The Silent Sister(82)

I’d already been in that jewelry store, but I hadn’t met a Sal.

“Thank you so much,” I said, and I slipped the photograph back into my tote and headed out the door.

A funny name, I thought as I walked the block toward the jewelry store. That worried me. But the music store fit so well, and that gave me hope. I wanted to hold on to that hope as long as I could.

* * *

The young guy in the jewelry store told me Sal would be working the next day, and I decided to wait till then to resume my search. Funny how I could run a half marathon without a twinge, but my feet ached from the stop-and-go walking through Ocean Beach.

I drove back to my Mission Valley hotel, took a long soak in the tub, and then spent the evening Googling “music store,” “Grady,” and “Ocean Beach.” On various music Web sites and blogs, I found people reminiscing about Grady’s Records from back in the day. The shop apparently closed down in the late nineties. I searched for any reference to a female employee, with a “funny name” or not, but no one mentioned anyone from the shop other than Grady himself, and I finally went to bed for another long and restless night.

* * *

Sal was not a very trusting guy.

When I arrived at the jewelry store the following morning, the gray-haired, bearded jeweler sat at the worktable in the window, and he wore a blank expression as he looked at the picture of my sister through his safety glasses.

“Never seen her,” he said, resting his soldering iron on the table.

“Someone told me she might have worked at Grady’s Records years ago,” I said. “And that you might know where I can find Grady.”

“Rad shop,” Sal said with a nod. “Grady closed it down around 2000 when vinyl officially tanked. He could open it up again now, though, and have customers lined up for blocks.”

“Can you tell me where I can find him?”

He looked suspicious as he slipped his safety glasses to the top of his head. “You going to cause him any kind of grief?”

“No,” I said. “Of course not. I just want to see if he remembers my sister.”

He stroked his beard, considering the request. I thought I looked pretty straight and innocent in my blue capris and black T-shirt, my hair in a ponytail. Apparently, he thought so, too. “He’s a sound engineer at the stadium,” he said.

“Where’s the stadium?”

He gave me directions back to Mission Valley, and I remembered passing a stadium not far from my hotel.

I thanked him for his help, then walked slowly to my car, reluctant to leave the beach. I was so sure I felt the vibrations of my sister in this town.

* * *

It took a lot of walking around the aging circular stadium and many questions of many custodians before I found the guy named Grady, but I did finally find him. He sat in a small room in the middle of a half circle of monitors of varying shapes and sizes. His back was to me, his hair in a curly gray ponytail.

“Excuse me?” I said.

He swiveled his stool around to face me and I was mesmerized by his see-through green eyes.

“You lost?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “I’m looking for you if you’re Grady. Do you have a few minutes to talk?”

“Depends on who’s asking,” he said, but he smiled warmly.

“My name is Riley MacPherson.” I waited to see if my name meant anything to him, but he looked at me blankly. “I think … there’s a very small chance you might have known my sister,” I said. “Did you ever have a girl working for you by the name Ann Johnson?”

He lost his smile and stared at me. “No,” he said, but the look in his eyes told me he knew that name, and I felt my own eyes fill with tears.

“Please talk to me,” I pleaded. “I don’t want to hurt her. I promise.”

He was still looking hard at me, but I saw something inside him begin to bend. “You’re too young to be her sister,” he said.

Oh, my God, I thought. He knew her.

“My family was very spread out in age,” I said. “But I promise you. I am.” I wiped the corners of my eyes with my fingertips.

“Why would you think I know her?” he asked.

“I’m pretty sure that a private investigator talked to you about her long ago. Do you remember?”

He shrugged. “Some guy came in with a picture of a girl and I said I didn’t know her,” he said. “And that’s what I’m saying to you, too.” He swiveled his chair around so his back was to me again.

“I flew all the way from North Carolina to try to find someone who knew her,” I said. “Please.”

I saw his shoulders sag and heard him sigh. He turned back to me.

“Why do you want to find her?”

“I thought she killed herself when she was seventeen,” I said, and his pale eyes widened, “but I recently found out that she faked her suicide. That she’s probably still alive. I never got to know her. Our parents are both dead. She and my brother are my only family.”

He was frowning at me now, gray eyebrows nearly knitted together. “When’s the last time you saw her?” he asked.

“When I wasn’t quite two.”

“Shit.” He ran a hand over the thinning hair at his temples. “Well, it seems to me if she wanted to see you, she would have found you instead of you having to look for her.”