“We didn’t have friends,” Rebecca said. “Pell wasn’t like that.”
“But some people he’d met would come by, stay for a while, then leave. He was always picking up people.”
“Losers like us.”
Linda stiffened slightly. Then said, “Well, I’d say people down on their luck. Daniel was generous. Gave them food, money sometimes.”
You give a hungry man food, he’ll do what you want, Dance reflected, recalling Kellogg’s profile of a cult leader and his subjects.
They continued reminiscing but the conversation didn’t trigger any recollections of who the houseguests might’ve been. Dance moved on.
“There are some things he searched for online recently. I was wondering if they mean anything to you.
One was ‘Nimue.’ I was thinking it might be a name. A nickname or computer screen name maybe.”
“No. I’ve never heard of it. What does it mean?”
“It’s a character out of the King Arthur legend.”
Rebecca looked at the younger woman. “Hey, did you read us any of those stories?”
Linda didn’t recall. Nor had they any recollection of an Alison—the other name Pell had searched for.
“Tell me about a typical day in the Family.”
Rebecca seemed at a loss for words. “We’d get up, have breakfast…I don’t know.”
Shrugging, Linda said, “We were just afamily . We talked about what families talk about. The weather, plans, trips we were going to take. Money problems. Who was going to be working where. Sometimes I’d stand in the kitchen after breakfast, doing dishes, and just cry—because I was so happy. I had a real family at last.”
Rebecca agreed that their life hadn’t been very different from anyone else’s, though she clearly wasn’t as
sentimental as her sister-in-crime.
The discussion meandered and they revealed nothing helpful. In interviewing and interrogation, it’s a well-known rule that abstractions obscure memories, while specifics trigger them. Dance now said, “Do this for me: Pick a particular day. Tell me about it. A day you’d both remember.”
Neither could think of one that stood out, though.
Until Dance suggested, “Think of a holiday: Thanksgiving, Christmas.”
Linda shrugged. “How about that Easter?”
“My first holiday there. Myonly holiday. Sure. That was fun.”
Linda described making an elaborate dinner with food that Sam, Jimmy and Rebecca had “come up with.” Dance spotted the euphemism instantly; it meant the trio had stolen the groceries.
“I cooked a turkey,” Linda said. “I smoked it all day in the backyard. My, that was fun.”
Prodding, Dance asked, “So there you are, you two and Samantha—she was the quiet one, you said.”
“The Mouse.”
“And the young man who was with Pell at the Croytons’,” Kellogg said. “Jimmy Newberg. Tell us about him.”
Rebecca said, “Right. He was a funny little puppy. He was a runaway too. From up north, I think.”
“Good-looking. But he wasn’t all there.” Linda tapped her forehead.
A laugh from her comrade. “He’d been a stoner.”
“But he was a genius with his hands. Carpentry, electronics, everything. He was totally into computers, even wrote his own programs. He’d tell us about them and none of us could understand what he was talking about. He wanted to get some website going—remember, this wasbefore everybody had one. I think he was actually pretty creative. I felt bad for him. Daniel didn’t like him that much. He’d lose patience with him. He wanted to kick him out, I think.”
“Besides, Daniel was a ladies’ man. He didn’t do well with other men around.”
Dance steered them back to the holiday.
“It was a pretty day,” Linda continued. “The sun was out. It was warm. We had music going. Jimmy’d put together a real good sound system.”
“Did you say grace?”
“No.”
“Even though it was Easter?”
Rebecca said, “I suggested it. But Pell said no.”
Linda said, “That’s right. He got upset.”
His father, Dance supposed.
“We played some games in the yard. Frisbee, badminton. Then I put dinner out.”
Rebecca said, “I’d boosted some good Cabernet and we girls and Jimmy had wine—Pell didn’t drink.
Oh, I got pretty wasted. Sam did too.”
“And we ate a lot.” Linda gripped her belly.
Dance continued to probe. She was aware that Winston Kellogg had dropped out of the conversation.
He might be the cult expert but he was deferring to her expertise now. She appreciated that.
Linda said, “After dinner we just hung out and talked. Sam and I sang. Jimmy was tinkering with his computer. Daniel was reading something.”
The recollections came more frequently now, a chain reaction.
“Drinking, talking, a family holiday.”
“Yeah.”
“You remember what you talked about?”
“Oh, just stuff, you know…” Linda fell silent. Then she said, “Wait. That reminds me of one thing you might want to know about.” She tilted her head slightly. It was a recognition response, though from the focus of her eyes—on a nearby vase filled with artificial amaryllis—the thought was not fully formed.
Dance said nothing; you can often erase an elusive memory by asking someone about it directly.
The woman continued, “It wasn’t Easter. It was another dinner. But thinking about Easter reminded me.
Daniel and I were in the kitchen. He was watching me cook. And there was a big crash from next door.
The neighbors were fighting. He said he couldn’t wait to get out of Seaside. To his mountaintop.”
“Mountaintop?”
“Yeah.”
Kellogg asked, “His?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Did he own some property?”
“He never mentioned anything specific. Maybe he meant ‘his’ in the sense that it was something he wanted to have someday.”
Rebecca knew nothing about it.
Linda said, “I remember it clearly. He wanted to get away from everybody. Just us, just the Family.
Nobody else around. I don’t think he said anything about it before or after that.”