O n a summer’s eve, the lingering heat of the day drifting romantically around like incense, the sun glowing, no other word for it, people in Penn Park had a right to feel superior to most other folk. They had their kids, their steaks and barbecue sauce, their dogs, and their greensward. Greensward-Ray loved that word. Up the grassy hill, couples kissed in that golden light and ducks quacked along the slow-moving creek that ran through the center of the park.
They stepped through air thick with the sweetness of blooming flowers over boulders and dips in the path.
Leigh had grown up close to Penn Park. She had told him about the summer programs and the heat, and how much she longed for those lengthy days to come again when she had no needy clients coming after her, no deadlines to work her up.
“We spun on the merry-go-round,” she said. “Oh, you have no idea how hot it used to get, how dizzy we got. We fell on the ground. It tasted sweet, the dirt.”
His memories of heat mostly involved bungalows without air-conditioning, the air so tight it choked you. He remembered Penn Park only vaguely, like Disneyland, a one-time event, magical, hazy. Why hadn’t Esmé brought him more often when they lived on Bright Street? He really didn’t know. Maybe she was too busy working, trying to keep them fed.
“They had craft programs. I learned how to weave a plastic bracelet. Kat and I brought our dolls here and made a whole world for them. And if we forgot them, the lantana made a pretty hoop-skirted doll.”
Searching for James Hubbel, Ray and Kat strode into the swing area. Ray found himself amazed at how high these swings seemed to be. He sat down on one. Kat shoved him hard, and he flew.
“You see him there?” Kat muttered, because James Hubbel stood in the nearby meadow while his dog crouched only a few dozen yards away from them.
“Yeah.” Ray slowed to a stop.
“He didn’t even bag it!” Kat said, outraged.
“I imagine the minute he arrived in the park with a dog he was breaking rules.”
“Well, people shouldn’t-”
“Listen, Kat. I want you to stay right here.”
“What? It was my idea.”
“Haven’t you ever noticed how much harder it is to speak from the heart when there’re more than two people talking?”
Still holding on to the swing’s chain, she gulped. “Well, okay. True.”
“So I’m going to talk to him.”
“I have a more friendly connection. He remembers me, Ray. I knew him when I was a kid.”
While they argued in whispers, a couple of kids screamed by them, fighting over a bouncing ball. “Gimme.”
“No, you gimme!”
Before the fight ended up deadly, a graybeard picked one up by the neck of her shirt, like a tomcat lifts a kitten. “It’s her turn,” he said firmly, then carried the kicking child back to the red gingham-covered picnic table. “Your mom has a hot dog for you, if you can shut your mouth long enough to open it.”
The child shut up and stuffed her face with a hot dog loaded with mustard. The child who had won the ball returned and sat across from her. The two little girls made ugly faces at each other. They tossed fries and competed as to how much ketchup.
“He thinks I killed his daughter,” Ray said quietly. “He needs to talk with me.” He got off the swing and walked toward Hubbel.
Kat let him go. She sat down on the swing and watched.
“Here, Marley. C’mere, boy!” Hubbel had let the dog off the leash. Marley chased a little boy. The boy’s father arrived, purple-faced, to chastise Hubbel, who apologized, although not profusely. Once the beagle finally decided to come back, he was spoken to in a mild but firm tone. “You’re a bad boy and you know it,” Hubbel told it, snapping the dog’s collar to his nylon tether. “You know we love you but you’re a bad boy.” Like all bad parents, he gave the dog a good petting, and even a kiss on his head.
“Hello, Jim,” Ray said.
Hubbel, clearly startled, jumped up and examined him. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I used to come here years ago.”
“Nostalgia strikes me funny coming from a man your age.”
“I came here once with Leigh.”
“Have you heard from her?”
“No.”
“No,” he repeated. He shook his head, and Ray saw him as a father who was sick with worry about his daughter.
Ray said, “I know you are angry and suspicious of me right now.”
“Damn straight I am. I just had a talk with Detective Rappaport about you.”
“I want to show you-explain-that I’m looking for Leigh. I’m worried, too.”
Marley, snuffling in a hedge, pulled his owner a few feet. Hubbel followed, as if he didn’t know what else to do under the circumstances, and Ray fell into step beside him.
“Tell me more about this shirt you found up there,” Hubbel said. Ray went over it carefully. When he was finished, Hubbel said, “I don’t know if you’re trying to help or if you’re destroying evidence. The trunk of your car! Don’t you watch cop shows?”
“All I know is, I’m looking now, Jim.”
“You’re really looking for her?”
“I should have gone looking a lot earlier,” Ray said. Hubbel took this in. They entered a narrow path, deserted, between rosebushes.
Ray heard a sound like a sob. Hubbel had stopped and turned his back to him. He found himself patting the beefy shoulder of his father-in-law.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t swear it’s her on the videotape. I can’t promise you she was all right at that time.”
“It’s her mother. She seems to have given up on everything. When she heard about the shirt, she broke down. She is sure Leigh is dead. I don’t know what to think about this video, whether it’s a hopeful sign. I’ve been a cop a long time, and when girls go missing like this, the news is usually bad. Ray. Swear to me-swear you didn’t-”
“I swear, Jim.”
Hubbel looked hard at him. “Okay,” he said. “I want to help. Anything.” He continued to keep his opinions in reserve, though.
“I came to talk to you about the cabin.”
“Ask me anything.” They kept walking, the little dog keeping to the side, sniffing at the flower beds.
“Has she ever gone there on her own, to get away for a while, as a refuge?”
“No. I don’t think so. I don’t think she liked it much. Maybe there is a ghost scaring people away. I don’t think anyone will ever buy it. This rumpled-up T-shirt you found. You’re right, it’s odd.”
“If it’s hers-if she went to the cabin, where could she be heading?”
Hubbel rubbed his mouth. “If Leigh was in charge-” He stopped and the dog looked back at him. “I would think Palm Springs. She used to rave about a trip she took there a few years ago. She ever tell you about that?”
“No.”
“Oh, I guess she wouldn’t because she went there with her old boyfriend.”
“Tom Tinsley?”
Eyebrows raised, Hubbel said, “You know about him?”
“You know I do.”
Leigh’s father shrugged. “Yeah, well, she and Tommy stayed at the Blue Sky Motel and took a hike in Borrego Springs. She wanted us to go see the waterfalls at the end-you know how Leigh gets sometimes. We don’t go out to the desert, though. My wife can’t take the heat.”
The park lamps came on suddenly.
“Here comes night,” Hubbel said conversationally. “Let’s sit down. I’m walked out.” They sat on a low brick wall against a viney hillside. They had walked deep into the forested part of the park and were alone.
Hubbel, stroking the dog, who had his head back and eyes half-closed in pleasure, sighed, and Ray suddenly realized how much emotion James was suppressing. He kept turning his head away, swiping at his nose. He was like a big old dog himself, wary, with that barrel chest. “You and Leigh ever talk about having a baby?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t volunteer much, Ray.”
“I didn’t want a baby.”
“Oh. That cause problems?”
“And the thing is, I’d love to have a child. But I didn’t think I’d make a good father. Didn’t trust myself. Leigh had no doubts.”
“Doubt’s like a pesticide in a marriage. Kills the love. You should trust her.”
Ray felt an intense longing to talk to Leigh. There was so much to say.
“You’re some schmucky kid, then you have a baby, you know? Oh, I guess you don’t. But let me fill you in on the parenting thing. It’s like getting hit by a semitruck on the interstate, a horrible surprise. You don’t know how to cope with this emergency. You’re thrust into a new world of disability. You can’t go out at night to dance, to dream, to drink. You can’t even sleep, for Chrissake.”
Hubbel said, “I never got my degree from Cal. She ever tell you that?”
“No.”
“Yes.” Leigh’s father petted the dog below him who circled twice, then plopped down directly on his feet. “Studied criminal justice with the help of the G.I. Bill.”
“She never said, Jim.”
“I married her mom in my sophomore year because we were going to have a little girl. I got a steady job. I’m a good deputy. I’d rather be on the street than sitting behind a damn desk anyway. I don’t regret my life, but I wanted Leigh to be safe, to have a skill. I wanted her husband, when she married, to have a good degree.”
“Uh-huh.”
Hubbel smiled. “You don’t get why I’m saddling you with this ancient history.”
“Not really. No.”
“Then she had to go and fall in love with Tom Tinsley.” Hubbel pushed the dog off his feet. In the glimmering twilight, in the distant bursts of light from the park’s lampposts, children screamed and played. Ray wondered if Kat was eavesdropping.
“It went on for years. He used to eat dinner with us. My wife liked him. He seemed like a nice enough kid. But we had issues. Tommy was-nice didn’t make him a good match. He had no direction. No drive. He wanted to be an actor. He would have made a good truck driver, if he had lived. You know he drowned himself?”
“Not the details.” Ray could no longer read his expression, but he heard Hubbel breathe deeply.
“You know, I smoked for thirty years. I miss it every day, even though I know it was making my lungs black and tarry. It was right about then, when I was trying to quit, that I had a little talk with Tom. I couldn’t stand how much I missed smoking. I thought about it every minute, night and day, until my wife sent me packing to the park. That’s when I got the habit of coming here every day,” he said. He laughed humorlessly. “I’m not excusing myself, I was mean as hell for a while. That’s just how it was.”
“He met you here, at the park?”
Hubbel nodded. “It was earlier. A really hot afternoon in the summer. Smog like today. Anyway, he and Leigh had had a dustup. A bad one. He looked miserable. He’d been crying, I don’t know.”
“Puffy eyes?”
“Yeah. She had met you. He was afraid he was going to lose her.”
Ray looked around the park at the pools of light the lamps created, at the extended families still eating barbecue, laughing, some shouting slightly drunkenly. Life at its best, in a way. The best part of Los Angeles, a homey warmth here in this suburban park named for William Penn, the peacemaker. “What did you tell him?”
“It seemed like my chance to get rid of him once and for all. First, I talked to her. Then I told him-” Hubbel smoothed the leg of his corduroy shorts. “Don’t come around my daughter anymore. Told him he was finished.”
“And?”
“She had another man lined up. A better man. She had told him, too, but Tom was crushed. I saw that and I ignored it. You know, I never told my wife any of this. To this day, she doesn’t know what I said to that guy. I don’t know which of you Leigh would have ended up with. She still loved him, I think. I pushed her very hard.”
Ray tried to see Hubbel’s eyes, but could not make them out. The dog made satisfied dreaming sounds, the equivalent of a cat purring.
“Yeah, I told him to fuck off. I told him all about you, Ray. How much she loved you. How you were gonna be a big man. A rich professional. The man could see I was moving him out and Leigh had done the same. All for you, Ray. We believed in you.”
“He died that night,” Ray guessed.
“He folded. Gave up.” Hubbel patted his pocket as if seeking phantom cigarettes.
“Leigh must have felt like she killed him,” Ray said. “You should have told her about this a long time ago. You could have taken some of the burden off her, done something for her I couldn’t.”
“We all better take some responsibility now,” Hubbel said. “I’ll keep pushing law enforcement, but I won’t push ’em down your throat anymore. I can’t say I’m sure you hurt her. I just don’t know. They need to widen the search. You work with them, Ray. You promise me. I’ll let you know if I think of anything else.”
Ray shook his hand. It turned into a bear hug. It felt like they were clinging to each other, because they couldn’t cling to Leigh.