, since neither one at all resembled the young soldier in Mrs. Spalding’s photograph. He glanced at Parker, who shook her head sadly.

“I’ll get right on it,” he said.

Among the photographs on the wall was a picture of Alice, Clifford, and a very young George Spalding in front of a pueblo revival-style motel that had been popular in the Southwest before the advent of the Interstate highway system. Kerney asked about it.

“It was our first motel in Albuquerque,” Alice said. “On Central Avenue. We owned it for years.”

“You lived in Albuquerque?” Kerney asked.

“I think so,” Alice replied as she glanced questioningly at Parker.

“Yes, you did,” Parker said.

Alice smiled in relief.

On the desk was a framed photograph of George in his Class A Army uniform, probably taken after his graduation from basic training. Next to it was a picture of a pleasant-looking teenage girl.

“Who’s the young woman?” he asked.

Alice Spalding glared at him. “You know very well that’s Debbie Calderwood.”

“Yes, of course it is,” Kerney said.

“Find her and you’ll find George,” Alice said.

“She’s also missing?”

“You know she is,” Alice replied hotly.

“Debbie left Albuquerque soon after George died,” Parker explained. “Alice believes she was pregnant with George’s baby at the time.”

“I want to see my grandbaby,” Alice said. She made a cuddling motion with her arms.

Kerney had heard and seen enough. He excused himself and let Parker escort him downstairs.

“See what I mean?” Parker said as she led him toward the front door.

“Who is Captain Chase?” Kerney asked.

“He’s the commander of the Santa Barbara Police Department Criminal Investigation Unit. Alice usually has me call him once a week to report another lead about George. He’s handled the case-if you want to call it that-for years.”

“Can he tell me anything about Mr. Spalding?”

“I’m sure he can,” Parker answered. “As well as probably more than you’ll ever want to know about Alice’s search for George.”

“How did Spalding handle Alice’s obsession?”

“Indulgently, for years, until it got the best of him.”

“What about Debbie? Is she really missing?”

Parker had her hand on the front doorknob. “She probably just moved away. The police aren’t looking for her. They never have. Years ago, before my time, Alice talked Clifford into hiring a private detective to look for Debbie, but it didn’t get anywhere.”

“Does the private detective live here in Santa Barbara?”

“Yes, but he’s retired now, and I don’t know his name. Alice will eventually ask me about Clifford. What can I tell her?”

“What I said earlier, that he probably died from natural causes in his sleep.”

“What a peaceful way to go.”

“You’ll be able to get a report from the San Luis Obispo Sheriff’s Department within a few days.”

“Could you bring it to me?” Parker asked, smiling winningly.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Parker gave him directions to the second Mrs. Spalding’s Montecito estate, and Kerney decided to find a room for the night. After his visit with Alice Spalding, he wondered if staying over in California to chase down information would turn out to be nothing but a waste of time.

He pulled into a motel parking lot on State Street, a few blocks beyond an area of hotels, high-end department stores, movie houses, restaurants, and retail shops that formed the tourist center of the city. His cell phone rang as he killed the engine.

“Hey there, Kerney,” Andy Baca said.

“How were the polar bears at the zoo?” he asked.

“Playful,” Andy said. “The grandkids loved them. We’re on our way home to Santa Fe, and they’re asleep in the back of the car.”

“Wasn’t I supposed to call you later tonight?” Kerney asked.

“Yeah, but I’ve got news,” Andy said. “I told my district commander to do whatever it took to find Mrs. Spalding pronto. So he contacted the state game and fish officer for the Pecos District and asked him to go looking for her and her trail-riding buddies up in the mountains.

“The game and fish officer found her all right, along with only one, I repeat, one, trail-riding pal: a white, forty-year-old male named Kim Dean. It was just the two of them. Mrs. Spalding gave the officer a line of bull about the rest of the group having gone on ahead to Elk Mountain. But from what the officer saw, he didn’t buy it.”