“What’s the story on him?”
“Typical of the times. Early sixties, he went off to college as a clean-cut kid and came home looking like a bum. I believe it was the summer after his sophomore year, he and this little gal showed up in a yellow school bus. He’d been traveling across the country, thinking what a free spirit he was while he borrowed money from his folks. Turned out his girlfriend was pregnant and the two of them were broke. Deborah and Patrick offered them a place to stay. Nothing permanent, just until the baby came. The girl already had one kid, five or six years old. Greg parked the bus on one side of the cabana and that’s where they hung out. I used to see the little boy running around the front yard without a stitch of clothes on. Deborah and Patrick were fit to be tied. To top it off, once the baby was born, Greg and what’s-her-face took off with the boy and left the little girl behind. After two years of no contact and no financial support, the court terminated their parental rights and the Unruhs adopted her.”
“Sounds like a soap opera.”
“It was. They thought they’d seen the last of them, but here they came again some time later, in the same yellow school bus, only now it was covered with peace signs in psychedelic paint. It was the talk of the neighborhood. Greg had changed his name to Creed and she was Destiny. I forget what her name was before. Her son was ten or eleven by then. They called him Sky Dancer, Sky for short.”
“Oh dear,” I said. “And the daughter was Rain?”
“Patricia Lorraine. The shortened version came before it occurred to them to rename themselves.”
“Why’d they come back?”
“Beats me. They left again abruptly some weeks later. By then, Deborah was worried the day would come when the bio-mom would try getting her daughter back so that might have been another reason she and Patrick packed up and left. ‘Gone, no forwarding’ as far as those hippies were concerned.”
“Could the bio-mom have done that, reclaimed the child?”
“Hard to say. The courts can be capricious when it comes to the welfare of a child. Judges sometimes put too much stock in nature and not enough in nurture. Deborah and Patrick were terrific parents, but why take the risk?”
“Who left first, Greg or his parents?”
“He did, definitely. It was the second time he’d decamped with his common-law wife. Deborah had no intention of putting up with that again.”
“What happened to him?”
“Last I heard, he and Destiny were heavy into free love and dope. Flower children. That’s what they called themselves. Remember that? Sticking daisies down the rifle barrels of the National Guardsmen, like that would make a difference.”
I laughed. “That’s right—1967 was the Summer of Love. What were they thinking?”
He smiled and shook his head. “That’s how you know you’re getting old—when you start looking back with kindness on things you knew for sure were ridiculous at the time.”
“At least they believed in something. Kids I see these days don’t seem to have passions of any kind.”
“That’s the other way you know you’re getting old. When you say crap like that,” he said with a laugh. “Anyway, I didn’t mean to get sidetracked. Do you think the dog’s burial is significant?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll tell you what’s bugging me. That dog’s body was stolen from the veterinarian who put him to sleep. Does that make sense to you?”
“Not much.” He nodded at the house next door. “Before you give up, you might want to talk to Avis.”
“I didn’t say I was giving up. I think the pieces are there. I just don’t understand how they fit.”
I left his house, walking past my car on my way to her place next door. In truth, I was talked out for the day and I would have preferred to head home. I had a lot to absorb and I wanted to make notes while the information was fresh. At the same time, the woman lived no more than fifty yards away and I figured I might as well make contact while I was close. I hadn’t known her name before Felix mentioned it, but I’d put her on my mental list, along with the neighbors in the houses across the street. It had been a while since I’d done an old-fashioned canvass, trotting from door to door, introducing myself. As a PI apprentice, under the tutelage of Ben Byrd and Morley Shine, this was how it was done. You followed a trail of crumbs through the forest and pecked them up one by one. Thus far, I was still lost, but my appetite hadn’t been satisfied so on I went.