Neighbor George by Victoria Nelson

Author:Victoria Nelson [Nelson, Victoria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2021-11-05T00:00:00+00:00

17

The phone in front of the market took coins.

I borrowed a quarter and a dime from a wizened hobbit in a baseball cap (when they weren't hallucinating, Bolinas street people tended to be far more generous than the well-heeled newbies) and dialed 911. The operator patched me to the sheriff's department. I hadn't thought about what I was going to say. After a moment, I spoke up and reported the Bel Air's location up in the park, gave my address and hung up.

Then I trudged slowly up the hill to the cul-de-sac like the little homing pigeon I was. Where else in this world did I have to go to but there?

At the top of the hill George's house stood still and shuttered. The driveway was empty.

I let out a long breath. Climbing up my own back steps like a very old person, I unlocked the kitchen door, taking both the key and the fake rock with me. I relocked the door from the inside and checked to see that all the windows were locked, too.

In my overnight absence a curious transformation had taken place. My aunt and uncle's bungalow had shrunk to the size of a dollhouse. A musty smell filled all the rooms. I sat down at the kitchen table to wait for the patrol car that the officer in San Rafael assured me would be there shortly.

I picked up the phone and dialed the Finches. Now that the matter of the missing Bel Air was, so to speak, out of the closet, I didn't have to dodge them. But how much could I say about the rest of it? The whole episode at Mud Lake was starting to feel like a dream.

“Why, Dovey!” Sally tried not to show her surprise. Almost always she had to call me and not the other way around. “I thought you must be over in Berkeley.”

I got straight to the point, or one of them. “Did you hear my uncle's car start up two nights ago?”

Sally thought. “I don't remember. I'll ask Al. Why, dear?”

“Somebody stole it.”

“Stole it?” she cried.

I heard a car pull up outside and looked out the window. My heart jumped. A sheriff's car in the driveway, another eerie moment of déjà vu. “I'll call you back,” I told Sally and hung up.

At the firm double knock I undid the latch and forced open my stiff, scarcely used front door to a large young uniformed deputy with a deeply tanned face and almost invisible blonde eyebrows.

“You're reporting a car taken two nights ago?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn't you report it then?” His voice was neutral.

I explained that I thought the person would bring it back. That I found it in the ravine near Mud Lake. That I was very frightened of my neighbor, which was why I stayed out in the woods all night.

I didn't say a word about the body in the lake.

He listened to all this without expression. “Did you know there's a call out on you as a missing person? We've been looking all over the park for you.

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